Chapter One
I was meant to be a thrall. Were I blessed with a few coinflips less fortune, that was the fate inscribed for me. But I still wonder at the details. What thralldom would have been mine to suffer? Isolation in the dank depths of some basement room still mutating into a hive cell? Or a continuance of my daily life, save for the new punctuation of drugged stupors and weekly blood donations?
Luridly I remembered the creature that easily could have been my new master — dark pseudoceramic and too many limbs crouching above my paralyzed form. So easily mistaken for a night terror: but I knew I was awake. A beak-like mouth split down the middle to reveal an oral panoply: needle-tongues and scapel-teeth to tear me surgically open. Dripping tubes piercing, conveying venom… and languidly I felt that bare flesh of mine numbing in its passage.
My alertness was unplanned, that I could surmise — and a dire mistake at that. Tipped off by some change in heartrate or breathing, every mouthpart went still, and in the span of a second the limbed form above me was whisked away on some unseen wire. I still felt the numbing paralysis soaking into my flesh. Weariness and siren-sleep clawed at my awareness, but oh how I fought.
(Terror, terror, terror. This could have been a nightmare. This could have been a memory. For me, quite unlike other prey. That was the unplanned element.)
Truly, my only tool of resistance was a pounding heart and eyes in panicked sweeps about my room. But this was enough to sear the events of the night into my memory — another, feebler mind may have forgotten it all come morning, or let it be diluted by dreams until the truth was irrecoverable.
But I awoke and at once marshaled a record into the tearing tissue paper of my dresser, soon transcribed to a more durable diary. I told no one else of it — would I be called mad? — but I chewed my nails in dim apprehension of the implications.
(So fine was the mandible-surgery that even now the scars were faint ghosts. What evidence was blood alone, so easily flaking away?)
My sleep only deteriorated after that. This was not only a matter of dreading some repeat occurance of that betentacled encounter — or perhaps it partly was. My dreams had distorted, delirious with novel and alien geometries. Quite suspect, of course, but I had dithered toward conclusion; maybe this was just stress. What evidence remained?
Then I awoke with fresh droplets of blood on my sheets. Upon closer inspection, I found new bumps on my skin. (Their arrangement perfectly mirrored!) They did not pain me, nor did they feel remotely out of the ordinary: only because they did not feel. I pressed my fingers; the flesh was numb. And under the pressure I felt a fluttering.
Something within me wriggle-twitched.
I screamed until my father dragged me to a doctor. A scalpel, at my insistence, cut me open. We found blood-fattened worms, detected a virus in my fever-hot blood, and a bitter toxin staining my mucus. A growing infestation: my paranoia was praised. Few could catch such parasites this early into their life-cycle. The doctor smiled and said I’d saved myself a lot of pain.
I smile to remember this — oohehehe, even now I laugh!
A brief questionaire: had I been troubled by mosquitoes? Had I dabbled in wastewater? Had I noticed round ovoids in my food? But only the last sparked that great tremor of truth. Does this look familiar? I was asked as the doctor gestured to a vague portrait — a beaked mouth crowned with too many eyes, all above too many limb and a body of such segments!
The doctor conversed with my father afterward — I overheard words like entiote and chrylurk and finally the diagnosis: ovirexia.
That day a new moon had hung somewhere above: and the doctor said one cup every four day for the rest of the month. Signed a page and wax-stamped it as a curled-up scroll.
With this, I had authorization for a temple visit, for request of ingredients, for a glass of ambrosia, frothing thick and sweet with honey as spat by the gods’ own bees. The worms breeding within me could not stand the light of such holiness and would perish in my thus-purified body.
Each visit, we left those fine eaves of riverstone in possession of tiny pounches of leaves and glassy droplets of honey. I would always reread the instructions as we sat together in a carriage pulled by a those vast, trunked servants of the city. Father’s arm tightened around me as men and mice crowded around.
Water, never boiled but brought to a scalding temperature. A rhythm of stirring, and a slight addition of salt with the honey. For best result, prepare in the warm rays of the noon sun.
