Year of Shrines

For February’s fourth story, Tessa Gratton shares a young person’s potentially life-changing journey. ~ Julian and Fran, February 25, 2024

This month’s stories are by authors Margaret Ronald, Kij Johnson, Brian Slattery, and Tessa Gratton. The first story of the month is free to read, but it’s our paying subscribers who allow us to keep publishing great stories week after week. We are delighted that nine of our 2023 stories appeared on Nerds of a Feather’s Hugo Reading List and seven of our 2023 stories are featured on Locus’ 2023 Recommended Reading List. If you haven’t already, please consider signing up.

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Year of Shrines

by Tessa Gratton

For her first shrine, she chose a young redwood just past the lower fork of the mountain path. Two of its roots formed a lap, the bark furrows brushed with lime-green moss. You see, it was already half built, waiting.

Shrines require three aspects: shelter, food, body. These aspects might take many forms: a small house, a walnut shell, a lap of roots for shelter; tasty incense, honey, or soaked tea leaves for food; a statue, a skull, a doll for body. People like to add knotted wool for decoration or painted talismans, sometimes bells or carved bamboo to hang as wind chimes. Often words or familiar symbols are used so pilgrims know to which spirit or avatar or god the shrine is dedicated. One can add candles or spears of crystal, or the favored food of local demons. But all that is required are shelter, food, and body.

She liked that. As much as she liked anything anymore.

This lap of roots was a good shelter, and she had carried with her a granite figure for the body. She wanted to begin with an obvious beginning, so the figure was lanky and androgynous, as the curator of fate is said to be, shaped into a kneeling pose with their arms up, palms raised like either side of a balancing scale.

She settled it into the root nook and withdrew a paint set from her bag. With dew off the ground ivy, she wet the little pots of sky blue and black, then painted black arcs for closed eyes and the thin line of a set mouth, and gave the little curator two blue blots on their cheeks. For food she split a rose apple into two rough halves. One she ate; the other she set against the statue’s knees, pips like black eyes in the white meat.

She said, “I dedicate this shrine to the curator of fate on the last day of winter, when we do not yet know if spring will arrive tomorrow—but fate knows. I have been called Peony Family Evervale, though Family Evervale is no more, and peonies are for children, of which there shall be no more from our line. I have come to Fate’s Mountain Overlooking the Lily River to change my fate by dedicating a shrine once a day from today until next year’s spring, as is promised in the Book of Heroes. Here is my first shrine, for the curator of fate.”

She kissed the statue’s crown, a brush of lips as she breathed in and breathed out apple-crisp air.

Then she bowed until her forehead touched the earth. She smelled sweet fungi and cold stone, and a richness she could not name.

The next day, Peony returned and chose the northern fork again. It was steeper than the eastern way but wide enough for three to walk abreast, and according to the priest whose hut was nestled at the foot of the mountain, the north led to a small spring with a shrine to the curator themself.

She walked until she reached her first shrine. Beside it she built a second shrine with a thin slab of flint as shelter, a tiny pillar of amethyst as body, and a bowl of milk as food. This she dedicated to the mountain itself.

On the third day, she built a shrine by planting a snapdragon for shelter. It would grow bright red dragon flowers, and nod like blood splatter in the bright summer breeze. For body she gave it a carved jasper dragon, for food a small nautilus shell filled with water. This she dedicated to the Lily River that coursed through the valley below.

Every day, she walked up the mountain and made a new shrine.

The priest in his hut offered smiles every morning, the occasional flask of dark tea or dried oranges. Peony ate and drank his gifts, or shared them out among her shrines where food needed replenishing.

On the seventeenth day, she had built shrines around the first broad curve of the path, each within arm’s reach of the next. That day she left a doll of bone under the shelter of a grass mat lean, with a flat dish of blackberries. As she knelt to pray her dedication, her toes turned to cold ashes.

The ash crept up her shins in intricate lacelike snowflakes over the mounds of her calves. It did not hurt. It was cold and dead, nothing more. It made her heartbeat slow her thoughts slow her breaths shallow and slow.

This was not the first time.

Carefully, she moved a toe, and rubbed her hands down her thighs. She forced a deep breath, filling her lungs out to her ribs and down to her guts.

She melted over in a way that could pretend to be a bow. “Curator of fate, this shrine is yours,” she murmured, and pressed a finger against one of the blackberries. It squished, squelching like a rotten cherry, a spider, and its juice splattered against the stone dish. She painted two dots on her cheeks as if she smiled, just like the curator of fate doll from her first shrine.

The next day, Peony was late up the mountain. She lay in bed, trapped by the weight of cold nothing. She thirsted but did not drink. She never grew hungry. Her bed was a small pallet in the kitchen of an inn where she’d bargained for a sleeping corner in return for rewriting their prices and the corner blessings every new moon. She paid for food with the recompense money from the palace.

