Godwin’s Path
They call us Fates. Norns. Moirai. Prophetesses. We are the cousins who grace the first sleep of a newborn babe. Our presence whispering to them the story of their lives. Each moment, each sadness, each breath, each dream: all written under the ancient branches of the ageless tree.
We cousins are faceless. Nameless. We scatter into shadow and vanish into breeze. We are only messengers. Our power is constrained to an echo while the stories are written by The Matrons. Their days are spent toiling, weaving strands of life into the intricate pattern of everything. We carry their words to the earthly plane, where our lips lay down the path they have foreseen. And we ourselves are bound by these stories.
Or so I believed.
I could not tell you the when or the where of it. If it happened in a tiny hamlet or a rushing metropolis. Ages before or millennia after. In the end, perhaps it was all of those and more. What matters is the boy.
Godwin.
He lay there untroubled, unfocused eyes gazing upon the world for the first time. The perfect peace of a child who is not yet laden with destiny. In this moment, he could be anything. Anyone. But such peace is never meant to last. So, I moved to him, carrying the burden of his tomorrows.
He felt me come. He stilled as I drew near, alert and uncertain. One breath further, and his cries would pierce the night. He would call out for his protectors. They would soothe his fears and tend to his needs. Yet they would be forever unable to save him from the very gift they gave: that of a life to live.
These thought swept across my mind just as my lips parted, ready to deliver his future. I had felt such pity countless times before, watching an unbound spirit become weighted and contained. I'll never know why, but this time it soured into a crumb of lost faith that grasped onto the story of this child. Before a single syllable could escape from my tongue, Godwin turned and looked at me.
I am nameless. I am faceless. I cannot be seen. But Godwin saw me.
I fled without a single spoken word.
*****
The soldier's boot crashed into the muddy bank of the creek, startling Godwin from his reverie. A cacophony of horses and men quickly followed. These men dressed all in khaki marched past in an endless line. One. Five. Ten. One hundred. Godwin promptly lost count. He gathered his book to his chest like a shield and made to leave. Never had he seen so many men in one place, much less men with fire in their eyes. But before Godwin could melt into the wood, a soldier grasped his shoulder.
"Another year, and you'll be a soldier yet!" He chortled at the mooneyes of the startled child. "Just hope the fight is still lively, or you'll miss out on all the fun. Isn't that right, boys?" A cheer went up from the passing men, rippling down the line. Godwin turned a shade paler, and the soldier hardened his grip. "Tell me your name, boy, and I'll come to claim you when you're a hand taller and a stone heavier."
"Oh, let him off, Thom. We have plenty of cannon fodder for today. Anyway, he needs at least half a dozen seasons more before he's a crop ready to reap." This second soldier lacked the careless slouch of the first.
"Right you are, Captain. I was only planting the seed with him. Got to get his nose out of that book there." Thom lifted his hands as a declaration of innocence as he backed away from Godwin. "Didn't mean a single thing by it. Sir." He disappeared back into the anonymous stream of men.
Godwin wished Thom was still standing next to him, for the Captain shifted his whole focus to the boy. For three full minutes, this man considered Godwin deeply, eyes traveling from the book Godwin held to his arms and shoulders. Up and down the length of Godwin's gangly frame until finally settling on his face. "You trouble me," he said, bringing an end to the excruciating silence.
"Sir?" Godwin retreated into formality.
"Do you want to be a soldier, boy? Do you want to fight for queen and country? Take up arms to protect all that you love?" The Captain's face turned stony still as his gaze intensified, searching.
"Sir?" This time the word slipped out as nothing more than a whisper. It was all Godwin could do to repeat the single syllable. His paralyzed mind fighting against his body's urge to flee.
"There is a void in you. Something missing. Or perhaps you are just another coward," the Captain spat at him. "If you don't find some courage, the world will break you." His eyes flicked down to the book Godwin held. "That book will have no tears for you or honor for your family. Those require sacrifice. Bloodshed. We don't need poets or daydreamers. We need soldiers."
"I thought to become a doctor, sir. To tend the sick and heal the wounded." The boy's voice started thin but doubled with each word until he managed a defiant look into the Captain's eyes. "Bloodshed is not the only path to honor, and it is no path to goodness."
The slap came so hard that Godwin dropped his book. The pages drank greedily from the creek. "What use is goodness? You are not only a coward but a fool. Soon enough, you'll learn that you cannot escape the fight. Even the greatest stone erodes in the river. And you are but a mere pebble." The Captain high-stepped back into the line of men, landing a firm stomp on the book's spine as he went.
*****
Never had a fateless life existed before. No cousin had failed in her sacred duty, nor would one ever fail to do so again. And so, my punishment and my destiny became one and the same: watch him. Keep him safe in the world. And keep the world safe from him.
A banishment of sorts for me, one constructed out of their fear. The Matrons made to hide their unease behind their eternal masks, but I could see how this boy weighed on them. Each time they grasped at the strands of Godwin's life to weave him back into the fabric of time, the strands would fray. He became evanescent. He slipped from their domain. Ungoverned. Ungovernable. So that became my impossible task.
No longer would I chase the dawn, delivering news of the future to the children of the world. Instead, to be a watcher. To bear witness to this life devoid of meaning. Devoid of certainty. The one that I had created or perhaps doomed. For if The Matrons could not hold the threads of his life, they were powerless to bring the story to an end. What that meant was a mystery, and The Matrons could do nothing. So, Godwin lived.
And so, for once, did I.
