Steampunk World

The Omai Gods Alex Bledsoe

The island, low and heavily jungled, beckoned the men on the storm-battered ship Tiger’s Claw. They’d been drifting for days, unable to repair their mast and raise sail, at the mercy of the tides. Now that the storms had all passed, and the brutal tropical sun had begun to take its toll, they couldn’t believe their luck in spotting this little knot of land where their charts said there should not be one. Most of them assumed they were hallucinating.

But one part of the vista kept them from the weary elation they so desperately wanted to feel.

“What are those?” the warlord Shang said, mostly to himself. But he spoke for everyone.

Arranged along the shore, just above the sand, stood a row of enormous stone statues. They seemed to be mainly heads, with long, flat noses and prominent chins. They faced away from the ocean toward the interior, implacable and imposing.

“No idea,” Teng, the second in command said. “Could they be gods?”

“They could,” Shang agreed. “But not strong ones. They have no weapons. They’re the gods of farmers, and women.”

“The island’s got trees,” Teng said. “That means it’s got water.”

Shang nodded. Their water casks were almost empty, their food supplies practically gone, and the men were desperate for relief from the blazing tropical sun. “Then it could be the storm was our gods’ way of bringing us here,” the warlord said.

“That storm was a warrior god’s bellow, all right,” Teng agreed. He nodded contemptuously at the statues. “Not the whimper of them.”

“Of course,” Shang said. They had barely escaped with their lives after Shang’s rebellion failed, but now they had a means to repair their ship, resupply it and return to finish the battle. The men, his most loyal warriors, would see that their leader could turn defeat into victory, and was so strong even the gods conspired to help him. Once they returned and word spread of his power, even more would rally to his standard. The old king wouldn’t stand a chance. “Get the men to the oars and let’s make landfall.”

Teng nodded. The crew were testy, short-tempered and starving, and he looked forward to leading them through the streets of any villages that might be unlucky enough to be on the island. He yelled orders, and the men hurried to obey because they knew it would get them off the ship that much sooner.

Shang stood in the center of the village, pacing before the male captives. The women were locked in one of the few remaining, pathetic huts, awaiting his men’s pleasure. That would come tonight, along with drink from the jugs of whatever these savages fermented. But for now, he wanted them to understand how beaten they truly were.

Smoke filled the air from the other burning huts. The village held about a hundred people, but most of the children had run off into the surrounding jungle. The warlord did not worry about them; children were useful only as hostages, and he had no need for them now. He could wipe out every human on the island with a word.

“Bring me the leader,” he said.

Shang’s men pushed an old man, his hands bound tightly before him, out of the crowd and to his knees before the warlord. Like the rest of these vermin, the elder wore a long loin cloth, and his dark, reddish skin was painted with elaborate designs. Some of them were smeared where he’d been manhandled.

Shang glared down at him and said, “You speak my language, I understand.”

The old man nodded. “A sailor from your people lived with my family for years. He washed up here and we gave him shelter. He lived and died as one of us.”

“That’s lucky. Otherwise, I’d have no use for you. What’s your name, old man?”

“Arto.”

“I want you to tell your people what I say to you, Arto.”

“I think you’ve made yourself clear,” the old man said.

Shang slapped him hard, and he fell to the dirt. The other tribal men, bound painfully and tightly together, glared at Shang but kept silent. They had been completely unprepared for the attack, so secure in their isolation that they had weapons only useful for hunting birds. The battle had taken mere minutes.

“I am Shang. I am a warrior, and you are either allies or enemies.” Then to the old man, he barked, “Tell them!”

Arto rose painfully to his knees and repeated the words in his own language.

“We have no intention of staying on this miserable island any longer than necessary. We will repair our ship, fill it with food and water, and then return to civilization. While we are here, you are our slaves. Some of you will resist, but I’m not speaking to them right now. To the ones sensible enough to understand your new roles, I will only say this once: disobey or hesitate when I give you an order, and I will castrate you. Do it a second time, I will take your tongue. A third time, your eyes.” He smiled as the old man relayed the information, and enjoyed the change in the prisoners’ faces.

