Chapter 17: One of hers

It was hard to call the way that Mkaer and Naertral spoke to each other in the back of Wirrin’s head language. It didn’t sound like any language Wirrin had ever heard, and she was fairly sure she had heard every language spoken in Nesalan.

It was very like the feelings that Wirrin got when they talked to her, the rumbling and burbling and crashing and hissing. But that wasn’t quite it either. It had to be something like language. She was sure she could feel patterns and systems to the feelings that niggled in the back of her mind.

The Fiends seemed completely engrossed in whatever sort of conversation they were having as Wirrin began her trek back to Esbolva. As she walked, that feeling of the ground and water of the wetland seemed unchanged for having awakened Naertral.

Around noon the next day, Wirrin reached the bridge she’d made over the river. She could feel the crocodiles in the river nearby, floating idly in a different spot to where they’d been before the bridge was there.

‘You made this, Mountain?’ Naertral burbled into Wirrin’s mind.

‘I made this,’ Wirrin thought. Why would it bother speaking to her if only to ask Mkaer a question?

‘Against my advice,’ Mkaer rumbled.

‘Against your advice?’ Naertral hissed.

‘I just did it,’ Wirrin thought, stepping onto the bridge. ‘It hurt quite a lot, mind.’

‘It would do,’ Naertral burbled. ‘But you did it even though the Mountain did not want you to?’

Wirrin frowned to herself. ‘What of it?’

‘I am simply interested, Wirrin,’ Naertral shushed.

The Fiends returned to their strange speaking, niggling at the back of Wirrin’s head as she tramped up the rise away from her bridge. Then she stopped and turned.

Near the crocodiles, the water eddied very like a fish rushing away. All three swished their tails gently, redirecting themselves to follow the fish. Wirrin took a couple of steps back down the rise, to the bank.

The fake fish seemed to get caught in the current, which was working against it, thrashing and wriggling to push itself upstream. The winding of the crocodiles, by comparison, was barely detectable.

Before the leading crocodile could bite, the fake fish put on a burst of speed and swam under the bridge. In a barrage of sharp spikes, the bridge collapsed on top of the leading crocodile. The other two scattered and fled back the way they’d come.

‘Oh, I like you,’ Naertral burbled.

Wirrin waded into the water, head pounding, and dragged the crocodile onto the bank by the tail. As she did, the shards of stone shushed apart into tiny gravel and started to wash away in the rising stream.

‘I’m out of food,’ Wirrin said. ‘I buried everything that Ayan and Veyoc had with them.’

‘You could have shot another bird,’ Mkaer rumbled.

‘I had to get rid of the bridge either way,’ Wirrin said. ‘It’s not on the survey map, is it?’

‘Oh, she really isn’t one of yours, Mountain?’ Naertral burbled.

‘I’m one of mine,’ Wirrin said. ‘I’ve yet to decide if you two are, as well.’

Naertral laughed like the fighting of crocodiles.

High on the rise, Wirrin set a fire and sat down. She finished off her tea as she built up the fire enough to start cooking. She’d never skinned or cooked a crocodile. She’d just left the last one she’d killed in the water.

As the Fiends niggled in the back of her head, she started with the belly and did her best to skin the crocodile the way she’d skin any other animal. The skin was hard, but not as hard as she’d expected, her knife seemed to mostly follow the gaps in the scales.

‘Start with the tail,’ Naertral burbled. ‘People always said that was the best bit.’

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With a shrug, Wirrin reversed the knife to cut along the tail. She built up the fire some more and put on her pan to heat. She hadn’t realised how hungry she was until she put a section of the tail in the pan.

It immediately smelled good, like a combination of water fowl and fish. ‘How long do you need to cook it?’

‘As much or as little as you would like,’ Naertral hissed.

That made sense, Wirrin figured. She sprinkled the tail segment with salt and turned it frequently until all sides were nice and brown. There was no chance it was cooked through, but Wirrin was starving.

As soon as she took a bite, that warm, nauseous power of Naertral’s suffused her, burbling and dripping and shushing in her head. She noticed it was much quieter than when she actively used the power. As with the sense of the ground she used Mkaer’s power for, which she barely noticed the sound of anymore.

Wirrin couldn’t tell exactly what was happening, though she was fairly sure she had an idea. So she just kept chewing, just ate the meat. But something warm and nauseous stayed in her mouth.

