Eating the children of the Scalped One (We Who Are Hungry: Part 3/5)

Part 2:

In the morning, they set out across the wasteland, kicking up plumes of dust which rose up behind them to join the clouds, steadily unzipping the sky from its dark background until they crossed into a land where the dirt was soft beneath their feet.

Whether the creation of this land was intentional or if the Colossi had simply created it and abandoned it before witnessing it blossom, nobody in the band could tell. Stretched out so far that they could see no desert past it was a vast open field of dark compost, dropped and abandoned by a migrating mass of Giants, purified by time and sprouting with purple grass and black flowers. 

The family stopped at its edge, squinting at it with suspicion. Korah investigated it, stooping down to drink in the earthy scent. “It’s clean.” He rumbled. 

Ody crept forward, hesitantly stepping over the stark line separating field from desert. He was careful when setting his foot down, but upon finding no sharp pain in his soles, he spread his scarred toes out and swallowed the dry glob that had been building in his throat.

The father jumped onto the grass, grinning and laughing. “It's soft! what is all tis?!" 

Rachel followed him, scrutinising the tiny sprouting blades with the brush of her foot. “I think it’s grass.”

“I tought grass was meant ta be green.” Ody’s brows upturned in disappointment.

Korah grinned and boasted. “I told ye green isnae real.” 

Rachel smiled at Ody. “Maybe this is just a different kind of grass answer’ll find real grass eventually.” 

Ody smiled at that. “Yeah, te Shelter must be hoardin’ it all. Paula, d’ya want in on a bet?”

Paula turned her glazed over eyes onto her father. “What bet?”

“Bet wit me tat tere’s green grass at te Shelter.”

Paula stared out at the steppe, which curled up at the end of the world and rolled against the sky as though the very multitude which birthed this place lay dead and buried and forgotten beneath it, blanketed by grass never to be uncovered again. “I don’t think we’ll ever make it.” She murmured.

Ody’s smile fell. “What?”

Paula shook her head and crouched down, covering her face with her hands. “It’s not even real. What’s the point of continuing?” 

Ody crouched down beside his daughter and gently rubbed her back. “What’s on ya mind?” He cooed.

Paula sobbed, her entire body quivering. She looked so fragile and light that Ody feared the breeze would lift her off and take her away from him at any moment, and so he took her hand. When she finally mustered the strength to answer him, her voice checked and started with the wet phlegm and snot which blocked her airways. “We can’t even trust others anymore. And even if we could, what’s the point? We’ll starve, we’ll walk ourselves to the bone, we’ll be thirsty, loved ones will die, we-we’ll kill, I already have. And at the end of it all, something hungrier than us will eat us. There’s no end to this. There is nothing but the long walk. What’s the point in trying?” 

Korah and Rachel looked to one another with pity before turning again to Ody and his daughter.

Ody moved to crouch in front of her and cupped her cheeks in his grimey, boney hands, lifting her to look at him. “Yeah, we will starve. We’ll ache and bleed and we’ll suffer. But we’ll also eat and sing and dance and bathe and we’ll have eachother. And at the end of it all, whether the Shelter is real or not, I like to think all of that makes carryin’ on worth it. Life is shite sometimes, but it always gets better.”

Paula sniffed. “But it also always gets worse.”

“And then after that it can only get better again.” Ody’s voice was soft against her face. He pressed his forehead to hers and she reluctantly pressed hers back. 

They began to cross the indigo steppe within the hour, the moist grass a balm to their aching feet. Insects scuttled under foot and bigger insects chased them. Flowers with sweet bulbs on their stems offered themselves to the family, and the family partook of them with eager gratefulness. By the time the family arrived at their next obstacle, they’d lost track of how much time had passed and had almost forgotten what hunger felt like. 

They arrived at the famished maw of a cavern dug into a mountain too steep to be climbed. Korah peered inside and saw no hint of sunlight. Without a word, Rachel separated from the group and returned with a stick in hand. 

“Should we go through or try ta go around?” Asked Ody. 

“I say we go through.” Voted Korah.

Rachel nodded. “Going around will take us too long. The air is getting colder, this place won’t feed us forever.” 

“I don't like te look of tis place.” Said Ody before leaving to go gather food for the journey. The family split up to stuff as much food as they could into their fists and pouches before meeting back up at the entrance of the cavern. After a quick glance at his company’s eyes, searching for any sign of hesitancy, Ody led them into the blackness.

Their Odinic trade cost them their sight, but every other sense sharpened. They could taste the earth in the stiff air, they knew each of their kin were accounted for by the sound of their footsteps and they found themselves dodging the grasping roots even in the pitch-black as they reached down to gently fondle the travellers. The scrape of Rachel’s stick against the ground eased Ody’s nerves, and yet he could not help the urge to account for his clan.

“Everyone still tere?” Asked Ody. 

“Aye.” Answered Korah.

“Yes.” Answered Rachel. 

“Yeah.” Answered Paula. 

Ody relaxed and they pressed on. 

The slip of his foot over a ledge clued the father in on the shift in terrain. “It gets narrower here, feels like tere’s some kind of chasm.”

