The Prey of Gods

by Nicky Drayden

  Only Stoker doesn’t remember wearing it. Not at all.

  Chapter 12

  Nomvula and Mr. Tau

  “Nomvula, you eat like a bird,” Mama Zafu says, dipping her big wooden spoon into Nomvula’s bowl as she gulps down the last of the stew. She then takes a sip of beer and pats her mouth nice and clean with her sleeve. “This is the third day in a row you’ve left food on your plate. Have you lost your appetite, or do you just not care for my cooking?”

  “Your cooking is always wonderful, Mama!” Nomvula throws her arms around Mama Zafu’s neck and kisses her hard on the cheek. Oh, she’s hungry enough all right, but it’s Mr. Tau’s bread she has a taste for. That and more of his stories.

  “Says my niece the bottomless pit.” She clucks and smiles, going through all sorts of pains to avoid looking Nomvula in her oddly colored eyes. Never that. She puts her hand to Nomvula’s forehead. “You don’t feel sick. Is it a boy you’re trying to impress, then? You can tell me if it is, child.”

  “There’s no boy,” Nomvula says quickly. It’s not a lie. Not really.

  Mama Zafu hums to herself, then shakes her head. “Maybe, maybe not. But there will be one day, my dear, and now that you’re almost a woman, I suppose it’s my place to tell you about how babies are made.” She looks at Nomvula uncomfortably, even more so than usual.

  “I know all about it, Mama Zafu. I’ve seen how it works.”

  “Have you?”

  “Mmm-hmm. With Mr. Ojuma’s goats. The man goat climbs up on top of the woman goat, and they play like that for a while, and then the woman goat starts getting fat, and that’s when the baby is inside.”

  “Well, I suppose you do know a little. But people are not like goats, child. There’s all kinds of things involved when it’s people. Like love.”

  Nomvula purses her lips. “Have you ever asked a goat if it is in love?”

  “Nomvula, now is not the time for games. This is important. There are girls your age with child already, sweet-talked by boys and men alike. And once those boys and men have played, they don’t stick around once the fun is over.”

  “Like what happened to my mother,” Nomvula says quietly.

  “Like what happened to your mother. Your gift is precious, and only you will know when it is time to share it. Now tell the truth, Nomvula, is there a boy?”

  “There’s no boy, Mama!” A man, yes. Yesterday, she and Mr. Tau had played pretend together, down in the brush where they shed their mortal clothes. He’d held her hand as he’d sprouted wings like a hundred golden swords from his back. Nomvula gets bubbly with envy every time she sees his wings. Hers are such wispy little things, thin like thread, and the dullest of grays. But they’re wings all the same, and together they flew and flew, up and up until the ground beneath them looked like a tongue lapping at water.

  “This is your land,” Mr. Tau had said. “These are your people. It is up to you to choose how you will serve them. Will you be a benevolent god or a vengeful one? Ruled by ire or basos? Demanding or giving? Involved in guiding their decisions or content to watch over their lives?”

  “Haw! All this is mine, baba?” Nomvula had asked, enthralled by the vast blueness of the ocean. She’d never imagined there could be so much water, so much she’d never feel bad for stealing water from the air ever again.

  “There are others like you. All over this world, some old, some very old, and others only a few centuries. Some are simply healers and diviners. Others have been saviors and tyrants and kings and queens. And a select group are exalted as gods. They achieve immortality through their followers, through belief. Likewise, they can draw intense power through fear, though the effects are short-lived.”

  Nomvula frowns at that. She’s had a hard enough time making friends. Getting people to believe in her seems as likely as catching the wind. “And what happens if a god doesn’t have any followers?”

  “It’s a sad existence. Imagine an artist with no will to create. A singer whose lips refuse to part for a tune. Down that path lies a slow death, but death will come. That is not your path, my child. I will teach you what I can, for as long as I can,” Mr. Tau had said very firmly, and he had squeezed her hand so tight Nomvula’s fingers hurt. She’d turned and caught him weeping, and for a moment, his face was not quite his own, like the faintest hint of golden eyes and a sharp buzzard’s nose.

