Viscera

by Gabriel Squailia

  “Whatever is wrong with you?” said Hollis, squinting up at her.

  “Sorry,” she said, struggling to steady the pounding of her heart as her eyes adjusted to the candlelight. There was no sign of Tanka, or the bear. “Look.” Kneeling, she turned her back to him, still pawing at the nape of her neck. “Is there something on me?”

  “The rain has washed away the filth of the tunnel,” he murmured. “Unless you mean that cobwebby stuff in the door?”

  “Yeah.” She rubbed her neck, peering up at the walls, spying dozens of tiny, unsteady lights among the riot of jumbled objects. That the whole place hadn’t gone up in flames was a wonder, unless enchantment kept it from burning down. “I guess it’s nothing.”

  “Not that I can see. Though there’s certainly no dearth of—whatever it is.”

  Indeed, strands of whiteness hung from every carven ledge. As a breeze blew through the glassless windows, sheaves of it waved from hooks driven into the high, domed ceiling. Tiny brown birds swooped and dove around its irregular, hanging shapes. Ashlan even spied it tangled in the layered paint of a grand, red mural splattered on a wall on the far side of the room.

  “Nerves.”

  Tanka’s voice rang through the grand chamber, but Ashlan couldn’t find her, by sound or by sight. There was too much to see in all these dimly-lit nooks: bones and baubles, books and brushes, branches and antlers, chalky diagrams and animal skulls. Alcoves and sconces were hidden everywhere, with just enough candlelight to make out the riot of paint that covered every wooden surface, repeating, again and again, their creator’s visage—though Tanka’s face never seemed the same twice. Here, she was slender as a skeleton; there, round-cheeked and -bellied; and in a knotted carving almost completely covered by candle wax, she was muscled and square-jawed.

  “I’m sorry,” called Ashlan, pawing at her neck again, still feeling an echo of that rubbery wriggling on her skin. “Did you say—”

  “Nerves.”

  The ruptured bear lurched out of a dark corner, bearing a tray laden with wooden bowls and clay mugs, depositing it smoothly on a low, wooden table.

  “Drink,” rang Tanka’s voice. “Eat.”

  Ashlan mumbled an absent-minded thanks, then took a cup.

  “Ashlan,” whispered Hollis.

  “Silent partner,” she said, just before she guzzled.

  The tea was cold, as Tanka had promised her, but it tasted pleasantly of honey and flowers where Ashlan had expected bitter roots and herbs. Chasing it with a berry cake that sent crumbs spilling over her tunic, she stared back at the overlapping networks of pale fibers that hung over the door.

  “Nerves, huh?”

  Hollis sidled up against her. “Ashlan.” He was peering around, slapping the back of her calf. “Where are they?” he whispered. “The junkies, can you see them?”

  Ashlan, her headache abating, couldn’t think of any reason to be so suspicious. Everything seemed fine here. If Tanka wanted any of them harmed, they’d be harmed, that was all—what good would worrying do?

  “I don’t understand,” she called out, looking around. “You mean—nerves from bodies?”

  “Of course,” came Tanka’s voice. “Where else would one find them? These—belonged to Umber, once.”

  Ashlan heard a chirping, and looked up.

  “Here I am, Lady Ley.”

  She could see Tanka now, as if she’d allowed herself to be seen. She was perched on a high ledge framed in grassy nests, her fingers entangled in an extraordinarily large skein of white stuff secured to the ceiling above. Now that Ashlan gave it some consideration, it didn’t resemble moss so much as an unearthed system of roots, organized around a long, central stem. That must be Umber’s spine, she thought, and the four fluttering branches were his arms and legs, and all those tiny rootlets had once been spread through his heavy, breathing flesh.

  She wondered how Tanka had managed to extract them.

  It no longer felt awful.

  It seemed wondrous, now.

  And perfectly natural that the cold scrap of white that had landed on the nape of her neck had made its wriggling way down her spine. Warmed by the heat of her skin, it tickled, not at all unpleasantly, as it began to stretch itself around her ribs.

