by David Haynes
He took a handful of her hair and pulled it, until she felt it come free in his fist. Blood dribbled down her throat and into her grumbling belly. She no longer felt the pain of his lashes, of his fists or kicks. She tasted only his blood, his essence. His life.
He screamed, punching her repeatedly in the back of her head. She bit down for as long as she could, holding onto the consciousness that kept her alive. She bit down until the world went black.
3
In the days that followed, her arms and legs were bound together, forcing her into a permanent hunch. He kept away from her. The only source of nourishment she took was from the moss, from the water it provided and the creatures that made it their home. She did not know if he chose to leave her alone, or was afraid of her. She did not care which it was, glad only to be away from him.
His injury was deep. She had broken through the skin, the sinew and then finally through the bones in his cheek. Now, when he turned his face against the warmth of the fire, she saw an abyss as dark and festering as the one she now lived in. She had devoured part of him, and as much as she despised him, part of him lived inside her now. Forever.
He tended himself. First, he packed snow into the hole she’d made as if he had been burned. His cries must have been heard all the way across the valley and across the ocean. Next, he took burning wood and pressed it against the wound, scorching the flesh, sending yet another stomach-churning stench around the cave.
She wished him dead. After what he had done to her, she wished him to suffer as no beast had ever suffered before. If she could have eaten all of him, she would have done it. If she could have consumed the grotesque creature and imprisoned him inside her as he had confined her, she would have done it.
Yet she could not. She did not have the strength and, now that he had restrained her with the coarse rope, she was trapped.
*
The months passed in a nightmare of grim fortitude. She was determined to live as long as he did. She would see him gone and then she would allow herself to move on. The man threw meat at her, making her crawl through the filth to eat it. The side of his face she had taken from him was sunken and hideous. He no longer wore his hood over his head, but whatever happiness she gleaned from hurting him evaporated when she saw how quickly he healed.
He was not afraid of her, however much she wished to believe it. She knew that only too well. He came to her every night, pushing her face down into the detritus so she could not bite him again. And with the storm blowing outside, he would do what he wished with her. Still she clung to life with the spite that comes only from the need for revenge.
Something had changed inside her. She felt it. At first, she thought it was because of the bones she’d eaten. That maybe a demon or devil was growing in her belly, spawned from his gruesome flesh. But then later, after he’d pushed her aside and stumbled back to his fire, she understood. She was forming a life. Not a devil, a demon or anything else from her father’s stories, but a child. She was pregnant with his baby.
Her belly grew large and round, and the tethers that bound her made every breath an excruciating chore. On some level he must have understood that something had changed, for he stopped coming to her and using her like an animal. Her cries now were not for herself but for the child she carried.
She tried to explain to him, showing how her stomach was distended. She gestured with her hands how she had seen mothers in her village carrying their own children. He appeared not to understand, and this made her wonder at his own childhood, how his own mother had cradled and loved him. The first twinge of pity rose up in her throat. She choked it back down, devouring the sentiment and swallowing it whole. He did not deserve compassion, only ire, and she hated him.
In such a position, tied as she was, she feared that the child would be born deformed and grotesque, just as its father. She could feel the baby pushing against her, stabbing its tiny, bony feet into her ribs and kicking. It was as painful as it was joyous.
Eventually he untied her, a glimmer of understanding finally visible on his scarred face. Understanding but no sympathy, for the beatings continued. Now they would be about her head, arms and legs but not her stomach. She could take them for herself, exposing her head for him to hit just to stop him going anywhere near the unborn child.
There was a brief period where the sun shone through clouds. It was milky and pale, and only penetrated to the very front of the cave. The man eased away from it as if he would be turned to stone should the warm rays touch his skin. Somewhere far below, she thought she heard the songbirds of the forest making their music. But it may just have been a memory of a time that had gone. She could not be sure of anything now. Her father’s face, mother’s laughter, they were all gone. Now when she closed her eyes, she saw only the devil who imprisoned her and his hideous expression.
The sun did not last long and was soon obscured by the clouds again. She had never known so many differing shades of gray, but they all carried snow and they all dropped it on the mountains in front of the cave.
He hunted always, bringing meat for them to eat. Her body did not crave the fruit and berries that grew in abundance in the valley, only meat and the small bones of the creatures he caught. The baby inside her craved meat too, for when it was hungry it kicked and thrashed and pushed her ribs upward until they threatened to rise up her throat.
And then the time came when she knew the baby would come. She wept and cried out as the pain rose to levels that even she had never felt before. He came toward her, the cane raised above his shoulder to quieten her, but she could not choke back the screams of anguish for the baby was coming and no beating, however harsh, could prevent it.
He gazed down at her, his naked silhouette against the snowy landscape beyond the cave.
“Baby coming!” she shouted.
He did nothing, simply staring down at her with the cane raised. Babies cried when they came into the world. She had heard them in her village. Would he beat the child when it came? Would he…?
