His time is coming, she thought. He needs to eat more, in order to get his strength. And so do I.
Yet she was afraid—she was terrified—that it wasn’t just a matter of needing to eat more. There was something she needed to eat, something forspecial. The chap needed it in order to… well, to…
To finish the becoming.
Yes! Yes, that was it, the becoming! And surely she would find it in the banquet hall, because everything was in the banquet hall—a thousand dishes, each more succulent than the last. She would graze the table, and when she found the right thing—the right vegetable or spice or meat or fish-roe—her guts and nerves would cry out for it and she would eat… oh she would gobble. . .
She began to hurry along faster yet, and then to run. She was vaguely aware that her legs were swishing together because she was wearing pants. Denim pants, like a cowboy. And instead of slippers she was wearing boots.
Shor’boots, her mind whispered to her mind. Shor’boots, may they do yafine.
But none of this mattered. What mattered was eating, gorging (oh she was so hungry), and finding the right thing for the chap. Finding the thing that would both make him strong and bring on her labor.
She pelted down the broad staircase, into the steady beating murmur of the slo-trans engines. Wonderful smells should have overwhelmed her by now—roasted meats, barbecued poultry, herbed fish—but she couldn’t smell food at all.
Maybe I have a cold, she thought as her shor’boots stut-tut-tuttered on the stairs. That must be it, I must have a cold. My sinuses are all swollen and I can’t smell anything—
But she could. She could smell the dust and age of this place. She could smell damp seepage, and the faint tang of engine oil, and the mildew eating relentlessly into tapestries and curtains hung in the rooms of ruin.
Those things, but no food.
She dashed along the black marble floor toward the double doors, unaware that she was again being followed
—not by the gunslinger this time but by a wide-eyed, tousle-haired boy in a cotton shirt and a pair of cotton shorts. Mia crossed the foyer with its red and black marble squares and the statue of smoothly entwined marble and steel. She didn’t stop to curtsy, or even nod her head. That she should be so hungry was bearable.
But not her chap. Never her chap.
What halted her (and only for a space of seconds) was her own reflection, milky and irresolute, in the statue’s chrome steel. Above her jeans was a plain white shirt ( You call this kind a tee-shirt, her mind whispered) with some writing on it, and a picture.
The picture appeared to be of a pig.
Never mind what’s on your shirt, woman. The chap’s what matters. You must feed the chap!
She burst into the dining hall and stopped with a gasp of dismay. The room was full of shadows now. A few of the electric torches still glowed, but most had gone out. As she looked, the only one still burning at the far end of the room stuttered, buzzed, and fell dark. The white forspecial plates had been replaced with blue ones decorated with green tendrils of rice. The rice plants formed the Great Letter Zn, which, she knew, meant eternity and now and also come, as in come-commala. But plates didn’t matter. Decorations didn’t matter.
What mattered was that the plates and beautiful crystal glassware were empty and dull with dust.
No, not everything was empty; in one goblet she saw a dead black widow spider lying with its many legs curled against the red hourglass on its midsection.
She saw the neck of a wine-bottle poking from a silver pail and her stomach gave an imperative cry. She snatched it up, barely registering the fact that there was no water in the bucket, let alone ice; it was entirely dry. At least the bottle had weight, and enough liquid inside to slosh—
But before Mia could close her lips over the neck of the bottle, the smell of vinegar smote her so strongly that her eyes filled with water.
“Mutha- fuck!” she screamed, and threw the bottle down. “You mutha-fuckah!”
The bottle shattered on the stone floor. Things ran in squeaking surprise beneath the table.
“Yeah, you bettahrun!” she screamed. “Get ye gone, whatever y’are! Here’s Mia, daughter of none, and not in a good mood! Yet I will be fed! Yes! Yes I will!”
This was bold talk, but at first she saw nothing on the table that she could eat. There was bread, but the one piece she bothered to pick up had turned to stone. There was what appeared to be the remains of a fish, but it had putrefied and lay in a greenish-white simmer of maggots.
Her stomach growled, undeterred by this mess. Worse, something below her stomach turned restlessly, and kicked, and cried out to be fed. It did this not with its voice but by turning certain switches inside her, back in the most primitive sections of her nervous system. Her throat grew dry; her mouth puckered as if she had drunk the turned wine; her vision sharpened as her eyes widened and bulged outward in their sockets. Every thought, every sense, and every instinct tuned to the same simple idea: food.
Beyond the far end of the table was a screen showing Arthur Eld, sword held high, riding through a swamp with three of his knight-gunslingers behind him. Around his neck was Saita, the great snake, which presumably he had just slain. Another successful quest! Do ya fine! Men and their quests! Bah! What was slaying a magical snake to her? She had a chap in her belly, and the chap was hungry.
Hongry, she thought in a voice that wasn’t her own. It’s be hongry.
Behind the screen were double doors. She shoved through them, still unaware of the boy Jake standing at the far end of the dining hall in his underwear, looking at her, afraid.
The kitchen was likewise empty, likewise dusty. The counters were tattooed with critter-tracks. Pots and pans and cooking-racks were jumbled across the floor. Beyond this litter were four sinks, one filled with stagnant water that had grown a scum of algae. The room was lit by fluorescent tubes. Only a few still glowed steadily. Most of them flickered on and off, giving these shambles a surreal and nightmarish aspect.
She worked her way across the kitchen, kicking aside the pots and pans that were in her way. Here stood four huge ovens all a-row. The door of the third was ajar. From it came a faint shimmer of heat, as one might feel coming from a hearth six or eight hours after the last embers have burned out, and a smell that set her stomach clamoring all over again. It was the smell of freshly roasted meat.
Mia opened the door. Inside was indeed some sort of roast. Feeding on it was a rat the size of a tomcat. It turned its head at the clunk of the opening oven door and looked at her with black, fearless eyes. Its whiskers, bleary with grease, twitched. Then it turned back to the roast. She could hear the muttering smack of its lips and the sound of tearing flesh.
Nay, Mr. Rat. It wasn’t left for you. It was left for me and my chap.
“One chance, my friend!” she sang as she turned toward the counters and storage cabinets beneath them.
“Better go while you can! Fair warning!” Not that it would. Mr. Rat be hongry, too.
She opened a drawer and found nothing but breadboards and a rolling pin. She considered the rolling pin briefly, but had no wish to baste her dinner with more rat-blood than she absolutely had to. She opened the cabinet beneath and found tins for muffins and molds for fancy desserts. She moved to her left, opened another drawer, and here was what she was looking for.
Mia considered the knives, took one of the meat-forks instead. It had two six-inch steel tines. She took it back to the row of ovens, hesitated, and checked the other three. They were empty, as she had known they would be. Something—some fate some providence some ka—had left fresh meat, but only enough for one.
Mr. Rat thought it was his. Mr. Rat had made a mistake. She did not think he would make another. Not this
side of the clearing, anyway.
She bent and once again the smell of freshly cooked pork filled her nose. Her lips spread and drool ran from the corners of her smile. This time Mr. Rat didn’t look around. Mr. Rat had decided she was no threat. That was all right. She bent further forward, drew a breath, and impaled it on the meat-fork. Rat-kebab! She drew it out and held it up in front of her face. It squealed furiously, its legs spinning in the air, its head lashing back and forth, blood running down the meat-fork’s handle to pool around her fist. She carried it, still writhing, to the sinkful of stagnant water and flipped it off the fork. It splashed into the murk and disappeared. For a moment the tip of its twitching tale stuck up, and then that was gone, too.