by Scott Hale
Vrana came to a halt and cocked her head. “What?”
“Do you know what we do on this island?” Mara ignored her. She stepped off the path and into a thick copse.
“No,” the Raven shouted, following after her.
The copse was densely packed, lit only by the shafts of light that had worked their way through the canopy. A small pond sat at the northernmost point, its waters constantly circling inwards, much like its larger cousin the Gyre. Around the pond, long blades of rust-colored grass protruded from the ground like wild hairs.
“What did they tell you?” Mara crossed the copse toward a rock formation only a foot taller than herself.
“That I’d find a way to reach the Witch in Nachtla.” Vrana watched with intrigue as Mara began to manipulate the stones on the rock formation. “That I’d…” She laughed and shook her head. “That I’d ‘find out where we came from and where we’ve been’ and why the flesh fiends became a myth.”
The Centipede looked over her shoulder and nodded. “Not even I could resist that temptation.” She pushed her palm against a smoothed piece of sandstone and something clicked into place within the formation. “Do you still steal away to Aeson every chance you get?”
Vrana allowed her silence to speak for her.
“This mechanism works the same as those that guard the three tunnels to the Inner Sanctum,” Mara said as she bent down and twisted a small key between two fused rocks.
“No sudden movements.” She backpedaled to the pond and beckoned the Raven to stand beside her. “They are quite skittish.”
Ancient gears within the formation turned and groaned, and at the structure’s center, the rocks pulled away and slid into the ground. A gust of hot air trapped within blew through the copse. The sound of feet in ascent came shortly thereafter, followed by the sniffling of noses and clearing of throats. Vrana strained her ears as she heard raspy whispers and what seemed to be the din of a bell.
“Does this lead to the mines?” Vrana asked, standing on the tips of her toes to have a better look inside the formation.
“That, and much more,” the Centipede said, amused. “Save your questions. You’ll have plenty more in just a moment.”
Vrana scratched at her stomach. “I don’t like you.”
“Very few do,” Mara said indifferently. “There they are.”
Fifteen adolescents with children at their sides emerged from the structure, wide-eyed and hesitant. Half of the children and half of the adolescents were Corrupted, bearing the crimson defect on their right arms. Those that didn’t wear the mark of humanity stood among them unassumingly, picking their noses or biting their lips.
Vrana turned to Mara. “Why are there Corrupted on the island?” Her eyes darted back and forth between the faces of the children. “How are there so many children? What are they doing in the mines? Mara?”
The Centipede turned her head slightly and lifted her mask just enough to show the Raven that she was smiling. “They are gifts from the Blue Worm.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Vrana stepped away, into a tuft of the rust-colored grass, which pricked her feet. “What the hell are you saying?”
“The elders of Eld mean well, but if we had waited for them to solve our fertility problems, we’d have all died out by now.”
“The Blue Worm?” Vrana shouted. “I brought the sealing stone to keep it asleep, and you’ve woken it up?”
Mara shook her head. “Vrana, dear, it’s always been awake.”
CHAPTER XXXI
Grim thunderheads loomed over the deepening gloom of the island.
Inky waves spilled across the bone-white shore, grabbing with thieving fists idle tributes from the sands.
Twenty blazing eyes blinked in the coves below Lacuna as small ships were loaded with unlabeled stock.
“Why not seal it sooner?” Vrana backed away from the balcony carved out of the bluff and faced Mara.
The Centipede shuffled past R’lyeh, who was sitting on a small chair beneath a guttering sconce; Blix ruffled his feathers as she passed. “That would’ve been a waste.”
Vrana’s head throbbed from a migraine born of her anger with the woman. Mara had refused to answer the Raven’s questions until the party had been reunited. “The children are a gift from the Blue Worm?” Her eyes followed a line of girls moving about the docks, which the balcony overlooked. “How? Why?”
