What lives in the mountain has been there for more than tens of thousands of years, long before the village was built. Most people believe it is a god as the entity has the power to create and destroy life, balancing a delicate world on its fingertips. I, who’s seen its true form, refuse to keep silent. I’ve gotten on the soap box and shouted the truth. But no one believes me. I’ve heard them scathingly call me behind my back— the heretic, old witch, and every word synonymous with beast.
When the first families settled on the uninhabited land, having found the soil rich and fertile and the land teeming with animals, the God in the Mountain made its presence felt. First, there was the rumbling ground strong enough to shake the houses and knock off plates from the shelves and disturb furniture from their proper place. Then, a gust of wind blew through the village carrying with it the foulest stench they’d ever smelled. Finally, the vegetation withered, and the animals dropped dead one by one, frothing blood at the mouth.
Frightened by these events, the villagers sought answers and refuge in the church. The answer came to them through the mouths of the dead pigs and bulls the farmers were about to burn in a pit: honor thy new god with the offering of your purest soul. The responsibility of appeasing the lustful appetite of the God in the Mountain, whenever it stirred awake from its deep sleep, fell onto the villagers whose very lives depended on its temperament. And so, the Honoring was created; the day when the god receives its Divine Bride.
After more than a decade of quietude, the signs of the god waking up are once again being felt. The fruits and plants in the garden have rotted. The animals cry all day and night restlessly pacing about in their pens. Then the tremors happen. They start out as a rumble and a gentle shake that lasts for about a split second but each day, they’re growing stronger; the god hungrier. I was in the kitchen when the whole house suddenly and violently quaked. The cabinet doors slammed. The lights flickered, and glass and dishes shattered. My house was left in a mess. As I started cleaning up, a peculiar odor swept in through the broken windows. It churned my stomach. I knew that stench—gas from the bowels of hell. I cautiously stepped out and looked towards the mountain. There, smoke was rising from the summit. I fell to my knees from the heavy dread weighing me down.
An announcement from the Three Fathers arrives in the mailbox: the selection ceremony for the Honoring is to be held.
I put on the wooden mask crafted by a skilled artisan who’d taken pity on me. The mask is to hide the gruesome reminder of my own Honoring. Whenever the villagers catch a glimpse of my face, they recoil in disgust, the children in fear; and even the infants scream in terror. To get anywhere in peace, like the market, I’ve no choice but to wear the mask, though people still gawk, point and whisper.
The whole village pours into the church, sweeping me away in its current. I’m shoved and pushed and then backed into a dark corner when they recognize who I am. I don’t care to be near the front for the best view of the selection ceremony; I already know the ceremonial arrangement and process as I’ve been one of the nominees before. The organist steps onto the stage, and once he starts the first measure of a hymn, conversations cease, and all attention focuses on the entrance where the procession begins.
Two servants in white robes lead the way down the aisle to the altar carrying the sacred candles. Twelve steps behind them is another white-robed servant carrying a bejeweled scepter on a purple velvet pillow, and then another with the ancient scrolls that hold the sacred words of the God in the Mountain. After them is a tall, slender figure in a green and white robe with gold trimmings. The figure has a head with three faces—a horned bull, an old man, and a tusked boar. These are the Three Fathers, through their eyes the god observe its worshippers, and their voices it uses to dictate its wisdom. The villagers revere the Three Fathers, but also fear them. Their faces are of real flesh, each one awake and aware of their surroundings, breathing heavily and gazing intensely at the worshippers.
Then, finally, at the tail end of the procession, walking in two straight files arranged by height, are the twenty nominated girls in white embroidered gowns from ages twelve to nineteen. Their faces bright with anticipation. Every girl’s desire is to be the Divine Bride and ascend with the god to the Great Kingdom where her flesh and blood would become ethereal, and her soul eternal. That is what the Three Fathers assures us.
My head was once full of fantasies. Over the years, having listened to the tales of the God in the Mountain, my curiosity turned to fascination, and fascination turned to a love so intense that my soul felt like it was on fire. I grew hateful toward the other girls who’d also dreamt of being chosen. Only I could be the one! I’d thought back then. How silly I was to think like that. But that was how it was. Those emotions were stirred up by our own flesh and blood, especially our mothers, sizing us up, comparing our charms and complexion—whose skin was fairer and smoother, whose hair was silkier and darker, or whose figure was slimmer. The women of the village drank each other’s gossips like glasses of wine. They grew drunker and giddier the more they consumed.