  Smiling privately, she took a bowl of soup and drank. It was a delicious melange of broth and root vegetables, so hearty that she didn’t mind its coldness, nor that Hollis was making such a racket as Umber carried him, by the ankles, down a shadowy hall.

  “Are you curious about them?” said Tanka. “The nerves, I mean.”

  “You gathered all these,” Ashlan said, sitting on the floor beside the table and cracking a boiled egg, “for your—collection?”

  “For my research,” said Tanka. She hopped nimbly from her ledge, down a series of wide platforms and onto the floor, where she pulled a massive basket from an alcove, almost too broad for her arms to bear.

  It was full of writhing, furry creatures. The largest one, Ashlan saw as she peeled the shell, was the carcass of a mountain lion, with a little painting like Umber’s in its own ripped chest. Tenderly, it was nuzzling the living kittens that were curled up beside it—and inside, since one was at play in its ribs.

  “I had an ailment, once,” said Tanka, feeding the kittens, one at a time, from a leather skin. “It dwelt in my nerves for most of my life. I’m younger than you are, do you know it?”

  “Most people are.” Ashlan, having devoured the egg, decided she was full. She sat back, cradling the teacup in her hands. The wriggling seemed intent on covering her entire body, as if she were being fitted with a very cozy suit—of warm rubber, perhaps, or supple skin.

  “This ailment disturbed me deeply,” said Tanka, batting the mountain lion’s muzzle away from the milk. “It would often make me tremble. Sometimes it would make me shake. It distracted me from my work, and from the company of my friends. So I collected all of these, from people and other animals, to help me fix it. And fix it I did. I am pleased to say that I healed what the doctors of Eth said could not be healed, and that I have been healthy for many years.”

  Ashlan had to set down her cup.

  She was afraid she’d spill the tea.

  Tanka looked up in surprise. “Does my story please you, Lady Ley?”

  Ashlan realized she’d been laughing, hard enough that tears were spilling down her face. “Yes, it does.”

  “Will you tell me why?”

  “Because you can change living bodies,” she said. Her amusement was gone. Only the warmth of her suit remained. “And I—I want mine changed.”

  She always had, she realized. Or at least for as long as she could remember.

  Tanka turned her face away, smiling. “Then you have come to the right place.”

  Ashlan arched her back and let out a great yawn.

  “Lie down, if you’re sleepy.”

  She did, right on the floor, and closed her eyes.

  “But don’t go to sleep,” said Tanka. “Not just yet. I must be—honest with you. It is important to me that we are honest with each other. You are an esteemed guest, Lady Ley, as is the stag when he carries his heavy antlers onto my lawn, bearing news from home. For this is your wood, however you have learned to think of yourself in your long, unpleasant travels. Are you still with me?”

  “Yes.” Ashlan could feel the suit closing around her fingers and toes, even the tip of her nose. She relaxed herself completely, surprised at how deep her breath could run, how slow.

  “I have become a part of this wood, too, but for me it took effort, education. By now, I am more a part of it than of mankind. I have not spoken in words for many years—not since I dug the ailment out of my flesh, and replaced my faulty nerves with those of my friends and adversaries. No human has seen me in almost a decade, unless they were about to go home—or demanded to be sent there. Instead, I have given my life to my friends, and to my creation. I love both more than any troth could express, and I do not regret the time I have spent h
ere. But what my friends tell me when they visit, more insistently each day—friends like Umber, when he was alive, and Lady Greatcat here, and all the unnamed others who still have breath in their lungs—is that I am missed, back home. Do you know what I mean by that?”

  “Death,” said Ashlan, the word as heavy on her tongue as gold in her palm. “You mean death.”

  “Yes,” said Tanka, settling down beside her. A bird seemed to have settled down, too, chirping as it pecked at the food on the tray. “Although that name is unpleasant to me. It conjures an end, where I know there is a land. My homeland. Most names are unpleasant, though, or at least ill-fitting. Even the one I’ve given myself. It seems—an approximation. For something better painted, or sung.”

  Umber was dragging something heavy in. It had been some time since Hollis had made any noise, wherever he was.

