Halo Hagios

A horror story of salt and saints

Image credit: Scott Osborn via Unsplash

I trace the windblown veins of salt with my feet, stumbling toward the heart of something buried long ago.

The wind gusts, kicking up grains of salt and scrubbing them against my arms, my legs, my face, scouring away the last of my childhood. Above the sun is a white eye in a white sky, baking away the last of my ignorance. To the sides, silver mountains range, blocking my escape.

There is nowhere to go but onward toward a future honored by many, desired by few.

And among those few, only I have proven myself worthy of the Halo Hagios.

The temperature rises as the sun reaches the roof of the world. Below my feet, the salt bakes, sending up waves to bend the air, making the distant mountains shimmer, echoing the waves of our lost lake.

I think of it now as I walk, a way to distract myself from what’s to come. Our stories say the lake’s waters were the blue of the All Mother’s eyes. That it stretched for miles in either direction to lap at the feet of glaciers. That it was home to thick-legged beasts with long tongues that could reach into the body of a man and pull out his heart. That the waters could burn but the sediment could heal.

That it was dangerous but sacred.

And once in a generation, the water itself birthed a baby who might grow up to slip unscathed through its currents to dig their hands into the lake bottom. A gift. A healer to our people. Honored more than kings. Cherished more than wild horses.

The Limnis Hagios.

Over the centuries, three hundred healers were born to the waters. Three hundred healers lived among us but not of us.

Until a man the storytellers call the Wolf asked too many questions.

His wife was sick. The healer said that not even the balm at the bottom of the lake could save her. But the man called Wolf would not accept his wife’s fate.

He had a great many questions for the healer. And for each question, he used a knife carved from the antlers of a hart to ask it.

Why could the healer not save his wife? The knife slipped between the healer’s ribs.

Why did the lake hold its healing so close? The knife punched holes in her gut.

Why did the lake and her daughter get to decide who lived and who died? The knife slid across her throat.

Why? Why? Why?

Over and over and over again he asked. Each question a wound. And blood alive with iron and salt flowed like water from the healer. It ran in a torrent, a scarlet wave that gathered and broke against the ground, sinking into the shore and running out in fingers to mingle with the water.

And the lake tasted its child, tasted her sea-salt blood. And the lake wept briny tears over her lost daughter. For days and days the lake wept until all the water was gone from its shores and all that remained was the salt of its tears.

And at the sight of the dying lake, my people fell into a rage. And then they fell upon the Wolf, tearing him limb from limb. And when that was done, they threw the pieces of the man who was once the Wolf upon the last bit of water left in the lake so that they might wash away the taste of her dead child with the blood of her killer.

But it was too late.

So the elders of my people wailed and sang and cried out to the blue-eyed All Mother.

Why? Why? Why? they called again and again.

But they had not learned it was the wrong question.

The All Mother and her kin do not parse the reason. They are elemental, primordial. They know action and they know reaction. So the All Mother turned away, unmoved and quiet.

But something else heard the echoing cry of why on the breeze.

A newer kind of god or devil who knew about the power of purpose. And this creature, who we call Almus, heard the cries of my people and he gave them reasons.

One among you has forsaken nature, Almus said. One among you has desecrated the child of the lake. One among you has turned all that was good to salt. And now all of you must pay.

And pay they did. With plagues that turned their tongues black and painted their throats with sores. With a creeping madness that turned neighbor upon neighbor. Parent upon child. Brother against brother until the salt lake ran red. With a blight that turned fields to dust so that my people feasted on bones and sand.

And salt. Always salt.

Finally, after so much suffering, the elders that were left gathered again. They gnashed their teeth and pulled out their hair.

Why? Why? Why? they shouted. Each question slicing through the bits of sinew that kept them tethered to reality. And once again, Almus gave them reasons.

You have suffered, Almus said. You have paid a great price for what the Wolf did to the child of the lake. You have felt something of the pain of the lake for her child. And now, now you must atone.

Atonement was a strange idea. Something more than action and reaction. And my people struggled to understand. Finally, they asked a new question.

