Story-Eater, Spin a Yarn of Chaos
by Xan van Rooyen
Climber, tattoo collector, and peanut-butter connoisseur, Xan van Rooyen is an autistic, non-binary storyteller from South Africa, currently living in Finland. They are the author of several short stories, novels, and are part of the Sauuti Collective. Find Xan online @xan_writer
Tonight I find myself in the presence of a god.
We sit with the fire-pit and the weight of their story between us, their face curdled by shadow. My body aches despite the warmth, every joint pulsing with splintered-wood pain, the toll of my travels etched in skin and bone.
“You understand the bargain?” My voice is steady; my fingers tremble.
“I know what you are.” Their gaze flicks to the scars on my arms where other tales have gnawed through flesh to rewrite my sinews. “Are you ready?”
I brace myself. This is what I came for. What I begged of them. What I need. “Only if you vow to tell the truth.” I offer them my blade. “Our bargain must be struck in blood.”
They sneer at the proffered knife and raise their hand to the shadows instead. A quick tightening of their eyes, a twitch of their jaw, and they remove their hand from the rumbling darkness. Their palm bears a tattered crescent where fangs have gouged a crooked grin. “Sufficient?”
I nod and catch at the beads dripping from their skin, watch them splash then sink into the scar-tissue filigree mapping my wrists. “A vow for truth and completion.”
“Our contract blood-signed,” they say with a wry smile and pitiless eyes.
“Then you may begin.” I brace for the impending onslaught.
“May I?”
“Apologies.” I forget this is no vagabond demon, nor some exiled angel searching for redemption. And I forget I was human once, though now I’m scraped up road-smear remnants stretched to fit this body, thinned and thinning and still doing penance. “I’m ready.”
The god cuts me a curious glance as I squirm against the hard earth, molding my shoulder blades to the rock behind me. It retains some heat from the day’s baking and blocks the wind screaming through the woods that pin us against the cliff.
The wind quietens as they inhale, shadows grazing their lips with tentative fingers, before they spit the first words. “The enmity of my siblings often drove me from Pohjola into the deeper darkness of our grandparents’ realm.” The god catches a spark coughed up by the fire. It hovers above their palm, the atoms coming apart with the subtle tremor of their long fingers.
“Sibling spite, and the allure of taunting an undead swan,” the god continues, the story a slow unraveling.
I grasp the loose threads and spool it inwards.
“Darkness coats Tuonela like honey fresh-squeezed from the hive. Loss, sorrow, absence—the sweet odors you’d expect of the dead. But also relief, a more subtle perfume. There, the constant night is illuminated only by flickering wisps according to my grandmother’s whim.”
“Liekkiöt?” The word scrapes raw over my travel-rimed lips.
“You know them.” Their eyes catch the flames. “But you cannot know how the glow of murdered souls turns the snow silver and putrescent.” A smile slices their face and I wince. “To some it might be as exquisite as the blade pressed to a throbbing throat. We never saw it that way. To us, it was simply our playground.”
“Littered with bones.”
“Oh no, my grandparents keep a tidy house.”
I begin to carve apologies from the air between us, but they shush me with a raised finger. “To get into Tuonela even we have to cross the river, rarely a problem unless our Aunt’s dory was too full of ghosts. I say we although I was ever alone, ostracized, ignored. …Of course it was like that,” they berate the shadows congealed beyond the reach of the firelight. “You remember their taunts, their fists, and disgust.” The shadows ripple. The god sighs and runs a hand through their hair. The strands glint as iridescent as a magpie’s wing.
“Sometimes Rupi, number six, accompanied me. He tolerated my existence better than the rest. Seemed to enjoy tormenting my grandmother’s pet as much as I. Ten of us,” they answer the question still blooming in my mind. “And no, we are all ourselves, sharing only the blood of our mother and breath of our father.”
I had no siblings; couldn’t imagine sharing a legacy with nine. Though the only legacy I have is error and dust.
“We don’t even look all that much alike. … well, that is your opinion.” The shadows ebb and flow, sticky fronds like grappling fingers snagging on their shoulder, elbow, knee.
“You are—”
“The ninth,” they say. “The abomination.” They stroke the ink-spill spreading across their lap. “The swan of Tuonela has gaping sockets with emptiness for eyes, a beak gore-stained and offal-dripping, and marimba-jangle feathers of shredded human skin.”
They flick their fingers and god-blood mingles with flame. The monstrosity coalesces, seethes, cold magic dancing.
When I hold my breath, I hear the music plucked from the chimes of the bird’s pinions and its emptiness peers back at me from between the embers.
“Its webbed feet are tipped with obsidian claws, its body peppered with the skulls of the damned drowned in the churning river.”
“It’s—”
“The realm of the dead. If you wanted harps and ambrosia you should’ve begged another traveler for their tale.”
