Dreams of the Eaten

by Arianne Thompson

  Elim glanced back at the fishman’s fleshy wet carcass.

  He couldn’t stay. It would be dark soon. He would be as good as blind soon. And then that body would be nothing but fresh, unclaimed meat. Then there wouldn’t be anything left to stop him.

  Come, good Master, be our guest. By your bounty, we are blessed.

  Elim dropped the net and shivered, dizzy with hunger, paralyzed by dread. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be looking where he was looking, shouldn’t be thinking what he was thinking. He should… he had to…

  … he had to go home, that was what. He had to go home, or Boss and Lady Jane would spend the rest of their lives wondering why he hadn’t.

  Elim took a step back toward the cave – back toward the carcass. He squinted just-so, blurring its open-mouthed stare into an amorphous, anonymous mask of meat.

  He had to go home.

  He didn’t have to tell anyone what he’d done to get there.

  All he had to do was eat.

  For this bread, your will be done...

  “Elim? Elim, can you hear me?”

  He looked up, his heart seizing on the spot. That was Sil’s voice!

  ... which meant that it was the fishman, Champagne, fishing for him again. Because of course it was. Because Sil was a week dead and a hundred miles east of here, with his head bagged up in a sack.

  Well, good enough: Elim would give the fishman a hard sock in the jaw on Sil’s behalf, and a solid kick to the teeth for that little stunt with the hemlock, and once he had it down on the ground, he could help himself to whatever victuals it had brought along for the trip. That would do nicely.

  “Yeah, sure,” Elim called back. “Come and get me, short-stack.”

  “Elim! Elim, is that you?”

  The running footsteps coming up at him, combined with that rotten adolescent squeak of surprise, made a mockery of his lost hopes. “Damn it, fishman,” Elim snarled as he started forward, “I am gonna knock you into a cocked hat if you don’t – Sil?”

  He knew that black hat cresting over the hill. He knew the white face bobbing up under it. He knew them in an instant – and in an instant more he was running to meet them, and in an instant more Elim had grabbed Sil bodily up off the ground in a rib-cracking bear hug.

  It was true. God was good, and it was true.

  “I thought I was gonna have to take you home in a box,” Elim mumbled, his voice molasses-thick as he pressed Sil’s slight frame closer in, firm and real and –

  – ripe. “Phew, buddy – you’d stink a dog off a gut-wagon!” And that wasn’t a good honest body-odor smell, either. That was...well, it was more like the odor of a body.

  Sil squirmed and pushed away. “Ugh, put me down – I’m not well.”

  “No kidding,” Elim said, helpless not to stare. Sil looked horrible – sickly and bloated and fishbelly-white, almost green around the edges, with bloody pinspots in one eye and a festering blue-green bruise around his neck where the noose had gotten him... almost gotten him, Elim corrected himself. “What the hell happened to you? How did you get all the way out here? And do you have anything to eat? Please God, Sil, tell me you do.”

  Sil stared up at him, confusion souring to amazement. “Food? Is that it? I hike all the way out here through the devil-knows-what to find you and all you want is a slop-out?” His voice sounded like rusty water through a gunked-up pump, and his breath was heinous.

  Elim shook his head, as desperate to dispel the smell as he was to be understood. “No, no, it ain’t – I ain’t kidding, Sil. I’m dead serious. I gotta eat, or I’m just – I just don’t even know what. Please...”

  Sil’s astonishment softened just slightly at the cracks in Elim’s voice; he nodded at the rifle in Elim’s hand. “Well, my god, it’s not that bloody difficult – just heft your gun and shoot something!”

  “No, I can’t,” Elim stammered, struggling to come to grips with the idea that Sil had brought no food and no tools and didn’t know the first thing about outdoorsmanship – that he wasn’t going to be any help at all. “I ain’t got any bullets left – I blew my only one.”

  Sil’s brows furrowed. “What, honestly? Then what’s that in your pocket?”

  Elim followed his gesture down to the bulge at his right hip.

  He fished out the little cloth bag and stared at it, feeling the roll and clink of the cartridges inside.

  Then he put his hand over his eyes as the world dissolved into a wet blur.

