The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [93]
The monster again lifted her head clear of the water, this time long enough to snort with derision. “Who said anything about a baby?”
“But I gave you a dream. You’re supposed to give birth.”
“Not always babies. And here, in this place . . .” The fecund shuddered. Her eyes, just inches from Octavia’s own, were mostly white. In them, pinpricks of light danced. Nostrils blew a rancid froth. “The water is good for phlegmatic fluids, like air for blood, and fire for black biles. I need this water.” The head went under, came up again. “I need to be here.”
Octavia looked up and out over the city. The red area glowed angrily against the clouds. Wind carried renewed gusts of smoke; out there, it seemed—in the market place, perhaps?—burned a large fire, getting larger. “Can I help, fecund? Can I help you? Please.”
The fecund stopped swimming. Slowly, she drifted with the current, her great ribs like bellows against Octavia’s thighs. Another contraction wracked her body and, for a second, it seemed as if there were worms streaming from the monster’s skin; these worms moved against Octavia’s own flesh before vanishing from under her palms and down into the sludge.
On the shore appeared several men, whose torches did very little against the gloom. There were shouts, and it seemed there was a scuffle.
Octavia and the fecund watched silently.
Hornblower was tied to a dead man’s raft, plunging over the edge of the branch. Except that he was already under the clouds, lost in this place. Faces loomed from the darkness. The little piece of Anu he had swallowed had taken over his body from the inside, getting rid of everything that had once made him padre hornblower. He thought again and again about his breezy home, but in quick, forbidden images, which he conjured and then swiftly tried to suppress, afraid these memories might be discovered by Anu and taken from him. If he ever found a way to return, would he be able to look at the settlement the same way? Would he be able to look at anything the same way?
Though Anu had not spoken in a while, nor urged him forward, hornblower forced his legs to keep moving, to avoid punishments, to please the power, but he felt so heavy and clumsy on this unforgiving ground. Vistas about him were too dark, too cluttered, too dense. The air continued to press down upon him, filling his lungs as if he were drowning. And the heat was unbearable! Without a horizon, abrupt shapes of the huge huts and the dim branches that ran between them spread out in all directions, endless, everywhere he turned. He craved sky and stars, and to watch the placid face of the moon as it rose above true branches. He had to feel wind against his skin. . . .
So remotely, Anu’s voice whispered in the back of his mind. Had the power forgotten about him? Was Anu preoccupied, talking to someone else?
Hornblower tried to look at everything he could, in all directions, to appease, but the input and effort was overwhelming. He saw animals here like none he had ever imagined; few of these beasts saw him, too, and approached to sniff at his cuffs. Others walked side by side with the grey people and paid him no heed. Several times, lithe blue creatures, running on two legs, tugged at the hem of his robe, laughing shrilly at his frustrated attempts to scare them off before vanishing again. One stuck its tongue out. Another nipped his calf and drew forth his sap.
People scowled all around.
What if the power was bluffing, and he was out of Anu’s range? Hornblower rubbed his fingers against the palms of his hands, nervously considering this idea. Perhaps he would feel agony only for the briefest instant, if he fled, then he would be free—
Yet could he get the piece of Anu out his body, or these experiences out of his mind?
No pain, at these thoughts.
Anu’s