Care-Taker

The mountainside plummets into the wet ground where it meets the forest, stretched out like an old, forgotten painting.

It even smells the same.

Like Rot.

Sour, metallic rot.

A smell that used to cling to my clothes long after I left this place behind.

My jaw tightens as I take it all in, memories crawling their way back to the present. I was supposed to rid myself of this place. Liora forbade me from ever considering it again. I never expected to find myself here once more. The forest’s scent fills my lungs, bringing with it the realization that I’ve already broken my vow.

I shift Liora higher on my shoulder as I begin my careful descent into the woods.

It takes longer than I remember. Maybe the years away from this place weakened me, making it more difficult to carry a corpse.

I almost wish that was the case, but some lessons can’t be erased by time alone.

I remember making this descent as a young girl, sacks of flour slung over my little, naïve shoulders. As I grew older, flour became slaughtered goats. Then calves. Then people.

So many people.

So many it became mundane.

This time, it’s Liora.

My Liora.

The terrain flattens along the side of the mountain. Her hair brushes my neck, rocking with my stride. The same hair I touched not even an hour ago.

When she was alive.

“You’re going to leave me to die here, and you’re going to keep on living.”

She was always so demanding. Lucky for her, I was just as stubborn. Stubborn enough to heave her up the cobblestone steps to the door carved into the mountainside.

Frogs sing in the distance as I collapse, exhausted, at the doorstep. I let her weight slide off my shoulder. Her body lands with a soft, wet thump – a small sound that twists something in my chest

“Sorry,” I breathe, raising my fist to the cracked door. “It won’t be much longer now. I promise.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Sound echoes in the space behind the door, disappearing far into the mountain. I lay my head against Liora’s cold shoulder and listen for any sound of life. Footsteps, maybe. A shift. A prayer. Anything. Seconds collect into minutes until my tired laugh breaks the silence.

“Hear that, Liora?” I mutter, staring into her half-lidded eyes. “They’ve all left.” Or died. The sick tension in my chest loosens, and for a moment, I can breathe.

In all my years serving, I’ve never heard a sound as peaceful as this. Not a single scream. No prayers murmured through clenched teeth.

Only absence.

In that absence, the music of the forest remains. Sparrows sing somewhere high in the canopy. Wind rustles through leaves. For the first time, I hear the mountain as it is, untarnished by suffering.

I could drag Liora back up the mountain. I could find her a peaceful, quiet spot and bury her somewhere clean. Somewhere good. Somewhere that smells of spring flowers instead of rot, where she could rest.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I say to her, voice breaking. “You could die for me and then…” The words disappear into a quiet sob. And then stay that way. As her bloodied clothes soak up my tears, I try to imagine things as she would want them.

Grief.

Acceptance.

Her body left rotting somewhere in the forest.

My stomach contracts violently with nausea. I scramble to the side of the steps, clutching my abdomen as I vomit into the grass.

“Sorry, Liora,” I half-whisper. “It’s not just going to end here.”

I slam my shoulder into the door. Pain shoots down my arm, but the stone remains unyielding. I look back at Liora’s body, bleeding quietly into the moss.

I could still turn back. This place doesn’t have to taint her beautiful soul. Even so, as I look at her slack face, at the blood darkening her blouse…

I throw myself into the door again.

And again.

Dust showers down from the stone above me, clinging to the tears on my face. With a strangled, desperate yell, I push everything I have into my next shove.

Crack.

The hinges yield. The door buckles inward, sending me stumbling into the temple with it.

The smell hits me first – air trapped with years of decay. I gag violently as the air forces itself into my lungs along with the taste of burnt myrrh and yew. Blinking away tears that sting my eyes, I turn to the open door, my hand already outstretched in greeting.

Unlike the hundreds I’ve carried before, Liora’s corpse could never be mundane. Not to me.

“Weary traveller,” I say to her. The words slip through my teeth before I recognize their meaning. “By the grace of suffering, you shall find your healing.”

My arms strain as I try to lift Liora over my shoulder. Before I can manage it, I lower her back against the moss, sweat slicking my forehead. Instead, I lock my arms around her chest and drag us backward into the hazy temple.

Her boots scrape against crumbled rock as her body drapes over my arms. A hand falls limply to the ground, fingers trailing through the dirt. She hated getting her hands dirty.

Guilt rises in my throat, sour and thick.

Every instinct urges me to turn back. This place is wrong. Even the air itself feels rotten – permanently stained with the smell of stale yew long since burned. A smell that would choke me in my sleep. Liora would talk me back to myself as I screamed bloody murder in the middle of the night.

She made a point of never burning sage in the house after that.

The ground shudders as the door creaks shut, flooding the temple in shadow. These walls once flickered with the light of many torches. Now, the prayers etched into the walls are only visible by the sunlight clawing its way through cracks in the ceiling. Prayers, carved by hundreds of shaking hands, including my own.

