Free Apotheosis: Stories of Human Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods by Peter Rawlik, Jonathan Woodrow, Jeffrey Fowler, Jason Andrew

supporting his overlarge head on his spindly newborn neck. I did not reach out to touch him, though I wanted to. It was not for the ordinary to handle the newly born. He wriggled a little in the rubbery cradle, and opened his eyes. They were dark, without iris or white, and they bulged with the Look. I saw that his nose was no more than a pair of slits in his fat round face, that scales gleamed in the hollow of his throat. He was marked. Chosen.
    Somehow, I thanked the nurseling, voice hushed as was proper in the creche, and I left. Never before had I failed to rejoice at the birth of a child with the Look. All children were treasured, but those with the Look were special. Those Above and Below had touched them.
    His eyes haunted me. There was no trace of Isana in him, though I had looked. In the curve of his ears, the shape of his chin, there was nothing to indicate that he had been born of her body. She was gone. The honor of her death meant nothing before that single stark fact. She was gone, and nothing of her remained, not even in her son.
    I had so hoped that he would have her eyes.              
     
    *             *             *             *
     
    By the time I returned to the center of the shanty, the evening meal was beginning. I accepted my share of meat and boiled grain and brew and found a place at the end of one of the tables, where I usually sat. The talk was of the servant that had passed me on the path. It would be staying for the night. I listened, but did not speak. No one was paying the slightest attention to me.
    Or so I thought. I was just about to tip out some of my brew when I noticed Arash watching. I smiled at him, pretended to take a large swallow. He nodded and looked away without smiling back. I took the chance to set my mug back down on the edge of the table, so that when I took my hand away it fell. Feigning consternation, I leaped up and snatched at it, too slow to save it before it spilled out its contents. The liquid soaked into the dust and between the cracks of the stones immediately; it was impossible to tell how much had been lost. My tablemates stared, murmuring in sympathy.
    I sighed. “At least I had almost finished it,” I said with what I hoped was the right mix of relief and chagrin, fighting the pounding of my heart. “I would hate to trouble the kitchen for more when they have already cleaned up for the day.” The others at my table nodded agreement. It was rude to trouble the kitchen, or anyone else. Their expressions indicated no surprise at my clumsiness, but Arash's face when I glanced quickly at him on my way past left me feeling cold. He suspected. Careful. I would have to be more careful.
    Though I had been among the last to retrieve food, I was one of the first done. After setting my dish and fork and mug on a rack to dry, I returned to the center and began to stretch in preparation for what was to come. As I did so, others came to join me. The musicians collected their instruments and set up around the perimeter. They would not come into the center until the madness seized them.
    The drums began, their deep regular beat soon joined by the skirling of flutes. I took a place near the edge of the gathering crowd, adding my voice to the chorus, my feet to the dance, stealing glances around at my fellows while they did the same. Their faces reflected the same ecstatic joy that always characterized the ritual; for them, everything was as it should be and all was right with the world.
    But it wasn't.
    The drums were ragged and out of time with each other, no two following the same beat. The flutes all seemed to be playing in different keys, with a dissonance that grated unbearably. Nor was the singing any more coherent. The words that usually carried me to heights of frenzied union with my fellows and with Those Who Returned were idiot mumblings, unintelligible. I felt no more connection with them than with the calling of crows.