Parasite Soul (8 page)

The blonde ascended three creaking wooden steps and disappeared
through the front door of the cabin. Simon glanced around for any other
signs of activity. The homestead wasn’t large, crowded as it was by the
forest, with a small patch of garden and an old shed to house firewood and
tools. Outside the shed was a large stump, stained and pitted with axe
blows. A few feathers lay scattered around, hinting at a henhouse hidden
behind the cabin. Laundry hung to dry on a line stretching from the porch
to a nearby oak tree suggested a household mainly of women, but with at least
one man.

“This is good,” whispered Niu. “We will be able to find
clothes, food, and maybe arm ourselves without even going into the town.”

“I don’t like stealing,” Simon hedged. He’d been able to
justify the concept earlier, back at the lake, before he’d seen who he was
stealing from. Here, however, was a peasant family, living simply, not
unlike his own. The notion of robbing them seemed little better than
robbing one of his own neighbors in Brand.

“It is simply survival.” Niu cast him a glance which spoke louder
than words:
am I going to have trouble with you every step of the way?

“Fine,” Simon agreed at last. “But we take no more than we need.”

“Of course.” Niu started forward. Simon caught her arm.
Her jaw tightened as she turned to glare at him. “What?”

“There’s a chance they might just help us if we ask,” he told
her. “Country folk… we often do.”

“I have told you - I trust country folk as far as I trust city
folk. There is also a chance that they will turn us over to the King’s
soldiers, particularly if coin is involved.” She shook herself free from
his grip. “If you will not help me with this, wait here. I am
growing accustomed to your inaction.”

“I’ll help you,” Simon mumbled.

One step behind Niu, Simon approached the cabin cautiously.
Upon abandoning the cover of the forest, the handmaiden walked swiftly and with
confidence. Pausing only to snatch up an abandoned trowel from the
scattering of tools at the edge of the garden, she approached the cabin wall
and listened carefully at an open window. Judging the room unoccupied,
she stood on tiptoes to peer inside. Simon found himself holding his
breath; he didn’t feel at all good about any of this.

Beckoning to Simon, Niu indicated that she wanted a boost inside, or
at least that was how he translated her convoluted gestures. His hands
provided a springboard; with his assistance, she was easily able to heave
herself up and through the window. While her performance in Vingate -
scaling the inn as she had – strongly suggested that Simon’s assistance was
unessential, he was happy to feel useful for a change. The handmaiden was
extraordinarily light.

Simon listened breathlessly as Niu prowled inside. Was he
expected to follow her? He thought not, but he couldn’t be sure, so he
waited for her cue. When she reappeared at the window, she handed him a
pair of sheepskin boots, designed for a larger man than Simon, but a definite
improvement over bare feet.

“Wait,” she whispered as he pulled the boots on over protesting
blisters. She looked uncharacteristically apprehensive. “Do not
come in. I will return shortly. Keep watch.”

Simon smiled tightly in return, hoping to communicate both
amenability and concern. He would have preferred to be inside, with
her. Here, pressed against the cabin wall, he felt exposed and
vulnerable. The road, which ran past the property, was quiet; he would
hear a cart or a patrol in time to relocate himself, but he wasn’t so sure he
would detect foot traffic before it was too late. If the girl came back
out and he was forced to move, where would he go? Edge around the cabin,
where every corner was a blind spot and he might run into someone else?
How large was this family? How many people might he have to avoid? What
disposition might they have, faced with an intruder of uncertain intention?

As hurting anyone was entirely unthinkable, Simon made up his mind
to throw himself upon the mercy of anyone who discovered him. He had more
faith in his fellow country folk than Niu, who was, after all, a city girl and
a foreigner to boot. Had he and his father not given shelter to strangers
of dubious character in the past? They’d never asked questions and none
of their transient guests had caused them trouble. Hospitality was simply part
of the rural code.