Mara took a seat on a couch not much larger than R’lyeh’s chair and crossed her legs. “It was half awake when we took the island from the Scavengers,” she said, scratching at the stubble on her legs. “The Trauma and the Corrupted’s sacrifices had roused it from its slumber. With some coaxing, we woke it fully, and in its fitful waking, it turned the ocean violent.”
“Didn’t you know what you were doing?” R’lyeh said loudly. She shook her head. “I don’t understand. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Make no mistake, little Octopus,” Mara said, pointing at the girl. “I’d little to do with Lacuna’s beginnings. I only took over operations six years ago.”
“Why is the Blue Worm helping our people?” Vrana interjected, stepping between R’lyeh and Mara, as though to physically block their conversation. “It has to have a reason.”
“Of course it does. No one and nothing does anything unless there is a benefit to be had.” Mara turned her head at the sound of a crate falling onto the dock.
“Half of those children are Corrupted,” R’lyeh said in disbelief. Having not been witness to those that had emerged from the copse, she added, “Are you using them?”
“As slaves?” Mara threw back her head and laughed. “Look how well that worked out for the humans. Aren’t we supposed to have learned from their mistakes?” She cleared her throat. “There is some misinformation regarding our kind and the Corrupted and what happens when we share the same bed.”
R’lyeh looked at Vrana, confused.
Vrana nodded at the girl. Tired of Mara’s smugness, she cried, “Will you just fucking say it? We didn’t come all this way for stupid fucking games.”
“Aren’t you eighteen?” the Centipede said, as though the Raven didn’t have the credentials to be outraged.
Vrana fell back against the cavern wall. “I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not,” Mara quipped, “but that’s okay.”
“Please,” R’lyeh begged, pulling her legs up and under her.
“The Corrupted earned their name for a reason,” Mara started, “though what truly colored their right arms red is still a mystery.” She paused for a moment. “The elders tell us that our kind and the Corrupted cannot bear children together, that we are of two different species, but that is not entirely true. Impregnation is difficult, seldom successful, but it is certainly possible.”
“I don’t…” R’lyeh began to tug on the tentacles of her mask. “What?”
“The elders of Eld look inward, using what little tools are left from the Old World to try and make our bodies better for breeding,” Mara continued, “and one day they may have their answer, but it will be too late. Under the right circumstances, the Corrupted and our people can reproduce, with fifty percent of the offspring bearing the Corrupted gene.”
Vrana pushed herself away from the cavern wall. “The right circumstances?” she stammered.
“When our people and the Corrupted fuck, and that’s really the best word for it—there’s too much anger and cultural confusion to make the act enjoyable—it’s not long after that the woman will learn if she is with child. The gestation period for human offspring is nine months; for our kind, it is four.”
R’lyeh leaned forward. “What about…”
“One,” Mara said, holding up her pointer finger. “It takes one month for a child begot from a member of our tribe and a Corrupted to gestate.”
“You said it takes the right circumstances,” Vrana reminded.
“It does, because in most cases, the offspring is deformed, deranged; not fit to
live more than a few hours outside its mother, and if it does, it’s quickly killed because it cannot be tamed or reasoned with. The Corrupted call them demons, but I believe you know them best by their true names: flesh fiends.”
“That can’t be,” R’lyeh said, ducking as Blix cawed loudly and began to circle the room.
“I’ve no reason to lie to either of you,” Mara retorted. She looked at the docks and said, “We have been preparing to leave since we received word from Anguis of your arrival.”
Flesh fiends? Vrana scratched at the top of her hand until the skin was red and speckled with hints of blood. Is it possible? She turned away from R’lyeh and Mara and looked over the balcony, into the spiraling pools of the Widening Gyre. How far removed are we? Is the balance just a means to satisfy our inherent bloodlust?
“Vrana?” R’lyeh called.
“Why do you need the Blue Worm?” Vrana continued to stare into the ocean, mesmerized by its constant aggression.
“To ensure an egg is fertilized after every encounter.” Mara sounded cold, detached.
“And why does the Blue Worm need you?”
