The Sacrifice

If walls could talk, boy oh boy. I would have told her to run! Run like she had never run before. Run and to never look back! 

I would have shouted it the minute she stepped in. 

But could she ever have heard me? She was deaf. As deaf as a doornail. 

And I imagine that's why her father sent her there. And that's why the high priestess had requested for her. She was a child. Young and innocent. Uncontaminated by all the evils of the world. In her deafness, she had not heard the odious. The silence within her protected her from the vile. It kept her pure they said. Her innocent eyes would filter out the ugly, leaving her unadulterated heart to focus on the rainbows and butterflies in her mind. Isn't that what the nescience of childhood does? They said she possessed it in its purest form. 

And through her, the gods would talk. 

I do see the tourists that come to the cave. They come in awe of it. Curious about the altar. Fascinated by the deep history of our existence, they gaze at me in examination, probably wondering about all I know. I feel them touch me. And as they run their fingers through. Some even bump me. Some push. Maybe to feel how strong I have been holding it all. 

And I do hear them too. 

"All these years and it's still standing…strong," they whisper to each other in awe.

I also hear them wondering about the girl. The one found laying on the altar with her face looking up to the rock above, her throat slit open and her hands and legs tied to the logs below, her hair brushing the floor. Her eyes closed as though in blissful sleep. Her brown sack cloth clinging to her solid skin. It was linen white on that day, time it seems had turned it brown. 

" She lay like that for three hundred years," the tour guide does not fail to retaliate. 

Three hundred years, I think to myself. Has it been that long? Really? It's like time stopped the day the priestesses left and sealed the cave behind them and all the darkness in it. And it's like I was born again the day it was unsealed and a new existence was put right in front of me. Now I am paraded for all to see in all the bright light. But still a passive participant in it all. 

They call her the girl at the altar. They don't know her name. But I do. 

I heard the high priestess call her name over and over again as she put her in and out of a trance. 

" What do the gods say, Sedriasis?" she would command as though in anger. "Tell us… I know you can hear them Sedriasis. That's why you can't hear us. What do they say!?" 

The high priestess would hold her and lift her up. She would then look into her face and have her read her lips. 

Sedriasis would be numb. She didn't say a thing. She would shake in fear, confused by all that was going on around her. 

The other priestesses would surround the altar, they would mummer intelligible words before breaking out in dances and chants. They said they wanted the gods to hear them. And they would speak to them only through innocence that had never heard the evil of the world. 

Sedriasis would not say a word. She would only sob with no one to wipe her tears. 

This lasted for three days. 

On the fourth day, it would happen. Right in front of me.

The priestesses came in dressed in silk. At their centre was the girl. They laid her on the altar surrounded by burning candles, the smell of their incense in the air, and began their chants as they danced around her. The high priestess then moved closer to her. In the dim flickers, I saw their reflection on sharp shiny metal. Then suddenly, I heard a quick slit, then a gush as though from a fountain. Then it stopped. 

Sedriasis would be no more. 

A priestess shocked at what had happened, screamed. A few ran out gasping, unable to come to terms with it. Later they came back and I could see them sealing the cave with all its contents in it. Some shook and sobbed. 

The girl lay there lifeless in the flickering light. After a while, the candles burned out. 

In the days to come in the still darkness, I would hear a female voice weeping on the outside agony filled in her voice. 

" Seddy my baby… When will the gods release you… Seddy…? 

" The gods will release her when they deem fit," came a coarse voice, "and she will be a goddess. You will be the mother of a goddess." 

I imagined this was the voice of her father. I imagined the priestesses had told them that their daughter would be back. 

Often I would hear footsteps outside. Maybe her mother coming to check. I wished I could call out to her. Tell her that her daughter was not coming back. Shorten the time of her misery. Or maybe the footsteps were from guards, guarding the mouth of the cave, keeping the evil secret dead. 

Until I couldn't hear them anymore…

I only felt thorns piercing me on the outside, or torrents of rain and hot sun. Maybe time had passed. 

***

I had heard and seen it all unfold. Until it amalgamated into pure evil.

Locusts had swarmed the lands chewing away every bit of green they could find. That had been two seasons before. Massive floods then followed the locust invasion flattening crops, sliding lands and sweeping away animals and people alike. 

In the calamities, I could hear the priestesses venerating the spirits asking for mercy for the people and their land. They had repented their sins she said. 

Fathers brought their young daughters to the cave. This was the way. The priestesses had them lay at the altar. They nursed them with treated milk and honey and lay flowers on their flowing hair. They then cut it off and burn it for the gods filling the air with the smell of carbon. The innocence of the girls would allow the spirits to convey messages through them. They would bring healing. 

In their trance, the girls would utter intelligible words. The high priestess would interpret and convey the messages to the people. The girls' father would collect them from the mouth of the cave and they would take them home heroines for the great help they had offered to the lands. Maybe if they were lucky, they would be chosen to be a priestess in a few years. 

But even with the messages, the calamities did not stop. From a distance, as soon as the floods subsided, the horns of the raiders could be heard. They were on their way marching to loot what the other calamities had left. 

Soon tributes stopped coming to the caves. The people it seemed no longer believed in the priestesses and their power. Even with all their chants in the caves, misery had not stopped looming. The elders wanted to send them away. 

I heard the high priestess tell the others that they would have to venerate harder. That a sacrifice was needed. The purest of them all. This would bring the desperately needed revival to their lands she added and the people would hold them again. 

And that is when they brought Sedriasis. 

I knew what would happen to her right from when they brought her in. I had heard the high priestess when she was alone in the dark. She said bloodshed was the only way. 

I hear the tour guide tell it to the tourists all the time. 

" It was the way of the ancient Xaparx to sacrifice the lives of innocent young girls to the gods in search of blessings." 

" No it wasn't!" I want to scream out loud each time. 

I feel ired over the foul lie embedded in history. 

The priestesses desperate for a place in their society murdered an innocent child. And only I know the truth. History sided with them, but it doesn't tell the truth. 

I wish I could shout it to the world. If only walls could talk.