He’s dead. Your problems are solved.
She rose up, stiffly. She turned from the ocean, not looking back.
He was dead. He was a dead human. Her world was restored. She didn’t feel anything for a dead human. Dead humans did not have heartbeats. She was a shict once more.
This is more than luck, she told herself. This is a blessing from on high.
That thought gave her no comfort as she walked over the dunes and away from the shore.
She was a shict. For her, all that was on high was Riffid.
And Riffid did not give blessings.
‘What is a human?’ her daughter had asked.
She had paused before answering.
‘Your father should have told you.’
‘You said Father didn’t know what a shict was.’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘You implied it.’
‘And you wonder why people hit you.’
‘If you can’t answer it, just say so and I’ll figure it out for myself.’
‘A human is … not a shict.’
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s enough.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘Has anyone ever told you you’re amazingly bull-headed?’
‘Grandfather says they filed down my antlers after I was born. But that’s not important. What is a human?’
She had wandered away from their village, into the part of the forest where the earth beneath their feet and the ancestors that came before them were one.
‘Humans are … not like us, but also like us. They fight, they kill, just as we do. And what we claim is ours, they claim is theirs. Our cause is righteous. They say theirs is, too. We do what we must. They do as they do.’
‘Then how do we know they deserve to die?’
She had stared at a grave marked with long white mourning feathers.
‘Because they knew we deserved it.’
She journeyed over the dunes, through the valleys of the beach as the sun continued to crawl across the sky. Always, she found her gaze drifting off to the distant forest and shortly thereafter to her own belly as it let out an angry growl.
The knowledge that any food to be had would be found in the dense foliage gnawed at her as surely as the hunger that struggled to wrest control over her from a frail and withering hope inside her. In fact, she knew, it would be wiser to go into the woods now, to begin the search for something to eat as soon as possible, lest she find herself too weary and starving to conduct a more thorough search later.
Still, she reminded herself, it’s not like it’s hard to find something to eat in a forest. You’ve never had trouble sniffing out roots and fruits before. Hell, find a dark spot and you can probably find a nice, juicy grub.
The image of a writhing, ivory larva filled her mind. She smacked her lips. The fact that she was salivating at the thought of a squishy, tender infant insect brimming with glistening guts, she reasoned, was likely a strong indicator that she should go seek one out, if only to keep herself from dwelling on how bizarre this entire train of thought was.
And yet, no matter how strong the reasoning, she continued to walk along the beach, staring out over the waves. And always, no matter what she hoped to see, nothing but empty shoreline greeted her.
Stop it, she snarled inwardly. Forget them. They’re dead. And you will be, too, if you don’t find food soon. This isn’t what a shict does. Look, it’s easy. Just turn around.
She did so, facing the forest.
Now take a step forward.
She did so.
Now don’t look back.
That, as ever, was where everything went wrong.
She glanced over her shoulder, ignoring the instant frustration she felt for herself the moment she spied something dark out of the corner of her eye. Tucked behind a dune, bobbing in the water, she could see it: the distinct glisten of water-kissed wood.
Her heart rose in her chest as she spun about and began to hurry toward it, despite her own thoughts striving to temper her stride.
It’s wood, she told herself. It doesn’t mean anything beyond the fact that it’s wood. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get too excited. Remember the wreck. Remember the Akaneed.
As she drew closer, the boat’s shape became clearer: resting comfortably upon the shore, intact and unsullied. She furrowed her brow, cautioning her stride. This wasn’t her boat; hers was now in several pieces and probably jammed in one or two skulls right now.
So it’s someone else’s, she told herself. All the more reason to turn back now. No one with any good intentions would be out here. It’s not them. It’s not him. Turn back. She did not, creeping around the dune. Turn back. Remember you’re alive. Remember he’s dead. Remember they’re dead. They’re dead.
And, it became clear as she peered around the dune, they were not the only ones.
