Elim accepted the root-stub dubiously. It didn’t look like much. Then again, he’d seen with his own eyes how Way-Say had changed when he got sick – and after sunburns and gut-wounds and more hard miles than Elim would have guessed a man could walk, he could believe that he wasn’t the picture of health himself.
So maybe he’d take this critter’s word about that. “Herbs n’ shit,” he said absently.
“Herbs n’ shit,” it echoed. “Chew that one a hundred times before you swallow. It’ll work faster that way.”
Elim tipped the fishman’s chin back to look it dead in its upside-down eyes. “Yeah?”
It answered with a contemptuous blink. “Yeah. Let me know if you need help counting that high.”
Elim let go before he could give in to the temptation to smash its head against that rock. “Mainly I need help understanding how come you’re such an obnoxious pissant, and why I ought to believe one word out of your obnoxious pissant mouth.”
As soon as he let go, it hopped across the pool, out of his arm’s reach. But it made no effort to escape: instead, it turned to drop to a bandy-legged squat on the opposite side of the water, leaving its bland, vaguely obscene under-parts on full display. “Because I’ve done NOTHING but work to save your miserable hide! Who tried to warn you away from that brothel, eh? Me. Who misdirected them after you excused your drunk carcass out the back door? Also me. Who cut you down from those posts, and took a bullet for you, and has gone through hell on earth to catch up with you, and kept you from drowning yourself last night, and is RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND trying to help you winch your head out of your ass hard and fast enough to maybe get out of this alive? Wait, don’t hurt yourself: it’s me.” It broke off, coughing.
At the beginning of all that, Elim had no idea what it was talking about. But he did remember the little violet lady, Champagne, who had so impatiently cut him down after that day-long roast in the sun... and was promising to take him to Sil when that fish-queen appeared... and shoved herself in front of that very same fish-queen when she pulled that pistol – and good God, there was a fresh puckered wound right between this one’s ribs. This was the same one. She – it – was still alive.
“I’m sorry,” Elim said, when he finally found his voice. “I thought you were dead.”
Its colors wavered uncomfortably at that; it flexed its stumpy toes over the edge of the rock. “Yes, well... no such luck. Are you going to eat that or not?”
Elim glanced back at the root in his hand. He always said it’d be a cold day in hell before he bought snake-oil from a fishman. On reflection, accepting a free sample on a slightly nippy day in Sundownerland was probably close enough.
It smelled of mice and tasted like raw parsnip, all fibrous and tough. But he went and took a seat on the big rock nearby and counted faithfully to one hundred as he chewed, watching the hair on his arm all the while. Probably it would need a little bit to work.
Champagne watched him intently, apparently equally anxious to see results. Which begged the question...
“So, uh, how come you’re helping me, anyway?”
The fishman snorted. “Oh, don’t feel obliged – I’m only doing it for your mother.” And it tipped its head in a vaguely south-easterly direction.
Elim tried that from every vulgar ‘your-mama’ angle he knew, and came up blank. But surely that wasn’t meant to be taken seriously: when had this Champagne ever met Lady Jane?
It stared at him, as if amazed by his dullness, and finally sighed. “That would be U’ru, eternal mother of the Ara-Naure, youngest of the Moon Singers, who is sometimes called the Dog Lady.”
Somewhere in all that mess of words, Elim got the idea – and wasted no time in giving it right back. “No,” he said. “Hell no. That ain’t any mother of mine.”
Champagne stood, the white of its belly and the blue of its back brightening like a poison frog, and bared its teeth. “SHE damned well is, and a better one than you deserve, you ungrateful shit.”
Elim stood likewise, queasy but perfectly ready to hit the dirt over this one. “You shut your egg-sucking mouth,” he snapped. “That’s not her, and I don’t want to hear one more word about it.”
