The Devourers (13 page)

“What. What are you doing?” I stammered. “What is that?” I asked in a weak voice, despite myself. I felt nauseous, though I had eaten only some dry fruit to break my fast since I had woken up.

“Cyrah, meet Makedon. A mutual friend of mine and Fenrir's.” He turned the head a bit so it faced me.

It was the third traveler who had walked in the caravanserai along with Fenrir and Gévaudan. I recognized the curly black hair, though it was mired in dirt and clotted blood.

“Why? Why is his head there?”

“I killed him. And Fenrir, idiot that he is, wasted time burying him.”

I felt the sour cud of eaten fruit rise up my throat and spatter on to the ground, frothing in the ground by my feet. Retching, I staggered a few steps backward.

“Calm down. He deserved it. And he was about to kill your Fenrir.”

Even light-headed with nausea I reacted to that, spitting the bile from my mouth so I could speak. “He's not
my
Fen—whatever his bastard name is! He's your friend, and he's fucked things up for me and run off, all right? Which is the only reason I'm following you around while you dig up heads and Allah knows what else. He's not my anything, your wretch of a friend.”

Gévaudan gazed at me, steady-eyed, head in his hands. “Right. Well. Anyway.”

“Anyway,” I confirmed, wiping my mouth.

“We had a fight,” he said, looking at the head like he was talking to Makedon and not me. “That's why we all split up. Well, Fenrir and I. Not this one, obviously. Things got ugly. Makedon was about to kill Fenrir, so I had to cut his throat.”

“What were you all fighting about?”

Gévaudan smiled, running his thumbs across Makedon's blackened lips. “You.”

“What do you mean, me?”

“Well, I wasn't involved, not directly. But Makedon had a problem with Fenrir going out and doing what he did, with you.”

I swallowed another wave of sickness, feeling faint.

“Makedon wasn't a moral creature. He wasn't worried about you, if that's what you're thinking. It's just that Fenrir, what he did, it's forbidden. Like if you fucked a pig. Makedon wanted him to atone by giving his life.”

“You're mad, you people. Allah forgive me for talking to your friend, and to you. Allah forgive me for not turning away when I could.”

“When all's said and done, I'm sure your god will forgive you, if he's the sensitive sort. Not your fault, is it? You're just lambs, you people. What Fenrir did to you was wrong. He preyed on you, hunted you, but he left you alive. It's unnatural.”

“It's you and he that are unnatural. And you know nothing about my god. You are a godless people, I can tell.”

“Oh, I wouldn't say that. Many of our tribes worship the same gods you humans do, or at least recognize them as gods; some don't do either; some even claim to be your precious gods, and others your devils. Many among your kind think we
are
such, believe it or not. But honestly, we've no need for gods or devils ourselves. That's what I think.”

I sat down, not caring if I soiled my shawl on the earth. Pushing my hands against my face, I shook my head.

“I don't think your own god much favors women whoring themselves to men out of wedlock, no? I'm pretty sure it's all there in his holy book. So I wouldn't take too much of a stand against my godlessness if I were you, lest hypocrisy also be considered a sin under your religion.” He laughed softly.

I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. I could say nothing, and didn't want to admit that I'd never read the Quran. My mother had told me about it, and recited from it, but I knew little of what was actually in it. I tried not to think about it, telling myself Allah would forgive the way I had to make my living because I'd had so little choice since I was born.

I wiped my eyes, not wanting to start that debate in my head again. “Fen-eer told me what you said, that it was forbidden among your tribes. To lie with a human. I thought he was just talking nonsense,” I said.

“Not nonsense. It was foolish of him to do what he did to you. He can be most cruel. Though he scarcely knows it.”

“Foolish,” I repeated, and laughed. “And are you not cruel, Jevah-dan? What are you doing, holding your so-called friend's head in your hands? Bury it and let him be. Has he not been punished enough by being killed? Let him be, for God's sake, and let us leave his resting place.”

“You want to keep going?”

“Yes, I want to keep going. What did you think? The petty fights of your people are of no concern to me. I don't want to know about your friend Makedon and how you two killed him, or what you fought about. I want to leave this desecrated grave and find Fen-eer like you told me you would. I have words for him, and I will say them no matter what. He can't run from me.”

Gévaudan smiled and dropped Makedon's head in its hole. It landed with a horrible slap. “Spoken like one of us,” he said. I don't know if he meant for me to hear that. He probably did. Why else would he say it in my language?

*1
Persian garden divided into four parts.

