Friends for Lonely Gods — teaser

This book is in the process of being revised. The final version may have changes compared to the version posted here.

Chapter One

Mina rapped on the table with a spatula inches away from Isabelle’s fingers.

“I told you not to pick at the splinters,” her mom said.

“‘Do no harm unless you must,’“ Isabelle quoted. “What was that, last week’s? The one before?”

“It’s part of the closing remarks, and you know it. Besides, it was just a warning.”

Preachers liked warnings. It was one of the things Isabelle was most sure of, since she lived with two of them. She might have questions about everything else under and above the sun, but not that.

“Did you read that pamphlet?” Mina asked.

Isabelle looked away from her mom’s expectant gaze. “Yes, but I still don’t know what I want to study yet.”

“I know there’s not that many options, but we’re lucky to have a community college so close by. You can always change your major later. I want you to apply next month.”

Her dad came downstairs, drafts of future sermons tucked under his arm. Leo’s hair was wild, which meant he’d probably been up all night working on something clergy-related.

“How’s the daily destruction?” he asked Isabelle.

“I’m trying, I promise.” The splinters were just asking for it.

“Well, try harder,” her mom said. 

“Bell just needs an outlet,” her father said. “She inherited my fidgeting hands but hasn’t figured out what to do with them yet.”

“I thought yours were from all the caffeine,” Isabelle said. 

“They’re from multiple things. How are the Vanquishing Festival plans coming along?”

“Fine, until I realized I’d made an apocalyptic mistake.”

“Eighteen is pretty young to bring on apocalypses.”

“I thought we could string lights and cloth from the rafters so it looks like the sky. But then, I remembered all the webs in our attic, and I realized…” She clapped her hands, making her dad jump. “Spiders. A whole religious tribe of spiders, hanging above the congregation’s heads, ready to drop down on everybody’s Tuesday best —“

“We get it,” Mina said. “Plan vetoed.”

“Are you sure? Maybe it would be fitting. Everyone gets the chance to defeat their own spider, except in this case they’re small and harmless instead of a demon. Might help people imagine themselves in his shoes.”

“That would be a little too much,” Mina said. “Humanity’s place has always been alongside gods, not in the same position.”

Isabelle had heard this before, but it still didn’t make sense to her. It would be one thing if all humans were on their world, Mundi, and all gods were on their own world, Axis, but that wasn’t the case. To her understanding, gods might not age like humans did, or always be shaped like she was, but they still thought and felt. They could be like her parents’ god Mammoth, loved and successful, or they could be like the six-armed individual she’d once seen walking alongside her town’s main road, covered in dust and hopefully headed towards a place that would treat them kinder.

“And,” Mina added, “that could be insulting, comparing a real threat to a harmless little spider. Mammoth saved his first village from destruction by defeating the demon. We shouldn’t risk mocking his founding myth like that.”

Leo ruffled Isabelle’s hair. “Plus, we don’t know how many arachnophobes will be there. Let’s stick to stories. The lights are a good idea, though. Your mother and I have always struggled with presentation. He has such an eye for it, and that’s just not who we are.”

It was odd to Isabelle, that her parents sometimes acted like Mammoth was nearby. She’d heard some other religions thought their gods were omniscient, but Mammoth wasn’t. He was a single person, somewhere else on Mundi, who her parents had never actually met. When she was much younger, that way of talking had made her think he lived right down the street from them. This had scared her, because gods fed off of human affection and belief. They could tell who was their follower. She’d been terrified he would tell her parents she wasn’t one. Nowadays, she thought they probably knew she at least wasn’t as into Mammoth as they were. It was just… hard to imagine explaining to them that no, she didn’t believe in a charisma god whose entire message focused on the value of relationships and community.

She waved goodbye as her parents drove down the dusty road to their volunteer jobs in town. She didn’t have class that day, and there was barely anything to do at home. They didn’t even have a TV because her parents disliked how the newer flatscreens used parts based off an electricity god’s design, as if that were cheating on their object of worship. Even if they’d had one, her parents probably wouldn’t’ve used it, because “real” entertainment — and real happiness, and fulfillment, and all manner of good things — came from relationships. Her computer could barely access the Internet, and the town was like a box of crackers, dry and identical throughout. Her parents would have insisted there was more to it than that, but they said the same about everything. Isabelle ran to the neighboring building in search of entertainment.