When the sun skewered in through the kitchen window, she felt it like a knife to her liver. She got up and took nothing with her—everything was too, too heavy. Even her own feet were heavy as stone.

But she knelt just beyond the seventeenth shrine, at a small cluster of sprouting clover—spring had come after all. Slowly, she braided them together into a living crown that might even blossom soon. “Body and shelter both,” she said, then spat into the center. Spit was food for plenty of fungi. Maybe a little rot would gather and ferment here.

On the nineteenth day, she dragged herself slowly again, built a shrine of what she found on the spot. But on the twentieth day, she felt better and brought a small iron hood. She dug into the earth beside a hemlock to shove the hood’s edges deep. This shelter would last a long while, rusting and staining in streaks of sunrise orange. Beneath it she placed a wooden statue of Leafsong, the Mother of Trees, and at the goddess’s feet Peony put a small bowl of porridge.

On the thirty-second day, the mountain was alive with bird cries and rainbows of wildflowers. Rain from the night before dripped down onto her head, slipping along her scalp beneath her braids. At the end of her line of shrines a man crouched on his heels, eating nuts from an embroidered bag. He wore the pale layers and fan hat of a pilgrim and his long hair was loose, curling around a suntanned face with soft planes and a pointed chin.

“Nuts?” he offered.

Peony blinked at him. “No, thank you.”

“I’ve heard the curator of fate likes nuts.”

Kneeling, she pushed three bright yellow sticks into the earth at angles to lean against each other in a pyramid. The sun shone through the canopy here, she’d noticed yesterday. Light turned the sticks into a shelter of sunbeams. “This shrine is for the avatar of the sun, not the curator of fate.”

“Ah,” the pilgrim said, then crunched another nut between his teeth.

She placed a round copper coin under the sunbeam sticks for the body, then dripped a drop of chili oil onto its face. She bowed and breathed in. The spicy oil tickled her nostrils. She breathed out and stood.

The pilgrim waved as she made her way back down the mountain.

By the fifty-eighth day, others were aware of her attempt. More pilgrims in pale layers using their fan hats to waft away the late spring—almost summer—heat, curious local children, their parents and cousins. Often the crowd watched her leave from town, smiling or clapping their encouragement. One or two, usually a pilgrim or clutter of kids, might walk behind her as she went. They stopped at each shrine with her, to bow as she replaced the food. Sometimes they asked her questions, to which she rarely replied. Usually they only spoke to each other. A little child was the first to shyly offer her a piece of cheese, which she accepted.

It was high summer the next time she saw the pilgrim with his nuts. She was alone that afternoon, thanks to the clinging heat that put dew on her skin and melted her braids. He waited on his heels again, just across the path from her next shrine, fan hat in one hand, creating a lazy breeze. As she came around a boulder, he pinched a nut from his bag and set it between bright white teeth. The shell cracked, and Peony misstepped over a root. Her foot landed hard and her ankle twisted. She squeaked in pain. The pilgrim made no move to help.

That was fine. Peony went to her knees right there, it was as good a spot as any, and began to make a shrine in the lee of the boulder with feathers and incense.

“One hundred,” he said, and she felt the breeze from his fan hat against her sticky nape.

“You can count.”

The pilgrim scoffed.

After that she saw him sometimes among the others, walking just behind a trio of pilgrims and almost fitting in. Or playing complicated hand games with the children in the shade.

On day one hundred and fifty-seven, she woke feeling fine in her bed, no longer a pallet in the kitchen of the inn, but a small room on the second story. As word had spread of her attempt to change her fate, fame and donations had given her a better sleeping arrangement. But as she took care of herself in the communal washroom, her bones grew cold. Nothing had caused it. She’d eaten a normal dinner, slept as well as usual, woken when the sun touched her face. But the cold ash gripped her anyway. She sank to the worn wooden slats and leaned her temple against the sink. She breathed.

Guests startled when they saw her slumped there, and called her name. The innkeeper knelt beside her, talking quickly, urging, Peony, you’ve made it farther than most. Are you ill? Someone call the healer. Can you speak or open your eyes?

The healer came and Peony used their shoulder to stand. Opened her heavy eyes. Shook her head and walked away through the cold malaise. She didn’t want this.

She walked, breathed in, one step two step, breathed out, all the way up the northern fork. Behind her she heard hushed voices, footfall.

Past her one hundred and fifty-sixth shrine she dropped hard to her knees. Fell onto her hands against the damp, mossy earth. Breathed in. Whispers, rustles of fabric. The snap of a fan, a breeze. Someone began an invocation, another joined in. Their chant slunk toward her, as gently as a snake against the grass. It couldn’t touch her.