She spat it on the ground. It just looked like gristle. The meat was chewy and mild, more like fish than Wirrin had expected. She took another bite and put the rest back in the pan to keep cooking.

Naertral’s power engulphed the mouthful and again Wirrin spat something that looked like gristle onto the ground.

‘What is that?’ Wirrin asked, leaving the meat in the pan.

‘An infection,’ Naertral burbled. ‘Nothing you need to worry about.’

‘What if I’m curious?’ Wirrin thought, as she chopped a couple more pieces of the tail, salted them, and added them to the pan.

Despite how hungry she was, Wirrin moved the pan off the direct heat to cook the meat slower. She was hoping that cooking it longer would help the flavour. The first couple of bites had been quite bland.

‘Surely you’re not worried about infections and disease,’ Naertral shushed. ‘With the two of us in your head.’

Wirrin snorted. ‘I’m worried about taste.’

Though it was tougher, the tail did taste noticeably better when it was cooked more. And Naertral’s power did not suffuse her as she ate it. Wirrin suspected it would taste better with some sort of marinade, but she didn’t have the time, equipment, or ingredients for one.

Gradually, as the afternoon drifted by, Wirrin ate almost the entire crocodile tail. Admittedly, she’d only had fowl and rice for the last three meals. But she didn’t think she should have been quite so hungry.

Only once she was completely full did Wirrin make herself more tea, using the last of her peppermint. It was more bitter than the last two batches, but it helped with the headache. She supposed, since the nausea was gone, she didn’t need the mint so much.

As night was falling, Wirrin finished skinning the crocodile and started cutting it up. She had butchered a crocodile the same number of times as she’d skinned one, but trying to treat it like any other animal still basically worked.

Wirrin flushed the bones down the stream, and the gradually returning crocodiles chased them. It was interesting to feel the way they wriggled through the water a little like eels.

Then she wrapped the remaining flesh up in the skin as tightly as she could and left it right near her rugs and blankets when she lay down to sleep. It didn’t feel like much time had passed when she was woken by the rumbling of a small cat, investigating the crocodile bundle.

Wirrin waved the cat off and it skittered away, but not so far. She wanted to get back to sleep, so rather than climb into a tree, where the meat probably wouldn’t be safe, Wirrin reached into the ground and pulled a dome of compacted dirt over the crocodile.

She wasn’t woken again before morning.

After a big breakfast, Wirrin strapped the crocodile to her pack and moved on. There was more than enough meat to accompany the last of her rice over the next three days out of the wetland.

Though Wirrin didn’t use the Fiends’ power much for the rest of her trip back to Esbolva, she found she still much hungrier than expected, almost to the same level as when she’d been travelling in the mountains.

Certainly she could still feel the ground, feel the water, feel the rumbling of everything that moved. But it hadn’t made her so hungry on her way into the wetland, so that wasn’t the difference. It must have been the amount of magic she’d used at Naertral’s statue, and destroying the bridge.

Wirrin reached Esbolva in the mid-afternoon, with a couple days’ worth of rice and crocodile still in her pack. She’d never tried to be a hunter around Esbolva, so she didn’t know who to attempt to sell the crocodile skin to.

She had considered treating the skin, but she wasn’t confident she would have the time for it, and besides she still had most of a sheep skin in her room at Outolt.

As she stopped by a market to pick up a lantern and some more rice, the proprietor of a nearby stall just asked directly if she wanted to sell the crocodile skin. Selling the skin and the rest of the meat for probably cheaper than it was worth, and trading the lamp she had taken from Alina’s bag back in the mountains, she came away even from the market.

Walking around the city was strange, almost overwhelming even as the evening started to get dark. The cement paths rumbled with hundreds of people all through Esbolva. Hundreds of conversations reverberated into a constant, unintelligible babbling.

With each step Wirrin took, it was like a wave of detail spread around her. She could see people and buildings and outdoor furniture. She could hear words and snippets of speech.

She was tempted to track down Bilar. Wirrin certainly felt in need of relaxation, but it was getting dark and she wanted to bathe and take off her pack and eat something good.

Outolt had filled up even more in the weeks Wirrin had been away. More northerners arriving to get shipping and handling work during the winter. Wirrin may have even recognised some of them, but she wasn’t in the mood to greet half-remembered travellers.

The bath was warm and relaxing, the soap wasn’t scented with mint. Her room was dim and the meal she had brought up to her didn’t have any rice or water fowl.

Wirrin fell asleep easily.