The many arms heaved. The great wheel creaked. The iron-banded cask groaned. The dozens and dozens of little round polished stones went clunkclunkclunk-a-clunk-clunkclunkclunk.
Clunk.
The godmaker raised her arm and the wheel stilled in the grips of the many, panting and sweating. The cask ceased its spin slowly, the momentum of the rocks in its gut struggling against its over-greased axle.
A single small stone nestled in the godmaker’s hand as she withdrew it from the bowl beneath the cask. She held it to the light and looked with great care.
“Needle is god now,” she said, with calm ceremony –
“Woo-hoo!”
– followed by “oh for fuck’s sake,” without it.
Somewhere in the huddled crowd, a space emerged by force of elbows. Needle was dancing in it.
“It’s just for one year,” said the godmaker. That also wasn’t part of the ceremony.
Needle’s tempo accelerated. There was a strangled shout as her braid whipped into someone’s face.
“It’s just for one year.”
***
Raintime was upon them. The woods were turning green again. The animals were stumbling bleary-eyed and hungry from the depths of the earth. The fields were more mud and less crust. And Needle made her first decree.
“Cattail time!” she called from the godstool, one leg dangling and swishing like a cat’s tail herself. “They’re turning nice and green and juicy at the tips! Snip the tips, snip the roots, get ‘em in a basket and let’s all get stuffed!”
“The swamp is cold yet, god,” spoke the godmaker at her side, eyes appropriately downcast.
“Oh yeah! That’s the best part! The frogs’ll still be a little sluggish, so get a few of ‘em too!”
So spoke Needle, and Needle was god, so everyone took their baskets and nets and spears and waded into the still-chilled waters of the swamps where the cattails were bright green at the tips and the frogs bestirred themselves from the muck with thick, phlegmy chugga-booms only to be met with spears between the eyes. They brought out basket upon basket of green thin cattail shoots and roots, the long-dead branches of many dead swamp-struck trees for fresh kindling, and no less than three moosefrogs, dangling from thick saplings carried by twelve hunters apiece. Their meat sizzled over the quick-burning marshwood, and from their antlers Cricket the Crafty wove a towering crown that Needle wore for three whole weeks before hurling it atop the evening bonfire, where it popped snapped and crackled in a halo of flame.
Cricket was annoyed by that, but distantly. She’d long moved on; spent the whole time since then shaping the base of Needle’s godpole: the bark was bare, the trunk was clear, and from the base to a third-of-the-way-to-the-top the thick stem of the tree had been narrowed into an elegant spillage of cattails, slender stems carved so slimly that the bonfire’s light made them bob in the breeze.
***
Suntime blazed, night nearly banished. The heat grew fierce enough at noon to drive everyone to huddle indoors, to remove clothes, to scrape shallow patches in the dirt and press their foreheads into them, to lie moribund in the stream until a preyfish grasped an extremity.
“Let’s set the woods on fire!” decreed Needle. “We haven’t done it in AGES, and the wind is nice and flat! Get the kindling going!”
And though the groaning was of preposterous magnitude and the thought of more heat was devastating to all, thus spoke Needle, and Needle was god, so flints were struck and bark and needles (lowercase) were set aflame and fed with breath until they grew up tall and proud and ravenous for more, and they took and took and took and ate until the air was smoke and the sky was black and the world was red.
When the smoke cleared things were different. The underbrush was gone. The cindertrees had dropped their cones, and the grand vultures had come from afar to feed on the small things. The deadwood was gone, and the thick ash was already sparkling with a second green, like raintime come again.
“One way to burn off a sweat,” said Needle. Cricket the Crafty wrought her a brilliant, fragile sceptre from an over-charred cindertree branch, white and jet black, and she used it to poke everyone for two weeks until she threw it so high in the air that nobody saw where it landed, or heard the crunch.
Cricket furrowed her brow at that, but she was too busy to dwell. The second aspect of Needle’s godpole was of greater difficulty for her: first, due to needing taller and taller ladders; second, due to the care necessary in shaping such long and delicate licks of flame, twirling higher and higher in a leaping pyre that the tree’s own heartwood turned red all on its own.
***
Closingtime began, slow but sure, a groaning door catching a breeze and tipping farther inch by inevitable inch.
So just as everyone was busy with the harvest of the meadows and the field, in the midst of it came the loud, piercing shout of Needle’s third decree.
“Snake hunt!” she called from the roof of her house, where she’d moved the godstool once the height of suntime had passed, to expand the reach of her gaze. “They’re nice and fat now, and they’ve started packing into their hibernacula! I know a good spot in the hills – let’s go let’s go let’s go go go!”
And though everyone was tired and covered in dirt and berry stickers thus spoke Needle, and Needle was god, so the spears were gathered and the drying racks were hauled out and the thick stone-gripper sandals were donned and the boulders were clambered and with burning spear, stabbing spear, and slicing spear the serpents were bearded in their den and dragged out in reasonable quantities (“leave some for next year!” reminded Needle helpfully, as blood flew and screams warbled); their venom drained into vessels for fishing and healing; their flesh smoked and packed for the hungriest of cold days; their skins burnished and woven into armour and waterproof blankets; their fangs carved into daggers and knives and awls. The greatest of these was shaped into a true sword by Cricket the Crafty, who gave it to Needle and watched as she waved it around and then accidentally dropped into the well immediately.
Cricket didn’t say much to that, but she did stomp her wood-gripper sandals extra hard into Needle’s godpole when she was ascending to work on the last third. The thinness of the snakes slid upwards, ever-entwined, each scale perfectly, painstakingly chipped into reality. Birds feared to approach it now.