One young man, clearly the defiant kind, said something. The warlord looked at Arto, who said, “He asks how many times they must fail before you kill them.”

“I won’t,” Shang said. “I’ll just keep lopping off pieces of you until you cease to amuse me.”

Arto translated, and the men looked even more terrified.

Shang continued, “Soon we will return to our kingdom, and some of you will come with us. The strongest men…and the most beautiful women. The rest of you, if you’re lucky, may remain here with your lives. If you cause us difficulty, I will leave this island a smoking husk. That is your only warning.”

The men cowered away from Shang, and pressed tightly together. A couple of them began to cry.

The warlord shook his head. He despised men who blubbered like women or children. “Whip them,” he said to one of his men. “Give them something to cry about.”

As his commands were obeyed, Teng joined him and said, “They won’t make warriors.”

“Perhaps not, but we can use their muscles just the same. And the wombs of their women will produce a fresh generation, one we can teach in the ways of the sword. I expect the belly of every woman in that hut to swell with our seed. Am I clear?”

“As the sky after a storm,” Teng said.

“That’s my father,” Rito whispered. She was thirteen years old, tall for her age but still thin and wiry with youth. She hunched in the bushes at the edge of the village and watched the stranger whip the men where they knelt. Her father had been the one who asked when they would be killed.

“My father is in there, too,” her best friend Eru said. He was twelve, shorter, muscular, and yet preferred to practice painting on rocks rather than play any games or learn the skills of the hunter. Rito was far better versed in the tasks adults would need, but their friendship survived despite this; their parents assumed they would one day marry.

“And our mothers and sisters are in that hut, waiting to be taken,” Rito hissed angrily. Her fists clenched in fury. “I would rather die trying to rescue them than watch that happen.”

“If you rush in there like a silly furo bird, then you’ll get your wish,” Eru said. “Or you’ll be forced to join them.”

“So we should just do nothing, then?” she almost yelled.

“Quiet! If they hear us, they’ll come after us, and we have no weapons to kill anything bigger than a dakulo.” He held up the little stone knife he used to carve figures from wood. “This is all I have. Do you have anything?”

Rito shook with the effort of controlling her anger. She knew Eru was right. She blinked away the hot tears that burned their way from her eyes with every distant crack of the whip.

At last, the whipping stopped. The bound men lay on the ground, bloodied and whimpering. No one moved to help them. In fact, the invaders laughed. From within the hut women sobbed, and the children too small to run away cried as they sensed their mothers’ terror.

Rito could barely contain her rage. Only the certainty that she’d be cut down within moments of showing herself kept her from charging out of her hiding place. Then she felt Eru’s hand on her shoulder.

“We have to get away from here,” he said into her ear.

“I can’t—”

“I have something important to tell you, but not here.”

She turned and looked into his eyes. They were dark and kind, without the arrogance of the other boys. Eru had never done stupid things to impress her, the way the rest had done; he’d never attempted to steal a kiss or watched her bathe from the jungle shadows. Perhaps for that reason, Rito never really thought of him as a boy, just as her friend, despite her parents’ knowing smiles and chuckles. But now there was a stern determination in his eyes, a new glimmer of manhood. She nodded.

One of Shang’s men caught a hint of movement, and strode over to jab a spear into the bushes where they’d been hiding. When nothing emerged or cried out in pain, he rejoined the others.

The two youngsters moved through the jungle without making a sound, leaving the village behind and climbing the slight hills that formed the ridge separating the jungle from the beach. When they were safely over it, huddled against the rocks and with the open plain and beach before them, she said, “All right, we can talk now. What’s so important?”

“Rito…” Eru said, then trailed off. He looked guilty and uncertain, as if he had a secret.