But she could no longer think; the baby was coming and it would come whether the world was cruel and vindictive or kind and generous. It would come just the same.
And then the pain grew less and she felt a great release as the baby came out of her body and entered the cave. It screamed as its body slithered onto the cold, harsh stone floor covered in filth. She felt the world tilt one way and then the other, but she pushed herself upright and gathered the girl to her.
He reached out, a grotesquely swollen hand with fingers extended, toward the child.
“No!” screamed. “You will not!”
He withdrew his hand, bringing the cane down on her legs. She did not cry out, only pulled the baby to her breast. Not even when he beat the soles of her feet did she make a sound. The girl was all that mattered now and she would suffer any amount of pain to keep her safe.
“Blanket!” she screamed at him. “Give me your blanket!”
*
They fed together on the strips of flesh he threw down on the floor. She had little milk for the girl and what she had was often laced with blood. She had seen only three babies in her life, all from the village, but she did not remember any of them having teeth. Her baby came into the world with them. Tiny, sharp teeth that were as white as the snow outside. They allowed her to feed on the flesh of animals. They allowed her to grind the small bones down to dust, releasing their nourishment.
The girl did not look like her. Her face was deformed, lopsided, her flesh gray and bulging. Yet she loved her little tenshi and kept her close to her always, shrouded in the gray blanket he had given her. It was not through kindness that he granted this kindness, but from revulsion. He no longer looked at her with lascivious hunger but with a terrible intensity that spoke only of death. She knew he would kill her. The time would come.
But it was not the fear of her own death that frightened her. She did not care for herself any longer. She was terrified of what would happen to her angel if she were t
o be killed. He did not care for her, for either of them. He did not understand the child and sooner or later he would get hungry again. Not for the meat he craved but for the other need. He would not use her like that again, not now.
It was that which scared her most, and she felt helpless to assuage her own soul. There could be only one answer. She must destroy him; she must grind him into the wreckage that littered the cave floor. Grind him to dust. Make snow of his bones.
4
She knew when she must do it. He hunted at dawn, leaving the cave before the shadows left the landscape. She watched him pull on the ragged furs that he only wore when he left the cave. At all other times he remained naked. His skin bled almost constantly and the pustules that covered his back and legs wept a milky fluid. It sickened her.
He was a demon. The stories her father told were true. He walked as a man, his features were of a man, but he was no human. She had long ago dismissed thoughts of his childhood and what had befallen him to make him so. Instead she regarded him as something not of the land, not of the earth or rivers or sea. He was borne of something else, something inhuman and warped. Something base.
He spoke in her tongue but not always, and when he bled himself and tasted his own blood, he muttered in a strange dialect that bore no similarity to any language she had heard before. The sounds he made were not words, they were grunts and cries, squeals and screams. It was the tongue of the devil.
His longing to touch the child, to hold their baby, would be his undoing. It pained her to think of it but she would hand her to him and while he held her, she would strike him with a rock from the fire pit.
She crept over to it, dislodging one of the blackened rocks. It held heat and warmed her fingers. She pressed it against the baby’s body, feeling her wriggle and chuckle at the pleasure of it. She moved the other rocks so the gap was unnoticeable, and retreated to the rear of the cave to wait for his return.
The demon came into the cave as he always did, throwing down the carcasses of whatever meat he’d caught and then taking off his furs. She recoiled instinctively. Could she do it? Could she hand over her child to this monster? What if she was unable to hit him hard enough? What if his head did not break as a man’s head would under a rock? What then? She cared not for herself but for the tenshi? What would he do to her?
She sat and watched, feeling the well of hopelessness bubble over and trickle down her dirty cheeks. The infant shifted, kicking strong little legs against her ribs. She was urging her mother into action.
She rose slowly. Her feet ached constantly where his beatings had broken her toes. She hobbled toward him, clutching the baby to her chest, feeling the heat of the rock at her breast.
He looked up, tearing the fur from a rabbit with his teeth.
She swallowed hard, her mouth a desert. “Baby,” she said, unwrapping the child for him to see.
He stopped, spitting fur and sinew onto the floor of the cave, and stood. He looked from the child to her and then back again.
“Hold her,” she said. The words almost choked her as she spoke. Her hands were shaking as she pushed the baby toward him.
He spat again, said something she did not understand, and held his scarred hands toward her.
She placed the child carefully in his hands. He had barely seen her before, just a fleeting glance now and then, but now he held her as if she were something so utterly beyond his comprehension that he was frozen in place. Baby and devil-father stared at each other. They were more alike than she cared to admit.
He turned her slowly in his hands, looking at her, turning her over. Was that a smile? She too was frozen.
The baby started to cry. She watched a dark cloud cross his face; his expression changed in an instant. He held the baby up above his head with one hand around her chest.
Now, she thought. Now I must act.
