Total pages in book: 151
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 738(@200wpm)___ 591(@250wpm)___ 492(@300wpm)
I cough, stumbling to the edge of the tent, searching for the flap of a door. It takes me several seconds to find it. And by this time, Apis is up and next to me. “Pell, what are you doing?”
I push through the flap, sucking in fresh air.
“Pell!” Apis follows me, grabbing my arm.
I turn on him, baring my teeth. I’m a teenager, not a fully mature satyr with anger issues. So this threat is nothing like it will be in the future. But it’s enough, because even though Apis is older, more muscular, and more formidable than me, he backs off.
I growl at him. “Finish the story.”
“What story?”
“The little gryphon girl. What happened to her?”
“Is this what’s got you all upset?”
“Answer the question.”
“They cursed her with spells. The eros was taking her. He’s been banished from the pantheon, Pell. He’s not entitled to the riches the rest of us are.”
“Rest of us?” But that’s not what he means. And this is when it becomes clear. He’s not talking about me. I am not one of the ‘us.’ I am something they are entitled to. Because I am not a god. I am a godling. Something less. Something more, though, too.
Because I am magic.
I am… a tool.
“What kind of curses?”
He shrugs. “Tarq wasn’t specific, if you’re asking for the spellings. He just said they took away her gryphon magic. But it wasn’t hers to keep, anyway. All the magic of animals belongs to the temple. But I don’t have to tell you that. You know this better than anyone.”
And there it is. The proof. Not only that they see me as something less, but it’s worse than that. They see me as an animal, not a person. “They turned her into a wood nymph chimera?”
“So sad, right? But that’s not the worst part.”
“What else?”
“By the time she was pulled through the door, she was a human!”
I turn away, trying to get my bearings about where the fuck I am. Trying to fit all these pieces together. Trying to understand what it all means.
I get it. To these people, I am a magic animal to be used for my bloodhorn. It makes sense. But Pie? This is how she ended up with that shitbag of a mother, it has to be.
This Caretaker Ceremony cursed her to a life as a human in a world where there is no magic.
But is that really true? Because PA, from my perspective—and especially my little area of it—is overflowing with magic.
Apis puts a hand on my shoulder. Squeezing. Mimicking comfort, or understanding, or sympathy.
But he feels none of those things. I can tell.
The Apis bull, from one of the lesser-known legends, was feared. No. Wrong word. In that legend, people were terrified of him. And when he died, they did numerous ceremonies to make sure he would never return. Things like pull out all his organs—even his heart—and put them inside jars. Which was something they often did with mummification. But in the case of Apis, they used twelve jars, not just four. And they didn’t mummify his body, they burned it inside the sarcophagus before sealing the lid and filling the cover with inscriptions. Spellings. To curse his remains and keep him contained.
They didn’t even store the jars in the same tomb. They took them hundreds of miles away and buried them in different places, just like the legend of the god Osiris. In fact, there is some speculation that Apis and Osiris were the same god.
These jars were never found, so modern people don’t even know how much he was hated. It’s just something I had known, but had forgotten, and now remember.
Later, the personality of Apis was conveyed into a black bull with specific white markings. And that’s how the myths stayed. The original Apis—and the fear he evoked—faded into obscurity and the blessing of the stupid bull became something more palatable.
But I am not in the company of the bull.
I am in the company of the god. One of the most powerful ever known and whose cult outlasted all the others.
I turn and look at him. “What are you doing?”
He screws up his face, then puts his hands up in some kind of innocent shrug. And this, I realize—this… charm, or charisma, or enchantment he’s doing—is all an act. “I’m getting you drunk, brother.”
“We’re not brothers. You only have one, remember?”
“Hmm.” He smiles. Smugly. “Maybe the better question is… what are you doing, Pell?” Then he narrows his eyes at me. “That is you, right? Because I don’t see much of you in those yellow eyes of yours lately.”
This is a dangerous moment. Because he knows I am not some young, wide-eyed, willing participant who can be pacified with drink and sex. Maybe it’s just a gut feeling he’s getting due to my odd behavior and admissions about a dream girl named Pie. But maybe it’s something else.