The Honoring brings out the ugliest in us. I remember how jealousy reared its ugly head when I heard rumors that the Three Fathers intended to bestow the Divine Bride title to another girl, instead of me. My confidence was shaken as I was convinced that I would be the one chosen. My mother, a devoted servant to the church, was sure of it too; she’d overheard the nuns whispering about how the Three Fathers was taken by such wild beauty and innocence. Everywhere the girl went, heads turned. She was the kind of beauty that the God in the Mountain lusted after. The Three Fathers said so; they knew what the god wanted because it spoke to them.
No doubt in my mother’s mind that the wild beauty they were referring to was me. She’d shown a photo of me to one of the nuns who plucked it out of her hand and brought it to the attention of the Three Fathers. Later, I was summoned to the church for a ‘proper evaluation’ as the nun had put it. They led me into a dark chamber behind the altar where the Three Fathers was waiting.
Though I’ve seen the high priest many times at Mass, it wasn’t until that day I’d seen the three faces so up close that I could feel the bull’s hot breath, see the short bristles of hair on the boar’s chin illuminated by the single candle in the room which shined in all of the three faces’ blackened eyes. They told me not to be afraid, and to come a little closer, so that they could see me better. A pair of long twig-like arms with folds of loose wrinkly skin hanging off the bones shot out of the darkness. Their gnarled fingers took hold of my arms and reeled me close.
The boar sniffed my face with its wet snout. The bull flicked its long black tongue at my cheek. The old man grinned, his mouth salivating.
“What a wild beauty you are!”
“Yes, yes! A wild beauty!” the boar chimed in.
“The god will be pleased,” the bull added.
Soon after, I was listed as a nominee for the selection ceremony. But I couldn’t shake off the rumors circling around about another wild beauty. If true, my mother said that the church would be making a grave mistake. She—I, as well—was determined to secure the title of Divine Bride for me but had to move quickly since the selection ceremony would soon take place. Within hours, she’d devised a plan, though she didn’t relay to me exactly what it was, I was to trust her and follow along. So, I did without question.
The organist, having reached the end of the score, loops back to the first measure until the procession arrives at the altar, and the candles are placed on the altar table. I inch my way up to get as close as possible to the front. Some, throwing me a glare of repulsion, move aside quickly so as not to be touched by me.
The servants march to their respective seats; the candle bearers on the far right side, while the scepter and scroll bearers are seated on each side of the Three Fathers on the throne. The girls take their place on their knees at the altar steps with their eyes humbly lowered and hands clasped in prayer. Their families watch from the front row pew looking proud yet anxious. One of them is the mother of a deceased girl. Now, it is her niece who has joined the ranks of bridal candidates.
Our eyes meet. She scowls and tears her gaze away. Though a little more than a decade had passed since the incident, and with no evidence found of foul play, the hate she harbors for me is still raw. She suspects the death of her daughter was my fault. My mother’s plan was for me to visit the girl’s house with a small sweet bread my mother baked as a way to congratulate her on her nomination. My mother strictly told me that I was to make sure she ate the bread, every last crumb, but I wasn’t allowed to have a piece of it.
I didn’t know what my mother had baked into the bread. I suspected it was something that would make the girl an undesirable candidate. With a sincere smile, I presented the sweet bread to her. She thanked me and took the bread. She didn’t eat it right away, instead she stuffed it in a knapsack, and suggested we’d go out for a stroll. We went out for a walk by the river bringing the knapsack along with her.
We spoke a while about which stories about the God in the Mountain were our favorite. Soon we lost track of time and had wandered too close to a popular resting spot among the crocodiles. This was where she met her tragic end. The crocodile, which had been lurking close by in the tall grass, came out and snatched the girl’s leg. It was quick. She screamed for my help but, in fear for my own life, I retreated to a safe distance. The creature dragged her down the bank and into the water. I can still hear her screams, and her mother’s too when the men had pulled out from the river what was left of the body—a severed foot with a silver gemstone-studded ankle bracelet still attached. It was the only undeniable evidence to confirm the body’s identity.
