Page 36 of The Godhead Complex
Roxy was lost in thought. She may not have been his real mom, but he wanted to get to know her—really know her as much as he could before they got to Alaska and things changed. He could look at the rudder later. “Tell us about your grandpa.” He sat on the captain’s bench. “He taught you about the water, what else?”
Roxy sat down next to him and pulled her legs up to her chest as if she was about to tell a proper yarn. “He collected stories from all over. Books, pamphlets, almanacs, whatever he could find, and he’d memorize those stories. He’d travel the country and towns on horseback to find more.” She laughed.
Minho couldn’t picture it. “Your grandpa went around on a horse? Just to tell stories?”
“Why is that so hard to believe?” She scrunched her eyebrows.
Minho didn’t mean to offend her, he just didn’t get it. Traveling to give a warning he understood, because he’d killed many people doing so. Traveling to give aid was another excuse he’d heard often before shooting arrows at trespassers. But traveling to share fairy tales seemed less . . . respectable. It seemed like an unworthy reason to die.
“What, spit it out. Whatever you’re thinking.” Roxy frowned.
He wasn’t sure how to share all that without telling her how many men he’d killed who had been traveling with greater missions. He looked at Orange but she was only watching the ocean. As she should when at the wheel, but it didn’t help him find the right words. “Because there’s no honor in doing so.”
“Honor?” Roxy spat it out as if she’d never heard the word before.
“The reason. The purpose. A need that’s greater than your own.” The Orphan explained as best he could. He didn’t want to say that telling stories wasn’t worth dying for. He knew Orange would understand his perspective.
Roxy shook her head back and forth. “Connectionis the purpose. Without stories, we’re all just barely living. Stories help us understand life so wecanlive. Stories are the glue that hold our bones together. Stories of family. Stories of Old. Stories of make-believe. Didn’t that Nation of yours ever teach you anything?”
“We have rumors in the Remnant Nation. They’re like stories, right?” Orange asked, and Minho tried not to make a face. “Tell us one of yours.” She didn’t take her eyes off the small waves ahead.
“Oh, there were so many.” Roxy tilted her head back as if looking to the cloudless sky might help jog her memory. “People used to come from many towns over just to hear his tales. The ones about the ancient Gods were the stories people loved the most.”
“What ancient Gods?” Minho asked.
“The Elohim.”
He gazed lazily at Orange but she looked just as confused as he did. “What is that?”
“You know, the God with the Angels and the Devil?” Roxy waved her hands in front of her as if that could help them place it. The only God they’d ever heard of while growing up was the Godhead, and those weren’t stories about how to worship them. No. Only ways tokillthe Godhead.
“The Flare was our Devil,” he said. “And our God was the Cure.”
“Still is,” Orange agreed.
Roxy huffed. “The Cure is just a thing. You can’t worship athing.” Minho knew plenty of people who did just that.
She continued. “Most people of old worshiped a God, but not everyone had the same one. Different names, different origin stories, different lands and planets the Gods came from, but one thing that never really changed was the Devil. Evil remained a constant in all tales of old.”
Orange steered the ship, and Minho watched to make sure she continued to favor the right side. To him, evil was evil, no matter what shape, body, or thing it possessed. The Flare would always be his Devil even after he joined the Godhead. And the Evolution was needed to stop that Devil. “This guy have a name?” he asked to appease Roxy.
“Iblis.” She paused. “God commanded all the spirits to bow before man, which he’d created from his own breath, but the spirit named Iblis refused. He wouldn’t bow to anyone but God. He didn’t believe man could be a God.”
“Kinda like the Godhead,” Orange contributed. “People who think they’re Gods and can control the Cure.” What would she think of Minho when she found out his personal mission in Alaska was to join the so-called Godhead? To become one of them, despite the rank he was born into? “I agree with this Iblis fella. Men aren’t Gods.”
Roxy seemed pleased with the conversation. “But by not bowing, Iblis offended God. So much so that he was cast into Hell.”
Minho and Orange looked at each other with wide eyes. They both understood Hell long before these grandpa stories. They hadbeenthere before. It was the lowest level of the Remnant Nation fortress, a place of torture and cruelty. A place to which Minho vowed never to return.
“Oh, we know Hell,” Orange said.
“Yeah,” Minho added. “We’ve both been there.”
“No, no, no.” Roxy laughed. But if she had ever been to their Hell, she wouldn’t have. “Hell is a place you go toafteryou die, where the Devil rules his little scary kingdom. I don’t believe in it, not literally anyway, but some people do.”
Roxy could say Hell was a made-up place all she wanted to, but it was real.
All too real.
