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As the San Jose Sharks’ selected devotee player, Mario gets some bonus responsibilities. It’s nothing he wouldn’t expect as an alternate captain, though when he got named as the devotee to replace Joe Thornton, he was a little concerned. Joe was already gone, couldn’t stick around to teach Mario the ways of the San Jose god-figures. Mario had to figure it out by himself.
Well- himself with the help of the ‘Cuda’s rotating lineup of devotees and each SJSU’s team’s devotee and even a few companies’ devotees, HR people whose duties include appeasing god-figures right alongside meeting with management and balancing payroll.
It’s supposed to be good for the team, and, well, Mario thinks they should take any help they can get. And it’s not too hard, to do what the other devotees tell him to do. He has to make his sacrifices, usually in the form of time and effort and game pucks when he has those to offer, and in return he gets a perk.
Some of the other devotee players get cool perks: McDavid never has to refill a tank of gas, Marner’s lawn is always perfectly clear in the middle of autumn when everyone else has to rake leaves constantly, Sidney Crosby supposedly is good friends with every animal in the Pittsburgh Zoo. Hell, Trevor fucking Zegras gets to fly. Like with wings and shit that sprout out of his back. How is that fair?
Mario can talk to sharks.
“Very helpful. I come across a lot of sharks in my day to day life,” Mario sighs as José scores on him in Chel while one of his players is down. “Dude, dick move.”
“Take it up with the refs,” José says with a shrug.
Rosa flicks him on the back of the head.
“José, don’t be a douche,” Emmy chides from where she always sits - the rocking chair in the corner, with a magazine about her latest agricultural pursuit spread across her lap and at least one lamb skittering around her, sometimes even nibbling on the ends of her long, grey, ever-plaited hair - “and Mario, if you went to the aquarium more often, you’d come across more sharks.”
“I’m busy,” Mario whines.
Sharkie pats him on the shoulder.
Mario’s perk kinda sucks, but at least his sacrifice usually consists of playing Chel with the god-figures of San Jose and his team’s beloved mascot about once a week. Which is something he did anyway, when Leno was on the team. San Jose’s pretty relaxed, as far as god-figures and traditions go.
While Mario plays with José and Sharkie switching out, Rosa and Emmy watch. Saint Joseph sometimes drops in, but rarely. Kallehic sits at the back corner of the room, calm eyes surveying the scene. It’s bonding time, by a given standard of bonding. He gives them his devotion and shows the team’s respect for the city, which is supposed to bring good fortune or something. Mostly he thinks it’s for optics. No team wants to be the first in the NHL - let alone the first in the major four North American sports leagues - to abandon their god-figures.
So Mario keeps showing up every week, bringing little gifts sometimes when he feels his play is particularly unworthy of being an offering, beating Sharkie in Chel and losing to José more often than not. He barely resists throwing his controller when José beats him 14-nil.
The bell tower of the holy house rings 2pm, time for Mario to go back to the rink and keep training. “Good game,” José says with false sweetness as Mario gathers up his keys and water bottle.
“Yeah, whatever, same time next week,” Mario grumbles.
José grins and wiggles his fingers at Mario and-
“Dude, I can’t believe you still cheat at Chel!” The USB dangling from his wrist says it all, stupid fucking Silicon Valley-ass god-figure, so fucking annoying, Mario should probably play analog games against him but then he just googles it if it’s strategy-based and then the next time Mario tries to play him he’s added another game-solver to his brain.
All the god-figures are staring at him.
Oh, he said the b-word.
“I mean. I believe it, you tech-bro scumbag, but it’s ridiculous to me that you do that,” Mario rephrases, and they all breathe a sigh of relief.
After that particular fuckup, Mario’s, like, not rushing to get out of the holy house but he does want to go home. None of the other Sharks would be especially great at their devotee duties, but it seems like the sort of thing Mack could handle, given time. And at the very least, Mack would have more points and pucks to offer the god-figures. Mario doesn’t have much of either. But that’s a problem for another time, when Mack is older and more settled in San Jose. There’s always issues with forcing a rookie into the devotee position too fast - just look at Connor Bedard.
Mario shakes a few of the god-figures’ hands, gives Emmy and Rosa polite hugs and bows in Kallehic’s general direction before going to the entrance of the holy house and putting his shoes on. He’s just about to step outside when someone appears next to him as if out of thin air.
“Mario?” Kallehic says, touching the hem of his shirt.
Kalle’s normally a woman of few words. Mario stops in his tracks to look at her. “Yeah?”
She gazes at him with dark brown eyes, her irises so deep in color that they’re nearly black. “Good luck tomorrow,” she says.
“Thank you,” Mario answers with the customary half-bow.
She nods and returns her attention to the basket that’s weaving itself together under her careful eye and skilled hands.
The sun sets over the Pacific as Mario drives himself home. It’s late enough that traffic has slightly died down, but San Jose never properly goes to sleep. The work-from-home revolution used to make Mario’s drives much easier. Unfortunately, companies are hemming and hawing over that decision - Mario can tell by how the congestion of the streets rises and falls every few months. Sometimes José talks about it, too.
