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The small wooden shelter was just off of the main road, circled by several old apple trees that somehow always seemed to be bearing fruit, even if they were old and wrinkled for most of the year. Mezou took to examining the trees as he approached, leaving his laden handcart close by as he peered up at the trees. There was inevitably one that was better than the others and when Mezou found it, still red and shining, he climbed the tree with his gangly limbs and plucked it with a sure, practiced motion.
The small shelter held up well during the preceding winter. The rotted planks that he replaced the prior year had left the shelter in far better shape than the previous spring. Debris was thick under his feet last year, requiring him to almost be late to market after having only done a cursory cleaning. Mezou reached for the broom and supplies that he’d hidden under the thick piles of fleece in the handcart, moving eagerly towards the shrine as the sun began to break over the horizon.
“Good morning,” he murmured to the statue in the corner, the eyes of the man with the head of the bird feeling as piercing as they ever had. “Hopefully it has been a fine winter? It was not too bad for my flock, though I fear that the spring will not stay so sweet. The fields are heavy with water, one bad storm and there will be flooding, I’m sure of it.”
Fanciful as he might be, Mezou did not stop and wait for the statue to respond, instead getting to work as he began to sweep out the old leaves and grass that had blown in over the last few months, gotten stuck, and rotted. They came up after a bit of effort, not as bad as they had the year before but still heavy enough that Mezou found himself wishing for a shovel. But that would have surely drawn the attention of his parents, so he had left with what he had.
“That belongs to the old gods,” his father said between wracking coughs as they passed by the shrine when Mezou had been only a few years younger. “You’ll do best to leave it to rot.”
Mezou listened to him at the time and took his words and his warnings seriously. He was an obedient child who lacked the argumentative nature of his older brothers or the impetuousness of his younger siblings. Mezou had always been agreeable and steady and it had been that which would earn him a strong clap on the back or a kind word.
And yet, when it was his turn to bring the handcart to market, he found himself stopping at the small shelter. It was overgrown then, a mess of thorns and rotten vegetation and despite everything in himself, he had been unable to leave it be. He instead begun to chip away at the detritus, slipping in supplies into the handcart as he was sent to market to sell fleece and bring back supplies.
It was a hot day when he finally revealed the statue. Insects squealed in the humid heat around him as he pulled back hard on a thorn laden vine and had been so surprised by the sight of the old stone statue that he had not even noticed his blood spilling on the stones below from several tiny scratches. Its eyes drew him in, the cold imperiousness striking and powerful. They made him feel small in a way that he never had before, his bulk and height having come to him early and never shown any sign of stopping. But under those eyes, he felt insignificant, as though he were a leaf that would float away in the breeze, free and light.
Mezou paused, the broom handle smooth under his palm as he looked at the statue again, feeling the same lightness as he always had despite being nearly a grown man, having weathered sixteen winters. The plumes of feathers on its face surely had been intricately carved once, taking someone days if not weeks of effort, only for the elements to have sanded them down to mere whispers of what they had been. He itched to reach over and touch them, to feel the cool smoothness of the stone beneath his fingers but something about that had never felt respectful, and so, he had kept his fingers to himself.
His brows knit as he began to sweep at the base of the statue, indentations in the stone visible as he cleared out old caked-in dirt. As engravings became visible, Mezou let out a soft snort at the sight.
“All of this time and I have missed words?” he murmured, speaking to himself out of habit as he would during his time out in the fields with the sheep when he tried to trick his brain into thinking that there was company besides the sheep and the dogs. “Time to remember your schooling,” he muttered, eyes narrowing as he stumbled over the words, “Tsukuyomi, he of the carrion and the night, may my days be ever for you and may you carry me from the light.”
Mezou had seen many of the great golden eagles out in the fields, their bulk looming during lambing season as he and the dogs tried to keep them at bay from the small, defenseless newborns. But sometimes an ewe would slip away and Mezou would hear the decisive beat of wings as an eagle lifted into the air, a still bleating lamb in its strong talons. It was a sound that he loathed and that he feared and when he heard a sudden, strong beat of wings, he had frozen in place as the world seemed to dim into twilight. There was a sound and Mezou spun to face a creature of darkness and fear, it’s eyes a glowing red as it said in a booming voice that seemed to make his body sing, “I accept.”