‘Take my sight so you may see –

My hands so you may feel.’

The prayer forms on my breath before I can stop myself. Swallowing the lump in my throat, I squeeze Liora to my chest and continue deeper into the temple.

The stone floor dips in places worn down by desperate knees, bowed in prayer to something they never understood. Faith has carved itself into the mountain with divots from hands. Knees. Foreheads bowed low. Stone blackened by sacrificial blood. My feet work around the erosion seamlessly, still remembering the correct path by instinct alone. Almost there, Liora. I promise.

Something in the atmosphere tightens as I enter the sanctuary. A presence, ancient and expectant, wraps around me in a stiff embrace.

It remembers me by name.

Caretaker.

I lay Liora down as softly as I can. My eyes turn downward as I face the altar; an instinct carefully developed from a young age. Words form on my lips once more and leave my mouth in a whisper.

“Let suffering give birth to miracle.”

The prayer fits uncomfortably well on my tongue.

I allow myself to slide into routine. Head bowed, I fall to my knees, submerging my hands in the shallow pool of cleansing water. Cold. Stagnant. My hands work through the motions; wrists. Palms. Fingertips. My face sinks into the basin next, hands rubbing away tears and grime. Only then do I allow myself to look at the altar.

Black stone rises from the earth in the sanctuary’s centre – the beating heart of an ancient body. At its base, the stone curves into two hollowed beds.

One for healing.

One for sacrifice.

My legs tremble as I return to Liora, carefully grasping her under the shoulders. The receiving bed takes her neatly as I guide her body into the right hollow. She fits almost too well, as if the mountain itself has been waiting to cradle her.

Shallow grooves lining the bed’s base begin collecting her blood, carrying it to the mouth of the altar.

A sound groans from deep within the sanctuary floor as it consumes Liora’s blood. I freeze, breath catching in my throat. The sound rolls through the chamber like distant thunder before disappearing into the mountain with a soft echo.

“Okay,” I mutter, forcing my trembling hands to straighten Liora’s limbs. “It’s okay. Not much longer.”

I remember this sound. This primal fear.

The temple was never truly silent, even when no one spoke. Something deep within the mountain always rumbled its response. When bodies stilled, the floor would not – it continued to tremor as I knelt beside the altar, holding down worshippers that recited prayers through gasps of pain.

Now, with Liora’s body peacefully still in the altar’s right bed, I turn to the left.

The giving bed does not offer the same comfort.

The hollow is narrower, closed in by steep edges that prevent bodies from twisting too far from the caretaker’s grasp. Deep channels cut down the centre, designed to drain blood faster than it can pool. Restraints hang from iron rings bolted into the altar’s base, waiting to fulfill their purpose.

I remember tightening stiff leather around trembling wrists. A simple task, often reserved for the young. Restraints were not usually needed. Most people secured themselves here willingly, desperate enough to surrender themselves for the sake of a miracle.

Others needed to be held down.

I should leave.

The thought presents itself uninvited.

Beside the giving bed, I stare at the tools arranged neatly, awaiting a caretaker’s hands to put them to use. I know the ritual. I know what comes next.

‘Blood for atonement,

Flesh for prosperity,

Life for a life.’

Something in my chest tightens as I stand. My fingers drift along the altar’s smooth surface as I approach the giving bed, focusing only on the cold stone.

You know this. You’ve lived it.

Lie down.

Stopping beside the bed, I scan the tools once again, assuring myself that everything is prepared correctly. Needles. Daggers. Hooks. Everything blackened with age, arranged just as they should be. Of course they are.

Lie down.

Slowly, I lower myself into the hollowed stone.

My shoulders settle naturally into grooves worn smooth by generations of writhing bodies. I know the contours before I feel them. A shudder wracks through me as I pull in a deep breath, closing my eyes. My mind may have forgotten details over time, but my body still remembers. It’s a strange, aching sort of comfort, to lie in your own bed after years away from home.

I first lied here when I was seventeen.

Seventeen.

I remember the kindness in the women’s voices as they tightened leather around my wrists. There was tenderness where the blade met my skin; they taught me that suffering was sacred.

My breathing quickens as I stare at the temple’s ceiling. I look at Liora. I look down at the blood winding through mazes of grooves, disappearing somewhere into the mountain.

Not much longer.

I reach for the first blade. Small. Sharp. Designed for a clean sacrifice. Blood for blood. The weight of it settles into my hand. My arm positions itself for the first offering before my racing thoughts can stop it. A caretaker’s precision.

A quick, clean cut.

Hot pain flashes down my forearm. Blood spills into the channels beneath me, snaking in thin winding ropes to the mouth of the altar. The ground drinks it up eagerly.

