This would be their last night. They knew it – the whole Snake knew it. Badalle had said nothing to change their minds. Perhaps she too had given up – it was hard to know for certain. Defiance could hold its shape, even when it was made of nothing but cinders and ash. Anger could look hot to the touch, when in truth it was lifeless and cold. In this way, the world could deceive. It could lie, and in lying it invited delusion. It invited the idea that what it was was true. In this way, the world could make belief a fatal illness.
She stared down at the backs of the heavies, and remembered more.
Rutt’s steps wavered. Halted. His voice cracked as it made a wordless sound, and then it cracked a second time, and he said, ‘Badalle. The flies are walking now.’
She looked down at her legs, to see if they could take her up alongside him, and, slowly, agonizingly, they did. And far ahead, to the place where he was looking with his blinded, closed-up eyes, she saw swarming shapes, black as they came out of the sunset’s red glare. Black and seething. Flies, walking on two legs, one clump, then another and another, emerging from the blood-light.
‘The flies,’ said Rutt, ‘are walking.’
But she had sent them away. Her last command of power, the one that used her up. And now, this day, she had been blowing nothing but air from her lips.
Badalle squinted.
‘I want to be blind again, Badalle.’
She studied the puffed masses filling his sockets. ‘You still are, Rutt.’
‘Then … they are in my head. The flies … in my head .’
‘No. I see them too. But that seething – it is just the sun’s light behind them. Rutt, they are people.’
He almost fell then, but widened his stance and, with terrible grace, he straightened. ‘Fathers.’
‘No. Yes. No.’
‘Did we turn round, Badalle? Did we somehow turn round?’
‘No. See, the west – we have walked into the sun, every day, every dusk.’ She was silent then. The Snake was coiling up behind the two of them, its scrawny body of bones drawing together, as if that could keep it safe. The figures from the sunset were coming closer. ‘Rutt, there are … children.’
‘What is that, upon their skin – their faces?’
She saw the one father among them, his beard grey and rust, his eyes suffering the way the eyes of some fathers did – as they sent their young ones away for the last time. But the faces of the children drew her attention. Tattoos . ‘They have marked themselves, Rutt.’ Droplets, black tears. No, I see the truth of it now. Not tears. The tears have dried up, and will never return. These marks, upon face and hands, arms and neck, shoulders and chest. These marks . ‘Rutt.’
‘Badalle?’
‘They have claws.’
A ragged breath fell out from him, left him visibly trembling.
‘Try now, Rutt. Your eyes. Try to open them.’
‘I – I can’t—’
‘Try. You must.’
The father, along with his mob of clawed children, drew closer. They were wary – she could see that. They did not expect us. They did not come looking for us. They are not here to save us . She could see their suffering now, the thirst that gripped their faces like taloned, skeletal hands. Claws will make you suffer .
Yet the father, now standing before Rutt, reached down to the waterskin strapped to his sword belt. There was little water in it – that was obvious by its thinness, the ease with which he lifted it. Tugging the stopper free, he held it out to Rutt.
Who in turn thrust out Held. ‘Her first,’ he said. ‘Please, the little one first.’
The gesture was unambiguous and without hesitation the father stepped up, and as Rutt pulled the cloth from in front of Held’s small, wizened face the bearded man leaned close.
She saw him recoil, saw him look up and stare hard into Rutt’s slitted eyes.
Badalle held her breath. Waited.
Then he shifted the waterskin, dipped the mouthpiece over Held’s mouth, and the water trickled down.
She sighed. ‘This father, Rutt, is a good father.’
One of the clawed children, a year or two older than Rutt, came up then and gently took Held from Rutt’s arms – he might have resisted, but did not have the strength, and when the babe was in the cradle of the strange boy’s arms Rutt’s own arms remained crooked, as if he still held her, and Badalle saw how the tendons at his elbows had shrunk, drawn tight. And she thought back, trying to recall when she had last seen Rutt not holding Held, and she couldn’t.