  “... Elim? Elim, what the devil’s the matter with you?”

  But he could only stand there, head down and shoulders heaving at the thought of what he’d done – what he’d come within a six hellbound paces of doing – and all his explanation came out as a hoarse, helpless creaky sob.

  “Oh, Elim, I’m sorry... really, I’m sorry I got you into this mess. It’ll be all right – you’re just hungry and over-anxious, that’s all. Come on, put yourself together and we’ll set to it. You can shoot something and I’ll fix a fire, and you’ll feel much better after your supper, won’t you?”

  Elim drew in a deep, raggedy breath and wiped his face. “Yeah. Yeah, sure we will.”

  Sil’s voice sounded like a clogged gutter, but it managed some cheer. “That’s what I mean. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Then a cold, clammy hand curled up under his arm, and led him away.

  FOR DAYS NOW, Sil had thought of nothing but Elim – of getting him out of that mess in Sixes, first of all, and then of finding him out here, doing whatever it took to catch up to him and set him free.

  He’d expected him to be in rough shape, of course. He’d expected the a’Krah to use him like a rented mule. He just hadn’t expected... well, this.

  And yet here he was, sitting by a greasy, smoky brush-fire, watching Elim use Sil’s little pocket-knife to mutilate a dead rabbit: sawing off the limbs, peeling back the fur, and eating the flesh raw.

  “’m sorry,” Elim mumbled, once he’d gotten down to the guts.

  “It’s fine,” Sil said, briefly meeting the rabbit’s glassy-eyed stare. Hopefully it would keep Elim busy long enough for the grouse to finish roasting. “You were hungry.”

  “No – I mean, yeah, but what I meant was about all of this.” Elim laid down the carcass and wiped his mouth. It left a bloody streak on his arm. “I didn’t mean for you to have to come out all this way looking for me. I wouldn’t of let them take me if I thought for a second that you were still there. But they said you were dead, honest – they swore it up and down, and they had a head in a sack and showed it to me, and honest to God, Sil, I thought it was you...”

  “Really, it’s all right,” Sil said, anxious for Elim not to go to pieces a second time. “I could fill a book with what I wish I’d done differently, but it’s not important. We’re here now, and we’re going home.”

  “Yeah.” Elim’s gaze drifted down to the bird on the spit, as if struggling to read something in its glistening skin. “Yeah, sure we will. But I gotta tell you...” Elim glanced up, his expression profoundly pained. “I mean, about Actor. I’m so awful sorry, Sil – I had to...”

  “I know,” Sil cut him off at the mention of the horse. “I saw him on my way here. Don’t worry about it – Will’s going to know you did everything you could.”

  Best not to tell Elim what Weisei had done with the body afterwards.

  Actually, Sil had some confessing of his own to do. He’d been rehearsing it for hours now. I’m so sorry, he would say. I took Molly to come and get you, but I was careless and stupid and I lost her. She ran away and I couldn’t get her back, and it’s all my fault. I know how much she meant to you. I’m awfully, awfully sorry. That was it. That was what he would say.

  But it was impossible to concentrate with the smoke in his eyes and that damned fly pestering him, and the words kept getting caught in his throat. “I, ah... I don’t suppose you’ve seen Molly?”

  Elim shrugged and looked away.

  Damn it. “Her
e, mind that before you burn it,” Sil said, and shifted the subject. “So how did you get free anyhow?”

  Elim gave the spit a halfhearted turn. “Ran away.”

  “Well, it must have been a good trick – Vuchak said the fishmen had you. What happened?”

  Elim returned to his grisly meal. “Don’t know.”

  Sil rolled his eyes and moved closer to the fire. “Riveting story, that.”

  He regretted it at once. Still, it was impossible not to be frustrated. There was Elim, clean and fit and fine – better than fine, even: he’d lost that little bit of a gut and taken on a lean, subtly muscular look, and all without a scratch or a burn left on him. But despite this tremendous stroke of luck, Sil began to think that he wasn’t going to be able to bring Calvert’s groom back in the same state as he’d taken him away – that no matter what happened now, this Elim was no longer that Elim, and Sil had no more power to undo that than to un-cook that spitted bird.