*2
A Muslim Sufi ascetic who has taken a vow of poverty. Faqirs, often incorrectly stereotyped as Hindu ascetics (a popular image of the faqir, or fakir, being that of a turbaned man sitting on a bed of nails), were believed to have developed miraculous abilities and powers from renouncing the material world.

N
ight fell quickly, a cloak draped across Shah Jahan's lands. The day had passed like an eternity, with me not talking to my fellow traveler, though he felt like no fellow of mine at all. I kept remembering Fenrir telling me he was a foreigner in all the lands he traveled in because he didn't know where he had been born. I didn't believe him when he had said that, and I still don't believe it, but it made a stupid kind of sense. I'd never met anyone who felt as foreign to me as Fenrir and Gévaudan, even though they spoke my language as well as I did. There were a thousand questions brimming at my lips, but I kept them sealed as we traveled along the tangled wilderness that clings to the edges of the Yamuna, using the river as a path. I wondered if Gévaudan was staying close to the shore for my benefit, or whether he was following Fenrir's trail. He always kept his friend's blood close, tying the rag around his right hand and occasionally raising it to his mouth. I couldn't see properly, but he might even have licked it, for all I knew.

On the other side of the river, I could still see a few lights from Mumtazabad in the distance. I felt no fear to be out there in the dark and the wild with this unknowable man. I only felt a deep, sickening excitement, which distracted me from my fatigue and hunger (I had finished all the dried fruit and nuts I had carried with me).

Finally, Gévaudan decided to stop and camp for the night, probably realizing that I was tiring. It was too dark to tell anything from his face, not that I could fathom much from it anyway.

“Has Fenrir been traveling this way? Are you following him?”

He nodded, shrouded in shadow. “I wouldn't worry about it if I were you.”

“I'm not worrying, just asking.”

I sat down, pebbles and moisture attacking my rear through the shawl that I had wrapped around myself.

“Can we make a fire? It's cold.”

“No. A fire can be seen from miles away,” he said, gruff, and took off his cloak. I wondered why that mattered—who he thought might be watching. He walked behind me and draped his cloak across my back, his hands firm on my shoulders through the coarse fabric. I took the edges and pulled it around me. It was very thick and very warm, unlike anything I'd worn before. I assumed it was so heavy (like some great animal's skin had sloughed off on top of me) because Europe has colder winters that make rivers freeze. He tramped around me and walked away, facing the river.

“Thank you. I can barely see anything, though,” I said, shivering in the sudden warmth. The cloak smelled of dirty hair, and I wondered if it had lice. It probably did, but I didn't much care at that point.

“There's nothing you need to see. I can see everything for us,” he said. I wondered what he meant by that.
Everything.

“I'm going to go get you some food.”

“In the dark? Don't you have food in those big bags?”

“I do, but nothing you'd want to eat, trust me. And like I said, I can see just fine. I'll be back soon. Don't move, don't make a fire. Just stay here.”

It felt wrong to feel afraid. I should have felt afraid to be around Gévaudan, not afraid that he was leaving me alone. It made me feel ashamed, disgusted at myself. I said nothing, not daring to give myself away.

“I'm going to undress,” he said bluntly, whipping off his clothes and pelts. The bone trinkets clattered in protest. His fardels fell heavily to the ground.

“Why? Why are you doing that?” I asked, alarmed.

“It's how I hunt.”

“It's cold, why on earth…”

“Will you stop going on about the cold? It doesn't bother me. I'm not asking you to strip, am I? This is how I hunt,” he said, firm, harsh. His voice sounded hoarser.

He peeled off his boots. I was thankful for the darkness, though his naked body was so pale I could see enough even in the dark, making me realize that I was still looking at him. I turned away quickly, looking at the far-off lights of human life instead.

I heard the patter of his piss hitting the ground, and I gritted my teeth, wondering if I should even bother to ask. I held the cloak over my mouth and nose as a burning smell clawed its way into my head.

“Don't touch my things unless you want to die. I'll know, trust me,” he said. And I heard the slap of his bare feet on the ground recede, become faster, until it sounded like he was running on all fours. I kept looking away until I could no longer hear him.

