The Devourers (14 page)

“To me, to my kind. You are prey. Not something to fuck. Something to kill, and sustain us.”

“You are cannibals, then.”

“No. We do not eat our own kind. We eat you, little Cyrah. You keep forgetting—we are not human.”

We are the devouring, not the creative.

“One of the things Fen-eer told me was that your kind can change shapes. What shape can you take, other than this one?”

“We have our second selves, yes, that we may turn into, should the time be right. And those second selves may change in time, or use the arts to guise themselves in nature. We may change our first selves as well, though it is difficult and dangerous to molt so.”

“Can you”—I touched my mouth, stifling nausea—“turn to smoke and fit in a lamp, so I could carry you around like a trinket?” I tried to make myself smile at such a thought but couldn't.

If he found this funny, he gave no sign, either. “It is rumored that there were tribes, and still are in some parts of the world, who have many selves. That their souls are not merely bifurcated, but multifarious things that enable them to change shapes until each of them is legion in itself.”

“Show me, then. If all of this is truth and not madness, as I thought when Fen-eer told me of it, then all you need do to convince me is show me your second self.”

“And why would I care to convince you? My second self is sacred. If a human wishes to see it, that human must be willing to give himself to certain death, or to the joining of our tribes.”

“Then why are you even telling me all this? What pleasure does it give you to recount your own existence as if it were something new? You want to tell me. You want to show me what you are, like my suitors pride themselves on disrobing, as if it were some heroic thing that they were born with cocks between their legs, which they all thrust out in front of themselves like so many monkeys. So show me, right now, this sacred and holy second self. Reveal it. Take off this human you wear.”

I heard him breathing, panting like he had before. The strange sound of a man behaving like a beast.

“You've never actually talked to a…a human, about any of this, have you. Just like Fen-eer. You were blabbering. You can't help yourselves. Stop talking. Stop boasting about your superior race and show me.”

“Stop this now.”

“I said show me.”

“Fuck you.”

“Show me, Jevah-dan. I know you want to.”

I heard the rabbit carcass fall, heard him stand up. The bone trinkets clattered, the giggling of infant skeletons. My heart thundered so loud that the insects and their continuous song were finally silenced by the sound of my own blood flooding my head in fear.

I felt myself whipped off the ground like I weighed nothing, so hard I heard a crack in my neck as my head was jerked back. He had lunged at me so fast I barely had time to see him cover the few feet of darkness between us. My body felt like lifeless mud and straw. I wondered if he had broken my neck. My feet left the ground, my legs dangling. A livid rain wet my face, and I thought the clouds had broken but it was his spit. His face was inches from mine, hot stinking breath burning the tears from my eyes. I heard a hissing and crackling, like stones grinding together. His teeth.

I flexed my fingers, then my hands, and felt the fur of his pelts, grasped at them in tufts as if it might hurt him. I could still move. I held on to that thought. My neck wasn't broken. He wasn't actually holding me by the neck at all, but by the knot of his cloak (which I wore), right below my throat. I felt the cloth push tight against my neck and begin to choke me.

Even inches away from my eyes, I couldn't see his face in the dark. I was glad, because I could feel enough of the ugly, hideous mask of anger that I had brought forth to cover his boyish face. Somewhere, buried deep beneath panic and terror and pain, I felt pride. Just as I felt my throat close off completely because of the tightening knot of the cloak, I fell from his hands.

I coughed and gasped, the wind gone from my lungs, pain spiking my neck each time I tried to look up. I gave up and just lay there on the ground, curling myself into Gévaudan's cloak as he stalked away. The earth was cool and soothing against my cheek. I could smell it, too—an odor that I imagined was what clouds might smell like at that moment. I breathed it in, to drive the fleshy smell of Gévaudan's mouth from my head.

He was still panting, maybe ten paces away from me. He was staying away.

“You're a coward. Just like Fen-eer,” I murmured and tried to laugh. Instead, I coughed until my body shook. Even after it stopped, the shaking wouldn't go away, leaving me trembling on the ground, cloak drawn tight like a caul around me.

