"The Capricorn´s Plight" by Panu Karjalainen

The pounding of drums rolled across the earth in a frenzy. The players, grinning faces painted red, threw not only their hands and arms at their instruments, but their entire bodies, heaving up and down, sweat flying. Before the mad players, people threw in return their bodies to the rhythm, waved their heads, tongues lolling out and eyes bulging, throwing up their arms as if urging the drums to beat faster. Around the dancers, revellers in costumes both lavish and skimpy streamed past, eyes fixed always somewhere above the crowd, lips parted in a half-smile of ecstasy. Bodies reeled, bumped into each, scurried out of the way of giant paper dragons and collapsed in heaps of drunken giggle, in the shade of decorated willow trees, behind striped booths, even in the middle of the street.

The Capricorn sat, feathers askew, on the middle tier of the temple stairs and looked down into the chaos of the carnival below. The lowest steps were full of people hugging, kissing and laughing together, but up here it was peaceful enough. No one wanted to go through the trouble of walking up, particularly since there were no festive activities to be up in the temple – just prayers, and the carnival folk found their prayer in the wild piping of flutes or at the bottom of a cup of wine. It was just as well. The Capricorn wanted to have little part with the celebration. He would rather sit here and be alone.

The Capricorn wondered. He should have resonated to that human ecstasy down below. It should have pushed his mind to ravenous hunger, an uncontrollable urge to swoop down like a falcon and sink his claws craving passion into the deliciously beating hearts of mortals. That was his hunger, the desire for human emotion, which had earned him the reputation of a seducer, the eater of mortal souls. Gods and heroes fought him. It was glorious, and it was wicked – he flaunted his beauty in the open, and he hid like a spider, weaving his web. He was the God of Unsated Lust.

Then why did he not feel like this now? Power cascaded in his halo, the power of his divine will and dominance. Why did he not employ this power as frivolously as he had used to?

Sadly he looked into this carnival that slowly pulsed its way through the lower levels of the Tradewhisper City of Letion. He was sad. Sad because his lustful desires had lost their meaning. Sad because the tempting human fates swirling before his eyes were so insignificant. Sad because he had come to feel toward one man what, before this, he had felt toward all

A sandalled foot trod heavily just next to him. The Capricorn jerked up sharply. It was a monk, in orange trousers and a yellow tunic. The monk was deathly still, face like a meditation pattern, eyes staring right ahead. On smelling the scent of his soul, the Capricorn realised the monk had drunk himself out of his wits. Slowly the monk continued his way down, one step and one foot at a time, carefully as if the slightest misplaced move could topple him over.

The Capricorn ruffled his halo of spikes and peacock feathers, and experienced the shadow of loneliness gliding over his heart. It was pitiful. A single man held sway over his heart, the heart of a god who held mortal minds on the palm of his hand and crushed them in one intoxicating moment of bliss. Yet he could not help longing after him. The Capricorn watched the drunken monk make his pendulum-like way down the stairs, and sighed profoundly on each heavy step taken. Always he had consumed the love of others, driven by never-ending hunger – now he wanted to give his love to someone else.

What was he to do? He did not understand. The power at his fingertips – his halo flickering gorgeously around his perfect shoulders – his faultless marble body – what use were these? He had come to desire only one man, and felt powerless.

“Curses! Are you still around?”

The Capricorn grimaced. He did not need to turn to know it was Geno Deloi. The smell of his soul, like crushed rock scraped on skin, was distinct enough. Summoning the vestiges of his demigod pride, the Capricorn rose and, although it put more and more of a strain on him, forced power through his halo. The feathers renewed themselves, gleamed in the violet sunlight, reflecting little rainbows, the spikes shone silver-like, and the rusted iron arcs crowned his head and shoulders.

“Yes, Geno Deloi,” he said. “I am here. Are you going to try and chase me away again?” He tried to sound like a king, but felt the words lowered his status to that of a fool.

“You're a bag of wind,” Geno grunted, hobbling down the stairs and sitting down heavily. “A bird that's been beaten by the cat. It wouldn't be worth it.”

