A voice sang deep and mournful through the smoky night of the camp. Sirijunga glanced up as it reached his ears, slow, sad, prickling his neck as he sat on a stump gazing into the night. Fireflies stirred in the damp air with the liquid, foreign tune, acclaiming some god from far beyond the hills. The moon was long set, and just past their camp watch the road to Jumla vanished into a mist, a cool blanket wrapping the pilgrimage train.
Sirijunga tilted his head, peering at the nearby tents. The Hill Lords accompanying him to pay respects to the ancestors had all retired hours earlier, leaving Sirijunga with his thoughts and an empty bedroll. He rolled his shoulders back as his thoughts wandered in sullen, sleepless wisps.
But what was this strange melody?
The air was still around dark tent flaps as Sirijunga paced slowly through the camp. He frowned at the standards, fumbling for the names behind the crests and who went where. A hint of trepidation raced through him as the song cloyed at his ears between the flags of strangers. But the song kept going, kept him swaying and stepping, and at the far end of the tents he finally came to a stop.
The melody began to draw down again as Sirijunga squinted at the standard in the dim starlight. It was a cross like the sign of the Hanged God from the West, but the beams were fuller, blooming almost like flowers. He couldn't recall seeing it before, let alone who flew it. He shivered as the voice quieted again, caught in a moment between forward and back.
His heart raced in his chest, and he ducked through the flaps before he could regret it.
The smell hit him immediately, not the stink of Namyam's den, but something deep and sweet, working its way into his nose with a warm chill. A figure in a brilliantly hued robe knelt prone before a censer sullenly churning smoke into the dim lamplight. His raiment was wild with peals of golden and lavender, a firestorm under endless dark eyes as he turned to Sirijunga. He shuffled around on his knees, and slowly bowed.
"My Hang," he said.
Sirijunga swallowed on a throat that was suddenly hot and sticky as the man straightened up. The haze of the tent flickered into a glow with the brilliance before him. "Hill Lord Phim," Sirijunga said, the name hanging in the air between them.
"That is what this body is called, yes," Phim murmured.
The words turned over and back Sirijunga’s head, hearing the strange peals of Phim's song back in his enigmatic reply. "You hold a late offering," Sirijunga said, looking around the tent.
A gentle smile danced across Phim's face. "I hold a foreign God, great Hang. Discretion is only polite." His voice sent a silver shimmer down Sirijunga’s scalp, the mourning of his strange song gone for a soft, careful control. Lamplight gleamed on his stubble, flickering with thoughts beneath.
"Foreign," Sirijunga repeated. The censer hissed and crackled, and the puff of smoke caught his attention for a moment as it sank into the haze. “But you visit the ancestors,” Sirijunga said, turning back to Phim.
“The ancestors are the ancestors,” said Phim. "God is God."
The silence in the wake of his words was a lonely cavern. His song hung in the air, finished and not yet begun, daring Sirijunga to proceed. Sirjunga wet his lips as he weighed his question.
"Was…what I heard your offering?" Sirijunga murmured.
Phim gave the barest chuckle, a whispered secret in the glow. “I am my offering, my Hang,” he said softly. “The Light of God shines in us all. The Msallyana merely pray to see it.”
Sirijunga blinked, turning the strange syllables over in his head. “You see…the Hanging God?” he said.
Phim cracked his neck slightly, and the pops were a drumbeat of a tune past hearing. “See,” he said, his dark eyes locked on Sirijunga’s. “Feel,” he added, turning the palm of his hand up. “Hearing. Light comes from within, and we see from without. All else is prayer.”
“Seeing it,” Sirijunga said, tapping a finger on a thigh he suddenly realized was tense and flushed. His heart thundered in his ears as he bit his lip, glancing between Phim and the censer. A potential lay behind the glow, past it, waiting and ready, teasing the strange believer before him and the Great Priestess long past them.
Sirijunga leaned forward, heedless of the sweet syrup coating his chest on the inside. Phim’s eyes widened as Sirijunga shuffled forward on his hands and knees, leaning close into Phim’s face, searching Phim’s bottomless dark eyes for an end.
“And when you see me,” Sirijunga whispered. “Do you see your God?”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Not All Man to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.