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Emmanuel 7.18 finds himself a glorified errand-boy, hauling the local riverbed clay up from the basement where it is kept cool and wet in sealed containers. It's more physical labor than he’s used to while on his Debt, but he finds he doesn’t mind. It reminds him of being home—when he’s home with his batch-sibs, he’s the default heavy lifter. He has two good arms and no gash in his chest.
Clay by Isabel J. Kim. Godmaker by J.A. Prentice. BCS 288: Godmaker by J.A. Prentice.
The godmaker smiled pleasantly and made his way home quickly as he could. He shut the doors of his shop and lay in his bed, telling himself again and again about the power of coincidence. Belief did strange things to the mind, made patterns appear where there were none, made three incidents seem a certainty. He was a craftsman, nothing more. He sold icons and idols, nothing more. “I cannot make gods,” he said, though there was nobody to hear him.
“That would be a fine thing, to hear that fiddle played as it should be,” the ferryman said, mostly to hisself. He cast an eye over the dark expanse of river, dotted with white ice cakes. “You sure, jacks? A trip like this, it rarely takes you where you’re planning.”
Every one of our people hears three stories of Agani in their lifetime: once when we leave childhood behind and become women; the second before we marry and become one with another; and the third when we must face death and send a loved one off to the other world. I had hoped to tell you the first story in the summers to come. It is my sorrowful task to tell you all three, instead.