Looking down on Geno, the Capricorn noticed with some pleasure that his hair was still lustreless, resembling a patch of tempest-levelled corn field. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes shadowed by big black lumps. It was astonishing that Geno had survived the Capricorn's seduction as well as he had – there was a frightening undercurrent to the scent of Geno's essence, as if an angry beast was sleeping somewhere deep within. Yet Geno was no godling or a majesty. Still, it pleased the Capricorn to see the proud warrior in a shaky physical condition.

“You weren't the cat that beat me, Geno,” the Capricorn reminded him pridefully. Though with all the power of his immortal mind he wished that were true. Geno grunted again and made to get up, and the Capricorn noticed he tried his best to hide his failing legs and stinging sides.

“I can give you a beating here and now if you'd like,” Geno growled, though it sounded more like a wheeze, and turned his glaring, ice-cold eyes to him. The Capricorn stared back levelly. He was immortal to hunger and harm. He was immortal to pain and age. Certainly he was immortal to this poor man's feeble physical threats.

“That puzzles me, Geno Deloi. I am here, and I know you want to kill me on account of what I did to you. Yet why don't you?”

The icy fire of Geno's eyes flashed, nearly flickered out. His teeth were bared in a glimpse of a snarl, then he sat down again, more heavily this time, more painfully. He did not answer, and that truly puzzled the Capricorn. The interplay of honour, pride, bravery and code of combat swirled before his eyes and around Geno in lines of striking red and bold gold, and everything in it told him that here was a warrior who had every reason to kill him but, paradoxically, would not.

Geno wrinkled his nose at empty air, and began checking the straps and strings of his bag and sword-belt. The Capricorn noticed only now that Geno looked prepared to leave this place. He wondered why that was. Geno's face was thin and pasty, eyes withdrawn, the facial bones shining through the skin; in a word, he did not look fit for travel. He looked like a sick, old man just out of bed. Perhaps it was the strange fire inside him, the wild devil that drove him on. The Capricorn frowned.

When he had seduced this man, this Geno Deloi, he had drawn deeply from him, drunk all his passion until nothing had remained. Yet here he was, alive as if his soul had never been siphoned from him. Mortals were weak, they fell like weeds before the scythe. But this weed, Geno, had somehow bent around the scythe. The Capricorn's frown deepened. It was as if he had merely sank his fangs into the surface of a greater being – yet smell as he might, Geno Deloi did not give off a godling scent.

“You are leaving? Where is Moraya?”

“In the temple, talking to the monks. We'll be gone – ah, here he is.”

The Capricorn's skin was doused in ice. His halo flared up, trying to display all its glory, in an instinctive attempt to seduce, captivate, attract attention. Here, standing on the steps to the temple, modest and moody, was the man he had fallen for.

He was unremarkable. Moraya, too, had as if grown old. His dark hair looked brittle and was swept into a loose tail; his thin hands looked skeletal; his lips were colourless and eyes without light. Yet this man aroused emotions in the Capricorn's heart. Strange emotions, desires to protect and be protected, desires to surrender completely – feelings of weakness, insane strength, teary-eyed relief – emotions that were alien to his demigod heart.

The Capricorn wanted to rush to him, wanted to embrace him and kiss him, and wanted Moraya to do the same for him. With a glance like the crack of a whip, Moraya told him to stay away. He went to his twin brother and helped him up. Together they descended the stairs, down toward the hum and roar of the carnival.

It tore the Capricorn's heart. He did not know what to call it. A feeling of dithering between two impossibles, maybe, or like sitting by a fire that both burned like death and warmed like life. He did not know what to do. He was a demigod, demon and idol of a thousand realms, but here he felt alone and abandoned. He, who was perfect in himself. He, who contained the universe in his heart and toyed with it at his will. Yet now he could not find that strength in him. It was gone and only helplessness remained. He saw no alternative but to vainly trail after the man whom he loved.

They plunged into the feast. The Capricorn did not let Moraya out of his sight for one moment. He forced his halo to flare out, the peacock feathers slamming aside those who were too slow to get out of his way. A smiling sea of faces drifted past on either side. Music swirled in the air, interchangeable with the cheering, the laughter, the drunken roar. Paper talismans fluttered in clouds, like snow. Moraya's back receded in the crowd.

