I was a child when I first heard the Calling of the Harpy. I didn’t know what it was then, but I can remember its screams nursing me to sleep in my bed. I asked my mother about the screams in the morning. At first she was ignorant, but then a stern look grew across her face, and she told me not to talk about that ever again. It was quieter after that, but I still heard the screams every time I closed my eyes.
I was 11 when I noticed the Markings of the Harpy. A dark red webbing that emanated from my chest and genitals, shining from beneath my skin. I ran to my mother, worried about what was happening. She saw the Markings, and wailed in agony. My father came running, when he saw me, he hugged me, told me it would be alright. My mother wailed still more and screamed at me to be gone from her sight. I ran from the house into the forest outside, terrified of her. I ran so quickly that I didn’t even cover my naked body. I ran and ran into the forest, bruising my feet on the rootbound earth and cutting my legs on brambles. I ran until I couldn’t hear the wailing anymore, until I felt safe. When I couldn’t run anymore I collapsed.
The sun beat down on my back and the grass around me rustled. The peace of the forest helped me to regain myself. I looked around to make sure that nobody was near, suddenly aware of my nakedness. I sat upon a rock and looked at the Markings. I traced the lines of the webbing, they were sensitive and hot to the touch. I wished to see my whole body, to see how much it had spread. I knew of a pond nearby, that was like a silvered glass. I walked to the pond, forgetting to be ashamed of my nakedness, and leaned over to look at myself. The Markings crossed my body in a beautiful web of scarlet, like rubies had been placed under my skin. As I stared I saw that the Markings were beautiful, I wanted it to spread, to cover my entire body, to cover me in its beauty.
That was how my father found me. Staring at the beauty of the Harpy's Markings, he spoke to me but I didn’t hear him until he was right next to me. His voice was drowned by the screams of the Harpy’s Call. When he placed an arm on me, I drew my eyes away from the pool and focused my ears on what he was saying. He told me that he loved me, but that I needed to put on some clothes, and come with him. I dressed, and he led me by the hand through the forest.
When I arrived back home, there was no wailing coming from the house. Just plumes of white smoke from the chimney. I came into the hearth room and my mother was there with the Chaplain. Her eyes were red from crying and her hands shook. I felt so ashamed that I had caused all this. My father had me sit on a stool, and the chaplain spoke to me very softly. He told me about the demon the Harpy that the people of this land once worshipped. How the great heroes of the past had vanquished the darkness and brought the true Gods to the land. I had heard the story before, but I learned something new that day. Although worship of the Harpy had been vanquished from the land, its power still remained. It still reached out to some who were born here. That it showed signs on our body and in our mind. He asked me if I sometimes heard a screaming that kept me up at night. The screams never kept me awake, but I nodded and told him that I heard screaming most nights and sometimes during the day.
He told me that I had a hard path ahead of me, but that I would be okay. That it wasn’t my fault that the sinful nature of man had caused me this terrible pain, but that I had a responsibility to those around me to fight as hard as I could. As I looked up at him, I caught a glimpse of my mother’s eyes, and I saw hope in them. I wanted to nourish that hope, so that I wouldn’t have to see the pain in her eyes again. I nodded my head and promised to be as brave as I could.
The next morning my mother awoke me at dawn and took me to the Shrine to pray. We prayed until the town began to wake around us. We then walked back home on bruised knees. At home she forced me into a blistering bath and scrubbed my skin with harsh lye soap and stiff brushes. I told her it hurt and I struggled to be free, but she held me there and told me to be brave. That she was doing what was best for me, she said that she was washing away the Markings. I struggled and wailed in agony but she did not stop. It felt as if my skin was being flayed and the Markings were being burned out of my skin. Eventually I just went limp and closed my eyes, so as to not see the pain. Thus began my treatment. Morning prayers everyday and baths three times a week. I fought against it every time, and eventually I ran away, fearing the pain. My father came and found me, and took me home. Then my mother took me to the Chaplain, who beat me until I bled, and forced me to spend two days fasting and praying. I didn’t run away again after that. On my next name day I looked at myself after a bathing, I noticed the Markings seemed to fade from my skin slightly, but now my skin was defaced with scars and welts.
