Chương 80: What He Learned to Eat

Zayn learned that hunger had several forms. Before Rhel-Fosse, he had thought he understood hunger. The hunger of a body that has not eaten enough. The hunger of a boy forgotten in a room too silent. The low, humiliating hunger of those who watch others receive something without ever reaching out. Then Rhel-Fosse had taught him another language. The hunger that looks at a still-warm corpse. The hunger that makes the word impossible negotiable.

The hunger that no longer asks what a thing is, only whether it can be kept inside. Among the Mist-Fangs, two months later, he was still learning a third form. The hunger that stops. Not because it is dead. Because a bowl is set in front of him before it needs to scream. That was the hardest one to understand. Zayn sat behind Brakka's hut, bare-chested despite the cold morning, his forearms resting on a low plank. Dark marks ran beneath his skin, appearing, vanishing, returning like black fish under dirty water.

Brakka stood in front of him with her measuring stick. Narek was crouched beside them, supposedly observing in silence. He had been failing for ten minutes.

"It looks like stone-sickness," he said. Zayn did not look up.

"You look like an educational mistake, and Brakka still lets you walk around."

"Narek says Brakka says I'm promising." Brakka grunted.

"I said he promises to be exhausting." Zayn slowly turned his head toward Narek.

"You see? Official diagnosis." Narek pretended not to be offended. Badly. Brakka struck the plank with her stick.

"Again." Zayn inhaled. Slowly. Not like Korr. Not like Odran. Not like the clan's warriors when their aura rose beneath the skin of the world. His own breath carried nothing noble. It only served to keep his body from panicking at the moment he was about to betray it on purpose. The mark on his tongue heated. He thought of the hard hide. Not the whole creature. Just the texture. The density. The resistance. Do not want to become the beast. Do not want to take everything. Do not mix. Only one thing.

A small dark plate appeared on his right forearm. It covered an area the width of two fingers. Stable. Zayn clenched his teeth. The pain was there, but shorter. Cleaner. It no longer spread to his shoulder like a startled animal. It stayed around the transformation, bit locally, then waited. Brakka pressed the blunt tip of her knife against the plate.

"Hold." He held. One second. Two. Three. Four. On the fifth, the plate trembled. On the sixth, it began to split. Zayn released before it burst. The skin turned human again. A little blood beaded up. Not much. Narek widened his eyes.

"Six beats."

"Six and a half," Zayn corrected.

"No."

"You count like you fight. Badly." Narek wanted to answer, but Brakka set a hand on his head and pushed it slightly downward.

"Silence." He went quiet. Brakka examined Zayn's arm.

"Better." Zayn blinked slowly.

"Twice in one week. You're becoming sentimental."

"You bleed less. That makes it less filthy to clean."

"Ah. There it is. I was worried." Brakka set her knife down.

"Now claws." Zayn looked at his hand. He did not like the claws. The plates were painful, but simple. Defense. Resistance. Skin that lied for a few seconds. Claws demanded something else. A movement outward. An intention. A will to tear. And the Fall always answered that kind of idea better. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Too well. He placed two fingers on the plank. Inhaled. Thought of the gorge scavenger. Not its hunger. Not its gouged eye.

Not its warm body under his. Only the claws. The mark heated. His nails darkened. The points pushed out slowly, less violently than before, split and imperfect, as if a foreign beast were still trying to grow through a human hand. Narek did not speak. For once. Zayn drove the claws into the wood. He pulled. Shavings came loose. The claws held. Three seconds. Then four. On the fifth, his index finger cramped. He stopped. Too late to avoid the pain, early enough to avoid tearing.

When his fingers became human again, only the base of two nails was bleeding. Brakka nodded.

"You're learning." Zayn drew his hand back.

"Dangerous sentence. I could get used to it." Narek leaned toward the scored plank.

"Still shallower than a clan child."

"Narek." The boy raised his hands when Brakka turned toward him.

"I'm only saying what's true." Zayn looked at the marks. They were weak. Clean, almost. Not enough to kill. Not enough to intimidate a real warrior. But enough to climb, to hold, to open a throat if the other person was already too close. He had learned to reduce. That was the strangest part. Gluttony had given him a logic of excess. Swallow. Keep. Imitate. Take from flesh what it possessed. And the Mist-Fangs were teaching him the opposite. Do not take everything. Do not use it too long. Do not mix.