“To be used, and to be fed.” Mara cocked her head as Vrana turned to face her. “The Worm gives us our future, and we to it the fiends that are born.”
“But she was attacked by one,” R’lyeh said, her voice soft and doubting.
“Some escape; some, it lets live. A hundred or so have taken up residence in the reefs and the atoll; a few in the woods, even. They feed on and fuck each other, and at the end of the day, really, they are no different than the Corrupted or us. The only difference is that they know who they are.”
“If you’ve been at this for years—” Vrana crossed the room, crossed her arms; stood over Mara, tall and imposing, “—where are all the children?”
“Like I said, we have safer ways of leaving the island.” Mara stood up, forcing Vrana to back away. “Once they are old enough, and a suitable placement has been found, they leave for the mainland.”
“To our villages?” R’lyeh started to rub the side of her leg, a nervous tic developed at the slaughter of Alluvia.
“Sometimes—most go to Traesk—but there are those untouched by Corruption that are set aside for more important duties.”
Vrana received Blix onto her arm. “Like what?”
“Oh, what did they call them in the Old World?” Mara moved past the Raven, to the steps that led down to the docks. She shouted an order to a Hound carrying several baskets. “Sleeper agents, that’s the word. The humans are superstitious, but if you concoct a convincing enough backstory, they’ll take in a child without Corruption and elevate them to a higher status than they deserve.” She shouted another order. “If you’ve been to Geharra, then you surely stopped by Nora.”
Vrana gritted her teeth. “I have.”
“Well, if you’d had the pleasure of meeting their eponymously named mayor, then you would’ve met a child of Lacuna.”
Vrana’s mind returned to that night in the library when she first came upon Nora. What did she say? Vrana searched her thoughts for the exchange. I said that her arm wasn’t red, and she said neither was mine. When I tried to tell her I wasn’t human, she said that maybe she wasn’t either. Vrana’s thoughts hurried along to the night weeks after their meeting, when the Red Worm had ripped itself free of Geharra’s womb. The letter to the elders asking for help—it wasn’t an alliance. She’s part of the tribe.
“How many agents are there?” Vrana said finally.
Mara shook her head. “I couldn’t tell you. We lose contact with some.”
“How do you keep in contact, then?” R’lyeh interjected.
“Depends on the distance,” Mara said, starting down the steps that would lead to the boats. “For those that are difficult to reach, we make use of spellweavers. In fact, most of what the spellweavers know was taught to us by the Blue Worm.” Mara craned her neck toward the Raven and the Octopus, as though she enjoyed destroying their firmly held beliefs. “It is, after all, no easy feat to make a mountain disappear, to make an island vanish.”
Vrana gestured to R’lyeh to come to her feet, for it seemed the Centipede had grown tired of the balcony and would be moving elsewhere. “In Caldera, the spellweavers were kept a secret,” Vrana said, “until the Witch gutted one.”
“Of course they were,” Mara said, descending the creaking steps. “They are rare and in short supply.”
Vrana twitched as Blix’s talons clamped down onto her skin. Together, with R’lyeh, all three followed as Mara went across the boardwalk, drawing from the busy workers quick glances and short whispers. Vrana counted four small boats, each large enough to carry a crew of no more than ten. It didn’t seem enough to empty the island entirely, but what did she know? And of what she did know, how much of it was true?
“I don’t… this is too much,” R’lyeh said as they turned at an intersection and made their way toward the tunnel that led topside. “How do you determine who’s a spellweaver?”
“We don’t,” Mara said, ducking beneath a low-hanging rock that arched over the boardwalk. “As I said, they are rare and in short supply. They are artifacts from the Old World. Vrana…” Mara pulled back the two wooden doors that divided the tunnel from the docks, letting in a gust of hot air. “Your mother told me that your third trial took you to the hospital near the ravines.”
“The homunculi?” Vrana crouched beneath the rock. “The homunculi?” she repeated. “Those are spellweavers? They’re us?”
