46

Conor felt a jolt of pain through his back as they landed back up top. He had slammed into a small log by a forgotten firepit. The spot was familiar; it was on the hills out beyond Glyder Fawr in Snowdonia. Far from any trails, but he knew it. He, Ella and Calum had camped here several times.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, you stupid piece of shit, I’ll fucking murder you. Good God, you’ve no idea what you’ve done. Oh, you’re fucked, Conor. You ‘offer’ me - I’m not yours to give you fucking stupid child. Oh, Jesus. Ugh, I’m not even mad, really. It’s just ridiculous, it’s, it’s nonsense is what it is. But just fucking keep your mouth shut, hey, how fucking stupid are you?”

She was pacing like a tiger behind a sheet window from a big piece of meat. A matter of time, thought Conor. He caught her looking at him like he’d seen her looking at Calum on occasion, like she was picturing him thrown from a great height. Tryfan was the perfect spot for this fantasy of hers. There were plenty of ledges nearby that would offer her the opportunity to see his broken and bloodied body smashed against jagged rocks 100 metres below.

“Offer me. Offer me!” She continued raving, “You’ll do nothing, Conor, you can do nothing, you’re fucking weak. You need me for everything. You creep behind me, crawl on me. You’re a pet, Conor. A pet. Fuck me, credit where it’s due, it’s a ballsy move, but you can do nothing to back it up. You know that, nothing. And me - I won’t lie down and be your offering. Anything you want from me, you’ll have to fucking take it. Only you won’t, you wouldn’t even try, and you certainly wouldn’t manage it. I’d have you skinned before you ever laid another hand on me. Skinned alive and burned. I’d have you watch it fold and melt and burn before your eyes, too. Offer me all you want, Conor, I’m not going anywhere.”

The man had been constructing the fire during Ella’s tirade. As the night darkened and the fire grew, his features shifted and changed as the light beneath him grew. He sat back then, finally, long legs crossed, leaning back against a rock, half a metre from the flames. Then he spoke, his voice hard like water on rock.

“Ella, enough. Come, sit beside me.” She started, seeming to have almost lost track of his being there, immediately stopping her pacing. Conor watched as she filled her lungs before slowly exhaling and closing her eyes. Conor was grateful to have them off him for the moment, but prayed for them back as he now locked onto the man without eyelids, who was inexplicably speaking now, here in the world above. The exhale was long and quiet as she sat down beside the man, close enough to lean into him, had he raised an arm to meet her.

“Adults have sacrificed their children for ages and millennia, Conor. As long as man has been here, he has plunged dagger into child to demonstrate his love to the unknowable unseen. The man that does so rejoices, the sickness of the ego to translate that into virtue, remarkable.”

Conor looked his man in the eyes, they were dark. They were fixed on him without movement. His breath was slow and steady, he scarcely moved. Conor realised just how much he was adjusting his position on the floor while the man spoke. Looking for a good place to sit before the reality he was living crumbled under its own madness, and he was pulled down to an unimaginable depth from which there would be no returning. He grasped for any comfort, for even the space between the seconds, but there was none to be found.

“A man sacrifices his child on the altar to some god. To what is the purpose of his offering? It is for food, to appease some world-destroyer, so that crops might grow, so that another enemy might be defeated, for vision. What man will not do to be able to see what to do next. Then also, to whom is his offering directed? Well - at first glance you see that it is for the one he speaks of. His momentary deity, they are always invoked. No one lays down a child without knowing what they expect out of it, nor from whom they expect this gift of mercy. Mercy, boy - grace, from one who asked you to lay an innocent life down for them. You see it now, don’t you? You only need a moment of consideration to see the truth - they do it for themselves. The man takes the knife to his own child and you discover that it was for no one but him. The act of anti-virtue constructed properly makes the man, in his own eyes, the perfectly selfless.”

Conor had placed his fist in front of his mouth, with the side of his index finger laying across the space between his lips. He did this to help him feel more keenly the sensation of his breath through his nose. He felt his insides screaming. He had promised this man something. Unbearably desperate to have him speak to him he had offered all he could and here he was, hearing that his offering was simply an act of selfish pride.

“And what of the child, Conor, they sit upon the laps of their fathers and mothers. Nursed they give nothing, do nothing. They are a commodity, it's true. No agency, no rights, not really. They lean on even those that cut them, curse them, abandon them. Children are scars, Conor, nothing more.”

Conor felt all the water in his body as he quietly began to cry.

“So you have made me your offer, and I accept it.”

Ella’s mouth shot open, and her sinews tightened as she set herself to stand and throw herself at Conor, but the man quickly laid a hand across her. None of the tension in her body relaxed, but she sat back again.

“I accept your offering because you understand this truth, that the sacrifice of the older at the hand of the younger is right. You are entering your time to build, Conor - you can remove all that stands in your way. The sacrifice of a child is the way of the old to maintain life as they had it. But an offering is not meant to maintain, but to advance.”

Looking at his sister, Conor said, “Our tasks are bound - right, Ella” before turning back to the man without eyelids, who was prodding the fire as the logs collapsed and embers rose. He continued, “If the offerings we make are for ourselves, and I have promised you mine, who sacrificed the three sisters?”