The church’s double doors were kept unlocked. When it was packed full during service, they needed fans to keep it cool from all the sweating and body heat, but the other six days and twenty-one hours of the week it remained cool despite the blistering sun. When empty, the church looked like it belonged in a ghost town with its creaking floorboards and stained glass windows Isabelle thought were the color of beer.

She circled the worn-in rows of pews and shook her fist at the spiders in the rafters before going through a back door. Muscle memory guided her down the dark stairway and to a switch. The background buzz of electric lights filled the basement. Isabelle’s parents had taken over the church from their predecessor, who had lived in this room despite its tamped-down dirt floor. They sometimes joked that the church was Isabelle’s older sibling they took care of, and how if she hadn’t been born, they might be living like moles. More humorous to her was the idea that even preachers dedicated to a god who was all words and white-toothed smiles might, at the end of a socialization-filled day, need to retreat to an isolated hole in the ground. If they had, Isabelle would be Mundi’s biggest hypocrite to blame them. Nobody was cruel to her, but being someone with her level of social awkwardness in a town where everyone just loved to talk and form relationships — seemingly with everyone but her — felt like being set up for failure from the very beginning. Isabelle blamed her parents’ god’s complete hold over the county. Her “big sibling” was older than her parents, history crammed into crates and rusting the cot’s metal frame. She reached between the frame and wall, retrieving a shoebox. Inside she’d hidden the altar she’d found when given the chore of cleaning up the basement by her parents. The smooth stone oval was a foot long, thin enough that she could almost wrap her hands completely around it. She often wondered about its past owner, but the church’s last preacher was several years dead. Isabelle suspected it had been confiscated, not cherished, and then forgotten about. Technically speaking it was a historical artifact, one of a limited number. It was also hers now. 

She twisted both ends. The two sides separated, revealing a glass rod in the middle. It faintly vibrated, the noise buried under the faltering lights. Isabelle set it down. She threw a bouncy ball against the floor and paced while she waited. Finally, she heard heavy, stomping footfalls.

“I didn’t know humans could make that sound,” a voice from the altar said. It wasn’t exactly one voice, but a collection of them, young and old, female and male and neutral, all belonging to the same god, who happened to have multiple heads.

“I’m a tool-using ape, I can make many sounds,” Isabelle said, catching the bouncy ball. “Sallow, I need help with class.”

“It’s always something mundane with you. You know you’re talking with a denizen of another world, right?” But she heard him settle down next to his end of the altar, scaly skin on rocks and distant staticky rainfall. “Which class this time?”

“My writing elective. I have to write a persuasive essay.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like, you try to convince your reader to agree with you.”

“About what? And why not just say it yourself?”

“About anything. I haven’t picked a topic yet. And I guess partly so it can potentially reach more people? Not that I ever want to do that. That’s my parents’ job, not mine.”

“Perhaps that could be your topic? You’ve mentioned them trying to make you interact with others more in the past.”

“Maybe.” Isabelle sighed. “Mom keeps wanting me to look into that community college, but last night I found another pamphlet for the program she and Dad went to. I’m a little worried they’re going to suggest it.”

“Program?”

“Where they learned to be preachers. It would be a horrible fit for me, and they should know that, but what if they still ask? What if they tell me life is about leaning into the hard things, the difficult conversations?” Most conversations were difficult for Isabelle already.

“Then maybe you should practice your persuading,” Sallow said.

“Okay. Three reasons why I shouldn’t be a preacher. I don’t want to. I’d be horrible at it.” Isabelle frowned. “It feels like I shouldn’t arbitrarily need a third reason if those are the first two.”

“If anyone tries to make you, they’ll get eaten by a dragon?”

“A bit threatening, but I’ll consider it. How does it work when you eat?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Unless you have other ideas, put someone else on the phone.”