“What?” she said.

“There might be…something we can do.”

“What do you mean?”

“I sort of…well…discovered something a while ago. I haven’t told anyone.”

“Is this the right time to bring this up?” she almost yelled. All their lives, Eru had been “discovering” things, from whale bones on the beach to the secret nests of the okoluchika.

“Oh, it definitely is,” he assured her. “Do you remember the stories we were told as children about the omai?”

Rito’s head snapped around and she gazed at the statues across the plain, lined up at the edge of the sand. It was considered bad luck at best, curse-worthy at worst, for anyone but the elders to speak of their gods. “I remember we shouldn’t talk about them.”

“But the stories? How they came down from the skies, destroyed the evil beings who first lived here and brought us into existence? Remember those?”

“Of course, I do! But Eru, what does this have to do with—”

“Didn’t you ever wonder how that could be true? They’re just rocks, right? Just images carved by our ancestors.”

“Eru!”

“But I mean, they are. I’ve touched them. I’ve struck them, and nothing happened.”

Rito grabbed him and gestured back toward their village. “Maybe this is what happened, you idiot! Maybe you brought down the wrath of the gods on us!”

Eru just smiled his infuriating grin. “Oh, Rito. Stop believing everything you’ve been told. The truth is so much more amazing.” Gently he pried her hands away. “Come on, let me show you.”

“But we haven’t brought an offering, or—”

“Rito, if you really believe they’re gods, with the power of life and death over us, then this is all their fault. Why should we bring them an offering?”

“Because if we don’t, it might get worse!”

Eru laughed. “I promise, if the gods get angry, I’ll make sure they know this was all my idea.”

He led her across the plain down to the beach. Rito felt the statues’ gazes on her as they crossed the empty space until they finally reached the nearest one, at one end of the line. Like its brethren, the statue was buried up to the neck, so that it appeared to be only a giant head. No one currently alive remembered why that was done.

Eru stood on tiptoe and smacked the tip of the stone chin. “See? Just rock. And look.” He pointed at distinctive white traces that streamed down from the top. “Would gods allow birds to shit on their heads?”

“Why is this important now, Eru? You still haven’t told me.”

“What do you think these really are, Rito? They’re certainly not our ancestors. Are they just blocks of stone?”

“This is no time for a lesson!” Rito insisted.

Eru chuckled. “You’re right. It’s not. It’s time for a demonstration.”

He led her around the base of the statue to a spot between it and its neighbor. A pile of dirt showed where a hole had been dug alongside the stone; it could’ve been an animal’s burrow, except Eru jumped down into it and grinned up at her. “You’re not going to get scared, are you?”

“I’m not a coward, Eru. Are you asking that because I’m a girl?”

“No, but you think very literally.”

“I do not! I just don’t let my head fly around with the furo birds like some people I know!”

Eru laughed and ducked down in the hole. Something heavy slid against something else and made a grinding sound, followed by a single loud CLONK.

“Eru?” Rito said. There was no answer. She moved a little closer to the hole and tried to peer in from a safe distance. “Eru, are you okay?”

There was no answer. Only the waves from the beach and the occasional bird call broke the silence. She clenched her fists and tried not to think of what was happening in the village, and to not be furious with Eru for wasting their time with this nonsense. Yet what could they even do? The men from the ships were clearly used to killing, and they were just two children, cut off from everything, with only the cloth around their waists to their names. How could they possibly rescue their village?

“Eru?” she asked again, a plaintive whisper.

Then the statue before her began to rise from the ground.

Rito shrieked and jumped back a few steps. She watched the lower body lift straight up, pushing dirt away in a slow wave. It stopped when it was at ground level.

Then one stone foot rose and placed itself on the edge of the hole. Like an old man, it climbed out, groaning and creaking. There was a smell like the odor after lightning struck the island, a burnt-air scent that she couldn’t identify. When its other foot hit the soil, she felt the impact through her own bare feet.

