Dreams of the Eaten

by Arianne Thompson

But still she didn’t succumb. “Thank you very much,” she said, careful to look him in the eye as she said it. “Do you give grace before a meal?”

  Not with you around, he thought. “A little later,” he said as he served himself and took a seat. “The food is yours to enjoy.”

  And enjoy it she did. It was a fascinating, sickening thing to watch her eat: Vuchak could see that she was desperate for it, but she wasn’t like the half-man, Ylem, who devoured his slops with the reckless joy of a starving hog. She did not allow herself to gulp her food, or stain her mouth or face, and she kept half an eye on Weisei all the while – watching, Vuchak belatedly realized, to take a bite only when he did, as if in this way she could disguise herself as a wholesome person.

  Vuchak had no love for the Starving God, or for the people who served him. But he did appreciate cleverness, and discretion, and respect, and this woman here – Día, as she was – had at least a passing facility with all three.

  So he served her a second steak, and then a third, and by the time she had found the top of her stomach – by every god, she could eat! – Vuchak was full and his clothes were nearly dry, and he could think useful thoughts again. He could consider not just the next necessary thing, but its children and grandchildren.

  And as the father and provider for all those whining, screaming needs, Vuchak was the very definition of parenthood: well fucked.

  He HAD to find Dulei and Hakai and Ylem – that before anything else. Two of them might still be alive, though every passing hour diminished their chances. And retrieving Dulei’s body was no less urgent: the longer the fishmen had him, the greater the likelihood that they would break open his coffin and discover the value of their rotting hostage. One glance at his holy black-feathered cloak would tell them that this was a son of Marhuk – a prize worth an exorbitant ransom, and one that Vuchak and Weisei absolutely could not return home without.

  And yet they could not take even one more step. At this time yesterday, Weisei had been on the very brink of death: he was ruined, emaciated, utterly spent... and though he would never, ever admit it, Vuchak was not far behind. He’d given everything he had to carry his dying prince to water, to fight off the fishmen, to hunt down food – well, scavenge it, anyway – and build the camp and lay out traps and do every single other necessary thing just to keep them fed and defended – just to keep their last, tiny guttering hope alive. Vuchak had no help and no plan and no energy left to think of one, much less execute it.

  What he did have was a strange woman named Día, and an urgent need to make her useful somehow – to make her tell them something that would lead them to their missing men.

  “– so much indebted to your kindness,” she was saying. “Please tell me how I can be helpful to you.”

  “You don’t owe us anything!” Weisei predictably replied. “Right now we’re looking for –”

  “– a better understanding,” Vuchak finished with a pointed look. What had he just said about not revealing their business? “Tell us: how did you get so lost?”

  Día set down her barren stick and looked into the fading fire. The gray sky was already darkening towards night. “Well,” she said, “I have to start by telling you something that you might find difficult to believe. Weisei, your friend Halfwick is – he’s actually still alive.”

  “Oh, I know!” Weisei burst out, nearly spilling the last of the liver. “Isn’t it awful? We saw him just yesterday, and he looks absolutely –”

  “Weisei!” Vuchak snapped. “What did I just –”

  “He’s here?” Día interrupted. “Where?”

  Well, there was no getting around it now. “Our paths crossed briefly,” Vuchak conceded, “on the other side of the river. And we’ll be glad to tell you about it, but first we would like to hear the rest of what you have to say – respectfully, and without interrupting you.”

  Weisei returned Vuchak’s glower, and drew his blanket more closely around him.

  It was obvious that Día wanted to ask more about Halfwick, and that she understood that her hosts had other motives. She drew her dried black garment into her lap, and brushed the dirt from it as she spoke. “Well, you will... you might imagine my surprise. And he insisted that he had to catch up with his partner, Elim, the one who...” She trailed off, her gaze flicking between the two of them, and the moment she spoke Ylem’s name, Vuchak could have finished the thought for her: the one who killed Dulei.

