Two Crows Watch from the Gallows Tree (part 5)

"You're not the only one." She would perhaps be a more merciful god than Gaius would be. He'd happily drag a giant finger over the Michael's of the world and grind them into a fine red mist. Then he would get on with the safety and food. "Did he ask you to call him Mark?"

She hesitated. “… no… maybe I shouldn’t make up a name. ‘Marrow Man’ just seems so… so…” she gestured vaguely. “It feels like a mean nickname a bully would give you and it makes you feel bad then everyone else calls you it and it makes you feel even worse. He deserves a name.”

"He has a name," Gaius pointed out. "Somewhere. But maybe you're right. Maybe he dislikes the name." He certainly wouldn't want to be called the Skinny Man. "Perhaps he'll like being called Mark, if you ever speak to him again."

“Maybe. I’ll ask him, if he can’t remember his name,” she said, contemplating the matter. She’d been wondering most of the walk back how the whole hide-exchange was going to go. How would he know which tent was hers? How could he get past the guards? “I feel like there’s got to be a way.” She sighed. “Maybe if I sat in the middle with fires built around me? Or…or… if we got a deer to give him instead. Or…” she hadn’t thought of any other ideas.

"He told you not to leave your tent. Maybe you ought to leave things to him. He wouldn't have offered if he couldn't get to you, right? If you're awake when he arrives then perhaps you can talk to him through the tent. Perhaps not. Then all you've lost is a conversation instead of your life."

Ky sighed and nodded. “Yeah… that’s probably best.”

Spoiler

Ky, trying to make friends with Marrow Man

(Ain't that just the way)

"He may have been kind to you, and he may still want to be kind, but you've got to remember the stories," Gaius said firmly. "Remember why he's called the Marrow Man in the first place. Remember the bear."

Ky hesitated, remembering the way he’d utterly decimated the bear. She’d have been nothing but a flea. “… I don’t understand how a goat can be a predator.”

"He's not a goat. He's a starving man with a hunter's mind. He was a warrior." She seemed to know about the Marrow Man and his past; someone had told her this before, surely. "A brilliant fighter and a credit to his tribe. He's a predator because that's all he could be in the Far North where only lichen and pine trees grow."

Ky considered, then nodded. “I guess that makes sense.”

"The only reason he looks like a goat is, if this part of the story is true, because he ate Fjori the Builder's sacred animal: a goat. You are what you eat, or so I'm told."

Ky sighed, frustrated, yet again, at what a petulant child Builder seemed to be. “He had to have been hungry,” she said, staring into the fire. “It’s not like he killed it for fun.” She was so, so frustrated with powerful people — or gods, as it were — having the means to help people, and choosing not to. “He could have invited him in and gave him a sandwich instead… I feel like if you’re a god you should be able to protect your goat, anyway.”

She didn’t mean to be saying all this out loud. She knew it was dangerous to have an opinion. Dangerous for even a hint of it to show in your eyes, much less to come boldly out your mouth.

"As I said before, gods are fools. They change their minds quickly but they're stubborn as anything. And Fjori especially--the cruel aspect--enjoys tormenting his creations in creative ways." Much like Michael enjoyed tormenting everyone around him creatively.

“Perhaps it’s a good thing they all went to sleep,” she said sourly.

"I couldn't agree more." The fire was dying, and Gaius stirred up the embers. "We really ought to get back in the tents," he mused. "We won't be setting out again for another few hours and if the Marrow Man's the one keeping the spiders scared in the trees, we might not want to rely on his presence remaining."