  “But I do not return home, not yet, for a single reason. Do you know what it is?”

  Ashlan couldn’t imagine one. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been able to.

  “No.”

  “What keeps me here is my desire to create.” Another bird flapped down, and another. “I am a woman, both like and unlike yourself. But however far I have traveled, whatever I have woven with nerves and with flesh, whatever I might carve, or paint, or tell in song, the ultimate act of creation remains beyond me. And so I stand alone, unable to love, unable to give as I would—until I gain my final boon from this world. Tell me, Lady Ley, do you know what that is?”

  Umber, by now, had dragged the heavy thing up to Ashlan’s side and trudged off.

  Tanka’s riddle wasn’t hard to answer. It just felt nosy to do so, with or without an invitation. But between her height and the peculiar timbre of her voice, which belonged to no category but its own, Ashlan could guess.

  She was reminded of a woman who’d been her lover long ago—of Tay, who’d proudly called herself crosswise, and broken the will, if not the nose, of anyone who’d shamed her for it.

  Until the Liniment Boys slit her throat—for confusing them, as they’d put it.

  Crosswise. Ashlan couldn’t imagine Tanka calling herself any such thing.

  All the same, she’d asked her for an answer, and Ashlan had to give it.

  “You don’t—have a womb,” she said.

  Tanka gave a short, bitter laugh. “I do,” she lilted, “it simply hasn’t arrived yet. But I didn’t mean the crucible, Lady Ley. I meant its proof. A child.”

  For a while they listened to the birds cracking seeds in a bowl.

  “And this is where you will help me become myself—as Umber once did, with his nerves. I did not take his life, as I hope you have guessed. He died on his own, after we had been friends for a good while. It was painful to wait, but wait I did, and would have waited longer, for the sake of our friendship. But I have no such luxury now. My time is short, and you, Lady Ley, have no such—restrictions.”

  Ashlan thought of how freely she’d given her guts to the addicts, and wondered how she could possibly object.

  Something about that thought troubled her.

  She realized, foggily, that she couldn’t object.

  Nor could she say anything at all.

  Because Tanka hadn’t asked her a question. Everything else Ashlan had said, for quite some time, had been at Tanka’s express invitation.

  Umber was dragging a second heavy thing into the room. Ashlan struggled to open her eyes, and found that impossible, too.

  “You may look.”

  The woman and the boy were laying in low cradles on either side of her, still fully clothed, but blanketed in deep piles of orange fronds. They seemed to be breathing easier, though the boy was wheezing.

  Tanka was squatting near Ashlan’s feet. “I care little for the lives of humans, as you may have gathered. But you, Lady Ley, are no human.”

  Ashlan wanted to object.

  This was what Tanka had been getting at all along.

  But Ashlan had a mother, once, and siblings. They just hadn’t been—like her.

  Cursed.

  “It must have occurred to you.” Tanka smiled, and the wrinkles around her eyes reminded Ashlan that she was vulnerable, despite her power, and aging, even now. “However you might have pushed the question out of your mind. You are more powerful than I, Lady Ley. More powerful than most anyone alive. But you do not know yourself—that much was clear from the moment I met you. I think you must be a foundling. And so I have bound you, rather rudely, because I have waited so long for your arrival that I cannot wait for your understanding. Still, I will not take what I need without offering you an exchange. I might earn your exasperation, but I would not earn your enmity. And this is why it made me so glad to hear that you, too, are in need of change! That means that you can see me, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  That was the worst part.

  Ashlan understand her perfectly.

  She thought, without knowing why, that this must be the true reason she was keeping Hollis close.

  Because she needed him as Tanka needed her.

  Tanka reached toward Ashlan’s face.

  “May I touch you?”

  “Yes.”

  The hand was warm and dry.

  “Tell me.”

  Ashlan’s breath thickened.

  “Tell me what you are, that you would yet become.”

  She tried not to speak.

  “You have been seeking some goal. That much is clear just from looking at you. You’ve folded yourself around it, until you can barely breathe.”

  The suit tightened around her skin until it felt like her eyes would burst.

