A Wayward God Read online

had to watch her father smack her in the face, and in return she shoved him angrily and ran to another room in their house.

  I didn’t like her father, I decided. I watched him for a bit. After a moment, he left the house and met with a man out in the woods. The man had brought his daughter, and appeared to owe Heidi’s dad money. Heidi’s dad demanded the money, and when the other didn’t get it out, he pulled out a knife and threatened the man.

  I watched with increased interest. The man who owed him money threw up his hands and promised he would get the money somehow. But that wasn’t good enough.

  Heidi’s father grabbed the man’s child, putting a knife to her throat. The child’s father took out every gold, silver, and bronze piece he had and put it down in front of him.

  Heidi’s father moved forward to grab it, moving the girl with him when—

  My eyes widened and my heart was seized with worry—which was an alien feeling to me of late, and I didn’t like it—Heidi’s father had slipped on mud in front of him, taking the girl down with him and accidentally slitting her throat.

  I waved a hand hurriedly across the water and the image was gone.

  I was horrified. I checked my list and was even more horrified to learn that as Vengeance, two days later, I would have to judge Heidi’s father and I would have to kill her.

  But I couldn’t. Heidi was too interesting to kill… I would have to cheat and judge her as Joshua. The problem was, if I got caught, I would be stripped of my powers and forced to live among mortals for at least a year.

  That would be unacceptable.

  That night, while I was crawling into my cloud, I saw Death’s giant shadow cast over my head.

  I’ve noticed you looking at that girl… He said.

  I wasn’t worried. “Is that a crime? After all, you’re the one who actually goes down to earth and sees one,” I said sarcastically. We Gods looked down upon each other when one of us actually went among humans, let alone had romantic relations with them.

  If you fall in love with her, you may have to kill her someday…

  “The mortal is interesting. Little more.” I said simply, holding my ground.

  So you wouldn’t care if she died?

  “Go away,” I said.

  I looked behind me, but he was gone.

  I sighed. I missed him… I missed him a lot. I looked into the distance and reflections of the past danced in my mind. It was hard not to dwell, being so old…

  Two days later, I looked both ways before looking into my pool of water as Joshua. I skipped right to Heidi’s father, and rather than signing her death warrant, I signed her father’s death warrant instead, and then I let Vengeance take over afterwards.

  I felt ashamed and guilty, and needed to take my mind off of how I cheated. So I walked across the clouds until I arrived at the beautiful white clouds, where the sky was blue and the weather was so nice that I wanted to live there rather than at my own cloud.

  “Hello Justice,” I turned around. That was Fate; a rather young God. Fate was a new concept, and so she was only born recently. Well, recently concerning Gods, that is.

  Fate had red bushy hair, and she always seemed to be in a good mood, which made sense since his job was not as crushing as mine was. Her job was merely to decide the general course a mortal’s life took. Not every mortal, just the ones she chose to make an impact.

  I did a slight bow, as she was very well-respected among us Gods. “Fate,”

  “Do you need something…?”

  I was distracted, and didn’t answer.

  She leaned forwards a bit “You seem distracted. Are you okay?”

  I sighed and sat down on the clouds. “I don’t know… I feel… sad? I guess…”

  She sat down next to me. “Why’s that?”

  I sat down, clasped my hands on my knees and looked up at the other clouds passing gently by. “My brother hates me.”

  “Death…? I thought you two were close.” She said, surprised.

  “We were… I am—lonely—I don’t think Gods should be lonely.” I shrugged.

  “Everyone gets lonely, even Gods. We have many gatherings that you simply don’t come to.”

  “I don’t think I would really… fit in there…” I shrugged again.

  “I do. And I don’t think it’s fair that the older Gods judge you by a mistake made years ago,” she said with a smile.

  “You weren’t there…” I said quietly.

  “Even so, you ought to come. Let by-gones be by-gones, hm? You should come to Sun’s Day. Join me tomorrow when the sky turns purple?” Before I could rebuff her suggestion, she clapped me on the back and got to her feet again, walking off.

  I was envious of her happiness. Gods should not be envious.

