and sat down heavily, staring at her bandaged hand. Seconds after she’d let go, Satyendra’s eyes opened and his face split in a yawn which became a stretch, whole bodied.
She ignored that too, and began to pull away the knots holding the bandage in place. Sweat stained the armpits of her nightdress and the back of her neck was slick with it. Is this nerves? Or is it fever?
Straps were removed and the wad of padding peeled away. A puffy red dot sat in the middle of her palm, the skin around it raised and angry. After rifling through the bag the cook had given her she found a small but very sharp knife. Slipping it from its sheath she pressed the point to her palm.
There was nothing.
She pressed harder, making sure that the point pierced the skin. The wound was sufficiently deep enough she could make blood seep out by squeezing the sides of her hand together.
Why can’t I feel anything? I’ve left it too late. By the Thrice Blessed Suns, I’ve left it too late.
She moved the point of the knife further down until it sat at the thick edge where palm meets wrist. It felt clumsy using her left hand but she pressed the knife in and, when she saw rather than felt the blade, made several more cuts around the area.
Each time, her horror deepened.
How can I protect Satyendra out here with just one hand? It’s not even my good one!
All of a sudden she missed the castle, and all the staff there. Several of them were her friends. She felt sure that she could manage if they were here. But she was alone, and her baby needed her to be strong.
I am more than strong, she reminded herself. I am Sapphire. She looked at her arm. Little streams of blood ran down it to start dripping from her elbow but she ignored them.
She directed the point of the knife above her forearm.
Please let this next one hurt. Please.
Just as she raised the blade, the flap at the front of the wagon was pulled open.
‘What’s going on in here?’ shouted Varg.
She brought the knife down and cried out, delighted. Never before had the sensation of pain brought such relief.
She heard Varg say ‘fuck’ several times, then felt the wagon come to an abrupt halt as he ducked in to join her. His face grew pale behind his beard. ‘What are you doing? Are you possessed?’
‘No,’ she gasped.
‘There’s blood everywhere!’ He grabbed the hand that was holding the knife. ‘Do you want to get us killed?’
A little indignation stirred within her. ‘I am not trying to kill anyone, quite the opposite.’
‘Shit and suns and fuck! They’re going to smell us a mile away.’ He picked up a piece of cloth, looked at her arm and then handed it to her with a look of disgust. ‘Clean yourself up.’
‘Aren’t you going to help me?’
‘I’ve been too close to you as it is,’ he muttered, releasing her arm and backing away. ‘You’re going to bring half the fucking Wild on our heads!’
Chandni replaced the bandage but it took her several tries to retie the straps. Though she couldn’t feel her right hand, she found she could flex the fingers. It was strange, as if the digits belonged to someone else. She forced herself to hope. Surely it was a good sign that her fingers still responded to her commands? If the poison had worked, wouldn’t the hand be useless?
Satyendra made an unhappy noise, one that would be followed by a proper cry if she did not feed him.
‘Ssh,’ she said as she opened the cook’s cloak and pulled down one side of her dress. ‘I’m coming. Ssh.’
When she picked him up, Satyendra’s mouth was flapping, fishlike, so eager that he missed, head-butting her shoulder before latching on.
She stroked his head as he grunted, content.
The wagon was moving again, faster this time, with Varg’s deep voice a constant companion to the creaking wheels. She found both the tone and the content objectionable.
Being careful not to disturb her son’s feeding, Chandni edged to the front of the wagon. No suns were visible now but a little gold still inflamed the sky. Long grasses swept to either side of the road. Not the short, leafy clumps she was used to at the castle but thick stalks over half her height, each one covered in buds the size of her thumbnail, each bud shaped like a human ear.
As Varg muttered, the grasses rippled, the nearest stalks bent by the sound, touching their neighbour, whispering and passing it on. Like a breeze, Varg’s voice was carried away across the fields.
Chandni’s eyes followed the trail until they came to rest on a distant shape, an anomaly in the gloom; she couldn’t tell if it were a person or animal, but whatever it was towered above the grass.
She cleared her throat and pointed. ‘What is that?’
The grasses caught her words, scattering them across the fields in a flurry of frightened echoes. ‘What is that, what is that, what is that …’
As the ripples reached the shape in the distance it began to move, unfolding long appendages. Fabric hung down from them like a pair of wings, tattered. And then it began to glide, and Chandni could not be sure if the grasses simply parted for it or if they were passing it along, one row to the other.
‘That,’ said Varg, ‘is a Whispercage.’
Glider started to whine and Varg responded by shouting and applying a boot to the Dogkin’s backside. ‘Go faster you stupid lump or you’ll really have something to complain about!’
‘Faster, faster, faster,’ said the grasses, ‘you’ll really have something, you’ll really have something, you’ll really have something.’
She had thought it big before, but as the Whispercage got closer Chandni realized she had not done the creature justice. It was nearly three times her height and twice as wide, with a long stretched skeleton, wrapped in rippling cloth.
Or is that loose skin? Chandni’s gorge began to rise. Is it wearing someone else’s skin?
‘It’s going to overtake us!’ she cried.
‘Take us,’ echoed the grasses, ‘take us, take us.’
‘We’re nearly past the fields,’ shouted Varg, ‘it won’t touch us unless we look at it or talk to it, understand?’
‘I understand,’ she replied, as the grasses whispered: ‘Touch us, touch us, touch us.’
‘That means keep your fucking eyes down and your mouth shut.’
Chandni bit back a retort and did as she was told.
With Glider’s five legs pumping for all they were worth, the wagon seemed to fly along the path, but the Whispercage was waiting for them up ahead. It leant out from the edge of the grasses, its arms – long poles of dirty bone – held high.
As they went past, the wagon rocked sideways as the Whispercage latched onto it, and Chandni felt something brush her cheek. It was surprisingly gentle, and soft as peach skin.
Don’t look up, she told herself.
From the corner of her eye, she could see the edge of the fields in sight, the grasses thinning out and giving way to a wall of twisted trees.
She forced herself not to react to the movement by her ear. The Whispercage was right next to her. In her periphery, she was aware of it watching, waiting for her to turn and make eye contact. It wore a hood of sorts, and within it something moved where she’d expect to find a mouth, a tongue-petalled flower, opening.
Don’t look up.
Satyendra’s