The concoction was searing like a god’s ire; my brain burned with liquid light. My glare was famous, but on the days I drank my prescription, it was the sun’s.
And maybe this story would have ended right there — a disgusting health scare meeting a bright and tidy end — if I had a few coinflips more fortune. I had screamed until my father brought me a doctor; I screamed until we dutifully attended temple service and to a frowning hierophant filed our requests.
But nothing in the world is free, and a girl’s screams are not a well-traded tender. Father could afford an academy visit, he could afford a few cups of ambrosia-leaves. But temples could not part easily with this — not when the every particle is the covet of alchemists.
When a moon turned waxing gibbous was setting, my father gave a pained frown, hugged me, and with a soothing voice: “You feel better now, don’t you? Bet that full course is meant for those wretches stuffed full of impurities for vermin to fatten up on. That’s most of who sees the doctors for these things. We caught it early, and now you’re in the clear. C’mon, girl, I’ve seen how those cups knock you out. You’ll be glad to be rid of them too!”
And I was. The gladness lasted one happy month.
My paranoia had been praised: so I remained on watch for more bumps, even as my father declared the crisis behind us. My fingers traveled up and down my flesh, feeling for any suspect deformity, and I contorted in front of the mirror squinting for any issue.
Twice shy, I suppose. Oohehehe.
The dreams stayed with me. That much wasn’t a surprise. The perverse geometries fascinated me, and I idly sketched fractal webs and segmented planes, but could make no sense of them without the lubricant of oneiric hallucination. I drew and stared with curiosity and more than small trickle of lingering fear.
It meant whenever I dreamed again of distortion and ever-vanishing rays, even that paranoia could not motivate me to make note of it. I could imagine my father’s rebuttal — was I not doing this to myself with my singular focus on the matter?
Then one night I awoke with a nosebleed. With no witnesses, I idly licked the trickle — and it tasted bitter. The doctor had called it toxin, I recognized this smell. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Still my body suffered from a parasites’ invasion. Even if no worms still wriggled in some shallow lesion of my flesh, even if this was a lingering dose only at length expelled, then I had not yet fully rid myself of the verminous memory.
(I could never rid myself of the memory, not when those vanishing rays remained so poignant a mystery…!)
My father would keep a bowl of nuts on the table in the common room of our house. A treat for guests. I lounged upon the chairs one day and fed myself nuts by the handful while I furiously ruminated on what next to do. Handful after handful, as thoughts scribbled their way into my diary.
Almost in fugue, broken only when I reached for another and felt the clay of the bowl. Oh, had I eaten so much already? I had not emptied it all — were I to sweep and pinch for more, I could doubtless have filled my hands at least a few more times. But this was far too much already. Far more than a snack.
I made myself scarce after that — wished to not be present when my father saw the evidence nor answer any inquiry sooner than I had to. In the end, he did not send more than a knowing glance my way, which was scolding enough to me. As if to say: you know what you’ve done, girl. Vililianne, you scoundrel, you miscreant…! My only tangible reprimand was smaller portions for my dinner that night.
Which stung more, truly — for I was still hungry! In the coming days I’d find other snacks to tide me through my thinking sessions; I chewed through loaves of bread, wandered through the woods till I found berry-bushes.
But if anything, my stomach only gnawed more sharply with the drumbeat of time.
This new ravenous streak did not go unnoticed by my father. One day, I found the pantry locked, and that night, he sat me down to inflict stronger words. I flinched from meeting those furrowed eyes, catching instead the brown and crooked flesh of his broken nose, or the gap in his lip where a knife had dug. (What a chequered life he lived, before this city.)
“Are you trying to make a sow of yourself, girl?” he asked, in a tone that brooked no answer. “You are not some farm animal to be fattened up for the slaughter. We certainly can’t afford that. Understand me?”