The rush of people became wilder, more powerful, and the Capricorn found he had to shove his way forward. The press of vibrant bodies felt like tentacles trying to grasp him. The commotion dissolved in his ears into a clamour of senseless noise, and he pushed it back in his mind. He did not want to lose sight of Moraya. Nothing else was purposeful.

The twins stopped at a booth. Living green streamer flew overhead and cascaded in the shrieking crowd; the Capricorn again had to force his way through. Fingers smeared red paint on his marble-like body. It stuck. That should have surprised him, but he hardly noticed. He pushed his way to Moraya.

Moraya was looking at some trinkets, back turned to him. There were people shoulder to shoulder, thick like a wall. Geno was not in sight. The Capricorn braved it; he flowed forward, reached his arm and touched Moraya's shoulder, connected. Moraya turned, abruptly, giving an oath. It was not Moraya.

The Capricorn stared wildly into the eyes of a bearded man. His hand was still on the man's shoulder; the roar of the carnival was muted, as if a thick blanket of ash had fallen down. The bearded man backed off, turned, blended into the crowd. The Capricorn was left alone, and he was lost.

He tried to escape. The surging of people everywhere, the scent of their souls, the knowledge that he could destroy them with but a touch but did not want to, was driving him mad. He bumped onto priests and peddlers, stumbled onto the arms of masked women, pushed them away. Twice he fell and had to scramble away from trampling feet. That he was weak enough to stumble should have surprised him, but somehow, it did not. He had forgotten his halo, and it trailed after him, abandoned and miserable.

He found relief from a narrow lane. It ran parallel to the festive street but was quiet, one or two souls dashing here and there, confined between rows of tightly-packed houses. The orange plaster was cracked. The stones were lined with human refuse. People had as much of their household out on the street as inside the cramped houses. It reeked.

“Rotting damn, look at yourself, man!” Somebody stood in a doorway, legs apart, glaring scorn at him. The Capricorn took support from a wall and looked down into a pail of water.

“I am beautiful,” he said. “I am the vision of perfection. My skin is like marble, cold and impenetrable to hate and harm, soft and supple to lust. My face is the sunrise, glowing with desire. Living fire nestles at my feet and in my palms. My halo is bright, steely, proud as a peacock...”

He did not recognise himself from these words. A naked, dirty youth stared at him from the water of the pail. Long wisps of paper hung from his neck and shoulders, and his abdomen was filthy with vomit. A small cut on his forearm had caked with black, crusted blood. The Capricorn could not believe it: he was painted with things mortals painted themselves with.

The Capricorn looked up and down the alley. He dreaded going back to the celebration, so he walked up the crooked lane, skirting boxes and barrels and stepping into puddles of filth. He wanted to find Moraya. He did not want to be away from him, but here he was, lost. The thin strands of human souls still streamed in torrents everywhere around him, but he could hardly discern them from each other. What was happening to him? Normally he should have been able to pick out any soul-strand from that mass without effort; now it was just incomprehensible jumble. He was completely lost.

In too short a time the festive street loomed ahead of him. He looked around in bewilderment. Wishing to avoid the street at all costs, he turned and went through an open door. It was pleasantly quiet inside, though he still felt the throbbing of soul-strands everywhere. It was becoming like a headache. Knowing that the strands belonging to the twins would be slightly different did not help; he could not make sense of anything right now. All that existed was the coarse world before him, and it made him want to retch.

The corridor ended too fast, and opened too insolently into a room full of boisterousness, tables packed with eaters and drinkers, people singing at the back. The Capricorn was about to turn and leave, when a woman in a nearby table grabbed his arm. She was laughing, eyes staring in different directions. She pulled him down to a seat, held to his arm, and just kept laughing, neither eye focusing on him. Even this close, the Capricorn could not make out her individual soul among the rest; all that he could see before him was an insanely laughing woman with a pair of mismatching eyes. He wanted to go, but she clung to him.

Suddenly the table was laid with bowls of steaming food. Men and women stuck their fingers in the brown, greasy masses and began to eat. Jokes flew. People laughed with food in their mouths. A man was salivating on the table, with another reaching over him for the food. Someone urged the Capricorn to eat. Friendly looks were cast his way. He did not see warmth in any of them; there was just a churning feel in the pit of his stomach, a strange, base feeling that he was only now becoming familiar with; the desire to throw up.