  “... the one who shot the prince of the a’Krah. So I helped to smuggle Halfwick out of Island Town, and please understand: I would not for the world have let him steal Elim away from his just punishment. I was only escorting him out so that he could find his partner and share in it. But Halfwick, he – he took advantage of my trust,” and Vuchak heard some of that anger creep back into her voice, “and stole the horse I’d borrowed, and left me stranded alone in the desert, and I can’t... and the heat isn’t good for me. I got lost in visions, hallucinations, and there was a dog – just a small and ordinary dog, when I first met her, but the longer she stayed with me, the more I began to think peculiar thoughts, and to feel peculiar things.” Día drew her knees up, pressing the garment to her chest, and as she stared into the fire, she might have been hallucinating all over again.

  “And she spoke to me, in my head. She wanted me to follow her west. Then she asked me to pull a corpse from a lake. One night, she made me start – I started a fire, a huge, awful fire that ate up half the desert, for reasons I can’t even remember.”

  Vuchak met Weisei’s glance in an instant. Here was the source of their salvation, then – the miraculous arsonist who had thrown up a wall of fire between them and the marrouak hell-bent on their deaths. Ylem had behaved as though their reprieve had come from the Starving God, but only now did Vuchak believe it.

  Día frowned. “I don’t understand what happened after that. She found something – some sign – and she changed. She grew and grew, and she was ANGRY. I realized that she was not the child of an earthly god, as I’d first thought, but a god herself. And I was her, and she was me, and we – we tore down to the river, bounded right into it, and I’m frightened to say so, but I think we might have killed someone.”

  “Who?” Weisei asked, but Vuchak already knew. He had seen the huge she-creature with the dark figure clinging to her back – he might have mistaken her for the Grandfather of Wolves at the time – and how she had taken the queen of the fishmen down with a single throat-rending bite. If the fish-queen had survived, Vuchak would be surprised indeed.

  After all, the Dog Lady had once wrecked an alliance, made an enemy of Marhuk himself, and led her own people to their deaths trying to find her missing son. If she was awake again after all these years, what wouldn’t she do?

  “I don’t know,” Día confessed. “We tasted blood, and tore at flesh. We were furious, because someone was stealing our – was stealing her child.”

  The fish-queen had been carrying Ylem away in a net.

  “That’s probably not very helpful. I’m sorry. I feel like I don’t know anything anymore.” Día wiped her face, which was ample time for Vuchak and Weisei to share a glance, and an understanding: if she realized what she’d done, it would add tremendously to her guilt... and if the fishmen had caught even a glimpse of her during the battle last night, they would be ready to kill her on sight.

  More to the point, this Día was not going to solve any of their problems: she had come with too many of her own. Damn it.

  “And she’s gone now?” Weisei asked.

  “Yes,” Día said, “though I don’t know where. We were separated in the water, and she – you know, she left me. After all that, she took her child and left me.” Her voice hardened as she said it, the dwindling fire throwing shadows across the soft contours of her face.

  It was difficult to find a reply.

  “In our language, we have a saying,” Vuchak ventured. “We say, ‘don’t make her responsible for us’, which is our way of acknowledging the things t
hat we cannot understand.” He did not glance at Weisei until after he had finished speaking, but by the look on his thin face, he had gotten the message: this woman here was being used by powers beyond her understanding, and it would be both dangerous and cruel to add to the knowledge that could be torn from her mind and used against them.

  After all, if Día found out that they were looking for the body of Dulei, a holy son of Marhuk, she would realize that they were the funeral party that she and Halfwick had tried to find – and that Ylem had been with them.

  And if Día, and by extension the Dog Lady, found out that Vuchak and Weisei had been taking Ylem to his very-probable execution – had stolen him for far longer and more sinister a purpose than the fishmen – it would be as good as inviting the fish-queen’s fate on themselves.

  And if she found out that she had just eaten dinner with another son of Marhuk – another holy hostage ripe for the taking...

