The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  ‘That could well be the case,’ said Vintage. ‘Are you on your own, Eri?’

  Curiously, the boy looked down at the covered bucket, and again he seemed to struggle with the question. ‘Food is the problem,’ he said. ‘I can’t really go on pretending it isn’t. One jar left in the pantry, the ground too cold for seeds.’ He looked back up at them, swaying on his feet slightly. ‘Is there food where you are going? Where are you going?’

  ‘We’re going to the centre of Ebora, Eri, to the palace. Hopefully, there will be people there, or at least, I’m sure they will have left something behind we can eat.’ Vintage put on her best smile. ‘It’s worth a look, don’t you think? Would you like to come with us?’

  ‘I’m not supposed to go there,’ the boy said. ‘I know that much. We were never to go there again.’

  ‘Who told you that? What has happened at the palace?’ Nanthema looked sharply at the boy, but he just shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve never been. And I can’t remember why now, not really . . .’ After a moment, he reached down and picked up the bucket by the handle. Inside it, something clacked dryly together. ‘I will come and have a look, that’s all. I can always come back, can’t I?’

  Later, when they had stopped to make camp and the boy was asleep by the fire, Vintage found herself staring at his face. It was too gaunt, the skin oddly thin, and somehow she thought it wasn’t entirely to do with his hunger. As if sensing her thoughts, Nanthema nodded at the boy and poked at the fire with a stick.

  ‘Born after Ygseril died. Sickly, no root-nourishment there. He looks older than he should, don’t you think?’

  ‘Do you have any idea how difficult it is to tell how old an Eboran is, my darling?’ Vintage kept her voice lower than Nanthema’s although the boy was obviously deeply asleep; his odd growling snores were evidence of that. ‘To me, he looks like a boy who has been ill for a long time.’

  ‘He has, in a way.’

  Silence fell. They had made their fire near a ring of standing stones. Each was elaborately carved with twisting strands of ivy, although from the corner of Vintage’s eye the leaping shadows seemed to turn them into leering faces.

  ‘We should have asked him to take us to his house. I should like to know how many other Eborans are out here, and why they’ve chosen to be so far from the palace.’ Nanthema pursed her lips. ‘Before I left, people were moving inwards. Trying to keep close to one another. Being out here, so far from the palace, makes no sense. Shall we see what is in his bucket?’

  Vintage shrugged, uneasy. ‘It’s probably the food he collected earlier today,’ although in truth she didn’t really believe that. It hadn’t sounded like food, not as they’d walked along the road and listened to the contents rattling against the metal. ‘Leave him be, Nan. We’ll get him to the palace with us, find him some food to fatten him up a little, and perhaps there will be someone there to look after him. The poor lad looks like he could use some looking after.’

  Nanthema looked uncertain. She pulled a roll of greased paper from her pack, and peeled it back to reveal a length of dried sausage; she gnawed on the end of it.

  ‘How does it feel, to see a child of your people again, after all this time? It could be seen as a hopeful thing. You were trapped inside that Behemoth for over twenty years.’

  ‘Time hasn’t really passed for me, Vin.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  Nanthema looked up from the meat, and then broke into a wide smile. ‘I feel curious, Vin, like I usually do. Hopefully there will be people left at the palace, and then the boy can be someone else’s problem. Here, do you want a bite of this?’

  Vintage thought of the lad looking at the bucket, of him saying, ‘I need meat’.

  ‘Thank you darling, but I’m fine.’

  6

  The cell – as Hestillion had come to think of it – was almost cosy, in a terrible way. It was never cold, nor too warm, and the dim glow from the bulbous nodules in the walls dimmed for several hours each day, so that it was almost possible for her to recall the normal cycle of days and nights. A few hours after the queen had left her the first time, the wall had split open like a pair of eyelids peeling apart and a squat, formless creature had oozed through, carrying an armful of fleshy brown things like larvae. Hestillion had scooped up the war-beast pod and scrambled hurriedly towards the far wall, but the creature had placed the things on the floor between them, and then made stilted, encouraging gestures at her, as though she were a wary wild animal and it were trying to make friends. When Hestillion had not moved, the thing had shuffled forward on its squat legs and, picking up one of the brownish pods, had peeled the top open. Inside it was a grainy-looking white muck, which it then scooped out with its approximation of a hand, and lifted to where its mouth would have been if it had any features at all. The mime was clear enough. The homunculus carefully placed the open pod down on the floor and then oozed its way back out of the wall.