  “What have you been seeking, Lady Ley?”

  Ashlan did not want to speak this truth.

  She didn’t even want to know it.

  But it was slipping out on its own.

  “What I want,” Ashlan whispered, “is to die.”

  Tanka did not take her hand away.

  She watched Ashlan breathe for a long while.

  “You are aware, aren’t you?” she said with a wistful smile. “That this is a far greater distance to travel, for one such as yourself, than for me to become a mother.”

  “Yeah.” Ashlan looked at the ceiling, feeling her heart seize. “Is it impossible?”

  “No.” Tanka stroked Ashlan’s cheek with her thumb. “I don’t believe so, Lady Ley. Not impossible. Just very, very difficult. And requiring components that are, quite frankly, beyond my means to purchase. They’d cost a king’s ransom. Now, you might find them and steal them, mind you, or kill their owners. But by then you might be asking these things of my child, and not of me—for by the time you’d won that war, I’d have gone home before you, whether I wished it or no.”

  Ashlan was laughing again.

  This time Tanka did pull her hand away. “Have I—upset you?”

  “No. No, it’s fine. Just don’t—don’t hurt the doll. He has gold. A queen’s ransom. Enough to buy whatever you need.”

  “Ah. Now I see why you tolerate him!” She laughed herself, a bright, musical sound. “But come, we have no need to delay what we’ve both waited for—not a moment more.” Standing, she peered down at the cradles. “Which of these two would you rather be?”

  The smile slid from Ashlan’s face.

  Something sought to buoy her mood, just as the suit held her body in place.

  “Neither.”

  “You must pick one, Lady Ley.” Tanka knelt next to the boy. “This one has fluid in his lungs. He hasn’t breathed properly for some time. I’m not sure why, but perhaps his body will tell us the tale. Umber, the shears?” The bear withdrew to an alcove, digging through a pile of clanking tools. “But it is a minor pain, as such things go. The woman’s arm is ruined, as you know. We can do nothing there, not without far more effort than she warrants. The pain will be excruciating, and constant. I’d go with the boy, if it were up to me. But you know them better.” She folded her arms beneath her breasts. “Choose.”


  It hurt not to.

  But it was only pain.

  Now that she’d noticed Tanka’s spell at work in her mind, she could struggle against it. Not enough to move of her own volition, but enough to disobey.

  “Don’t take me out of myself,” she gasped.

  Tanka frowned. “Hush,” she said, flicking a finger at Ashlan’s mouth.

  Ashlan felt the wriggling, supple substance of Tanka’s spell drawing itself over her lips, sealing them shut with comfort and warmth.

  “This will not be quick, Lady Ley. This is untested magic. I have long theorized. I have imagined the forms extensively. I have filled sketchbooks with plans. But still, there will be—guesswork. It will take many drafts before I get it right. And while they are tested, I will not listen to a friend of this wood as she suffers interminably.” She laid a hand on the boy’s cradle. “To these two, I owe no such loyalty. So you and the boy will trade places, for a time.”

  The bear lumbered back with a pair of shears, their blades as long as Tanka’s forearms. Kneeling, she laid one under his shirt, one over, and cut him out of it.

  “Hm.”

  Ashlan wrested her head up, though it felt like it would split her skull. She saw another layer of fabric under the boy’s shirt, startlingly filthy, wound tightly around his chest. The skin around it was angry, with open sores where the friction had been greatest.

  No wonder there was fluid in his lungs.

  “What—is this?” Tanka murmured. “What’s he done to himself?”

  The answer was plain enough, at least to a former student of the Uni: the boy was as bent as a thrown-away nail, and he’d been binding his breasts for so long that he’d given himself pleurisy. He must have been wearing the makeshift binder in his sleep, probably to keep his partner in crime from learning the truth—as a matter of survival, if modern-day Eth was anything like its forebear.

  What’s he done to himself? Tanka had never encountered a binder before, it seemed. So she’d asked a question, and Ashlan, focusing on her unspoken explanation, wedged her desire to answer against Tanka’s order to keep quiet—with enough force to part her lips at one corner.