We're Even

Light filtered through the grating into the room, and Mors woke from yet another peaceful, pleasant sleep.

His throat felt a little uncomfortable. He touched it, and the hard, dry blood crust crumbled into flakes that scattered over his black clothes.

Sure enough, Peturabo had attacked him last night.

He cleared his throat and strolled leisurely outside. The noon heat was fierce, sunlight falling directly from above onto the clearing; the air currents below the cliff were steady, and the windless forest lay silent. Thanks to Mors's psychic power, even herbivores were unusually scarce around his dwelling.

The boy had his back to him. Stone cracked beneath his hands with crisp sounds.

Mors silenced his footsteps and quietly walked up behind Peturabo.

The first thing he saw was the wounds on the boy's hands.

From his fingers to his wrists, improperly used stone-carving tools had left countless tears across his skin. Whenever he raised the stone hammer and slammed it down upon the pointed chisel, blood seeped from his split wounds like a string of bright red beads.

Peturabo stubbornly refused to wipe away the bloodstains, leaving these records of mortal injury upon skin that ought to have been smoother than a finished statue.

The work beneath his hands was no better. Its shape was vague, its proportions distorted, filled with the foolish mistakes characteristic of a beginner.

Mors could only tell that he wanted to carve two humanoid figures facing each other, and that the stone had come from one of Mors's unfinished works.

After a comparison lasting several milliseconds, he confirmed that it was the head of his griffin statue.

Mors sat down on the ground beside Peturabo. The muscles in the latter's jaw tightened. Gritting his teeth, he swung the stone hammer, but his left hand, which held the chisel, lost strength and control. The chisel flew away, leaving an ugly diagonal gouge in the stone.

Without pausing, Peturabo immediately leaned over to retrieve his tools.

Living alone, Mors naturally made his tools according to adult proportions. They were somewhat too large for Peturabo.

The pointed chisel slipped from the boy's weary fingers again and clattered to the ground, like a cunning flying fish snatching away bait after granting him a fleeting, illusory taste of sweetness.

Peturabo said nothing. Even the anger he sometimes could not suppress had been cooled and extinguished. Cold, hollow beads of sweat rolled over his pale, chapped lips.

He stared fixedly at the materials before him: the pointed chisel, hammer, carving knife, square, file... and a shapeless failed piece. Those objects filled the reflection in his eyes, making him unwilling to see anything else.

Even the wind and light seemed to pass around him. Over the course of a single Olympian night, Peturabo had built illusory bunkers and trenches within his mind.

Mors reflected on his actions for a moment, then confirmed that he had already explained the principles of communication to Peturabo.

Since Peturabo had made no request, then he needed nothing.

He brushed the bit of dust from his black clothes and walked into the lush green woods nearby.

His daily life held little interest, Mors admitted. He merely broke off wood, trimmed away shoots and bark, and dried them for firewood or carving materials.

If he found a dead bird, he would crouch down and examine its down while pinching its chin. If its color, length, and resilience were all just right, he would wash and dry the feathers, then paste them onto the corner of a colored painting or a game piece.

On rare occasions, Mors would go to Lokos, the nearest city-state, silently walk through its market, and observe the bearing and expressions of its residents.

The last time he had entered Lokos was during Olympia's athletic truce, when every city-state agreed to rest and cease fighting, gathering at the arena for the grand event.

By selling a performable comic play script, he had sat beneath a magnificent canopy, painstakingly produced day and night by countless weavers and designers, alongside the city-state's tyrant at the time. Together, they watched a wrestling champion below raise a fresh laurel crown in the sandy arena and display his huge muscles gleaming with oil.

Mors lifted a hand and brushed aside a spindle-shaped green leaf blocking his path, stepping forward as undecomposed dead leaves rustled beneath his feet.

When he released the slender branch that had sprung back and forth, there was now a newly broken light-brown twig more than three inches long between his fingers.

His gaze passed through a rectangular gap between trees and moss. Clouds drifting through the sky caused the forest's light and shadow to shift in a tangled pattern. Between two neighboring trunks, a small, nimble brownish-yellow shape flashed past.

"Why should a craftsman learn to hunt?"

Mors murmured softly, answering his own question. "To obtain the finest leather, feathers, sinews, leg bones..."

"Then can I kill them with my own abilities?"

He imitated a child's tone, the corner of his mouth curling strangely. He nearly laughed at himself.

"Of course, as long as you are truly more skilled with them than with a bow and arrow."

The light-brown twig flew from his hand. The next second, that soft, nimble shadow silently collapsed amid dead branches and grass, while several mammals that might have been its kin crashed frantically through the leaves and fled in all directions.

"This is really difficult. Every time I hit prey, I can't find where it died. I need to retrieve my arrow, and claim my trophy."

