by Oliver Fosten
The rules are simple. You arrive at the Temple of the Hidden Goddess covered from head to toe in loose garments. Or at least, you do if you have any wisdom to spare. The Acolytes keep themselves unrecognizable for a reason. Knock three times for each visit the Hidden Goddess paid the Progenitor, another three for every instance she was turned away, and then a single rap for the killing blow she dealt him upon their third and final meeting.
Everything around us is his creation except for Hidden Goddess, who arose from the ether outside his dominion of knowledge. As he carefully crafted his universe, The Hidden Goddess watched on, unnoticed. When she grew bored of observation, she approached him on the astral plane. Not once, not twice, but three times he refused to acknowledge another being as powerful as himself, vowing all kinds of godly harm if she didn’t leave. Perhaps the Progenitor was terrified his proto-beings might see the mighty stranger and realize he wasn’t the sole deity they might worship. Maybe the Hidden Goddess tired of having her own strength go ignored just because it stemmed from an unfamiliar source. Regardless, the results were still the same. The Progenitor never finished his work, leaving humans incomplete, never to become gods in our own right. That’s why we’re all imperfect monstrosities, running around without any idea how to behave.
I won’t venture a guess as to how many visitors of the Temple actually believe in the legends. It doesn’t matter so long as you show up and respect the customs, such as waiting until your knocks at the door are answered before demanding they hear your claim. The Ushers don’t make you stand around for long, just enough so those inside can decide whether you’re serious or if you’ll flee the moment you hear footsteps. Despite the entryway being large enough to lead a draft horse through, the iron doors swing open at barely a touch from the Ushers, perfectly balanced on their hinges and carved with a scene of the Goddess standing over the Progenitor’s corpse.
The Ushers all wear the same blank mask, curved like a kite shield with narrow slits for eyes. It isn’t until they complete their training and become Acolytes that they are permitted to choose the face they show the Hidden Goddess. Free from the cage of the Temple’s buttresses, Acolytes are indistinguishable from those you’d see in the hundreds or thousands each day. That’s why Temples of the Hidden Goddess can only exist in dense cities. Any place else and eventually, someone would recognize you.
For as gruesome as their job can be, Acolytes live better lives than most. They get a safe place to sleep, warm meals, even an education. Nobody can wake up one day and decide to become an Acolyte, though. You have to be selected when you’re a babe, and only then if you’re an orphan. Nobody to care for you, nobody to remember you. After a certain number of years serving the Temple, Acolytes are offered enough funds to start a new life elsewhere. The only stipulation is should they leave, they may never return.
The Temple doesn’t hide any of this information. In fact, they’re more than willing to chat about it once you’re inside. Ask them about anything, they’ll give you a straight answer. Why should they fear how the public might react to their practices when they are wholly above the law? It’s no secret nearly every politician, merchant, and aristocrat has sought out their services at one point or another.
Those inside the Temple aren’t the type to pressure you into making an uninformed decision, although it isn’t out of kindness. Dismissing hesitant clientele impacts their wealth as much as drawing water from a lake with your cupped hands. All you have to do is specify exactly what you want done and justify it through one line of logic or another. While the Temple can’t turn a pauper into a king, they can ease someone a few places from being next in line for the throne into a far more desirable position, arrange an accident so a widow comes into full control of her husband’s wealth. The reasoning behind such desires doesn’t even have to be particularly good. Requests made from greed or lust are all fine, but nothing nonsensical. Asking for a lance to tilt against windmills will only get you booted from the Temple.
In other cities, a bishop decides if you have earned the Temple’s assistance. Here in the capitol, you see the Patriarch. Older than the city itself, the Patriarch is little more than a corpse perched upon a great obsidian throne. The inside of the Temple is kept dark enough that without the guiding hand of an Usher, outsiders would never find their way back onto the street. There are no windows to allow daylight or moonglow inside, only clean-burning torches set along the walls at irregular intervals. The dancing torch fire is mirrored along the throne’s glassy surface, giving the impression the Patriarch moves far more than he actually does. He says nothing, only commands you to explain yourself further with his prolonged silence. Eventually, one of his boney fingers will twitch atop the arm of the throne, which the Ushers will interpret as him either accepting or rejecting your case. From there, you sign your name into an enormous tome set in a shadowy alcove to the side of the Patriarch’s dias, the translucent pages disturbingly similar to the feel of your own flesh. As the ink dries, you are promised the Temple’s aid, to be performed with the utmost efficiency, and you submit to two binding clauses in turn.
First, upon your death, an agreed upon percentage of your estate will be given to the Temple.
Second, upon your death, all your dealings with the Temple will be made public.
None of this was a revelation to me, but the crowd packed into the inn’s cramped common room gasped and winced. Entertainment like this was a rare treat in the slums. Usually, the best you could hope for was a hanging, and even then, only if the length of rope was incorrectly calculated. Seeing the condemned dangling there, gasping as their face went blue, was better than nothing, but the real treat was when the drop ripped the head clean off its body.
Vile as it was, there was little else to do in this part of the city. The fog made it dangerous to be out for too long, both because of the poison it carried from the wheezing factories and whatever could be hiding within it. The few minutes it took to watch a hanging regularly left weaker spectators coughing until they bloodied their hands and sleeves. At one point nobody could precisely pinpoint, the brick and stone comprising the leaning tenements ranged from red to beige, but they’d all degraded into the same dirty gray. Even the gargoyles and grotesques atop the rooftops weren’t immune to the fog’s corrosive effects, the details masons so painstakingly chiseled replaced by a surface nearly as smooth and featureless as the Temple Ushers’ masks.