The head was easily three-fifths of its height, and disproportionately large. It held its arms at its side, and the long fingers crossed over its belly, where a navel protruded between the fingertips.

The statue—or was it a god come to life?—turned toward Rito. She wanted to run, but she wouldn’t give smug Eru the satisfaction. She did whisper a prayer she’d memorized as a child, one asking the great gods of the sky to please make her passage to the next life as painless as possible.

But nothing else happened. When the god-statue didn’t move for a long time, and three birds fluttered down to perch on its head, Rito slowly approached it. “Eru?” she called. There was no answer, and he did not emerge from the hole.

She reached out a hand, took and held a deep breath, then touched the statue. It was stone, all right, just as it always had been, cool and solid. No god of spirit and fire. She started to think maybe she’d imagined it moving, that maybe it had been there in the bright sunlight all along. After all, mere statues couldn’t move, could they?

Then, with a great grinding of stone on stone, the omai’s head tilted down and looked directly at her.

She screamed and fell to her knees, her arms out and head bowed.

Rito expected to be crushed, or somehow blasted from existence. She heard more grinding, then Eru’s amused voice coming from above her. “While you’re down there, could you please get that grass from between my toes?”

Rito looked up, astonished. The enormous head had split open down the middle, and the two halves swung apart to reveal a strange sort of seat, flanked by protrusions like the spikes of one of the island’s multicolored beetles. Eru sat there laughing, then reached out and moved two of the spikes, which made the statue tilt down so Eru towered directly over Rito’s prone form.

“What…” Rito sputtered.

“I don’t know,” Eru replied with delight. “I discovered the passage into the statue during the last rainy season. A vakaline had dug a burrow down beside it, and I hid in it to get out of the rain. Somehow I bumped into something that made it open, and light appeared inside it. I found this chair, and these metal sticks. There are drawings on the walls showing someone sitting here and moving these sticks, so I tried them, and discovered the statue moves. It moves, Rito, and it’s made of stone.”

Rito continued to stare.

“Rito!” Eru said impatiently. “We can use these to rescue our village! Nothing the invaders have can possibly hurt us inside here.”

Rito got slowly to her feet. “There’s no room for me inside—”

“No! You enter one of the others and join me. Two of our gods come to life! The invaders will flee like barking monkeys!”

Rito thought this over. It was an actual plan, and it might conceivably work. It beat doing nothing, or hiding until they were inevitably found. “How do I get into it?”

“Watch this.” He pulled some more of the metal sticks, and the statue turned toward its nearest fellow. One hand pulled away from its belly, curled into a cup and scooped out an immense handful of dirt from around the second statue’s base. Two more scoops and a round patch of stone, of a slightly different texture than the rest, was exposed in the bright sunlight.

“Push on the middle of it,” he said. “When it opens, crawl inside.”

She jumped down into the hole and did so. The same grinding sound she’d heard before now came from this statue, and as Eru said, a lit passageway appeared. The rock was covered with shining sheets of metal smoothed to the inside contours of the passage. She climbed up several horizontal protrusions until she emerged into a tiny chamber with the same sort of chair and sticks.

She climbed into the seat, which was cool against her bare back and legs. There were uncomfortable bumps and ridges, but she put her feet on two platforms and looked around the little room.

A rectangular shape glowed directly ahead of the seat and showed the world outside the statue. Then another, smaller rectangle beneath it came to life and showed Eru’s grinning face.

“The big window ahead of you shows where you’re going,” Eru said. “Look to your right.”

On the metal wall were drawings showing which stick caused which part of the statue’s body to move. She tentatively pushed one, and felt the whole statue lurch.

“Come on,” Eru taunted. “Let’s go chase those bastards back to the sea!”

Rito paused for a moment. One of the designs showed the very seat in which she sat, but the creature occupying it did not look…like her. Like the statue, its head was too big, its limbs too short, and its eyes narrow slits. Its form seemed to fit the bumps and ridges that made her squirm. Was this, then, the image of the real god?

