As Simple As Hunger

by D Des Anges

  Hana contrived an expression of appropriate discord and sorrow. “That poor girl.”

  “Yes,” said Radigis, and were she aught but who she was, Hana might not have seen the insincerity of his sadness. “And the idle one is in disarray, and mourns. His wife, however, is given the most vexing turn of mood and is breaking into smiles all about the place as if tickled by invisible hands. All is chaos and turmoil; my lady and I walk in search of news.”

  “A dark day indeed,” said Hana with grave aspect. “And now your hours shall be all filled-up with the complexities of this, you shall have no time for friends. It is understood.”

  “O quite the contrary,” said Radigis, taking her gloved hand and laying a brief kiss upon it. “I am come to give as many of my hours to the house of al-Fihri Auda Bedu Ird as she desires in recognition of her many kindnesses.”

  Hana, as she knew he wished her to, glanced over his shoulder to the street beyond, but there was no sign of any face that was not set to its destination elsewhere. She gave a nod so small that a watcher with even the most cunning spyglass would be unable to perceive it.

  “How may I serve you, Emira?” Radigis asked, releasing her hand.

  “My daughter does not return,” Hana said at last, still with her eye to the window, “and rumour runs ragged the town with its insinuation of ill-made match. She is all the family I have close to me, and the only comfort to an old woman’s dotage –” she made sure to keep here a downcast and saddened face, instead of the ice-cold anger which coursed in her, “—and both absence and rumour cannot be tolerated.”

  Radigis said, “I know Secure Guardians and I know coast-watchers, Emira, and I know the pain of a mother’s heart when her child is gone from her side.”

  He gave another bow, more florid than its predecessor, and thence allowed a smile to take brief hold of his face. Hana did not match it, not yet.

  “What can be done will be done; in the meantime the house of Radigis thanks the house of al-Fihri Auda Bedu Ird for her friendship, and for the comfort she will not doubt provide to the betrayed bride of our lazy acquaintance.” He caught her eye, but of course did nothing so noxious and treacherous to his inner thoughts as wink.

  You will have to learn to cover your pleasure better than that, Hana thought, as he took his leave, but she said naught. Instead she rapped her knuckles on the back door of the bird-dealer’s shop for the old mummer to return and haggle over the sale of one brood-hen.

  Chapter 27

  By her own calculation, Hajar watched Ferdinand sit with his head in his hands for what might have been upward of an hour.

  The forest was hot and humid and brought on the sweats. In consequence, flies of every known size, from almost invisible to the length of her palm, sang and danced and tried to land on her. The hot-forest stank of rot, and death, and ripe fruit, and her own ripe body.

  Hajar put her hand over her nose and gave herself over not to despair, but to the determination of chance and progress. The star that Benjon – the parasite, the liar – had made for had proven good, and it held in her mind amid its fellows.

  Should she be able to make regular soundings of their position in relation to it, she felt sure she could keep them on a course northward.

  But to what end? They had no clue where they were, no idea how far from Albion.

  And should they reach by some unheard-of manipulation of every odd that lay against them the General of which El Alacrán had spoke, how would they speak? How should they convince this stranger that they were not to blame for, for, this, and that they should be returned to Albion, and not imprisoned?

  Hajar did not presume to consider what Ferdinand might dwell upon, as he rested his face in his hands, but there was little they might gain in remaining but to sit here and rot.

  They could scarce return to a boat neither of them had the wit to sail nor navigate, and take to the ocean that was filled up with beasts that dwarfed the very islands that rose from it.

  “We should go,” Hajar said, when she was sure that Ferdinand must either rouse himself or fall into stupefied sleep.

  “Where, exactly?” Ferdinand asked, his face still lodged in his hands.

  “Away from here,” said Hajar, for it was the only answer to be given. “Or do you mean to sit the rest of your life upon the forest floor and sleep yourself dead?”