A girl grabbed his hand and thrust it deep into a bowl of lukewarm stew. Before he could resist, she had forced his hand into his mouth. He tasted the grease, the sickening, sharp sweetness of meat, and the burning tang of salt. His stomach heaved, and he pushed away from the table, feeling sudden shame at being sick before others. Unfortunately, the leg of his chair hit something and toppled over.

Then he was wiping the floor with his face. A roar went up in the room, and hands clapped wood, flesh, his back. Strong hands wrenched him up like a blast of wind, and the hot mouth of a man pressed against his. The Capricorn closed his eyes – ghosts of ridicule swam past him in a dream – and he struck with his fists. A body crashed down, and pottery was smashed. The clamour of laughter changed to din of chaos.

He fought his way out of the tavern and onto the street. Dancers and drunkards fell on his way, and he flailed his arms in panic, striking them down. He ran down a length of steps, hearing the rapid flap of bare feet behind him, and then suddenly a gush of cold water hit him in the face. Someone hit him across the shins with a wooden baton, and he fell. His face was buried in riverside mud.

The Capricorn watched the river flow past, grey and ugly, as they beat him. He smelled the scent of liquor through his nose, not through their souls, and knew they were drunk. He watched the river flow past. He watched the little brown eddies dance with trampled paper lamps, bits of broken wood, smashed vegetables. He felt each and every beat of the stick on his bare back.

The tears came with the pain. Their hot stream from his eyes was a release. He cried because he felt pain, and because he had lost his love, but most of all because he did not understand what was happening to him. He was a demigod... but why was he in the gutter? He was an immortal... so why did the world overwhelm him?

After a while the beating stopped and the Capricorn realised he was alone. His body was afire, and dirt and sweat had squirmed into his wounds, making them sting. With a bitter groan, he realised he had come to learn what pain was. Yet there was something meaningful in the sharp yet dull, strong yet silent, physical sensation. He crawled on, trying to think what it was.

The world laughed at him. It had lost its lustre, it was gutted and ugly, and it was mocking him. He had become a worm, and did not understand how it had happened. Mind dull, he slipped into the water.

The Capricorn did not know how to swim. The current took him, and plunged him underwater. He gasped, and foul liquid filled his mouth. He gagged, gasped again, drunk water. The current tossed his body, and he thrashed, striking the water as if it were a foe. Fear welled up inside him. Part of him wanted to resign, part of him wished to fight. He drank more and more water, and felt a curious sensation. The fear subsided. Had he known death, he might have thought it approaching. Now he simply felt peace.

He did not know what happened, exactly. There were moments of blackness. His body became numb and cold. Suddenly he was out of the water, on the riverbank, coughing, throwing up, his stomach muscles trying to beat everything out of his system. The pain, again. The pain in so many forms. What was the pain trying to say?

Then he realised strong hands picked him up. They were not hostile, they did not beat him. He was taken, dragged. Stone under his leg, sliding cold like snakes. The scent of incense, dancing in the air, begged him to sleep. He was laid down on a reed mattress.

Bit by bit, clear realisation of where he was returned. A bald man in a robe stood sat near him, muscular arms bare. The Capricorn lay under a coarse blanket. The bald man went inside. The Capricorn saw he was lying outside a small shrine by the river. It was quiet. There were no sounds of festival, and the sense of crowds was gone.

“Are you awake? Drink this. Here, I'll help you.”

And he was helped up. A cup of something hot was brought to his lips. He drank. He coughed, and the liquid spilled, spattering on his breast like a touch of warm fingers. He drank more, and warmth returned to him. The bald man was over him, and the Capricorn looked him in the eye. The man smiled, and it was the first truly benevolent smile he had seen in a long time.

“Swimming during the Festival of the Pogekrain,” the bald man said, still smiling, “is not a smart thing to do.”

The Capricorn coughed, and a sting of pain rippled through his chest. He gasped.

“Does it hurt? Try to be at ease.”

“Who are you?” the Capricorn asked, clutching his chest. The bald man set the cup aside.

