The Flames of Forgery

By Josy Bongiovanni

 

Athea had lost track of time as she wandered in the field by her hut, picking wildflowers for the evening gathering. Everyone had already congregated in the village square, each holding their offerings to their god, ready to cast them into the eternal bonfire in return for his continued blessings on the inhabitants of the island. As she ran to join her family, Athea passed Zelos, who held a small wooden goat, one of his many artful carvings. 

 

"You've been busy." She whispered in his ear.

 

He held her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. Although she cared for all her neighbors as though they were family, Zelos made her heart soar in a way the others didn't. 

 

"For you, sweet Athea." 

 

He handed her the wooden figure. 

 

"I can't take this. You'll have no offering." She gasped. 

 

"I would offer my eternal servitude, but I promised it to a lovely golden maiden."

 

She giggled, pushing her long sun-kissed tresses off her shoulders, and quickly made her way to her parents, who were waiting for her near the head priest, Dolion. As the crowd settled down, he raised his wrinkled hands into the air and spoke. 

 

"Oh great Hephaestus, hear us tonight as we ask for your eternal blessing. Keep our threads woven tight so that our community may continue thriving for many more generations to come. Let no one among us drift away from the love and deep connection we all share."

 

Dolion reached into his robes and held a straw effigy over his head. 

 

"Receive these offerings as symbols of our devotion in return for our continued bliss on this prosperous island."

 

The priest flung the figurine into the fire. Other offerings soon followed, ranging from carvings and metal tools to fruit and flowers, and even poems. Athea threw in her flowers and then, at the last minute, reluctantly tossed the wooden goat that Zelos had gifted her. The flames grew high, and Athea could feel the heat dangerously close to her body. Many times, they had warned not to stand too close to the offering pit because the flames could become uncontrollable, but she couldn't help but be mesmerized as the blaze consumed the wooden goat. Besides, the eternal fire had never burned anyone. Things of that nature didn't happen here. 

 

"Athea, watch out!" she heard Zelos cry from the other side of the pit.

 

But it was too late. Her gown was on fire. 

 

"Quick, the sand!" someone shouted, alluding to the many buckets they kept around the fire in case of emergency. 

 

Athea frantically waved at her skirt and tried to pat the fire down but ended up lighting her sleeves with flames as well. She screamed as heat spread throughout her arms and ran as people tried helplessly to stop her. 

 

"Roll on the dirt!" someone else shouted. But Athea couldn't hear past her screams. 

 

A heavy, gritty weight hit her back, not the relief she quite needed. Soon, muscular arms grabbed her shoulders as more sand flew in her direction. Shaking, she clung to the person who had saved her. Zelos. She smiled through the pain, and then everything went black. 

 

***

 

The smell of smoke made Athea wake with a start. She was in the priest's hut, where the scent of incense permeated the room. The sweet smoke almost made her retch.

 

"Easy child, you need to rest." The priest sat on a low bench next to her. 

 

"What happened?" 

 

"When one gets too inquisitive and gazes too closely into the flames, the gods get angry."

 

She looked down at her hands and arms. There were no burn marks, but she clearly remembered the fire consuming her as she writhed in pain. 

 

"Hephaestus has given me the strength to heal you."

 

"But how? It's a miracle." 

 

Athea's eyes went wide, inspecting every part of her body where she felt the phantom heat of the day before. Everything was the same as ever. 

 

"We don't question the gods, and they permit us to live on this island in harmony and with no cares."

 

"Thank you, Dolion!"

 

She leaped from the bed and embraced the priest tightly. His rigid stature softened momentarily before he gently pushed her away. 

 

"Now go, your parents are waiting." 

 

He pushed a bundle of herbs into her hands and sent her off. 

 

Athea opened the door and saw her parents sitting by the temple. They smiled when they saw her and waved. She looked back at the priest as she walked through the threshold, wanting to thank him once more before she left, but didn't have the chance before she felt a wave of dizziness overtake her. 

 

***

 

Shaking her head of the cobwebs that seemed to be there, Athea felt disoriented for a moment. Why was she in front of Dolion's hut? The bundle of herbs in her hand told she had gone to him for something, but she had no recollection of her interaction with him. 

 

"Athea, we've been waiting for you. Did Dolion give you the herbs you needed to prepare your offering?"

 

She held up the bundle, and they smiled. All three returned to their hut, and no one asked questions. 

 

***

 

That evening at the gathering, Athea stayed away from the fire. She didn't know why, but the flames didn't call to her as they usually did. Zelos was not too far behind. 

 

"Fair Athea, what have you to appease our god this fine night?"

 

"A poultice."

 

"What is a poultice?"

 

"It is used to heal people."

 

Zelos furrowed his brow and tilted his head. 

 

"We don't need healing, Athea. No one has been sick on this island for at least five generations."

 

"It's symbolic, in thanks to Hephaestus for allowing us the good fortune of health."

 

Her father interjected promptly, taking her hand and guiding her behind him. 

 

"The ceremony is about to begin."

 

Dolion shuffled to the fire, showing his age. He held up his hands as was customary and began the nightly ritual. Athea, for the first time in her life, stayed away from the fire. When it was time to give her offering, she used all her strength to throw the poultice from her spot on the grass away from the main square. The bundle fell on the hard floor; the kerchief she had used to tie it opened up, revealing the moist clay and herbs within. She quickly ran to retrieve it and, without thinking, ran up close to the fire to throw her offering in, lest the gods get angry at her for not getting it right the first time. 