Mezou’s ears rang as he breathed in short, shallow breaths, unable to think of anything but how the hum in the air resembled the feeling just before lightning struck as his mouth tasted like iron and bile. The red stare stung his eyes, building in intensity until the world went dim.
He woke in stops and starts, his breathing catching in his chest as he tried to remember where he was. The leaves on the apple trees rippled in the wind and he paused to stare at them through hazy eyes before he sat up, heart sitting high in his throat as he frantically reached up to pick sticks and detritus from his hair. “It was a dream,” he murmured to himself before he looked around himself and froze at the sight of a dark figure on a bench.
“Don’t faint again,” the figure said, it’s voice deep and almost annoyed in tone as it reached out a wide hand from its perch on the stone bench. “I don’t have all day to wait for you to wake up.”
Mezou blinked, his eyes staring at the man and it’s birdlike head, so similar to that of the statue. He stared and he stared until the figure reached out it’s hand again. “I’ll take my apple now.”
With numb hands, Mezou reached into his pocket and pulled out the incomprehensibly still ripe apple. He generally would cut it into slices before artfully splaying them on the stone in front of the statue, a cool wind almost always blowing as they touched the stone. He blinked at the red flesh and reached over to place it in the palm of the creature’s human looking hand. “You’re still here,” he said numbly.
“I am,” it said as it considered the apple and took a bite. It chewed slowly as it looked at him, causing Mezou to have to fight the urge to try and dust off his shirt, feeling dirty and somehow small. “Would you rather I left you? It’s not the safest of roads.”
“I…” Mezou looked at his cart and let out a relieved breath to find it still full. “No, I suppose that I wouldn’t.”
The creature shrugged as it chewed, strange eyes seeming to stare holes into Mezou’s skin before it reached out the hand not holding the apple and said, “There’s not much of a reason to continue to delay this any further. Give me your hand and I will take your soul.”
Mezou blinked and sat up slightly straighter. “Pardon?”
“Your soul,” it said slowly, as though Mezou was tremendously stupid. “You have pledged yourself to me after my shrine has been repaired, your acts of service have been completed and your blood has been spilled. And I have dutifully accepted. Come along, there is work to be done, it is time to leave your earthly body behind.”
“No,” Mezou said, brows furrowed.
“No?” The creature cocked it’s head. “You say no to Tsukuyomi, the god of carrion? After all that you have done?”
“I was just trying to be helpful,” he said, shock making his mind slow and stupid. “I was simply reading aloud, you can’t have my soul.”
“This is fated,” Tsukuyomi said slowly, it’s eyes narrowed as though that would help it to understand the depths of Mezou’s stupidity. “You have pledged yourself, your fate has been set. I will be taking your soul into my service now. Truly, it is a blessing that I do so now as if I do not do so, every day that you live will be one more that you are not supposed to exist. It would throw everything into chaos. When a life lives that should not, the world will seek to rectify that error. The end that will eventually come to you will not be quick and will not be kind.”
“No,” Mezou said, the hack of his father’s cough in his ears and the bickering of his siblings and the soft steady sigh of his mother, all of whom needed him still.
“The fates are not ones to fight, boy.”
“If you want my soul, then you will have to take it,” Mezou gambled as he called the creature’s bluff. “For I will decide my fate. And that is not to die here.”
He was considered, the god’s eye measuring as it took him in. But then, it nodded once and opened its hands wide. “I will not make you deny the inevitable. But I will return and you will be mine, Shouji Mezou.”
“How do you know my name?”
There was a flicker of amusement in the eyes, a wry smile that Mezou could somehow read in the crook of their lip as they stood, seeming to tower over Mezou where he sat in the dirt. “I know every inch of you,” they said plainly. “I know every breath of you, every thought, every beat of your heart. Of course I know your name.”
There was a hand pressed to his cheek, one that should have been cold as the grave but instead felt as warm as the touch of any of his family members. Mezou stared upwards, transfixed as the god looked him over and nodded his head. “Go then, be as a boulder dropped in a stream, blocking the flow of water and causing the water to carve a new way. I will not wait long, but I will wait for you to choose me.”
One errant swipe of a thumb across Mezou’s lower lip and the god was gone, leaving Mezou to the quiet, empty shrine.