  Nomvula now knows that Mr. Tau was like that man goat, climbing on top of her mother and having his way and leaving her with a child in her belly, a half Zulu, half god child. And just because it had happened in a dream didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

  Nomvula leaves Mama Zafu with a pot and a promise to come back with water, even though her auntie had insisted that they already had enough. Out of habit, Nomvula takes the road that leads to the old broken solar well. Her mind is too caught up with the idea that Mr. Tau could be her father to watch where she’s going. She smacks right into Sofora who falls back and lands rump-first on the dusty ground.

  “Nomvula!” she wails out, then nearly jumps back onto her feet. “You’ve ruined my brand-new skirt!”

  “It’s just a little dirt,” Nomvula says, almost sorry she’d done it. Almost. She puts her pot down and helps Sofora wipe it off. Sofora slaps her hand away.

  “Don’t put your filthy paws on me!”

  “I didn’t mean it, honest.”

  Sofora storms back toward her home where her older brother Letu tends to a fire and a kettle of what likely contains beer, judging from his lazy eyes. Orange flames lick out from beneath the cast-iron pot like fiery tongues.

  “I’m telling my father,” Sofora says. “I’m telling him you pushed me down on purpose because you were jealous, and he’ll make you pay for a new skirt.”

  “Silly Sofora, there’s nothing wrong with your skirt, except that maybe it’s a little ugly.”

  “What?” Sofora turns around. “Who are you to call anything ugly? Your hand-me-down skirt probably used to be somebody’s old bedsheet.”

  Nomvula frowns. Her auntie had made this skirt just for her, sewn with love and not by a stranger in some faraway town. The material isn’t shiny, and all the stitches aren’t the same, but it’s more special than anything Sofora’s father could buy. But girls like Sofora don’t see things that way, and if she wants to be impressed, Nomvula can sure impress her. She knows she shouldn’t, but she does it anyway, calling up that itch between her shoulder blades where her wings meet her skin. She flexes and feels her wings stab through her shirt, and as she spreads them wide, she gives Sofora the smuggest of grins.

  “Why are you staring at me like that?” Sofora says, propping a hand on her hip and not even seeming to notice. “You and your crazy eyes. You’re just as crazy as that mother of yours.”

  “You take that back,” Nomvula says. She flaps her wings, still to no effect.

  “It’s not like I’m the first to say it. Everyone knows she’s been touched by evil spirits. Better be careful or some might rub off on you.”

  Nomvula shoves Sofora, but this time Sofora stands her ground and shoves Nomvula right back. Into the dirt, Nomvula goes tumbling, wings and all. By the time she’s up on her feet, Letu has stepped out from behind the beer kettle and has stationed himself between the girls, his lanky arms extended and pushing them away from each other.

  “Nomvula, maybe you should go back home,” he says, his tongue thick in his mouth from sampling too much beer. “Before someone gets hurt.”

  Nomvula thinks that might be a good idea, but as she bends down to pick her pot back up, she hears Sofora wail again. She looks up and sees fire embers jumping to Sofora’s skirt. It smokes and smolders, then that nice, shiny material goes up in a flash.

  “Take off your skirt!” Nomvula screams, but her words aren’t getting through. Sofora runs around like a headless chicken instead. Nomvula finds herself caught in that moment, stuck between helping her enemy or watching her suffer for calling Ma names. Sofora deserves to burn, Nomvula’s vengeful
mind tells her, but her merciful heart also has a say, so she quiets her dark thoughts, rushes to the solar well, and pulls the pump.

  “It’s still broken!” Letu cries as he throws handfuls of dirt at his sister’s skirt.

  Nomvula hits the side of the machine, hoping to jog something loose, but when she whacks it, something surges through her, like a sliver of lightning. She places her hand on the side of the machine, the entire flesh of her palm against cool metal. Threads of white light race right in front of her. Electricity sizzles in her ears in an odd stutter-stop language that she instantly understands.

  Work, she tells it, and a second later, a trickle of water drips down onto the ground below. She shoves her pot underneath the spigot and tells the machine again, WORK!

