He stoppered the bottle and set it back down. No, the gods didn’t know what he’d done. The gods weren’t heartless. The gods didn’t exist at all.
“So what do you have for me?”
The mountain witch pushed herself up from her reclining position to better face him. She tucked her chin and c****d her birdlike head, her neck so thin that it nodded under the weight of her disheveled hair, oiled and twisted, secured with twine and combs. Long pieces spilled over her shoulders and writhed across the ground. Tiny bells hung from long metal pins decorating the dreadful tresses. When she stood, the bells chirred like crickets, hypnotizing. She was huge. Akito couldn’t take his eyes off the monster as she approached.
“I really have lost everything,” he said.
His body hummed from exhaustion. The sun h
