”We have so few tales of the goddess as a child. Most accounts treat the banishment as the earliest holy parable, and while there are glimpses of her young divinity in the fragments of Cade the Younger's Confessions, we are often left wondering what was she like, and did those around her know of her great destiny?”
— Professor Sunita Berhard, 1299 A.D.E
“Story! Story Aunt 0!”
Éo of Andevale, slayer of tygers and vampyres, friend to pirates, savior to children, blessed of Mari and bane to injustice, knew that despite her storied history of victories, this battle could not be won. The two children grasped at her legs. “Story! Story! Story!” and she picked up one in each arm, my how Cate was getting heavy, sat them down on her knees, the heavy Cade on her left leg, the iron underneath better suited to his weight, and put Hope on her right the child’s perfect metallic face beaming with joy.
“Should I tell a story of Wootag pushing the Titan into the sea, locking them in the ice to never return?” Or how Dhar solved the battle of a thousand nights without raising a single hand in conflict. Eo wasn't too keen on religion for herself, but a good story is a good story.
“No. No. We hear those stories all the time. They're boring.”
“Boring,” said Hope and stuck out her tongue. It gleamed a shiny black.
“Well then, what do you want to hear?”
“An Éo story,” said little Cade.
“Yeah. Mama story!” said Hope.
“And a new one,” Cade demanded, as he did most nights. Trouble was, so few of her stories were really fit for children at bedtime story. She racked her brain, trying to find some memory.”
“All right, how about a story when I was a kid, just like you,” and she bopped both of them gently on the nose. They nodded and settled into her lap as she began. “Once, when I was a bit older than you, Cade, my father was trying to call me home.”
“Éo!” A man’s voice called through the streets of his village, his voice neither frightened nor frustrated. More resigned, knowing his nine-year-old daughter would return home the moment she felt it necessary and not a moment sooner. Still, he had to show he was trying, less the neighbors gossip too much. He caught the eye of the village blacksmith, retiring home for the day, and shrugged as if to say, what else could be done.
The blacksmith returned a nod. The whole village knew Eo. They also knew that the shouting was futile. There were few who would attempt to chastise her, and none who would speak against her father Éodar. For him, all the village had much respect, and for the child, well. Nearly for while left side had turned to iron by this time, and in one so young, it would be but a matter of time before her body succumbed to the disease. Let her be free. What's the worst that could happen?
The girl in question ran through the cloud forest that surrounded her small mountain village, the voice of her father growing fainter with every step.
She couldn't let anyone see her cry.
“Éo…” but the voice in the village was nearly too faint to hear. Suda had called off classes today, the shepherds were slaughtering and salting, the winds blowing colder each morning. The weak were culled to keep their masters strong through the unforgiving winter.
Éo was too young for a knife, but was volunteered by her father to help with the salt packing. Perhaps Éodar was unaware of the antipathy Junepyr daughter of Patron held towards his child. Perhaps he knew, and thought a bridge might be built through an act of service.
Éo lasted for all of ten minutes.
They were cutting apart a brace of hares one of the trappers brought in, the smaller of the two riddled through with iron, muscles inedible. Patron started cutting, working delicately to trim what meat and fat he could, before his daughter spoke up.
“Throw it to the side. It has too much iron,” Junepyr looked at Éo with a smirk. “Anything with that much iron is worthless.”
She was far enough away now to let some tears flow, but she was too furious to cry. There was a time, many years ago, where she did not understand the significance of the ever expanding iron transforming half her body, nor the fear it caused in so many people around her. But she knew now— oh yes, she was made very aware. Partly by the curiosity of her mind. Mostly by the cruelty of the average child, her peers, who constantly reminded her that she was a short-lived freak. A cursed child whose threads of fate were drawing to a swift and terrible end.
She hated them. She hated them all.
The surrounding forests were gold and brown, she slowed her breathing to hear the leaves crunching under her feet and rustling in the branches above. A few more heartbeats and she could pick out others in the forest with her; creatures also hiding in the leaves to hide their secrets.
In a burst of energy, leaves flew as a hare ripped through the undergrowth and with a flash disappeared under the granted roots of a venerable oak. Close behind, a rusty fox sniffed around the tree, poking its nose in to each hole, teeth pointed and sharp and dripping.
