Her father ran a hand over the crown of his head and his lips curled into a small smile, though she didn’t see any reason to be happy, not if the rumors were true. He touched one of his hands to her chest, right over where her heart was still beating too fast, on account of her sprint. “What do you feel?” he asked.
“Nothing. I feel noth—” She paused before she continued, because she did feel something. A warmth, radiating from her chest—her heart—outwards, to her arms, her legs, her head. “Warm,” she said. “I feel warm.” The evening was cool, the wind washing over her. “But I was just running. That’s why I’m warm.”
“If you say so,” her father said.
She frowned, something her mother said she did too much, especially when she was thinking. She was always thinking. “No one ever said Absence brings warmth,” Shanti said.
“You’re right, they don’t. Let’s go for a walk.”
It wasn’t what she expected him to say, but he’d already roped his arm around her shoulders and steered her in the same direction she was already heading. Away from their hut. Toward temple.
Walking rather than running, Shanti noticed that dozens of other Terans were heading in the same direction, slowly, like fish swimming upstream. Others peeked from hut doorways and windows, watching their neighbors pass by, seeming to consider whether they should join them.
“Everyone is curious,” her father said. “Everyone is scared.”
Shanti said nothing, wondering what they would find when they reached their destination. Would they all laugh at the false rumors, wondering how such lies could’ve spread so fast? Or would their mouths open in shock, in horror, their fear doubling when they saw the truth?
She listened to her heart beating in her chest, felt the warmth that filled her. Absence, is that you? Are you alive?
They reached a circle of small huts, seven in total. Temple. Each hut contained a different characteristic of Absence. Purity. Selflessness. Faith. Patience. Generosity. Courage. Perseverance. The Seven Virtues of their god. Once a week, all Terans would attend temple and focus on one of these virtues, attempting to achieve but a sliver of the righteousness of their deity. Once one achieved all seven, they could apply to become a temple priest or priestess, if they chose. Shanti had only achieved Perseverance so far—“You were born with that virtue,” her mother always said—though her sister, Aliyah, had achieved Purity, Faith, and Selflessness.
They walked between two of the huts—the ones for Selflessness and Generosity—and stopped, the crowd too thick to pass. Shanti craned her neck, trying to see over the mob, past the long-haired men and short-haired women. “Patience,” her father said. Shanti had not been born with the virtue of Patience, and suspected she would never achieve that one, even if she had a hundred lifetimes to do so.
Slowly, the crowd pushed forward as those at the front departed temple on the opposite side. Once there was only a single row of people in front of them, Shanti slipped away from her father and squeezed between two people, nearly tripping as she skidded to a halt in front of…
She’d been to temple a thousand times, and every time the last stop was the center, to gaze upon Absence, to pray, to fathom the fathomless, an infinite hole with no end…
It’s gone.
A shiver trembled through her at the sight. Where there was once a hole—Absence’s haven on the earth—there was now only dirt, packed down hard, a slightly different color than the ground around it.
Absence is dead. Shanti felt like crying, but no one else was, and she wondered why. Aren’t they sad? Don’t they feel the loss? It was just like when someone they knew died. No one cried then either. Terans mourned in a different way, by eating and drinking and dancing, celebrating the life they’d lost rather than the fact they’d lost it. But this was different, wasn’t it? This wasn’t just some person who’d passed into the Void. This was Absence. This was God!
Shanti wanted to scream, to yell at these people, who walked silently away from temple, not showing any emotion at all.
And then her father was there, his arm around her, and she looked up at him…
He was smiling.
Something about his smile made her angry, so angry she balled her fists and wanted to hit him. “It’s cold,” she said instead.
“Is it?” her father asked, raising his thin copper eyebrows.
“Yes. No. I feel empty.”
“Like Absence?”
She didn’t know what to feel, and when she looked around, she found they were the last ones there, save for a priest, who watched them from afar. “You should go home,” the holy man said. “There is nothing left for anyone here.”
“We’ll leave soon,” her father answered. The priest nodded, and slipped away.
“I still feel warm,” Shanti admitted when they were alone.
Her father nodded. “That’s the truth. Listen to what’s in your heart, not what’s before your eyes.”
She tried, she really did, but as Shanti stared at dirt where a hole should be, she couldn’t. “I don’t know how.”
“This is the seventh virtue,” he said. “The hardest one to achieve. Faith. Even those who think they’ve achieved it usually haven’t.”
Shanti remembered the lost look in the priest’s eyes. He was supposed to have achieved all seven virtues, but her father had basically just accused him of being one short. “How many have you achieved?” she asked him. She was surprised to realize that she didn’t know how many of the virtues either of her parents had achieved.
“All of them,” he said.
The truth startled her. Her father was a Seven? “Then why aren’t you a priest?”
“Because it’s a choice. And I chose a different path.”
“You’re a farmer.”
“I love farming, growing things, providing for our people.”
“But—”
“One day you will understand. One day you will find your true calling.”
She hoped he was right, because she knew she would never be a Seven. “What now? If Absence isn’t dead, then where has our god gone?”