He knew – he’d always known – that he was either an irresponsible accident or a brutal on-purpose, and as much as he liked to pretend to himself that his mother was a poor nice girl who’d gotten shoved to the wall by some big ugly Sundowner, he understood that more probably it was the other way around – that his white parent had done the doing, and his native one was done-unto. And no matter it had happened, he knew in his heart that God had made him, even if He had used the Sibyl to do it. But dammit, he wasn’t a monster, which meant that he couldn’t be the child of monsters. And he would knock the teeth out of anybody who said otherwise.
“Is that right?” Champagne sneered. “Well, why don’t you talk for awhile, then? Who are your parents? Where are your siblings? Do you know your birthday? How old are you?”
Elim understood its game – and he would be damned if he was going to give it the satisfaction of watching him grope for answers. “I’m twenty-three years old, and my birthday is October the 4th,” he said, even as it occurred to him that he didn’t know what today was and he might actually be twenty-four now. His head was swimming, but he shook it off and went on. “I belong to Mr. and Mrs. T.A. Calvert of Hell’s Acre, in Washburn County. Merrily Cal – Merrily Ross is twenty-eight years old, and lives in Calder City, and Clementine...”
He would excuse himself from mentioning that they didn’t actually know where Clem was. In fact, he half wanted to excuse himself behind a bush. It was supposed to be going away, all that hair on his arm, but really it just itched some, and his hands felt shaky, and his mouth was watering unaccountably, and he might should have eaten something before he tried that root. “So... what’d you say I just ate?”
The fishman flashed him a brilliant, sharp-toothed smile. “Royal hemlock.”
“Oh, you whoreson evil son of a bitch –” Elim bulled forward, taken body and soul by the urgent need to end its life, but not soon enough: he barely got halfway there before he was on the ground, retching hard enough to burst bloody pinspots in his eyes.
But that was not nearly enough, not even though he heaved and gagged enough to bring up everything he’d ever eaten. He felt his limbs seizing uncontrollably, and rolled over in some clumsy attempt to avoid the pathetic watery puddle on the ground. His arms flung themselves out, and suddenly he was clenching his fists until his biceps were about to rip out of his skin – driving his heels into the sharp rocks with lacerating force – choking, strangling on his own spit as his back arched up in hideous, bone-cracking convulsions. He was dizzy, starving for air, but his muscles were too busy trying to break his ribs to let him draw a breath, and the rest of him was too busy dying to let him think about it. Finally, mercifully, Elim blacked out.
SHEA SINCERELY ENJOYED taunting the boy. She did not enjoy what came after. It was a frightening, horrible thing to watch, and not only because of that worrisome thought that he might not have the resilience of a true god-child – that she might have just killed him.
But no: as his convulsions slowed, and his limbs stilled, Yashu-Diiwa kept breathing. After a few minutes, he groaned, and in a positively impressive display of initiative, turned his head to vomit up one last quarter-ounce of bile.
That was when Shea knew she’d been right all along. He was exactly what she’d promised him – and the sooner he understood that, the sooner he could begin to accept U’ru’s love... and the sooner Shea could find her way back into the great lady’s graces.
So she rounded the pool and strode forward, inviting herself to straddle his quivering soft stomach, exactly as he’d done a few minutes prior. Then she leaned forward to make herself scintillatingly clear.
“Now then,” she said to his bleary, half-conscious face, “let’s review what we’ve learned. Item one: you ARE U’ru’s son, whether you like it or not – because i
f you weren’t, you would be dead. Is this much understood? Can we move on now?”
His marks still weren’t quite right – his fur was still more like short hair, and only his left eye had turned to that soft black-pitted amber – but that was all right. At any rate, his mismatched eyes focused on her face for almost two seconds, which she would take as a solid affirmation.
“Good. Item two: you can get as soppy as you like about whoever washes your whites back home, but U’ru is your mother, and you will comport yourself as a kind, loving son. Are we clear?”
He lifted his head a scant couple of inches off the ground, as if wondering dimly who had wet his pants.
“Excellent. Item three: I am smarter than you. I am smarter than you ever thought smart could go, shit-flick, and older and meaner too. So don’t you EVER think you can...”