“What is shelter?”

It was the voice of the nut pilgrim, quiet but right there.

Peony frowned. She cared, she did.

But here she was, with nothing in hand. She had to do this. One hundred and fifty-seven.

“No, I’m really curious: What is shelter?”

His voice annoyed her enough that she turned and snatched his fan hat. She planted it against a fern. It cast a sliver of shade in the already shady rainforest. Fumbling, she looked for a sharp edge and found it in a discarded walnut shell. Gritting her teeth, she cut the meat of her thumb. The line of blood was hot, the pain was hot. This was a bad way to break her coldness.

Blood dropped into the shade.

“I’d have used blood for food,” the nut pilgrim said idly.

“I didn’t ask you,” she whispered, and bowed to breathe out out out over the blood.

On day two hundred and forty-nine, the pilgrim sprawled across the path so she had to step over him. Cute. Annoying. She almost smiled.

Peony knelt beside his bare feet, glancing along their surprisingly elegant lines, at the tiny rivers of blood just under the surface of skin. “Home,” she said softly. “Shelter is a home.”

The next day, the nut pilgrim appeared at the foot of the mountain and walked beside her. “Shelter is the whole world,” he said. “A roof, a spreading tree, a town, a family, community, home. A place to belong, certainly. I wonder if your habits are a shelter too. What do you think?”

Peony dared to look at him. He had a new fan hat, simple wood slats tied to a messy topknot. Several blue ribbons fluttered from the ends, falling over his face like waterfalls. “Am I making a shelter for myself with this habit, you mean?”

His eyes crinkled in a smile. “I rarely mean anything.”

“Is that why the Book of Heroes sets this task, to change one’s fate? One step at a time, a shrine a day to make new behavior, a new pattern? Changing one’s fate by changing what one does?”

“You’d have to ask a priest or sorcerer about that kind of philosophy.”

“Or the curator of fate themself?”

“I don’t know any stories where the curator has much to say. Do you?”

Peony did not.

With the autumn came rain every day, and harsher winds. The forest stayed wet and green, but in places there were bursts of gold and falling leaves, smears of mud and footprints from deer and raccoons and tree spirits wandering across the northern path. She used fallen leaves to form spiral bodies and built shelters from pine cones, carried up apples and braided scraps from her spring skirts into dolls and flags. Every day. Shelter, body, food.

On the three hundred and third day, she halved a small orange she’d bought in the market. The thick skin itself was shelter, she thought, for the body of the seeds and food of the flesh. All of it in this one little fruit. She breathed in the citrus tang, breathed out a shaky laugh. Shelter is body is food is shelter.

On the three hundred and fourth day, she carved the meat out of an orange, keeping the shell of its thick skin intact. With it she made a half-dome shelter and placed the tiniest little green jade dog under it. She fed the jade dog the corner of a cracker. On the three hundred and fifth day, she carried up an old lacquered box and used its lid to build a shelter, half of an orange for the body, and a pinch of dried fertilizer for food. On the three hundred and sixth day, she built a little fence out of slats from the rest of the box, red and yellow lacquer blinking merrily in the sunlight. For body, she found a rock shaped like a sleeping cat. An orange for food.

When she stood, the nut pilgrim watched from farther up the path. “Those four will get expensive,” he said approvingly.

The top of Fate’s Mountain Overlooking the Lily River grew white with snow, exactly as it had been when she’d begun her attempt to change her fate. But the snow didn’t touch this path: here it was only rain after rain after rain. Greenery flushed in every direction and the path became more of a creek. She slomped and trudged, squelching and chilled, but wrapped in enough wool, her cheeks turned rosy.

She only had forty-seven days to go when a great storm came tearing through. It lasted through an evening, all night, into the morning and afternoon, driving the sun away, scouring the entire mountain. The innkeeper begged her to stay; surely the curator of fate would understand. Peony had to go.

The priest barely opened his door, but shoved a lantern into her hand. The wind snatched the flame away in moments. Peony hugged the lantern to herself until the residual warmth was gone too.

She walked. It didn’t matter if she ruined her hands falling or her hair was caked in mud. Wind slashed at her, shoving her down, and she gasped, then sobbed. This stormy world was colder than the ashes in her bones. But louder. She took another step and screamed.

The path was black and cold, and she could only open her eyes to slits. She couldn’t see her shrines, could only walk the path up and up, around this bend and the next. Everything ached and she shuddered and shook with cold inside and out.

Finally she knelt. A spot of vivid orange drew her eye: the whole orange, the food for the little stone spirit cat under the lacquered box lid. She had to go farther. But she picked up the orange.