His hands had still been trembling as he reached the market, making it difficult to haggle as he should have, the god’s words ringing in his mind. But still, he managed to get a fair enough price and when he finally pulled the cart into the barn at home, no one was the wiser of the strangeness of his day.
The next time that Mezou saw Tsukuyomi was not a pleasant visit. Mezou was curled into his blankets, teeth chattering as fever wracked him as the fall winds blew over his tent and promised a bitter winter. He'd been trying to brace himself for going out into the cold to attempt to stoke a fire when he felt a prickle on the back of his neck. Even as congested as he was, he heard a ringing in his ears and frowned as he looked up to see Tsukuyomi somehow squeezed into the corner of his tiny tent.
They stared at each other for a moment and fever addled as he was, Mezou could only bring himself to say “Hello.”
“Hello,” Tsukuyomi said, a tilt to its head as it took Mezou in, from his sweat damp hair to his pallor to the way that he shook. “Are you ready now?”
Mezou blinked as his laugh turned to a cough. “No,” he said as his chest cleared enough for him to speak. “It is a fever, I won’t die from this. For all that I might wish that I would.”
“Mm,” the god muttered, looking absurd in the small tent that barely fit Mezou. “You should be at your home, surely up on the side of a mountain is not the best place to recuperate.”
“I don’t want them to get sick,” Mezou admitted before he let his head fall back against the pillow. “My father hasn’t been well for years and some of my siblings are frail.”
“So instead you will suffer?”
“It isn’t that bad,” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders. “Lonely, but that is how the life of a shepherd is.”
“Ah,” the god said and as it peered at the tent and it’s construction, Mezou found words on the tip of his tongue, as though they had been waiting to find someone ever since he'd come back from market, left the goods to the barn and herded the flock straight back up the mountain, for fear they caught what had been going around the town.
“Why was your shrine in such bad shape?”
Tsukuyomi regarded him again, eyes steady as it seemed to consider him before answering, “Because your people have forgotten about balance. They grow crops and tend to animals that are docile and sweet and they have taken to living in cities, living shoulder to shoulder as they pretend that death will not find them. They either scorn it or they glorify it, both of which are not ways of understanding death that I can not abide. And so, they have chosen to think of me as a villain and attempt to hide all traces of me as though they may hide from the inevitable.”
“If you do not want it glorified or scorned, then what do you want for it?”
“To be respected. Death comes for all, keeping the world in order as the soil is made dark and fertile again and as room is made for the next generation. But that is difficult for some to come to terms with.”
Coughs wracked through Mezou, painful and harsh and when he was done, Tsukuyomi was looking at him with an inscrutable look on his face. “My shrines were never ostentatious,” it admitted. “Not like the Forge or the Greenery. I have never been loved, though I used to be more understood. But I like my shrines well enough.”
“Are there more?” Mezou asked. The god reached out a hand and it was cool to the touch against his fevered skin as it brushed his sweat soaked bangs back from his forehead.
“There are,” it said softly. “But I am happy enough with the one that I have now.”
When the coughs ripped through him again, the pain seemed to be less as though it had been drawn out through the feeling that still seemed to reverberate of fingers against his skin. Mezou opened his eyes to thank Tsukuyomi but all that remained was the wail of the wind outside of the tent and the darkness of the night.
Mezou tried to convince his father to let him cull the ewe. Her fleece had always been particularly fine but her temperament was sour and she had, as she had the year before that and again before that, left her lamb in the grass where she had birthed it. It toddled towards her like it’s ill fated brother and sister before it but she scornfully moved away. When it tried to nurse, she tried to kick at it, sour as anything.
It took Mezou holding the ewe steady for the lamb to be able to nurse but that had still been a near thing. But the lamb tried, a determined look in its eyes as it attempted to follow the instincts that all infants had, to yearn for food and comfort and safety. And as the ewe refused to provide those things, Mezou found himself in the position that he was in, with the lamb’s tail wagging back furiously as it suckled at the makeshift teat that Mezou made from leather and filled with milk from the damned ewe.
“I do not understand the effort you put in,” a deep voice said and Mezou wearily scowled at the valley before him before he turned to face the god who had appeared to his right.
“Am I to let it die?”
“Yes, actually,” the god drawled. “You only draw out it’s death. Are you to raise it yourself?”