After my treatment began, adults stopped speaking to me, children wouldn’t play with me anymore, brought inside by their parents when I walked by. My mother began to dress me in long dark clothing to hide the Markings. I spent my days in quiet repentance and my nights afraid of the screams of the Calling that only grew louder. I confessed to the chaplain that I felt it was hopeless, that I might not be strong enough to fight against the Harpy. He confessed that he had done all he could do, but he knew someone who could help me.
He took me to the Bishop. A man who I had only seen a few times in my life. He greeted me with a cold and polite distance. He told me that he had heard about me, and that he knew how hard I had been fighting. He said he had something to show me, and he took off his shirt, showing me the scarred skin beneath. He told me that he had suffered too, and had gone on The Pilgrimage. That he had gone to the Temple of the Harpy, that he had seen its horrific Visage, and he had turned his back on it and it had lost its power over him. He told me it was dangerous, that not everyone came back. He told me that it was the only thing left for me to do, I told him that I would, that I would do anything to be free from the Harpy.
Two weeks later, I departed for the Pilgrimage. Only my father was there as I departed.
The road to the Harpy’s Temple was long and treacherous, overgrown and dying, only the preserve of Pilgrims and Disciples now. A met a few others like me, wretched souls making the Pilgrimage, or making their way home. Those heading to the temple seemed fearful, those returning professed happiness, but seemed dead inside. A result of the horrors of the Harpy I had been told. I walked each day and stopped only at night to eat and rest. I left behind others, I needed to get there, and soon. The Calling was growing louder each day, and the screams kept me awake each night. I knew that if I didn’t reach it soon, I would surely die, or succumb to the madness.
It was on the twentieth day that I saw it. A Disciple. It looked at me with blood red eyes, the Markings wrapped all around its naked body. It gave me a smile, and opened its mouth as if to make a noise, but I remembered what I had been told. I ran and ran, panic gripping at my heart, the warning wrang in my ears, but so did the Calling. Eventually I collapsed, and gripped my chest trying to regain some control. It felt as if I couldn’t breathe, and then darkness.
When I awoke I was in a place that I didn’t recognise. I stood before the Temple. I don’t know how I appeared there. Whether by my own feet or carried by a Disciple or fellow Pilgrim. But the temple stood before me. Made of scarlet red bricks, dulled and damaged from centuries of neglect, but still standing. I stood and took uneasy steps towards it then, I saw them. Out of the darkness the eyes of the Disciples all around me. They spied me from the shadows, gazing upon me as I entered their holy place. I kept walking deeper. Deeper into the place where the Calling came from, deeper into the place the Demon dwelt. I walked forward, eyes downcast, wishing to give myself some more time to steel myself before I had to look at it.
All my life had been leading to this point, the point where I would prove my faith and tear myself away from this Demon that had tormented me.
Finally I looked up, ready to see the horrific statue of this Demon God. I had been told how horrifying it was, a twisted and cruel mockery of the beautiful life of the earth.I looked, ready to see this monster.
But I didn’t see a monster. I saw only beauty. The Visage was a statue of a young person, with flowing hair and a body unlike any I had seen before, with proportions both man and woman. The white marble was webbed by delicately placed rubies, its wings stretched around the room, sheltering all within its walls. Its eyes were gleaming red pearls, that held a kindness I hadn’t seen in years. Upon seeing its beauty, I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to. I wanted to look like this vision of beauty before me. I wished that I could have its proportions, its beautiful pattern of Markings. That was when I realised that I did look like it. Beneath the scars and the bruises, my body looked just like the Harpy. I tore my clothes off as I felt the Markings burn a beautiful pain as they shone from beneath my skin and scars. It was then I noticed the Disciples in front of me. They stood before their great God. They opened their mouths and began to scream. It was the sound I had heard from my earliest days, and I had never heard anything so beautiful. I sank to my knees and wept, for such beauty had never filled my world before. One smiled at me, and reached an arm out as if beckoning me. And I opened my mouth, and the sound came naturally to me, as I joined the chorus of screams, for our sweet God.