Renzhies

by Mara Duryea

  “K’lar, watch me make one picture of me!” Velevy rammed her face into the snow and then lifted it out. An almost perfect print of her face was stamped into the snow.

  Squealing in delight, I squished my face into the snow, too. Pulling it free, I admired the small, round print until a giggling Velevy smashed it with her hand.

  “Hey!”

  “Heh-heh.” Velevy pushed snow in my mouth. I threw snow on her head and we giggled until our sides hurt. The laughter fractured a barrier I didn’t realize existed, and I fell silent.

  “What?” said Velevy.

  I put my finger in my mouth. “I’m…I’m not K’lar.”

  Velevy crouched before me. “Who are you?”

  “I’m…hm…” The name took its sweet time reaching my tongue. “I’m Zhin.”

  Velevy’s light brown eyebrows rose. “Zhin? You sure?”

  My fists quivered excitedly next to my face. “I’m Zhin!”

  Velevy squealed and hugged me.

  I wanted to celebrate. “Let’s make a snow monster!” I packed snow between my gloves. My hands knew what I wanted, although I wasn’t sure myself. Not being any kind of sculpter, the finished product was a lumpy glob.

  Velevy cocked an eyebrow. “What you make?”

  “The other one,” I said.

  “The other what?”

  I gazed at the blob. “There’s two of them. One’s pink and blue, and this one’s hunting.”

  Velevy visibly shivered, and she hugged her stomach. “What you talking about?”

  I contemplated my creation. “It needs long ears. They curve up like this.” I touched my fingers overhead. “The pink one doesn’t…” My voice caught. “I don’t know where she is. I made her cry, too. I made her cry so he would cry.” I sank down. “I made her cry!”

  “Minamee.” Velevy gathered me into her arms. “Is okay. Don’t cry.”

  The term of endearment pierced my heart. “Gramma!” I threw my arms around the vozhar’s neck.

  The pretty Veerin jumped. “Gramma? Now you look here, I not that old! I fresh! Okay, maybe not now, because look at my hair. Ow-wap! But this kind of serious. I need one mirror.” Keeping me in her arms, she barreled into the Kosalin. She nearly carried me to her room, but remembered me at the last second. Turning from her gold and white door, she whisked to my room.

  Plopping me on the bed like a sack of dead plupkins, she thrust open the wardrobe doors and examined her face in a small mirror pinned to the back. I’d had no clue it existed until that moment.

  The door opened, and Hemrin entered with two guards. “Velevy, what’s going on?”

  “He called me ‘Gramma.’”

  Hemrin frowned. “Are you looking in a mirror? Velevy!” He glanced at me and his brows rose. “The tears are clearer.” He almost shut the closet doors on Velevy’s nose. “Concentrate, vozhar! What happened?”

  Velevy glared down her nose at him. “These things matter, Hemrin, especially when you been underground for one long time.”

  Hemrin opened his mouth to rejoinder, but nothing came out. His head just wagged in exasperation, and then his mouth shut.

  “He remembers his name. Is Zhin. And he remembers one ‘she,’” said Velevy, before he could think of something to say. She shot me a scowl. “And one gramma.”

  Hemrin decided to ignore that last and sat beside me. “We don’t need the spider. Zhin, what’s the matter? Who is ‘she?’”

  “The pink and blue one,” I choked out. “She didn’t care about it.”

  “Care about what?”

  “I don’t know!” I doubled over and buried my face into my lap. I struggled to picture the woman, but I could only recall a pink shock of hair among dark blue tresses.

  “Velevy,” said Hemrin, “you may go.”

  The Veerin scurried out, hand on her hair, as if its paleness indicated her age. It would take a bit before she realized she was young again.

  Hemrin remained in the room, recanting little stories to calm me down. It was dangerous to leave a bloodheart victim alone when they were upset. They could be changed in the morning. At that point, saving them was too late, because they were dead. Hence, soulless.

  As he told me tales of the Sirix in the far west of Merisyliss, the tug stood in his usual spot. Immediately, my insides ceased to squirm and my whimpering stilled. I was so emotionally exhausted that I fell asleep, even though Morning Sun had hardly begun.

  ***

  A small noise woke me up, and I peered at the room from behind the blanket covers. The dying coals rendered the walls red and the curtains dark.