I wait.

Nothing happens.

The offering must compare with the demand.

I let the knife fall from my trembling hand, clattering against the sanctuary floor as blood streams steadily from my arm. The offering must meet the demand. I know this.

My fingers curl around another blade. Hooked.

Flesh for prosperity.

My stomach lurches.

“No,” I mutter weakly into the silence. The ground vibrates beneath my spine, waiting patiently. I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to breathe.

I think of Liora, laughing after I clumsily splashed ink across her favourite dress.

I imagine her half-asleep voice talking me down from a nightmare.

I see her lying in the grass, gasping in pain.

The blade drives through my thigh. White-hot agony screams through me as warmth floods down my leg. A strangled cry tears out of my lungs before I can stop myself. My shaking hands drag the blade free, pulling flesh along with it.

The altar trembles in response. The ground answers with a pleased groan. I attempt a breath, but it quickly dissolves into a ragged gasp.

I thought the restraints were a sign of devotion. Surrender, maybe. Now I understand the pure, animal instinct pain strips a body down to. No matter the mind’s resolve, the body fights for survival.

My vision blurs as I turn toward Liora.

Nothing.

“Please.” The word breaks in my throat.

Please. Anything.

I’d do anything.

Time becomes meaningless through clouds of insurmountable pain.

The knife trembles violently in my grasp as I put it to work.

Another offering.

Another piece of me.

Would an eye be enough? A few fingers?

A hand?

Heat pulses in the empty socket where my right eye used to sit, blood pouring into the grooves beneath my spine.

One hand stops responding entirely.

The other shakily drags the knife through flesh I can still bear to lose.

I used to assess givers for survivability. I know exactly where a human body begins to fail.

How much more, then?

The mountain drinks.

My remaining pupil fixates on Liora for a long moment. Heart pounding violently in my chest, I wait.

Her fingers twitch, weakly curling into her palm.

“Liora.”

The word barely exists. Her hand relaxes, then stills, as if it never happened.

Not enough.

Still not enough.

Through the pain pulsing down my limbs, memory uproots another teaching.

Not all offerings are equal.

A sob claws its way out of my exhausted lungs as I stare at the unmoving corpse.

“What do you want?” I scream with all the strength I can muster, watching the cracked ceiling warp above me.

The altar doesn’t demand pain. It doesn’t demand flesh.

It demands what is sacred.

“You want me to prove that I love her?” I cry through trembling sobs. “Is this not enough?”

Of course it isn’t enough, I tell myself. Hundreds of bodies carved up by my hands, and I never understood what it meant.

This temple never relied on faith.

It was built on grief.

Grieving people bound to this very spot in the name of devotion – widows, mothers, and children. They were not faithful; they were mourners. People whose grief was so consuming that they’d rather carve their bodies apart than accept it.

You want more.

The sanctuary shifts in expectation.

Biting back another sob, I find Liora through my tunnelling vision. So pale.

“Okay,” I breathe. Life for a life.

My remaining hand clutches the last blade – a long, polished dagger, curved gently across the sharp edge. A dagger reserved for the deepest, most sacred offerings. The metal shakes violently as I find the hollow space beneath my ribs. For a moment, I listen to the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

I pull in a sharp breath, and push.

Agony envelops everything. There is no temple. No altar. No Liora. Only pain that makes me forget how to breathe. My back spasms violently off the altar’s bed, burying the blade deeper beneath my ribs. The sound that escapes me twists into a wet, choking gasp.

Warmth floods down my stomach. My chest. Every heartbeat sends blood streaming down my ribs in pulsing sheets. The altar trembles hungrily beneath me as my fingers spasm against the dagger’s handle.

A groan rattles through the sanctuary floor. The grooves under me pulse as they swallow me whole. The mountain is alive.

Breathing.

I fix my eye on Liora as the edge of my vision begins to blacken.

The most raw form of prayer forces itself from my mouth: a plea.

“Please.”

Liora’s chest violently rises with a sharp inhale. Her eyes – God, her beautiful eyes – open wide in blind confusion, darting aimlessly in the darkness. I see the way they sharpen with terror the moment they find me.

A single word rasps out in the silence.

“...No!”

Closing my eyes, I listen to Liora’s voice as desperate words blur together into sound. Her cold, trembling hands press into my stomach, trying desperately to hold me together.

“I-” My throat closes around the word, forcing blood out in its place.

Numbness envelops all sensation.

All I can think about is the mourners; Centuries of broken people, damaged beyond repair by a grief larger than themselves. They were people who looked unbearable loss in the face and refused it. They fed themselves to something they didn’t understand, until there was nothing left to give.

Here I lie, bleeding into the earth as both sacrifice and caretaker.

Now, for the first time, I understand what it means.

A smile creeps up my face.

Perhaps I’ll be the last.