  “It would be no worse than what else might befall us,” Ferdinand muttered, but he pulled one hand from his face and scrubbed at his jowls as if waking.

  “We should go north,” said Hajar.

  “Should we,” Ferdinand grumbled. He rose slow to his feet and regarded her without passion or disgust. “And what good will that bring us?”

  “More than sitting here in the stench of our friends’ decay,” Hajar said, grim and gritted to the very bone. She had no idea what better there was to be found, but her boots had dried and her headscarf was so stiff with salt and dirt that it had near become a helmet: she felt for that moment that if they came across another being she might well destroy them with a look.

  “And how shall we know north?” Ferdinand asked, brushing leaf-litter from his seat. His face was drawn, and though his beard had grown now almost to where it might have wisps beyond his chin, it did not disguise the hollowness in his cheek.

  “Away from the ocean, until night, and then I shall find our pole star,” said Hajar. “It will serve until the skies change.”

  “You know best, I’m sure,” he said, and led the way away from the shredded and strewn graveyard that had become of their companions without a backward look.

  “If you have a better idea I will hear it,” Hajar said. She had to stride to keep with his pace.

  “I don’t,” said Ferdinand, pushing back branch without breaking his step.

  For the remainder of the light they came through the forest, away from the ocean. Hajar grew concerned for the fading sound of the shore, masked by the buzz and hum of the hot-forest’s many lives, and availed herself of a fallen stick to drag through the leaf-litter. She meant by it to mark their way that at least they should not circle full back on themselves.

  Hajar could not mark the exact moment she knew that something watched them, but it was before the last of the light faded from the sky.

  The heat of the hot-forest which had so long oppressed them had given up some moving water, from which she and Ferdinand had drunk with greed before squabbling over how they should take from the stream. This became a squabble on how, being unable to take from the stream, they should change direction and follow the waters to their source.

  The squabble drew to be of how Hajar was an idiot who knew nothing of hot-forests and Ferdinand was a fool who knew nothing of hot-forests either.

  Their tempers thus frayed and worn, neither were observant as they might have been of the stillnesses here and there among the growing shadow of the hot-forest. There was near-constant movement among the trees: the spring and swing of branches as monkeys leapt from them, the rustle of leaves as birds flew through them, and the regular outburst of squawk and wail as some beast devoured another beast and its fellows lamented.

  This cacophony of life and death came as a chorus to a song, unnoticed and familiar after few enough repetitions. As Hajar ruminated that Ferdinand might well have been right about the water and whether or not she would concede this aloud, she did not give her attention to the deep-shadow and the sounds that failed to hail from it.

  “And how will you find your pole star?” Ferdinand asked. The light faded further from the hot-forest, leaving them in very deep shadow indeed. “We are as within a hall, here. There is a roof as good as any building’s.”

  “Climb a tree, I suppose,” said Hajar, looking doubtful at the great smooth trunks that rose in the gloom as tall as the columns of Romish ruins.

  “Can you climb?”

  “Can – fuck,” Hajar yelped, dragging on Ferdinand’s arm with great urgency. The silent shadow sprouted a snarling face with gleaming eyes, and
without waiting to discover their direction or the nature of the attack, she slapped Ferdinand in the chest and broke into the best run she had.

  He soon outpaced her, but Hajar had as little desire as he to become the meal of some starving beast, and strode as best she could. She sprang from the uneven litter and darted between trees where he raced straight, and hoped it would gain her some advantage on the beast.

  She did not think to look behind her to see what manner of predator had discovered them, for the ground was strewn with treacherous roots and fallen foliage.

  It had teeth and hunger, and that was enough.

  There came then, over the thud of her heart and the rustle of hot-forest as she raced through it, a yelp of pain which broke without reaching its natural conclusion. It was behind her, and for a very terrible moment indeed Hajar thought she had somehow outpaced Ferdinand and he fallen to the beast.

  But Ferdinand drew up ahead of her and pulled them both to a halt, panting hard as he seized upon her arm.