“Nowhere,” her father said. “Absence is in our hearts, always. And Absence is here, in front of us. Absence can’t be killed any more than the wind can be killed.”
She frowned again. “I don’t understand.”
He smiled. “That’s because you don’t have Faith. Not yet. Let me show you.” He kneeled down, and began to dig.
After a few moments just watching him, wondering if her father had gone mad, Shanti knelt down and started helping him. She scooped handfuls of dirt, pushing them aside, tossing them behind her. Soon they had made a wide depression in the ground, right where the hole used to be. Is he planning to re-dig the entire hole? she wondered. The thought almost made her laugh. If so, they’d be digging for the rest of their lives!
Still, there was something satisfying about watching the hole get deeper and deeper, the mounds of soil around the edges getting taller and taller. When they got too deep to climb out, they carved steps into the walls.
They toiled until well after dark, the crisscrossing moonbeams splashing on the walls of the hole.
Exhausted, Shanti stopped to catch her breath. They were really deep now, almost twice as deep as her father was tall. Her father, several locks of his long hair having broken free, sticking with sweat to his body, kept working, however, using a stick to dig out rocks that got in the way. Shanti was just about to get back to work when his stick thudded against something hard. Not a rock.
He glanced at her, a grin creasing his sweat-sheened face.
“What is it?” she asked.
“An answer,” he said. “A truth.”
She crawled over to him and helped him dig away the thin layer of soil that covered whatever he had struck.
“It’s wood,” Shanti said when they broke through. It was true, a long wooden beam ran across the hole, jammed firmly into each wall. Next to it was another. And another. Like a platform.
The dirt that had filled in the hole had been piled atop the wood.
“I feel air!” Shanti exclaimed. Though the boards were tightly packed together, there was still room for a cool breeze to waft up from the empty space beneath. She smiled—really smiled—for the first time since they’d seen the patch of dirt in the center of temple.
“Now does your mind believe what your heart always knew?” her father asked.
“I just needed to see it,” she said. “I needed proof.”
“Faith is knowing without seeing.”
“Why didn’t you tell the others? You let them walk away.”
“They weren’t ready,” her father said. “Perhaps tomorrow they will be.”
“What do we do now?”
“Run home. Get rope. Bring my axe.”
“What do I tell Mother?”
“Tell her I sent you.”
Aliyah was already asleep when Shanti burst through the hut door. Shanti expected her mother to be angry, to scold her for sneaking out and returning in the dark, sweaty and filthy.
But she wasn’t. She helped Shanti find the rope and axe, as if she’d expected her all along.
“Come home safe,” she said, watching Shanti race back out into the night. “And bring your father with you.”
Shanti sped through the empty streets, wondering what the other Terans were dreaming of. Were they dreaming of a world without Absence, a world without meaning? She longed to see their faces when they awoke the next morning to find the hole reopened.
When she arrived back at the center of temple, her father used the rope to secure them both to a metal loop pounded into the ground beside the hole. Despite how late it was, Shanti felt energized. She hadn’t expected her father to include her in the next part of the task.
Hand over hand, they lowered themselves back into the hole, their feet thudding on the wooden platform at the bottom.
“Do you want to take a swing?” he asked her.
It took all her restraint to not scream Yes! She nodded, accepting the axe by the handle. He motioned her toward the side of the hole. “Try to cut as close to the wall as possible,” he instructed.
She held the axe with both hands, one much closer to the blade than the other. She swung.
Whack!
It took her several tries to yank the blade back out of the wood, but when she did she found a satisfying slice in it. She looked back at her father and he smiled. “Keep going. Just like that.”
When she tired, he took over. They switched back and forth, moving around the perimeter, hacking through the wooden boards, which began to fall away, clattering into a darkness so complete it was like the absence of light.
A satisfying darkness.
Instead of fear, Shanti felt only warmth, a sensation of comfort. Her skin tingled, not unlike the feeling after a bath, when her mother had scrubbed her clean. “Father…” she said, staring at her arms.
“I know, my Sha-flower,” he said. “I feel it, too. Absence is very much alive.”
Shanti also felt alive, more alive than ever before. She wondered if this was how the priests and priestesses felt during their initiation ritual, when they were lowered into the hole, communing with Absence in darkness for an entire day and night. If so, she suddenly wanted to become a priestess.
While she hung, enjoying the sensation shivering through her, Shanti’s father finished the job, cutting away the rest of the boards, until only open air remained.
Beside each other, they hung from their ropes, dangling over the nothingness beneath them.
“It’s time to go,” her father said.
“I don’t want to.”
“Neither do I,” her father admitted. “But we must. This isn’t our place.”
“Just a little bit longer. Please.”
He relented, and they hung there for what felt like an eternity if it was a second. Just existing. Living. Feeling. Being.
“We have to go, before we can’t bring ourselves to leave,” her father said, more insistently this time.
Shanti took a deep breath, grabbing hold of one of the steps they’d carved into the wall. Started climbing.
