I watch them assemble like a small verdict. My mother's knees wobble before she reaches me; her eyes are bruised and swollen from crying, her voice a ragged hymn: "My son! Oh my goddess, what a sight—what have you seen? You didn't even see a rat die—why did you go there? Woe to you, Big Eyes!" Her words break on the last syllables and her hands are already on my face, lips pressing wet, frantic kisses to my cheek. My sister stands by, useless as a shadow, chin bobbing with each new tear. "I'm fine, Mom," I say, honeyed and steady. "Just blood. It frightened me, that's all. It was horrible, but I'm fine. I swear. I love you." The lines fall into place. Her shoulders loosen. Relief smooths the hard creases from her face — victory requires nothing grand, only the right coin. The priest has gone — bowed and excused away — leaving us to our small domestic ceremony. My sister's voice is small and quick as if she's practiced steadiness: "Let's go home." The room exhales with her, a breath that heats the stale air. I lift myself off the pallet slowly, testing legs that still tremble from smell and shock. Outside the temple, the village moves in its old loop: whispers, conjectures, the slow machinery of rumor winding up. The forest waits at the edge of town like a mouth. My father is not back yet. The thought is a weight I keep folded under other things. We step into the cold. Snow bites the air; the world is bright and white and ridiculous after the chapel's dim warm fuss. My mother wraps her shawl tighter, my sister huddles close. We walk home in a line that could be ordinary. But the snow holds what happened, and the village will soon wear the scream like a new weather. It changes how people look at one another. It changes what questions get asked. The house breathes warmth when we step inside, as if the walls themselves have been waiting to wrap us in something soft and ordinary. I go straight to my room. The notebook is exactly where I shoved it before I left — small victory, stupid and private. My father still hasn't come. Fourth day. No one from his caravan has shown up either. They've probably found some "luxury deal" in the city and are counting profits instead of carts. That's what people like to tell themselves. When I think of that dead dog again, the thought refuses the easy answer. This wasn't wolves or a bear. Too precise. Too deliberate. Men can make a scene look like a beast did the killing; cruelty knows how to hide behind claws. Tomorrow I'll go back. I'll look, touch, measure — find what the blind villagers refuse to see. "Son! Come — food's ready!" My mother's voice breaks the quiet like a coin dropped into water. Each step toward the kitchen twists something in my chest: excitement, anxiety, the small thrill of surviving a day. The food is warm, exactly the kind that fixes bodies for a while. My mother eats like prayer and prays like hunger. Her hands fold and unfold; she says my father's name between bites, eyes squeezed shut. "After this evening we'll go to the temple," she says suddenly, mouth full and innocent as a child's. "The priest has something important to say." I file that away. Important, or performative? Either way, I let her believe the importance matters. She needs it to be simple. I'll go. I have questions I want answered — As we walk closer to the vast temple grounds, the crowd grows thicker. Our village may stretch wide, but most of it is swallowed by dense forest, leaving only a handful of people scattered here and there. Yet here—hundreds gathered together—it feels overwhelming. Strange how only hundreds can suddenly seem like a multitude. They come from every corner. Pregnant women, old men bent with age, children clutching lollipops, some wrapped in torn rags, others in bright woolen jackets. The poor and the rich alike, all drawn by the same call. We push through and find a place to stand. There's the boy with the big mouth beside his heavyset mother. And over there, the chubby child with the red scarf—his grandmother, I think, trailing close behind. Familiar faces blur into the mass, yet the anticipation pulls us together. And then, silence begins to stir. The priest steps forward. Dressed in full white, he almost seems otherworldly, a divine figure glowing against the restless crowd. Yet his eyes betray him—eyes clouded with fear, or perhaps something richer, something I cannot name. His robe trails with flowers stitched into its folds, his crown woven from the dry branches of trees. For a moment, I wonder—have I finally seen someone more beautiful than myself?
He opens his arms, and the silence is so complete I can hear the snow cracking under the weight of our dread.
"MY DEAR PEOPLE!" His voice isn't calm. It's a weapon. "THE HOUR OF CRUELTY HAS COME. WHAT YOU SAW IN THE SNOW WAS NOT A KILLING. IT WAS A MESSAGE. A FIRST WORD."
He has them. He has all of them. His eyes are not kind. They are full of a terrible, knowing fire.
"THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO, A SICKNESS CAME TO THIS LAND. A MAN AND WOMAN. THEY PREACHED A LIE. THEY SAID THERE WAS ONLY ONE GOD. THEY SPAT ON OUR IDOLS—ON THESE FIGURES OF ROCK AND MUD THAT GIVE OUR LIVES MEANING."
He lets the words hang in the frozen air. He is a craftsman, building a coffin for our reason.