  Water gushes out, enough to fill the bucket, and Nomvula takes it and douses Sofora, once, twice, and another time until Sofora is sopping but safe. A small group of neighbors have exited their shacks, catching just the tail end of the drama, including Sofora and Letu’s father.

  “Nomvula!” he cries out and then hugs a half-naked and fairly crisp Sofora to his chest. “You have saved my beloved daughter!”

  “And she fixed the well!” Letu says, then quiets under his sister’s smoldering glare. But the damage is done. Their father lets out a chirping whistle and hums a deep, rich note as others join in. Singing follows—dozens of voices blending into a beautiful, winding harmony. They hoist Nomvula into the air to the beat, calling her a savior and a hero and a brave soul.

  She feels their words more than hears them, and they begin to fill that bottomless pit in her stomach and soothe that never-ending hunger for the first time in her life.

  Chapter 13

  Sydney

  “Careful with that,” Sydney yells at the hulk of a delta bot lifting up her coffee table by one end. “It’s an antique.”

  The bot’s oblong head lolls to the side, then its mono-eye flashes neon green in affirmation. It proceeds slowly through the doorway, its simple brain rechecking the spatial parameters of the long narrow hallway and steep stairs. Another bot hefts up her couch, and the third is outside loading her television into the double-parked moving van.

  There’s six of them altogether, three men and three bots. They’ve been here a total of ten minutes, and her apartment is nearly empty already. Sydney’s going to miss this place. It’s not much, but it’s decent—concrete floors easy to bleach blood off of, thick plaster walls, and the only window looks out onto the side of a brick building. And then there’s the trash chute at the end of the hallway, just big enough to dump pieces of body into without the hassle of hauling them down all those stairs and to the Dumpster out back. But it’s been three days, and even though it’s cool out, Mr. Gnoto is bound to be getting ripe down there. Then there was Paulo yesterday afternoon—the thief she’d fed images of a brimming jewelry box and a key under her doormat. And last night Mitchell Adams had caught her eye, some punk kid who’d cut in front of her at the movie theater. Oh, the shrillness of his screams! Sydney licks her lips. His was a special kind of fear, not clouded by guilt or shame or vice, but rich and delicate like a small piece of dark chocolate. A morsel unpolluted by sin. A virgin, too. She’d forgotten how sweet they were.

  But don’t think her to be a complete monster. She’d spent the whole of the morning cleaning up her apartment, spick-and-span, even dusted the floorboards and moldings, taking pride in leaving her apartment in better condition than she’d found it. Not to mention the new crisp white ceiling. Her landlady will be pleased, maybe even so much as to refund part of her deposit.

  The delta bot takes the last of the boxes out to the moving truck, and all at once, her apartment is nothing more than bare walls, a slick, waxed floor, and some plastic drop cloths crammed into one corner. Yes, she’ll miss this place, nostalgia already taking hold. It was here that she’d found a believer, after all, the seed of hope that she’ll regain her godhood, if all is going to plan. Up until now, she’s had no way of knowing. Paulo and Mitchell had been tasty treats, but fear is fleeting. But the great thing about fear is that it breeds like dik-diks. Put two scared people in a room, and each feeds off the other’s anxiety. Three people quickly push the bounds of hysterics, and that’s when the real fun begins.

  The three men stand like terrified statues in their movers’ overalls, all lined up against the back wall of her apartment. Slowly, Sydney locks the door and lingers so their minds go to all those dark places. Anticipation is the worst kind of torture.

  They get a good glimpse as her atrophied back muscles flex and she yawns out sleek wings, a deep, blood red. Oh, it’s been too long. Their strands have tangled together, so she takes a moment to preen, then gives her wings a vigorous flap.

  She inhales the stench of the men’s fear as she approaches. Kirk, reads the name tag stitched into the first man’s overalls. He’s forty and balding, spineless—the kind of guy who would push his own mother into the mouth of a lion if it meant he could get away unscathed. He cowers, even in his paralysis. Then there’s Gilbert, tall and wiry, with cheap tattoos creeping from the neckline of his undershirt. Sydney had seen the extent of his work ethic, sitting out on the loading deck of the truck, reading titty magazines as the bots did all the work. And finally there’s Orion, a hundred and ten kilos and none of it muscle. Just a kid really, eyes following Sydney’s movements in their doughy sockets. He loves his mama, draws her hot baths and paints her toenails for her now that arthritis has set in. Sweet. Sydney makes a mental note to send her a coupon for her salon, then runs her finger down the bridge of Orion’s nose. “I think I’ll save you for last,” she whispers.