“Should we turn back?” Asked Paula.

“Ah, a chasm never hurt anyone.” Korah snorted. 

Rachel spoke up. “Let’s just hold hands and see if the path gets any wider, if it doesn’t then we can turn back and try to find a way around the mountain range, or find one that’s easier to climb.”

“Tat what ya’ll want?” Asked Ody, to a unanimously positive response. They scuttled forwards in a cancrine march, hand in hand - Korah holding Rachel’s stick. A rock gave out beneath Paula’s foot and she squealed, flattening her back against the wall as Ody and Rachel’s clammy grips tightened on her hands.

“Ya alright?” Asked Ody.

Paula swallowed. “Mhh-Hmm.”

“D’ya wanna go back?” Asked Ody. 

“No, no, let’s keep going.” Paula answered. 

They continued their awkward shimmy, now significantly lighter in their steps. Ody felt at the ground ahead of them with his toes before taking a step, ensuring that it would not crumble beneath the feet of his followers. 

Soon, his feet rested flatly against a complete floor and he pulled Paula onto the ledge, laughing a quiet sigh of relief. 

Rachel followed them with her sleeping babes, but when Korah went to take the final step, the ground gave out beneath him. With a cry of terror, the elder was swallowed by the chasm. 

“Korah!” Yelled Ody. Nothing. 

“Korah!” Screamed Rachel. 

There was a distant groan in response. “I’m here! I think I broke ma arse, though!”

“Can ya walk!?” 

“Yeah, yeah I can walk! Wait!” He paused, assessing his answer again. “Nevermind, yeah I can walk! Think ye can make a rope out o those roots an’ toss it down?” Korah replied.

“Roots are too thin! Should we climb down after ya!?” 

“Na, I'm fine! dinnae come down here, I'll find ma way up! If I find ma way out, I'll go around as many exits te this mountain as I can an mark a line for ye te follow an find me!”

“Well how are you going to do that!?” Rachel called down to him. 

“There's some tunnels here, feels like they're going the same way as the one you're heading down! I'll see if any o them lead up there, keep makin' that trail!" Korah instructed. 

“Are ya sure!?” Yelled Ody.

“I wouldnae have says it if I werenae sure!” 

“Alright, don’t get lost, alright!?” Paula shouted.

“Damnit, there go all ma plans!” 

With that, the family went their separate ways. Despite their communal quiet, they shared a mutual worry which every member of the family allowed to simmer in their chest, lips sealed shut for fear of it bubbling up, as though speaking it aloud would lend more credibility to the concern. What if we never see Korah again?

Their advance was cautious - each member of their dwindling number patting at the earth tentatively with their feet before each step. Eyes wide in futile, instinctual attempts at sight, they wandered for days, the length of their journey through the underworld indicated only by their diminishing supplies. Hades grasped at their minds, raking its spindly claws over their collective sanity with deviant eagerness, and they in turn fought it back with songs, stories and a pointless and repetitive game of I-spy which stubbornly returned to Ody and Rachel’s boisterous mouths to irritate Paula every few hours until she too gave in and joined them.

Despite the tunnel through which they passed only having one path large enough for them to fit down, they would occasionally come across a slit in the wall or ceiling that no doubt connected to a different tunnel. The first time they came across one of these cell-windows, Ody brought the group to a halt and crouched down and held his mouth nearly against the stone bar separating the two tunnels and called out ,“Korah!”. The two othera in his company were silent, ears strained as they listened.

Nothing.

They carried on.

It was a few hours before they came to a small chamber with its floor lined with brittle thorny grass and dried out flowers, which sustained them for a few minutes before their stomachs began to digest themselves once more. Ody took a moment to wonder why the ground was littered with foliage, but he soon came to the conclusion that it was best to move on and not disturb it further. 

The cave walls moistened and they licked salty water from its sides and from the roots that dripped barely-filtered foam down onto their heads as they passed and under one of these roots Ody pressed his hand against the wall and felt around for another tunnel connection. Nothing. It would be another hour of sliding his palm across the wall before his fingers slipped through another doorway into a connecting tunnel. He once again leaned against it and called out, “Korah!”

Once again, the group listened. This time, there was a response.

“I’m here!” 

Ody grinned, “We’re over here! Tis tunnel’s too small for your fat ass, but at least we’re goin’ the right way!” 

“I’ll - find ma way!” Came the reply. 

Ody stayed by the stone grate as though hoping to hear approaching, but nothing came. Paula had to pull her father away from the wall before they kept on walking down the tunnel. Each time they passed another stone window into some other passing passageway, they would be comforted by the echoes of distant footfalls.

The first glimpse of sunlight came like a mirage, distant and hazy in Ody’s vision. He almost didn’t recognise it, and when he realised what he was looking at he grinned. “Look at tat, girls! we're almost tere!” 

Paula peered tiredly around her father’s arm, eyes out of sync as she blinked, only for daylight to wash the remaining slumber from her mind. Rachel laughed. “Well what are we standing around here for!? Let’s go!” She took Paula’s hand and began to pull the girl towards the light.

Ody’s brows furrowed. “Wait! What about Korah?”

