A Pretty Mouth

by Molly Tanzer

  As it turned out, the forest was thick with ravens. They perched everywhere, on branches, upon fallen logs and stones; flapped through the treetops and hopped through the underbrush. They saw no other creatures.

  “She was worried about the birds?” whispered Petronius.

  “Bar,” said The Thing, holding a finger to her lips as she trod lightly upon the loamy forest floor, her pace quick, her expression grim. She relaxed somewhat after they reached the other side, but would not let them make camp until they were some distance from the treeline. Even then she would not let them light a fire.

  “I wish we could talk with her more,” said Spurius, as they shivered in their cloaks, eating cold rations. At the sound of his voice The Thing looked up at them, but when he smiled and waved at her a little she scowled. “She must have had an amazing life.”

  “Do wild animals have amazing lives?” asked Petronius skeptically. “She rises with the sun, hunts, eats, shits, mates, and goes to bed when it’s dark.”

  “Why, Petronius! She is a woman of strength and courage; a human with a culture! Look at her! Even just her jewelry, the inlaid sheath for her dagger—”

  “I have heard it said that magpies bring back shining objects to decorate their nests,” interrupted Petronius. “That doesn’t mean they have a culture.”

  “She let me hold her sword earlier, it’s well-balanced and the blade is keen. You do not give these people enough credit.” Spurius shook his head. “If only we could understand one another, I wonder what she could tell us.”

  Petronius drew his cloak tighter about his shoulders. A chill wind ruffled his hair. “You are a soldier, which means you’ve killed for Rome,” he said, “so you know that one day Romans will conquer this whole land. Like everyone else, her people will either die in battle, unremembered and unlamented by history … or they will yield to the standard of Rome and become civilized Latin-speakers.” He looked up at Spurius, who looked disturbed, smaller, perhaps, after this description of his career. “Then, maybe—if you yet live—you can find out what cradle-songs her mother sang her, and what she likes best for breakfast.”

  “By Jove,” said Manlius, “you’re a cynic.”

  “You’re not married,” countered Petronius. “Take her to wife, if you think her such a treasure! Or are you a hypocrite, who in his heart sees these savages as the very worms of the earth, as I—”

  “Ssst,” said The Thing.

  The Romans fell silent, and then they heard it too—a crunching sound, as of leaves trampled by feet.

  Something was coming.

  Spurius’ dagger was in his fist before Petronius had time to feel afraid. Manlius had his hand on the hilt of his borrowed gladius—had the translator ever undergone any martial training? Not even pretending to valor, Petronius elected to pull on his sandals, all the better to make a break for it if things got ugly.

  It was less dark than the night before: A thin crescent moon shone through the scudding clouds, as did the myriad stars. Still, in the shadows of these strange hills, the light did little to help them see, and the small group was tense with anticipation.

  Another crunch, then a whining that did not sound human.

  Petronius’ blood pounded in his ears. He was terrified, and began to slink away from the direction in which The Thing and Spurius squinted.

  The Thing stepped forward, sword in hand. Spurius tried to step in front of her, indicating he would go first, but she shoved him so hard he was caught off balance and almost fell.

  “Bar-bar!” she cried in the blackness, taking a step forward. “Bar!”

  The sound of quickened footfalls on the earth, and then something bounded out of the blackness and struck her in the chest. With a cry she fell backwards and hit the ground, and Spurius, steady on his feet again, rushed over—and then began to laugh.

  “It’s all right!” he cried. “It’s—come and see!”

  Petronius, nonplussed, cautiously returned to camp, and found The Thing laughing as the mongrel that had sat at her feet during the council licked her face raw. She seemed to have mixed feelings about his presence: While she cooed at and petted the dog, jabbering at him fondly, she kept looking worriedly into the darkness around them.

  “Barbar,” she said with a nod to Spurius, when he made motions as if he, too, would like to pet the animal. He reached out his hand and the dog snapped at him. The Thing laughed—but so did Spurius, which brought a ghastly smile to her face.

