Chapter Forty-Three of my current wip. As before, all and any comments very much appreciated

Please note: This is a weekly post

Jess had already faced the problem of what to do with a dead body when Poalt died. A new problem, requiring much thought. For whether in the mines, the manufactories, or within the GM Programme it was the Techs dealt with death. They took away the body and left the Monza to grieve. Or not. Having already lost their twin, the Monzas on the GM Programme were seldom affected by a clutch-mate’s demise. But how the Techs dealt with that body, Jess didn’t know.

He had observed various strategies amongst the various breeding pools on the various planets. Yet in all places, there was one constant. The dead was removed from the living. But first the innards were removed and the bulk of it buried. But with the dead companion’s life-force being strong in the blood, the group then consumed the heart and-or the liver. Though in some breed-pools, that heart was consumed by a specially lit fire. Jess was disinclined to enact this rite with Poalt. He doubted any would want to consume what remained of his life force. Besides, he had died of a virulent venom.

Regards the dead one’s remains, treatment varied. The corpse might be buried, or wedged in some high place, or secreted away in a cave. Or burned. With the former treatments, bones might later be gathered by the group for whatever their purposes. With all but one group he’d observed, all the dead person’s belongings were also treated as dead.

When Poalt died, the question Jess had to resolve, and fast, was how to separate his dead body from his clutch. He didn’t so much discuss this with Cela-Byi as to ponder it aloud.

“Make of it an offering to the shore dragons,” she said.

Jess had seen the way those dragons tore into flesh. He shuddered at the thought of that happening to Poalt. Yet Poalt wasn’t alive in that body. Where his spirit had gone, Jess didn’t know. Still, he objected, “That flesh is tainted with venom.”

“Banmakka venom. It harms no Byi-kin.”

So that’s what Jess did with Poalt’s body. He took it by flier to the shore, close but not too close to the dragons’ burrows, and laid the lifeless body on the sand. And quickly retreated. That was one feeding frenzy he didn’t want to see.

Now here was another death.

Kookka slumped beside Jess on the soft seat in the front-cell, leaned far forward, head in his hands but not weeping. “I feel so wretched with guilt.”

Jess said nothing but allowed his friend the space to talk. And what could he say? That he too felt guilty.

“I didn’t want her. She wasn’t to me like Cela-Byi is to you. No affection, she just…drew me into her. Baby-bumping cock,” Kookka growled his anger at his anatomy.

Jess rested a calming hand on Kookka’s back.

“The screams…” Kookka shuddered and hung his head. “Never ending, they’ll haunt me. I as good as killed her so Antel says.”

Jess knew exactly what Antel said. That a Monza foetus grew too fast for the Itamakki womb. That there was a discordance between the two species not yet overcome by the Techs’ GM Programme. And Jess too had seeded a foetus. How long before Cela-Byi also died. Kookka mightn’t weep, but he would. He would miss her far more than he ever missed his sister Jilly.

“There was blood,” Kookka said. “So much blood. Antel says that’s what killed her, that she lost so much blood. Don’t mistake me, Jess. I might talk like I’m grieving but, truth, in many more ways I’m relieved that she’s gone. I didn’t want her. I didn’t. Truth, she was an evil cat, verbal claws always raking your Cela. Trying to turn Segul against her too. She didn’t want to be here. She hated us.”

Jess left Kookka to hang his head while he stood in the hive’s doorway and gazed out at their rocky base. What to do? Take Tawan’s body back to Toki-dow, to her family, her people? If that, then it must be done this day. He couldn’t allow death to remain this close to the living. And where was Segul? She would be grieving, of course she would. But where was she?

He found her in the front-cell of Cela-Byi’s hive, with Joel.

Jess spread his hands, his arms, in helpless gesture and hoped one of these three might help him. But Segul didn’t even look up, her head buried in Joel’s embrace. She was sobbing, her body shaking.

“I have to move her,” Jess said – to Joel, to Cela-Byi. “We must cleanse the hive. Segul is best to stay here for now. Does that suit?”

“Where will you take her?” Cela-Byi asked.

He lifted a shoulder, hoping she’d say.

“Not to the dow,” she said. “You heard what Anji-Tiki-ta said. They both belong to this god-hill now.”

“I can’t do with her what we did with Poalt,” he said. “Can’t you ask Segul? What does she want done? What’s the way with your people?”

“There’s a cave. Close to the dow. But Tiki-ta has forbidden it.”

“What about your cave, the dragon cave?”

Segul hadn’t spoken, hadn’t looked up, hadn’t stopped sobbing. But now she did shake her head. They waited for her to speak.

“Kuca-house, we’re cat-spirit.” Her words were thick with her crying. “She should return to our spirit-kin. I show you where.”

“I’ll take her,” Joel said.

Jess didn’t argue with that, glad to have that duty taken from him.

As soon as left alone with Cela-Byi in her hive he scooped her into his arms and held her so close her heart hammered next to his own. “I’m worried,” he whispered into her hair. “I’m so very worried for you. If you—”

“Hush. Don’t speak it. Best not think it. We enjoy what time we have. And maybe it won’t happen to me. I tell same to Joel.”

“Is Segul—?”

“Not yet. But he wanted not to be with her, not ever to bump her. And that would hurt them both more than to face this possible death. Same as us, I could not be without you.”

“But—”

“Hush. One death is not all deaths. One woman is not all women.”

But she hadn’t seen those bones in that cave. All those women. All with babies. Was that how they died? Yet she had seen the drawing. He asked her if the Itamakku had any stories of women disappearing, many of them all together.

She drew away from him. “One day, our stories tell, a star-spirit waded out of the sea. It was Nozim, the sea-goat. And he herded the women – not all of them, only the young – and took them out to sea and never were they seen again. Unless they be sea-sprites.”

Continues on Monday

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