  With a flick of her finger, she rolls out the drop cloth and wills Gilbert over it. No way she’s cleaning this place all over again. He dangles midair, fear doubling, tripling. After a few slits of vital arteries, she’s fed enough to conjure the smallest peephole into the plane of transcendence. The dik-dik virus is spreading already. The lab tech had passed it on to her entire extended family, thirty people so far, and this second generation has nearly incubated long enough to pass it along again. In a mere few weeks, nearly half the population will have two very inconsequential gene sequences augmented. They don’t determine eye color or skin color or intelligence or foot size, or any of a million other variables that scientists have brought under their control.

  They’re found on mitochondrial DNA, in fact, passed down from mother to child for generations upon generations from a time where demigods ruled the earth. Mr. Tau had told her the story when she was a girl, half a millennium ago. Even back then, visions of power danced before her eyes, and Mr. Tau had filled her head so full of flights of fancy she began to believe the stars themselves were within her reach. She remembers how proud she planned to make her baba. She remembers the thrill of learning there were others like herself. She remembers Mr. Tau’s smooth voice tickling her ear as she curled up in his lap. She remembers it all like it was yesterday.

  Mr. Tau had said:

  When the earth was still young, I was birthed from her fiery womb, and for centuries I floated contentedly on patches of her charred crust across seas of lava lapping at my skin like slow, hot kisses. I knew neither loneliness nor want until I had a dream of six trees standing in a line on a riverbank. I’d never seen such beauty—branches twisting up seductively from knotty trunks, foliage such an inviting shade of green. I wanted them in the worst way. When I opened my eyes, there was only a bloody, scabby darkness stretching into eternity. So I closed my palms together and willed with my very life force to create a sun, but then all that I could see was that I was truly alone.

  It made me weep. I cried for countless days, years, decades, until I found myself drowning in a river of my own tears. I splashed against the surface and screamed for help, but there was no one. The scorched earth was no more, and instead there was a shore bearing six trees, roots drinking from the river’s water. I wished for their branches to reach a little lower. A breeze came, and the bra
nches swayed closer, but I still could not reach them.

  My tears formed a whirlpool around me and threatened to suck me down, so I did the only thing I could think of. I willed those six trees arms and legs like my own. They uprooted themselves and began to walk about the muddied bank. I called to them, but they could not hear for they had no ears. So I willed them.

  “Come quick! I’m drowning,” I yelled, and the trees heard me, but they were blind and bumped into each other and walked in all directions. So I gave them eyes. I thought for sure I’d be saved then, but when the trees saw how beautiful they were, they forgot all about me and began preening each other’s leaves.

  So I gave them all hearts, hearts that loved only me, and they came rushing toward me, dipping their branches into the water. With all my might, I grabbed onto the nearest branch, saved at last! But then one of the other trees, ruled by jealousy, swatted me away so it could be the one to save me, its love. Bruised and battered, I willed them all minds so that they could work together.

  Moments later, I found myself on the shore, lying on my back. I’d swallowed too much water and had lost my breath. I was dying! With my last thought, I willed the trees breath, and they breathed into me, each in turn until my lungs cleared of water and my lips tasted of bark.

  I was so grateful that I took those six trees as my wives and made proper women of them, seeing as they could already walk and hear and see and love and think and breathe. With a hammer and chisel, I sculpted them faces and breasts and hips. I was meticulous, spending hours on my first wife’s earlobe until I thought it to be perfect. For months, I did not eat. I grew thin and weak, and thought I would die. But then a crab crawled out of the water and right up to my feet.

  “Mr. Tau,” the crab said. “I have been watching you for months and am in awe of your creation. Her beauty is unmatched on this earth, and I could not bear for her to go unfinished. Please, Mr. Tau, you are weak. Eat of my flesh. I would be grateful.”