The Phantom Pulse #2 | November 2026
J.A. Espersmyth
Before she comes, the air bloats with myrrh, and supplicants offer fingers, each stroke of a knife spilling viscous warmth at my feet. They kiss my stubbed thumb in turns, lips smoothing the stone knuckle away; they drape wilted roses over my arms; they place candles in my palm, four fingers already congealed with cooled wax.
After all this, a match is struck, and a candle lit.
Before she comes, the Three-Eyed, Nine-Fingered Goddess Myvanir comes, called into my flesh by the flame. From my pedestal, Myvanir takes stock of the offerings: incense, kisses, roses, thumbs. The candle flares with Myvanir’s satisfaction, flooding the room in her light.
Before she comes, the supplicants describe ashy fields, charred homes, dead sons. If they cared to read the words carved lovingly beneath my feet, they would know why Myvanir will spurn them: Vengeance doesn’t beg, borrow, or take. It claims.
But they do not. Instead, they beg: Burn the Tyrant’s fields and homes as he burned ours!
The flame shrinks, and Myvanir does nothing; they already have torches.
They plead: Myvanir, slaughter his sons as ours were slaughtered!
But they’re already well-armed; Myvanir vanishes, her flame curdling to smoke.
The girl comes when the supplicants leave and the chamber is quiet. I do not know her name, but she’s mine. She cares for me.
She’s younger than the others who come, and smaller. Her flesh is marred like mine; as blood pools and dries in dark patches on my legs and feet, so too does blood pool in yellowing patches beneath her skin. She’s even marked by candlelight like me, one arm puckered and glossy from wrist to shoulder, as if licked by still-wet wax.
Like always, she begins by removing the flowers, their stalks cracking in her hand, then the wax, her long metal tool excavating my stone flesh.
She sweeps away the offered fingers, tuts, says, “They waste finger after finger without claiming eyes. They misunderstand you, Myvanir, and that’s why they’ll get us all slaughtered.”
It’s Myvanir she speaks to, but me who listens. Me who feels the touch of her wire brush as she scrapes away blood and rot, her strokes tenderer than kisses. Me who loves her, while Myvanir’s absence dims the room.
My favorite part comes after she sweeps the flowers, wax, and fingers away, when she lathers all of me in lavender soap until I gleam in the lanterns’ light. It’s the longest part, rote, so she always entertains me with a story.
“Yesterday, the Tyrant’s soldiers burned my house and slaughtered my family,” she begins. Her grip on the sponge chokes out all the water. “I showed them what my father’s fists had done, and pity bade them to spare me. Like you lost a finger but gained an eye, I lost my family but gained my life. So, I do not regret it.
“Since then, I’ve pondered your story. The loss of a finger seems too small a price for a prize so great. I wondered then, Myvanir, is your third eye not great? But of course it is; it’s what makes you all-knowing, all-seeing, all-consuming. It’s your finger that isn’t what it seems.”
She lovingly swipes her sponge around the stump of my thumb, the soap bubbling over newly cleaned stone. It’s smoother than the rest of me from countless prayerful kisses. She has never kissed me before, but now, she does. Her lips are cold and chapped.
She continues, “The finger itself is irrelevant—the pain is what’s important. You didn’t have a clean, sharp knife as the cowards leading my village do. You bit it off like a rabbit chews its leg to escape a trap: hungry, angry, desperate. You had no other tools. No other choice. And when you escaped, the giant that was your captor attacked, and you reached into his skull and tore out his eye.”
She dabs the eye on my forehead with the sponge, delicate, reverent. Despite her softness, it grates. Usually, I would revel in her tenderness. But, usually, she doesn’t address Myvanir so much.
“How did it feel? Wet, sinewy, hot? Did you vomit, Myvanir, or weep? Only some of the stories tell it this way. They forget you were mortal before. Human. They make you a god when you swallow your finger, but that wasn’t so, was it? Claiming the eye made you a god. There were moments between when you could have failed.”
She finishes cleaning me, but she does not leave. Instead, she lights the myrrh. Drapes fresh flowers across my arms.
No. This can’t be right. She has never made an offering before. Never summoned her. She is mine. Only mine; I bear the greasy imprint of her fingers, the holiness of her attention. The ritual of scrape and soap and sponge is ours alone.
But the girl places a candle in my freshly-cleaned palm, and strikes a match.
Myvanir returns, bright and burning. Takes in the girl and her offerings. Notes the lack of a severed finger. Registers my affection, a spark of warmth beneath my breast. The flame surges, then pulls back; Myvanir is curious.
The girl’s breaths draw short. She falls to her knees. “Venerable Myvanir, I, like you, am hungry, angry, desperate. Like you, I’ll tear the Tyrant’s crown from his head, if you’ll show me how. My pain is yours.”
She places her thumb over her tongue and bites hard. The flame flares and crackles, smothering her strangled sobs. She holds the dripping wound above her heart and swallows. Retches. Blood and vomit dribble from her parted lips to my feet.
Myvanir’s flame snaps, throwing sparks. The sparks gather on the girl’s sick-wet tongue, buzzing and vibrating like lightbugs. In minutes, the entire flame, burning with Myvanir’s excitement rather than heat, abandons my candle for her mouth. The girl smiles.
Wax stills down my knuckle mid-drip; smoke chars my palm. She never returns to scrape it all away.
About the Author
J. A. Espersmyth (she/it) lives with her wife and menagerie of pets in South Carolina. Its fiction appears or is forthcoming in Heartlines Spec, manywor(l)ds, Tome & Space, and elsewhere.