Dreams of the Eaten

by Arianne Thompson

  Vuchak spared a guilty glance at the coffin. Dulei had been so glad to be rid of his atodak for awhile, to do as he pleased without Echep looming over him, cautioning him to moderate himself and mind his responsibilities. When he didn’t return, Huitsak discreetly dispatched a search party – and when that turned up nothing, he told Dulei that Marhuk had come to him in a dream, that the Eldest had given Echep a new, sacred duty, one far more important than merely delivering Huitsak’s ledger.

  Dulei had never thought to ask why the dream wasn’t given to him personally.

  And now here was Vuchak, struggling to conjure some face-saving excuse, acutely aware of Ylem standing there not ten feet away, blind and shivering in the dark, probably wondering when they were going to get moving again.

  “Of course he did,” Vuchak lied, and nodded at the coffin. “Isn’t that so, Dulei? Didn’t we discuss that very thing? You were so confident that your atodak had done his duty, so sure that he had stopped to do someone else’s too, so proud that he trusted you to mind yourself, no matter how long he was away...”

  Echep glanced up, shaming Vuchak into silence.

  Mind him for me. Those had been Echep’s exact words. Keep him out of trouble, don’t let him get behind the bar, and make sure he doesn’t go to Oyachen’s after work.

  Well, damn it, Vuchak had done all that, on top of reining in his own marka’s wild fancies. Huitsak was the one who’d ordered Dulei out that night, and Ylem was the one who’d shot him. He was sorry for Dulei, and for Echep, but he was not about to start blaming himself for either of them. And if they didn’t appreciate his attempts at consolation, then... well, they could get in line behind Weisei, to start with, and Vuchak would gladly return to his own duty – which had nothing to do with exchanging awkward sentiments and everything to do with getting this stinking box and that two-colored delinquent up there to Atali’Krah for someone else to decide about and dispose of.

  Vuchak said none of that, of course. He drew a deep breath and made the sign of an inscrutable god. “Well, the important thing is that you’re here now. Come on, brother – suck your teeth. Let’s get your poor marka home to his rest.”

  And just like that, the lingering resentment in Echep’s face melted into fear. “No – I mean, yes, but not just yet. Look, you see – it’s full dark, and the half-man won’t be able to see a foot in front of his face. And besides which, it’s freezing, and I’ve been hiking up the north face all day – really, Vuchak, I’m dead on my feet. Let’s just stay here for tonight, and start again in the morning.”

  That was a bag of excuses, and they both knew it. Vuchak frowned. He had already reconciled himself to the futility of going back down for Weisei, just as he had for Ylem’s missing mystery-person: they had no supplies to reach a stranded man, no clear idea of where to look – and with Hakai in mind, no time to waste. The best thing to do now was to hurry through the last hours to Atali’Krah, and mount a proper search from there.

  Vuchak did not trust Echep to care about any of that just then. “We can make a light for the half, we’ll stay warmer if we keep moving, and you can...”

  He stopped just short of a disastrous finish: you can rest when we get there.

  Yes, of course he would. When they got to the top, Echep would make his apologies, dictate his wishes, and then he would sit down and kill himself. Since the moment Vuchak had learned of Dulei’s death, he had known that Echep’s life was over too – and yet it was only here, looking down at his pleading, fearful face, that the reality finally sunk in: Vuchak was talking to a man who would be dead by this time tomorrow. He was witnessing his friend’s last hours of life.

  And Echep – strong, handsome Echep – clutched Vuchak’s leggings like a needy child and begged. “Please. Please, just let me have tonight.”

  Vuchak couldn’t look away. He didn’t need to. He already knew that Hakai was badly hurt, and the mountain was unstable, and Weisei was out there somewhere in the freezing dark, without food or water or even a flint for fire. The hours until morning were hours they didn’t have. Staying here was the worst possible thing they could do.

  From somewhere away and to the north, an owl hooted.

  They were horrible creatures, owls – rapacious, crow-eating, bone-vomiting opportunists. Their pellets brought bad luck for the one who found them, and their cries portended death. Echep cringed at the sound.