  “What was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Hajar choked, very short of breath herself, and unable to hear aught at all over the gallop of her heartbeat. She bent at her middle and gasped for air, but Ferdinand tugged her upright again. “We should not dwell –” she murmured in agreement, but he had froze to the spot.

  “O,” he said, very quiet, and she followed the direction of his pointing finger with no great joy.

  There behind them, some yards away and obscured by the darkness, it was just possible to see what had become of their predator in the twilight. It dangled, lifeless, some fifteen or so feet from the ground, in the grip of the great, serrated arms of an arthropod which bore all the same feature as that which had this last day dispatched El Alacrán.

  Two, three – a fourth, farther yet away – stood beyond it. All their vast domed eyes turned on their long slender necks to stare at Hajar and Ferdinand as if interrupted in some private debate.

  “Shit,” Hajar said. With neither prompting the other they broke once more to a run, caring not for whether they ran to the north, the south, the east or the west, only that they ran.

  The hot-forest came alive with the troubled hoots and shrieks of animals Hajar could only guess at. It seemed to reach out a thousand arms of spiked and impeding spite to stop her, slapping her face with branches and tangling her legs in vines.

  Twice she lost all notion of where Ferdinand had run and decided in an instant that she cared not and would rather live: the second time she near-collided with him as he rounded a tree and neither had the breath to spare for recrimination.

  It was all for naught: the great beasts had legs the length of tree-trunks themselves, and galloped with chilling serenity through the trees. They ducked and leapt with their great telescoping limbs tucked tight to them, then splayed as they landed with a softness of foot that belied their great size.

  She was already sure they were as good as dead when the vast forelimb of one slapped her flank with such force that all the breath was driven from her and the ground wrenched from beneath her feet. Hajar flew as no human had ever flown: like a tossed leaf, through the dark of the forest, and into the side of a great tree-trunk with a thump that she heard before she felt.

  As Hajar lay stunned and aching upon a comfortless bed of tree roots she was at first only sure that she was dead, then very surprised to find herself not dead.

  The question of what might have become of Ferdinand did not occur until after she had raised an arm which seemed to scarce belong to her, and begun to feel her body for broken bones.

  Though she ached as she never had, from end to end, she felt nothing that suggested a fracture. Hajar was impressed first-most with this good fortune; though it seemed to her that in the light of how she came to be in this position her fortune was sure to be short-lived.

  Two delicate arthropod feet pushed her without gentleness, rolling her along the floor as if she were a carpet to be moved, and Hajar came with them without dispute. She felt she could no more fight now than take to the wing and fly from the forest to the moon.

  With a few revolutions she found she was not pushed across leaf-litter only but over a lattice of strands that seemed as much metallic as silken, the gaps between each large enough to push her hand through but no more. She could scarce tell more while rolling over them in pain.

  Hajar took on very little other notion of what occurred, for the rolling and the blow made her dizzy, and it was not until she came to impact with Ferdinand’s fallen form that she grew again afraid.

  He breathed, still, and she could feel his heartbeat as her back was shoved into his stomach by the ungentle shoving of now several pairs of arthropod feet with their tiny claws, but Ferdinand was insensible and lay as limp as the dead. She supposed he must have been struck as she was struck, and therefore lucky to have still his head upon his shoulders. The force of such a blow could have snapped them in half as twigs underfoot.

  Hajar swallowed then a mouthful of bile and lay still, as the blanket or net upon which she lay lifted from the forest floor and jolted about. She shut her eyes, but was no less aware for this that a great deal of fidgeting and clicking took place. The air was filled with rustlings and hisses, as the net jolted about and at last came to a stop, swinging side-to-side like Ærndís’s haemmeck.

  There followed then a great interlude of hisses and clicks which Hajar gathered to be some discussion, though she understood none of it.

  There were further rustles and stirrings, and she imagined the great shocking colour wings of the arthropod the parasite had taken being shown to each other like the tails of peacocks.