He said nothing. Once again I heard the ripping of meat and skin, the frenzied twig-cracks of bones being chewed. I doubted he was even eating that poor rabbit anymore. My teeth clicking together, shaky gouts of breath returning through the fevered shuddering, I marveled. Whatever he was, I had scared him. I had scared mighty Gévaudan, whether djinn of France or white cannibal with syphilitic madness. I had scared him. That made two of them now.

—

I know it sounds strange, but I think Gévaudan trusted me more after that incident, and I him. He had, after all, not killed me yet. When I goaded him into attacking, I thought I'd pushed too far, that he would at least hit me, or do something to leave me bleeding. But no, he didn't. Not a drop of my blood was shed. I didn't know why, but I knew that I wasn't merely prey to him. I was hurt, that night—I couldn't move my neck without pain after that for days, but I know I should have ended up dead or worse, facing off against such a man, or thing. I don't know what I believed at that point, or maybe I just don't remember. But we said no words that night after he hurled me to the ground. Aching, giddy from the rush of my bitter victory (if you will allow me to call it that), I just stayed curled up in his cloak, as safe and warm as I could get ten paces from that man or monster who had just nearly choked me to death, and decided not to.

When the sun showered its light over the Yamuna again, splintering it straight into my eyes, I woke to see Gévaudan bent low over the bitten bones of those two accursed rabbits, hands and mouth still encrusted in dry blood. The dawn light tickled his green eyes (I never could tell whether his or Fenrir's eyes were actually green—it was only at times that they appeared so) and turned them pale as his head snapped up at the sound of my stirring.

I hissed and put my head back on the ground, my neck seizing with pain as I looked up. I immediately regretted showing him this weakness.

He laughed, showing his teeth, gone brown with the uncleaned offal. “I have hurt you, little one. Haven't I? Have I crippled you?”

I clenched my jaw, closed my eyes, and sat upright, wincing against the pain.

“No, you have not crippled me, despite your best efforts.”

“You're a fool, girl. You've no idea,” he said, and turned serious, his soft white face slackening. I saw the glaring light of the sunrise illuminate the fringe of fur around his red mouth, his swollen lips. He looked at the bones.

“If these were the bones of a human child, they would tell me things, and I could wear them on me to sing in the breeze. Sing you awake, Cyrah. Rabbit bones tell me nothing. They break, too, most easily. But so would yours, I imagine.”

“What do you want from me, Jevah-dan? Just tell me now. Why did you bring me with you? I've had enough of these games.”

“You're the one playing games. You gambled with your life last night.”

“My life is my own to gamble. Tell me what your stake is here. Take off my blindfold. If we're to play a game, let us play it together at the very least.”

He ran a finger across his bulbous lower lip, smiling. “Play,” he repeated like a child.

I stood up. He cocked his head like a curious dog.

“All right, little girl,” he said, voice thick. “I brought you as bait. I think Fenrir will be more willing to see me, talk to me again, if I have you with me.” There had to be more to his plan than that, but this was a start.

“I thought as much. You intend to stand by and watch him rape me again? Then settle your quarrels over my corpse?”

“How dramatic. Did you fathom nothing of Fenrir's ways? He'd rather die than take you by force again.” He tossed a little bone idly over his shoulder.

“Is that so.”

“He thinks he loves you, for fuck's sake. He knows nothing of love. Neither do I, for that matter. It's quite clear to me that it is entirely a thing of weakness, and turns the brain to runny porridge.” Rubbing my neck with one hand, I approached him, though not with the caution one might expect. Nor was he startled or surprised by this lack of caution. He looked at me as if he expected this, as I closed the gap until I was standing over him and his mangled bones.

“You're human. You're a woman. What do you know of it?” he asked me.

“Of what?”

“Love.”

“I loved my mother. I don't think I've known any other love. I've only heard stories, and poems.”