  “Here,” Elim said, ripping a wing off and passing it over. “Start on that – I think the outers are just about done.”

  Well, maybe eating like a human would help Elim remember how to act like one. Sil decided to humor him and took a bite. The hot grease didn’t bother his fingers, but the taste was unpleasantly stringy, almost rancid, and he wasn’t the least bit hungry. In fact, he was uncomfortably full. He hadn’t eaten in days, but he hadn’t been able to ease himself, either.

  So he pulled his shirt out to hide his swollen stomach, tore off little crispy morsels of skin to chew on, and watched Elim rip into the remainder with as much mannerless urgency as if he hadn’t already wolfed down a whole rabbit for his starters.

  “Good, isn’t it?” Sil said presently, mostly to give himself a break from pretending to eat.

  Elim eyed him over the fire. “Wouldn’t know it to look at you. You better hustle up and eat that – I ain’t having it from Nillie for bringing you back looking like chopped chickenshit.”

  A week ago, that would have been all right. A week ago, this had been the normal order of business: Elim stuffing his guts at the county fair and henpicking Sil to hurry and eat his greens.

  But an awful lot had happened in the past week, with an emphasis on ‘awful’, and Sil was in no mood to hear it. He chucked the wing at Elim, who plucked it almost casually from the air. “Surprised you didn’t catch that with your teeth. Stuff your guts and let me be – I’m in no mood for it.”

  But Elim actually left off eating and stared at Sil with that insufferable worried-dog expression of his. “Sorry, Slim – you know I didn’t mean it. But you just look so... are you sure you’re gonna be all right going home?”

  No. Not at all. “Of course. I’m just tired – I’ve hardly slept since you left. Finish your supper so we can go to bed. We’ll both feel better in the morning.”

  Elim looked deeply skeptical. “All right, well... I’m settin’ this aside for your breakfast, and we’re not leaving ’til you eat it.”

  Sil was tempted to snort in disdain as he watched Elim rip a leg off his greasy treasure and set it aside – as if Sil would ever have eaten that at any hour of the morning, sick or not! But he said nothing contrary, and passed the time agreeably until they lay down for the night.

  Except that Sil couldn’t fall asleep.

  He wanted to, was every bit as frantic for it as Elim had been for supper. He desperately needed to pay off whatever miracle of shock and borrowed time had let him walk the desert for days without food or water or rest, was fully prepared to sleep for three days and be ill for a week afterwards.

  But still nothing happened.

  No bill was presented for the extraordinary endurance he’d somehow bargained for. No second shoe dropped. He rolled over and back again in a vain attempt to find some comfortable position on the ground, got up and lay back down again after one final, futile attempt to ease that awful bloat in his stomach, closed his eyes and opened them again as he alternated between the world’s darkness and his own.

  So Sil, left with no means of settling his debt, lay awake through the night, shooing flies as the fire died.

  THE LADY, U’RU, did not change at sunset. She sat still and patient and almost-perfectly human until her companion was deep asleep – until the pilgrim, Día, lay with her head in the lady’s brown furry lap.

  Then she changed a little, just enough to lean over and lay a crown of kisses in an arc over the girl’s forehead – just enough to keep her thoughts peaceful and dreaming.

  Then she changed a little more. The fur of her robe tightened, clinging and spreading as the body beneath it stretched and grew – as the moonlight threw her shifting shadow clear down to the dry valley floor – as the starlight caught in the black of her eyes, and turned them golden bright.

  Then the lady, U’ru, picked up her newest puppy and went walking down the mountainside.

  IN THE DREAM, Elim was fourteen years old and lying with Eula Lightly when he heard the creaking of the old barn door. But he was so captivated by flesh and heat and sweaty gingham sweetness that he scarcely noticed when she stiffened and twisted astride him, did not begin to understand until the long shadow spilled over them from above.

  She slid off him, shrank fearfully into the straw beside him, but Elim had no such luxury. He had to rise to meet the shadow, to stand up with his hat and shirt in hand and bits of straw clinging guiltily to his cowlicked hair and go, walking straight out the door and through the yard and left onto the dirt lane, with no promise of what lay before him but an absolute certainty about who was following behind.