Mezou grit his teeth as the lamb pulled at the makeshift bottle too hard and sent milk sloshing onto the ground. “I can try to imprint another ewe onto it, I just need for another to have a stillborn.”
“And when this sheep grows, will it do the same as its birth mother and push it’s lamb away?”
“Why do you choose to haunt me so?” Mezou said in response, ignoring the fact that the lamb was likely to do just that, should it survive.
There was a silence and when Mezou looked back up, he half expected the god to be gone. Tsukuyomi had proved to be fickle like that, coming and going as it pleased. It would appear only when Mezou was alone but as that was most of the time, it had become a regular occurrence. But when he looked over, the god had remained, staring at him cooly with its dark red eyes. “I do not come to haunt you,” it said, voice surprisingly soft.
“Then what? You know as well as I that I can not leave the lamb in the grass, wet and scared and bleating. If it tries, then I will try with it.”
“A slow death is a cruelty,” the god agreed, “but a quick one is a mercy. And from that death, the crows will call in the wolves and the jackals who will feed their young. The vultures will take the putrefying flesh and the rot and will transform it into something safe. The insects will take the remaining flesh down to pieces and the world will go on as it should.”
Mezou let the lamb go as it finished it’s meal, watching as it began to chew on the sleeves of his thin and patched jacket. “You speak so casually of it, as though you speak of love or fire or growth.”
“It is what I do,” it agreed and Mezou could nearly hear a smile behind it’s words. “I would hope so. And what will you do with your creature that should be dead, Shouji Mezou?”
“I will try to keep it alive,” he said simply before he carded his fingers through it’s thick wool. “Whether you like that or not.”
When he turned, the god was gone. The lamb began to slow the next day, failing to thrive in the way that Mezou recognized all too well. When he’d woken to find it’s cold, stiff body next to his in the tent, he’d left the dogs and the sheep to carry its body deep into the woods. Once it was far enough from his own flock, he carefully placed it onto the ground in a quiet spot. The crunch of grass and dead leaves and stones under his boots had not drowned out the sound of crows as they called the wolves and jackals in.
“You leave your meadows only to be near your family and here you stand,” Tsukuyomi said softly from the shadows. Mezou did not flinch and merely lifted his flagon of mead to his lips. “Far from them all, watching from the shadows. Why?”
“What is there to say?” he said, the mead making his words fall from him easier than they likely should have. “My youngest sister is wed to a fine young man. He will move in to help her care for our parents. She seems happy and so, I am happy. I will have less to worry about when up on the mountain. And so,” he lifted the cup, “I celebrate in my own way.”
“But alone?”
“Am I alone?” Mezou asked, cocking his head at the god.
“You know what I mean,” it chided. “There are all sorts of people to speak with. To make bonds with.”
“Ah, but I am a boulder in the stream, forcing the water around me to carve a different path. Why should someone grow close to someone promised to Death?”
“I warned you,” the god said in a matter of fact voice. “I gave you an option. But it was you who chose this. And for what? To be a shepherd on a lonely mountain, with your only excitement or chance to communicate with the world around you being when you go to market or help to shear your sheep or to chop firewood for a family who barely seems to know you?”
The fall air was crisp in his nose as Mezou took in a long breath, taking in the smoke of the bonfire and the smell of roasted meat.
“Do you worry?” he asked finally.
There was a beat of silence before the villagers broke into another song, Mezou’s youngest sister’s cheeks rosy as she looked adoringly at the neighbor boy who had been infatuated with her since they had been children. And still, Tsukuyomi was silent as Mezou turned to look at the god. It had seemed to grow smaller over the years, though perhaps Mezou had simply grown larger. But what had been an even meeting of eyes had become one where Mezou had needed to peer down.
The god had no brows, nothing quite so human about it’s face and yet, Mezou could read him. “Those who choose to follow me have always been eager to do so,” the god finally said. “Death was to be embraced, it had been longed for. They welcomed me with open arms and it was simple. You have not. You stumbled into your fate as a child too young to know what you should do. And now, you have chosen life but have seemed to do everything that you can to avoid living it. I do not understand you, Shouji Mezou. And I do worry for you.”
“You think I have avoided living my life?” he asked, his heart thudding in his chest for no reason that he could understand.