  What conclusion they reached she could not know, but the beasts gave themselves to running soon enough, and Hajar came to understand with great swiftness how uncomfortable a progress this was to be for her.

  While on the spider’s back she had jolted and fasted, cocooned in silk. Here in the net she was dug into by strands, tossed about in the gullet of the bag by thuds, rocked back and forth with such violence that seasickness was afeared of her. She was squashed, slapped, and dug further into the net-strands with every roll and bump of Ferdinand’s insensible body.

  It took Hajar near the whole night to find herself a way in which she might cling to the uppermost strands of the net like an ape, her arms hooked through the gaps and wrapped in the scarf she pulled from her hair, her boots tucked about each other. She came to this position in exhaustion, but could scarce risk sleep.

  As light came slow to the hot-forest, Hajar wished at least Ferdinand would wake and share in her suffering.

  * * *

  For three full days and nights Ferdinand did not wake, and Hajar did not sleep, and their captors ran with a speed that put the spiders to shame.

  Hajar’s belly growled and complained and her arms weakened and ached, and her mind played heavy and often on the death of Benjon – how long ago had he perished, without her knowing? – and on the terrible end of El Alacrán.

  When at last Ferdinand regained his mind and roared to know what had happened and where he was, Hajar said only:

  “Get up here, I’m sleeping now.”

  And she fell from the top of the net like a raindrop.

  * * *

  It came about that the only means to quench their thirst – these fresh captors as ignorant or uninterested in the needs of humankind as the arachnids had been – was to lick dewfall from the net strands at dawn, and in this matter Hajar found herself given to sudden bouts of fury. It was as if the endless fires of injustice and impotence had found a crack in her armour and made the most of it by bringing her to try to punch the arthropod’s belly through the net after every morning’s drink.

  “What good do you suppose that will do?” Ferdinand asked her on the third occasion, as he lay limp at the bottom of the net, watching the landscape pass them by without interest.

  “Fuck off,” Hajar said.

  * * *

  There was a day in which their thirst wa
s over-quenched by their near-drowning, when the great arthropods of unknown name forded a river of width incalculable. The beasts either did not know or did not care that the net they bore swung into the waters almost to its apex, leaving the inhabitants to gasp for air for so long they were certain to die.

  Later, they were left also to upend Hajar’s boots and wring out Ferdinand's tunic to make good the vile and stained water they contained.

  There was the much-needed day when, moving through plains of tall seed-grass which poked at them through the net, Hajar and Ferdinand collected with snatching hands the grain they bore, and choked and chewed upon it in desperation.

  There was its cousin-day, when a foolish bird came to investigate either the husks of the grain or the dirt on their bodies, and instead lost its life at Ferdinand’s great hands. It fed them both nowhere near enough, but enough to keep from death.

  There was the day upon which their climb up a mountainside was interrupted by one of the great arthropods making hunt for the strange black-and-white bears that sat chewing upon branches. After much hissing and clicking and posturing of display-wings, the beasts chewed lumps from the bear and pushed them through the net as if in afterthought.

  “Arthropods and bears,” Hajar said, looking at the blooded lumps with hunger and dismay battling within her body like stags in rut. “They must see our diet very strange.”

  “Starve now or in-scitten later,” Ferdinand said with a rare smile, as if they faced only an anecdote to tell on their return.

  He bit into the flesh under the watchful eyes of three peering arthropods, and declared it, ‘worse than drinking piss, which we have yet to sink to’, though he ate the whole chunk.

  And then, at last, there was the day when they came to the long valley of the loud winds.

  In the long valley, capped with snowed mountains on their side and alive with fast streams and dipping birds too fast and too wise for either of them to catch, their captors met with others of their kind.

  Though Hajar had scarce thought it possible, the others were taller, and not green but dark brown and hoary. Their great serrated forelimbs were longer than horsecarts, and their display-wings, when spread, were dull instead of coloured.