Do not let hunger choose. It was almost offensive. They were not teaching him how to become more monstrous. They were teaching him how to be monstrous without dying immediately. Which, to Brakka, seemed to count as a form of care. She set a heavy hand on his shoulder. Not gently. But without violence.

"A bad tool can build, if a bad hand learns." Zayn said nothing. Narek smiled.

"That means you're a bad hand."

"Thank you, badly made little brother."

"Twisted brother."

"Yes, yes. Don't get sentimental, you'll lose fur." Narek bared his teeth. Then a horn sounded west of the camp. Not the alarm. The return of the hunt. Brakka gathered her tools.

"Go help." Zayn looked at his bandages.

"I'm in a medical session."

"Finished."

"You literally just said my body can open from the inside."

"Then help without opening." She left. Narek sprang up.

"Come on." Zayn put his half-mask back over the upper half of his face.

"You realize I could refuse?" Narek looked at him as if the sentence were absurd.

"No." Then he ran toward the entrance of the camp. Zayn stayed still for a moment. He could have refused. Technically. He was no longer tied. Not that morning. Not there. He could have gone back to his hut, slept, rested, kept his strength for himself. Instead, he stood. And followed. The hunters came back with a white beast. It was enormous, nearly twice the size of a deer, with pale fur clotted by mud and black antlers twisted forward. Three spears were still lodged in its flank.

Saeva walked beside it, a cut on her cheek. Odran carried one of the hind legs over his shoulder with two other hunters. The beast was dead. But the camp received it like something that still deserved caution. They did not throw it to the ground. They lowered it. They did not shout victory. They thanked the hunters, then the animal, in that strange order Zayn was beginning to understand without being able to imitate it. Korr traced a mark of ash on the beast's forehead. The elder spoke three sentences.

The children stayed quiet through the whole rite. Even the smallest ones. Zayn remained in the background with Narek.

"What is it?" he asked. Narek answered under his breath:"A Mist-Horn. Rare. It comes down from the high woods when the rain changes. Its meat feeds many. Its tendons are good. Its antlers keep bad dreams away from the little ones' tents." Zayn looked at the animal.

"And its strength?" Narek frowned.

"Its what?"

"Its strength. You don't take it?"

"We eat it."

"That's not what I mean." Narek looked at him. Then understood. A little.

"You mean like you." Zayn did not answer. Narek tensed slightly. Not out of fear. Out of instinctive disagreement.

"No. We don't take a beast like that."

"You kill it."

"Yes."

"You eat it."

"Yes."

"You use its tendons, its antlers, its hide."

"Yes."

"But you don't take it?" Narek searched for words. That was rare. The gray-eared boy usually spoke too fast. This time, he slowed, as if the answer had to be set down properly in order not to get dirty.

"It gives because it fell in a just hunt. We take what its body leaves. Not what it was." Zayn stared at the dead beast. The concept should have struck him as ridiculous. Maybe it was. But he understood the difference. Among the Mist-Fangs, eating was not always possessing. Killing was not always stealing. Using was not always degrading. Zayn's Gluttony, on the other hand, did not know how to make that distinction. It did not ask, what remains honorably? It asked, what can still become me? Narek was looking at him.

"You can't do that here." Zayn turned his head toward him.

"Do what?"

"Look at the Mist-Horn like a piece of you waiting." Silence. The sentence went in deeper than it should have. Narek had not said it like an accusation. Not really. He had said it like a younger brother seeing a hand move too close to a sacred fire and not wanting it to burn down the whole camp. Zayn smiled faintly.

"You give orders now?"

"Yes."

"Terrible development."

"Brakka says you need a lot of orders."

"Brakka should be studied as a natural disaster." Narek smiled, but his gaze stayed serious.

"Promise." Zayn looked again at the beast. The mark on his tongue was barely warm. Curious. Not hungry. Not yet. He could. He knew he could. Taste one small part. See whether dense fur gave thermal protection. Whether Mist-Horn tendons improved support. Whether the black antlers could be mimicked into a defensive growth. But he did not. Not because it would be morally wrong. Because, for once, someone had asked him before he needed to lie afterward.