I felt faint. Quivering. I began speaking: “I think—” and that was as far as I got before my tongue felt like lame muscle in a mouth so suddenly, uncomfortably dry. I knew what I meant to express: I think I’m sick once more. Could it be a tapeworm? Yet the thought seemed to slither far away. I felt faint, as if soon to swoon.
“Well, what is it?” he asked.
I saw the lips move, but he was inaudible over pounding pulse in my ears. Was this a headache? My mouth was still dry, maybe a draught of water could clear this all up. Or maybe something to eat, I was still quite hungry.
“I think… I n-need to lay down,” I told him. Somehow those words fell out clearly enough, where a confession of my illness caught in my throat.
“But do you understand me?” he asked.
To that I nodded with haste. He threw a hand out in a gesture of dismissal, then I was all but lunging and sprint to the comfort of my bed. Wrong, wrong, wrong! Why I do I feel so sharply ill? Why the selective mutism? The certainty that parasitic machinations must again be at play only heightened this psychological tumult.
I groaned my frustration, I traced my hands over my arms and abdomen in hunt for the tell-tale bumps that would flutter under pressure — but the worms had never been so obvious ever again. The passage of my hands grew more intense, I scratched, I drew blood, and my groan turned to a scream muffled by the fabric of my covers.
A finger traced wetly through upwelling blood my shivering skin. Some automatic mimicry of those webbed and segmented geometries that haunted my dreams. My hands did not even need to watch to copy that shape.
And how bizarre: now my breathing stilled and my skull-pulsing headache ebbed. Oh, but I felt better.
As I drifted off into the void of sleep, I yearned distortion and vanishment.
When I awoke, I sought instead to be free of this sty. By now the roaches were gone, at least, but black stains did linger on linen, and the cobwebs of those who had profited still hung about in so many rooms. We could afford to have a few freemice scurry in and clean up — barely. They visited few times a month and worked as if fighting the long defeat.
Father insisted I never ride the djramul-carriage alone — you won’t be alone for long, he joked — so I made a challenge of getting about of foot. I had free reign of the woods, I knew which deerpaths made for swift shortcuts.
(I knew when those screaming pests prowled, too. Only the smallest deer-things were fit for life this near to a city. When we’d newly arrived, Father had met one at night and thought it a raccoon!)
Woodland quickly gave way to houses packed somehow even tighter together — mostly owing to the mousehole alley-huts squeezed between the buildings sized for the upright.
I weaved among the flow of the crowd until I stood before a rickety door beside a sign proclaiming the general good. Crouching to fit in the door, I stepped in and breathed in deep. If I could smell perfume — I did — I knew I’d come at the right time.
My eyes and hands wandered the shelves. Tools and pottery, all familiar to me: I knew these shelves. So I noticed whenever a new offering found its way here. I felt it before I saw it, and my eyes widened as soon as they lighted upon it: a fountain-tipped pen. Shiny! Past the soft rubber grip, the body was crafted of metal, not gold but almost had the shimmer.
I brought this offering to the altar of coins, and there I whined.
“Shut up already,,” a voice at the counter hissed at me. “You’re more woman than girl now — I have no clue at all how all this crying ever gets your way.” Her frown showed off two of her teeth. Eyes stared into me, black with no white visible. Round ears twitched with her temper — an affect.
My shoulders slumped, and I let my face fall like a star. I looked up, past the apron and with wavering eyes searched the painted face. “Please?” I asked.
Her smoothly combed hair had a flower tucked in: pink was bright against the black braids. The rest of her fur was black — not rare, but few had quite the sheen she did, and a few splotches of almost-orange, cropped of here and there. Two lay on either cheek, like a natural blush.
How could you not trust a face like that? How could you not expect a little mercy?
The freemouse sighed and made it sound like a hiss. “Be serious, Vil. Has that act ever worked on me?”
I blinked. “Oohehehe,” I laughed. Pain and pleading was wiped away, my face now neutral save for a small smile. “Maybe I had to prove you’re still heartless. So cruel to me!”