  It had taken Hestillion hours to work up the courage to pick up the pod herself, but in the end her cramping stomach was too insistent, and to her surprise the grainy muck tasted rather like especially bland porridge. She had eaten it, and was not sick, and opened another of the pods. It had contained water with a faintly mineral taste.

  Now, the shuffling homunculus – she had no way to tell if it was the same one, or a series of them – dropped off the food parcels every day, and she ate and drank without fear. Yet she was frightened, angry in a way she had never been in her life, and heartily sick of porridge.

  The light nodules had brightened again in their approximation of morning when the latest homunculus slipped through the puckered wall opening. Hestillion was crouched on the slightly spongy floor, her arms around the war-beast pod. She thought it had begun to grow warm, and sometimes when she was very still, she thought she could sense the creature inside trying to reach out to her. But then she would remember how she had thought she was talking to the great god Ygseril while she dream-walked, when in actuality she had been simpering and grovelling to their enemy, tricked into finally releasing the Jure’lia queen from her prison within the tree-god’s roots. That thought was still too much to bear.

  ‘You. Creature. Can you speak?’

  The homunculus stiffened as it placed the food packages on the floor. The things that came each day were identical, as far as she could tell, constructed from the pliable black material that seemed to be at the very heart of what the Jure’lia were; they had no discernible head, just a thick torso, short stumpy legs, and long flexible arms. The digits that split the ends of those arms changed and twisted into whatever happened to be needed at the time.

  ‘I know you can hear me.’ Hestillion stood up, reluctantly leaving the faint warmth of the war-beast pod behind. ‘I want something other than this gruel. I want real food. If you are keeping me here, you must give me something real. Wine, bread, meat . . .’ The thought of bread, freshly baked and full of its own warmth, was like a physical blow, and for a second she was unable to speak. ‘Where is your queen? Bring her to me!’

  The creature was shuffling rapidly back to the wall, clearly meaning to leave her, and without knowing she was going to do it, Hestillion leapt across the chamber towards it. The wall flexed open in its unpleasant way but she had hold of the thing’s stringy arm and she yanked it away from its escape hatch.

  ‘Speak to me! I know you can hear me, I know it!’

  Under her fingers the creature’s arm was tough and stringy, but as she squeezed it the cords of its muscles seemed to turn back to goo, and then it was free of her and slipping back out the hole. Roaring with frustration, Hestillion threw herself after it, and her head and torso slipped wetly through the opening. She had a glimpse of a curving narrow space filled with shadows, the homunculus skittering out of sight around a corner, and then the wall was moving against her, closing around her like a tightening ring of flesh.

  ‘I know you can hear me!’

  Bracing her f
eet against the floor of her cell she pushed forward, trying to wriggle out into the corridor beyond, but the wall actively thrust her back; it was like being spat out with tremendous force. She hit the floor and was back on her feet immediately, but the hole had already closed – the surface was smooth and unyielding again.

  For a handful of erratic heartbeats Hestillion stood and glared at the wall, trembling all over, and then she shrieked, a terrible broken noise that left her throat raw and stinging.

  ‘You can! You can hear me! You can!’

  Unsteady on her feet, she walked back to the war-beast pod. It looked small and grey, an incongruous artefact from hundreds of years ago, in the belly of an alien monster. But inside it, she knew, there was a link to Ebora and everything she had abandoned.

  Kneeling next to it, she placed her hands on the surface and forced herself to look at it properly. It was not grey truly, but a deep burnished silver, and it was longer than it was wide, although the shape of it was irregular, covered all over with soft bulges. There were no creases in that skin, no wrinkles. Nothing to get her fingernails under.