 

To her horror, her sleeve got too close to the flames and caught fire. She heard her mother scream. Her father and Zelios ran towards her, shouting for her to roll to the ground. It all seemed so familiar, the events unfolding at a painfully slow speed, as if it were a memory or a dream. But it was real. She felt the heat on her body. 

 

Dolion, who was closest to her, jumped into action with surprising speed within seconds, even before anyone else could get to her. 

 

"Not this time." She heard Dolion say under his breath as he extinguished the flames. 

 

Athea was relieved that the old priest had regained his vigor so suddenly. But what had he meant by "not this time?"

 

"Athea! Thank Hephaestus, you are unharmed." cried her mother. 

 

Her parents embraced her as everyone looked on, whispering amongst themselves. Not one of them had tried to help. She saw something in their eyes that was foreign to her. It made her uncomfortable, but she couldn't explain why. 

 

"Come, everyone! Let us rejoice; Hephaestus has blessed us with his continued good will." Dolion told the crowd as he prepared to distribute one of his delicious concoctions. 

 

As she sipped the warm liquid, Athea didn't feel the usual calm it brought to her mind. For the first time in her life, she felt doubt - and she didn't like it.

 

***

 

The morning after, Athea was picking flowers in the field near her hut once again for the evening gathering. Her hands, usually adept at detaching the plants from where they were rooted, shook uncontrollably. She kept seeing them ablaze and felt the heat of the fire.

 

Dolion. He would know what to do.

 

She saw the smoke from his hut rise in the azure sky and followed it to the outskirts of town near the temple of Hephaestus. 

 

"Dolion, I need your counsel." She cried as she knocked on his door. 

 

There was no answer. She tried peering into his hut through a window, but saw no one.

 

"Dolion?"

 

Athea ventured to the temple. She rarely entered the sacred space alone, but she needed to talk to the priest. 

 

She moved through the stone structure carefully, as there were no windows and very little light from the torches on the wall. The entrance was a narrow hallway that spilled into a large area in which an altar took up most of the space. On this altar sat a statue of their god in all his bearded glory, his impressive musculature on full display under the simple tunic. He held his blacksmith's tools, with which they were told he once created life. She never understood how someone could create life with metal.

 

Hearing noises coming from the back of the altar, Athea walked past it to where only the priests could usually circulate. She had been to the temple many times before, but had never noticed a door beyond the altar. Maybe that's where she could find Dolion. 

 

As she got closer to the door, she heard metal scraping against metal, accompanied by a high pitch whirring. Opening the door, Athea couldn't comprehend what she saw. The room was brighter than the sunniest day on the island, although the sun could never penetrate this chamber. Metal contraptions littered the room, along with ropes that came in and out of walls and attached themselves to those contraptions, many of which were emanating some sort of noise. Dolion was at a workbench in the center of the room, so busy repairing something that he didn't notice Athea staring at him. 

 

"Dolion? What are you doing? What is this?"

 

The priest lifted his head swiftly in surprise, letting the object in his hand fall to the ground. Athea followed the path of the object as it landed at her feet. 

 

"Athea, you shouldn't be here."

 

"I needed to speak to you…What is that?"

 

She bent to inspect what had escaped from Dolion's grasp and stood back in horror when she realized what it was. A hand! A human hand lay at her feet. Except there was no blood, only little stings protruding from the wrist. 

 

"Athea, it's not what it looks like."

 

She felt her stomach churn. The light was suddenly too bright. The need to run gripped her. 

 

"No, Athea, don't go!" cried the priest. 

 

But she was already gone. 

 

Although she could hear Dolion's footsteps close behind her, Athea ran as fast as she could towards the entrance. In the shrouded darkness of the temple, however, she lost her footing and fell, hitting her head on the altar. The last thing she saw before she lost consciousness was Dolion looking down on her with a disappointed look on his face. 

 

"Oh, Athea, I really had hoped to save you." 

 

***

 

With a heavy heart, Dolion brought Athea to his lab in the back of the temple. He had been trying to fix her neural pathways to bring her back to the hive mind for weeks, but the nanobots in the potions he distributed after the offerings weren't doing their job. They erased the memories, yes, but they had not repaired all the fractured pathways. She kept asking too many questions, and the others didn't trust her anymore. He put the body on his worktable, moving the one he had been working on to the side to make space. 

 

After all the work he had done to isolate the community and keep it going for so long, he couldn't afford to let one defective android bring the entire project down. His island was the most promising and the closest to utopia they had ever come. His colleagues in the other secluded communities had significant results, but none of them had gone so long without an incident. Dolion had kept a watchful eye on his project for all these centuries, augmenting himself with bionic parts so he wouldn't miss a beat. 

 

The old engineer looked at Athea adoringly. In a way, she was like his own daughter. He had raised her, along with the others, to become the best of humankind and beyond. There was no war, no theft, no violence at all in the community. Because everyone felt empathy towards each other, no one wished any harm to come to their neighbors. He believed that Athea's disconnection from the rest had caused some uneasiness. That's how perfection started its descent into chaos. He couldn't let that happen. 

 

Dolion would miss her terribly, but for the good of the community and for the dream of utopia, he had to let her go. He reached for his tools and got to work. 

 

The End