  The daylight was now nothing more than an orange-red glow on the western horizon. Weisei scooted a little farther back from the firelight, drawing his blanket more closely around himself. Without the silver he had worn in Island Town, he was already changing with the onset of night: already his skin was just that little bit darker, the whites of his eyes just that little bit thinner as their black centers spread outwards. Even without wearing his black-feather cloak, he would soon be unmistakable as anything but the crow god’s son.

  And that would be unfortunate for everyone.

  “Do YOU understand it, though?” Día asked. “Did any of that make the least bit of sense?”

  “Oh, yes,” Weisei hurried to assure her. “It can be a frightening thing, to feel a holy spirit moving you in an unknown direction. But you must have been very pious and diligent, to have come so far, so faithfully, and it sounds like you’ve assisted her in accomplishing a great thing – in finding her missing child. What could be more wonderful than that?”

  Well, that was overstating it: if the son of the Dog Lady had killed a son of Grandfather Marhuk, then what happened next was going to be anything but wonderful. In that moment, the decision was out of Vuchak’s hands: they could not retrieve Ylem. One of Marhuk’s children was already dead because of him, and Vuchak had no right to risk a second one.

  “– and besides,” the second one was saying, “you said to me before, how you preferred to make your mistakes by doing too much, too generously, than to worry yourself into doing too little. Didn’t we agree then that our ways were different, but still born from kindness? Is your reason so big, and the world so small, that no kindness can exist outside your understanding, and no gratitude can be expressed beyond your hearing? Truly, isn’t it –”

  Weisei stopped, hearing the roughening rasp in his voice, and hurriedly stood. He was changing fast. “And, and speaking of kindness, I had better go and make the offerings, before the blood congeals.” He picked up the pans of deer-blood from where they had sat warming above the fire, made the sign of a benevolent god, and went away into the dark.

  Which left Día and Vuchak alone together.

  She remained silent, as if considering what Weisei had said. He kept silent too, fighting the weary ache in his bones, striving to anticipate whatever questions she might find next, and conjure suitable lies to answer them. More work. More last-ditch cleverness, hiding and scheming and covering their tracks – not nobly, not to achieve something for the honor and betterment of the a’Krah, but in the manner of a wounded animal fighting to survive the next hour, and the next one, and the one after that.

  Finally, when the fire was nothing but glowing embers, she pulled on her garment and found her voice. “I know that there is more going on than you can tell me about,” she said at last, “and questions I shouldn’t ask. If I can have just one, though –”

  Vuchak stopped poking the coals, and readied himself for the inevitable.

  “– will he be all right?” She nodded at Weisei’s empty place.

  And that was one question Vuchak was glad to answer. “Yes,” he said. “He was sick, but he’s getting better now.” And if she were anyone but herself, he would have told her how they’d run out of water crossing the desert, and how Weisei had been sickened to the brink of death by the spiritual pollution seeping out from that tainted oasis – and how the children of the gods could eat more than any three ordinary people combined, when it came time to replenish their strength.

  As it was, though, Día could not be allowed to know who Weisei was, because the Dog Lady could not be allowed to gain any leverage in her looming feud with Marhuk. She would be perfectly willing to steal Marhuk’s child in order to secure forgiveness for her own – and if hers were killed, she would be the first to trade blood for blood.

  It was easy enough to spare Día those thoughts, though – and shelooked pleased in innocence. “I’m very glad to hear that,” she said. “And your friends? What can I do to help you find them?”

  Very little – though Vuchak found himself savoring the question. It was a rare pleasure to be asked about his needs, even by someone so ill-equipped to satisfy them.

  Well, he couldn’t tell her about Ylem or Dulei, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t tell her anything. He had to make her useful, no matter how limited her use might be. “There is one friend we are especially worried about,” he said. “His name is Hakai, and perhaps you’ve seen him in Island Town: he’s lighter than we are, plainly dressed, with a blindfold over his eyes, and graying hair tied behind his neck. We would be grateful if you would sleep here with us tonight, and help us look for him tomorrow. The sun is unfriendly to our eyes, and you might be able to see him before we do.”