“And give up my monopoly on your attention? I think not.”

“You should just move into the altar’s cave already, make it official.”

“But my own cave is so nice,” Sallow said. “This one doesn’t fully fit me.”

“Got your butt stuck out in the rain?”

“And four of my heads.”

“Can’t relate,” Isabelle said. “It never rains here. What does it feel like?”

“Like an itch all over, but wet. Same as the last time you asked.”

Isabelle frowned, trying to add that snippet of information about an alien world to the web she was slowly building. “You described it differently from before.”

“What did I say?”

“That aggravating things are usually dry and scratchy, but rain was an exception.”

“Not sure why you keep asking if you remember what I say.”

“Because I want to be able to feel it. Here’s a new question. Think you could fit through a set of double doors?”

“Not if they’re human-sized.”

“What about one of your heads?”

Sallow was quiet for a minute. “I’d have to see it to know. Why?”

“If you ever come to Mundi, you should visit. Preferably on a Tuesday, so you can meet everyone.”

“Don’t a lot of your kind hate gods who don’t look like them? I’m not sure anyone involved would enjoy that.”

Sallow wasn’t wrong. Every god had a domain, something concrete or abstract they represented or were connected to — often they had some kind of ability related to their domain, and between that and a god’s potentially big or powerful body, there was plenty of reasons a human could find to be afraid of or angry about a god. And that was before even going into historical events where the two species hadn’t been on the same side.

“I’d enjoy it,” she said. “Maybe they’d be scared at first…”

“They’d all be terrified. You probably would too.”

“…But once you got a chance to speak, they’d realize you’re a good person. Maybe you could even get some followers?”

“I don’t play that game, and that would be poaching. Many gods feel strongly about poaching.”

“Like he’d notice that small of a difference.”

“You’d be surprised. If you could only hear some of the arguments that happen over here…”

“Is it the church you’re uninterested in, or the human world?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I know where I belong.”

“Lucky you,” Isabelle said. “Help me parse something out?”

“Again? Let’s hear it.”

“There’s this guy I keep running into…”

Isabelle often struggled with understanding what other people felt and what they wanted from her. Maybe it was part of being on the autism spectrum, maybe she was just stuck in that awkward phase of being both an adult and a teenager. Sallow didn’t have the answer to those interactions either, but he was comforting to bounce ideas off because he never made Isabelle feel guilty for not understanding. Her parents would have been shocked to hear how much she struggled socially, or how much it stressed her out. That was the point of half their sermons: nothing was better for the human spirit than healthy, close relationships.

“I just — ugh. People,” she said.

“People,” Sallow agreed. “But you’ll be better off for being with the right ones. It’s alright if that takes you a while.”

“How long before it’s no longer just ‘a while’?” Isabelle had been trying for years without success.

“Our sense of time is different. Life here changes over decades or in an instant, without much in between.”

“Tell me a story about Axis.”

“All my stories involve dragons.”

“You barely talk about yourself.”

“Neither do you anymore,” Sallow said.

“I’ve told you all there is to know. Nothing happens here. Ever.” She sighed. “I can’t actually use this topic, or my parents might hear about it. Maybe I’ll write about why I shouldn’t have to pick my life path right now instead. I’ve barely got any life experience outside my hometown, rushing could lead to a big mistake…” Using examples was part of the rubric. “People can be lots of different things throughout their lives, but this feels like I’m being forced down one path. What’ve you been, Sallow?”

Sallow sighed, likely rolling his many eyes. “If it’ll help with your homework, I’ll tell you. I was once a single-headed, two-winged dragon who lived in the skies instead of underground. Gods are fluid. Our bodies and personalities can morph based on how humans view us, but we can do it to ourselves too, if we try hard enough. Other gods thought I’d make a good messenger, and I wanted to be helpful and liked, so I used to bring news all over Axis’s light side, but I eventually got fed up with it. Most of the gods I met on the ground were rude, barely thanking me for the effort, and when the news had changed by the time I returned they’d often demand I immediately take wing again. But many of the sky gods were even worse. It’s hard to hold onto a region of sky as your own — very difficult to draw and keep a consistent border, you see — so they were all territorial and prone to violence. On Axis, gods can heal from even grave wounds without scarring given time, but that doesn’t change that it hurts. I’ve been smacked out of the sky more times than I now have heads, and that’s far too many.