Shea trailed off as his attention remained fixed on something behind her. The corner of his mouth ticked up in what might have been a smile. Then he dropped his head back down, apparently content to pass out. Perplexed, she turned to look...
... and was amazed to see that his left leg now ended in a huge, hard-walled hoof.
Shea bolted up as if she’d been bitten. She turned and squinted, scrutinizing him for anything else her poor eyes might have missed.
Then she noticed how the hem of his pants ended at his mid-calf. How his right hand had swollen and hardened into a massive, mailed fist. How his whole entire body had stretched and grown while she wasn’t looking – to seven, seven and a half feet tall easily, and the better part of four hundred pounds.
Sometime after that, Shea found herself sitting down, her mouth in her hand.
He was supposed to have grown up empty. That was what she’d assured herself of all these years. That was what that brand on his arm had promised. Kindly masters and a good life, fine, but what about his yearning? What about his curiosity, his longing for family and connection and truth?
Well, if he’d ever had them, they were gone now. His divine lineage had carved out a great place in his heart, but someone else had long since come along and filled it. U’ru certainly was his mother, but this Elim was not her son.
And Shea had no idea what they were going to do about that.
“VICHI? VICHI, WAKE up!”
Vuchak could not have said what was less pleasant: the sunlight in his eyes, or the shaking at his shoulders.
Then he realized who had hold of him.
Weisei looked down at him, abysmally thin but fully human, and bit his lip. “Please, Vichi, you have to get up – I’m STARVING.”
Vuchak could have laughed out loud. He sat up, beaming, cupping Weisei’s neck between his hands to press their foreheads together, and made the sign of a merciful god. “Yes – yes, of course, marka – anything you want. Blessings, I thought you would leave me!”
Weisei was in no mood for sentiments. He rose to his feet, wringing his hands like a child reporting a terrible emergency. “Yes, but the yucca cakes are all gone and I already ate all the corn flour and we don’t have any pot to cook the beans and there’s NOTHING to eat, Vichi. Why did you leave all the dishes with Hakai?”
Vuchak’s newborn joy melted in an instant. He stood up, into freshly-remembered anxiety. The strange god. The fishmen. The fight. “Hakai,” he echoed, striding downhill to scan the visible part of the shoreline for any sinister shapes in the water. But there was nothing – no fishmen, no bodies of any kind. Just a few abandoned rakes and shovels, which last night Vuchak had mistaken for tridents and spears, and a lingering sense of unease.
Weisei sensed his worry. “What’s wrong? Didn’t you leave him behind to guard Ylem and Dulei?”
Dulei.
Vuchak took an appalled step backwards. He’d thought the air was unusually fresh. Where was Dulei?
They’d put him down maybe five yards from the rest of their things – not enough to make him angry; just enough so that he’d be slightly more bearable. And indeed, as Vuchak closed the distance, he saw that he’d remembered the spot correctly: there was still a vague square-shape in the dust – but the coffin was gone.
“... Vichi? Where are they?”
Vuchak shook his head, as helpless as Weisei to render an answer, and watched the river flowing through the cool desert morning. Whatever the reason, Hakai, Dulei, and Ylem were gone, and Vuchak and his marka were alone.
SIL FELT ABSURD, more than a little childish, as he poked at the body with a stick.
For one thing, he was well past the age for prodding squeamishly at dead things in the garden. For another, he’d spent thousands of miserable hours at Watt’s Tannery, seen and smelled dead horses in just about every stage of decomposition and disassembly. It was not as if one more would be any great novelty.
But this was his – was Will’s horse. This was Actor. And this was also his single best clue about where Elim might be.
He had been here: Sil was sure of that much. Those were his tools in that gunnysack in the ditch. But his rifle was gone, and his ammunition, and the kinds of things you’d want even for a short hike – trail food and canteens and the like. The a’Krah looked to have taken theirs too.
So Sil was left to prod at the horse and shoo the flies, and wonder whether that great nasty wound at his shoulder had been made before he died or after, and make his best guess at how long poor Ax had been here... and where and how far Elim and the others might have gone in the meantime.
