Pleasing the Gods
Liam Rands
Dusk stopped the flies, and for that, Melina was thankful. Gone too with the fading hours before dark, was their malevolent drone; contented emanations, a black heaving cloud of hungry mouths, lapping, gorging and fighting to to gain their share of blood staining the walls and base of the deep pit.
Torches set and lit against the coming night, the sacrifices resumed amidst the low chanting of the priests.
Melina squeezed Benan's tiny hand in hers.
He looked up, bright eyes full of trust. His smile, meant to reassure, only served to clamp barbed fingers around her heart. Muscles contorted painfully in her face, forming a semblance of a smile in return.
Both needed to be brave. At her age, Benan would be her last. She was too old and worn to bear another.
The line shuffled forward. Melina and Benan moved closer to the altar-pit, sandaled feet stirring the dust.
Now, parched soil, void of life for so long, rose at the slightest disturbance. Three years had passed and not a scintilla of rain. Nothing but endless heat imbued their island paradise.
A young girl was next. Long copper hair reflecting the amber glow of the torches as she knelt, offering her neck to the wicked blade of Tencheral, the Island's head priest.
His thick fingers curled within her locks, pulling tight as he dragged the knife across her throat.
Skin puckered and split as her life-blood rushed forth, spilling and blending with the other children's already cooling and congealing within the pit.
The ultimate offering to Penchah, goddess of the earth.
Tencheral held her firm, her spasms fading as her life force ebbed. Gently, as if his own child, he lifted her empty husk and placed her within the cradle of her mother's waiting arms. The line moved forward again.
Benan leaned against Melina's waist, his face turned away from the scene ahead.
She stroked soothing fingers across his cheek.
A boy of seven or eight, close to Benan's age, knelt before the priest. The boy's eyes were wide as his emaciated chest rose and fell in a rapid beat. He held himself steady; his hands clenched tight upon his knees as the blade bit deep and released his essence in a surging fountain of red.
Melina caressed Benan's cheek again, reassuring herself his sacrifice necessary.
The blood of all their children would run free before the night was done.
They must appease the gods if the rains were to return. From death came new life. Tencheral had told them so.
Lynchelle, wife of fisherman Kell, stepped forward with her daughter.
Tencheral handed off the drained, limp boy to his mother.
Lynchelle's calloused hand on her daughter's shoulder, she offered up to the knife, Meesa, long-time playmate of Benan and his friends.
Melina watched Meesa's solemn countenance, such a stark contrast to the laughing, happy girl who had chased the boys as they played among the wind-swept dunes across the eastern beach.
Lynchelle knelt beside Meesa, hand-in-hand, their eyes fixed on each other as the blade descended and scored her daughter's neck.
The girl shuddered, a rasping breath rising from her ruined throat as her oval face writhed in pain. She slumped against her mother, her heart pulsed slower, covering Lynchelle in a crimson sheen. Melina tasted the sharp copper tang of blood in the dry evening air.
Rising to her feet and clutching her lifeless child to her chest, Lynchelle stumbled away, the whites of her eyes bright against the stain of her skin.
Melina's resolve came close to failing when Ovina, her only daughter, moved forward to take Lynchelle's place. In her arms, wrapped tight in a blanket of blue and yellow and oblivious to the nights' events, was Cenna, Melina's eight-month-old granddaughter. The babe was offered. Tencheral held Cenna by the feet, and unwrapped her covering as he dangled her over the pit. The infant began to cry.
A flash of despair burned within Melina's breast. She clutched Benan closer, a comfort still before his time drew near.
She raised her head to the heavens, eyes fixed on the pink streaked clouds above, adding her own silent prayer for rain as she heard the child's cries cut short.
When she looked down, Tencheral had finished. He handed the silent bundle back to Ovina.
Melina's daughter bowed her head as she silently withdrew.
The line moved forward again.
At that moment, the moon rose above the scattering of pink clouds, a spectator come to watch the mortals pay their overdue homage to the gods.
Melina cursed its curiosity as it spied on them in their moment of greatest pain.
Fuldek, wisest of the fisherwomen, and bent crooked with age, shuffled to the pit holding the hand of her son's son.
The boy wailed at the sight of the knife, and Melina could hear the crooning words of Fuldek as she held him steady.
The blade flashed, a wink of moonlight caught along its length. It opened the boy's neck, ending his cries in a strangled gasp as his blood merged with the others in the darkened pit.
All too soon, Benan's time had come and together they stepped forward to accept his fate.
Melina's heart beat faster as they knelt before the priest.
Eyes on each other and hands held tight, Benan whispered, “I love you mother,” as the blade descended to extinguish his light.
The deed done, Melina stumbled numb to her feet.
Her back straight, she lifted Benan gently in her arms, tears clouding her eyes. Holding him closer to her breast she moved away and faded in to the growing night.
She will mourn his passing alone, in silence, the moon her only observer as she searches for a quiet place to add him to the earth.
In her pocket, she carried the sweet seeds of the orange flower Helena blossom. To the earth, she will add them, a marker for her child's grave.
When the rains come again the seeds will grow.
When the rains come again, the blossoms will be her reminder of the boy she lost this night.
When the rains come again and bring the island new life.
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