*****
As Godwin grew, anger became his constant companion. It began with a refusal to explain his bruised face and muddied book. From there, it festered into vicious words and scathing glances. He bent to no one and nothing but his own whims. Bully, they called him. Brute. A young scofflaw who would no doubt grow to empty his pockets on ale and control his world with his fists. These words only made Godwin more powerful, so he embraced them.
Not that he ever would use his fists. That day in the woods gave him anger but also gave him peace. It gave him a certainty that violence would not bring him the joy it brought to other men. Instead, his anger was a shield and a whetstone. It kept him safe and kept him sharp and kept him mercifully alone.
The day his father turned him out, Godwin could not help but feel relieved. When others looked into his eyes, they saw nothing. They saw that same void that drove the Captain to strike him many years before. Those years had intensified the hollowness in his eyes until even his mother could not bear to meet his gaze. She withered as the anger in Godwin grew. As the emptiness grew.
On the morning that his mother did not wake, the two men sat at the rustic wooden table, neither one saying a word. Then Godwin's father slammed his fist on the table, a gavel of judgment upon his son. And for the first time in many months, their eyes met. "I cannot blame you, but I cannot have you here. I need peace. This town needs peace. So go."
His father took a box from the mantle and set it in front of Godwin. "This is all I can give you. I do not want to see you again." The last memory Godwin would have of this man was his silhouette as he walked out the door. A moment later, the thwump thwump crack of splitting wood filled the airless silence.
Godwin left the crumpled bills and tarnished coins in the box but took the other items. A note addressed to him, and a small silver compass strung on a chain. The note went into his pocket and the compass around his neck. He left the door ajar so his father would know he had gone, and Godwin began to walk.
*****
I could feel him moving, but still, I waited. The years had made me weary, and this mortal body ached. His steps pulled at me as the distance between us grew. All at once, a breeze scratched at the window, loud as a knock at the door. A cousin was here.
The shawl wrapped my shoulders, but it barely staved off the bitterness of their entrance. "Cousin, fallen though you are," the breeze whispered, "it's time to go to him. The Matrons feel they can end this madness and make the world right. But you must be the one to do so. You must guide his steps, and then you can rejoin us in the winds." The breeze shifted the clouds above, and the light from the moon chased away the shadows. As the moonlight bloomed, the cousin departed. My course was set.
*****
For mortals, a crossroads is a point of choice. A divergence with different endings. But for the cousins, a crossroads was an illusion. Moments in a story where a soul can feel the weight of its life. And so, under a waning moon, a fallen cousin and a fateless mortal found their path's crossed.
He almost didn't see her. The old woman, shrouded in shadow. But the moonlight touched her hair, and her eyes met him without wavering. She had watched his every step, feeling the roiling emptiness move: a robbed potential that had grown into something darker than the darkest night. She felt the side of her mouth turn up in recognition and shame.
"Forgive me, Goodwife. I didn't mean to stare. Only it is awfully late to be traveling the roads alone. I would offer assistance, but I fear I have none." Godwin leaned on his words in an attempt to maintain the momentum of his steps. But he realized as he spoke that he had stopped walking entirely.
"Godwin." The woman tilted her head. "A name is a useful thing - so you may know me as Asha." She winced at the taste of taking a name. The Matrons had names, not cousins. Perhaps her destiny was already sealed.
"You know me, then." Godwin's words drew the woman back into the moment. She watched as his eyes grew luminous.
"We've met before - but only once. Before you could begin to remember." Asha felt herself solidify as if her physical body somehow grew more real. She had spent these years lamenting her solid form, only to find now that she had been mere mist all along.
As if mirroring this change, Godwin grew darker and less defined. His edges, once hard, blended into air. As Asha examined him, she caught a glimpse of silver around his neck.
"A compass?" A question more to herself. What good was a compass to one with no destination? But she could not move her eyes from it until Godwin spoke.
"My mothers. In her superstitious ways, she would channel her dreams for me into it, hoping that one day it would help me find my way. I have been lost since the day I was born, but she could not—she would not—leave me to that fate."
Asha chirped an ironic chirp, and the frown on Godwin's face deepened. He was speaking more words than he had said to anyone in many years, and such intimate ones at that. But this lonesome pair on a moonlit road were caught in an inescapable dance.
"May I see it?" Her palm reached forward, and then pain. Fire. A storm of light and dark poured through her, tearing her apart. A final scream cascading into a gale. In the whipping wind, Godwin swore he could hear laughter. He pulled the compass back and huddled against biting air. When he looked up, the woman was no more.
He was afraid. It had been so long since he was afraid that he could not convince his body to move. He did not know how long he waited, hoping this stillness would keep him safe. Finally, he plunged his hands into his pockets. The edge of the note caught against his fingers as if begging to be read. Perhaps his mother had given him words of comfort and so he searched the page for her familiar handwriting. Instead, he found these cryptic words in an unknown hand:
You are the balance. The road you walk is your own. But the road of others can be made and unmade in equal measure. Let the compass guide you.
*****
They once called me Godwin. Now they call me Chaos. Aphophis. Balor. Loki. As The Matrons weave, I unweave. Unmake. They bind mortals to their doom while I grant them the blessing of living unbound. I am the balance, the father of freedom and choice. I feed off the destiny of mortals, chasing the one thing I will never have: an ending.
NYCMidnight Short Story Challenge 2023
Round 1 Prompts: Fantasy | A Call to Arms | A Doctor
Result: Did Not Place