  “Hemrin?” I said. “Velevy?”

  There was something wrong with the top of the fireplace. Two black fangs poked out of it. As they grew longer, a shadowy bump appeared between them, and then two eyes reflected the fiery coals.

  Shrieking at the top of my lungs, I hurtled to the door. Locked. Clawed hands gripped the sides of the fireplace, and a massive frame swung out of the flu. It landed in a crouch on the floor, and then rose taller than the fireplace.

  I jerked on the ribbon until it broke. A few seconds later, the bell next to it chimed. Deep down, I knew Hemrin wouldn’t reach me in time.

  Dark, hairy hands slammed on either side of me, and I spun around. Veined red eyes bore into mine from a craggy visage. Bloody breath misted from a rancid mouth. Sharp fangs hung over the thing’s crusty lips. It posessed a humanoid female face and body.

  Crushing me in one furry arm, she crossed the floor in a single stride, and swung into the chimney. I squeezed my eyes shut as ashes and smoke half choked me.

  Frigid wind shocked my warm skin as the monster bulged onto the roof. The place was a labyrinth of towers and smoking chimneys. As the creature darted through it, I curled into a ball against the howling storm. The monster burned like a sweltering heater. Soon, even my exposed parts had warmed.

  The wall ringing the Kosalin jutted into sight. Separate from the town, it was attached to it by a walled pass. Sentinels watched the forest for predators. Squeezing me so tight that I couldn’t breathe, the monster tossed pebbles on either side of two guards. They turned their heads, leaving the space between them unguarded.

  My kidnapper sprang across the gap between the Kosalin and the wall. She landed between the two guards without a sound, and then leaped from the wall as if it were a foot high. The guards never saw her.

  As soon as we were safely away, she loosened her grip and I gasped, but she never stopped running. Snow filled my mouth, and I hid my face into her hairy side. The monster’s stench was as unbearable as the cold. Trees vanished in white vortexes. Bone-hard branches slapped at my feet. I pulled them up and pressed them to her stomach.

  Sometimes we were high in the branches with nothing but swirling snow above and beneath us. Other times, the monster plunged into deep drifts, which parted in her wake. The blizzard worsened and a wall of white enclosed us. I couldn’t tell if we were high in the trees, or cutting through the snow.

  A black mouth yawned through the storm, and we plunged into it. In the darkness, the entryway resembled a pallid eye. The thing dropped me on a thick bed of grass.

  Curling around me, she patted my head and hissed, “Sleep, sleep.” She shook her hair over my face. “Sleep, sleep.”

  My head swam and I blacked out.

  The monster was an orilas.

  11

  Monster Mother

  An ocean of snow dusted the floor a little way inside the cave, but couldn’t reach me. Creeping to the opening, I peeked out. A foggy canyon lay before me. The icy walls stretched into a white void. Peering up, I started at sight of a dark figure crawling head first towards me.

  I fled to the grass bed and huddled in a corner. The monster landed in the opening. Something hung from her mouth. I covered my face as she lumbered to the nest and dropped a weight on the floor.

  She caught me around the neck and dragged me to her side. A mangled leypel lay at her clawed feet. Her gnarled
toes were spread like talons.

  “Eat.” She ripped a chunk of meat from the leypel’s side and shoved it against my face. Crying out in revulsion, I thrust the flesh away. It seemed a massive hammer cracked across my face. My eyes nearly popped from their sockets as I sprawled flat on my back.

  “Eat.” She forced the meat between my teeth before I could catch my breath, and pressed her hand against my mouth. The exposed blood was cold, but the meat was hot and squishy. As I thrashed in her grip, I accidentally swallowed the carnage.

  The monster lifted her hand and I retched on the floor. Veins slid from my mouth like thin worms. The meat squelched in a pool of blood and saliva. It didn’t deter the monster in the least. She ripped a fresh hunk off the leypel.

  “No, no,” I moaned.

  “Always crying,” she snarled. “Now Baby can’t eat. Mother is sick of this. She will fix you!” Pinching my jaw open, she forced the new meat inside, and then held it closed until I swallowed. “Mother punish you if you spit it out.”

