Free Unbound by Meredith Noone Page B

reading?”
    No one did, except the wolf.
    “Ah, well. It wasn’t touched upon in any great depth. Just a passing mention. ‘ And the Old One was bound to a mortal body. ’ You would have had to have gone down to the library and looked it up if you wanted to find out anything more. Or asked one of the Elders.” Professor Seybold looked them over with his eyebrows hiked up. “None of you took that sort of initiative, though, did you?”
    Murmurs broke out, and heads shook.
    Professor Seybold just laughed. “Ah, youth. So self-important. So uncurious. Never mind. I’ll tell you. The god Cern was bound to an infant child’s corpse, dead seven days, born at precisely seven months, survived seven days outside the womb. Three sevens. Powerful numbers, and a potent binding. Tragic for the young parents who lost their child, though. Absolutely tragic.”
    Sachie put up his hand.
    “Yes, Sacheverell?”
    “If a god can escape a dead tree or a cracked stone, then how can it be bound in a dead baby’s corpse? If it’s bound to one of its bones or something, what happens when it finishes decomposing? I don’t understand.”
    That was actually quite a good question, the wolf thought, pricking his ears to hear the answer.
    There was a pause. Most of the class was looking at Sachie, who shrank down in his seat and flushed in embarrassment. He probably thought he’d asked something stupid and everyone would laugh behind his back at his lack of knowledge later.
    “That would be something we would normally discuss next year, not now,” Professor Seybold said, slowly. “It’s part of the advanced syllabus. But I will cover it in brief, so that you might understand.”
    Ranger crawled out from under Eli’s desk to sit in the aisle between the desks so he could watch Professor Seybold as he paced the front of the class.
    “Human beings are inherently fragile creatures,” the professor began. “You might not have noticed, but it is very, very easy to kill us. Sometimes, just falling over is enough to do it. Other times, a little cut that gets infected. A human baby is the most fragile of all, beside the very elderly. But we have bright, strong souls that burn short and sharp and then are gone. That’s what sets us apart from the animals, which are dim and distant as the furthest stars, and the trees, which smolder for hundreds of years.” He paused, as if considering his next words carefully. “Gods are infallible. When they choose to manifest a form, they cannot be harmed, cannot be killed. Their souls are not one but a million strong. Cern is a force of the rawest, purest nature. The baby that died – it was empty . It could not be sustained, not with all of the cutting edge medical techniques. Its soul had flickered and gone out, and there’s nothing you can do once that happens.”
    The wolf swallowed heavily. An ache settled below his ribcage, and his throat felt tight. A rolling nausea began to bubble low in his belly.
    “When they bound the souls of Cern to the dead child, it breathed again,” Professor Seybold said. “That was what they thought would happen, but they didn’t know for sure. There has never been a god both bound and also capable of sentient locomotion.”
    “He’s not bound to a location, then,” Kara, a girl with frizzy red hair who was sitting in the row in front of Sachie said. “He can go anywhere, and the old magic moves with him. How has no one noticed?”
    “From what I gather,” Seybold said, licking his papery old lips as he prepared to launch into another lengthy explanation. “The people who have been tasked with His guardianship have been keeping Him in densely-populated human cities, far from nature. The Horned God gained His strength from the wind and the trees and the grasses and the wildflowers and the animals of the wild, and the cycle of life and death and rebirth therein. Being among steel and glass skyscrapers, cut off from nature, where people are kept alive by