On reflection, the voices on the other side of the hill might have something to say about that.
Sil glanced up, an instant of concern overruled by days of solitude, and hurried to his feet. “Hello?”
The first figure over the little rise paused at the sound, and answered in kind. “Hallo?”
Then it must have spotted him: in seconds, it was running gleefully down the hill, some sort of cloak billowing out from its back and arms, resolving itself into a familiar, welcome shape. “Afvik!”
Sil waved, absolutely transported with gladness, and called out in Marín. “Weisei, good afternoon!”
The young man of the a’Krah pushed up a blindfold that he’d had over his eyes, perfectly eager to return his enthusiasm. “Afvik, we thought you were dead! We thought –”
Then he stopped about ten feet away, as if shocked still by the sight of him.
Well, two could play at that game: Weisei’s black-feather cloak was fine enough, but every other part of him looked terrible. His long hair was tangled, his shirt and leggings were filthy, and he looked as if he’d lost twenty pounds by the most gruesome method imaginable.
“Weisei, what’s wrong?” Sil was sure he looked just as dire, but the amazement on Weisei’s face was downright uncomfortable.
Vuchak strode down the hill to answer on his partner’s behalf. He didn’t look to have lost much weight, but otherwise he was in equally poor shape. “The fishmen have taken your Ylem,” he said brusquely, “and two of our own. Weisei, come here.”
“What?” Sil had to have misheard. “Where? What for?”
Vuchak tipped his head, left and right, and kept coming. “We will do our best to discover that, and bring him safely to Grandfather Marhuk.”
That was not much comfort. Sil didn’t think for a second that Vuchak would use that shield and spear on him, but he didn’t like that grim look on his face as he advanced. Sil backed up, groping for a diplomatic reply.
Weisei followed in Vuchak’s wake, his fine-boned features pinched with unhappiness. “You should go to Grandfather too, Afvik. He can help you.”
“I’ll come with you,” Sil replied on the spot. “I’ll help look for –”
The two a’Krah stopped by the horse. Weisei knelt down beside it. “No,” Vuchak said. “Our way is not yours. Take this road west to the river, and then follow it north. You will see a bridge at the main highway. When you are safely across, go west to that mountain with the two shoulders there, which we call the Mother of Mountains, and look for the trail that...”
He went on, but Sil wasn’t listening. Weisei had put his hand to the horse’s neck, and begun to hum. It started softly, as nothing more than a swallowed vibration in his throat. Then it got louder, clearer, until he opened his mouth in a tuneful, wordless song.
And Actor got up.
He rolled onto his belly, propping himself up with his front legs first, then heaving his backside up off the ground, and finally standing there calm and just a little stiffly, like a newborn foal that didn’t quite have mastery of itself. From this side, one could almost mistake him for a real, living horse... but as Weisei brought him around, keeping his hand on his neck and the song flowing all the while, the black gelding turned, revealing that unfortunate little hole at his forehead, and the dust-crusted, ant-ravaged flatness of the other side of his face, and there was no more room for misunderstanding: in life, Actor had been Will’s horse, but his body now belonged to the a’Krah.
Vuchak must have finished speaking, or had seen Sil’s inattention and given up. He lanced his spear through his shield-straps, freeing his right hand to hold to the horse’s mane as he spun and launched himself up onto its back. “Go quickly, Halfwick,” he said as he pulled Weisei up in front of him. “Your god does not look kindly on you.”
“No,” Sil said, desperate to forestall what he already knew would come next. “Wait, please wait – don’t leave me h –”
But Vuchak’s only answer was the pity in his eyes. Then Weisei turned the horse again and they were off at a lope, riding out for parts unknown.
Sil watched until they were out of sight. He held perfectly still, waiting until he could be sure that the fear-tinged frustration boiling up inside him would not spill out into any unseemly, unproductive excess. He would not give the universe that satisfaction.
Finally, when he was firmly in command, he folded his jacket back over his arm and walked on west, alone except for those obnoxious, pestering flies.
Medicine for the Dead Page 36
