Gradually, the gods left their realm, or left it for a time, drawn to a jewel of an island on the sea, its beaches dusted with pink sand, its inland lakes brimming with fresh water and fish brilliantly scaled. A city was raised on hilltops. The god of the sea carved a gentle bay from the coast into a natural harbor. Mortals chiseled marble statues in honor of the gods, and the gods were pleased, because worship was a relatively new pleasure. For certain gods, fear was equally pleasing.

The city was called Ethin, the word in the gods’ language for the exhalation of praise.

A mortal’s life is as fluttering and uncertain as a bird that flies into a lamplit hall filled with joy and argument, and then dives out a window into the unseeing night. A few of the one hundred gods came closer to certain mortals, enchanted by their beautiful brevity, their supple skin, their strangely warm mouths, their odd ways, their stumbling yet earnest efforts, their brilliance. Sometimes the gods would argue among themselves over a mortal. One might accuse another of blessing a claimed favorite. And a mortal might reveal a grace or intelligence marked by no god, causing the pantheon of the hundred to murmur among themselves, entertained—even, occasionally, concerned—that some mortals possessed skills due to no one but themselves, to human luck or labor.

One day, a mortal gave the gods the greatest surprise of all: a baby. The child radiated divinity. There could be no doubt that god-blood lurked inside her, though no god dared claim her as their child. She captured the love of most of the gods, who charmed sunbeams to her cradle, and cushioned her every tumble, and painted her skin with glorious colors to bear the sign of their favor.

Even the god of death stayed his heavy hand.

The god of foresight smiled her cruel smile. Death will come to the girl anyway, she said.

She will never lose a drop of blood, decreed the god of luck. She will never suffer disease, Luck said, nor the corrosion of age.

So may it be, said the god of foresight, who visited the girl in the night, and drew a blanket over her sleeping face until her breath grew slight, then smothered, and the small body was as cold as clay.

No god likes to be wrong, especially not this god.

I said it would be so, she told the mourning pantheon, and hear me yet. There will be more of her kind, to our everlasting misery.