“Better cruel than lazy.” Only one arm was crossed on her flat chest, the other had a rag: she was rooting out encroaching dust. “I’m working, in case you still haven’t pieced together what it is I do here.”
The freemouse looked down upon me, because she had a stool behind the counter. On foot, she’d rise just above my elbows.
“But of course,” I started. “Wasn’t that the point? I was hoping you could… work this into my possession.” My fingers idly played with the pen. No ink, so the tip simply scratched blankly at me.
She snatched the pen from me. “I’m not your father, Vililianne. I still think it’s crazy that man lets you crawl about doing nothing all day.” Black eyes were narrowed at me, and she snorted — her way of smuggling smiles out of her body. “Well, nothing except looking pretty.”
I parried with a smirk. “You’d be surprised how well it pays.”
My father had made a small fortune in those savage seas below the rim of the highlands. After climbing up to the great bosom of the empire, he had rationed that gold for years, hoping for a nobler calling. Not easy to find fancier employment when the only work you could claim was — technically — not piracy.
More importantly: it was legally not piracy, and father had been awarded citizenship in the empire for all his work. But in his travels he had made friends with several coinflips less fortune.
At this point, I came into the story: I’d been all but married off to a barbarian pirate. My suitor sent monthly payments kept me taken care of while affairs were put in order down at sea. As far as the empire was concerned, we were courting through our letters, all to build a pretense for our eventual and ceremonious union. Which, of course, would grant him all the rights of a citizen.
Father had commissioned flattering portraits of me, so that his buddy knew what he was buying — but I had never cared to ask for any reciprocation.
What could it possibly matter? Disappointment was the fate inscribed for me.
Words brought me out of reflection, soft and restrained like a knife touching on flesh.
“I saw through your last act, you know,” said the shopkeeper. “I can see through this one. Don’t act like you’re happy this way.”
“Why shouldn’t I be happy?” For my next act, I imitated her voice. “I can laze about doing nothing all day!”
Flick. She threw the pen at me, and her hands were sure. The round end bounced off my skull (ouch!) then it ricocheted back just so for her to catch it.
“Stupid.” Head shaking, making those black braids dance around her. “Just like your daddy.”
I was rubbing the pain in between my eyes — then I snapped my eyes up and grinned. Got you now. “Oohehehe, but if I were anything like my father, wouldn’t I be looking for work?”
“He isn’t looking for work,” she said. “Any noble looking for a bodyguard would hire him in a second.”
“He’s putting those violent ways behind him. Brings him no joy anymore.” I was imitating his solemn voice.
“Joy, happiness.” She snorted and spat. “No, just pride. Daddy thinks he’s owed a nice and high position in a senator’s retinue or the voice speaking for some merchant. He thinks that he’s won now, and that dirtying your hands is beneath winners. And you,” she jabbed the pen at me, prompting an exaggerated flinch, “are a natural in the ways of imitation. So you pick up the act and turn your nose up the same way. I bet he even calls you princess.”
I opened my mouth. Then I closed it. I squinted at the mouse. When I hoped my mouth again, I was determined to say something, and just gave a wordless growl. “Ugh!” I reached out for the pen, grabbed it but her grip was tighter. “Are you jealous, Ida?”
“Hardly. Just think, for once?”
“I think often!”
“Only about whatever nonsense you put in your diaries.” She snorted. “No, think about what I said. See, you only bother me this early in the morning if you really need out of that house. Is daddy making you pretty yourself up again?”
“No it’s—” The words caught in my throat again. “—sure, I guess. Fresh air, fresh words. Just wanted to chat, I guess.”
Clicked her tongue. “No, that’s not it. C’mon, what do you really want?”
I glanced down at the shimmering fountain pen.
“I’m not buying you the pen,” she said.
“Then…” Still I could not say it. “I’m hungry, I guess. Can I eat with you?”
Ida snorted. That meant yes.
“Next bell, out by the park?” I ventured.
She nodded, eyes glancing under the counter as she set the pen somewhere out of sight. “I’ll bring you the usual. Bread, fruit?”
