The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [180]
It had been the smell, the elusive, alluring smell of her. Dropping his stick beside the oily bricks, the silent one licked up the blue petals beside the canal and came back with them clinging to his whiskers, brilliant against the dirty fur.
They were confused, and in the globes where the parasites swam, they stirred and coiled and the salty fluid around them tasted of steel and confusion. One became so overloaded by conflicting signals that the dog body flopped to the ground and convulsed in the dust, spasming back and forth while the others whined sympathetically. Finally the fit passed and the salp spun in its chamber, bruised but relieved to find the membrane surrounding it intact.
They pushed forward, following Hrangit as he shed cogs and gears in his frenzy to tug the madwoman away toward a broader, better-lit avenue, where the crowds resumed. The salps curled close to the shaggy necks ― as long as the dogs did not move too purposely, there was a good chance they would not be noticed, and any pursuit would be slow and two-footed.
All he had wanted was to visit Yeshe, to go into the courtyard that always seemed quieter than it should be, and to sit in the shadow of the god, half spider, half elephant, half something else. The statue had been carved decades ago, maybe as long as a century. His father claimed to have figured out whether or not he wanted to marry (the answer was no) while sitting there, and his great-uncle claimed that while he was sitting there, the god had spoken to him ― "Quite a long conversation, and so pleasant spoken, you would have thought him an old friend." The old man had been given to speaking to the god in his later years, and Hrangit remembered being lectured, the rheumy eyes fixed on a point just beyond his shoulder with a terrifying fixity that had given him the constant urge to spin and confront whatever ectoplasmic wonder the senior was witnessing. But the few glances he had stolen had revealed only air transfixed by the pinpoint glare, and in time he had come to think of the habit with false nostalgic fondness, forgetting the stomach-twitching anxiety the old man's stare had always induced in him.
It had always seemed conceivable to him that the god might choose to talk to him in turn, and that he would be a far better conversationalist than any other member of his family. Indeed, he had saved away two or three very funny but tasteful jokes and several anecdotes of the sort he thought that a female god might enjoy, steering away from the topics of politics and the divinity of rulers and toward the absurdity of toads and clouds. Every time he had sat beside Yeshe, he had felt the silence seep down into his very bones and then assume a waiting patience, as though this, this might be the day in which the god would at long last open her eyes and greet Hrangit in tones mild but familiar.
With a sigh, he let go of this pleasant dream and let his mental vision of the god sink back into silence as he and the madwoman emerged into the louder drub and hum of the crowded street. Street children, dusty hair and big eyes, were grouped around a dhosa cart, begging for scraps from the vendor, who did his best to ignore them while fulfilling the orders of the paying members of the crowd. From far away the crackle and pop of a string of firecrackers overcame the oil sizzle and clink of coins, even though the sun had yet to set, and the pleasant, savory wind became tainted with sulfur and gunpowder.
The crowds were frenzied, an eddy from one place to another, a factory shift changing perhaps or a performance of some sort letting out, maybe a gathering going somewhere, where, he couldn't tell, but he kept his hold on the madwoman's sleeve as the crowd pulled him along, washed him through the street like a paper boat on a stream. He thought he heard her saying? singing? something, but when he shouted and gestured incomprehension with his free hand, she gave him a sweet, bewildered smile. He noticed her eyes were as blue