The Other Normals (21 page)

“Holy
crap
!” Mortin yells. “Gamary, c’mon!”

A dog-head jumps at Mortin. He ducks. It sails over him and narrowly avoids landing in the fire, scrambling to the side
as Gamary kneels and Mortin climbs onto his back. Two dog-heads leap at Ada. She whips them with the only weapon she has—the princess figure—and tears into the ear of one and the eye of the other.

A female pounces at me; I kick at her. She watches my foot fly over her head and bites calmly into my calf. I fall. A snarling face jabs forward at me—

And Ada knocks it away, loosening several canine teeth.

“Get up!” Another one is already on me, a male, at my ankle. My bad ankle. I kick his face and reach toward the campfire to grab a log. The end of the log is on fire, and it makes a pretty comet trail as I fling it at him. It lands on his head. He howls, fur flaring up, face sizzling. He runs to the stream to put himself out. The log burns in the grass. The dog-heads take notice.

“Get it!”

“Stamp it out!”

They run to it. This makes sense. Lots of animals don’t like fire. There are monsters in C&C that you get a bonus against if you have fire. I grab another log and wave it at the dog-heads, pulling it through the air like a matador, trailing flame.

“Back off!”

They snap and growl. My leg is bleeding. They seethe and spit at the heat.

“Come on!” Gamary yells. “Hurry up!” He kneels with Mortin and Ada on his back.

“I’m coming!”

Gamary takes a log and swats at the dog-heads that attack
his front, while Ada beats at the ones who circle his flanks. Mortin grabs a rock with his tail and swings it like a club
(we are the stoners!)
, fending off the creatures at his rear. One of the cynos snatches my log with his jaws. It drops to the ground. A group of them stamp it out.

“Peregrine!”

They have me now. I’m separated from my friends, with no weapons. Nothing to hit the cynos with, nothing to slash them with, nothing to light on fire and throw at them …

My getma.

I pull it off. I’m not wearing anything underneath. Here I am, naked with naked breasts around me, but it’s all wrong. I snap the loincloth like a washcloth at the circling dog-heads. One yelps as it nicks his eye. I dip it into the fire; it catches and I have a flaming weapon again.

“I can’t”—I swing—“believe”—I swing—“you made me”—I swing—“get
naked
again!”

They part for me, growling. One attacks my back, but I spin and hit him with the burning fabric; he retreats.

“All right, Perry! You crazy naked othersider! C’mon!”

Almost there. I whip my getma in the air twice more as I reach Gamary’s back and hop on. The dog-heads nip at me. The flames reach my fingers, and I drop the cloth in the grass as we take off. I don’t have anything to hold on to but Ada.

“I’m sorry Ada I know this is inappropriate I’m naked I hope—”

“Shut up! When we
met
, you were naked!”

Gamary gallops along the stream. The dog-heads follow, snarling and howling, Pula’s slit-eyed father in the lead. They snap at the okapicentaur’s flanks, which are already injured and bandaged from the fight in Subbenia. “I don’t know—
huff—
how much longer—”

“Don’t start talking like that.” Mortin clocks a pursuing cyno. “We got you covered.”

“But Mortin—
huff—I
can’t breathe—
huff—
I shouldn’t have smoked—”

Gamary slows. I look at his sides. The bandages are streaming off him. The moonlight is making his blood black. Cynos bite his back hooves. They can’t just crawl on their hands and knees; they can
run
, with their knees acting as feet and their feet curled up behind them. When they get close, they rear up on two legs to take bites. The end of Gamary’s tail is gone; it bleeds onto the grass.
They’re taking us down
, I think,
like hyenas bringing down a wildebeest.

Roaring, Pula’s father leaps through the air and clamps down on Gamary’s leg. With a twist of the cyno’s head, Gamary’s thin shinbone snaps sideways. He screams and keels over. I jump off him and roll away in the grass. Gamary hits the ground with a thud and some cracks—his ribs. Ada gets to her feet and runs toward the stream with Mortin. I go to Gamary and grab his arms as cynos bite into his hide.

“Bigmeat!”

