Elizabeth Bear: Bone and Jewel Creatures

The Bey’s man did not mention the bed or the cage in the corner, and the child remained as cannily concealed as a cat for the duration of both his visit and that of old Madam Oshanka, the Northerner, who had come to collect the Artificed skeleton of her small curly dog, which Bijou had re-dressed in its own tanned, grey-muzzled skin.

Lupe had watched the process with suspicious lenses, but once it became evident that the small nervous Artifice was not staying, seemed to have accepted its presence without baring jeweled teeth. Hawti, Bijou suspected, had made something of a game of pretending to be about to step on the darting creature—but Bijou was certain that it was a game, for Hawti was perfectly capable of dodging crabs and kittens made of bone and gemstones and precious metal.

Bijou’s Artifices made old Madam Oshanka nervous, which Bijou found ridiculous, considering what she was carrying from Bijou’s loft cradled in her arms. But if a little fur and padding and glass eyes made a difference—well, so be it.

Bijou thought of Madam Oshanka as old, but she was ten years younger than Bijou. That didn’t seem significant when Madam Oshanka’s back was bent like a gaff and her hands shivered with every gesture, and she wore so many coats and rugs that if she had not been attended by her coterie of strong young servants, she would have looked more like a carpet-seller’s stall than a great Ordinary lady.

Bijou showed her out and gestured Hawti to bar the door. Restive, clattering, the elephant did so. With relief, Bijou turned back to her loft, a private space once more. Private—except for the bright eyes and strip of forehead that had appeared above the covers on the bed.

The child had awakened calm and free of fever. Its knees were drawn up, a fragile barrier. From the silhouette under the blanket, Bijou could tell it held the stump of its arm pressed hard to the ribcage, but its breath came normally, and it had been sensible enough to get its back to the wall.

It looked like it was going to live. Which meant it was going to need a name. And breakfast.

“Ambrosias,” Bijou said, “start the tea.” She tromped closer to the bed, waiting for the child to make some sound or begin to withdraw, but it only watched her approach through narrowed eyes. Lupe, which had arrayed itself beside the bed, rose slowly on paws of wired and flexing bone. The child startled.

“Are you hungry?”

The child crouched back, left shoulder raised and forward, chin dropped to the collarbones. Protecting its injured arm and throat. Bijou opened her mouth and touched her toothless gums with callused fingertips. Her paws were nearly as deformed as the one she’d amputated from the child, she thought bitterly. If still more functional.

“Eat,” she said. “Hungry?”

Just an animal response, crouched and tense, but she noticed that the child feared Lupe far less than it did Bijou herself.

From the kitchen floated the aromas of stewing couscous and vegetables sautéed in oil with saffron and almonds. The child’s head turned. It sniffed deeply and its stomach gave a long, conversational rumble.

“Right,” Bijou said. “Eat.”

She turned away, trusting that the further smells of cooking would draw the child from its bed.

It ate like a mantling falcon, awkwardly crouched over the plate with its left elbow and right stump spread wide and spiky. At first it had just shoved its face into the plate and been shocked to find the food painfully hot, drawing back with a silent frustrated cringe. But it was clever; as soon as it had seen Bijou scooping mouthfuls of couscous onto a bent lime leaf pinched in her cramped hand and blowing on them, it mimicked her actions, shoveling as fast as it could bear, no more chewing its food than would the raptor it resembled. Bijou gummed her own food slowly, appreciating the spices and the aroma of argan oil through dimmed senses.

They sat chewing suspiciously at one another, Bijou settled on fat cushions and the child huddled on the floor, shivering with a chill across its naked shoulders.

Bijou, trying potential names inside her head, wondered if there was any way to convince it to wear clothes. Well, one thing at a time. It was clever. It could learn that warmth and shade were portable.

“Emeraude,” she said aloud.

The child cocked its head at her like a listening dog.

“Emeraude,” she said, and pushed her half-finished plate towards it across the floor. She had no appetite these years.

It crouched a little lower, suspicious. She nudged the plate again. “Emeraude,” she said. “Eat.”

The leather-wrapped stump of its right arm squeezed so hard against its brown torso that the flesh paled, but the left arm snaked out long and slid the plate closer.

Not a dog, Bijou decided, watching it.

Something shyer and more fastidious, wilder and even less certain.

A jackal-child of the jackal-city.

There’s more food here than the cub has ever seen, and no-one is trying to snatch it away. The old creature hurt the cub, before, but the cub barely remembers it except in a haze. Now it brings the cub food and soft things to nest in, and none of the other strange bony creatures seem afraid. So maybe the old creature is not an enemy. It’s not very big, anyway, and it moves with deliberation.

There’s some other creature in the shadows overhead that does the same thing. The cub can hear it there, the slow click of claws on wood every few heartbeats. It might be one of the bony creatures; everything here that does not smell of food or of the old creature or of chemicals smells dusty, musty, like desert-dried bone.

The wholesome smell of food drives out other considerations. Aromas carried on steam rise as if from the entrails of a fresh kill. But it’s hotter than that, hot enough to sear, so the cub crouches over the plate wishing it dared growl and protect its claim.

The fever and dizziness are gone, the wounded useless limb no longer a dragging anchor. There’s pain, but it’s bearable pain, except the itch of healing. The cub might gnaw at the healing stump, but no matter how it stretches its neck or twists its shoulder, teeth will neither reach the wound nor penetrate the leather.

The brothers-and-sisters could do it, for the teeth of the brothers-and-sisters is sharp. The cub has never been as sharp or strong or deft as the brothers-and-sisters. It can run longer, though, and wear down prey as the brothers-and-sisters cannot.

There is enough food here for all the brothers-and-sisters. The cub should bring some back, except the food is too hot to touch, and too crumbly to carry. It might pack its gullet and then regurgitate, but it doesn’t know where the brothers-and-sisters and the mother can be found, or how to find its way back to them even if it did.

So it eats, warily, all that its given, gorging until the skin of its stomach stretches uncomfortably. Then it angles itself out on the cushions, panting, and does not protest—not even a weak whine—when the old creature takes the remains of the food away. The cub is too sleepy and warm to be afraid.

It has to roll to the other side to pillow its head on its foreleg, though. Because the useless one is missing, which is probably why it hurts less now.

When Bijou heaved herself from the nest of cushions, the child was already twitching in dreams. Its resilience amazed her; the strength of animals, not to dwell in what could have been. Instead, it adapted, accepted, and carried on.