Shattered Ruins

 after an old Japanese fairy tale

   There were two brothers. Armand, the elder, was a hunter of sorts — he spent his life tracking, running, chasing shadows through the Wasatch foothills. He thrived on movement, on the snap of bowstring or the flash of a deer vanishing into scrub oak. His strength was in his legs, his bright eyes, his tireless lungs.

   The younger, Daniel, was different. He was a dreamer. He lingered in coffee shops and library basements, writing in notebooks filled with half-formed poems, maps of stars, and sketches of impossible architecture. His voice was gentle, his thoughts even gentler, and when he sang, it was always of things unseen — gods, fairies, or forgotten rivers beneath the city.

   On a warm summer morning, Armand disappeared into the canyons above Red Butte, bow on his shoulder. Daniel, instead, wandered downtown. He trailed the city creek as it slid beneath bridges, past murals and broken glass, until he reached a block where an abandoned church squatted behind a chain-link fence.

   The building leaned, its once-white stone streaked with rain and soot. A hundred cracked steps climbed to its barred doors, where two gargoyle-like lions hunched, worn by decades of weather.

   Daniel pressed his palm to the fence. “Fairy money,” he whispered, thinking of the yellow mimulus blossoms he had gathered earlier by the stream. “Enough to buy all the joys of another world.” He smiled, slipped through a hole in the chain link, and began climbing the stairs.

   The stone lions creaked and shifted. Their heads turned. Slowly, they rose from their haunches and padded behind him.

   Inside, the air was thick with mildew, candle smoke, and rain dripping through broken rafters. Dust motes swirled like incense. In the dim light, tarnished mirrors reflected fractured images of Daniel’s face — a dozen pairs of eyes, each darker than his own.

   From the shadows came singing. A man stepped forward, taller than any living soul, his skin aglow with a youth that seemed embalmed rather than eternal. He carried a child in his arms, no more than a year old, swaddled and silent.

   “What babe is that?” Daniel asked, his voice trembling.

   The stranger smiled thinly. “No babe, dreamer. A spirit.”

   “And you… who are you?”

   “I am the one who gathers children,” the man murmured. “The abandoned, the stillborn, the ones whose cries echo in the city drains beneath your feet. They wander here, piling stones in the alleys and gutters, making towers that are torn down each night. When they weep, I hush them. When they beg, I hide them in my sleeves. Touch one, dreamer, and feel how light and cold they are.”

   The child’s small hand twitched, pale as smoke. Daniel shuddered.

   The man paced the ruined nave, rocking the spirit-child, humming a lullaby that scraped the edges of sanity.

   And then — a woman appeared, robed in grey, silver sandals glinting on the wet floorboards. Her face was gentle, unbearably so. “I am Mercy,” she said. “I refused eternal rest. My arms are many, my hands full of gifts. When you dream, you will see me drifting in a dugout canoe across the Great Salt Lake, carrying the forgotten.”

   Daniel bowed his head. “Lady… Lady Gwendolyn…”

   The air shifted. Music, like water through stone. A voice sang from the shadows — low, resonant, intimate. A woman in blue stepped forth, her eyes dark as storm clouds. Around her feet coiled serpentine forms, scales glistening, eyes like molten opal.

   “I am Benten,” she said. “Goddess of flood and song. My dragons sleep beneath the valley. Do you not hear them breathing beneath the city streets?”

   Behind her tumbled a crowd of laughing boys, faces cherubic and cruel, arms reaching out. “Come to our cool caverns, dreamer. Come play among the drowned.”

   Figures came and went, each stranger than the last. The God of Roads, attended by apes who covered their eyes, ears, mouths. A gaunt woman wrapped in funeral rags, clutching garments torn from the dead too poor to buy passage across the river. They pressed closer, whispering, their eyes filled with hunger.

   And Daniel stood in the ruined shrine as the storm outside deepened, rain hammering the roof, the city beyond reduced to shadow and thunder. He swayed, transfixed, lips parted in awe.

   Then — a crash. Boots striking wet stone. A lantern’s beam slashed the darkness.

   “Daniel!”

   Armand burst through the door, hair plastered with rain, eyes sharp, frantic. “Brother, where are you?”

   Daniel turned, smiling faintly. “I am here.”

   Armand caught him, gripping his shoulders with both hands. “Half the night I’ve been searching — through alleys, up by the creek. I thought— God, I thought I lost you.”

   “I have been with the gods,” Daniel whispered. His eyes were wide, shining. “They are all around us.”

   Armand lifted the lantern, sweeping its light across the church. The golden glow revealed nothing but rows of toppled statues, their faces eroded, their limbs broken. Stone lions crouched again at the threshold, their eyes blind and empty.

   “I see no gods,” Armand said flatly.

   Daniel tilted his head. “What do you see, then?”

   “Shattered ruins,” Armand murmured. “Only stone. And grey rubble.”

   “They are grey because they are sad,” Daniel insisted. “Sad because they are forgotten.”

   Armand pulled his brother toward the doorway, rain drenching them both.

   Daniel breathed deeply, almost blissful. “Ah… how sweet the city smells after the storm. Like flowers blossoming in a meadow.”

   Armand tightened his grip. “Bind your shoes, Daniel. We’ll race home. Before the night takes hold.”

   Behind them, in the broken shrine, something stirred and smiled, unseen in the shadows.