Prologue

  With a serene smile Father Paul looked over the small congregation that had gathered to hear his sermon. His final words had passed over them and he hoped that they had sunk in. Most of his listeners couldn’t read at all, let alone in the ancient tongue in which the scriptures were written, so he was their only conduit to the divine.

  Whether or not they had understood his words or their deeper meaning, the people were beginning to stand from their seats and leave the church a few at a time. They were, for the most part, poor farmers from further inland rather than the townspeople from the nearby harbor. They had a new church, paid for by the wealth that seaborne trade had brought them, and his predecessor at this older house of worship had left to helm the new enterprise.

  Perhaps it was not the life he had imagined for himself when he first entered the clergy, but Father Paul was content to minister to the poor and forgotten folk of this island, far away from the games of the mainland.

  Not that the job was a time intensive one, for most of his congregation were not interested or even aware of the deeper theological questions that Father Paul had spent much of his early life pondering. So, his job amounted to little more than giving weekly sermons and blessings during the harvest and at other momentous events.

  “Father,” a woman from the congregation said, pulling the priest from his reflections.

  “Yes, my child?” he asked, shifting his attention to the young woman. Rose, he recognized, barely out of her teens, unremarkable among the unremarkable people that formed his congregation.

  “It’s my sister, Father, her child is so far along now,” Rose said with an excited smile. “She’s expecting any day!”

  “That’s wonderful! Would you like for me to do a blessing?” the priest asked.

  Rose half turned and gestured for Father Paul to follow her. “Yes, yes, please!” she answered.

  He followed the excited young woman down the aisle to one of the seats closest to the entrance of the church. There sat a young couple, the woman heavy with child and the man beside her, her hand in his.

  “Hello Daisy, Garth,” Father Paul greeted the pair. He could have told that Daisy and Rose were sisters even without knowing them prior, for they were strikingly similar in appearance. Thin and plain looking with mousy brown hair and brown eyes; unremarkable features for unremarkable people.

  “Hello Father,” Daisy replied, making an effort to rise to her feet and struggling to do so under the weight of the child she was carrying.

  “Oh no, please don’t get up on my account,” the priest urged the pregnant woman. “You are carrying a much greater burden than I am at the moment.”

  “Thank you, Father,” Daisy replied with a small smile.

  The priest held out his hand toward the woman. “May I?” he asked the mother-to-be.

  “Yes, please, go ahead,” she answered, pushing her stomach out as far as her overburdened physique would allow.

  Father Paul placed his hand over the swell of Daisy’s stomach. “Heavenly Father,” he began, closing his eyes. The others around him followed suit and bowed their heads in prayer.

  “Please watch over this child, ensure that they are loved and that they grow to be strong in both body and spirit. May they ever bring joy to the faces of their parents and may they find beautiful purpose in your world,” the priest continued. “Watch over the mother as she undertakes this most arduous of trials, so that she may watch her child grow to be the person you intend for them to be. In the name of the Prophet Carag, we pray.”

  “We pray,” the expectant parents and excited aunt repeated before lifting their heads.

  “Thank you again, Father,” Daisy said.

  “Of course, my child,” Father Paul replied.

  The father-to-be stood from his seat, holding his wife’s hand. “Come on, we need to get back home before it gets dark.”

  “Yes, yer quite right,” Daisy said before getting to her feet with a great grunt of exertion and a little help from her husband. Once she was out of her seat her sister came over to support her other arm.

  “I just know that yer daughter is going to be a real fire-brand of a girl,” Rose said with an enthusiastic smile.

  “Girl? How would you know that?” Daisy questioned as the trio started their slow walk out the church. “I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a boy, anyway.”

  “And how would ye know that?” Rose countered.

  Daisy stuck her tongue out at her younger sister. “Mother’s intuition.”

  “Well, yer not a mother yet,” Rose responded before mirroring Daisy’s gesture.

  “Oh, Carag, yer both acting like children,” Garth muttered aloud, prompting laughter from both young women as the trio made their exit from the church.