There was no time to ponder this. She studied the drawings for a moment, coordinated them with the metal sticks, and then pulled the ones that seemed to make the legs move. A lurching first step rewarded her.

Shang felt the vibration first. He sat in the shade of the trees that ringed the village, sipping water brought from a sweet nearby spring. The village’s men were now locked within a stockade, hastily but sturdily built by his crew. The women cowered in the hut, awaiting their fate. He enjoyed knowing they all watched him, awaiting the signal that would begin their degradation. He could not wait until an entire kingdom felt the same way.

But the repeating rumbles broke his euphoria. He stood up and strode to the center of the village clearing. The sky was blue and cloudless, but a storm could be approaching from the other side of the island. Perhaps it was the same storm that had nearly destroyed them, seeking a second chance. Let it come, he thought.

Teng joined him. “Are those drums?”

“Too regular to be thunder,” Shang said.

“They said there was no one else on the island. Only them.”

“Perhaps they lied. But whoever it is, they have no idea what they’re walking into. Rouse the crew.”

As Teng turned and was about to shout orders, there was a high shriek of terror. Not from one of the villagers, though; it came from Loonk, one of their toughest and most vicious swordsmen. He stood frozen in mid-step, pointing at the sky.

Shang and Teng looked up together as an immense shadow fell over the clearing.

Within the walking statue, Rito saw her village from high above on the glowing rectangular window. She recognized it, yet had never considered what it must appear like to the birds that flew overhead. The view mesmerized her.

In the smaller window, Eru grinned as he said, “There’s a control that lets you speak with the god’s voice; it was the first thing I figured out how to work. Scared away all the birds. Watch this!”

Shang and Teng exchanged a look. They had battled together for years, but never faced anything like this. Already the other crew members were fleeing for the jungle, screaming like the women in the hut.

Not just one, but two of the stone gods they’d seen from the ship now towered over the village. Were the others coming as well? Had they been summoned, or did they simply know, as gods did, that their worshippers were in danger?

The god of the natives was made of stone, with a gigantic head and two long-fingered arms. A deep voice boomed from its unmoving lips: “Release my people!”

Shang ordered, “Bring me the elder!”

Teng, his eyes still on the god, ran over to the stockade. The old man was tied to the outside so that he could translate at a moment’s notice, and Teng half pushed, half dragged him over to Shang. Even the elder looked terrified.

“What did it say?” Shang asked, hoping his voice didn’t tremble.

“The great omai ordered you to release us.”

“And if I don’t? Go ahead, ask. What happens if I don’t?”

The elder drew breath and yelled up, “He asks, what will happen if he doesn’t release your people?”

A bolt of what could only be called lightening shot from the protruding navel of the god and tore through the trunks of a dozen trees. There were more screams.

“Eru!” Rito cried. “What was that? You could’ve hurt someone!”

“I was careful,” Eru said, still delighted.

“They’re not afraid,” Rito pointed out. “Not the leaders.”

“Then we have to be scarier.”

Rito started to protest, but then she had another idea. She looked at the drawings on the wall, carefully considered which sticks to move to make the statue do what she wished, and set to work.

“One god is leaving,” Teng said.

“Of course,” Shang said, puffing up with pride. “Not even a god dares oppose me.” He grabbed Arto by the hair. “Tell the other to go back where it came from, or I’ll kill every man, woman and child in this village. Tell it!”

The elder relayed the information.

The remaining god began to stride through the jungle, circling the village.

“What’s it doing?” Teng asked.

“I don’t know,” Shang muttered, still clutching the elder by the hair.

Suddenly, with surprising speed, the god reached down into the jungle, then stood again. In one hand it held one of Shang’s cowardly men, who screamed as if he’d been castrated in battle. Olon was his name: a rigger, worthless in a fight.