“When I’d had enough, I crawled underground and licked my wounds for a while. I decided I was done working for those who didn’t deserve it and forcing myself to be around bad company. I gave up my wings before I could be killed in flight. I guess that extra mass had to go somewhere, because when I woke from a long sleep, I had multiple heads.”

“They must’ve been big wings,” Isabelle said.

“Oh, they were. I was quite grand,” he said smugly. “But most creatures that can fly are bony and light, awkwardly shaped for when they’re on the ground. My current, rounder form is much more comfortable.”

“I’m glad you’re happy where you are, though giving up the view from above still sounds unfortunate.”

“There’s plenty that’s interesting underground. We have giant gods too, carving vast tunnels and caverns. Sometimes I feel them go rumbling by beneath me. I’ve heard there are whole communities that live deeper down.”

Isabelle closed her eyes, trying to imagine it. She wished she could see it for herself someday. Humanity had limited information on Axis, but one thing they did know was that the same atmosphere that nourished gods was quickly and fatally poisonous to humans.

Her homework wouldn’t write itself, and she had to return her attention to it. She would’ve liked to use Sallow as her example, but had the secret of their friendship to protect.

“Oh, my teacher will just love this,” Isabelle said.

She began listing everything her parents’ god had been…

He was not a glutton, Mammoth reminded himself as he leaned back in his desk chair, basking in the warmth of his followers’ attention. A glutton put their wants before others’ needs, and he didn’t do that. He wasn’t a hedonist either. If he was, he’d make service every day of the week instead of just on Tuesdays. There was nothing wrong with stopping to enjoy life’s pleasures, in this case the hourly joy of humans around Mundi attending services based around his teaching, his way of living. They benefitted too, after all.

“Come in,” Mammoth called out, hearing footsteps pause outside his office door. He straightened in his chair. He knew he wasn’t a glutton, or lazy, or any other negative trait a person could associate with his previous posture, but he didn’t want others to have reason to see him that way. For gods living off human attention, too strong a belief could become that god’s reality. Mammoth had enough followers who saw him positively to drown out the occasional rumor, but he didn’t like having to work to keep his image or personality stable.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Jared asked, sticking his head in.

Mammoth waved his assistant into the room. “I was hoping for your feedback. You know I worry about keeping how I present myself fresh, and it’s been a couple centuries since the last change. What do you think about this symbol?”

Jared looked over the printout, glancing up at the wall behind Mammoth’s desk as he considered it. All of the symbols Mammoth had used in the past were commemorated there, from a plaster recreation of his original arrow-and-wheat symbol etched into stone, to a torn and time-faded tapestry of a similar drawing, to hand-painted paper, to modern materials printed on a machine. The symbols morphed throughout time, the homage to Mammoth’s original abilities of the hunt and harvest gradually becoming more abstract and smaller, now relegated to just an arrow and drawn bow whose curved limbs were hidden in the outline of a sun. The newest version left them out altogether, leaving just a stylized sun. Mammoth preferred it this way. He was a god of the modern world, and had left his original domain and powers behind long ago. Humans could feed and protect themselves nowadays. All they had to do was cooperate with each other so everyone benefitted from the farming techniques and technology they’d come up with since. He’d evolved into something much better, a god of charisma, leaving behind his muscled and threatening build for a more ordinary physique.

“I do like it,” Jared said. “It’s simpler. Feels more like it stands for a lifestyle than previous ones did.”

Mammoth nodded. That had been the goal, something that could more easily exist outside of language so that it didn’t matter which ones the viewer understood. Not to mention, it was hard to have a grand religion nowadays. People outside of them would think it was too flashy, too smug. Ostentatious. And that was just from individuals. Governments especially didn’t like grand religions, because it made them feel threatened. Mammoth did sometimes miss the days when most of his followers worshipped him more than the ideas he tried to represent, but it was easier to be allowed in human society when you were more about a moral way of living than rituals centered around yourself. Who was going to outright say, no, it’s not okay to keep around a being who’s focused his life and followers on community and friendliness and good relationships and all the other positive things that came from them? 

