The Myth
JOY CAMPBELL
There is a willow myrtle whose languorous branches trail its leaves across the soft, shaded grass like a lover. Marked by flashes of red– young leaves backlit by the sinking sun– I position my spine against the trunk and wait, listening for the little god. As the sudden, thick heat of late spring is peeled away with the sky, all that meets me is the dark, the chill, and a great mass of stars hanging in the distance. The little god never comes. I light the candle on its rocky shrine, cupping my hands around it like a prayer. I say nothing; I let it singe my palms. When I pull back they beat like hearts, raw and purple. The glow of the wick persists for a moment in the darkness, I watch it as I withdraw through the curtain of leaves. They drag over my skin like spindly fingers warning me to stay. I go, back to the house. I don’t let myself believe that something is wrong. By the time I get there, everyone is gone.
*
At night I sleep with the window open, unlatched, banging in the wind. I tell myself that the little god can find me more easily this way, and each time I get up to shove it open again is an excuse to look out towards the myrtle’s hill. Part of me expects something to change out there, but it never does. It is dark and quiet. The little god never comes.
Days pass like this: hot and oppressive, thick with anxiety. The nights stop providing cool relief. The cicadas return, wrenching themselves from the soil and claiming the forest, so that each branch is its own ceaseless instrument. The few streetlights that still operate are swarmed with moths the second the sun dips behind the hill; if the house hadn’t already lost power, they would’ve swarmed there too. I do nothing, I eat what little is left, I drink only when I’m too dizzy to stand. On the fifth day a neighbour returns– an old friend begging me to flee. I tell them all is well, because that is what I believe.
‘You’re sick,’ they tell me.
‘The little god is still here, I know it.’
‘You’re sick.’
The air is full of an electric buzzing, the nearing sun singes my skin. I tell them I can feel the little god watching me, and that this is a test of faith which everyone else has failed. They shake their head and walk back into their house, eyes hollow, devoid of hope.
I long for my rituals– I think of them as I wait for the night. I recall each evening that the little god had appeared from the depths of the forest, the shadows of leaves dancing across its bright body and the damp-earth floor. I remember waiting by the shrine until darkness fell and the hill was lit only by the little god's insoluble glow; watching as it departed the dense wall of trees, making its way towards the willow myrtle.
I swallow my sadness. When it has been dark for some time I slip outside and see my neighbour getting ready to leave for good. Sitting at the end of the street, I observe from the treeline as they dart in and out of the other neglected homes, filling the tray of their ute with overflowing bags and jerry cans dragged from backyard sheds. Before they drive off, they stand on the street, staring up at my house. For a moment they turn and look right at me, their face lit up like a ghost by the artificial glow of their headlights. I don’t really think they can see me, but I retreat further into the trees anyway. From the myrtle’s hill I watch them go; the white beams lighting up the road get smaller and smaller, and the rattle of their engine harmonises with the song of the forest before fading entirely.
On the hill, the moon is rippling with light, reflecting the ever-nearing star that burns brighter each day. I can feel the heat even now, wilting everything in its place. I light the candle, it is warped and sunken. I cup my hands until they burn some more, sending a rhythmic pain shooting up my arms. There are no cicadas here– the only tree in the forest that remains untouched– I take it as a sign. Still, I hear them all around. I find a spot against the trunk where my head is cradled by its roots; I close my eyes against the sheet of stars flicking in and out of focus through the swaying branches. I let myself dream; the little god is sitting at my side, just out of reach, watching me from the corner of its glossy black eye. I settle into the story, tell it everything I’ve wanted to say since day one of this strange, empty week. I tell it about the sun, though I know it has been wise to this since the start. I tell it about the orders to leave, and the alien speed at which everyone else followed them. I ask if I am doing as I should. It blinks slowly at me in answer. After a while, something catches its attention in the dark forest behind us. In an instant it is gone.
‘I trust in the little god,’ I say aloud.
The lit wick of the candle pops and I open my eyes. The ground is warm and my skin is laced with a dew-like sweat. In the moonlight I make out the shaky lines of silver ants crawling over my shoes. The air is heavy and unmoving; I bring my face close to the flame and blow it out.