  “Spurius,” said Spurius, pointing at his chest. He pointed at her and said the name Petroinius couldn’t even begin to puzzle out, and she nodded. Then he pointed at the dog.

  She said something. Spurius repeated it, and she nodded at him, smiling.

  Petronius shook his head. “Gods,” he muttered to Manlius. “And now a menagerie.”

  “What is wrong with you?” said Manlius.

  “Hey, you volunteered me. If you didn’t want my company …”

  “You were talking the other night about wanting to do an ethnography of these people!” he snapped. “I thought you’d jump at the chance.”

  “I don’t even have anything to write on!”

  “You can do it later, though it escapes me why you would memorialize them at all if you hate them so much? What will your description be of these ‘wild animals’ with their culture you think no more of than a magpie’s hoard?”

  This took Petronius slightly aback. Manlius’ accusation wounded him. “I will tell the truth—that they have rudimentary language skills, little architecture or agriculture, some barely-domesticated animals, vicious weaponry for war-waging, women who have no sense of their place—”

  “Ugh,” said Manlius. “I don’t think so much of them as Spurius over there, but you’re being a real asshole, you know that?”

  “Whatever,” said Petronius. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

  “Good.”

  “Good then.” And, still feeling hateful, Petronius called into the darkness, “Just remember, Spurius—lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas!”

  “You know, I’ve always admired dogs,” replied Spurius. “Just think how nice it must be to have big teeth and strong paws! And their pack culture! Why, once I—”

  Petronius pulled his cloak over his ears in disgust.

  ***

  The next morning they broke camp at first light and continued to head due north. The countryside became increasingly hostile, steep knolls of flinty earth with fewer stands of trees and more scrubby bushes, and shocks of brown grasses that cut the skin if the travelers happened to brush up against them.

  The Thing had seemed ill at ease when she woke them, and during the day quickened her pace, increasingly edgy. She allowed fewer breaks, and when Manlius tried to talk to her, she hushed him with a glance at the grey, featureless sky. Petronius wondered if she was disturbed by the ravens that circled overhead, the way they seemed to be following the party, and how they would all caw riotously for a time and then fall silent for hours.

  Around mid-day they finally took a rest in the shade of a trough between two great hummocks. One of the coal-black birds landed on a nearby boulder. Petronius was surprised to see how large it was, it would have dwarfed the sea-hawks that he had used to shy rocks at when he was a boy. It was nasty, too—when The Thing’s mongrel frisked up to the bird playfully, it screamed like a woman and winged upwards only to dive at the dog’s eyes, beak snapping. The dog turned away just in time, slinking back to The Thing’s side as the raven winged away from them.

  “I was wrong,” said Petronius to Manlius.

  “Come around a bit, have you?” said Manlius coldly.

  “No. It’s just that I was wrong when I said that where we wrecked was the worst place in the world,” said Petronius, through a mouthful of biscuit. “This is far worse.”

  “I think it has its own natural beauty,” said Spurius, looking around at the jagged, colorless boulders that sat stark and foreboding against the washed-out sky. He gestured
to The Thing. “Diana among the rocks. Catchy, eh?”

  “Bar,” said The Thing, getting to her feet. She stuck out her hand to Petronius, and he realized she was offering to help him stand. He swatted her away. Her face darkened, her hand went to her belt knife—the one she had thrown at him—but then she laughed at him mockingly and donned her pack. Clicking to her dog she began to trot away from them.

  In silence they walked on, for they needed all their breath as they switchbacked up and back down the steepest ridges yet, yammered at all the while by murders of ravens. Petronius idly thought the birds might be laughing at them, but then checked himself. That way lay madness.

  Then, when the sun had sunk halfway down the sky, they crested a high butte—Petronius and Manlius were gasping, and even Spurius looked weary—and The Thing gestured at what lay directly in front of them. Her dog barked and wagged his tail.

  “Barbar,” she said.

  “We’re … here?” said Manlius, brow furrowed. “What the—oh, shit.”

