Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [106]
Cass Mulravey shrugged and reached for her ragazzo. The child climbed onto her shoulders and grasped her mother’s knotted hair. ‘Hurry, mama,’ he cried in a soft voice.
The ragazzo felt it too; the thickening of air and the smell of. . . lig.
Trin began walking, tracking Juno, who’d set off at a run, and the group followed him. As they stepped off the carpet of creeper onto the cracked earth, something landed near their feet. One of the women screamed in fright, setting off reactions in the others.
‘Settle,’ yelled Mulravey. ‘It’s just a lig.’
‘B-but it’s h-huge,’ called out Josephia. She stood near Tina Galiotto, who lent her shoulder to Jilda Pellegrini.
The lig’s body was the size of Trin’s forearm, its wings like stiff, transparent curtains. Tivi Scali kicked at it, and it lifted lazily to settle again not far away.
More came then, landing on the edge where the sand-creeper met the cracked, heavier clay.
‘They’re feeding on the flowers,’ said Mulravey loudly. ‘Nothing to fret about.’
It seemed that way, as if they were dipping deep into the white star blossoms that opened only at night.
Trin glanced back over to the boulders. More ligs had alighted near the base of the rocks and were crawling into the cracks that they had just vacated. Why so many of them? Why so large?
They moved forward again, but it was only a few steps before one of the Carabinere gave a hoarse shout. ‘Principe! Madre di Crux!’
Everyone stopped again.
‘Principe!’
The second shout came from Juno Genarro. He waved in the moonlight to Trin, indicating that he’d found a way up the mountain through the tangle of brush.
Trin waved back to him, then turned to the group. ‘Cue?’
They had spread out - instinctively, perhaps - around a Carabinere, who was on his knees. Before him was a hole. A clod of dirt lay alongside, the hole as though a piece of earth had simply flipped open.
Trin moved closer.
It has. One of the cracked surface segments had been knocked from its place by pressure from below. Something dark and thick and moist snaked out from the hole and licked at the man’s worn boot.
He scrambled backwards, out of reach.
‘A tentacle,’ said Joe Scali. ‘Saqr!’
Trin heard the terror in his voice. Joe knew what the Saqr could do - what they’d done to his sweetheart, Rantha, and all the others in Malocchi’s enclave. Herded them like pitiful animals and drained the fluid from their bodies. Thrown them atop each other in a used pile. Trin would never erase the memory of young Nathaniel clutching Rantha’s body.
‘It’s the Saqr. The Saqr are here!’ someone else screamed.
‘No!’ said Trin quickly, cutting off the panic. He pushed past Cass Mulravey and her Thomaas, and knelt down to observe the flicking flesh. ‘See how it is thicker, closer down to the hole, and the way it is retracting. I think it is more like a...tongue.’
‘But what creature has a tongue like that?’ Joe asked the question that they all wished answered.
‘Trinder!’ said Djeserit. She placed a hand on his shoulder and tugged. He felt gratified at her anxious tone.
‘There’s another one, Principe,’ said Tivi Scali. ‘Over there.’ He pointed towards the point where the sand-creeper met the clay
Everyone began to shift, lifting their feet, searching in the moonlit dark for anything unusual. Little eruptions began occurring all around them; more clods of earth overturned.
‘We should not wait to find out,’ said Trin, suddenly.
But his decision came too late.
A creature the size of a large dog erupted from the first hole, collapsing a swath of earth around it. It shook off the dirt with heavy, rolling movements and snapped powerful jaws at the kneeling Carabinere.
The man stumbled to his feet and kicked it, but it lunged at his leg, snagging his ankle. He punched its head and it let go, momentarily stunned. Dark, multi-faceted eyes reflected dully in the moonlight. It seemed to be looking at the ligs feeding from