Back on the street, the rest of the lights have given up. I stare back into the forest, willing the glow of the little god to appear– winding between the eucalypts that rise up from the arid soil in unyielding defiance– but there is only darkness.
At home I have no choice but to finally seal the windows so that I can exist by candlelight. The insects waiting patiently on the walls of my living room race to the flame like Icarus and burn up at once, falling into their waxy grave. Heat rises through the floorboards, every breath I take is vile and glutinous.
Saving yourself doesn’t make you unfaithful. Please, follow us soon.
My neighbour is returning south, where everyone has fled. I know this, but they have left a letter to remind me, which I read now as the orange circle of light grows weak. They talk about my siblings and the people who promised to take them in; they say it's colder there, safer. I think that if they really cared, they wouldn't have abandoned their home so easily.
I drift into sleep on the wooden floor, dizzy and suffocating, slipping in and out of dreams. Somewhere in the night the cicadas quiet and the forest falls into a familiar, anticipative silence.
I can’t stand until noon. I drink stagnant water from a vase of rotting flowers on the sink. I know it is calling me now.
*
The little god breathes like a dying thing, two sharp inhales and one wheezy, deflating sigh. I breathe with it like a chant as I follow the sound onwards, dragging my tired body across the scorched earth to where it lays below the willow myrtle. Its fur is as bright and orange as the sun looming above. It is thinner than the last time I saw it, only a week before. Its chest is sunken, skin pulled taut across ribs that jut out like new branches. For the first time I reach my hand out, closing my eyes to feel the furnace of its small body. When I open them, its head is bent towards me. For a second I see myself through its eyes; barefoot, shoulders pink and blistered, red-faced with dark, sunken eyes. I pull my hands back and plant them in the soil.
As night falls, the glow of the little god gets dimmer and dimmer until it’s cast only in the same cruel moonlight as my own gaunt body. For hours I sit with my spine to the tree, listening to its breathing fall silent for too-long stretches of time. I beg my eyes to let me weep, but they just sting of salt and hot air. Sometime before dawn its breath hitches, a sound that reverberates in my chest, and I know it is over.
On the shrine, the candle has melted down and buried its own wick; I try to dig it out with my nails, but the blackened appendage snaps off and disappears into the grass. I understand that I can never go back. I spend the rest of the night under the tree, sleeping to the sound of its brittle leaves scratching the dirt. I see gnarled beasts crawling out from the forest, teeth grinding as they measure up the little god– I do not know if I am dreaming. I keep the back of my arm pressed against its still-warm body until the first crack of light pierces the sky.
With branches torn from the willow myrtle, I craft a delicate pyre around its body; delaying this final, disorienting loss. I stand and watch until the flame catches onto the rough bark of the trunk– swallowing the tree in an instant– knowing that no unfaithful soul can touch the creature now. The minty smell of the leaves pierce the air, creating a taunting, illusive sensation of cool. Branches crack and fall, sending orange sparks flying across the dry grass which ignites and spreads with ease, until everything burns. As I back away, columns of sunlight shoot through gaps in the billowing black clouds; the particles move like waves through the bright hot shafts of light and fill my lungs like water.
On the street, the window panes of empty homes reflect the kaleidoscope of fire, smoke, ash– and above it all– the burning of that solitary, violent star. My body vibrates with a thousand little pains; my eyes are dry and stinging, obscured by a film of black soot; my hands hang raw and limp at my sides. I fight to stay upright while my body longs to fold inwards. All I can do is drag myself south, blindly tracking the path of my companions. The echoing collapse of each house, one after another, haunts me from afar. They do not resist; their wooden skeletons are as dry as the forest, and each room is filled with the fuel of what was left behind. I think about the letter; I try to imagine my siblings in that distant-southern cool, but all I see are people cowering in a void of faith. I keep walking. I know I won't make it, but it is so hot– and I don’t deserve the same burial as the little god.
Joy Campbell is a young Meanjin-based writer originally from Cavanbah/
Byron Bay, where she spent many evenings writing embarrassingly bad
edgy-teenage prose on the beach while getting attacked by sandflies. She
loves magical realism, the gothic, and weird nature (and hopes that her
prose isn’t as embarrassing now). She publishes under Joy, but is otherwise known by her first name— Tiana. Her short story ‘The Myth’ came second in the 2024 Future Leaders prize.