  Struggling to keep the filth down, I rolled into a ball. She eyed me as she slurped and chewed on the raw meat, including what I’d regurgitated. I covered my ears to block out the sound.

  “Baby grow strong.” She shoved more bloody meat into my mouth. “Why is Baby afraid of the Renzhie? Why more than one time to try to escape the house? Almost eaten by m’kriths. Baby let himself get captured! Crying in the Kosalin!” She punched the floor near my head. One of her fingers was thicker than my whole body. “Disgraceful Baby! Shameful! Baby is no good!”

  Curling into a corner of the nest, I cried myself to sleep. When I woke, the monster had gathered me to her bosom, where I’d be warmest. She breathed steadily, unafraid because she was the freakiest thing in the canyon.

  The snowstorm continued to wail, and the wind kicked at the snowflakes in the entryway. The tug wept somewhere in the vast wilderness. With him was she with the pink streak in her dark, wavy hair.

  Morning…

  For a second, I thought I was warm in bed, but not in the underground house. People spoke and pattered in and out of some place. Every time the door slid open, cold air swept in.

  “What’s that?” said the woman with the wavy hair.

  The tug’s heart swelled in pain. “Nothing…nothing…”

  I sat up and my heart sank. There was nobody, only the cave. Sighing heavily, I sought mental escape. A few stray sticks transformed into toy animals, which scampered across the grassy nest.

  Just when the retsinists prepared to battle the jirins, my monster mother swung into the cave, bearing a jar in her arm. She set it before me. “Drink.”

  For some reason I didn’t fear her as much as I had the day before. Venturing to the jar, I examined its contents. Freezing river water lapped its sides. She’d pounded through the ice to procure it. As I drank, Monster Mother smiled. Affection, maybe?

  When I finished, she shoved raw meat down my throat. Still smarting from the blow yesterday, I willed the meat to stay put in my suffering stomach. She approved. Clamping me around the middle, she shook her hair over my head. Calm settled the last of my fears and she set me down.

  I hopped around her feet as she gazed into the blizzard. Sometimes she glanced my way if I got too loud. She didn’t grow angry about it, though.

  Time passed. Blizzards and frozen winds howled. Ice bestowed sharp teeth on the cave entrance. The meat stopped nauseating me. My monster mother designated a pocket of the cave for my own private toilet. It was me and Mommy, in a cave within an eternal storm.

  ***

  Spring water dripped like molten gold in the sun and splashed on the lip of the cave. A warm breeze ventured inside. The river had unfrozen and charged through the canyon like a white foam snake.

  I gnawed on a kaprilel bone. They were the bigger cousins of the leypels. Monster Mother had murdered it somewhere. Kaprilels didn’t appear until late spring or early summer. It didn’t matter much to me at the time.

  “Baby,” said Monster Mother, “will learn to hunt.”

  A thrill rushed through me. “We’re going outside?”

  “Leave the cave now.” Tossing me on her back, she sped head-first to the bottom of the canyon. I clenched her fur in my fists as the ground rushed up at me. She vaulted over protrusions in the canyon wall. Rock snapped under her claws and flew into space. Thirty feet from the ground, she sprang into the marshy grasses at the river’s edge. The area boasted a few star trees, but the bulk of the vegetation was bushes and grass.

  Monster Mother dropped me on the bank. “Baby catch fish. Watch.”

  She dove into the churning waters. The gray waves swelled as high as me. They swallowed the shore and tasted my toes. I stepped back. She was crazy going in there.

  In a burst of freezing water, Monster Mother lunged to shore. A speckled fish thrashed in her jaws. She dropped it at my feet. I crouched to rip a chunk out of it, but she shoved me back.

  “Catch one, or Baby not eat.”

  My lips pinched into a thin line. “I’m hungry!”

  “Catch one!” She tossed me into the icy waves. I immediately lost the feeling in my limbs. The wild current roared in my clogged ears, and my lungs burned. Dread built in my heart when I realized I couldn’t see the surface.

  Monster Mother’s hand suddenly clamped hot on my arm and yanked me into the blessed air. I gasped and choked as she rolled my shivering form onto the grassy shore.

  “Baby catch fish!” she screamed.

  “I want your fish,” I yelled.