"Perhaps it isn't dead. It merely fell, bled, and disappeared."

Mors bent down and met the creature's beautiful, pleading wet eyes. Blood gushed from the prey's artery, nourishing the earth.

He touched the prey's forehead. His psychic power instantly destroyed its nervous system and brain.

This creature was at a fine age, rich in fat, with smooth and flexible hide. Satisfied, Mors casually picked up a stone, sharpened it into a blade, pulled over one of its legs, and began dismantling the raw materials.

As the temperature began to fall, Mors returned home with one haunch of the prey over his shoulder and a bundle of materials wrapped in animal hide in his hand.

Peturabo was still where he had been.

The tool in his hand had changed, from the chisel and hammer used to rough out the stone's shape to a thin, hard file.

The blade scraped across the stone's surface. A trace of dust rose from the shallow groove, and the fragments of stubborn stone were no paler than the boy's face.

Naturally, he no longer had the strength to carve the stone effectively. Peturabo merely gripped the tool, like a machine without power, with the grim determination to repeat one task until the universe reached its final moment.

Mors passed by him and set down the materials in his hand.

Some dry firewood and shredded hay flew down from the roof, while two flints came from the diagonal cross-shaped window lattice on the second floor.

He lit a fire in the courtyard. Smoke rose along the cliff, drifting with the clouds below into the clear darkness overhead.

Olympia's inhabitants were scattered among its city-states, and constrained by natural conditions, their total population was not large. Even so, if Mors's fire were added to all the golden-red lights burning across half the planet at this moment, their number should have exceeded the stars visible to mortal eyes. Thus, the stars merely hung there, lurking.

There was a place behind the house to draw water. Mors began washing today's haul, draining the excess blood from the prey's meat.

All right, he had to admit that he did not know the scientific name of this creature, which looked like an elk but was tougher to chew. He usually called it a "Lokos Deer" in his mind.

Before long, irregular chunks of meat were skewered on a metal rack. Fat dripped into the fire, sizzling as it did so, and Mors found himself missing beautiful serpent scales and scale-inlaid robes.

He turned the iron skewers and took a moment to check on Peturabo.

Peturabo suddenly turned his head away, pretending he had never been watching the roasting meat over the fire.

Mors shrugged. The salt jar flew into his palm, caught neatly in his five fingers.

The grains of salt melted and vanished the instant they fell into the meat's fibers. Mors waited patiently.

The flames were conquering the blood and flesh of the Lokos Deer. Blackened edges gradually formed, the charred area expanding, and the food irreversibly transformed toward roasted charcoal.

Mors paid it no mind.

The skewers continued to turn.

Then he heard a heavy, muffled thud.

Peturabo stood up, then fell.

Hunger brought cold, thirst brought weakness, and sitting for too long had robbed him of strength. A former demigod now lay miserably among sand and stones, unable to support his own body.

Mors sprinkled a small amount of cinnamon and anise over the roasting meat.

The second muffled thud came quickly. Clenched teeth locked away a cry of pain, and the sound trembled like a low string.

Then Peturabo grabbed his black sleeve.

"I..." He exhaled heavily, overcoming the burning, cracked dryness in his throat. His voice was harsher than a blade scraping across glass. "I want to eat."

Mors replied coolly, "Oh."

"I want to eat," Peturabo repeated. The second request came far more easily than the first, and with far greater confidence.

Mors calmly took down the half-charred skewer and gave it a light toss. The food fell into the blazing fire.

He pulled his sleeve from Peturabo's hand. "I understand."

Peturabo's body went rigid. His silence carried struggle, then he relaxed.

"One request for one price..." The boy's voice was quite low, carrying the drifting sense of something breaking. "I want food. What do you want?"

Mors smiled.

"Let's first settle what each of us has done," he said lightly, his tone as relaxed as if the two of them had always been harmonious.

"I dragged you into taking a photograph, and you followed me back for no reason. We're even."

"I helped you conceal yourself from the Maelstrom of Stars, and you had your strength and knowledge taken by me. We're even."

"This morning, I woke up to find that you had cut my throat, destroyed one of my statues, borrowed my tools, and now you are asking me for food."

As he spoke, Mors placed a hand atop Peturabo's head, slid it down the back of his skull, then patted his spine with evident amusement and raised his tone.

"But you have finally learned to make a request, and that makes me very happy. Give me one more apology, and I'll consider you a good boy. Then we'll be even."

Peturabo's expression was falling apart.

"I should not have... tried to kill you."

"What else?"

"I apologize."

He looked deeply at Mors as he spoke.

Mors glanced at him and smiled.

A second skewer of roasted meat placed itself on the metal rack.

Mors poured Peturabo a cup of warm water. The boy accepted the wooden cup, lowered his head, and at Mors's gesture, sat down beside him on the grass mat.