“Double it if you can?” I winced. “I am pretty hungry.”
Another hiss, eyes narrowed like slits. “I’m not—”
“Hey,” I started. I took a deep breath. My throat seemed to tighten beyond the point of speaking whenever I wanted to tell someone my sickness was back, getting worse. But somehow, these next words came with none of the hesitation or resistance I’d have once choked on. “I heard you. I am listening. And I think… yeah. I need to do something. Earn something.”
This line of logic snared me like a web, inescapable once I had computed it. If I did something to earn a keep, I could buy more food. Every day, I swore, my stomach gnaws ever more fiercely. At this rate it’ll eat from within!
My hands clenched into fists. What did Ida see? A determined image, but if there was determination in me, I did not feel it.
Oohehehe, I laughed to myself.
Webs have such strange, segmenting geometries.
Chapter Two [WIP]
Gray noon. Whether the austere canvas of the sky or the warming waters of our halted river be its provenance, a faint fog had graced the distance. Hours of sunlight had waned but not banished it entirely.
I had gazed upward at that gray expanse and tried to discern even a single dimension, some curve or darkling of the clouds. Something to begin the process of pareidolia. But I was not immune to sound and fury, and the quiet heavens could not hold my attention.
Not when the djramuls were in the park sparring.
A stationary stampede served as a encouraging drumbeat: hooved feet were stomping the ground. Four thick legs, ears like fans, flexibly long trunks. Twelve were standing in a circle, wrinkled skins white or brown or red, but all as inflections of a gray median. The shortest were just taller than I, but the largest must’ve been three meters high.
If Mankind hath risen higher than other Races, proclaimed some emperor or other, it is because we have rode on the backs of Djramul!
Within the circle, two djramuls circled each other, their steps careful. This lasted until that the tallest — she had a pretty headdress — lifted her trunk and blared the starting signal.
One bull charged, while the other rushed to the side. After the dodge, another moment of circling, searching for an opening, then again the charger lunges. This time the other meets him, tusk against tusk.
“Sexy stuff, isn’t it?” Ida said. She clicked her tongue.
The freemouse was sitting beside me on a park bench. I shot a sidelong glance at her.
“Not my fancy,” I said. “Is this what you’re looking for?” I didn’t disguise the note of exasperation in my tone.
“Point here is proving who’s the big tough bull all the girls should be swooning over, isn’t it?” She cocked her head. “If you aren’t swooning I don’t think it’s working.”
“I’m not a cow,” I said. “Not my fancy.”
“Oh? Losing interest just because he’s not human?”
“It’s not like that. You make me sound uncultured. I mean nothing impolite.” I paused. “Wait, wouldn’t it be more scandalous if I were interested?”
Ida snorted. She did not answer.
We glanced back at the fight. The tusk-shoving match had ended seconds ago, turned to a brief chase, and this time when their tusks were locked together, it was at an angle. The redder, defensive djramul twisted as much as he pushed, and the other bull buckled one leg.
Even as things looked to be culminating, I lost interest and found my eyes drifting back to the black-furred mouse. She noticed.
“Would it excite you if it was two tall men wrestling for you?” The whiskers on one side twitched with her lips.
“Hardly.” I must have said it with too much force, because her eyes widened with a grin. Eyes glancing away, I searched for an excuse. “I’m taken, after all.”
“Yes, your rogue pirate captain who you’ve never even seen. You’d take that over anything — anyone you can actually touch?”
I waved dismissively with my hand. “It’s not about what I prefer, is it? I’m saving myself for him.”
“You think a ravaging pirate will be more impressed with innocence than skill?”
“Skill takes passion,” I muttered.
“Oh,” she said. Almost a squeak — something she tried never to do. “Oho. You’re saying none of it interests you. You’re above it all.”
I looked at Ida. I let my eyes cascade down her body. She dressed smartly, outfits more covering than most freemice I’d seen. Her little hands bunched up the extra cloth of her pants. Cute.