  And Vuchak – practical, duty-bound Vuchak – gathered his resolve, surrendered his judgment, and made the worst possible choice.

  “... all right. Come on, let’s find a place somewhere out of the wind.”

  After all, Hakai would live – or at least he wasn’t actively dying. The Mother of Mountains might chip a little, but she wouldn’t fall apart under their feet. And as for Weisei... well, this was Marhuk’s home, and he was Marhuk’s son. He would be fine.

  After all, Vuchak was betting his life on it.

  SO ELIM PICKED up Hawkeye and followed behind the two crow knights as they carried Do-Lay’s box between them, to a place where the rock stuck out enough to offer a break from the north wind. That was fine.

  Then they hunkered down and started on a light. That was fine, too. Better than fine: it was colder than the Sibyl’s tit out here, and darker than the very pit of her back-premises.

  But when the scraping of the flint finally threw a spark, and the spark caught the tinder, Elim realized with the first flare that that wasn’t a torch – it was a fire. A sit-down sing-a-long boil-your-supper fire.

  Elim could do with about three suppers just then.

  Bootjack motioned for him to put down Hawkeye, which Elim swallowed a grumble as he did – because honestly, just getting the poor bastard up and down was as tiring as all the toting in-between. Then he waited to see what would happen next.

  Maybe the stranger was waiting here, while Bootjack went out to look for Way-Say. Maybe they would make some fancy smoke-signal with a blanket, though God only knew what good that would do at this hour. Maybe someone would tell him what the dickens was going on.

  But no: Bootjack just waved for him to sit down, and then he and the stranger set to making camp: unpacking this, unwrapping that, making stilted conversation between them.

  Elim did not sit down. He stood there, making himself just as big and awkward as he could possibly be – and when Bootjack finally looked up, Elim had his Marín words ready. “¿Way-Say dóndeyestá?”

  Irritation flashed across Bootjack’s dark face, tainted with something that might have been guilt. “Abaho,” he replied – whatever that meant – with a downward motion of his upturned fist. “Abaho, y regresa.” Two fingers became walking legs, climbing up through the air, finished with a chin-jerk at the fire.

  All right. So Way-Say had gone down – fallen down, maybe – and was going to climb back up. His best buddy here sure didn’t seem too worried about that.

  Elim copied the chin-jerk, this time at Hawkeye. “Regresa Hawkeye,” he said, making the climbing-up motions head up toward the top of the mountain. “Pronto.”

  Bootjack scowled. “Luego.”

  Well, whatever that was, it was a hell of a long way from ‘yes’. “He’s sick,” Elim snapped, “and he’s getting worse. You understand? He might even be –”

  “So fix him!” the stranger barked.

  Elim just about flinched himself to death – and then barked right back. “HOW?”

  The stranger bounded up to his feet, and for one giddy second Elim wondered if he was about to eat a Sundowner’s fist. “You dog-woman child, idiot! You heal him! Or only you are for killing?”

  “Hsst – trankilo, echep,” Bootjack soothed, beckoning his friend back to a seat.

  The stranger reluctantly returned to his place by the fire, glowering at Elim all the while.

  Elim said nothing, his surprise at hearing Ardish out of the stranger’s mouth shredded to a meaty pulp as the words delivered their brutal, mangled payload.

  Or are you only made for killin
g?

  Elim stood there for a minute more, being roundly ignored by the two Sundowners. Then he gave up and went to go sit with the one who couldn’t refuse his company.

  “Hawkeye,” he said, drawing the translator’s head and shoulders up into his lap, “do you reckon we could have another chat?”

  There was no objection, of course – just closed eyes, slack mouth, and those insidious trembles, which Elim knew better than to hope was anything as natural as shivering.

  “You were saying a few days back, about how I was good with handling Ax – you know, right when he was starting to take that queer turn. And you might’ve suggested that keeping him going was me being sorcerous somehow. And I, uh, I know I took some exception to that, because I don’t... I didn’t want it to be that way. I wanted to make him right just with my own know-how.” Elim was grateful the firelight didn’t stretch far enough for him to have to keep looking at his results. “But if there’s something I could do to make you right, I wish you would tell me. Even if it might not work. Even if I’m not – even if it’s not what I’d call church-regular.”