He looked comically disappointed, squatting at my feet. I felt like slapping him, kicking him down, and grinding his face into the mud.

“You never loved any of your suitors?” he asked.

“Don't be stupid.”

“Never met any man, or woman, who lit a flame under your heart?”

“No.”

He nodded, mulling over this.

“You hurt me,” I said, as forcefully as I could be.

“Yes, as I said. So?”

“I can't travel with someone who's going to hurt me.”

He shrugged. “Then don't. Leave. What do I care?”

“You obviously do care. You just said so. You need me as bait.”

“I don't need you. It would make it easier for us to find Fenrir if you're with me. That is all.”

“Then you need me to make things easier.”

“So?”

“So I'm going to keep going with you. And you must promise not to hurt me again.”

“No. I owe you no promises, khrissal.”

I laughed, my gut coiling like a snake with fear. “Then show me your second self. Why not? You're going to hurt me anyway.”

“It is sacred.” He bared his teeth and gums like a dog enraged, spitting the words. I held my ground. I saw in his darting eyes something other than simple anger—a fear that betrayed his curiosity. “You don't have any idea what you're asking, you stupid little bitch. Do you want to die?”

“I'm not afraid of dying.”

“What you're saying is, you want me to kill you. I'm not your personal hound, here to do a job you're too cowardly to do yourself.”

I smiled, though I felt nothing if not a fiery emptiness within my chest. “What I want is to see that you're not a liar, nor Fenrir. Whether you kill me is your decision. But do not call me coward when you can't muster the courage to show me the greatness, the magic, that you say is within you and your friend, that so justifies your hatred for us mere humans.”

That curiosity, still kindling in his eyes. Whatever tribe they were from, he and Fenrir were not beings to ignore a challenge. His mouth twitched. “Not hatred. Hunger. We are the greater predator, just as you are a better predator than other animals on this earth. My second self yearns only to hunt you and your kind, and I yearn only to help it do so.”

“Until I see your second self, these words of yours will remain cowardly lies that veil an empty hatred.”

He shook his head, a half smile on his twitching lips, revealing bloody canines. “You really don't care. You want to meet something that could slaughter you in an instant, just to prove that I'm not lying?”

“I watched my mother die in my arms, shitting herself because of some sickness that fate slipped into her food or water—fate, too, can be a coward. Since she went, I've met no one who has left me wanting to stay in this world. No, I don't want to die. But I'm not afraid of it.”

Gévaudan stared at me in amazement and shook his head. “What sad, pathetic little lives you humans lead.”

“Then show me, Jevah-dan of France, what lives of worth and beauty
you
live, you and your precious sacred self.”

Gévaudan got up, towering over me, though not as much as Fenrir. He looked as if he were about to say something, not in anger, maybe even in admiration. I could be mistaken, though I don't think I am. But he closed his mouth, turned away to pick up his fardels and sling them over his shoulders. He shrugged, that half smile turning dark.

“If you can walk, and you seem still able to, follow. We've wasted enough time.”

And so I followed, again.

I
f you were anyone but my son, this is where you would wonder if this is my true tale or some fable conjured from my imagination, such as those Scheherazade wove to save her life. Perhaps this
is
a fable, even though it is true; perhaps this world I stumbled into when I met your father and his companions is the place where fables come from.

Let us return to the telling.

I followed Gévaudan of France into the forest, only to see him shed his clothes and pelts once again in the midst of the verdant sals and khairs, and he turned to me glowering like a man possessed, eyes so green they seemed filled with the sap of the forest that surrounded us. He snarled at me, and this is not a fanciful use of the word—he actually snarled the words, and I was filled with a holy terror as I realized that he had bowed down to me. He stood upright, panting, taller and stronger and greater than I, but I knew right then that he had submitted to my demands.

“Your wish. Is my fucking command.” He laughed and laughed until it turned into the barking of a jungle cat or a monstrous dog, or both. A stream of piss fell from him, and he walked a circle around his clothes, spraying the golden liquid all over the ground, his legs, his feet.