San Jose’s god-figures take up a weird sort of mantle in the lives of the city. Maybe it’s different in places where religion holds stronger, or maybe where high technology and its associated disdain for the creative and mystical are weaker. José is, as far as Mario can tell, mostly a god-figure for the heart of the city. He loves his people, but he isn’t taken with their struggles. He has all the starry-eyed delight of a fresh-out-of-college Silicon Valley hopeful and the grit of a garage-based entrepreneur and the confidence of a CEO, with none of the student debt or monetary anxiety or sleepless nights.
Emmy, in contrast, is the body of the city if cities were to have such a thing. She’s the steel bones and the concrete pour and the stucco, the grass in the park and the sand on the beach. She’s the farmland park and farmsteads and mines, and she’s the named natural reserves, the Department of Wildlife buildings. She’s everything the city relies upon, feeds itself with, worries itself over caring for. She doesn’t do the worrying, though.
Rosa does the worrying. Rosa is the underbelly, the struggle, the heartache and graffiti and the abandoned lot made to look nice with blue tarps and chain-link fences. And she’s the action, the hands, the backhoes and excavators tearing down and building up in turn. She’s closer to Mario than Emmy or José ever could be, because she knows what it is to ache. But at the same time, she’s a paragon of it all. A patron saint, if Saint Joseph himself weren’t enough (and he isn’t, not by himself, when hardly a quarter of the population believes in proper Saints).
Rosa is the struggle, but she’s also a god-figure, and god-figures don’t feel anguish like humans do. Mario’s heart breaks for his team because he loves them and he wants to be better and it’s in his hands to be better, to save them from heartbreak. Rosa’s heart breaks for her people because she loves them and- that is all. That’s the end goal for her. The heartbreak alone is what she’s made for.
That’s not what Mario’s made for, though.
Rosa is made for worrying, and Emmy is made for worrying over, and José is made for leading a city forward. Saint is made for remembering their history, Sammy Spartan is made for the legions of college students, Sharkie is made for the legions of fans.
Mario is made for his teammates, and in that, he has one aspect in common with all those god-figures - he is made, and they are made, by human hands.
God-figures, as a rule, are divine. Some, because their origins are so deeply unknown that they’re presumed to be older than humanity, like Sagarmatha and Loowit and Zoroastra and Buddha, Abraham and Europa, Cronus and Rhea and Jupiter and Chang’e. Some, because humanity put so much faith in them that they couldn’t be un-divine any longer, like Galatea and Mississippi and the Northwest Passage and the American Dream.
And some, like Sharkie and Gritty and José, because humanity decided something had to be divine here and so they came up with a god-figure. They assembled their own gods. They found some, they birthed others, and finally they began to make.
San Jose’s god-figures are all human-made, except for Kallehic. Kallehic was born of faith and the Bay. She’s the only one.
Mario pulls into his human-made garage, locks his human-made car behind him, goes into his human-made house, and wonders if any of it matters.
The Sharks don’t win.
Mario can never really sleep after a loss. Usually he just plays Chel at home until he can see the darkness outside his window starting to lighten a few shades. But today something’s drawing him to the holy house - not a higher power or anything like that, just, the idea of being there sounds better than being home right now.
Usually the holy house is closed to the public outside of regular business hours, but, as an official team-representing devotee, Mario has his own set of keys. That doesn’t mean the god-figures are all going to be awake, but the game room will be still be functional. It’s not like the power goes out.
Mario’s just fishing his keys out of his pocket when the door of the holy house opens.
“There you are,” Kallehic says.
Mario stares at her.
“Come in. Acorn bread is almost done.”
Mario steps in and takes his shoes off at the door.
The holy house looks different at night. He can see the shut doors along the side hallway where the other god-figures have gone to sleep for the night and the private room at the end of the hall where they can congregate out of the public eye. The lights are off, and without bright sunlight streaming through the stained glass windows and high ceilings, the entire space feels smaller. More intimate. Kallehic leads him past the main room with its TV and PlayStation to the kitchen. “Sit,” she says, gesturing to the humble wooden table, and so Mario does. “Have you had acorn bread before?”
“No, ma’am,” Mario says.
“Mm.” Kallehic sets a plate and a butter dish in front of him. “Fresh is best. Here.” She pokes at something in the oven, then pulls out a tray. A round, grainy-looking flatbread slides onto Mario’s plate a moment later. “Pull it in half like a biscuit.”
Mario obediently splits the flatbread and takes the butter knife when Kallehic hands it to him, slathering the steaming-hot middle of the cake with soft, creamy-yellow butter. He takes a bite. It’s not like the bread he’s used to, it’s dense and nutty and mostly crumbles in his mouth, not sweetened at all. The quality of the butter really stands out, though. It’s good. “Thank you,” Mario says as he stuffs the rest of the half in his mouth and starts on the next half.