  There was no answer from Hawkeye, of course. He was just a presence, as comforting as a warm cat in Elim’s lap – even if the warmth was a rising fever, and he didn’t so much purr as shake, and both of those things were a sharp reminder of just how much more help he needed than Elim had to give.

  Elim had something, though. He must have. The stranger had called him a dog woman’s child. That bastard Champagne had said he was the son of the ‘Dog Lady’. And the monster herself sure seemed to act like it.

  And somebody had taken away all his scrapes and cuts, that arrow-wound at his side, the ugly sunburn on his back. He’d woken up as clean as a licked calf – apart from being half a monster himself. Was that in him? Could he do it for someone else?

  ... and would he maybe already have an answer for that, if he’d just shut his trap and listened?

  Elim smoothed Hawkeye’s gray-threaded hair back from his face. He kissed his forehead. He said the night-prayer, keeping his voice low and soft, and if he’d had a candle, he would have made the sun-wheel over it before he snuffed it out.

  But none of those things were magical. They were just the things he knew how to do, because Lady Jane had done them for him. That other mother probably did things too – powerful, arcane things – but Elim couldn’t begin to guess what they were. They didn’t belong to him, and neither did she.

  He was still thinking about that when a pair of dirty, battered moccasin-boots came to visit.

  Elim looked up at Bootjack, the great avatar of austerity. His face was an unyielding mask, his bloodstained shirt and leggings and – well, and everything, really – still as hard and solid as ever. He bent and handed Elim a warm, bundled cloth... and whatever was inside smelled wonderful.

  Elim looked from his supper over to Hawkeye, and then back up at Bootjack. “I don’t know how,” he confessed. “No se.”

  Bootjack’s pigtail-framed expression softened just slightly; he cast a glance back over his shoulder at the stranger still sitting by the fire. “Soon,” he said. It sounded like a promise. Then he went away again.

  Inside the little pocket were half a dozen grease-glistening hot balls of... well, of something edible, anyway. They looked like fruitcakes and smelled like meatloaf, but they were studded through with something else, nuts or tiny dried things, like good raisins or bad mushrooms. Elim was well ready to find out.

  But he hesitated even in spite of the raging, ravenous emptiness he’d been beating back for two days now. This wasn’t like the rabbit he’d shot or the steak he’d purloined from earlier – not a simple thing taken straight from hand to mouth. This was made food. And that was dangerous.

  He looked back over his shoulder, tempted to call out and ask about his oats, his peas, that half-round of cheese – the good, safe food he’d brought with him.

  But on recollection, he’d eaten the last of the peas and cheese already, polished off the oats with Ax... and if the Sundowners were feeding them from their own stores, it was almost certainly because there was none of his own food left to give him.

  So Elim was left with a hot pile of temptation in his lap. No, this new food probably wouldn’t poison him, but that didn’t mean it was safe. All its parts had grown here, died here, been transformed and finished here according to some unwritten recipe passed down through hundreds or thousands of indigenous hands. It had been steeped in place and ripened in time. It belonged here, to this old, wild world. What would it do to a visitor, a foreigner who put it inside himself? Would it change him – or worse yet, anchor him?

  Elim looked down at Hawkeye and back at the little bag of gleaming heathen meatballs. If it did change him, maybe that would come in useful. And if it anchored him... well, it wasn’t like he’d ever had much chance of leaving here anyhow.

  Elim closed his eyes, listening to the soft hooting of a nearby owl, wishing with all his heart for the taste of Lady Jane’s honey-butter biscuits. Then he dug in.

  KEEP ME ALIVE. That was what she’d said. That’s your job now.

  It had seemed simple enough at the time: all Sil had to do was show her the trail he’d found, and they’d be well on their way.

  And he had, and they were... and yet he was beginning to despair of keeping his promise. Día had been sick twice already, and had taken to stumbling like a Sunday drunk – and slurring like one too.

  “... an’ sho Harding advised against the c-consumption of copper-cooked fat, which lied leddle – which led Lyle to ban the use of boiling pans for his expedition, which meant that hish men ate their vegetables fresh, rather than reduced, preversing their health.”