  Father Paul returned to the front of the church and began to gather his notes and belongings. He smiled at the memory of the first wedding he had officiated after his arrival on Carsani, that between Daisy and Garth. It was one of the true joys of a simple life, that of watching young love blossom and grow into parenthood. It was a joy Father Paul was happy to behold, and a simple life he was glad to lead.

  ***

  The boom and crack of thunder rattled the old stones of the church. Father Paul was briefly distracted from his late night reading by the shaking walls around him, but once the momentary surprise and primal fear passed he returned to his scriptures.

  He had retired to his private chambers in the church, comfortable if not for the draftiness of the old worn stone. Still, a small fire helped to keep the cold at bay on a stormy night like this, though the fact that it was only a normal thunderstorm certainly helped. When one of the great hurricanes came from the warm waters and endless expanse of the southern sea it could swallow up the island for days on end and woe to anyone who didn’t have good shelter during it.

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  Another boom rang through the air and the ground shook as if there was a small quake. The candle that Father Paul was reading by rattled, threatening to teeter over onto the tabletop it was sitting on and the stacks of papers strewn across it. The priest scrambled to grab the burning stick before it could consume his work and perhaps even the whole church.

  He let out a deep sigh of relief as he settled the candlestick back in its prior position. Disaster averted.

  A different loud sound caught Father Paul’s attention, cutting through the endless onslaught of rain. Someone was knocking on the door to his chambers. He had left the doors to the church itself unlocked in the event that an unlucky traveler had been caught in the storm and needed shelter, but it was still a surprise to hear someone else. Few enough people lived out here, let alone traveled.

  The knocking grew louder and more insistent. Taking the candle he had just put back on the table after its misadventure, Father Paul rushed to answer it. He opened the door to find Rose, her clothes soaked through and her chest heaving as she pulled in air like a bellows.

  “Oh, you poor girl, did you get caught out in the rain?” the priest asked, immediately heading off to find some clean cloth for the young woman to dry herself off with.

  “No, Father,” Rose said, grabbing the priest’s sleeve to prevent him from walking away. “It’s…It’s Daisy and Garth. They’re…” she trailed off, struggling to keep tears from coming down her already wet checks.

  “Oh, God have mercy,” Father Paul responded, his thoughts immediately turning to the unborn child he had so recently blessed. “What happened? Lightning strike? Mudslide?”

  “I-I,” Rose stammered. “I can’t describe it. It was horrible.”

  The priest was caught off guard by the vague response. Was it just trauma and panic that had frazzled young Rose’s mind, or was there something truly unusual involved?

  “Have you told anyone else?” He asked, realizing that Rose would have needed to pass by multiple farmhouses to get to the church.

  The young woman shook her head, her expression grim. “I…I didn’t know who else to come to.”

  Hearing this, Father Paul realized that he would have to brave the storm to deal with this situation. “Did you drive a cart or wagon in?” he asked Rose as he reached for his heaviest cloak.

  “No,” Rose answered, shaking her head. “I tried, but the horse was scared of the thunder and refused to leave the barn.”

  Father Paul paused midway through putting on his cloak, briefly staring at Rose as he tried to come to terms with the fact that he would have to walk through the driving rain and lightning. Yet Rose had been so spooked by what she saw that she braved the same to get to him, and seemed willing to make the same journey in reverse.

  “Then let us be going,” he said, resolute.

  ***

  The driving rain had not abated as Rose and Father Paul walked, braving the elements to reach the farmhouse of Garth and Daisy. The building was still standing when they arrived, so Father Paul took it as a good sign. A tree next to the building had been felled in the storm, the trunk blown apart at the base by a lightning strike. It was hardly the time to investigate the scene, however, as the two travelers pushed through the final steps of the journey to enter the relative safety of the farmhouse.

  Father Paul lowered his hood once he was inside. Standing in the main room, he was struck by how normal it appeared to be. There was no sign of struggle or scramble, as if the home had simply been abandoned before the storm.