—

I dreamed that something came to me while I lay there between river and forest. A slouching thing that crept until it was close, and pushed its long fingers into my hair, scraped with one dirty claw so that a line was drawn through my scalp, beaded with blood. Its breath like scalding desert air against the back of my neck, its tongue a swamp snake hot with life, slithering between my salt-smeared roots until its blind head was at the thin wound. I felt it taste the cut, tongue-snake squirming its way across the line of my blood and swallowing the scent of my scalp, felt the crown of the beast's great fangs quiver around my head. I felt tiny, as if the beast grew in size with each passing moment, until it loomed like a mountain over the river, blotting out the night sky. I crouched on the ground under its cavernous maw. Its tongue-serpent was huge and engorged, sliding across my face and through my hair.

I couldn't move, through any of it. I felt something pass between my body and that of the beast, slow, almost imperceptible. My life, perhaps; it could be I was dying at that moment, that it was licking away my will to live from that thin little wound. I couldn't tell. I drifted off into a (second?) sleep until that sleep gave way to my awakening.

I bolted upright into the insect-torn air, the pests colliding with my skin as they hummed around my head, ants crawling all over my skin, somehow having found their way under my clothes. My scalp was burning, my face sticky. I stuck my fingers in my hair and felt the narrow, rough tissue of a long cut underneath it. I looked at my fingertips, coughing at the stench of something pungent on them. No blood, as far as I could tell. Just a scratch—I wondered if an animal had clambered out of the forest and clawed me, or if I'd just cut my head on a pebble or rock as I slept.

The darkness had thickened, clouds obscuring most of the stars and the moon. It felt like I was in some limbo, especially because I had no idea how long I'd slept.

I could smell him.

“Jevah-dan?”

“I'm here,” he said. My eyes adjusting, I could tell that he was sitting about five feet away from me. As far as I could tell, he wasn't naked anymore.

“Did you sleep?” he asked.

“I, yes, I did. Not very well.”

“Come closer and eat.”

I waved away the insects stinging at my face, raising the cowl of the cloak and tucking it close under my throat. Holding the cloak tight to me, I clambered closer to him in the dark, feeling completely at a loss.

“What did you find?”

“A couple of rabbits. I hope you eat meat.”

“I do. But we need a fire now, don't we? To roast them?”

“We don't. Your ancestors ate flesh raw, and so can you.”

“What? I can't do that.”

“So you think. It's all in your mind.”

“I can't eat a rabbit raw, even if you can. It's unclean. It will sicken me.”

Gévaudan didn't say anything. He was entirely a thing of shadow and dream in that dead light from the covered moon, reflected off the sleeping world. I saw the shape of the rabbits, one hanging limp from his hand, another on the ground.

“You need to eat.”

“I'll be fine. I'll find some berries or nuts tomorrow. Or make a fire during the day.”

My stomach rebelled at the thought, growling. I hoped that Gévaudan hadn't heard it over the deafening chirping of the insects and the lapping of the Yamuna not too far from us.

“You'll eat now. You've barely eaten all day. I can't have a sick and starving human straggling along with me. I'm not going to take care of you.”

“And you'll not tell me what to do. You offered to help me find Fen-eer, not the other way around. I don't need to be taken care of by anyone, let alone you. I've lived in these lands longer than you have and I've gone far longer than a day without anything in my belly.”

I heard his heavy breathing as he dragged the rabbit's legs through the ground, playful. I looked again across the river at Mumtazabad's lights, now almost gone, feeling agitated and sick. I could easily go back, if I wanted. We weren't that far away yet. Then I heard a sound like the tearing of a cloth, followed by dripping on the ground. I realized that Gévaudan had just twisted the head off the rabbit in his hands.

I heard more crunching and squelching for several minutes as he skinned and gutted the animals, maybe even with his fingers and teeth. I looked away throughout, light-headed and on the verge of retching once more.

I jerked away, startled, when he approached me.

“Here,” he grumbled. I felt him take my hand in his, and put something warm and wet in my palm.

“Just eat it. You won't get sick.” He waited a few seconds, before adding, “I promise.”

I put the meat in my mouth, too tired to argue. It was soft pulp, tasting of metal and salt. As I held this wad of flesh between teeth and tongue, I knew that Gévaudan had chewed on it already so that it wouldn't be completely raw. When I realized this I didn't spit it out for some reason. Perhaps I needed to eat more desperately than I had thought, though it was true that I had gone days without any real food on several occasions. The flesh was hot, as if it had been stewed in a pot of simmering water for a minute, though the taste of it belied any illusions of such a thing.

I swallowed and waited what seemed a long time with my jaw clenched tight as a vise to keep it from coming back up.

I could hear Gévaudan crunching bone and meat, feeding on the carcasses all the while.