The perpetual dampness that clung to the skin like pond weed also caused the clay deposits underneath the capitol to leech through the cobblestones. It didn’t matter how you attempted to watch where you stepped or scrape your boots clean, you still left the same rust-colored prints in your wake as everyone else. The mat placed just inside the inn’s threshold had done little to encourage patrons to wipe their shoes. Under every table, crimson mud flaked into dust for the innkeeper to sweep up after final call.
Seated next to me, one figure languidly raised a stein to his lips. His motion of wiping the foam from his face failed to completely hide his smirk. Everything about him made me uneasy, but I was assured he was the best Acolyte for the job. True as that may have been, it was easier to stomach his presence when his mask was on, the tinted glass eyes hiding his gaze so I could pretend it wasn’t resting on me.
The old woman giving her account paused, throat working as she quaffed the drink someone purchased for her. Every evening, if she were to be believed, she made her way to a different inn. She knew the time was coming when all her secrets would be released, and she had either the pride or the curiosity to see what others would think of her visit to the Temple for herself. I had no such intentions. Too much glee from my Temple bargain derived from imagining how cruelly the news of what I’d done would slash through the curtains of mourning. Everyone would know exactly who they put their trust in, and just how foolish they were for doing so. Nonetheless, I could admire her mettle. Fame hadn’t been a part of her bargain. There would be few who would recognize her name and likeness, yet she was determined to air her wrongs to anyone that would listen. Maybe it would go some way in earning her family and friends’ forgiveness, otherwise it was little more than a confession made to ease her own guilt.
My attention was again drawn to him, Lucian, as he told me to call him, as he propped his muddy boots up on the seat of the chair across from him. One of the barmaids briefly gave him an exasperated look before a grin and a wink made the blood rise to her cheeks. Frowning at her own reaction, she turned and went to attend to some table across the room.
There was no denying I envied Lucian. He was cared for in a way I could scarcely remember for myself. My dreams were still filled with the aromas and tastes of sustenance beyond watery gruel and stale crusts of bread. The cuffs of my pants and sleeves were always rolled up to hide how frayed they were. When I hadn’t been able to scrape together enough coin for rent, I slept under eaves with a dagger clenched in my fist. My mother told me until her dying day to look out at the city and feel fortunate for what I had. Instead, my ire only burned more intensely each time I remembered everything stolen from us, how eager my new equals were to see me plummet to their level.
I don’t know why I imagined the Acolytes as cackling lepers, drooling at the very mention of bloodshed. What little skin escaped the cover of the mask, gloves, and robes they wore within the Temple suffered from a lack of sun, but was otherwise unblemished. Unruly tresses that fell over the artificial faces almost always held the color and fullness of youth. Behind his own mask, Lucian was a porcelain doll any child would sell their parents to possess, the chivalric knight from a young lady’s dream finally come to carry her away, the type of beauty men at once spat at and wished to possess for themselves, through one method or another. He wore the green scarf he told me I’d recognize him by, the only person wearing such an accessory out of the entire packed inn we were to meet at. It took hearing his petal-soft voice, though, for me to finally believe this was the Acolyte assigned to me at the Temple.
Lucian wore his mask throughout our initial meeting, leather fitted to resemble a curving beak. What the mask didn’t hide of his face was concealed by his hood and robe, the wavering Temple light sending the birds embroidered in silver thread into flight. Whether he chose the avian symbol or was assigned it, it suited him almost laughably well. There wasn’t a single moment when he was still, eyes flicking to my face to the door to the window and then back to me, head nodding and bobbing whenever I spoke, fingers performing acrobatics around one another, legs crossing and recrossing, always with a foot shaking like it was having a fit. Harmless as all the excess energy was, it seemed to be flowing straight into me, and there was nothing I wanted more than to shriek at him to settle down.
Yet I kept my thoughts to myself, and not just because Lucian held my fate in one hand and an unfathomably sharp dagger up the sleeve of the other. Only Lucian knew the last time he’d gotten fresh air, felt the sun on his skin, been able to get a drink and listen to fresh stories. A falcon could be a caged bird just the same as any canary, let loose to hunt only to be hooded and tied by the ankle.
As if sensing my suppressed temper, Lucian flashed a chilling smile, stretching and flexing his limbs in a way a panther might display its claws with vindictive languor. I sat back, tempering my foolishness. There were whispers that if the Acolytes found you to be a hazard to the greater public or merely irritating, you’d be leaving the Temple when the tide ebbed through the underground canals. I wasn’t sure I believed that, but I also wasn’t willing to find out for myself. Regardless, Lucian was in no hurry to ease my rising discomfort.
In the distance, the clocktower tolled, and Lucian’s glee bubbled from him like a cauldron boiling over, eyes dark with a primal hunger. My body threatened to shatter under the tension seizing through me. Lucian rose, rolling his shoulders before offering his hand to me. I took a breath deep enough to strain my lungs against my ribs, held it, and then steadily released it until I was left with an aching emptiness. That done, I gripped his calloused hand and pulled myself to my feet.
I wanted this. I deserved this. The city deserved this. Those who tried to bury me shouldn’t have left me the very same spade they used against me. On some unknowable day, as everything I was rotted away inside a crypt, the Temple would read my name and what I asked of them from their endless book, countless of its pages filled and a near infinite number thirsty for fresh ink. But that didn’t matter right now, none of it did. Not when there was work to be done.
Oliver Fosten is a genderqueer, Pacific Northwest-born, NYU-educated monster enthusiast. When they aren’t writing, they can be found making candles, playing video games, or with a cat on their lap. For more queered content both fresh and familiar, follow their twitter @oliver_fosten.