“I can kill your people as well,” the god said, and the elder dutifully translated.

“Kill them,” Shang said. “I do not need their worship. Do you need yours?”

Teng looked at his commander with a mix of admiration and concern.

Eru was no killer, Rito knew. He was bluffing. She pushed her sticks more rapidly, driving toward her destination.

“Rito, where are you going?” he demanded.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Make sure they know what I’m doing.”

The god raised Olon high overhead. The sailor continued to scream, clutching at the stone fingers while simultaneously looking around for anything that might help. Then he froze.

In the distance, the other god strode into the water, toward the Tiger’s Claw.

“The ship!” he cried down to Shang. “It’s going to sink the ship!”

The thick sand under the water caught the statue’s heavy feet, making each step more difficult than Rito expected. The statue wobbled, and Rito had to quickly shift the rods to keep its balance. The water was as deep as the statue’s chin when she reached the anchored ship.

No one had been left aboard, so she had no worries about killing anyone. She raised one arm, curled the long fingers into a fist and brought it down heavily on the vessel’s middle. The blow crashed through the wood, splitting it into two halves. The anchored half continued to float, while the other spun and sank almost at once.

“Ha!” Rito cried in triumph. “Now they’re stuck here!”

She tried to turn the statue, but the sand held firm. Instead of the sound of stone grinding, there was a shriek of metal, and something popped loudly as it broke. The statue listed to one side, then with a great splash fell forward into the water, between the halves of the broken ship, and landed in a great puff of silt on the bottom.

Still clutched in the statue’s hand, Olon cried, “They’ve sunken the ship! We’re marooned here!”

Arto looked at Sheng. “You’re now an islander, just as we are. Except you have no idea how to survive here. You don’t know which berries to eat, which snakes are poisonous, which plants leave a stinging rash. If you kill us, you won’t live a week.”

Shang, his face white with rage, punched the old man. “You dare to threaten me? I will kill every man on this island, even my own, before I will beg help from an uncivilized—”

He froze, and looked down at his chest. A sword protruded from it, through his heart. Then it withdrew out his back, and he fell.

Teng, holding the bloody weapon, said tiredly, “He meant it. He’d kill us all.” To Arto he said, “So we’re now part of your tribe, it seems. I suppose we have to prove you can trust us.” He turned the sword and handed it, hilt first, to Arto.

Eru’s omai turned toward the ocean, waiting for Rito’s statue to rise. “Rito!” he called. “Rito, answer me!” The window that had shown her face was now black.

He put the invader Olon back on the ground and strode through the jungle toward the beach. “Rito! Say something! I’m coming!”

But there was no response.

When he reached the beach, he saw from her own giant footprints that following her into the water would be suicide. The statues worked fine on land, but would bog down in the water. Rito was trapped, buried on the bottom of the ocean.

“Rito,” he whispered, and felt hot tears burn his eyes. He put his hand against the black window, but no image appeared. She had gone, alone, to meet the true omai.

Arto stood before the row of statues. One was missing: the one that had fallen in the water that long-ago day, ensuring that their people would survive. Another had returned to its place at the end of the line, but this time faced out toward the sea, watching over its fallen comrade. Boats that passed over the spot could see through the clear water to the great stone shape lying face-up below.

Beside Arto stood Eru. The boy had changed since the invasion: he was quiet now, and seldom smiled. He seemed to harbor some dark secret that weighed on him, maturing him far past his years. When he’d come to Arto and asked to train as the next high priest, Arto had laughed at first. But he had no sons, and it didn’t take long for him to see that the boy was serious. The laughing troublemaker had gone for good, replaced by the grim young man who now stood tall and strong beside him.

“The omai will always protect us,” Arto said. “They watch, and wait, and listen. Once I doubted it, but since the day I saw them walk with my own tired eyes, I now know the truth.”

Eru nodded. His eyes filled with tears again as he followed the gaze of the lone omai that looked out at the water.