“You’re welcome,” Kallehic says. “I’m sorry about the outcome of your game.”
Mario shrugs. “It sucks, but- I mean.” That’s probably a little too informal for speaking with a god-figure. “I know I’m not the greatest at hockey. I just wish, sometimes, I could be good enough for my team.”
“You never pray to us for that,” Kallehic muses softly. Another acorn bread appears on Mario’s plate between blinks.
Acorn bread probably isn’t anywhere on the athletic trainers’ list of approved foods, but Mario can’t bring himself to care. It’s probably healthier than the In-N-Out he would’ve eaten otherwise. He butters up the fresh slice and takes a bite. “I don’t have anything to offer in return,” he says with another shrug. “At least if it were Mack, he could give you some points. I don’t think blocked shots count for much.”
Kallehic gazes into him. “Lucky, then, that I don’t take hockey as currency.”
Oh.
On the other side of the table, a chair weaves itself into existence, and Kallehic sits down, still with an acorn bread in one hand. “Do you know what I live on, Mario Ferraro?” she asks.
“No,” Mario answers obediently.
Kallehic waits until he looks at her, and then she speaks, and it sounds louder than normal. It echoes through the room - no, through Mario’s head. Kallehic’s eyes look at him and then into him.
“I am the god-figure of my people,” she says, “by ancestry and by adoption. I am the god-figure of tradition. I am the god-figure of new beginnings and neverends. I am the god-figure of rebirth.” Her smile gets sharper, like Jumbo’s before a faceoff. “I am the god-figure they declared extinct,” she says. “I am the god-figure they tried to make extinct.
“If there is anything I have learned in my age, it is that god-figures live and die by joy. I live on the joy of my people,” she says, “by ancestry and by adoption.
“And you, Mario Ferraro, bring joy.”
Mario’s eyes go wide.
“I do?”
“Yes.” Mario can’t look away from Kallehic’s eyes, but somehow- somehow he feels the gentleness and affection in her expression anyway. “Your smiles, your laughter. Your antics and care and love.” The corners of her eyes pinch into a smile. “Your heart.”
“Oh.”
Kallehic raises an eyebrow meaningfully at him.
“Oh- oh. Then, uh, Kallehic god-figure of San Jose,” oh, fuck, he’s digging up all the training he can in his brain, he needs the right words, there’s ceremony to this, “I ask- I ask your blessing for the San Jose Sharks, and I offer...”
She smiles.
“I offer joy in return,” Mario finishes, and Kallehic’s hands begin to glow.
Mario has only received blessings once before, when he first became the Sharks’ selected devotee player.
All the god-figures had blessed him, then, each touching his forehead one by one and murmuring words over him. Their power had all felt different - José’s like a spark of electricity, Emmy the thundering of hooves, Rosa like shuddering scaffolds and Saint Joseph a holy light.
Kallehic’s power then had felt like ocean waves, gentle but unforgettable, working their way into the back of Mario’s mind until solid ground felt foreign for a moment.
This- this is completely different. A unique blessing made with his offering.
Kallehic reaches across the table and lays her hand on his curls, nails sinking into the mass of his hair. It feels like warm water, the salty kisses of the ocean against his face, sunlight against his scalp when his hair was buzzed short.
His mother’s send-off hug when he first left home for an overnight hockey trip-
His father’s gaze of pride-
The sting and sense of accomplishment of blocking a good shot.
Kallehic curls her fingers, and Mario Sees.
He Sees too much - all light and stars and trench depths, the pattern on a fingertip and the plumbing of the entire City. Only for a flashing second, just a taste, just enough for Mario to appreciate Kallehic’s power as a god-figure before she shows him what she wants him to See, and then he Sees.
He Sees sharks in the ocean, great whites gathering in nurseries and singing lullabies, packs of dogfish shouting like drill sergeants, nurse sharks cuddling and gossipping themselves to sleep. He’s here, they say when they notice him Seeing, he is different than the last one, but he is here, and before Mario can See them for much longer, Kallehic blinks and he Sees.
He Sees Utah. He Sees their plain ice and sparkling-new arena, devoid of god-figures and he Feels Kallehic’s power spreading through the space like liquid soaking into a sponge. He Sees Keller and Stenlund and O’Brien and he Sees himself, he Sees Wenny and Toffs, he Sees the Lunds, he sees Cody and Jake and Jan and Kuni, he Sees-
He Sees a goal, shrouded in clouds, defended by a powder blue jersey, and five numberless, faceless skaters in teal closing in, firing the puck. He Sees it happen again. He Sees it again and again and again and again . And then he Sees-
Himself. His numberless, faceless teammates hugging him tight.
“You see,” Kallehic says.
“I do,” Mario answers.
“Do you listen?” Kallehic asks.
Mario thinks of the sharks he Saw and he says, “I will.”
In the locker room, he calls it, before the game even starts. He says it, and he calls it, and he has no fear of jinxing it. Because Kallehic will keep her word as long as Mario keeps his.
And Mario knows he can bring the joy.