Карин Тидбек - Jagannath

“It’s not working,” said the girl on the leftmost couch. “We ate them all up and it’s not working!” She burst into tears.

The middle girl pondered this. “Aunts can’t be Aunts without Nieces,” she said.

“But where do we find Nieces?” said the rightmost. “Where did we come from?” The other two were silent.

“We could make them,” said the middle girl. “We are good at baking, after all.”

And so the prospective Aunts swept up the crumbs from floor and plates, mopped up juices and bits of jelly, and returned with the last remains of the old Aunts to the kitchens. They made a dough and fashioned it into three girl-shaped cakes, baked them and glazed them. When the cakes were done, they were a crisp light brown and the size of a hand. The would-be Aunts took the cakes up to the orangery and set them down on the floor, one beside each couch. They wrapped themselves in the Aunt-skins, and lay down on their couches to wait.

Outside, the apple trees rattled their leaves in a faint breeze. On the other side of the apple orchard was a loud party, where a gathering of nobles played croquet with human heads, and their changeling servants hid under the tables, telling each other stories to keep the fear away. No sound of this reached the orangery, quiet in the steady gloom. No smell of apples snuck in between the panes. The Aunt-skins settled in soft folds around the sleeping girls.

Eventually one of them woke. The girl-shaped cakes lay on the floor, like before.

The middle girl crawled out of the folds of the skin dress and set her feet down on the floor. She picked up the cake sitting on the floor next to her.

“Perhaps we should eat them,” she said. “And the Nieces will grow inside us.” But her voice was faint.

“Or wait,” said the leftmost girl. “They may yet move.”

“They may,” the middle girl says.

The girls sat on their couches, cradled in the skin dresses, and waited. They fell asleep and woke up again, and waited.

In some places, time is a weak and occasional phenomenon. Unless someone claims time to pass, it might not, or does so only partly; events curl in on themselves to form spirals and circles.

The Nieces wake and wait, wake and wait, for Aunts to arrive.

Another child was born in the great Mother, excreted from the tube protruding from the Nursery ceiling. It landed with a wet thud on the organic bedding underneath. Papa shuffled over to the birthing tube and picked the baby up in his wizened hands. He stuck two fingers in the baby’s mouth to clear the cavity of oil and mucus, and then slapped its bottom. The baby gave a faint cry.

“Ah,” said Papa. “She lives.” He counted fingers and toes with a satisfied nod. “Your name will be Rak,” he told the baby.

Papa tucked her into one of the little niches in the wall where babies of varying sizes were nestled. Cables and flesh moved slightly, accommodating the baby’s shape. A teat extended itself from the niche, grazing her cheek; Rak automatically turned and sucked at it. Papa patted the soft little head, sniffing at the hairless scalp. The metallic scent of Mother’s innards still clung to it. A tiny flailing hand closed around one of his fingers.

“Good grip. You’ll be a good worker,” mumbled Papa.

Rak’s early memories were of rocking movement, of Papa’s voice whispering to her as she sucked her sustenance, the background gurgle of Mother’s abdominal walls. Later, she was let down from the niche to the older children, a handful of plump bodies walking bow-legged on the undulating floor, bathed in the soft light from luminescent growths in the wall and ceiling. They slept in a pile, jostling bodies slick in the damp heat and the comforting rich smell of raw oil and blood.

Papa gathered them around his feet to tell them stories.

“What is Mother?” Papa would say. “She took us up when our world failed. She is our protection and our home. We are her helpers and beloved children.” Papa held up a finger, peering at them with eyes almost lost in the wrinkles of his face. “We make sure Her machinery runs smoothly. Without us, She cannot live. We only live if Mother lives.”

Rak learned that she was a female, a worker, destined to be big and strong. She would help drive the peristaltic engine in Mother’s belly, or work the locomotion of Her legs. Only one of the children, Ziz, was male. He was smaller than the others, with spindly limbs and bulging eyes in a domed head. Ziz would eventually go to the Ovary and fertilize Mother’s eggs. Then he would take his place in Mother’s head as pilot.

“Why can’t we go to Mother’s head?” said Rak.

“It’s not for you,” said Papa. “Only males can do that. That’s the order of things: females work the engines and pistons so that Mother can move forward. For that, you are big and strong. Males fertilize Mother’s eggs and guide her. They need to be small and smart. Look at Ziz.” Papa indicated the boy’s thin arms. “He will never have the strength you have. He would never survive in the Belly. And you, Rak, will be too big to go to Mother’s head.”

Every now and then, Papa would open the Nursery door and talk to someone outside. Then he would collect the biggest of the children, give it a tight hug, and usher it out the door. The children never came back. They had begun work. Soon after, a new baby would be excreted from the tube.

When Rak was big enough, Papa opened the Nursery’s sphincter door. On the other side stood a hulking female. She dwarfed Papa, muscles rolling under a layer of firm blubber.

“This is Hap, your caretaker,” said Papa.

Hap held out an enormous hand.

“You’ll come with me now,” she said.

Rak followed her new caretaker through a series of corridors connected by openings that dilated at a touch. Dull metal cabling veined the smooth, pink flesh underfoot and around them. The tunnel was lit here and there by luminous growths, similar to the Nursery, but the light more reddish. The air became progressively warmer and thicker, gaining an undertone of something unfamiliar that stuck to the roof of Rak’s mouth. Gurgling and humming noises reverberated through the walls, becoming stronger as they walked.

“I’m hungry,” said Rak.

Hap scraped at the wall, stringy goop sloughing off into her hand.

“Here,” she said. “This is what you’ll eat now. It’s Mother’s food for us. You can eat it whenever you like.”

It tasted thick and sweet sliding down her throat. After a few swallows Rak was pleasantly full. She was licking her lips as they entered the Belly.

More brightly lit and bigger than the Nursery, the chamber was looped through and around by bulging pipes of flesh. Six workers were evenly spaced out in the chamber, kneading the flesh or straining at great valves set into the tubes.

“This is the Belly,” said Hap. “We move the food Mother eats through her entrails.”

“Where does it go?” asked Rak.

Hap pointed to the far end of the chamber, where the bulges were smaller.

“Mother absorbs it. Turns it into food for us.”

Rak nodded. “And that?” She pointed at the small apertures dotting the walls.

Hap walked over to the closest one and poked it. It dilated, and Rak was looking into a tube running left to right along the inside of the wall. A low grunting sound came from somewhere inside. A sinewy worker crawled past, filling up the space from wall to wall. She didn’t pause to look at the open aperture.

“That’s a Leg worker,” said Hap. She let the aperture close and stretched.

“Do they ever come out?” said Rak.

“Only when they’re going to die. So we can put them in the engine. Now. No more talking. You start over there.” Hap steered Rak toward the end of the chamber. “Easy work.”