  ‘I know you can hear me too,’ she said softly. ‘And I’m sorry if you’re not ready, but I need you here now, little one.’

  Gritting her teeth, Hestillion bent her fingers into claws and sank them into the skin of the pod. There was a great deal of resistance, and at the first few tries her fingernails just skidded off the surface, but she brought the pod around to brace it between her legs, and using her own weight, managed to lever off a chunk of the pod. It came away in thick, fibrous wads, filling the cell with the clean, sharp scent of trees and leaves. Choking back a sob – how that scent took her back to her earliest childhood – she worked all the faster, peeling away handfuls of the stuff, regardless of how it broke her nails and made them bleed. The skin of the pod was thicker than she had expected, so thick that she began to wonder if there was nothing inside at all, but she pushed away that sickening thought with a grunt and kept digging, faster and faster now. The joint of the smallest finger on her left hand popped and a sharp dart of pain travelled up to her elbow. Hestillion hissed with annoyance and kept going. There had been a change in the texture of the stuff; it was more brittle, crumbling to bits as she removed it, and then she was down to a layer like thick lace.

  It was then that something moved under her hands.

  Hestillion yelped, unable to stop herself. Purple scales, tiny and interlocked, shifted under her grasp. She had an odd thought – that the pod would be full of snakes, that they would slither out and eat her – and then she was tearing more pieces aside with her bloody hands. The thing inside was shifting weakly, not quite able to pull itself free, and gradually Hestillion became aware that she was murmuring to it, saying quiet soothing things as if it were a baby.

  ‘There you are, there you are, not much longer. Hold on, hold on, my sweet.’

  She slipped her arms fully into the pod, encircling the creature, feeling the fluids of its birth surge out over her chest, soaking her already tattered gown. The thing shifted against her sluggishly, slippery scaled skin oddly feverish, and then she heaved. The pod itself split into several large pieces, and she fell back against the floor with the creature cradled to her chest.

  For several breaths she was too exhausted to do anything but lie there, soaked in the tree-scented fluid with the weight of her new charge heavy on her torso and her hands throbbing steadily. When eventually she gathered the strength to lift her head, she found herself looking into a great pearly eye. The war-beast was no bigger than a large dog, and it was a dragon, its long serpentine head cocked to one side so that it could look at her better. Its scales were a deep purple, shading to magenta at its throat and belly, while small, dark horns, so purple they were almost blue, sprouted from behind its ears. The creature’s wings were small and wet, stuck firmly to its back still. Shaking with a combination of awe and exhaustion, Hestillion touched a hand to its jaw.

  ‘I can taste your blood.’

  Its voice was male, but light. He sounded very young. Hestillion nodded uncertainly.

  ‘You can hear me.’

  ‘I can.’ The dragon blinked at her owlishly. Although she had at first thought his eyes were entirely white, she saw now that they were silver at the centre, and oddly reflective.

  ‘Can you see me?’

  The small dragon snorted, and with a stirring of his limbs, slipped off her and onto the floor. He seemed to have difficulty standing, his head oddly oversized in comparison to the rest of him. He looked, she realised, very much like a baby.

  ‘I see you. I taste you too. I am hungry.’

  ‘Yes.’ Hestillion stood up slowly, unable to take her eyes from the small dragon. War-beasts, she knew well, were born from their pods fully grown – or at least, large enough that it made little difference. This creature, with its undersized pod, had not spent long enough on the branch, and there was a chance it would simply die, too weak to live. But at least now it would have a chance; the first war-beasts in so long should have that much, if nothing else. ‘What is your name, my lord?’

  The dragon took a few steps forward. He was trying to look at his own feet as he did so, and nearly fell over. His tail was short and stubby, with only the tip touching the floor.

  ‘I don’t know. Is there food?’

  This was new as well. When they died, the souls of war-beasts returned to Ygseril’s roots, eventually to be reborn in his branches centuries later. They would remember who they were, their old forms, and keep all their old memories. It was one of the reasons they were such a formidable force; the war-beasts were Eboran history given flesh. She thought of all the war-beasts dying at the end of the Eighth Rain, when Ygseril had died. She thought of their souls seeking out roots that were dry and dead, and a shiver worked its way violently down her back.

