He came to in the stand of trees, naked except for the blanket thrown over him. He looked up, stared into the huge eyes of a bright orange butterfly. It flexed its wings once, and he heard whispers and screams running through his ears. Then, it flew away.

He heard the crackle of a fire, and he stared around. He recognized these trees, that view of the city. He didn't recognize that boy.

"Oh, good," the boy said smiling at him. "You're up. I thought for sure I'd have to drag you back to the tribe and have Envisionment say words over you or something."

He rubbed his eyes blearily, stared at the boy across the fire. He was eating something, and he held out a handful of berries at him. "Hungry?" the boy asked him.

He considered this. How long had it been since he had eaten? He shook his head. "No," he said quietly.

The boy shrugged. "You got a name yet?" he asked.

He stared at the boy, wondering if the butterfly he saw had been a sign of approval or a reassurance. Cordell, his head whispered, but he shook it. "No," he said.

"Huh. That's weird," the boy told him. "Not my problem, though."

"What tribe are you?" he asked the boy.

"Goblin Tower Tribe," the boy replied dutifully. "I'm out here on training to replace Envisionment as shaman."

The boy, Cordell, blinked. "Envisionment isn't old enough to be replaced," he said quietly. "He still has at least ten years on him."

"Try three," the boy replied. "Anyway, I'm heading down to the city. I guess that's where you're headed, considering that's the way you were walking last night when you fell over where you are."

He stared at the other boy, blinked in confusion. "What?" he asked.

The boy shrugged, popped more berries in his mouth. "I dunno. But I'm sure Envisionment might be able to help you out." He motioned vaguely. "Wrap yourself up in that blanket, we'll go down. He'll know what to do. He knows everything."

Together they packed up the camp, and together they walked down the hill, towards the city.

The sun moved this time, and the boy, Cordell, felt much better about the whole thing.

"Envisionment!" the boy called. "Here I am, returned at last!"

The old man laughed, limped out of the cave he called home, and thought he would die then and there when he stepped out into the light.

"You!" he said, pointing at not his apprentice, but the boy that was with him. He was changed, yes. But he would recognize the boy anywhere. The one with the impossible duty to fulfill, the one who had haunted his dreams and visions for seven years.

But seven years had not changed the boy. He still looked not a day over fifteen, prime age for being given the ceremony of manhood, even though he should well be twenty at the very least by now. He wore marks across his skin, and the rope burn from so many years ago still stood out brilliantly on his neck. And an orange wing caressed his jawline gently, hidden only barely by the boy's long blonde dredlocks.

Envisionment felt his chest close in on him. "You," he said again.

The boy regarded him with eyes that had lost the luster of life. As well they should. They had found his body after he had gone looking for him in the hills around the city. The blood had remained fresh, and butterflies stood all around this bizarre cage. Even though the body had been dead for many days, the blood still pooled, liquid and hot and fresh.

He had known that Tyler had not wanted the boy, but no one else would take him, either. Not one of three hundred and forty-three deities would have this boy. So they gave him to Tyler.

And here he was, not an ounce of dirt on him, looking as much alive as the day he'd gone, except for those strangely dead eyes of a thousand colors.

Envisionment felt hismelf staring at the butterfly wing on the boy's face, rather than into his eyes. Such a thing seemed, crazy to say, sacrilige.

"Envisionment?" his apprentice asked. "What's wrong?"

"I need to sit down," he said and hobbled back inside.

The two young men followed inside. The apprentice sat at Envisionment's feet, as was his position. The boy knelt across the fire from him. Without a word of encouragement, the boy spoke first, causing the apprentice to look outraged.

"You're old," the boy said matter-of-factly.

Envisionment narrowed his eyes. "You're dead," he retorted.

The boy took his own pulse and shrugged. "I never could find it," he said.

"You succeeded, though! You did!" Envisionment was staring at him. "Half your body was destroyed, and you were lying in a pool of blood that refused to dry!"