“It’s subtler than that,” I said. “Honestly, I’d rather discuss work than this… prurientness.”
Ida scooted closer. Adjected the flower tucked into her hair. Reached for my arm and held it in a hug while leaning her head against my side. Heat on my face.
“Oh girl… I could say things that would devastate you.”
“Then don’t?”
She squeezed my arm tighter. I could see a smirk flicker and fade. “Vili?”
Tone still soft. I didn’t like that. Sitting, her head didn’t reach my shoulders. Looking down her, I calculated.
Then I reached out and gave her head a single pat.
Hissing. Scratching. I hopped back, almost falling off the park pench, but mouse claws were clutching me, digging in through the sleeve of my shirt.
“Vililianne,” she spat. “You know—”
“That’s more like you, Ida,” I said. “Can we be serious now? You mentioned one of your friends had work for me.”
“I ought to refuse you for this.”
“You aren’t that petty.”
“Aren’t I cruel?” She crossed her arms.
I stared at her. We’d bickered enough times — this was unpleasant, sure, but Ida could stand it. She could stand me. What’s there to worry about? She tells me how to find work some other day?
The gnawing in my stomach answered me. Not a risk worth taking.
At length, I said, “I’m sorry.”
“Human,” she muttered. “Whatever.” She reached into her bag, found a roll of blank paper, and with some care tore a square with a mostly-straight edge. She had brought that shiny pen. It should have been mine!
She scratched some words, then showed me. Lines creeped across the page, adorned with leaves and thorns. “Can you read this?”
“Dear Arii:” I started. Her letter were minute, and the ink was thin as if from a feather-light touch. I hadn’t thought she’d be gentle. “I’m sending you my idiot friend Vilianne (don’t shorten- she hates nicknames). Why are you lying?” I’d stopped reading to stare at her.
A sound between a snort and a growl. But she was nodding. “So you can read.”
“So—”
I was interupted by trumpeting. A djramul call — it was the tall matriarch with the pretty headress. One of the bulls was on the ground, a wet red line along his jaw. In the end, the red defender had lost.
The blaring — she must have been calling the duel — had stopped the other bull mid-stomp.
At once the other djramuls began stomping their hooves. Even in synchronicity, it wasn’t so much that the ground shook around us, but the rumbling traveled and shook me in my bones. The vibrations disturbed Ida more — I saw a hand twitch toward my arm she’d held before she stopped herself.
Ida snatched the page from me, crumping the paper at the corner. When she tried to write more, the shaking was too much and she left a splotch of ink.
For a moment I sat blinking, then I recalled my train of thought. “So I can read? What did you think my diary was about?”
“Only ever saw scribbles and doodles from you. Maybe you were just drawing.” She hummed sharply. “Who would have thought a pirate’s daughter could read the vines?”
“Privateer. He was a acquitted,” I said. You have my name, girl. Better defend it. “And I’m the daughter of scribe, too. She had a library.”
And yet I can’t bring myself to step inside.
I can’t bring myself to think of her.
But of course, that many-limbed visitor had been such a reminder.
She hadd spent years free of the thought.
Year doing nothing.
“You look so pissed at me,” Ida said. “That makes us even.”
“Are we friends?” I asked her. “Is this friendship?”
“Finished my letter of recommendation, Vil. Read all this to Arii, she’s illiterate. That’s what you’re good for, actually. That mouse lucked into inheriting a library of her own, as it happens, but can’t make sense of it. Help her with that, she’ll pay you.”
She folded it into even thirds, then ninths. I stared for a moment, then took it.
I glanced back the circle of djramuls. The loser still lay on the ground. Will anyone help him up? I idly thought. Oh well. I wasn’t going to stick around to see.
Ida spoke as soon as I stood from the park bench. “Where are you going?”
I opened my mouth. I said nothing — not words catching in my throat this time; I simply didn’t have an answer.
Ida stared expectantly.
Finally, I said, “So, where is Arii? I… need directions.”