  Sil had no idea what she was going on about. He didn’t care. His good arm held the smoldering nub that could only charitably still be considered a torch; his bad one was a leash for Día, pulling her along behind him with barely-restrained impatience. She might move faster if she saved her breath for the climb, but he needed her to keep talking – and could just about convince himself that that was for her own benefit.

  “... inspired De Zavala’s experiments,” she gasped. “By reppecating Lyle’s results, he p-proved the antic... antiscorbutic propeties of cabbages. He conquered scurvy, shaving countless lives and, and, and permently reducing the balance of human misery. Do you see what I mean?”

  He didn’t, no. He saw about six inches’ worth of road in front of his feet, and then a whole god-damned sea of darkness. He squeezed her hand.

  Día paused to take the next big step up, swaying in place for a long, agonizing moment. It was all Sil could do not to yank her bodily forward. Come on, hurry up – you don’t have much time.

  Then she swallowed hard, shivered harder, and continued on. “S-so, so, I’m saying... what I’m saying... invidually, we can relieve shimple suffering – starvation, poberdy, neglect. But collectily, we can make unvoidable suffering avoidable – we can change the nature of suffering itshelf. Izntit beautiful? Izntit miraculous?”

  No. Beautiful would be the sight of dry forage, some fresh kindling he could use to keep that fire alive. Miraculous would be finding the a’Krah before Día collapsed in a heap. Sil squeezed her hand again, urging her to go on, irrationally convinced that as long as he could prompt her mouth to keep working, the rest of her would follow suit.

  “... and that’s why I do it. Books and, and spearments and all. I want to be part of that. I want to belong to that. I want...”

  With a cry of dismay, Día lurched forward. Sil instinctively held the torch away as she fell, before realizing that she wasn’t falling at all – she was grabbing for it.

  The branch had burned all the way down to his fingers, crisping their edges to a black char. But Sil was apparently too wet to catch – and with nothing else to sustain itself, the fire dwindled down to a smoking cinder, and died.

  “No!” Día cried, wrenching herself from his grip, pulling the dead nub from his hand. Sil was happy enough to
let her have the useless thing – but when she dropped it and stepped on it, he had to intervene.

  No, come on, he thought, grabbing her hand again for an insistent pull. Let it go. Keep moving. You don’t have the heat to spare.

  After all, Sil was a Northman. For him, the cold was a distant suspicion – something that might be happening to someone else. But he could feel the trembling of Día’s hand, all but hear the chattering of her teeth, and needed no thermometer to tell him what was going to happen to a barefoot Afriti girl who was bleeding heat with every step. There was nothing else he could do for that: he’d already given her his jacket, but couldn’t manage to wrestle his boots off his grotesquely swollen feet. Sil pulled her again, frantic to get her moving.

  “No,” she repeated, stubbornly rooted in place. “No, I can’t – I can’t anymore.” And she dropped like a gut-shot deer.

  She hadn’t passed out, though. She was only sitting – sprawling, rather. “I need... tell them I need a treven – a trephination. One to t-two inches for a closed head wound. No sssedative. And if they can’t, tell my papáthat, that I...”

  Oh no. He wasn’t about to let her start dictating a will. Sil jerked harder, crushing her hand until his grip turned wet with his own foul juices. She cried out, but made no move to rise. “Le’mi ’lone!”

  Move. Move. Move, you ashy slag. You snotty god-bothering twat – get up! He shouted at her in his own head, called her every nasty name he could conjure – but one pop from his shoulder warned him that he was going to come apart like a picked-over chicken carcass before she so much as budged.

  Well, fine – but if she thought he was going to stand here and let her die on his conscience, she was dumber than any concussion. Sil let go of her hand and grabbed at her head, fully intending to haul her to her feet by whatever remaining tufts of hair he could catch...

  ... and was answered with an ecstatic gasp. “Oh!” Día cried, eagerly seizing his hand and guiding it over her scalp, to the back of her head. There was a nasty cut back there, frosted with dried blood. “Yes, there – just there – oh, you’re so cold… please, please, just hold it there...”