“Freshmeat!”

I pull, like he’s a friend I’m trying to get off the couch.
“Come on, Gamary.
Up!
”

“No, othersider. Go with your friends. It’s too late.”

“What about your daughter? You have to see her!”

“I’m going to. Don’t you understand? I’m going to....”

He smiles. A cyno snaps at me, but it isn’t to try and eat me—it’s to shoo me away from his meal. I back off, letting Gamary’s hands fall to his sides. He kicks his head back, still smiling, and collapses.

I run, naked, crying. I shut my eyes against the image of steam rising from Gamary’s opened flesh. Behind me, his body scrapes against the grass as the dog-heads drag him away. “Barbecue!” they call. “Barbecue!”

WE REGROUP BY THE STREAM. “STUPID pebbles!” Mortin gasps. “We would’ve been fine if I weren’t smoking!” He punches the grass, wild-eyed, maddened.

“Are you okay?”

“No! Are
you
okay? What kind of stupid question is that? Don’t ask any more meaningless Earth questions. In this world, when we talk, we mean what we say. My friend just got eaten alive! I’m not okay! You’re not okay either! Your leg is bleeding and you have no clothes!”

“I can help with that,” Ada says. She pulls a bandage off her shoulder from where the guard jabbed her back in Subbenia. Her wound is dark but not wet. She washes the bandage in the stream and hands it to me. It’s the bare minimum that will cover me; I put it on like a diaper. For my calf wound, she presses grass against me until the blood dries. It looks like I’m growing a small lawn, but it feels better.

“Oh, that’s cute,” Mortin says. “You two get quality time while Gamary is eaten because I can’t keep my head straight for forty-five seconds. If I hadn’t smoked … if I’d been alert … I would’ve seen that trap coming a hundred helms away.” Mortin
takes out Gamary’s pipe, which I’m sort of surprised he’s held on to in all the excitement. “No more. We’re burying this to remember him by. I don’t even need to smoke. It’s just an oral-fixation thing. Here”—he rips up a clump of grass and chews it—“just as good!”

As Mortin chews and spits, we dig a shallow pit by the stream and place the pipe inside. I notice Pula’s leather collar around Mortin’s shoulder. “What about that?”

“Oh, I figured we should keep it. Might need it. We don’t have much!”

“We should bury it.” I slip it off and place it next to the pipe.

“Why?”

“I don’t know—respect?”

“That cannibal dog ragamuffin doesn’t deserve any respect!”

“He tried to protect me.”

“So?”

“He was just a boy,” Ada says.

“So?”

“His dad had him ripped open in front of us!” I yell. “It’d be dishonorable not to bury something of his!”

“Honor? What do you care about honor? Honor gets people killed!
”

I know where I’ve heard that before. Suddenly I have an idea who Mortin corresponds to. “At least they die for something,” I say, and he doesn’t protest further as we bury Gamary’s pipe and Pula’s collar, piling dirt on top until we have a small mound by the stream.

“You want to say anything, Peregrine?” Ada asks. “You believe in God, right?”

“Ah … it’s complicated. This whole thing … I don’t even know what I believe anymore. Do
you
believe in God?”

“We’re not allowed to. He’s not appointed.”

“Oh, well … I guess …” I take a deep breath. “God rest the souls of these two creatures—”

“
Friends
,” Ada corrects.

“Was Pula really our friend?”

“He said he was yours, at the end.”

“Friends, then. Take them to a better place, and, ah, please lead us safely on our own journey, amen. And help Mortin with his new decision not to smoke earthpebbles. Amen. And please help me find some more clothes because this itches. Amen.”

“Very good. Can you walk?”

I nod. The adrenaline that ran through me when I escaped in Subbenia is back in full force. I feel like I could walk for days.

THE MOON REACHES THE TOP OF THE sky. The stream burbles and widens as it winds east; it looks like black glass under the stars. Ada asks, “What’s that?” A dark shape lies beside the stream bank.

“It’s not a body, is it?” I ask.