A lone tree, long dead but clinging to the sandy earth with the tenacity only a very old one could manage, stood in the middle of a small, barren valley. She peered closer, spying rope wrapped tightly about its highest branches, hanging taut. The grey, jagged limbs bent, creaking in protest as macabre, pink-skinned fruit swayed in the breeze, hanging by their ankles from the ropes.
She recognised them, the humans hanging from the tree. Even with their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated, their blood splashed against roots that no longer drank, she knew them as crewmen from the Riptide, the ship she and her companions had travelled on before pursuing the tome, the ship whose crew was supposed to come seeking them after they had obtained the book.
Apparently, they had found something else.
About the base of the tree, they swarmed. Kataria was uncertain what they were, exactly. They didn’t look dangerous, though neither did they look like anything she had seen before. She peered closer, saw that they resembled roaches the size of small deer, sporting great feathery antennae and rainbow-coloured wing carapaces that twitched in time with each other. They chittered endlessly, making strange clicking sounds as they craned up on their rearmost legs to brush their antennae against the swaying corpses.
And then, in an instant, they stopped. Their antennae twitched soundlessly, all in the same direction. A shrill chittering noise went out over them and they scattered, scurrying over the dunes before whatever had alarmed them could come to them.
But Kataria came out around her cover, unafraid as she approached the whitetree. She was unafraid. She knew its name. She knew the men whose blood-drained bodies hung from it.
And she had seen this before.
‘They had swords.’
Kataria had heard such a voice before: feminine, but harsh, thick and rasping. Her ears twitched, trembled at the sound, taking it in. It was a voice thick with a bloody history: people killed, ancestors murdered, families avenged. She heard the hatred boiling in the voice, felt it in her head.
And she knew the speaker as shict.
‘Humans always have swords,’ this newcomer said, her shictish thick as shictish should be. ‘They always move with the intent to kill.’
‘You killed them instead?’
‘And fed the earth with them. And warned their people with them.’
Kataria stared down at the red-stained ground. ‘So much blood …’
‘This island is thick with it. That which was shed here is far more righteous.’
Kataria clenched her teeth behind her lips, stilled her heart. ‘Have you found others?’
‘I have.’
At that, Kataria turned to look at her newfound company.
She was a shict, as Kataria knew, as Kataria was. But in her presence, her shadow that stretched unnaturally long, Kataria could feel her ears wither and droop.
The shict’s, however, stood tall and proud, six notches carved into each length, each ear as long as half her forearm. The rest of her followed suit: towering over her at six and a half feet tall, spear-rigid and steel-hard body bereft of any clothing beyond a pair of buckskin breeches. Her black hair was sculpted into a tall, bristly mohawk, her bare head decorated with black sigils on either side of the crude cut. She folded powerful arms over naked breasts that were barely a curve on her lean musculature and regarded Kataria coolly.
And, as Kataria stared, only one thought came to her.
So … green.
Her skin was the colour of a crisp apple … or a week-old corpse. Kataria wasn’t quite sure which was more appropriate. But her skin colour was just a herald that declared her deeds, her ancestry, her heritage.
And Kataria knew them both. She had heard the stories.
She was a member of the twelfth tribe: the only tribe to stand against humanity and turn them back. She was a member of the s’na shict s’ha: headhunters, hideskinners, silent ghosts known to every creature that feared the night.
A greenshict. A true shict.
And Kataria knew dread.
‘I have found tracks, anyway,’ she said, pointing to the earth with a toe. Kataria glanced down and saw the long toes, complete with opposable ‘thumb,’ that constituted the greenshict’s feet. ‘There are other humans here, for some reason.’ She stared out over the dunes. ‘Not for much longer.’
‘Why would they be here?’
‘This island is rife with death. Humans are drawn to the scent.’
‘Death?’
‘This land is poisoned. Trees grow, but there is death in the roots. That which lives here feeds on death and we feed upon them.’
‘I saw the roaches …’
‘Unimportant. We come for the frogs. They eat the poison. The poison feeds our blood. We feed on them.’