  The place was no Roman stockade, but a great wasteland of strange black monoliths that were indeed surrounded by primitive fortifications. These looked immemorially ancient, and in places had collapsed, but where the ruins survived the stones were indeed piled high upon one another, and the shattered weaponry and human skeletons littering the earth certainly showed many battles had been fought there. A charnel stench emanated from the place, nauseating them whenever the wind kicked up—Petronius saw through a break in the rudimentary wall that a large carcass of some enormous creature decomposing among the menhirs.

  “Bar-bar,” said The Thing, and trotted inside the wall. Her dog whined, but she bar-ed at him sternly and he sat, whimpering, as his mistress proceeded alone.

  “Jupiter’s bunions,” swore Petronius, as they followed her. The place looked even worse from the inside, and the odor of the nearby dead scaly thing was overpowering. Petronius pulled his cloak over his nose. “Motherfucker. I can’t believe this, we came all this way and for what? Some sort of spooky Britannic boneyard! I’d bet ten denarii that these godsdamned skeletons come to life and kill us so we can join their undead ranks.”

  “You have a very fine imagination,” said Spurius admiringly, “but that seems unlikely. Clearly,” he said her name, “just misunderstood, but I think Manlius and I have really gotten some good insights into her language during our trip, so—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Spurius,” hissed Manlius, to Spurius’ and Petronius’ great surprise. His eyes were glued to the sky. “We need to get out of here, now.”

  A great shadow fell over them, and, looking up, Petronius went weak in the knees. An enormous raven, a raven that could have been the grandmother of all ravens, glided silently over them and landed on the closest monolith, right above where they stood beside the corpse. It perched there, peering at them. Then it hopped down, landing on the other side of the dead monster. It set to pulling at the rotting meat clinging to the carcass.

  Petronius was horrified to note it had teeth. Two rows of them, like a shark.

  “Manlius is right,” he whispered, “we should—”

  Welcome to the feast.

  Petronius screamed and slapped his hand to his eyes; they felt like they were going to burst from sudden, painful pressure. He heard noises from the rest of his party, shouts, and even howls from the stupid dog beyond the perimeter. Apparently they had all heard the monster speak. It occurred to Petronius that it hadn’t talked with its mouth. It also occurred to him that it had spoken in the Latin dialect used in Syracuse. Petronius wondered if The Thing understood its speech—if they all heard the language most familiar to them …

  The monster spoke again, and Petronius fell to his knees from the pain of it.

  We thought it was this you sought. Well, eat! Make merry! You are our guests. Fewer and fewer of your kind come here, to worship at these stones. Let us be friends!

  Something wet and hot was trickling over his lips, and Petronius, removing his palms, saw blood was flowing from some part of his face. His vision cleared, but he wished it hadn’t—looking at the creepy giant raven gobbling the putrid corpse of a red reptilian horror with its awful bird-teeth was more than he could bear.

  Relax. Eat. Rest.

  The monster’s advice suddenly seemed reasonable. He was hungry, after all …

  The enormous bird looked right at him. Yes. You sense it, the power of the dreigiau’s flesh! You seek the power of wishes, do you not? That is why you have come—so, eat!

  Not exactly, but whatever, thought Petronius, as he bent down and tore a strip of flesh from the carcass. He idly chewed the tough, rancid meat, feeling deeply at peace.

  Why do you resist me?

  Petronius was confused. How was he resisting? Looking at Spurius and Manlius, he saw they had also relaxed somewhat, though neither had tucked in, as he had.

  But then he saw The Thing.

  She yet stood, the corners of her eyes and both nostrils bleeding freely; sword out, she was brandishing her weapon valiantly.

  “Barbarbarbarbarbar!” she screamed, and then, with a cry, she launched herself at the giant raven.

  It was as surprised as Petronius, apparently, for it wasn’t until The Thing got close that it began to flap away from the dead creature. Its hesitation cost it badly: with a single heavy, precise stroke she lopped off one of the claws on its right foot, which spurted viscous black blood all over her. It swiped at her with the other foot and caught her across the face, opening a diagonal wound from her right forehead down her nose onto her left cheek. Gore dripped into her already bloody eyes as it launched itself atop the tallest menhir.