“A monk. I maintain the shrine.”

“Shrines are for gods.” He did not know why he said it. The monk shook his head.

“Shrines are for ideals.”

The Capricorn attempted to get up. The monk tried to stop him, but he persisted, saying he wanted to move. The monk helped him. His feet tingled and his head felt light. Every fibre of his muscles was throbbing. His eyes stung. “I hurt,” he said. “It is strange. Why do I hurt.”

The monk laughed, and helped him inside the shrine. There was not much to see there, as the inside was as bare as the outside. A single candle burned on a simple wooden altar. Behind it the wall had been torn down and gave a view to a barren slope. The monk led him to watch this view. The slope was dotted with low mounds pierced with shabby wooden sticks adorned with a number of things salvaged probably from the river. A cemetery.

“You hurt because you're alive,” the monk said simply, leaving him to the view and went to a stack of papers sitting in one corner of the shrine. The smell of incense came from the burning candle. It was the only thing that did not cause hurt in this place: the floor was cold, the air was rasping dry, the light piercing.

That was it. That was the answer. Pain told him he still lived. But it was wrong. Mortals felt pain. Gods felt elation. He watched the cemetery, hands on his knees, watched bits of rags tied to the poles flutter. The graves were where mortals slept, where they did not feel pain any longer, where they were dead. Painless existence in the grave. Painful to live. The Capricorn got up.

“Hey, where are you going? You're not well, fool!”

He did not answer, but hobbled down the slope to the cemetery. The monk did not follow him. The Capricorn walked past the graves on sore feet, and the graves stared sullenly. He was drawn to something at the far end of the field. He walked on, scraps of sharp stones pricking his soles, tiny knives constantly reminding him what he felt, who he was.

Two graves, side by side. He stood before them disbelieving. A sword was stuck at the head of one. The Capricorn recognised it; it was Geno's sword. At the head of the other grave, tied to a crooked pole, was a strip of gauzy cloth. The Capricorn knew it as well, even better. The owner of the cloth still lingered in his mind, calling for his love. The Capricorn stood over Moraya's grave and stared. He was choking.

The grave had been partly dug open. It looked like the work of some animal. The grave was shallow. Bones stuck out of the disturbed earth. They had been gnawed.

Everything was clear, clear as the sky, as water and as air, clear as the purest snow. The Capricorn had fallen. He had loved, and he had lost. Like all the things he had ever desired, Moraya, too, had died. Now only pain remained, everywhere in his body, from his fingertips to his toes, and purest, strongest of all in his heart, his heart that beat with life. He walked out of the cemetery, heading for the hills beyond.

Harsh brown earth gradually began growing grass. The Capricorn's feet tread on a soft carpet, and the sun came out to warm him. The hills undulated in gentle ups and downs, never too steep, and the weather in the tiny vales was calm and serene. Under the shade of ashes and oaks birds piped timidly. The Capricorn wandered aimlessly, only the pain in his heart as his guide. The world was blooming, beautiful, but he did not know what to make of it.

He knelt beside a small stream that ran under the roots of gnarled elms. Dragonflies stirred the air over his head, sparkling in the sunlight. He reached out his hand, not to demand anything, but simply as a plea. To his surprise, one dragonfly settled onto his finger. Its long, powerful body gleamed in blues, greens and burning oranges. The wings were cascades of ephemeral colours. It buzzed away, and the Capricorn felt the tiniest breath of wind as it went. The beautiful insect disappeared in the interplay of sun and shadow amid the trees.

“Beautiful, isn't it / to be a mortal...”

The Capricorn cried out. He turned, but there was no one there. It had been a mere whisper, a few words delivered by the wind. His heart beat fast and filled him to the brim with energy. It was strange energy, altogether different from his godly power that swelled and ebbed, crushing and vast. This was subtler. It was the strength of small passions, of simple things like gestures or kind words. Was this what mortals felt?

The pain in his heart did not subside but grew. The Capricorn embraced it. He dug his fingernails hard into his palms to bring even more pain, to savour it. He smiled. Whistling, he crossed the brook. In a few moments, he, too, had vanished in the shadowplay of the forest, like the dragonfly.