N. Jemisin: The Kingdom of Gods

Deka crouched beside me. “Why are you out of breath?”

“Mortal realm, mortal rules,” I said, waving a hand in a vague circle. “I have lungs, I breathe, the universe is satisfied, hee-ho.”

“But you don’t sleep, do you? I read that godlings don’t sleep. Or eat.”

“I can if I want to. Sleeping and eating aren’t that interesting, so I generally don’t. But it looks a bit odd to forgo breathing—makes mortals very anxious. So I do that much.”

He poked me in the shoulder. I stared at him.

“I was seeing if you were real,” he said. “The book said you could look like anything.”

“Well, yes, but all of those things are real ,” I replied.

“The book said you could be fire.”

I laughed. “Which would also be real.”

He poked me again, a shy grin spreading across his face. I liked his smile. “But I couldn’t do this to fire.” He poked me a third time.

“Watch it,” I said, giving him A Look. But it wasn’t serious, and he could tell, so he poked me again. With that I leapt on him, tickling, because I cannot resist an invitation to play. So we wrestled and he squealed and struggled to get free and complained that he would pee if I kept it up, and then he got a hand free and started tickling me back, and it actually did tickle awfully, so I curled up to escape him. It was like being drunk, like being in one of Yeine’s newborn heavens, so sweet and so perfect and so much delicious fun. I love being a god!

But a hint of sour washed across my tongue. When I lifted my head, I saw that Deka’s sister stood where he had left her, shifting from foot to foot and trying not to look like she yearned to join us. Ah, yes—someone had already told her that girls had to be dignified while boys could be rowdy, and she had foolishly listened to that advice. (One of many reasons I’d settled on a male form myself. Mortals said fewer stupid things to boys.)

“I think your sister’s feeling left out, Dekarta,” I said, and she blushed and fidgeted more. “What shall we do about it?”

“Tickle her, too!” Dekarta cried. Shahar threw him a glare, but he only giggled, too giddy with play-pleasure to be repressed so easily. I had a fleeting urge to lick his hair, but it passed.

“I’m not feeling left out,” she said.

I petted Dekarta to settle him and to satisfy my grooming urge, and considered what to do about Shahar. “I don’t think tickling would suit her,” I said at last. “Let’s find a game we can all play. What about, hmm… jumping on clouds?”

Shahar’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Jumping on clouds. Like jumping on a bed but better. I can show you. It’s fun, as long as you don’t fall through a hole. I’ll catch you if you do—don’t worry.”

Deka sat up. “You can’t do that. I’ve been reading books about magic and gods. You’re the god of childhood. You can only do things children do.”

I laughed, pulling him into a headlock, which he squealed and struggled to get free of, though he didn’t struggle all that hard. “Almost anything can be done for play,” I said. “If it’s play, I have power over it.”

He looked surprised, going still in my arms. I knew then that he had read the family records, because during my captivity, I had never once explained to the Arameri the full implications of my nature. They had thought I was the weakest of the Enefadeh. In truth, with Naha swallowed into mortal flesh every morning, I had been the strongest. Keeping the Arameri from realizing this had been one of my best tricks ever.

“Then let’s go cloud jumping!” Deka said.

Shahar looked eager, too, as I offered her my hand. But just as she reached for my hand, she hesitated. A familiar wariness came into her eyes.

“L-Lord Sieh,” she said, and grimaced. I did, too. I hated titles, so pretentious. “The book about you—”

“They wrote a book about me?” I was delighted.

“Yes. It said…” She lowered her eyes, then remembered that she was Arameri and looked up, visibly steeling herself. “It said you liked to kill people, back when you lived here. You would do tricks on them, sometimes funny tricks… but sometimes people would die.”

Still funny , I thought, but perhaps this was not the time to say such things aloud. “It’s true,” I said, guessing her question. “I must’ve killed, oh, a few dozen Arameri over the years.” Oh, but there had been that incident with the puppies. A few hundred, then.

She stiffened, and Deka did, too, so much that I let him go. Headlocks are no fun when they’re real. “Why?” asked Shahar.

I shrugged. “Sometimes they were in the way. Sometimes to prove a point. Sometimes just because I felt like it.”

Shahar scowled. I had seen that look on a thousand of her ancestors’ faces, and it always annoyed me. “Those are bad reasons to kill people.”

I laughed—but I had to force it. “Of course they’re bad reasons,” I said. “But how better to remind mortals that keeping a god as a slave is a bad idea?”

Her frown faltered a little, then returned in force. “The book said you killed babies . Babies didn’t do anything bad to you!”

I had forgotten the babies. And now my good mood was broken, so I sat up and glared at her. Deka drew back, looking from one to the other of us anxiously. “No,” I snapped at Shahar, “but I am the god of all children, little girl, and if I deem it fitting to take the lives of some of my chosen, then who the hells are you to question that?”

“I’m a child, too,” she said, jutting her chin forward. “But you’re not my god—Bright Itempas is.”

I rolled my eyes. “Bright Itempas is a coward.”

She inhaled, her face turning red. “He is not! That’s—”

“He is! He murdered my mother and abused my father—and killed more than a few of his own children, I’ll thank you to know! Do you think the blood is any thicker on my hands than on his? Or for that matter, on your own?”

She flinched, darting a look at her brother for support. “I’ve never killed anyone.”

“ Yet. But it doesn’t matter, because everything you do is stained with blood.” I rose to a crouch, leaning forward until my face was inches from hers. To her credit, she did not shrink away, glaring back at me—but frowning. Listening. So I told her. “All your family’s power, all your riches, do you think they come from nowhere? Do you think you deserve them, because you’re smarter or holier or whatever they teach this family’s spawn these days? Yes, I killed babies. Because their mothers and fathers had no problem killing the babies of other mortals, who were heretics or who dared to protest stupid laws or who just didn’t breathe the way you Arameri liked!”

Appropriately, I ran out of breath at that point and had to stop, panting for air. Lungs were useful for putting mortals at ease but still inconvenient. Just as well, though. Both children had fallen silent, staring at me in a kind of horrified awe, and belatedly I realized I had been ranting. Sulking, I sat down on a step and turned my back on them, hoping that my anger would pass soon. I liked them—even Shahar, irritating as she was. I didn’t want to kill them yet.

“You… you think we’re bad,” she said after a long moment. There were tears in her voice. “You think I’m bad.”

I sighed. “I think your family’s bad, and I think they’re going to raise you to be just like them.” Or else they would kill her or drive her out of the family. I’d seen it happen too many times before.

“I’m not going to be bad.” She sniffed behind me. Deka, who was still within the range of my eyesight, looked up and inhaled, so I guessed that she was full-out crying now.