  It stopped at the property line, but Elim kept right on going, down the lane and right at the gate and straight up to the white-washed house, to knock, to wait, to realize a little too late that he hadn’t actually put his shirt back on – to pull off his hat as the door was opened and look Elver Lightly square in the eye and say the hardest words of his short life.

  “Mister Lightly, I am so awfully sorry for the outrage I have done to your daughter.”

  ELIM WOKE WITHOUT stirring, the dream still vivid in his mind.

  It faded with his first fresh whiff of that godawful smell, and his first glimpse of Sil, still sitting across from the dead embers in the pre-dawn grayness, and his first sharp pang of disappointment. The night hadn’t improved him. He looked worse than ever – more gross and sick and haggard than Elim had ever seen him.

  “You twitch like a dog in your sleep.” Sil’s voice was even rougher than it had been yesterday.

  Elim groaned and sat up. “And you sound like you just choked on your own teeth – and how come you ain’t even pretending to sleep, sickly?”

  Sil glowered at him with one blue and one bloodied eye, both made heavier by the dark smudges, like purple-black bruises, malingering above his sunken white cheeks. “I’m not tired. And if you’re rested enough to carp at me about it, I’ll take that as leave to get moving.”

  Elim sighed, the emptying of his lungs making more room for worry in his stomach. At least today it was a human stomach. “Yeah, sure. Let me inspect the crops and then we can go – and see you eat your breakfast while I’m at it.”

  Sil’s gaze tracked Elim’s pointed nod to the cold grouse-meat lying by the ashes. “You’re daft if you think I’m eating that.”

  Of course. Because if Sil actually ate a proper meal or got a decent rest, he might actually get better, and they couldn’t have that.

  But Elim bit his tongue and trudged out for his morning constitutional, relieved at least for his own sake. It had been a short night on rough ground, but he already felt so much better for having had a meal and a drink and a rest all on the same day, for finally having a reprieve from his body’s constant screaming for something-or-other. As wholesome and human as he felt right now, it was easy to imagine that all of what came before had just been a bad dream... except that Sil was a waking nightmare.

  He needed a doctor. He couldn’t possibly last all the way home. Hell, Elim wouldn’t even have w
agered on his being able to walk now, and who knew how long that would hold true? What the dickens was Elim supposed to say if he set out preparing to answer Will Halfwick for the death of his horse, and showed up having to answer for his little brother too?

  He couldn’t do it. It just couldn’t be allowed now – not after he’d gone so far expecting to do that very thing, and having just now, just yesterday been granted this miraculous reprieve.

  He would, though. He would, if it came to that.

  Elim paused, hugging his knees and staring with unfocused eyes at the gray light in the east.

  Boss had walked behind him that day, to see that he did the right thing. He’d left Elim to go the last of the distance himself, but he’d stayed there at the edge of that white-washed fence to watch – and it was a good thing he had, because otherwise there would have been nobody to stand between Elim and Elver Lightly’s shotgun.

  Elim looked over his shoulder at the mountain, its rumpled outline silhouetted against the fading stars. He had walked quite a far ways by himself now, and done it with every intention of confessing himself honestly – of taking Do-Lay’s body home, as he’d promised he would, and answering for the crow boy’s death. But there was nobody to watch out for him now, nobody to intercede on his behalf. Not even if his honesty cost him his life.

  And if that happened, how was Sil going to get home? Him, now, in the state he was in? He might as well be executed at Elim’s side.

  And somebody had to get home. That was what Elim had asked Día to relay for him, all those days ago in Sixes. One way or another, one of us has to get home.

  So when he finally walked back to their cold, reeking camp, and Sil opened his mouth to make some sharp remark, Elim cut him clean off. “Can’t go back.”

  Sil shut his mouth, appalled into silence.

  Unfortunately, that was about as far as Elim had gotten in his speech-making deliberations. “Which is – what I mean to say is, I been thinking about it and I can’t – I think we have to finish this here, to have our reckoning for it, I mean, before we can –”