“Leave it alone!” The fox looked up, seeing her for the first time. She grasped for a branch on the ground and flung it towards the fox, which vanished into the brush before the branch hit the ground.
The rustling stopped and there was silence, save from the occasional sniffle from the young child.
And after a long while, though in the quiet of the forest, time seemed to have little meaning, the hare poked its head through the tangled roots and looked around, freezing upon seeing Éo, then ducking back into hiding.
She had no intention of harming the poor scared animal, but she had no way to communicate that in a way it could comprehend. This made her sad, and though she could not put why this is so into words, she could put it into tears, and for the first time, she let them flow freely.
And while time passed in the forest in a funny way, it did pass. The shadows lengthened. The hare did not try again to escape. Éo's eyes opened: she had not realized she had fallen asleep. While she could not hear anyone shouting her name, there were several in the woods, just out of earshot, doing just that.
Leaves clung to her as she arose, along with the smell of old forest floor, and she started walking home. Not too fast. Trouble awaited her at home, no matter her justification or excuses. She'd been in trouble before, though. Lots. Éodar was not the yelling or hitting type by any means. He was the “disappointed” type. Yelling would be better.
Perhaps because of her silent, slow walk, the fox family did not have a chance to run or hide. One larger fox, mother perhaps, or father, Éo could not tell. Two kits, one with bushy hair and perky ears, and one scrawny and black— the iron had not been kind.
The larger fox stood between Éo and the hungry kits, teeth bared.
Éo made a wide circle around the family, keeping eyes on the scrawniest of the bunch. It bared its teeth at her, pretending it was not afraid. She understood.
She picked up her pace, and soon heard her name called through the woods, which she spent no time answering. They all would shortly know where she had been. Running into the village, she made a beeline to where she had been helping with the salt, dodging out of the way of her father, an irritated grin on his face as she ran a circle around him. “Where have you…” but his words were lost to the wind as she ran onwards, to the pile of gore and flesh and iron that was the leavings of the butchers.
She grabbed an empty basket and began shoving fistfuls of bloody leavings into the wicker, ignoring the surprised shouts. It was but a moment, too quick for anyone to make a serious move to stop her (not that anyone tried, as they all were lost in confusion) before she rose to her feet, hands bloodied, and began carrying the dripping basket back to the woods.
“Éo stop,” The words of her father rang in her ear, and while she did not obey, she did look back, locking eyes with his questioning glance. After a few moments. He simply shook his head and chuckled. She would have extra chores tonight and probably tomorrow as well, her father's obligation to correct her. But his heart wouldn't be in it. He'd most likely help her.
It did not take long to outpace the few voices that tried to follow her, and she once again found the fox den. She approached with care and quiet, trying to match the sounds of the forest like Suda taught her. She walked close enough that she could see the tufts of fur on the larger fox's ears and dumped the basket of gone on the forest floor and then backed away and waited.
The scent of blood eventually wafted its way to the fox family, and even so slowly, roses twitching, crept towards their free dinner.
"Éo…" the voice rang in the distance but was getting closer.
The children waited for Éo to finish the tale, but their storyteller had become silent, seeing an image of a man long gone, a man his granddaughter would only know from the words she herself spoke.
"Aunt O Is that it?"
“Oh. Uh… Well, my father eventually found me. I wasn't trying to hide from him, after all. The foxes got their fill, and I snuck away about every week the rest of that season with what we threw away. The herders would have had my hide if they knew I was growing foxes in the wild that would prey on their newborn glamas."
“So why did you?”
“Because…” she extracted herself from between the two children, pulling the covers over them both. She kissed them each on the forehead, Cade first, then the cool midnight black metal of her daughter.
“Because we can't let others define our worth,” is what Éo settled on for the bedtime story moral, one as good as any other, and spent the rest of the night trying to convince herself that was indeed was the reason, giving up the contemplation only after a glass of wine and Goldie's persistent attentions. For no matter how she turned the memory over in her mind, the uncomfortable truth remained: she did it because she was the one who could. The one who could choose life and death.
And she still wanted to choose.