***
Eventime did not announce itself. Instead it slid in through Closingtime, softly, slowly, until one day everyone knew that the water was going to freeze and there was nothing to be done.
“Before the days get too short,” said Needle, who had moved the godstool into the godmaker’s home (“it’s warmer in here”), “let’s build a new cold-lodge. Our old one is nice, but I bet we could make it even better. And twice as big.”
“The days grow shorter,” said the godmaker, who had been counting them in her head very carefully as of late.
“Well then we’d better work really fast!” said Needle with great cheer.
And at this though everyone cursed and complained and stomped their feet thus HAD spoken Needle, and Needle was god, for now. So they took axes into the woods and found those trees whose scorching from suntime bespoke great strength and soundness, and they felled them, and they heaved them, and they barked them, and they shaped them, and they raised them, and they had to move them again because Needle wanted it “bigger,” and they had to that again, and then once more again, and at the end of it all the cold-lodge was built and it was nearly the height of a godpole and it had an attic and two full floors and a hearth that could keep all of it as warm and sound as a suntime morning or a baby’s smile, and a terribly thick door, and snakeskin in all the places where water would otherwise insist on intruding unasked-for.
“This is great,” said Needle when it was done. “Hey, don’t I get anything? Where’s Cricket?”
From aloft, a groan. Cricket the Crafty was taller than the highest remaining trees of the village, swaying gently in the cold clutch of the winds and anchored only by her gripper-sandals and a sturdy snakeskin rope. A towering blocky mass erupted from the peak of the new godpole, resting atop the very skulls of the serpents below it. Every beam and shingle of it was represented, and if an eagle had looked between it and the new cold-lodge it would have not have been able to find a single measurable difference beyond that of scale.
“Don’t slack off!” called Needle.
Cricket’s mouth spoke no words. Her limbs did not shake. Her hands did not falter.
But she did slam the chisel in with extra vigor.
***
“It is turning-time,” said the godmaker, as she stepped into the weak sunlight of the shortest of all possible days.
“It is turning-time,” said the godmaker’s aunt, who heard her say that.
“It is turning-time,” said her friends, who she told that. And after they told their friends and they told theirs, everyone knew that it was turning-time.
“It’s what now?” asked Needle.
“Turning-time is here,” said the godmaker.
“Oh!” said Needle. “Right. So, do I need to go?”
“Before noon. Yes. Now.”
“Can I bring the godstool?”
“No.”
Needle sighed tragically at this. “Please? I know Cricket can make a new one, a better one, and it’s so comfy, and I’ve finally got this one leg to squeak just the way I like, and-”
There was a dry, crunchy crack and the godstool lurched slightly.
“Whoops,” said Needle.
“Just take it,” said the godmaker.
So Needle stepped into the snakeskin harness clutching the godstool and was raised together with it, up past the slender and elegant cattails, up past the long and delicate flames, up past the thin and entwined snakes, lurching around the towering thick-set mass of the cold-lodge model, and finally placing her atop the plain unmarred wooden disc that marked where god, who was Needle, was to sit for the afternoon until the sky took her away and all would mark their stones for the barrel once more.
Needle slapped the godstool down atop the disc. The rope slithered away back down. She waved, but all below had hurried back into the cold-lodge, for it was cold and windy. She looked around, but all the other godpoles were empty but for bare and unconversationally inclined bones. She tapped her foot and hummed, but the wind was too loud to hear herself.
“Ugh,” said Needle, as she leaned back in the godstool, which cracked again and lurched, which made the wildly top-heavy godpole sway wildly, aggravated a single very-slightly-too-deep-chisel-cut within the cold-lodge, which propagated inside the thin and entwined snakes, which spiralled out of control within the long and delicate flames, and which blew the slender and elegant cattails to pieces.
With perfect and mathematical grace, the godpole fell.
Another godpole caught it, then also began to fall.
Things proceeded as expected from there.
***
Everyone came out after the noise stopped – because some sounds herald things you can’t do anything about except hide and wait for the aftermath. The cold-lodge was untouched; the rest of the dwellings less so. The godmaker’s home in particular had been pulverized to smithereens by what appeared to have once been a lovely if antiquated carving of many fishing nets.
They stood together and looked at the wheeled cask, crushed flat by a familiar cold-lodge model. They stood together and looked up at the godpole grove, now holding nothing taller than a shrivelled leafless seedling or a cracked stump. They stood together and looked down at the scattered bones that had once been gods, several of which had landed in the well. They stood together and looked at the wooden disc that had embedded itself edge-first in the dirt right in front of the cold-lodge, like a shovel’s blade in a molehill.
“Do you think Cricket could have a look at the leg on my godstool?” asked Needle.
They stood together and looked at anything but Needle.
“It’s just that it’s cracked a little more than I’d like. Do you think she can fix that? Can I make that a decree?”
They stood together and looked at nothing but Needle.
The silence was broken at last by Cricket the Crafty, who screamed “oh, you little PIECE OF SHIT” so loudly that all in the village could hear the blood ooze into her throat.
***
The bones were buried in the last of the unfrozen ground; the wheeled cask’s husk as their home. The dwellings were left until raintime; the cold-lodge sufficed. The pieces of the godpoles were brought inside and hung from the rafters, strung from the walls, tied to the beams.
They’d never look good as old, but someday they’d look good as new.
Thus spoke Needle, and Needle wasn’t god, but nobody had the energy left to argue.