“Haven’t you?”
Mezou paused, frowning as he took another deep drink of the strangely sour honeyed wine. “I am happy,” he said finally. “I wake up with the birds. The dogs are always glad enough to see me. The sheep do not keep me busy enough but I still find things to keep my day busy. I do my duty for my family. It is a simple life but I am a simple man. This life is one that I am glad to have chosen.”
The mead was rich on his tongue, still strong and overwhelming and it was all he could think about as he reached out. His fingers were tentative as he wrapped them around the god’s wrist, not daring to touch palm to palm but content with what he had. “Don’t worry about me.”
Tsukuyomi stared at him, something that Mezou could not define in its eyes and then it was gone, leaving Mezou to his family and the night.
“You do not have to leave,” Tsukuyomi said, stepping in Mezou’s way.
“I do,” Mezou said matter-of-factly as he reached around Tsukuyomi to gather his pack. “Who else will the army conscript? My sister’s husband, as she is thick with another of their children? My father, who can not spend a night in the open air? Perhaps my nephew, barely old enough to watch the sheep? What would he do with war.”
Mezou stepped out of the barn, the day barely being visible at the edges of the night sky. He did not enter the house that had not seemed like his from the time he’d been sent to care for the sheep. He did not kiss his sister or breathe in the warm scent of his niece’s and nephew’s hair as they slept. He did not wake his father or mother so he could see the pain in their eyes. He had instead grabbed his pack and began to walk, unseen by anyone but the god of carrion.
Tsukuyomi stepped into his way again and again, Mezou side stepped it. “I have seen much of war, Shouji Mezou,” the god said, its voice serious and low. “I know war well. I know of the pain and the stink. There is no glory in war, if that is what you think to chase.”
“What need have I for glory?” Mezou asked with a snort. “I leave so my family might be spared.”
A hand tugged at his coat and Mezou grudgingly stopped to face his god. “You go to your death,” it said.
“Death is a necessary part of life.”
“This will not be a good death.”
“I know.”
Tsukuyomi stared at him, feathers illuminated by the sinking moon. “Choose me now,” it said, voice soft. “Your death will be clean. It will be painless. Let me give you this.”
“My death will stop nothing,” Mezou said, not unkindly. “Not now. Not before I have done something to be commended for. I do not choose you, not yet.”
“Fate is coming for you.”
“And I thank her for waiting.”
A tree waved in the grass, just at the corners of Mezou’s vision and he wondered for a moment if it was an apple tree, with fruit that stayed ripe even when the season was not right. But then he had to close his eyes as coughs wracked through his body. With blood on his tongue, he struggled to breathe, only opening his eyes when he heard the sound of footsteps approaching.
“You fool,” Tsukuyomi said gently as it sat and cradled Mezou’s head in his lap. “You utter fool.”
“I stayed alive for months,” Mezou reminded him. “It took five of them to take me down. We are so close to being done. Surely there will not need to be another conscription.”
“Your family will be safe,” Tsukuyomi agreed, its fingers soft as a feather as they cupped Mezou’s cheeks. “So much pain that you have put yourself through, and for what?”
“For family,” he rasped out, the wounds in his chest and belly long past the point of being felt as anything beyond simple agony and that he could bear well enough. “For duty. For honor.”
“And was it worth it?”
“It was,” he admitted. “It was.”
Tsukuyomi stared down at him, the same inscrutable look that it had given Mezou for so many years. It had scared him at first, the single minded focus of it. But he had come to be comfortable with it, to understand it. And at that moment, he felt the love behind it.
“And now, will you choose me?”
“If you will have me,” Mezou said, his voice feeling far too feeble for the immensity of what he felt.
“Always,” Tsukuyomi said softly as one hand reached down to get a strong grasp on Mezou’s jaw, the other on his temple. Mezou closed his eyes, taking in a deep breath. With a swift snap, Mezou felt no pain.
The world was hazy as he awoke again, the shrieks and wails of the battlefield loud in his ears. He sucked in a breath, though he knew that he had no need to do so as he looked to his side. Tsukuyomi regarded him again, its eyes solemn and feeling of home. The white robes that Mezou wore slid softly against his skin as Tsukuyomi reached up to grasp his hand, pulling him forward as the god said, “Come, we’ve much work to do.”