  She slapped me in the mouth, but I recoiled and bit her hand. Pride gleamed in her scarlet eyes, and she stepped away from the fish. Snarling under my breath, I caught the fish up and scarfed it down.

  As I licked my grimy fingers, the sun caught a white scar coursing diagonally across my hand. “Let me see your cut, Baby.” A callused hand washed my little fat one in a bucket of clean water. “Does it still hurt?”

  “A little bit,” I whispered.

  Monster Mother glanced at me, but said nothing. Her only care was to make me independent of her.

  “I want My,” I said. I didn’t know what else to call him. Every day I grew more and more like an orilas, until I spoke like one, too.

  “Not yet.” She lugged me onto her back. “Baby learn to hunt. Baby not fisher yet, either.” Disgust laced her voice. She darted up the opposite canyon face and into the forest.

  The sun hung at zenith by the time Monster Mother reached her destination in the middle of a dense star forest. Lowering to all fours, she crept through the trees. She seized a handful of dirt and pressed it to my nose. I smelled leathery scales, ground-up leaves, and urine.

  “Leypel,” Monster Mother hissed. “Follow.”

  I crept beside her on all fours like an animal. We didn’t go far before Monster Mother halted and pushed my back down. It was the signal to stay still. She darted into the gloom.

  Not two seconds later, the leypel’s shriek sent my heart racing. Birds fluttered from the trees and sped squawking into the distance. I half remembered the first time she’d forced raw meat into my mouth. I used to sleep in a soft bed with a crackling fire nearby. As my fragmented memory worked, the recollection of creamy Kosalin walls faded into a wooden wagon. It had been soft in the wagon.

  Monster Mother appeared, dragging a leypel by its broken back leg. Its camouflage hide flashed red, green, and black. The seven long ears flailed in panic. Its claws scrabbled vainly at the dirt.

  She tossed it to me. “Kill it.”

  Springing onto the leypel’s back, I clamped my jaws into its neck, but my mouth wasn’t big enough and the leypel shook me off. The beast’s tail batted me in the chest, and I landed flat on my back. It tried to crawl away, but Monster Mother knocked it back to me.

  “Bleed the neck,” she said.

  Rubbing my chest, I wobbled to my feet and tackled the leypel down. I jammed my claws into its neck. The beast’s scream pierced my ears as it attempted to buck me off, but
I held fast to it. It died of blood loss several minutes later.

  Monster Mother purred in approval as my heart swelled with elation. Coming to my side, she sat down and shredded the kill to pieces. We feasted on the fresh meat.

  12

  Rindar

  One morning, a few weeks later, Monster Mother took me to a clump of fat mushrooms, ranging from pale yellow to bright red. Some of them were orange with white speckles.

  Bounding to the first clump, I kicked a giant red one into oblivion. Its pieces shined in the sun before they scattered across the glittering star-shaped leaves. A smile cracked my lips and I kicked more of the squishy beauties. They flew high in the air and vanished among the rutted branches.

  Monster Mother wrenched me to her by the hair and whacked me in the face. I sprawled against a clump of roots with a cry of pain.

  “No,” she snarled.

  I glared at her through blurred vision. “Why?”

  “Eat!” She picked only the brightest of the red ones. “This one. Eat.” She threw it at me. “Eat, or Mother punish Baby.”

  My lower lip trembled as I bit into the mushroom. Life wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t I smash a mushroom or ten? They always grew back, and they sprouted just so I could smash them. They didn’t even taste good either.

  The tug suddenly cried out and broke down in tears. I squeezed the bulbous mushroom head in shock.

  “My,” I said, turning my head in the tug’s direction. “My is over there.”

  Monster Mother popped the mushroom into my mouth. “Bring Mother back dead leypel, and baby can find My.”

  I stared at her with round eyes. Had I heard her right? I gulped the last of the mushroom and almost choked. “I’ll be back!” I hurried into the forest.

  Picking up dirt and leaves, I sniffed for the rancid leypel odor. I only smelled awiks. Those shuffling pillows with their flesh-colored limbs were the sourest animals. I found tufts of white m’krith fur. Monster Mother and I had observed them one night shedding their winter coats in favor of dark green hide, the better to camouflage in summer. Monster Mother had killed a whole pack of them for fun.