I needed to survive.
There were no pregnant women stranded on the island with us. Which meant even if I managed to fan my feelings for Ruc into an open flame, I would fail my Trial, fail my god. Lying there in the hot dark, unable to move, each breath a searing pain, I faced the possibility head on for the first time. I’d feared this failure all along, of course, from the moment back in Rassambur when I first heard Ela and Kossal sing the song. Fearing a thing, however, is not the same as believing it might come to pass.
God of mercy, I prayed silently. God of justice, you saved me. You gave me a reason to keep going when my life had no reason. Please don’t let me fail you now. Please, my lord, show me a way.
Somewhere far off in the delta, a creature screamed, then screamed again, then fell suddenly, perfectly silent. Hope flowered inside me. The delta was stitched with death. Since the first serpent sank her fangs into the flesh of another creature, Ananshael had walked the mudflats, had parted the rushes with his million hands, searching for the living things of the world, holding them close in the moment of their unmaking. My god was here. He had always been here. I had decided to come home for the Trial, not just for Ruc, not just because I began my life’s journey in Dombang, but because it was a place where I could feel my god. The delta belonged to him, even more than the redstone mountains surrounding Rassambur.
And yet, if the Vuo Ton could be believed, if my own memories of a woman with golden eyes were to be trusted, there were things in the delta that mocked my god, that had been here as long as him or longer, bright, beautiful, defiantly undying. It was for the sport of these we had been captured, poisoned, dragged to the island, and they cared nothing for my Trial, for my devotion. If I wanted to complete the full measure of my offering, I would need to do it in spite of them.
I forced myself to focus on the world once more. Chua was moving now, twitching in silent pain. There was something strange about her struggle, unnatural. I squinted blearily at the shifting shadows, trying to understand. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, the wind tugged a scrap of cloud off of the moon. Milky light washed over us, and I could see. Chua wasn’t moving after all. She lay sprawled motionless on the mud. The movement came from a spider the size of my open hand. It had crawled onto her stomach where it sat preening, folding and unfolding its legs, making an awful clicking noise.
I tried to call out, but pain flooded my throat, strangling the warning; the best I could manage was a whispered moan and sliver of warm drool. I forced myself up onto an elbow, but my body locked there, caught in the fist of the toxin. The muscles of my chest and shoulder trembled, quaked, then failed, dropping me back onto the dirt where I lay panting, a thousand tiny fires blazing beneath my skin.
When I could see again, the spider seemed to be digging, stabbing at Chua’s stomach over and over. The fisher twitched, convulsed, but she was too lost to wake up. Again, I tried to move, to roll, and again I failed. The spider had grown furious in its exertions, frenzied, hacking at Chua’s flesh with all the intensity of something fighting for its life.
Or for its spawn.
I finally recognized the creature from nightmare tales of my childhood. “Meat puppeteers” we’d called them as kids. That’s what they did—they made meat dance, dance itself to death. A female would find a sick creature—a dog, a pig, anything big enough to feed her young and too feeble to fight back—hack her way into the skin, then lay her hundreds of eggs. For half a day or so, the poor beast would seem fine. Then, as the tiny spiders hatched, began to feed, the host would begin to jerk, twitch, even leap into the air as though suspended from the strings of some sadistic puppeteer. After a day of that, the final violence of the myriad spiders bursting forth seemed like a relief, a last, merciful severing of the strings.
The spider was still digging, burrowing madly into Chua’s body. A thin line of blood—black in the moonlight—slipped down her side. If I could reach her before it laid the eggs, I could save her. I took an unsteady breath, then hurled myself against my own treacherous muscles once again. This time I managed to drag myself a pace, then two, pain shredding my flesh, searing each labored breath. A desperate whimper caught on the wind. I thought for a moment it was Chua, then realized the sound came from my own throat. Chest quaking, arms throbbing, I dragged my way to the woman’s side.
In time.
The puppeteer was still burrowing.
I raised a weak hand to knock it aside, then stopped.
The spider’s multiform eyes glittered in the moonlight like dozens of dark jewels. Her mandibles twitched, as though tasting the air. I could smell Chua’s sweat, her blood—probably the same thing that had drawn the spider. I could save her, batter at the thing, keep it away until she woke. Puppeteers went after sick creatures for a reason—despite their size, they weren’t dangerous enough to subdue a healthy host. I could keep Chua alive, and yet, as I lay there shaking, my arm raised to strike, a new thought blossomed in my mind: Let her die.
What was I, after all, if not a servant of Ananshael? What was the spider? As I lay on the hard ground, eyes clutched against my pain, I had prayed to my god; and he had answered. I imagined the hundreds of tiny eggs hatching inside the fisher, all those new-made creatures feasting in darkness on her blood, her flesh, voracious and burgeoning, all of them, straining inside the skin until finally they were strong enough to burst forth, new life crawling black and bloody from the wreckage. This too, was my god’s work. It happened every day in the delta, a thousand times a day. Who was I to deny it? Especially when I could fashion it to my own end, bend it to my devotion.
Slowly, I let my arm drop.
The spider watched me. What she could see in the darkness I had no idea, but those glittering eyes remained fixed on me even as she went absolutely, perfectly still to lay her eggs. My horror had left me. She was beautiful, that spider, sleek and long-limbed, magnificent in the purity of her purpose. Like the snake that had poisoned me earlier that day, like the crocodile I had cut apart beneath the village of the Vuo Ton, like the jaguar that had come for me as a child, she was a creature of the delta, as was I, a minister of death, both humble and gorgeous. Since returning to Dombang, I had been trying to be something I was not, to find inside myself emotions I had never known. What did the spider know of love? What did she care?
Sometimes it is enough to be only what you are.