"You went looking for me?" the boy asked, sounding more amazed than amused.

"We interned your body to Tyler, even though he didn't want you!"

The boy smiled. "I need a name," he said quietly. "I've met my god."

Envisionment stared at him. There was a word that Lighteyelike had used, ages and ages ago, when someone had brought up the vague possibilty of something like this happening. Necromonkey, or something like that.

"Who?" Envisionment demanded. "Who is this god who can work such powers as this?"

The boy smiled, a genuine and simple smile, but one construed with such wolfishness by the sheer context of its occurance. "I have been forbidden to speak any of the names of my god," he said. "Suffice to say he is long forgotten by our kind. I have been taken in as his shaman to revitalize his place in our world."

Envisionment took a long, shuddering death, feeling the truth reverberate through the room at the boy's words. He could feel the power of the old god coursing around the room, could imagine the shadow of the deity behind the boy as he spoke these truths.

"Unlineable," he whispered.

The boy smiled, the same genuine, but wolfish, smile. Like his face had been slit by a kind and loving razorblade. The boy, Unlineable, rose and left.

After he had gone, Envisionment's apprentice looked up at him. "You are shaken," he said simply. "Why?"

"When you come into your age, when Tyler smiles upon you, and you feel the warmth of his sunlight, go speak to Unlineable. Tyler's sunlight will feel like a thin candle compared to that which patrons him."

For weeks, people avoided him. He had been risen from the death. His body had been given to Tyler, and yet here it was, walking around. Because Tyler didn't want him. And neither did anyone else but the Forgotten One.

He was told, in dreams and visions and tales whispered to him by butterflies, to seek out the creatures who were killed by Vanger's hunters. To bring them to rest easily. He was told to lay hands upon the sick, and to decide of his own accord whether they were to live or die. And then to make it so.

He made up the ceremonies, using nothing he knew from the few ceremonies of the other adults and their young gods. They mocked him, and he looked at them in disdain. He knew they would all die, and that he already had. The Forgotten One, Anubis, Osiris, Dis, Mors, Yama, anything the old god wanted to be called, he had a call of all of them. Though sometimes he wondered whether he, Cordell, Servent and Shaman of the Forgotten One, would die again.

Envisionment even kept his distance, though he was not particularly surprised. The old man himself had evidently found his body.

A part of him wondered what they did with the blood in the machine.

He didn't bother to ask.

Every now and again, someone would become brave enough to come up to him, to stare at him, to talk to him, to tell him they wanted to serve his master.

And every time this happened, he looked for the mark of his god.

And never was it found.

He realized serveral times how right his god had been to choose something else for his mark. For once, someone had come bearing feathers of a raven. He laid his hands upon the fool for presuming he knew, and the fool aged seven years on the spot.

The season sped on, from late summer to early fall.

Kursh's shaman called on him to retire their fields to the earth, for everyone knew that dead matter made the plants grow better the next year. Vanger's shaman asked him to lay hands on a hunter who had fallen beneath a subway bear, for, though Vanger would accept the hunter to his afterlife, none of the healer deities' shamans could help him end the suffering well.

He, Cordell, Shaman of the Forgotten One, mocked just weeks ago, took the duty well. He did as he was asked by the other shamans, and he did what he was commanded by his god.

And though he saw no butterflies for weeks as fall trudged on and the nights grew colder and the days grew shorter still, he felt at ease with the city enough to venture, time and again, towards the stand of trees or the Goblin Tower and climb up towards it.

If he jumped now, he wondered, what would happen?

But the urge had left him. His duties had been fulfilled. He had taken his own life and received a new one.

And even that warm little fuzzy spot, knowing he had someone more powerful than he was looking out for him, even that did not quite put a damper on his loneliness.

For he could tell no one of his dreams, his visions. He could tell no one of his duties, his charges.

He could tell no one of his thoughts, for so many of them surrounded the Forgotten One, the old god, and not a one was allowable for the ears of another.

Something, he supposed, that went with the territory.