“See?” he said, smacking through wet lips.

He handed me another, larger lump of ragged chewed meat. I took it and ate it, choking back the urge to throw it up, unable to understand why I was doing so. My hunger didn't seem a good enough reason.

“Your teeth are sharp stones, dulled by civilization,” said Gévaudan.

His pale face glowed in the dark, his mouth a black smear where the rabbit's blood had painted him like a courtesan's colors. The flies and other flying insects hovered around my mouth and crawled across my chin, my palms, and my fingers, tickling my skin as they tried to get to the raw juice of the dead animal on me.

“What are you and Fen-eer? You don't look alike at all, and yet you speak of the same tribes, and have the same madness in you.”

He grunted. I could hear the bubble of blood between his lips as he breathed out, and spoke.

“Fenrir's from somewhere else. Some land far north of where I come from.”

“Where do you come from?”

“A kingdom called France.”

“I've heard of it. I've never heard of people like you and Fenrir, though.”

“You have. They must have tribes of our kind here as well, with names in the languages of these lands. Where Fenrir and I came from, humans are killing one another for fear that we are among them—they burn one another, hang one another, flay one another to check for fur underneath, as if it's that simple. They tell one another stories—that we turn into wolves at night and live as humans during the day, that we are beholden to Satan, the devil of the Christians. Occasionally, they even catch us. I suppose that's why we left. Or I did, anyway.” He paused. The moist rustle of his tongue running across his lips.

“On the outer edges of this empire, past the Indus and beyond, in Khorasan, the land of the Afghans, the tribes of our kind call themselves djinn. They are numerous
.
There is the tribe of the ifreets, who shape their second selves with great flightless wings, which they flap to make storms of desert dunes, who strike fear in the hearts of their enemies by setting their oily hides on fire. There is the tribe of ghuls, who stalk their prey with stealth, and enjoy mingling often with khrissals in cities to lure prey to death, and sometimes take the hyena as a totem for their second selves.” As I listened, I felt again the ache in my chest, to hear these familiar words—
djinn, ifreet, ghul
—in a voice not my mother's. He went on.

“We lived among these tribes for a while, in the wilds of the mountains and deserts. They didn't much take to us, though. There were battles. Terrible ones. We brought strife to their land, because we were followed by another European tribe—the Theissians, the Hounds of God, who worship the Christian god. True to their name, they hounded us across the Black Sea to the Khorasan. They think shape-shifters of other tribes are demons, that the power to change shapes is given either by the father-god of Christ or by his fallen angel, the devil. In their eyes, to deny their religion as shape-shifter is to brand oneself as witch and demon. In the Khorasan, the Hounds went from chasing us to chasing the djinn tribes. So in a way, the djinn saved us. I hope they killed every last one of those self-righteous fools, who would betray their own to scrabble at the feet of a khrissal god.”

“My mother told me stories of the djinn when I was a child
.
Fen-eer mentioned them also, when he was babbling. Is that truly what your people believe you are?”

“Believe? Are you not listening? I don't need to believe anything. Do you need to believe that you are a human? I simply am what I am. I don't call myself djinn, ghul, or ifreet, demon or witch or wer-wolf, but these are words that might be used to describe me.”

“So. You and Fen-eer think you are not human.” It wasn't a question. I thought of us crossing the Yamuna, how it had struck me that no man could have carried me on his back while swimming, like Gévaudan had. I thought, of course, of Fenrir and his vision.

“We aren't. And I don't know what Fenrir thinks. He certainly acts like a human when the whim takes him,” he said, low in his throat. Silence, and then once again I heard brittle bone snap, the slurp of spit and gristle disappearing into his mouth.

I moved my tongue through my mouth, ushering the bloody bits of rabbit toward my throat as something swelled inside me, making me dizzy. I burped a foul breath of carrion.

“He raped me.”

In the gloaming, Gévaudan looked up, and even with no light to reflect in them I thought his eyes gleamed gem green as he moved his head. Like Fenrir's eyes.

“I know,” he said. “Like I said. Human.”

The insects observed our conversation, an invisible congregation as vast as the emperor's audience. The flies crawled on my lips, trying with desperation to enter my mouth.

“What am I to you, then, Jevah-dan? To your kind. If not something to use, to fuck. You look at me sometimes like that is exactly what I am.”

As if to oblige me, to demonstrate, he looked at me. I couldn't see his expression, but I knew it, I could see it in my head, even after just a day of traveling by his side. I heard the peeling of his stained lips.