  “Are they in the bedroom?” he asked Rose, pointing at the only interior doorway in the house.

  Rose nodded yes, unable to bring herself to speak.

  “Will you walk with me?” the priest asked gently.

  Young Rose shook her head no.

  Father Paul stared at her for a brief moment, recognizing the depths of the terror she felt. Then he heard it: a baby’s cries. Thinking only that a child might need his help, Father turned on his heels and walked briskly to the bedroom, not noticing Rose weakly flail at him, trying to stop him.

  The priest turned the corner into the bedroom and upon seeing what lay within fell to his knees.

  There had been a few possibilities for what had happened that had run through Father Paul’s mind, several of which had already been ruled out. The house had not burned down, nor had the roof collapsed. Yet nothing could have prepared him for he found in that room.

  Garth and Daisy’s bed was inside, and at its foot was a mass of flesh. Twisted and broken, with muscle, sinew, and bone splayed every which direction but without a single drop of blood to be seen, it could not be recognized as any living creature. Despite this, Father Paul could not shake the feeling that he was looking at all that remained of the man known as Garth.

  Getting back to his feet and approaching the bed, he noticed that a pile of ash laid at the head. Glancing around the room, the priest could find no other signs of flame or smoke. Despite that the ash was undeniably there, forming the rough outline of a woman with her legs spread wide, as if giving birth. Father Paul frowned, feeling an inescapable dread for what had happened to the young woman known as Daisy.

  In the middle of the bed was a lone infant.

  The priest’s mouth fell open, shocked at what he saw before him. The naked babe was a girl, he could tell as much just by looking. He could also see a shock of red hair crowning her head, like a lick of the flame that had turned the mother to ash. The color was unusual for that part of the world, in fact the child might be the only person on the island with it. Father Paul could only remember meeting a single person with red hair in all his life, a merchant he had met once when he was a student. He hailed from the Sunset Ring, a small group of islands that laid in the far west of the known world.

  Did Daisy have a dalliance with a sailor from a far off land? Perhaps, but the color of the child’s hair was at the bottom of the list of unusual things in this situation, and Father Paul found it hard to imagine the loyal and simple Daisy having an affair.

  Spying some clean rags near the bed, Father Paul did his best to wrap the baby in the largest one. As he did this he realized that the child had no umbilical cord, just a perfectly normal belly. In fact, she appeared to be in perfect health, a stark contrast from the state of her parents. Carrying the infant in his arms, Father Paul returned to the main living area.

  When Rose saw the babe she began shaking her head. “No, no, no,” she said, holding up her hands to block the child from her view. “Take that thing away from here, this instant!”

  “What, the child?” Father Paul asked.

  “That’s no child!” Rose spat out. “That’s the monster that killed my sister!”

  Father Paul looked down at the baby in his arms and saw just that: a baby. It had unusual features for the region and had been born in circumstances that were beyond horrifying and strange, yet the priest saw no reason to assume that it was the cause of the tragedy rather than an orphaned victim of it.

  “I didn’t bring ye here for that!” Rose yelled, her voice cutting through the sound of the wind and rain outside. “I-I wanted ye to exorcise that thing!” she continued, pointing at the baby.

  “What? Rose, it’s just a baby. Your niece,” Father Paul responded.

  Rose shook her head, disgust all over her face. “No, it isn’t,” she said before walking out the front door. It seemed she found facing the storm to be preferable to remaining in the presence of the child.

  Father Paul looked out into the driving rain before turning his gaze to the child cradled in his arms. Deciding that it would be better to wait out the storm, he sat in a nearby chair.

  “Astraea,” he said to the babe, which did not react to a word it could not understand. It was a name that the priest remembered from his studies, an ancient goddess of a long dead civilization, representing justice, fairness, and impartial judgement.

  “Yes, Astraea, that shall be your name,” the priest confirmed to himself. Justice, fairness, and impartial judgement, fine ideals and a fine way to redeem the terrible tragedy that had befallen this young family on a stormy night.

  ***

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