Though eating might not be what the creatures did. Had they eaten her companions? Had they killed Kane the Brain and Willit and Susso? Had they tortured them, enslaved them? What? Would it make her feel better to know they were worse off than she? Not really. Since she’d been alone, she’d longed for them. Even slob-lipped Willit. Especially Susso.
She rolled onto her side, finding the stony hollow that fit the curve of her hip. Near the opening, the jar in the niche stood as it had when she had found the cave. Never moved. Never looked into. Why was that?
“Because you know what’s inside,” she told herself soberly. “You’ve always known what’s inside.”
Mother had made that jar. Mother had painted it, using the rib of a furze plant for a brush, her own blood for the paint. Mother had fired it, so the blood turned black on the white clay. Mother had told her daughter to put her bones inside, in the care of Mother Darkness. If there were any bones.
When Snark had gone looking for Mother, overcoming her fear, deciding to disobey the prime command (“Stay in the cave!”), she’d found bones. She’d been hiding that from herself for many years, but here at the trembling edge of sleep, nothing could be truly hidden. Longings came out, and hates, and loves, and old, old memories that she’d tried to obliterate. Old horror would sprout, old bones would walk, old blood would fountain up.
Though homelier things returned as well. Like the stories of Breadh that Mother had sung.
“Homely Breadh of long ago!”
Snark remembered once when they’d been inside the cave, Mother cross-legged, Snark in Mother’s lap. She hadn’t been Snark then. Mother had called her Laluzh, Laluzh-love, Laluzh dearest daughter. Laluzh, last remnant of the faithful.
“I sing, Laluzh-love, of our homeworld of Breadh, where we patterned our lives as the weaver the cloth, light and dark, day and night, sorrow-joy, pleasure-pain. On Breadh we were born, on her bosom we grew, there we found our nearhearts, there we danced when we wed. On Breadh’s shoulder we grieved when our loved ones were lost. So it was, so had been, for time out of time.”
This was story rhythm, a kind of chanting. Mother could do it for hours. Sometimes the story rhythm changed, becoming inexorable:
“But then the tempter came. Ancient and sly was he. Rising from dark of caves. Mammoth with mighty feet. Furred like Behemoth he. Whispered in darkness, he. Telling the songfathers. How they might never die. If they would make the choice. Leaving beloved Breadh. Where even animals. Were kindred souls to us. Leaving behind our gods—”
“And the old men listened to the tempter,” interrupted Snark, anything to break that rhythm, that pounding.
Mother nodded, rocking back and forth, resuming the sweet motion Snark loved, like being cradled on the waves of the sounding sea: shush shush shush, to and fro. Mother sighed as she answered, not in story talk but as herself.
“The old men listened. They listened to sweet words and tempting promises. They bowed down before the tempter and called him the Gracious One. Gracious to them, indeed, for the price demanded was not paid by them but by the womenfolk. Godmongers have always found it easy to pay for their beliefs with women’s lives …
“So, they chose. Some of the people on Breadh said they would not do what the tempter ordered, they would remain behind, on Breadh, but no one was allowed to remain. Even after they were taken to the new home, the faithful refused the new commandments. Though we pretended to follow them, it was in appearance only. In secret, generation after generation, we remembered the old ways and recited the old prayers.”
“For we are the faithful,” Laluzh/Snark said.
“We are the faithful, Laluzh-love. And faithful we remained, even when a traitor among us denounced us to the songfathers. Then we were reviled and persecuted, some of us were tortured and killed. We decided to run away, to go back the way our ancestors had come, to return to Breadh.”
“Many of us. Many, many of us!”
Mother didn’t answer for a long time. There was only the shush shush shush of her garment on the floor as she rocked. Her face was wet when she spoke. “There were many of us who came to the gate. Enough of us to open that gate, for it is a heavy gate indeed, made of stone set upon stone. We were many as we came through that gate, but who knows if any came to Blessed Breadh. A few families of us ended here, and only Mother Darkness knows where the others ended.”