"I promise," he said. Narek stared at him.

"Really?"

"Really." The boy sniffed. Then nodded.

"Good." Zayn looked at him.

"Did you just sniff me?"

"Yes."

"To verify a promise?"

"Yes."

"I hate this continent." Narek smiled broadly.

"No." Zayn wanted to reply. The sentence stayed in his throat. No. Not entirely. And that too was a problem. The butchering of the Mist-Horn lasted all afternoon. Zayn took part in it. Badly. At first. He knew how to cut for survival, to take a useful part quickly before the smell drew something worse. The Mist-Fangs cut as if they were telling a story. Every part had a name. A destination. A reason. The best cuts to the wounded, the children, the hunters who had come back from the greatest risks.

The tendons to Brakka and the crafters. The hide to be dried. The bones to be polished. The heart shared between those who had landed the final blow and those who had tracked it since dawn. Zayn was given a piece of grilled liver. He looked at it suspiciously. Saeva, sitting on a stump, said:"Eat. It's an honor."

"In human lands, a lot of dangerous phrases begin with 'it's an honor.'""Here too." He ate it. The taste was strong. Rich. Normal. His body accepted it. The mark on his tongue demanded nothing. Narek, beside him, watched like an unusually small prison guard.

"I'm not going to swallow your deer's soul, relax," Zayn said.

"It's not a deer."

"My apologies to its taxonomic family."

"What?"

"Nothing." Korr approached as the sun was going down. He held a small piece of black wood, taken from one of the Mist-Horn's antlers. He offered it to Zayn.

"For your mask." Zayn took it. The piece was smooth, dark, light despite its density.

"Why?"

"Because you promised Narek." Zayn looked at the wood.

"And?"

"A promise should have weight." The old chief gestured toward the half-mask.

"Attach it. You'll remember you didn't take everything." Zayn fell silent. The piece of wood felt tiny in his hand. Ridiculous. And yet, it weighed. Not like a weapon. Not like a tool. Like a chosen limit. He almost hated Korr for that.

"You have a very aggressive culture around symbolic objects," he said.

"Yes."

"At least you admit it." Korr turned away.

"Tomorrow, you hunt with Saeva." Zayn lifted his head.

"I thought I was still in emotional recovery after the sacred liver."

"You walk. You promise. You eat. So you hunt."

"Impeccable logic. I should have stayed more pathetic." Korr stopped.

"You still are." Then he walked off. Narek burst out laughing. Zayn stared at the chief's back.

"One day, I'm going to find a people less honest." Saeva answered from her stump:"You were with humans." He pointed a finger at her.

"Low blow."

"True."

"Even worse." That night, Zayn tied the piece of black wood to the strap of his half-mask. He did it alone, in his hut. A small hole made with a heated point. A thin strip of leather. A simple knot. The fragment hung near his left temple, barely visible beneath the scored leather. He could have torn it off. No one would have known. He did not. Then he took off the mask and set the broken mirror in front of him. The mark on his tongue was still there. Black. Branched. Calm. He opened and closed his mouth.

Then looked at the half-mask. The leather stolen from a dead Ashen. The old blood in the seams. The black wood given after a promise. Two things that should never have belonged to the same object. Like him, perhaps. He set the mask beside Narek's small carving. The limping beast. The black wood. Two useless objects. Two things he had not taken. Two things given or imposed some other way than through fear. He sat looking at them for a long time. That night, hunger did not scream.

Gluttony remained there, in his tongue, in his flesh, in his power. But for the first time, it was not alone in his mouth. There was also the taste of grilled liver shared around the fire. The taste of a promise kept. The bitter taste, almost unbearable, of not having taken everything when he could have. Zayn lay down. Outside, the Mist-Fangs slept in incomplete circles. Rain began again. Soft. On the tent hides, on the palisades, on the black antlers drying near the fire.

And in the shadows, farther than the wolf-dogs could smell, a pale trace was driven into the bark of a tree. A white arrow. Too fine. Too elegant. Too clean to belong to the clans. In the morning, someone would find it. And the camp that had learned to feed the demonic human would begin to wonder what other people had already noticed him.