How?

How, the elders wondered, could our people atone for the Wolf?

Almus bent low, for he was taller than any of us. And Almus spoke quietly, for even his whisper was enough to crack bones. And Almus kept his teeth from clacking while he spoke so that we might forget just how sharp they really were. He hid his claws in his sleeves and his horns in his hood. And the elders forgot that Almus was a god or a devil.

Or a monster.

And he told them how.

A child. Once a year. When the day reaches long and the night grows short. When the winds off the dead lake call out for that long-ago daughter. A child of my people must find the heart of the lake. They must dig down into the salt with an antler blade and when they find the heart of the lake, they must ask themselves a question.

And so for nigh on a hundred years the elders have chosen a child. And for nigh on a hundred years there have been no plagues, no madness, no blights.

Our people have flourished. Peace has reigned. The land is bountiful. And all because Almus understood the need for a meaning beyond the chaos of tragedy. A ceremony to bridle the wild horse of the world.

That is why I am here. Why the sun bakes the skin of my arms and the back of my neck. Why I carry the antler knife so carefully in my hand, why my people have sent me off with great ceremony, a crown of flax and sage on my head.

I will be the why. I will be the how.

I will be the sacrifice.

I will be the Halo Hagios.

The salt crunching under my sandals is the only noise. Nothing else stirs. No birds. No insects. No lizards or rodents. Just me on the skin of the dead lake, bone white and hard.

Until the whispering starts.

It is a soft parting and pursing of lips, a series of breaths, a tongue against teeth. It taps its way into my ears, a phantom on the salt-rimed breeze. And I know I am close.

The whispers grow louder, more insistent, and I increase my pace until the voice is a roar in my ears and I don’t know what it’s saying, only that I must dig. Dig to make it stop.

So I drop to my knees, far, far from any shore, and I plunge my antler knife into the salt. I scrape the salt loose, pulling at it with the blade and then with my hands. My fingers form blisters which break and weep and the salt slips in under the flaps of dead skin and brings tears to my eyes.

I cry and I dig and I bleed. My arms burn, my muscles cramp with the effort of each swing of the knife. I need water but there is only salt. I need to stop but there is only salt. And if I stop now my people will die. So I keep going.

And finally, finally, after my palms are just red flesh, my knife hits something harder than the salt. Something round, and yellow-white. Something that stares back at me.

The lake daughter’s skull.

I lean down to look at it closely, my breath ragged in my chest, my body casting a long shadow over the chipped and weathered bone. I touch the empty eye sockets with a trembling finger and when I look up, the daughter of the lake, last of the healers, stands before me.

She is older than me but not by much. The wind whips her pale shroud so that it flaps and snaps with each gust. Her fingers clench and unclench at her sides. And her mouth moves with those strange words I want to understand. I watch her cracked and peeling lips and suddenly they are right next to my ear, the lake daughter’s salt breath tickling my skin.

I tremble and cry, but I don’t make a sound. Because now I understand her. She wants me to lie down beside her bones. So I do. She wants me to hold her, so I slide my arm over her rib cage and cup a throbbing palm to the skull’s cheekbone, red soaking through my flesh to paint the bone in blood.

She wants me to take up my antler knife and she wants me to ask my question. I grip it hard, the sharp edges cutting into the rawness of my skin. I raise it up over my heart.

The question trembles on my tongue.

Why?

Why?

Why?

A thrust of the blade for each question. A daughter for a daughter.

She waits for the ritual. The one that will send her back to the grave. The one she has seen so many times before with so many children of my people. And I always thought she would seem triumphant now, pleased, avenged. But her face is made hollow with sorrow.

And the knife in my hand is balanced on my own question.

When I finally answer it, I let the jagged antler drop. Instead, I reach out to the daughter of the lake, and her small, brittle fingers grip my ravaged hand. My perspective shifts and I feel her lodge within me, veins of salt next to my still beating heart.

Then I rise. Renewed.

A daughter of the lake reborn.

And somewhere, Almus shudders.

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