‘We?’
‘Three of s’na shict s’ha came to this island.’
‘Where are the others?’
‘They seek. Naxiaw seeks humans. Avaij seeks frogs. I seek you.’
Kataria felt the greenshict’s stare like a knife in her chest.
‘I heard your Howling long ago. I have searched for you since.’ The greenshict fixed her with a stare that went far beyond cursory, her long ears twitching as if hearing something without sound. ‘You come with strange sounds in your heart, Kataria.’
Kataria did not start, barely flinched. But the greenshict’s eyes narrowed; she could see past her face, could see Kataria’s nerves rattle, heart wither.
‘What is your name?’ Kataria asked.
‘You know it already.’
She should know it, at least, Kataria knew. She could feel the connection between them, as though some fleshless part of them reached out towards each other and barely brushed, imparting a common thought, a common knowledge between them. The Howling, Kataria knew: that shared, ancestral instinct that connected all shicts. The same instinct that had told the greenshict her name.
That same instinct that Kataria could now only barely remember, so long had it been since she used it.
But she reached out with it all the same, straining to feel for the greenshict’s name, straining the most basic, fundamental knowledge shared by the Howling.
‘In …’ she whispered. ‘Inqalle?’
Inqalle nodded, but did not so much as blink. She continued probing, staring into Kataria, sensing out with the Howling that which Kataria could not hide. Kataria did not bother to keep herself from squirming under the gaze, from looking down at her feet. In a few moments, Inqalle had looked into her, had seen her shame and judged.
‘Little Sister,’ she whispered, ‘I know why you are here.’
‘It’s complicated,’ she replied.
‘It is not.’
‘No?’
‘You are filled with fear. I hear it in your bones.’ Her eyes narrowed, ears flattened against her skull. ‘You have been with humans …’
Funny, Kataria thought, that she should only then notice the blood-slick tomahawk hanging at Inqalle’s waist. She stared at it for a long time.
Amongst shicts, there were those that loathed humans, there were those that despised humans and then there were the s’na shict s’ha, those few that had seen such success driving the round-eared menace from their lands that they had abandoned those same lands, embarking on pilgrimages to exterminate that which had once threatened them.
And for those that had consorted with the human disease, slaughter was seen as an act of mercy to the incurably infected. As such, Kataria remained tense, ready to turn and bolt the moment the tomahawk left her belt.
The blow never came. Inqalle’s gaze was sharp enough to wound without it.
‘Kataria,’ she whispered, taking a step closer. Kataria felt the greenshict’s eyes digging deeper into her, sifting through thought, ancestry, everything she could not hide from the Howling. ‘Daughter of Kalindris. Daughter of Rokuda. I have heard your names spoken by the living.’
Her eyes drifted toward the feathers in Kataria’s hair, resting uncomfortably on a long, ivory-coloured crest nestled amongst the darker ones.
‘And the dead,’ she whispered. ‘Who do you mourn, Little Sister?’
Kataria turned her head aside to hide it. Inqalle’s hand was a lash, reaching out to seize her by the hair, twisting her head about as Inqalle’s long green fingers knotted into her locks.
‘You are … infected,’ she hissed, voice raking Kataria’s ears. ‘Not voiceless.’
‘Let go,’ Kataria snarled back.
‘You speak words. That is all I hear.’ She tapped her tattooed brow. ‘In here, I hear nothing. You cannot speak with the Howling. You are no shict.’ She wrenched the white feather free, strands of hair coming loose with them. ‘You mourn no shict.’
‘Give that back,’ Kataria growled, lashing out a hand to grab it back. With insulting ease, Inqalle’s hand lashed back, striking her against her cheek and laying her to the earth. She looked up, eyes pleading. ‘You have no right.’ She winced. ‘Please.’
‘Shicts do not beg.’
‘I am a shict!’ Kataria roared back, springing to her feet. Her ears were flattened against her head, her teeth bared and flashing white. ‘Show me your hand again and I’ll prove it.’