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Thirty-One

Luntok

Beautiful, he thought, the moment before she cast him to his death.

He caught a glimpse of her face.

He marveled at the storm brewing within her eyes, at the dirt and blood that marred her lovely cheeks.

In her desperation, in her grief, Laya had become the wrathful god Luntok always knew her to be.

His neck snapped forward when Laya pushed him.

The wind swept through his thin marriage silks and sweat-slicked hair.

It roared in his ears, bitter as the woman who summoned it.

Laya’s storm clouds swirled in the blazing sky.

The last rays of the sun shone from below the horizon, scattering orange up through the spaces between the clouds, and the glow of their underbellies blinded him.

The wind whipped the water below into violent peaks, threatening to swallow him whole.

The sharp rocks that punctured the bay grew closer and closer as he fell.

Soon, his bones would shatter like glass against their jagged tips.

No time?—the rivers of death drew frighteningly near.

Their waters washed over him, his body swept up in their unrelenting currents.

He wasn’t afraid.

He could hear the eternal music of the underworld and the grumbling giants who awaited him.

I’m coming, he told them.

He closed his eyes, bracing himself for the impact.

His fate had been sealed from the first day he climbed the white stone walls of the palace.

This was no different.

A pleasant numbness hummed through his body.

He knew this well, this feeling of weightlessness.

The wind whirled past him in a dying gasp of breath.

He thought of Laya’s lips, soft against his?—a final earthly ache.

Thunder erupted in the sky above.

Then the bay sucked him in as the underworld beckoned to him.

The waves kissed his eyelids, his cheeks, the faint line across his back where his mother had healed him.

Darkness enveloped his body, the warm embrace of an old lover.

If this was death, it was but a mere shadow of mortal pain, and he felt none of it.

Luntok had spent years climbing to precipices beyond his reach.

He was ready.

He wasn’t afraid.

The gods called his name, and Luntok was ready to meet them.