Trembling, I asked him, “Is this your second self, then, Jevah-dan? You as your mother saw you first? You, unclothed and bare, pissing yourself?”

“I've no mother,” he leered. Giving off a powerful stink, he whipped the piece of my dupatta with Fenrir's blood on it off his hand. His body was horribly white and writ with tattoos, the tangled knots of hair between his legs and in his armpits a jarring contrast, the color of rust. I realized that many of the bone trinkets that hung off him were actually sewn into his body, hanging off his chest and stomach. I could see his cock growing and hardening, and I grasped the handle of my knife in one sweaty palm.

“It is sacred!” he snapped again, peeling back his lips. “No human may lay eyes upon it except as prey, or one of us. But without your eyes. Blind, you can see it blind.” Would he pluck out my eyes? I wondered. He laughed again, his own eyes spinning wild as he took in the world in this sudden frenzy, taking in ground and bark and leaves and sky as if he were just seeing them. He tossed me the dirty, blood-browned rag. I snatched it out of the air, fumbled and dropped it because of my tremors. I picked it up.

“Wear it. For me to open your eyes, you must blindfold yourself.”

I looked at him, lungs hitching with the ghosts of questions.

“Now, for fuck's sake. Now! Blindfold yourself. Trust me. You will die if you don't. Quick!”

I did. I tied that bloody rag around my head, fingers barely able to tie the knot amid the grime-thickened tangle of my unwashed hair. I trusted him, trusted madness itself, because I had come inches away from death's door in his hands last night, and I had been pulled back by those same hands. In that unreal moment, it felt like I had known him for an eternity instead of two days.

“Good girl,” he panted as my quivering fingers completed the knot.

The day was bursting into brightness at that very moment, a rain of light through the leaves and the damp ground-mist rising and turning back into air. My fingers went back to the knife at my waist, clutching it tight.

“I see the knife. Draw it,” he told me, and I did, without hesitation.

“Do you trust me? You asked for this. Do you?”

I nodded.

“Cut your arm, let the blood run.”

I swallowed hard. “Trust me! Fucking do it now!” he shouted.

I did. I felt the cold line I drew across my skin with the blade turn warm as the wound welled up, from the crook of my elbow to near my wrist. It dripped down to my palm, gathering there, sticky.

“Good girl,” he growled, again.

I heard him pacing, feet stamping the dew-damp ground, loud slaps as the pacing became faster. I heard the thump of fist on tree trunk, the bone-breaking splintering of wood, and it felt like the whole forest shook with each crash, the treetops swaying and the leaves hushing, the birds bursting from their roosts and screeching above us. I heard his growls grow deeper until it sounded like he was vomiting out his very soul. I heard the sound of sap spilled and bark torn from the trees, raked with what sounded like blades but could not be.

And then, silence.

—

How can I describe what came to my senses, in that silence? Even the birds stopped their screaming, the insects their singing. The smell of it was overpowering. It smelled like birth, the birth of god or demon, raw and animal and steaming in the morning air. Sweet and musk, like frankincense and myrrh; heavy and pungent, like the juice of living things, blood and piss, sweat and spit; rancid and fecund, like waste, shit, and earth. It stank of both life and death, both so intoxicating I found myself flushed with my own blood, my heart aching. I could hear it, feel it breathing, the rumbling of a mountain slumbering through centuries slivered to seconds. It walked to me, twigs snapping sharp under its great hands and feet, soil squelching under its enormous, impossible weight. It was on all fours, or so its steps told me, and yet I could feel its boiling breath, a hot and humid wind on my face as it approached. Even crouched, it was as tall as me.