  Actually, Vuchak was less concerned about seeing in daylight than in keeping someone on watch here at the camp: the fishmen could be anywhere, and at the moment, Weisei was good for nothing but eating and sleeping.

  “I’ll do my best,” Día pledged, her voice full of earnestness and warmth. “I’m so much in your debt, and very glad to have made your acquaintance.”

  That was pleasing to hear. But she made that peculiar holy sign of theirs as she said it – the four-pointed crossing motion over her chest – and the image stuck in Vuchak’s mind long after she had surrendered to sleep.

  It was a reminder, as if the universe thought he needed one, that he could not afford to make a tempting mistake. That she was not an a’Krah woman in need of his protection, no matter how much the selfish unshareable part of his mind might wish otherwise. That she was not trustworthy, even if she was trusting. That she was not his enemy – but she could not be a friend.

  Vuchak thought his thoughts alone in the dark, repeating them until they stuck in his mind, and then plaited his hair tightly enough to keep them there.

  THE MAN, HAKAI, stopped walking.

  He stayed where he was, standing still and quiet in the dark, with no sound but the singing of the crickets and the lapping of the river.

  Less than a quarter of a mile to the west, hidden behind a hill, a circle of stones sat sheltering the grave of a fire. Above it, a pyramid of branches spoke of its use for cooking. Around it, gathered and still, three bodies pressed the grass flat. One wore a small piece of gold.

  The man reached down and pulled on the rope tied around his ankle. Its other end was invisible in the water.

  The voice, Fuseau, emerged up to the neck.

  The man, Hakai, turned his blindfolded face to the west. “They’re here.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE MISSING AND THE DEAD

  IN THE DREAM, Día was seven years old, and the church was burning.

  She huddled in the sacristy, fingers jammed in her ears, as the fire roared outside. The door cracked and swelled, the wet rags stuffed underneath steaming from the heat, but the holy water was all gone now, and the fire had long since eaten the screams on the other side of the wall. God’s house was burning, and Día was about to burn with it.

  So she drew up her knees and tucked her head and clasped her hands behind
her neck, rocking herself in the heat and the darkness. And she prayed.

  Divine Master, author of light, architect of glory

  Hold us in your likeness

  Keep us in your mercy

  Now, today, and for all –

  A key turned in the lock. The door opened, flooding the room with gray light and cold air. Día looked up, astonished, as Miss du Chenne fixed her with a disapproving gaze.

  “Young lady, I am profoundly disappointed.”

  The schoolmistress reached in and pulled Día out by the wrist, her hard, clammy grip and brushing musty skirts a promise of what would happen next. What had she been thinking, hiding in the coal shed?

  “Please don’t tell my father,” Día begged. Mesquite thorns tore at her dress, and clouds of crickets bloomed and squished under her bare feet on the way to the schoolhouse.

  Miss du Chenne picked up the switch from behind her desk, and snorted in derision. “I wouldn’t worry about that – he’s been dead for dog’s years.”

  From where she had obediently bent over the desk, Día pushed herself up in protest. “No he’s not!”

  But Miss du Chenne only smiled that awful little smile, the one she used whenever a student had embarrassed himself in answering a question, and prodded one of Día’s sagging breasts with the switch. It swung like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. “Do we need to practice telling the time?”

  Día looked down in horror at her nude, withered body. Arthritic hands. Wrinkled flesh. Dreadlocks gray with age, dragging almost to the floor. Of course her father was gone – he’d died of old age – and she’d wasted her life hiding from her lessons. She’d wasted everything.

  Día bent over the desk, her eyes filling with tears. “No,” she whimpered. “I didn’t mean to.”

  But Miss du Chenne just tsk-tsked and circled around behind her. “Such an ungrateful child.” She drew back the switch.

  Día started upright. “I am not!” She was grateful – always, always grateful. She loved God, who had saved her from the fire, and her father, who had put her in the sacristy to protect her from it, and Fours, her dear papá, who had taken her out again afterwards, when everything was smoke and ruins –