  Undeterred by its retreat, she dropped her sword, wiped her eyes, dried her hands on her wool tunic, and got out her bow; in the blink of an eye she braced the string, nocked an arrow, and aimed. The string twanged as she loosed it. The arrow hit the creature square in the right eye.

  It screamed—not aloud, but in their minds. Overwhelmed, they all collapsed, even The Thing.

  How dare you!

  The Thing shouted something back at it, still on her knees, struggled to once again lift her bow.

  Serpents! Vile worms! You shall be crushed, ground into dust, and the dust shall blow over this unremembered place! Your souls will—

  Another of The Thing’s arrows winged into the monster, this time embedding in its right nostril and spreading a bloody spider web of fissures across its beak. With an audible shriek, it launched off of the monolith and dove at her, but it could not open its maw wide enough to bite due to the lodged arrow. Instead it tried to drop on her like a falcon, claws outstretched, but she was too quick. Her sword seemed to jump into her hand, and she struck with the edge; the blade hit the creature in its left ankle—and stuck there.

  Petronius watched, somewhat impressed, as she held onto the grip with both hands as the monster tried to flap away from her. The enormous muscles in her arms bulged and rippled as she tried to wrest her blade from its bone—or whatever—and Petronius didn’t need a grasp of her language to tell she was swearing at it.

  “To her, Romans!” cried Spurius, staggering dizzily to his feet and unsheathing his spatha. His eyes were crimson with blood but he rushed at their adversary and shaved off the tips of some of the feathers of its left wing with his first strike, but this just seemed to make the bird that much more furious. It kicked at him with its wounded but unencumbered right foot, opening a jagged gash along Spurius’ left arm.

  Manlius, apparently inspired, picked up his borrowed gladius and screamed “Come on, Petronius!” before charging into the fray, swinging so widely he endangered The Thing and Spurius more than the monster, in Petronius’ opinion.

  “Fuck that,” the historian muttered, instead slinking behind an adjacent monolith—he might yet be able to escape if things turned dire for his party. Peeking around the side, it seemed the battle could go either way. The Thing had gotten her blade free of the monster and had managed to break its leg in the
doing; its foot hung at a grotesque angle as it flapped in the air. Hovering over them, it struck only with its right foot now. It knocked Manlius in the forehead; he dropped like a stone and Spurius tried to draw the creature away from his body so he would not be trampled.

  The Thing did not seem much to care for her fallen comrade’s welfare. Holding her sword in both hands, she swung it over her head and chopped at the wound in the creature’s left foot. This time she severed it, and it flopped to the ground on top of Manlius, oozing all over him.

  The monster was bleeding badly now, and squawking like a fussy chicken. Spurius, arms trembling, struck it in the body with his sword. The bird crashed down on top of the soldier, pinning him. He cried out—the writhing creature was massive—but The Thing jumped away in time and, screeching something that sounded like the wailing of Furies, hacked at the bird’s thick, feathered neck. The monster stilled after the first blow, but it took many swipes to chop through its spine, Spurius grunting with each impact. Eventually she severed its head, and then spat on the body.

  It was very quiet for a moment, and then she began to sing a low, spooky song over the dead monster, which brought her dog to her side. It frisked beside her, jumping up and licking whatever patches of her skin he could reach. She either finished her song or broke off mid-stream, who knew, and sternly said something that calmed the mongrel—bar, probably—but she could not keep the grin from her bloody face as she turned back to the body of the monster.

  It was then that it occurred to Petronius, as he watched The Thing try to rock the heavy corpse off of Spurius, that he was in deep shit. First he had succumbed to the creature’s seductive magics, then he had failed to aid his companions. Manlius’ abortive attempt to help had still been exactly that; he knew his cowardice would not go over well with this crew. Maybe … maybe he should pretend to have fainted? No, too late for that, The Thing had seen him crouching behind the monolith, conscious and whole. Lip curling, she spat at him, then gave a tremendous push on the corpse that finally freed Spurius. Gasping, he sat up, and looked deep into her eyes.