Steph Bennion - Paw-Prints of the Gods

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Paw-Prints of the Gods is a sequel to the novel Hollow Moon . You do not need to have read the earlier work to enjoy this latest story, for any salient plot devices are reintroduced and explained wherever necessary. If you wish to read Hollow Moon and the associated short stories (and I hope you do), the ebooks are available from all major online stockists.

The author would like to thank Karen for friendship, wine and invaluable help in proof-reading Paw-Prints of the Gods ; Victor for the front cover artwork; and of course Sarah, who despite all evidence to the contrary, still keeps me sane in this big, bad city.

THE CABIN WAS DARK, its inhabitants sound asleep. No one saw the burly yet stealthy figure as he stole through the door, plucked a bag from the floor and quickly retreated.

Outside, in the sweltering heat of the dome, the thief withdrew a touch-screen slate from the bag and switched it on. The scan of their latest discovery was in the list of recent items, but upon looking at the image of the strange carvings he saw the slate’s owner had superimposed twelve lines of text that were all-too familiar:

“The Falsafah prophecy,” murmured the thief. He switched off the slate and dropped it back into the bag. “This is one damn fool student who knows too much.”

RAVANA OPENED HER EYES and stared groggily at the grey shapes at the foot of her bed. The nurses never seemed to stop moving, but it was a silent ballet devoid of all personality and warmth. Yet the rest of her surroundings were no more inspiring, with the only attempt to brighten the white-walled windowless room being the pot of wilting flowers upon her bedside table. Now she was awake Ravana felt the need to make her own presence felt, but when she opened her mouth to speak she found herself lost for words, her mind sinking beneath a weight both heavy and cold as if a wet blanket had been draped over her thoughts.

The thinner of the hazy blurs moved closer and presented Ravana with a small glass of water and the customary daily cluster of brightly-coloured tablets.

“Your medication,” she snapped. Her English was tainted by a harsh Indian accent. Seeing Ravana hesitate, she thrust her hand closer and frowned.

“We must make you well again!” her portly colleague added merrily. She spoke with a sweeter Asian twist, which she then ruined by smashing her fist against an innocent spider upon the wall. “You must take them. They will make you big and strong!”

“Big and strong?” retorted her colleague. “Or do you mean fat and butch like you?”

“Let’s not get personal, Sister Lilith! We’re all professionals here.”

“There’s only one professional here, my dear Jizo,” grumbled Lilith. Still holding out the glass and tablets, she pointedly looked towards the mirror on the nearby wall and regarded her own reflection. “And I’m looking at her right now.”

Ravana hesitantly took the tablets from the nurse’s grasp, popped them into her mouth and washed them down with a gulp of water. The reassuring words of Jizo were hard to accept when the nurse herself stood licking bits of spider from her hand. The few hours Ravana was awake each day passed by in an unchanging haze, with the same dull migraine clouding her thoughts and the same ache gripping her muscles and bones as she lay upon the bed. Every morning, if it was indeed morning, saw a fixed routine of waking, taking medication, a trip to the bathroom, then the interview room and back to bed. It could almost be the exact same day, replayed over and over again in her head. Even the bickering of the nurses and the conversations in the interview room continued to go over the same ground. She had no idea how many days had passed since her arrival, for how and when she got here was part of the gap in her mind where memories had once been.

Her eyes remembered how to focus and the nurse-shaped blobs resolved into two middle-aged Indian women wearing nun-like grey habits and headscarves. Ravana vaguely recalled being told that she was in some sort of church-run hospice, for reasons not fully understood but something to do with not having enough money or the right insurance to be taken to the city hospital. Nurse Lilith had commented on more than one occasion that being ill away from your home world was a risky business in the late twenty-third century. Lilith now waited to take Ravana to the washroom, as she did every morning, though at the moment appeared to be more interested in whatever it was on the computer touch-screen slate in her hands. As far as Ravana could tell it was the same nurses she saw every day. Although their faces were far from memorable, the mean-spirited squabbling was a constant theme.

“Time to rise,” Jizo told her, interrupting her thoughts.

Ravana pulled back the thermal blanket, heaved herself out of bed and cringed as her weight fell heavily upon her weak right arm. She was getting more tired by the day, her hair felt dirty and lank against her face and she was desperately in need of a bath. She was dressed as always in a green smock that would never win any awards for fashion. Shuffling over to the wall mirror, she scrutinised her reflection. A bleary, drawn face stared back; she looked as bad as she felt and certainly a lot older than her sixteen years. The scar on the right side of her face lay vivid against her pale brown skin, the strange silver lines that faintly followed the crevices of the damaged tissue more apparent than ever. With a sigh, she pushed aside a matted length of black hair and turned as Lilith approached.

“Breakfast?” asked Ravana, weakly. She always awoke feeling hungry.

“Later,” Lilith replied, looking as if she did not care less. “Follow me.”

The nurse led her through the door and down a familiar white-walled corridor to the washroom, then waited outside while Ravana relieved herself in the cramped toilet and splashed a little water on her face to wake herself up. Every bare-footed step was painful and her muscles throbbed with the effort of moving bones that felt like fractured lumps of iron.

By the time Ravana emerged from the washroom, she was exhausted and ready to return to her room. The nurse instead led her in the opposite direction, past dozens of other blank doors until they reached one standing open. The routine was so familiar that Ravana did not wait for Lilith’s signal before stepping inside. The nurse did not follow but closed the door carefully behind her.

As Ravana’s gaze fell upon the two figures seated behind the desk, a flicker of both recognition and panic flashed through her thoughts and then fell back into the recesses of her clouded mind. It happened every time, then moments later the figures returned to being nothing more than grey shapes, wearing their habitual hooded cloaks that left their features in shadow. Both had the same curious halting and screeching voice she had decided sounded male. From previous meetings, the only way she had managed to tell them apart was by the motifs embroidered in silver thread upon the red sashes they wore around their shoulders and waists. One had tiny lions upon the scarlet fabric, while the other had stylised symbols of an archer ready to unleash an arrow. The nurses referred to them as the monks, which was as good a description as any.