  ‘What do you remember, bright one? Anything you can tell me, anything at all.’ He wobbled his head around to look at her. ‘And then there will be food.’

  He made a huffing noise, and shook himself all over. ‘Warmth, sunlight. A rustling noise. Falling.’ One of his wings flexed experimentally, black feathers all stuck together. ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Do not be sorry, lord. Here, this is food.’ She went over to the gruel pods and began to peel one open, but as the small dragon teetered over to her, he stumbled and fell, legs kicking as he lay on his side. Hestillion scooped him up and took him back to the pod, ignoring the tight feeling of despair that was seeping through her chest. I have someone to talk to, she told herself. I am not alone here.

  ‘Here, look. Here.’ She settled him on her lap as best she could – he was, at least, too big to sit there comfortably – and directed his snout to the open pod. He began to eat, jaws working furiously so that gobbets of the gruel slopped down her robe. When he had finished the first one, she opened the second pod and he thrust his snout inside it eagerly.

  ‘You will need a name, lord.’ He did not respond save for a series of wet chomping noises. ‘And I suppose I will have to give it to you.’ The weight of him on her was as oddly comforting as it was uncomfortable. ‘I cannot know what your name was in your past lives, and I am uncertain as to whether I should give you another’s name. That would seem . . . unlucky.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I never thought I should hold a war-beast in my arms. I never thought I would leave Ebora again, but here I am. When I was very, very small, there was a flower that grew in Ebora. It was my favourite, when I was a child – a big purple flower with great velvety petals. It was called cellaphalious. Such a delicate bloom, and hard to grow in any great quantity. Many of our gardeners dedicated decades of their lives to cultivating it, and then in late spring, when all the new plants opened their buds, we would hold a day of celebration. The Festival of Celaphon – a welcoming to the new flowers.’ Distantly, Hestillion realised she was crying. Tears were making their way down her grimy face in a warm flood, but it did not matter. ‘Celaphon. How is that for a name? Do you like it?�
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  The young dragon snorted into the pod. ‘Celaphon. Celaphon.’

  ‘That’s it.’ She smiled through her tears. ‘You say it perfectly, Celaphon.’

  She had just opened the third pod, not thinking what she would do for her own sustenance, when the wall peeled back to reveal the Jure’lia queen. She stepped over the threshold, an intent expression on her face, and the hole healed behind her. Hestillion gathered Celaphon to her chest and stood up, trying to ignore how heavy he was.

  ‘What is this, Lady Hestillion Eskt? What have you done?’

  ‘You knew I had him,’ she said. ‘You knew, and said nothing.’

  ‘We thought the thing was dead.’ The queen’s tone was mild, but Hestillion was not fooled. ‘A living war-beast, here, among us. Such changes we have seen. Dangerous changes.’

  The teeming black ceiling above became suddenly more lively, and underneath her slippered feet, Hestillion could feel the floor growing warm, as though the Behemoth was turning its attention towards her.

  ‘If you want to kill him, you’ll have to kill me,’ she said. ‘This is all I have left. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I won’t die for it.’

  It was a gamble. She still had no real idea why the queen had kept her alive, or why she had taken her into the corpse moon at all – it could not truly be that she felt grateful, after all.

  ‘You are all so concerned with living and dying.’

  ‘And you’re not?’

  The queen seemed to take a slow breath then, and Hestillion wondered if she had lungs at all, or if it was some pretence meant to disarm her.

  ‘We suppose not. We are concerned with birth, with change, with movement. With consumption.’ Whether it was a contrivance or not, the queen had her head bowed slightly, as though she were truly considering her answers. ‘The individual is nothing, when the whole changes and moves on. Still, you have given us a lot to think about, Hestillion Eskt. You told us that this had never happened before – that never in the history between our peoples had we spoken with each other, and that is true. A line of communication has been opened. Change has happened. Perhaps that is meaningful after all.’