My skin blisters beneath their glare.
“The game we played was a simple one: the first to pluck a skull from the swan claimed victory. When played together, we’d goad the beast to frenzy. Whoever so much as wet a toe in the river, had to forfeit. The prize was the skull of course, and the sense of triumph, the joy of provoking savagery from the swan, of seeing your sibling flail bloody in the currents.”
“Were you ever—” I cough the weariness from my lungs and wash grit from my teeth with a last swig of water. “—afraid?”
“Why would we be afraid?” A crow cock of their head. “We couldn’t die and whatever injuries we received would heal. Paise, the fifth, even lost an eye once, remember that?” They turn to the shadows. “—I laughed because he deserved it, clumsy and careless.” They twirl their fingers and I watch the conjured swan fall like a scythe upon a figure wrought of ash, hear the wet crush of a skewered eyeball.
“But that day…” the god continues in a voice as crisp as spring snow, as rich as rain-tilled soil. They haven’t told me their name yet and I dare not ask.
“The souls were unsettled. The restless dead howled as they roamed, their shrieks scouring the frozen tundra. The river was a froth of iron and rot, which kept our aunt occupied leaving Rupi and I free to play.” Another smile and I touch my beard-scruffed cheek, fingers damp where the god’s gaze cut me.
“The swan was more agitated than usual, slashing at the souls trying so desperately to crawl back to life. Hopeless, pointless, but most don’t know they’re dead, not yet, only that they’re drowning in boiling blood.”
The copper on my tongue is only from thirst, I assure myself, and a day spent chewing dust, searching, hunting, pulled toward the next story trapped and in need of release. Now I have my quarry, I must be patient.
“I bet my brother I would take a skull from the swan’s crown, a wreath of smaller craniums—”
I flinch.
“Infants die too,” they say, each syllable frosted with the North Wind’s chill.
Oh, I know. I know the fragility of infant necks and sponge-soft heads.
“Rupi said it was too dangerous, said it would be enough to snatch a bone from the bird’s tail given the frenzy. A war, a plague? Could’ve been one of us, I didn’t note the dealings of my siblings.” They turn again to the shadows now gathered at their ankles and trickling over their toes.
“A more challenging game, and one more rewarding. We began, or rather I did. Instead of trying to provoke the swan, Rupi did his best to distract it, aiding rather than sabotaging my efforts.”
Silence. The god’s exhalations string the night with constellations that snap and stretch as they rise through the branches and graze a shimmer across the leaves, spangling the clouds before disappearing.
“But that’s not how the game worked,” the god says.
Carefully, I feed another log to the devouring flames.
“It wasn’t supposed to be an opportunity for kindness or collaboration. It was meant to be a battle. We were made for suffering. When not inflicting disaster upon the human world, we had to find entertainment elsewhere, to hone our skills, to anticipate the destiny for which we’d been whittled.” The shadows claw at their chest, leaving welts on the pale skin visible through the shredded fabric. “Mother encouraged us; Father didn’t care. Does the wind feel guilt for uprooting trees in a storm?”
“I—” Frown, huddle deeper in my cloak as the cold sharpens its claws on my spine, as the question lodges like an arrow between my ribs.
“My mother sculpted us from her gore. My father—” They peer upwards as the wind rattles the branches and tousles our hair.
“Only my sister mattered. Never allowed to bleed in case Mother’s worst fears were made manifest. That’s exactly how it was—” They scoop darkness from their lap and shake it from their palms. “Her name was Painajainen and her veins writhed with terror.”
Nightmare.
“But they never called her abomination, not even when Mother proved susceptible. I hope my darling sister revises the schematics for future generations.” Slowly, the spattered shadow creeps forward.
I sift saliva and courage through my teeth. “You can procreate?”
“Is it odd the spawn of Death may breed?” They nudge a pebble, foot bare, toes long and capped with jagged nails. “Not that I ever will.”
How I wish I never had.
“May I continue?” Another glance; another sting across the cheek. I blot the gash with my sleeve as I nod.
“I almost had it, the skull was in my hand. The swan thrashed, furious, bucking and honking, ululating a dozen death spells that turned our thoughts to water and tears to acid. I would’ve succeeded despite the bird’s histrionics had the algae-brained fowl not allowed a soul to escape. One became two became many and still I clung to its serpent-weaving neck, determined to wrench my prize from its head.” Their laughter is the snap of wild lightning, the seismic judder of a quake. I jerk, hand pressed to my ribs fractured by their amusement.
“By the time I understood Rupi’s screaming, it was too late. With a particularly savage twist of its neck, the swan flung me to the shore. Souls streaked past me, fleeing toward life. Battered and soaked in viscera, I hauled myself to my feet, incensed I’d have to forfeit. I rose only to meet the tip of another aunt’s spear.” The image in the flames warps, heat weaving a different picture and I choke back my rising gorge.