“Come,” I whispered to it, and it was as if I could feel it smiling, inhuman, fangs bared. I let go of the blade and held out my hands, palms itching with its heat. The rumbling of its breath grew louder. It was a foot away from me. I stepped forward, and my breath hitched as my fingers met fur and skin, thick and coarse. I have touched wolves and tigers cautiously, through the bars of caravan cages, and their heat was nothing compared with what I felt when I touched this beast. It felt like desert earth rumbling, warming my cold palms. I ran my hands across it, feeling its vibrations hum in my own flesh. My fingers caught on the bone trinkets sewn deep into the skin, a constant between the two shapes of human and beast. The beast rose and fell, and I wondered if I was touching its chest. I felt sweat roll down my face as it breathed its hot, rank life into me.

“Jevah-dan,” I said. Its fur bristled into stiffness at the name spoken, like spines, pricking my palms and drawing blood. I breathed out, a feather-light gasp, the thin air of my lungs meeting with the heavy humor of the beast's. I laughed. Something wet slid across my arm, wiping the blood from the wound I had made. Once, twice, thrice. Its tongue like a swamp snake, slithering blind. It tasted me. The wound tingled as the beast lapped at it. It stopped.

It said nothing, didn't bark or spit or growl, only continued to rumble under my fingers, filling me with an ecstasy I cannot express to this day. Tears ran down my cheeks from under the rag, and I felt a throb deep in my chest. I felt like weeping, wailing like one bereaved, sobbing with my entire self like I had when my mother drew in her last rattling breath while I held her.

It said nothing.

I don't remember if I heard words in my head, or just felt it, but I knew it was waiting. I knew it wanted me to climb onto it.

“Show me how,” I said through my tears, my voice shaking. The blindfold grew damp as it soaked in my tears. I felt the beast move, felt it lower itself into a hunch, my hands following its movements.

I knew I couldn't hurt it in any way, felt it let me know this.

I walked around it, its great head following me, I knew, its eyes burning against me. I climbed onto its back, feet and hands digging into its sides, clinging to its spiny fur as it bristled and cut new wounds into my skin, like clambering across a slope knotted with bramble. I sat at the ridged peak of its spine, fur sharp as pins against my legs and buttocks and forearms as I clung to it. It stood again on all fours, lurching up, my entire world quaking.

I knew I had to hold on tight, very tight. I couldn't hope to hurt it, no matter how tight I held it.

With me on its back, it ran.

It felt like it ran faster than any animal I have ever seen, and yet it seemed to restrain its power, perhaps only for my sake. Its muscles moved under my body like thick ropes, melting and re-forming every second, burning the skin of my arms and thighs with the scathing speed of their rippling. Each pounding step it laid on the ground I felt. I clung to the beast until I was sure I would fly off, until I was sure its fur would be torn from its skin because of my grip. My toes and fingers dug into it until its scorching blood pooled under my nails. My hair unwound itself, my tears dried themselves, and the thick cloak whipped out behind me as if it were light silk. I felt branches whip at me, tearing hair from my scalp and scratching skin off my muscles. I felt the open air of the river's mudflats rip into my face and fill my lungs, heavy with the scent of clay. I felt the spray of the Yamuna as the beast galloped along the river's silvered flank, heard the feathery beating of wings as flocks of waterbirds took to the air in its wake, felt its fur grow dangerously slick in my grasp.

I felt the impact of the beast colliding into something, and I struggled not to be thrown off. I heard its rolling growl erupt into a roar that hurt my ears, felt it contort under me as something brayed in fear and agony. I held on as it shook with abandon, the warm spatter of fresh blood mingling with the cold spray of the Yamuna as I heard the rip and crack of meat and bone giving way under its jaws and teeth, a strange familiar sound now, like Gévaudan chewing on his rabbits but much louder. The thunderous crash of the animal going down under the beast's force. Each clench of its claws on the captured prey flickered across the cabled muscles of its entire body like lightning, twitching under my legs and arms so that I felt every moment that culminated in its kill.

I laughed and I laughed and I screamed, louder than I ever had before, not caring who or what heard me, my tears lost to water and blood and wind even as they escaped my blindfold, my body shaking as it purged all the sorrows of my life in one howl that rode with us.