  As I crawled into my cloud that night, I debated going to Sun’s Day. I was anti-social for many reasons. The first was that I didn’t like being suffocated and over-stimulated by too much company; the second was, I just didn’t think I fit in with those other Gods. They all knew exactly who they were and what they were supposed to feel like. It was different for me. I didn’t feel comfortable around anyone but my brother, well, except for recently of course.

  I supposed I may as well go, after I finished my judging for the day, anyway. I wanted to convince Death to come with me but—I closed my eyes sadly-- things would never be the same between us.

  The next day I was feeling slightly more upbeat after a good night’s rest, and I got right back to my job. Part of me was always worried I might get stuck as one of my other personalities while going to a gathering. Once I had gotten stuck as Vengeance for a month when he wouldn’t close his eye and let me open mine. Weather, one of the oldest Gods, had to lock me up until I finally got my regular personality back. I had been judging and killing far too many people as Vengeance. Or rather, my brother was killing them and I was signing their death warrants.

  I sat in front of the pool of water and did my job as Vengeance. When the sky turned purple, Vengeance was good and closed his eye, and then opened all three so I could be Joshua again.

  I headed over to Fate’s white clouds and she greeted me. “This way,” she said. I followed her until we came to the Sun’s Day festival where I saw the most Gods I’d ever seen in one place. They were down in a circular indent in the clouds, and were sitting in a circle with Weather in the middle. Fate and I joined the circle, and I was surprised when Death suddenly appeared came and sat down next to me. I smiled. Maybe he’d had a change of heart.

  Weather was about to say something when Death raised his hand.

  “Yes Death? You’ve something to say?”

  My brother nodded his dark head. Weather motioned him to stand in the middle of the circle, and then my brother said something that shocked me.

  “I regret to inform you,” he began, “that a God here has broken the law.”

  There was no gasping like there would be among a human crowd. The Gods were completely serious and silent.

  “And that God is Justice,” he pointed at me.

  They all looked at me, and I was confused. I knew I’d broken the law, but how did he know…? He must have been spying on me. But why?

  “He spared a girl’s life when he was meant to kill her.” He stated.

  Weather raised an eyebrow. “These are serious accusations, Death. Where’s your proof?”

  Death took out the warrant I had signed earlier.

  Weather snapped and the paper appeared in his hand. “I see…” He took out another piece of paper that he himself had written long ago. “It says here that you were supposed to be Vengeance that day. According to the situation, you should have killed the girl.”

  Weather looked at me sternly, and then after a moment he looked down at his feet with regret.

  “Joshua,” Weather used my name, “do you know what this entails? Especially concerning your past mistakes?”

  “Yes. I shall be banished for a year to
the human realm.” We Gods didn’t display much, but on the inside, I was devastated. To live amongst those hated mortals for a year was unthinkable.

  “I am very sorry, Joshua. I hope you shall survive for the year you’re there, and your experience will not drive you mad like many Gods before you.” He walked up to me.

  I closed all three of my eyes. “No, I’m sorry. I’ve failed you all again.”

  Weather touched my forehead and whispered my Truename. “Yeshua,”

  A light flashed in my mind, and then I blacked out.

  Someone shook me rigorously. “Hey. Are you okay?”

  I opened all three of my eyes. It was dark out, and it was the human girl, Heidi, whose life I had saved. Why the Gods would send me close to the girl I’d saved confused me as I sat up and rubbed my head. There was a crater all around me, almost as if something had exploded. Most likely I had struck the ground as a lightning bolt, and destroyed the green grass all around. I looked about. Like I’d seen in my pool of water, her village was a nice place; so green and quaint with tiny houses and thatched roofs that it was impossible not to love it. Yet I couldn’t enjoy it because I was still upset about what happened. And, feeling huffy, I sighed.

  To go among mortals for a year… shameful.

  The girl laughed, though there was a great deal of confusion in her voice. “What are you huffing about? Did you just fall asleep here or something?”

  I noticed she was careful to avoid looking at my third eye, as if it were a deformity. “Don’t address me in such a way, mortal,” I said expressionlessly.

  “What’s your