Naming the Gods, a daughter of smoke and bone fanfic

Naming the Gods

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy

Zuzana had always been curious about Karou's world, even when she'd believed it to be imaginary; more than ever now that she and Mik had joined Karou at the kasbah. She had been fielding their many questions as best she could in between meals, sleep and resurrections, but every now and then, Zuzana could still say something that stopped Karou in her tracks. Sitting cross-legged on the bed, listening to Karou mutter imprecations as she scrabbled on the floor for a lost tiger tooth, the smaller girl looked up and fixed her with a quizzical, brown-eyed stare.

"You still say 'God' and 'Jesus' when you swear?"

"Huh?" Karou knocked her head against her desk, hissed, and came up with the lost tooth. Distracted, she picked herself up, and it was a few moments before Zuzana's comment registered. Once it did, though, she blushed, though hardly knowing why. "Oh. Yeah, I guess. I didn't realize I was doing it."

"Don't your, uh … people worship the moons?" Zuzana asked innocently.

"You shouldn't generalize about other species' cultures," Mik teased, looking up from his wing-to-weight calculations. "Species. Wow. Still can't believe I just said that."

"Nerd," said Zuzana lovingly, poking him in the shoulder. "I don't think political correctness applies here."

Karou couldn't help but smile a little, even though the question had made more of an impact with her than Zuzana had intended. She usually didn't think about religion one way or the other, but whenever she did, it was disorienting to realize how little faith she had left. It was rather like walking on a tightrope and trying not to look down.

"I used to worship them," she admitted. "As Madrigal. But then … " Then Nitid and Ellai watched and did nothing to stop the soldiers at the requim grove. Zuzana's eyes saddened in response to whatever she heard in Karou's silence; so did Mik's; so did Issa's, as she sat coiled in a corner mixing fresh incense with a mortar.

"This me was raised to be skeptical," she finally said, shrugging, choosing the least painful truth for the benefit of her friends. "Right, Issa? Brimstone always said religions were nothing but scraps of the truth."

"That's right," said Issa gently, bending her head over her work. "Brimstone's faith was always in people rather than gods."

Karou bent her head as well for a moment, as if she could feel every one of the souls beneath Loramendi on her shoulders. If she could have prayed, she would have prayed with all her heart that Brimstone's faith had not been misplaced.

"Well, I believe in God," came a stubborn, surprising declaration from Zuzana. She scowled a little around the room, as if daring someone to make fun of her. "If only," she added, with that twist of her mouth that signaled a joke, "So I can blame someone for making this ridiculous desert. Also? Churches are awesome."

With her admirable talent, she had defused Karou's dark mood in a moment, as well as all the tension in the room. Everybody smiled, even Issa, who had 'collected' every language Karou had in order to deal with the tooth traders and spoke perfect Czech. Karou remembered the churches of Prague, Orthodox and Catholic, gilded and frescoed, worn and crumbling, golden with candlelight and echoing with centuries of song and prayer.

Prague was home to her too, she realized. Not like Eretz, of course; it was in Eretz where her roots lay, and where her skills were so desperately needed. (Also, where she had first loved Akiva, though it was only in the darkest corners of her mind that she felt this way.) That was why she talked like them, joked like them, even swore like them; because wherever Zuzana and Mik were would always be one of her homes.

Not that they wouldn't poke fun at her, of course, if she told them that. Instead, she shrugged and and had recourse to Zuzana's other native language: wisecracking.

"I picked that up from you, you know. The 'Jesus' name in vain' thing. You're a corrupting influence. I wouldn't be surprised if someday a lightning bolt came out of the sky to smite you."

"Oh, please!" Zuzana flapped her hand. "Like he'd bother with me, when there are so many more smitable people around. Like Jackass, for example."

"No, c'mon." Karou laughed and shook her head, feeling as if her failed affair with Kaz had been centuries ago. "A lightning bolt would be way too cool for him. That perfume bomb of yours was just the right idea."

"Yeah, why wait for God to smite someone when you can do it yourself?" For such a good-natured boy, Mik seemed to admire Zuzana's vindictiveness a little too much. He grinned at her, and she grinned back.

The conversation spiralled on into light topics, even as karou put on her vises to tithe, and she set her deeper thoughts aside to concentrate. In the coming days and weeks, however, it was Zuzana's last question of the day – whispered down from her spot on the bed while Karou took the floor, double moonlight coming in slivers through the shuttered window – that would stay with her.

"So … what do you believe in, Karou? There's got to be something."

Karou frowned at the moonlit shadows in thought.

She had to admit that the crucifixion myth had always fascinated her; first for its sheer creepiness (the cross and crown of thorns, the gruesome death and glorious resurrection – it would fit right in among the chimaera's stories) and later because she understood all too well what it felt like to suffer for the sins of the world. If there existed any deity who would understand what she was going through, along with Nitid and Ellai, that mad Jewish carpenter from two thousand years ago would certainly be on the list. But she didn't believe in him, not the way you were supposed to; she had felt too many souls evanesce to believe in Heaven, and too many senseless and terrible things to believe a savior was watching over her, whether male or female, singular or plural.

So what do I believe in?

"People," she finally said."Like Brimstone. Issa. and Mik."

Akiva, she did not say. It would be weeks before she dared to acknowledge her belief in him, even to herself, let alone to others. Nevertheless, he had brought her Issa's soul. And she hadn't doubted, even for a moment, that he would keep her secret from the Empire.

For once, Zuzana did not make a joke. All she did was squeeze Karou's hand.

People, Karou thought, were much more fragile than gods. They could die so easily. They could betray you. But they could also surprise you endlessly with their strength and wisdom, and for that, she refused to stop believing.