She pulled the rock from her breast and struck him as hard as she could. The blow hit him just above his ear, making a sound like the crunching of bones between her teeth.
She waited, still holding the rock in her shaking hand. She waited for him to turn and kill her where she stood. The baby cried.
She hit him again, smashing the rock into the hollow in his cheek where she had bitten him. The baby cried, slipping from his hands, falling toward the rocks around the fire pit.
She dropped the rock and threw herself across the pit, smelling the damp smoke rise all around her. The baby landed on her, not in the fire but not in her arms either. She did not think about the demon behind her and what he might do. He was still standing after she’d hit him, still frozen in place by the sight of his child.
She rolled over, pulling the baby into her breast and away from the smoke, coddling her in the blanket and out of sight, away from his cane which she would inevitably feel.
She closed her eyes but the blows did not come. Instead she heard a terrible creaking sound, like the felling of a diseased tree, and then he was beside her, blood running from his nose, his cheek and his open, staring eyes.
They lay together for a while, sharing the cave floor as husband and wife share a bed, staring into each other’s eyes like lovers. She could not hear him breathing yet she could not get to her feet and flee. She was as frozen as he had been.
The baby kicked and cried beneath the blanket. She was hungry and eager to be away. It was this movement that made her rise from the cold, feces-covered rocks.
There were three rabbits, all skin and bone but meat all the same. She took them all, pushing them down beneath the blanket with the baby. She stopped crying immediately, replacing it with the wet and hungry sound of feeding.
She paused only to take his knife and cane before stepping out into the snow.
She was free. At last, she was free.
*
The storm was unforgiving of what she had done to the demon who lived in the mountain. It raged about her, spitting ice into her eyes, trying to blind her, whipping snow around her legs, trying to hobble her. Yet she walked on, descending down from the peaks, beneath the very clouds that tried to destroy her.
The baby remained at her breast, warm and oblivious to the circumstances of its young life. She knew only hunger and for now, at least, she was sated by the flesh, blood and bones of the dead rabbits.
She did not know how long or how far she had come on the horse when he first took her. That was a gray memory now, akin to all memories of her family and the village where she grew up. She did not know where her home was, only that it was below the cave and that there had been trees and flowers growing there.
The smiles she made in the village were also a memory. Her face did not know how to form them now. The lines around her mouth and eyes, which should have come from laughter, were deep fissures in her skin from repeated beatings. It was unlikely, even if she felt that way, that she could ever smile again.
For now, all she could concentrate on was keeping her tired and broken feet moving through the snow. She may have scaled the steepest part of the great mountain but she was not clear of it yet.
The day was gloomy and desperate and yet it grew darker still as she walked through the afternoon, slipping, falling, crying out and looking upward into the sky. If only the clouds would part, if she could only feel the warmth of the sun on her face again. It would revive her, drive her on.
But the gray, remorseless clouds did not allow the sun to break through. They tightened their grip, blowing the wind faster and sharper into her eyes, almost lifting her from her feet.
She stumbled once, twice, and then fell against a boulder that the great mountain had thrown down in anger. She pressed her back against it, for one side was leeward from the storm. She slid the blanket down, just enough to see her angel’s face. The baby slept soundly, her cheeks ruddy with blood. There was little left of one of the rabbits but the other two were intact.
She took the tiny rabbit’s leg, cleaning it of meat and then consumed the bones, grinding them beneath her blackened teeth. The les
ions in her throat and belly caused by fragments of sharp bone had long ago healed. Now it was not an arduous chore to eat the bones but a pleasure. She felt the nourishment flow through her tired body. The dead rabbit’s bones rejuvenated her, providing her with the life that had once flowed through the animal itself.
With this renewed energy, she forced herself to her feet and once again stepped out into the storm. She could see barely two footsteps in front and the snow grew deep, rising up to her thighs in places. Even with the food inside her belly, she grew tired. Her legs were unused to moving more than a few feet, from the front of the cave to the back. If she were not to perish on the first night she would need to rest, to find shelter.
But the large rock was behind her and all she could see were fields and fields of snow. Devils danced across her vision, calling her forward, onward to the very precipice of the ledge.
She screamed and woke her baby. The child screamed too, hungry, ever-hungry for food, for meat and bone. She dropped to her knees, digging a cave in the snow to provide respite from the wind.
The two rabbits that remained were frozen. Their milky eyes were orbs of ice. Her fingers were frozen, numb and growing black and withered. Pulling the pelt from the animals was too hard and so she used her teeth, pushing the animal toward the baby, showing her how it should be done.
The infant pulled the carcass from her mouth and tore into it like a wild creature, forcing almost the entire animal into her mouth, her jaws and throat expanding and swelling as she bit down on its head and torso, swallowing it whole.
She watched in horror. She had seen the child’s father do the same thing, consuming the vermin that occasionally scuttled through the filthy remnants on the cave floor.