“At the end of the day, if you’re happy with it, then it’s good. Although…” Jared tapped a pencil against the desk. “No, it’s nothing.”

Mammoth smiled to himself. People like Jared were more helpful to him than they would likely ever realize. He didn’t grow physically tired anymore, but there were times when his mind needed a break; it came in handy to have people as emotive and easy to read as Jared around then. “Don’t be afraid to bring up any problems. It’s alright.”

“Well, it’s not the symbol itself, that’s quite nice. Digital files are quick and easy to change, though it might take a while to sift through everything out there to update them all. I was just thinking, sir, you have over a thousand churches with the current symbol on them. It’s not a question of if we could afford to update them, but it would be a huge amount of time and work. Were you thinking a gradual rollout, or…?”

“A bit quicker than that.” Mammoth didn’t like having past versions of himself hanging around. “A grounded response as always, Jared. Thank you. You know I don’t do as much by hand nowadays, it’s hard for me to keep all these considerations in mind.” He sighed. “You’ll tell me the next time there’s an opportunity to build a new church, won’t you? I wouldn’t mind having a more personal role in its construction. It would be nice to at least set a few stones in place, or be there when they break ground.”

“I will. Does that mean there are churches you helped build?”

“There used to be, but they all collapsed centuries ago. There weren’t always laws against burning or knocking down another religion’s buildings.” Mammoth chuckled. “And, I’ll admit, there’s a good reason why I’ve never had a hammer in my religion’s symbol. They weren’t great buildings to look at, but I built them with my community, and they did the trick.”

“Sir, what do you want to do next? Other than build more churches?” Jared’s eyes widened. “Not that you have to tell me if you have a plan, but I want to assist you in whatever way I can.”

Mammoth easily kept a smile on his face even as he grimaced inside. The way Jared had said it, he was more asking about a divine plan than anything else. He had churches around the world. He had many thousands of followers. Back in the old days, the next steps were always obvious: more safety, and more growth. Now he sometimes wondered if he’d hit his peak, and despite living in a modern, civilized society, he still didn’t always feel that safe.

It would be nice, he thought, to really get to enjoy how Mundi had changed. It used to be that seeing you once in person was enough to win over a human forever; now, through the invention of radio and TV and the internet it was much easier for more people to see you, but they also wanted so much more from you all the time. Little deeds weren’t enough either. If you dug a village a new well, word of that might spread and people would be interested in your name long before meeting you. Nowadays the people you directly helped would still appreciate you, but you really had to make the news to get anyone else’s attention, and they weren’t impressed unless you were constantly one-upping yourself. You could also, once upon a time, always rely on the fact that there would be some distant, isolated community that had never heard of you; this was no longer possible now, especially not when you’d been someone as public as Mammoth was. How wonderful it would be if he could truly relax, and not worry that one little slip-up would be all over the globe in moments…

But of course he didn’t say any of this. “Just to keep making the world a better place, Jared. That’s the highest calling any of us can answer, human or god.”

This satisfied Jared, but then, most things Mammoth might’ve said likely would have. That was the whole point of keeping a true believer around — and that it made them happy too. Once Mammoth was alone again in his office, he let his expression slip into something more pensive and concerned. He let his hands tremble for a minute, and then made them stop. That was all he would allow himself for the week.

Today is a good day, he thought, and knew it to be true. But he was still tense inside. Mammoth sometimes imagined that, beneath the superficial layers that he tried to constantly keep in an appropriate posture and expression, he had a second set of muscles that could be tight as a wire, a second set of jaws and teeth to clench and grind. You are fine, he reminded himself. So why doesn’t it feel that way?

The clock on his wall ticked over to the next hour. Mammoth shut his eyes and let himself find some solace in the fact that, a third of the planet’s circumference away, many people were thinking on him fondly. It was almost enough.