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.
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.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Sunday Morning Transport to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.