Black Halo

roasted amphibians would answer a dire question she had been privately pondering for ages now, and whether or not she licked her lips afterwards would dictate what he did next.

Not for the first time, she found herself glancing to the thick Spokesman Stick resting against the rock he sat upon.

Saying nothing, she bit one of the toasted creatures from the skewer. They were bitter and foul on her tongue, the aroma of cooked venom filling her nostrils. They were quite toxic, quite terrible to taste; she found herself wondering again what the point of cooking them was.

Texture, perhaps?

She bit down. A pungent flower bloomed in her mouth, and her lips threatened to rip themselves from her face, so fiercely did they pucker.

Apparently not.

Yet, under his stare, she continued to pop them into her mouth, chewing them up as much as she could tolerate before they slid as greasy lumps into her belly. She met his gaze as she did so, watching him as he watched her, as he continued staring.

No, she realised as she saw the careful steadiness of his eyes, not staring. Her own quivered a bit. Searching.

She did not ask for what. She didn’t want to know. She tried not to even think about it, for she didn’t want him to find it. Yet with eyes and instinct alike, he searched her.

She had sensed him reaching out again, as she had all that morning since rejoining him in the forest after reclaiming her clothes from the Owauku. She had sensed him peering through the veil of the Howling, whispering over its roar to her, trying to reach her through their communal instinct. Of him, she could sense nothing. Of her, it was clear by the faint twitch at the edges of his mouth that he sensed only frustration.

It was discouraging, she admitted to herself, that the connection they had shared on Sheraptus’ ship had been lost so completely. There was a comfort in his instinct melding with hers, a soothing earth to bury her fear beneath, and she dearly wished to feel it again. How had it been lost? she wondered. What had changed since last night?

She fought to keep the despair off her face.

Oh, right.

Meeting Naxiaw should have been the first thing to do that morning, she knew. Going to Lenk should have been something that never happened. She had already made her choice between them, between a human she should hate and a people she should adore, three times. She had made it when she looked into his eyes. She had made it when she heard him scream her name and plea for help.

She had made it when she turned away.

She was shict, she told herself. Her loyalty was to her people. She owed him no excuses, would give him no reasons, would offer no apologies. And she had remained faithful to that vow when she came to him that morning, found him shrugging his shirt over a freshly stitched wound.

She had met his eyes, then, and was unable to say anything at all.

Perhaps that was why she unconsciously evaded Naxiaw’s probing instinct: a fear he might see what happened that morning, a dread he might know why they couldn’t connect, a gripping terror he might have a solution.

She looked to the Spokesman again.

She found herself surprised to see it there still and not, say, embedded in the skulls of one or more of the humans. Naxiaw had seen them, after all, when the two shicts had pulled themselves from the reaching ocean. He had paused, a mere fifty paces from them, and stared. The implications that had seized her with a cold dread then had surely dawned on him as well.

Despite his captivity, he was still fresh and energetic. Coming from a fight, the humans were not. He was still strong, limber and swift. The humans were weak, exhausted and burdened with each other. His Spokesman leapt to his hands like an eager puppy. The humans’ weapons hung from their hands like leaden weights.

He was shict.

They were not.

She had braced herself, then. For what, she wasn’t sure. The uncertainty paralysed her, rendered her incapable of doing more than staring dimly, unsure what more to do. A shict, she knew, would have rushed down with him against them. A companion, she told herself, would have stood between him and them.

But a companion would not have stared into her friend’s eyes and turned away when he screamed her name.

And a shict would not have felt wounded when he stared back into hers the following morning and turned away when she said nothing.

Kataria had done nothing that night. Kataria continued to do nothing. As much as she cursed herself for it, that did not surprise her.

What did, however, was the fact that Naxiaw had followed her example and let the humans be. Of all the qualities the s’na shict s’ha were legendary for, tolerance and patience were not among them.

Why he had vanished into the forest, continued to wait here, she did not know. Why he had met her with nothing more than an offer of cooked amphibians, she could not say. What he hoped to find in her as he stared at her so intently, she had no idea.

But she wished, desperately, that he would stop.

He might have picked up on that desire through the Howling. Or he might have seen her squirming upon her log seat with an intensity usually reserved for dogs inflicted with parasites. He looked away, regardless.

‘Cook the poison from the frog and there is no point to consuming them,’ he said, producing a pouch from his hip. ‘Venom, you see, has a number of advantages.’

‘My father said it’s how the greenshicts keep their blood toxic,’ she replied.

‘Your father knew more about the s’na shict s’ha,’ he paused, letting the word hang in the air, ‘than he knew about his own people.’

‘You knew him?’

‘Many of us did. He was a knowledgeable leader. He knew what he was. He knew what he had to do. He knew he was a good shict, and so did we. He also knew the value of consuming venom.’

He reached into his pouch and produced a frog, still alive, its red and blue body glistening as it croaked contentedly in his palm, unafraid.

‘It is a temporary pain and so snaps one from stupor,’ he said. ‘It sharpens the senses, makes one more aware of the weakness of lesser pains … improves the function of the bowels.’

He said this pointedly, looking at her. She furrowed her brow in retaliation.

‘And?’ she pressed.

‘And,’ he continued, ‘it is what cures disease.’

She stiffened at the word, gooseflesh rising on her back.

‘One would assume,’ she whispered hesitantly, ‘that poison would make one as ill as disease.’

‘Poison does not make one ill; it merely poisons. It is a temporary element introduced to a person’s body. It enters and, assuming the host is strong enough, it leaves. If the host survives, she is more tolerant to the pain.’

He watched the frog as it tentatively waddled across his palm, testing this newfound footing.

‘Illness is born of something deeper,’ he said. ‘It infects, festers within the host, not as a foreign element, but as a part of her body. And because of this, it does not leave on its own. Even if symptoms disappear, the disease lingers and births itself anew. Because of this, the host cannot wait for it leave. It must be treated.’

His fingers clenched into a fist. There was a faint snapping sound.

‘Cured.’

She fought to hide the shudder that coursed through her, more for the sudden ruthlessness of the action than for the fact that he subsequently popped the raw amphibian into his mouth and swallowed.

‘A cured illness is a purified body. It leaves the host stronger. But this is all assuming she recognises the illness to begin with.’

He fixed his penetrating stare upon her, sliding past her tender, exposed flesh, past her trembling bones,