She carried it past twelve more shrines, noting them as best she could in the darkness, in the storm. Then she collapsed on the side of the path, and huddled around herself, back bent over crossed legs. She wrapped her cloak tighter and her hair dripped mud and water. She bit into the orange. Shelter, body, food.

On the three hundred and nineteenth day, Peony woke up stiff and cold. But not the cold of ashes, guilt, and grief, just the regular cold of sleeping outside in the winter rain. The sun pricked at her eyes, reflected off mud puddles, off needles and leaves and the slick, treacherous path. She sucked in a huge breath and still tasted citrus on her tongue.

“You’re the worst shrine yet,” the nut pilgrim said from where he crouched. “I like it.”

Then he gave her a cup of tea that somehow was warm.

Peony sipped and the nut pilgrim bowed as if to a spirit at home in a shrine.

The path down the mountain was devastating. Some shrines remained, some tattered, some washed out completely. Peony studied them silently and the nut pilgrim walked beside her, their steps loud and squelching.

It wasn’t as bad as what had happened to Family Evervale. This she could fix. This she had witnessed. This she was part of.

And she understood a bit better about shrines these days.

Peony caught a cold, but kept going. Every day, she hiked up to her next shrine and on the way back down repaired the ones along the path. Sometimes she found one already fixed up, here or there with food or a body replaced, with a new grass braid or a different flower planted as shelter. It was the children, and the pilgrims and the priest from the base of the mountain.

On day three hundred and sixty-one, she reached the curve in the path that bent around the spring. Moss-covered boulders surrounded it and the water was clear as air. A tiny trickle of a waterfall squeezed out from the cliff face, and carved into the granite was an alcove painted in streaks of cobalt blue. A bell hung from the curved ceiling, and below it was a little bowl of water and a fresh red berry. Peony set down her basket and climbed up the slick boulders. She considered picking her way over them to the shrine, but the moss was thick. So she hopped into the freezing spring with a splash. She hissed through her teeth and walked across. The water numbed her, spread ice up her legs and into her bones, but by now she knew how to keep going through such a feeling.

At the far end of the spring, she stretched onto her toes and rang the bell.

Peony clasped her hands and bowed. “Thank you,” she said to the curator of fate. She took the shallow food bowl and refilled it with spring water before climbing back out of the spring.

Her shrine that day was a ceramic tree dotted with pink plum blossoms, a toy that barked if you pulled the string, and a jelly candy. She dedicated it to the children of the Lily River, for their help with her shrines.

Walking down the mountain almost warmed her legs, almost chased the numbness from her toes.

She didn’t speak to anyone in the final four days. So many people smiled at her, squeezed her hands, reached out to touch her hair, which she hadn’t put back into braids since the storm. She let them touch, and met their gazes if they wished. But she said nothing.

Peony walked up the mountain on the last day with a rose apple and blue paint and a new pilgrim’s fan hat. Beside the spring, near the roots of a spruce that smelled sweet and spicy, she sat down and waited. She tied the hat on backward so it dripped its blue ribbons down along her dark hair. She held the rose apple in one hand and the paint in the other, and waited. She breathed in and breathed out.

The nut pilgrim ambled up as if he’d never had anywhere to go in a hurry. He folded himself down in front of her, near enough the knees of their crossed legs almost touched. He looked into her eyes and she looked back. There was nothing spectacular to see. She took a bite of the rose apple, then handed it to him. He ate some, and while he chewed, she painted two circles of blue onto his cheeks. He returned the favor. The fine brush hairs tickled and she let her smile spread over her face.

They shared the rest of the tiny apple, one bite, two, and he lifted his chin to spit a seed into the spring. It arced easily and plopped in with hardly a ripple.

Then the nut pilgrim leaned in and kissed her.

She closed her eyes. His lips were cold, but so were hers. Her cheeks still tickled with drying paint. She smelled the spruce and tasted the sweet rose apple. Birds sang: after all, tomorrow was the first day of spring.

When she opened her eyes, it was only the curator of fate sitting there.

She breathed in. She breathed out.

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Thank you for joining our journey this week.

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Tessa Gratton is genderfluid and hangry. They’re also the author of adult and YA SFF novels and short stories that have been translated into twenty-two languages. Their most recent novels are the dark queer fairy tales Strange Grace and Night Shine, and the queer Shakespeare retelling Lady Hotspur. Their upcoming work includes the YA fantasy Blood & Fury, and several novels of Star Wars: The High Republic. Though they have lived all over the world, they currently reside at the edge of the Kansas prairie with their wife. She/any.

“Year of Shrines,” © Tessa Gratton, 2024.

The Sunday Morning Transport: Selected Stories 2022 is now available at Weightless Books!