The Three Fathers, standing behind the altar table, raise the scrolls above their head and the face in the middle—the old man—begins to recite the first prayer with the worshippers repeating after him. The ceremony is rather long. There are seven prayers recited along with a hymn in between, before we finally get to the selection process.
With the scepter in hand, the Three Fathers inspects each girl as if they are seasonal fruits at a market. Then, stopping before the youngest-looking girl in line, the Three Fathers raises the scepter and taps it on her head. The boar and the bull roar in excitement. Applause and cries of joy ripple throughout the church. The other girls swarm around her with their growing envy masked behind forced smiles and excited squeals. Today will be the girl’s final hours as a mortal, and by tonight, she’ll be a goddess.
Seeing the new Divine Bride’s beaming face, I’m reminded of the feeling when I’d been chosen. I drank up all the attention that was lavished on me. But I had no idea what waited in the mountain. While the villagers looked upon the Divine Bride with adulation and awe, I could do nothing but watch with dread. The worshippers line up at the altar to receive a blessing from the soon-to-be divined being. They caress her bare feet; the skin of the chosen one is thought to cure all kinds of ailments.
The strongest men hoist the girl’s sedan chair over their shoulders. The villagers march onto the street banging drums and blaring trumpets along the way to the forest. But I climb up on a raised platform shouting truth to anyone who’ll listen: “I once was a believer in the tales of our God in the Mountain, and how its kingdom is a grand palace of light and splendor. Those are lies! Its kingdom is a deep void that devours life and light!”
No one listens as I’ve expected. There are a few curious gazes thrown my way which, at first, make me think that my message has gotten through them, but then a friend of theirs whispers in their ear, turning that curious gaze into a scowl. After a while, my voice becomes tired, and I return home.
Some nights I dream about the cave at the foot of the mountain. A voice, more animal than human, would call for me to go inside, and once I went in, the opening would vanish. I could smell the god’s odor, the musk of an animal in heat. I moved towards a voice at the end of the cave.
“Closer, my Divine Bride,” it seemed to say.
The brittle rocks and sticks crackled and crumbled under my footsteps. As I got closer, the red glow lit the path revealing a long trail of skulls and bones, human and animal. Along the wet, veiny red walls of flesh were lipless mouths baring rows of yellow sharp teeth and flicking long black tongues. Above me were hundreds of thousands of eyes staring down at me, shimmering like stars in the vast expanse of space. The god’s true form was an unfathomable mass of horror. I saw no Great Kingdom, no God in the Mountain…only a nightmare.
I jerk awake with my nightgown drenched in sweat and the sheets in urine. The beast exists in my nightmares now. Every night I relive the Honoring. My fingers are gnarled with several of them missing fingernails from when I clawed desperately at the closed entrance of the cave, which a curious but shaken young guard cracked open, giving me the chance to escape. I had barely escaped with my sanity intact. When I returned to the village, the Three Fathers were angry and my family ashamed. They demanded to know why I dishonored the god. In shock, I struggled to find my voice, which I partially lost from screaming in terror in that cave, pleading for help.
Not wanting to be forced back, I did what I thought would save me: I burned my face with my mother’s hot clothes iron. No god would want a half-face that resembled a melted wax candle. As for the guard who saved me, he was taken deeper into the forest and was never seen again.
Without a Divine Bride, the god nearly destroyed the village but the villagers swiftly selected another girl and offered her to the god. Once my voice had returned, I told many of what I saw. They were stunned yet refused to accept my words; some said they were lies, others thought I’d become delusional. The beast in the mountain has enslaved the villagers’ mind, and they find comfort in the Honoring decorated with pomp and circumstance. I’ll carry the truth as a burden, though I’ll keep telling it from now until my last breath with a dim hope someone will listen.
I wash up and toss the wet bed sheets into the washer. As I gaze out the window, the sun is coming up, spreading its golden light across the lush green fields. The fruits and plants in the gardens have renewed. Later, I catch a couple of kids with a mischievous grin on their round faces hanging around my garden. They reach up and pluck the large, round plums off the branches and sink their teeth into the sweetness.