"OUR ANCESTORS, IN THEIR MERCY, GAVE THEM A CHANCE TO REPENT." The priest's voice drops into a lower, more intimate register of hate. He leans forward as if sharing a secret with all of us at once.
"OUR ANCESTORS, IN THEIR WISDOM, KNEW THE PUNISHMENT HAD TO BE HOLY. BRUTAL. A WARNING CARVED INTO THE FLESH OF HISTORY ITSELF."
A low murmur of agreement ripples through the crowd. I see heads nod, not in horror, but in grim approval. They are not hearing a confession of ancestral sin; they are hearing a recipe for salvation.
"THEY TIED THOSE MONSTERS—NAKED—TO A MASSIVE LOG IN THE CENTER OF THE VILLAGE. THEY MADE THE HUSBAND WATCH."
A woman next to me, the baker's wife, clutches her shawl tighter. Her eyes are wide, but she does not look away. She is leaning in.
"EVERY MAN—EVERY RIGHTEOUS MAN—TOOK HIS TURN. THEY PURIFIED THE DEVIL'S WOMB WITH THEIR OWN MASCULINITY. THEY TORE THAT EVIL APART FROM THE INSIDE."
I watch the faces. The men are staring, their jaws set. Some have a faint, glazed look in their eyes—not revulsion, but a dark fascination. They are picturing it. They are measuring their own righteousness against the act.
"THEY LEFT THEM BOUND FOR A FULL DAY. LET THE SUN AND THE FLIES BEAR WITNESS. THEN, THEY PURIFIED THE HUSBAND. A SPEAR DRIVEN DEEP INTO HIS BOWELS. A CLEANSING PAIN."
A collective shudder runs through the crowd, but it is not one of disgust. It is a shudder of rapturous violence. They are absorbing this, not as a crime, but as a sacrament. My stomach turns. They call them monsters? The ones who were torn apart on a log?
"AND THEN, THEY BUILT A FIRE. A GREAT, PURIFYING FIRE. AND THEY BURNED THE FILTH FROM OUR LAND."
A sound goes up from the crowd—a sigh, a groan of relief. It is the sound of people believing a beautiful, necessary lie. They are picturing the flames cleansing the world, not realizing they are worshipping the fire that burned a woman alive for a thoughtcrime.
"BUT A CHILD OF MONSTERS IS A MONSTER ITSELF!" His voice rises again to a scream. "THAT BOY SAW IT ALL! TWELVE YEARS LATER, HE RETURNED! HE HAD SOLD HIS SOUL IN THE DEMON'S UNDERWORLD!"
He's spit-flying mad now, his divinity cracking to show the fanatic beneath. "HE REVEALED HIS TRUE SELF—A MASSIVE, HORRIFIC ABOMINATION! A WRITHING BODY WITH CLAWS, THE HEAD OF A MAN, AND THE VENOMOUS MOUTH OF A SNAKE! HE CAME TO BURN THIS TEMPLE TO ASH!"
The crowd gasps as one animal. I see fingers digging into sleeves, mothers pulling children closer.
"OUR BELOVED GODDESS HERSELF DESCENDED! SHE SEVERED HIS HEAD FROM HIS BODY!" He pantomimes the violent act, his arms swinging in a terrible arc. "BUT WITH HIS FINAL BREATH, HE CURSED US! HE SWORE HE WOULD RETURN! HE PROMISED TO DESTROY US ALL IF EVEN A SINGLE SOUL DISBELIEVED!"
He stops, chest heaving, and thrusts an ancient book toward the crowd. "SEE! HERE IT IS! THE SAME CRUSHED SKULL! THE SAME GUTS TORN OUT! HE IS HERE! THE ONE WHO DISBELIEVES! THE ONE WITH A PLEASANT FACE AND A LYING HEART!"
His eyes scan the crowd. I feel them drag over my skin. All around me, people are subtly shifting, putting millimeters between themselves and their neighbors.
"FIND HIM! ROOT HIM OUT! IF YOU FIND IT, KILL IT! IF YOU DO NOT, NONE OF US WILL SURVIVE! ALL HAIL THE GODDESSES!"
The silence breaks. A wave of sobs and terror crashes over them. My mother is already weeping into her hands. The crowd is no longer a crowd—it's a single beast with a hundred suspicious eyes.
People are looking at each other differently now. The baker's wife edges away from the butcher. The schoolteacher eyes his own assistant with new calculation. They are seeing monsters in the faces they've known their whole lives.
It is the most honest I have ever seen them.
I feel a cold smile touch my lips.
Am I the one they are looking for? The monster?
No.
I am not the monster. I am the truth.I am real.
In their words... I am the angel.