“Kalma is a lot like our mother, only worse. Tasked with protecting Tuonela’s borders and destroying any who attempts escape, she’s as hard as the onyx blades she carries, as keen as the spear-tip she held at my throat.” They press a hand to their neck and the shadows curl beneath their ear like the hangman’s rope.
“Surma, her dog-shaped pet the size of a bear, mauled the unlucky souls bolting from the river. It left nothing of them, not even their memories, chewing up their lives and spitting out the gristle. All they had been vanished in that relentless maw.”
For several moments, the god stares into the flames and my cheek scabs as I watch a small figure raise hands made of cinders.
“Rupi came to my defense, but I wasn’t sorry, and I didn’t want him putting apologies on my tongue or making excuses. I shoved him away and stared at Kalma. What was she going to do, run me through? She couldn’t kill me.” A pause, a breath. “I am Kaaos,” they say and it is a molten rupture of earth, the vortex swirl of the cosmos, the vacuous swallow in the wake of dying stars.
The god’s name.
It twists a hook inside me, their story finding purchase between my organs.
“She said my name as if it tasted more foul than the string of intestines caught between her cavity-riddled teeth, her tongue cratered with frost-bite. Her skin crackled with the scuttle and thrum of carrion insects and—I am not exaggerating. Would you prefer to tell this story?” They snarl, thin lips pulled cadaver-tight. “You weren’t even there yet, how would you know?” They complete their admonishment and the shadows settle once more, a mantle across their shoulders.
“Kalma gestured to the tumult our game had caused as both dog-monster and swan-beast attempted to catch the souls trying to tear their way to freedom. ‘You will be punished.’ Her words sunk through my skin and weighed down my bones, each syllable an anvil. With a look, she drove me to my knees, her spear still aimed at the soft depression of my throat.”
The shadows condense between the god’s clavicles. My own hand rises to the same spot, pressing hard until I wince, the pain a reminder that I live.
“Perhaps I should’ve been more wary of a daughter of Death. She drew back her spear and I raised my head—I think the word you’re looking for is defiant—” A rasp like serpent scales, just shadow laughter.
“I caught the spear and snapped the tip clean off the shaft.”
“Is that so?” The momentary temerity seizes in my chest and stoppers the breath in my lungs. The words ring hollow in my ear, turn to mist as I splutter, the shape of the tale distorting with the lie.
“I threw the broken ends of the weapon at her feet and sauntered out of Tuonela. Just like that,” they say, repeating the last part as if saying so could make it true. Their injured hand trembles as the flames singe a different tale across the air.
“I’m here for the truth. You made a vow.” I gesture to the marks on their palm. “It won’t work unless you’re honest.”
“You came to my fire.” All growl and bluster.
“And you accepted my services.”
“You need my tale,” they say. “I know what you must’ve done to deserve this.”
“Each drowning soul recognizes the other in the whirlpool.” I quote from the scripture used to snare me in the prison of my flesh, my affliction the sentence I deserve—the one I begged the priestess to bestow.
Silence between us. Moments stretched taught, time elastic as the god stares unblinking at the cinders, as stars whirl and die and moons fracture above us. My sinews strain, blood bubbling. I dab at my nose and ears, close my eyes against the pressure, breath fettered in my lungs like cobweb, like ghosts, like remorse.
Finally, the god relents so lie might become truth.
Kaaos speaks. “Even now, all these centuries later I hear it as if he were right beside me.” The flames paint the scene of snapping cartilage, crushed bone, sheared flesh. “I taste his fear, our sibling connection a screaming umbilical. I feel—” The god gasps and the shadows slip into their hair, coil tighter about their throat.
I feel that squeeze, that throttle. My own desperate fingers on another neck.
“Watch then, story-eater, and know the tale you want so badly.”
I do not say how they would never have agreed to our bargain had they not been willing—desperate—to share this memory and allay the burden of it.
My eyes are seared by the image of the smaller figure shoved aside by the larger as Kalma released her throw, the spear plunging into a face.
“No anger shuddered through his mind, no hatred suffused his thoughts. All I felt…” A tear carves a rill down the god’s face and lands with a sizzle upon the dirt. “Our aunt’s spear is no mundane weapon,” they say. “One nick of the blade and you can be unmade—an eternal and inexorable decomposition.”
My vision blurs with the memories seeping from the heart they have laid bare before me. I could kick sand across its ragged edges and try to staunch the bleed, but that is not my purpose. Instead, I bring my blade to my palm and open the oldest scar—the one the priestess gifted me.
It’s time.