“If it were a body, the dog-heads would’ve taken it,” says Mortin. We creep closer. It’s a pile of rucksacks. The moon shines off buckles and snaps. Mortin kicks the pile. The bags clank against one another. We dig in, tearing everything open. I find a saucepan, a spoon, and a lighter (traditional, not tail). Mortin finds metal sporks and sleeping bags. Ada finds bottles of wine. That’s not even counting the weapons: a hefty broadsword, a pair of axes, a trident with spiral tips, a few daggers, and … yes! A war hammer, like Pekker Cland’s! “I call the war hammer!”

“Stop,” Mortin says. “Consider what happened here.” He picks up a bag and holds open a ragged hole at the bottom. “Do they all have holes like this?” Ada and I nod. “And what’s missing from them?”

“Food!” I say, raising my hand. Partly I know the answer
just because I’m hungry.

“Exactly. This is the equipment of three members of Ophisa’s rebel horde. You’ve got three sleeping bags but enough weapons for six. They go armed to the teeth. What else don’t you see?”

“Firewood,” Ada says.

“Right. They were passing through and got ambushed like us. The dog-heads made one of them take the wood to the campfire. Then: barbecue.”

“What were Ophisa’s followers doing here?” I ask.

“I don’t know, but their loss is our gain. Let’s sew up these holes and start traveling in style. Ada, can you open a wine bottle?”

“Didn’t you just say you weren’t smoking anymore?”

“This is drinking, it’s different.”

“Mortin—”

“I need something, okay?”

“Open it yourself.”

As Mortin looks for a corkscrew, I check the bags and find something curious: a small leather case attached to a mirror. Inside is a two-inch comb, perfect for a mustache. There are two people I’ve met recently with mustaches—Officer Tendrile and Dale Blaswell. Only now do I recognize that they have the
same mustache.
Looking at the mirror, at myself, I start to think I might be putting more of this correspondence thing together.

I WAKE UP WITH AN UNGODLY HEADACHE on one side of my head, the side I slept on. I’m snuggled inside a sleeping bag beside the stream. I remember Ada giving me the sleeping bag around when she took away my bottle of wine. Was that my
second
bottle? What time is it? The sun assaults me. I get on my hands and knees and dry heave. “Rise and shine, buddy!” Mortin says. “I told you to drink some water before you crashed out!”

I crawl forward. It’s a beautiful morning, from an objective, nonheadache perspective. Ada has started a fire with flammable items we didn’t need from the rucksacks we found. “What
happened
?” I ask.

“You tried wine for the first time,” she says. “You and Mortin started … talking.”

It comes back to me. Mortin opened the first bottle, and I asked if it was any good. He told me to try some. I thought about how I didn’t want to end up like my brother, but then I thought about how I’d just seen two people torn open alive and I decided this was when you were
supposed
to drink. I took a sip. The wine made my mouth shrivel and my nose wrinkle, but
after I passed it to Mortin and watched him take a few manly swigs and start telling Ada about how this stream had to meet up with the Warbledash River soon, and we were going to be in Upekki any day, and his brother Leidan was going to be there, and it would all be all right, I decided I wanted more. Ada didn’t drink any, and she shot me a look when I took a second sip, but some switch that controlled whether I cared about her had been flipped. I cared more about being cool with Mortin. I drank—I saw the stars behind the bottle—and then I talked, and then I forget what happened.

“It hurts … ,” I tell Ada. I kneel by the stream gulping handfuls of water. As soon as it hits my stomach, I heave it back up again.

“That’s what happens when you guzzle Jiringian wine. You better keep some of that down. You’re dehydrated. Your
brain
is dehydrated.”

“Really?”

“That’s what a hangover is.”

“What you have to do,” Mortin says, “is drink twenty-one handfuls of water before you go to sleep. I tried to tell you.”

“Where are …
ugh
… the dog-heads?”

“Having a party eating Gamary, or maybe passed out. We’re ready for them anyway.” Mortin shows off his new arsenal. He has a sword on each hip, two daggers above his crotch, and an ax strapped to his shoulders. Ada has the other ax, two more daggers, and the trident. That leaves me with—