“Mm,” Mara said, waiting for the girls to pass before locking the door behind them. “Makes you wonder, then, where we came from.”
“Huh?” R’lyeh said, her mask glowing in the torchlight. “What do you mean?”
Vrana laughed and shook her head.
“She’s got it.” Mara chuckled. She pointed to the ramp they’d descended earlier, the mouth of which was housed in a hollowed tree. “Here.”
“What does she mean?” R’lyeh persisted. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if the homunculi are of our tribe, and if half of every birth between Corrupted and our people results in a flesh fiend, what does that make us?” Mara ripped a torch from the wall to keep the shadows away. “It’s not so much about where we came from but why we can’t seem to shake the notion that we are so much better than everything else.”
In a matter of hours, Lacuna had become a ghost town. The trees, and the homes they held, swayed eerily in the moonlight, stripped of personal belongings. The small houses that circled the village howled of their emptiness, the bitter wind that passed through them giving voice to their discontent. No longer did animals, masked or unmasked, roam the sandy soil, nor would they ever again. Soon, the island would be reduced to an oddity, a tale told around fires to frighten the young and enliven the old; and eventually, the lie would become more believable than the truth.
Vrana stepped back into the house that sat upon the hill overlooking Lacuna. “When are you leaving?” she asked Mara, who was placing the girls’ possessions on the bed.
“Tired of me already?” Mara joked. “I’ll leave when the deed is done.”
“And how are we going to get out of here?” R’lyeh lifted the octopus mask off of her head.
“After you’ve sealed the Worm’s chamber, you’ll come topside, and together we’ll go by boat to the mainland.” Mara stepped away from the bed.
“The Blue Worm is going to let us do this?” Vrana asked, making no attempt to hide her doubt.
“It will, because it has no reason to stop you.” Mara slid past Vrana, pushed open the door that she stood beside.
“Wait.” The Raven reached out to catch Mara with her claws, but the woman was quick and pulled away. “Deimos said that these things bring about the apocalypse.”
Mara shrugged. “Maybe,” she said, grasping the door handle and pulling it shut as she exited, “but the philosopher Victor Mors has been dead for a long time and was considered a madman when he was alive.
Apocalypses come in all shapes and sizes. Sleep tight.”
It seemed Vrana’s body had no intention of taking Mara’s advice. In the dead of night, after lying still and trying desperately to get some rest, she turned over and found on the other side of the bed an equally awake R’lyeh.
“I’m glad you’re up,” the Octopus said, turning on her side as she kicked the blankets onto Vrana.
“So am I,” Vrana said, smiling.
R’lyeh blew a loose strand of hair away from her face. “I can’t believe I’m doing this again.”
“You don’t have to.” Vrana took the strand and brushed it under R’lyeh’s nose. “You can stay with Mara until it’s over.”
“I’d rather not,” R’lyeh said, cringing as the hair tickled her skin. “Besides, this seems different.”
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“Do you really believe her?”
“About what?”
“The flesh fiends,” R’lyeh said, the words rolling off her tongue slowly, as though she was afraid to remind Vrana of the encounter.
The Raven’s hands moved to her stomach, which was almost healed. “I guess so. At this point, I feel like she has no reason to mislead us.”
“But that means we’re related to them.”
“I know.” Vrana yawned. “Now, I’m wondering if that has something to do with our people and the low birth rate. If it’s this hard to procreate, maybe we weren’t mean to.”
R’lyeh bit her lip. “Does that mean Serra is a homunculus?”
“I—” Vrana shook her head. “I don’t know. The homunculus in the hospital was like a statue, a mold of something. Deimos did say they found him there, though. Honestly, R’lyeh,” she said as she laughed and rolled onto her back, “I’m not sure what the hell’s going on anymore.”
“How many people do you think know what we know?”
“Not many. I’m not sure what that means for us, though.”
R’lyeh punched her pillow into a more comfortable shape. “What did you want to do after you were initiated?”