Kaaos leans forward as I reach a gentle hand toward the damage, letting my hurt mingle with theirs. Slowly, I set about my harvest, tenderly peeling away the layers of false from true, spinning their yarn into my own tapestry. The screams of their brother so like the cries of my own son, relentless, incessant—both cut to sudden silence. Kaaos, a god, suffering hubris. Me, weak and sleep deprived. Both to blame for an accidental demise.
I see their moment of shame—can they see mine?
Rupi’s flesh fell like dried petals from his body. Kaaos could do nothing but bear witness as their brother became beetle fodder. The swan ate his remains, his head sprouting from the bird’s back, jaw wrenched open in contorted rictus.
The tiny skulls upon the swan’s head. Which one had I set in its crown?
“I remember what she said to me.” The god’s words ooze slow and thick.
“It should’ve been you.” The words slip between my teeth as I taste what they cannot forget, letting their tale slither into my veins. “Better perhaps, to let you see your brother suffer knowing he suffers in your place.”
As I now suffer for a lifetime, two, three, for the infant one I stole.
“I’ll never forgive Rupi for what he did that day,” Kaaos says, voice as empty as shed snake-skin.
“He loved you.” The words linger between us before the flames leap to incinerate them. I bite my tongue to keep from screaming as the god’s anger whips strips of flesh from my exposed arms. I clench my fists, fingers curled protectively over the story winnowing deeper. “He did what he did out of love.”
“And for his love my mother flayed me. He was her favorite. Her power ended at the border of Pohjola. She couldn’t save him, her parents indifferent to her pleas. So she set her wrath upon me. Over and over again she broke me.” Their voice cracks and a tree splits, bark blackening and sloughing away. “She let me heal only to tear me asunder once more.” Roots wrenched from earth, branches reduced to kindling. “And then—” They choke as rings of darkness close their throat.
“Exile,” I say. “A harsh punishment.” Undeserved, I think for a childish prank gone awry. I’ve met the discarded and unwanted. The road is pitted with such flotsam, each floundering and wrestling the story caged within. How many have I freed and set upon a new trajectory—how many more must I endure? Will it ever be enough?
It will never be. The priestess, her words a faint echo across the eons as she closed her spell and stitched a new fate to my soul: You are bound to the search, she said, until you are able to forgive yourself.
“Exile,” Kaaos echoes. “Driven from the family that never wanted me. Spurned, detested… forgotten.”
“Not by Rupi.” Still swaddled in swan flesh. “You still have time.”
“Like you, time is all I have.”
They move and I will myself not to recoil as they close the distance between us. Their scent is sulfur, sweet decay, the scorched metal of a forge.
They cup my face and smooth a strand of hair from my blistered forehead. They keep their lambent gaze shuttered behind long lashes, squinting lest their power lacerate too deep and loose the collection simmering in my skin. The newest acquisitions are still restless, not yet written in bone or mired in marrow.
“Is it always like this?” they ask.
“It can be.” I lean into god-touch.
“A harsh punishment indeed.” They have no need to ask what I did.
“Well deserved. I—”
Their thumb wipes away all further explanation from my lips.
“Is it done then?” they ask.
I open my scabbed palm and they trace the story minnows skimming just below the surface as they search for sanctuary, from hand to wrist to elbow, their razor fins breaking the surface of my skin as they write the god’s truth.
“I’m sorry.” Kaaos places a moth-wing kiss on weeping flesh. With unexpected tenderness, they bind the injuries they inflicted upon my arms, using the bandages from my bag.
“Thank you,” they say when the final knot is tied, then return to their side of the fire and I feel their retreat like a scab picked too soon. The shadows welcome the god back with an oily embrace and a jolt of envy turns my stomach.
“I only did as we agreed.”
“Was it worth it?” Kaaos asks.
“We are all what we’re made to be.” I suppress the wriggling resentment buried deep beneath layers subsumed from others. My own tale a brier tangle, a bezoar of the heart.
“My brother loved me,” Kaaos says.
“He may love you still.” My words tumble and bounce across the span between us, a festering wound no longer, but a rift… healing. My part is complete, what comes in the wake of catharsis isn’t up to me.
“Yes, he may.” The shadows flood behind their eyes, tendrils splaying across their face and trailing roots beneath the collar of their tunic as they pour between the god’s lips. Kaaos swallows: guilt, fear, resentment. The shadows leave stains like bruises on their face.
The god’s way is clear now.
They bow and raise two fingers to their lips then pull them away in an offering of silent gratitude.
I accept, tapping two fingers to my chest where the story gnashes beneath my breast bone. Eventually, it too will find its place and settle its feathers to join the myriad others at roost. Kaaos leaves me as night gives way to pre-dawn gray.
Light spills shy across the horizon as I stamp out the embers and gather my belongings. Already, I sense the familiar hum of a fresh tale in need of release drawing me back upon the road, that rutted track I can only trust will one day become the path to salvation.
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