Listening hard, Simon tried to watch the road, forest, yard and
window simultaneously. He felt like his head might take flight, or at
least sprout a third eye. Sounds drifted from within the cabin, but Niu
wasn’t responsible for any of them that he could tell. He heard soft
singing – a young woman, no doubt the blonde from earlier – and the clatter of
pots and pans.

The kind of wife
, Simon thought,
and
the kind of lifestyle that I might have had, if my head wasn’t always in the
clouds; if my mind ruled my mouth rather than vice-versa
. In that
moment, he found himself almost resenting Niu, and had to remind himself that
it wasn’t
her
fault that she and he were entangled in this ridiculous,
dire situation.

A muffled metallic clattering demanded his attention.
Straining to locate the source of the sound – which sounded uncomfortably like
the clanking of chains – he determined that it probably came from within the
cabin, but below ground. The dwelling had a cellar, then, but what was
being kept down there?

“Keep quiet!” someone shouted, another woman, whose voice was harsh
and cracking. Staccato thumping followed, as though of heels on hollow
floorboards. Simon frowned, licking his lips as he was sometimes wont to do
when he felt anxious. What were these people keeping in their
cellar? Some kind of animal? If so, why wasn’t it penned
outside? With a prickle of foreboding, he wished Niu would reemerge and
that the two of them were well on their way.

The next few minutes passed distressingly slowly. Simon became
aware of a muted moaning, low and desolate, which seemed to hang in the air
like a sorrowful fog. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at
attention; something uncanny, something
wrong
was at play here.

“Would! You! Bloody! Well! Keep!
Quiet!” the unidentified women yelled, each word punctuated with angry
drumming.

“Oh, calm down, mother,” came another voice from an adjoining room,
soft and soothing. “You know he just wants to be fed.”

Simon could bear the tension no longer. He peered in the
window.

“Niu!” he hissed. “Niu, where are you?”

He was looking into a cluttered den, where detritus had accumulated
over a span of what looked to be decades. He couldn’t get a feeling for
the identity of the occupant, whether man or woman, young or old. Dusty
boxes were piled on the chairs, the bed, and in every corner; many of them
overflowed with mismatched items of clothing, weapons, tools, toys and assorted
knickknacks. Sheets of cobwebs draped the walls like a depressing parody
of tapestries. A ratty old doll lay crumpled at the center of the room,
staring back at him with blank glass orbs. Simon had the eerie feeling
that he was looking at a graveyard. Worse, Niu was nowhere in sight.

“I don’t care
what
he wants,” the older woman – ‘mother’ –
snapped. “I’m sick of that infernal noise! Keeping him was
foolish. Had I been a wiser woman…”

“Hush, mother,” the girl said sharply. Simon sucked in his
breath. Had she heard him calling for Niu? Had she detected Niu
herself? He spun away from the window and flattened himself against the
cabin wall, breathing hard.

“Don’t you tell me to hush, girl! And don’t you be calling me
mother! You’re the ungrateful baggage I inherited when I married your
father…”

“Oh?” the girl’s voice rose sharply, and if she had suspected
intruders, the older woman had refocused her attention. “
I’m
the
baggage, am I? I
cook
for you, I
care
for you - I clean
your damned
chamber pot!
– and… and, as for father, I do
everything
for him! When was the last time
you
lifted a finger to…”

Mother’s quavering voice rose an octave as she cut across the girl.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that! I won’t have it! Your
father…”

“Ha! Father wouldn’t take your part in this if Vanyon himself
demanded it!”

“Is that so? Is that so, you little witch? Is that what
you think? Conveniently hard to ask him, though, isn’t it, you sorry
little harlot?”

“
Don’t you call me a harlot, you filthy old hag
– what’s
that?” A different kind of tension entered the girl’s voice. “Did
you hear that?”

“All I hear is the disrespect of my useless…”

“
Shut up
!” the girl roared, and the woman fell obligingly
silent. “There’s someone in the house!”

