Sam Sykes - Black Halo

Humans don’t have thoughts , she growled inwardly. Humans only have desires. Humans desire gold, desire land, desire whatever it is they don’t have. Father told you what humans were .

And through it all, she heard the distant beat of a heart. The sound of a heart that had beat fiercely enough to drown out the sound of a roaring sea. The sound of a heart that she was supposed to cut out, the sound of a heart that had fed the pulse in a throat she was supposed to slit. His heart, his pulsating, hideous human heart that she had heard before they departed. His horrific heart. His human heart. The heart she heard now.

But that’s just a memory . This knowledge came without forcing, the thought resounding in her head only once. Those are just sounds. He’s dead now .

And the memories were gone, leaving that thought hanging inside her head.

He’s dead. Your problems are solved .

She rose up, stiffly. She turned from the ocean, not looking back.

He was dead. He was a dead human. Her world was restored. She didn’t feel anything for a dead human. Dead humans did not have heartbeats. She was a shict once more.

This is more than luck , she told herself. This is a blessing from on high .

That thought gave her no comfort as she walked over the dunes and away from the shore.

She was a shict. For her, all that was on high was Riffid.

And Riffid did not give blessings.

‘ What is a human? ’ her daughter had asked.

She had paused before answering.

‘ Your father should have told you .’

‘ You said Father didn’t know what a shict was .’

‘ I didn’t say that .’

‘ You implied it .’

‘ And you wonder why people hit you .’

‘ If you can’t answer it, just say so and I’ll figure it out for myself .’

‘ A human is … not a shict .’

‘ That’s it? ’

‘ That’s enough .’

‘ No, it isn’t .’

‘ Has anyone ever told you you’re amazingly bull-headed? ’

‘ Grandfather says they filed down my antlers after I was born. But that’s not important. What is a human? ’

She had wandered away from their village, into the part of the forest where the earth beneath their feet and the ancestors that came before them were one.

‘ Humans are … not like us, but also like us. They fight, they kill, just as we do. And what we claim is ours, they claim is theirs. Our cause is righteous. They say theirs is, too. We do what we must. They do as they do .’

‘ Then how do we know they deserve to die? ’

She had stared at a grave marked with long white mourning feathers.

‘ Because they knew we deserved it .’

She journeyed over the dunes, through the valleys of the beach as the sun continued to crawl across the sky. Always, she found her gaze drifting off to the distant forest and shortly thereafter to her own belly as it let out an angry growl.

The knowledge that any food to be had would be found in the dense foliage gnawed at her as surely as the hunger that struggled to wrest control over her from a frail and withering hope inside her. In fact, she knew, it would be wiser to go into the woods now, to begin the search for something to eat as soon as possible, lest she find herself too weary and starving to conduct a more thorough search later.

Still , she reminded herself, it’s not like it’s hard to find something to eat in a forest. You’ve never had trouble sniffing out roots and fruits before. Hell, find a dark spot and you can probably find a nice, juicy grub .

The image of a writhing, ivory larva filled her mind. She smacked her lips. The fact that she was salivating at the thought of a squishy, tender infant insect brimming with glistening guts, she reasoned, was likely a strong indicator that she should go seek one out, if only to keep herself from dwelling on how bizarre this entire train of thought was.

And yet, no matter how strong the reasoning, she continued to walk along the beach, staring out over the waves. And always, no matter what she hoped to see, nothing but empty shoreline greeted her.

Stop it , she snarled inwardly. Forget them. They’re dead. And you will be, too, if you don’t find food soon. This isn’t what a shict does. Look, it’s easy. Just turn around .

She did so, facing the forest.

Now take a step forward .

She did so.

Now don’t look back .

That, as ever, was where everything went wrong.

She glanced over her shoulder, ignoring the instant frustration she felt for herself the moment she spied something dark out of the corner of her eye. Tucked behind a dune, bobbing in the water, she could see it: the distinct glisten of water-kissed wood.

Her heart rose in her chest as she spun about and began to hurry toward it, despite her own thoughts striving to temper her stride.

It’s wood , she told herself. It doesn’t mean anything beyond the fact that it’s wood. Don’t get your hopes up. Don’t get too excited. Remember the wreck. Remember the Akaneed .

As she drew closer, the boat’s shape became clearer: resting comfortably upon the shore, intact and unsullied. She furrowed her brow, cautioning her stride. This wasn’t her boat; hers was now in several pieces and probably jammed in one or two skulls right now.

So it’s someone else’s , she told herself. All the more reason to turn back now. No one with any good intentions would be out here. It’s not them. It’s not him. Turn back . She did not, creeping around the dune. Turn back. Remember you’re alive. Remember he’s dead. Remember they’re dead. They’re dead.

And, it became clear as she peered around the dune, they were not the only ones.

A lone tree, long dead but clinging to the sandy earth with the tenacity only a very old one could manage, stood in the middle of a small, barren valley. She peered closer, spying rope wrapped tightly about its highest branches, hanging taut. The grey, jagged limbs bent, creaking in protest as macabre, pink-skinned fruit swayed in the breeze, hanging by their ankles from the ropes.

She recognised them, the humans hanging from the tree. Even with their throats slashed and their bodies mutilated, their blood splashed against roots that no longer drank, she knew them as crewmen from the Riptide , the ship she and her companions had travelled on before pursuing the tome, the ship whose crew was supposed to come seeking them after they had obtained the book.

Apparently, they had found something else.

About the base of the tree, they swarmed. Kataria was uncertain what they were, exactly. They didn’t look dangerous, though neither did they look like anything she had seen before. She peered closer, saw that they resembled roaches the size of small deer, sporting great feathery antennae and rainbow-coloured wing carapaces that twitched in time with each other. They chittered endlessly, making strange clicking sounds as they craned up on their rearmost legs to brush their antennae against the swaying corpses.

And then, in an instant, they stopped. Their antennae twitched soundlessly, all in the same direction. A shrill chittering noise went out over them and they scattered, scurrying over the dunes before whatever had alarmed them could come to them.

But Kataria came out around her cover, unafraid as she approached the whitetree. She was unafraid. She knew its name. She knew the men whose blood-drained bodies hung from it.

And she had seen this before.