When she emerged from the hole, rolling into the dirt, she felt as if she’d lost a part of her soul.
The next day she awoke invigorated, despite having slept only half as long as usual. She threw back her sheets and burst from bed, racing past her mother and shoving open the door.
She stared out expectantly, waiting to see the smiles, the laughs, the looks of wonder and excitement and hope and reinvigorated Faith.
Instead she saw only misery. Those who walked past stared at their feet, their heads hanging. People were going about their daily business, but in a heavy, trudging manner, like they were carrying sacks of stones on their backs.
Confused, Shanti poked her head back inside, searching for her father. “He’s gone,” her mother said, focused on breakfast.
Aliyah said, “Where were you last night anyway?” Her older sister was frowning at her, helping to wash the rice and beans that would soon become their traditional morning meal. Her hair had grown dangerously long, and was on the verge of being disgraceful.
And yet Shanti thought it made her look utterly beautiful.
“Didn’t Father tell you?”
“He wouldn’t say anything.”
Though Shanti was practically bursting to tell someone about what she’d experienced the night before, to shout the truth from the rooftop of the marketplace, she clamped her lips shut. Something about it didn’t feel right, not anymore. Not when the entire city seemed to be swimming in an ocean of sadness.
“We were at temple,” she said.
“Sad, isn’t it?” Aliyah said, her turquoise eyes blinking rapidly. “What will we do without Absence? Will we still visit temple? Will we still seek the virtues?”
“I don’t know!” Shanti snapped, shoving back outside and leaving her sister stunned and her mother halfway through a rebuke.
She ran, anger coursing through her. She was angry at her sister’s questions, angry at her father for leaving without her, angry at the people of the city for acting the same way as yesterday even when everything—everything—had changed. Her father and she had changed it.
Most of all, she was angry at herself for the sinking feeling she felt in her gut, because she felt sad too.
I communed with Absence! I should be happy!
She skidded around a corner and galloped between temple’s huts, screeching to a halt before the very place she’d spent half the night, toiling under the stars.
Her mouth gaped open.
Her father stood arguing with one of the priests, gesturing at the center of temple.
Where, once again, the hole was gone, filled in with hard-packed dirt.
“I don’t understand,” Shanti said, once they were back home again. Her mother and sister where gone, off to the marketplace. “Why can’t we just dig it up again? Show everyone it’s a lie.”
“The people have lost their Faith,” her father said.
“But the priest—”
“The holies, too. They wouldn’t even listen. If they cannot believe without proof, then they don’t deserve to know.”
“But if you show them….”
Before Shanti could finish her thought, a cry rose up from without their hut. Her mother and sister rushed in a moment later, dresses swirling around their ankles.
“Phanecians,” her mother wheezed, her chest heaving.
Shanti hissed in a sharp breath. Their neighbors across the Burning Sea to the north had rarely set foot in Teragon, only appearing once a year during the summer harvest to trade for coffee beans, golden wheat, sugar, and other native goods.
They were too early. Recently, travelers had been telling disconcerting stories of Phanecian slave ships sailing further and further…
“They’ve come for us,” Shanti’s father said. His voice sounded hollow, like part of it had been scooped out and tossed aside.<
br />
“The people will fight,” her mother said. “We will fight.” She reached over and snatched their largest knife from the table. Her mouth was pulled into a straight line of determination.
Her father shook his head. “No,” he said. “They won’t fight. They think Absence has abandoned them. They will submit like lambs to wolves.”
Her mother’s face was ashen. “We have to hide the children.”
Her father nodded. “Hurry.”
“No!” Shanti said. “We want to stay with you.” Beside her, Aliyah started crying.
“I know, my Sha-flower, my Ali-bird,” her father said, cupping each of his daughter’s cheeks. “I know.” And then he grabbed Shanti and forced her toward the bed. She kicked and struggled, but he was too strong. He forced her beneath the bed, into a narrow crawlspace. Aliyah crawled in next, sobbing, her too-long hair getting in Shanti’s mouth.
Shanti tried to shove past her sister, but there wasn’t enough room to maneuver. “Aliyah! Move!”
Her sister only cried harder.
Helpless, Shanti watched her parents’ feet as they crossed the room together. Then she saw the base of a heavy wooden chest as it was slid along the floorboards and shoved against the side of the bed, blocking all light.
Her parents’ footsteps receded away and the door creaked open and then banged shut. Shouts arose once more.
“Sha, I’m scared,” Aliyah said.
Shanti sometimes wished her older sister acted like the older sister. But Aliyah had never been as adventurous as she was, always scared of interesting things like worms and critters and the dark. Still, she was her sister. She put her hand on Aliyah’s shoulder and said, “We’re safe now.” But Mother and Father are not.
More shouts, the sound of slamming doors. Someone crying.
Another door banged open. Ours, Shanti thought.
“Oh Absence,” Aliyah whispered, her voice choked with a sob.
“Shhh,” Shanti murmured in her ear.
Neither of them breathed as footsteps stomped across the room.
Shanti’s father’s voice rose up. “This is our home. How dare you—”