Niu
, Simon thought desperately
, get
out of there.
For all his defense of country folk, something uncanny
was going on in that cabin, and he wouldn’t even have minded enduring the handmaiden’s
inevitable dry
I-told-you-so
if they could just
leav
e.

“Where are you?” the girl hissed. Simon could barely make out
the words, but there was no mistaking her tone: predatory, excited.
Little as he wanted to set foot in that ill-omened cabin, it was time to save
Niu for a change. He dithered for a moment, dancing on the spot, then
dashed up the porch stairs before he could lose his nerve, making as much of a
racket as he could. Not only would the groaning stairs attract the occupants’
attention away from Niu, the noise committed him to the enterprise, which
strengthened his resolve to see the matter through.

Ramming the door with his shoulder, only to find it both unlocked
and hanging open, Simon flew into the cabin and collided with an interior
wall. Grateful that no one had witnessed his inglorious entrance, he
stared left and right. He found himself in an untidy little antechamber,
dominated by a looming wardrobe and overseen by an enormous stag’s head mounted
on the wall. Multiple pairs of shoes and boots lay where they’d been
kicked. A woman’s jacket lay crumpled in one corner where it had fallen
from its peg. Disconcertingly, several unpleasant-looking stains reddened
the bare floorboards.

Chickens
, he told himself frantically.
Might
have been chickens
.

He dashed to the right, in the direction of an escalating
commotion. The older woman was shrieking like a harpy, and the girl was
yelling at someone, probably Niu. Something brittle impacted the wall;
crockery, Simon guessed. He was right, and in time to watch white shards
skittering across the floor of the common room he found himself in.

He had no time to examine the room in detail. He had the
impression of a cozy little den of a type which might, under different
circumstances, have made him homesick. An empty hearth which surely
crackled merrily on cold winter nights; a thick rug upon which Simon could
easily imagine stretching out, his feet to the fire; a rocking chair of the
type in which his father liked to doze. This sitting room was, unlike
that of his own home, combined with a kitchen. Pots, pans, and utensils
crowded one end of a long counter. At the other end, dripping gently onto
the floor, was half a human corpse.

Simon stared at this horror for a moment. The half-corpse, a
green-eyed young man with a peach-fuzz beard, stared unseeingly back.
Wherever his lower torso had disappeared was not immediately apparent, although
a large iron pot containing what looked to be his entrails squatted
nearby. A profusion of blades - butcher’s knives and smaller knives used
for deboning – bristled from a block nearby the body. Simon, unable to
entirely control his gag reflex, at least managed to prevent his quaking knees
from giving out. He desired nothing more than to collapse and vomit
himself empty, but Niu needed him. He had to keep it together.

The handmaiden was trapped. The blonde girl had maneuvered her
into a corner and was slashing at her with a butcher’s knife. Niu’s dark
eyes betrayed no fear, and she ducked and dodged each swipe with uncanny
precision. Simon had never seen anything quite like it; she moved with a
dancer’s grace, but more rapidly, like a darting minnow. He got the
sinking feeling that she was toying with her opponent, that she could have
ended the fight any time she wished it. The tiny smile playing about her
lips seemed to support that theory.

The older woman, gaunt and skeletal, appeared to be confined to the
rocking chair. Hurling epithets at Niu, she flung anything within reach
in the handmaiden’s general direction – her plate, her cup, a poker. Her
aim was terrible enough that Niu didn’t pay these missiles much heed, but
despite her ineffectiveness, Simon found her loathsome. Her mad, sunken
eyes hovered above an incongruously girlish, snub nose, while her lips were
fixed into a cruel twist. Fleshless arms made puppets of her spidery
hands, which scurried about searching for something to throw. A dirty
threadbare blanket covered her useless legs. She didn’t notice Simon’s
entrance, so he took the opportunity to run up behind her and violently spill
her out of her chair.