Rachel turned back to the vague direction Ody’s voice came from. “He said he’d meet us outside.” 

“Oh yeah, I must have forgot.” Ody slapped the heel of his palm against his forehead and followed the girls. 

Platinum sunlight flooded into the chamber at the end of the tunnel, bleaching and warming the stones. For a few seconds, Rachel patted her feet on the ground just to bask in the feeling of warmth again. Paula blinked, turning to a darker segment of the chamber and slowly turning to the light as her eyes adjusted. The father peered through his eyelashes at the cracks, they seemed to be low enough that they could all jump out of them, and wide enough for them to fit through one by one. Ody took a single step towards the exit before the shadows called out to him.

“Wait!”

Ody paused and turned to the tunnel they had just escaped. “Korah?!” He called out. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief, a cumbersome weight she’d grown too used to carrying slipping from her shoulders. Paula smiled for the first time in days.

“I’m here! There’s some tunnels!” 

Rachel circled her mouth with her hands and called out “Hold on, Korah! We’re coming!” The group didn’t think twice before they submerged themselves once more in darkness, following the voice of the elder.

After a while, Ody began to hear footsteps approaching. “Where are you!?” He called out.

“Down here!” Replied the shadows.

“Are ya stuck!?” Ody called out again.

“Yeah!” 

“It’s alright, we’ll get you out, alright!” Rachel promised.

“I think I broke ma arse!” 

The entire family fell silent for a few moments. Ody’s brows furrowed as he peered at the darkness. Rivers of ice shot down through Paula’s arms and legs and raised her hairs. Rachel’s lips parted to speak again only for her to fall silent.

“I think broke ma arse! Follow - find me.” The grew higher as it trailed off at the end, only to once again take on Korah’s voice. “Find me!”

Ody lifted his arms and silently stepped back, pushing Rachel and Paula backwards. He glanced back to the open chamber they’d left behind - too far behind. 

“Come - here.” Paula swallowed dryly.

“Come here.” The voice dippled.

“Come here.” “Find me.” There were two voices speaking at once.

“Come.” “Come here.” “Follow.” “Find me.” Several voices chirped at once, all in the separately bastardised tones of their companion. 

“Run.” Ody breathed. 

Both Paula and Rachel broke into a dead sprint for the exit, Paula taking Abida in her hands to lighten the mother’s weight. Ody followed suit, slowing down to keep himself between the legion and the remnants of his family. 

Blackness held them like a vice, the light fleeing from them nearly as swiftly as they could run. Behind them, Ody could hear the pitter patter of tactless predators scuttling after them. 

He felt Rachel’s shoulder brush against his and he shoved her forwards. “Move, damnit!” She hastened, her babies weightless and her body numb, her veins filled more so with adrenaline than with blood. 

The first few rays of light graced Paula’s leg and she dove into it, slipping briefly on loose pebbles before steadying herself and bolting for the exit, Rachel not far behind. 

Ody was pushed forwards by gusts of air, barely caring for whether it was the creatures’ breath against his back or the flapping of their flightless wings. 

He crossed over the platinum line and his eye snapped to Paula, who was helping Rachel climb up onto the ledge of the crack before they both disappeared, swallowed by sunlight. 

“Come here.” It breathed against his ear. Squeezing his eyes shut, Ody braced himself and leapt for the fissure, the breeze whipping past him as he was engulfed by the sun. 

He landed face first in the shifting gravel and tumbled down the sloped foot of the mountain. Stones left small cuts on his soles and rear. Below him, he could see Paula and Rachel making the same descent, Rachel screaming, Paula gagged by the wind’s current as it slashed past her. She bloodied her palms on the gravel in a vain attempt to slow herself down. 

All three met the earth with tremendous thumps, caught by tall, indigo grass. Rachel’s stick went flying. The babies wailed, Epher injured by the impact of his mother’s front against the ground. Panting, Ody lifted his one-eyed gaze to the mountain and immediately stood up to start running again. Floating elegantly down the mountain, slowed by their open wings whose mesmerising eyes almost pinned Ody down under the weight of their gaze, was a hoard of infant Nephilim - each twice the size of the father.

“Keep fuckin’ runnin’!” Rachel was already sprinting by the time he opened his mouth, Paula stumbled to her feet and dashed through the grass on weeping feet, almost slipping on her own blood, followed by her father. 

Rachel scanned the open plain for salvation and found it in a tree towering so high that she could not see it’s top, and behind it a cluster of younger imitations of it. It was possibly the single oldest living thing she’d ever bore witness to, and she had no time to marvel at that. “Get to that tree!” 

The father could hear the muffled thump of thony-angel’s feet against the grass running him down. His gaze fell on the tree, filled with anguish, before it fell on the Mimics. White in their feathered attire, the second to largest one was mere inches behind him, wings spread, mouth wide in a ravenous grin, slobber dripping from its lips, teeth like needles cruelly stuffed into its gums gnashing at his heels.

He would not escape them, he knew it as soon as he heard them in the grass, he could only hope that they’d be so preoccupied with him that he could buy the others time to flee. 

A sudden pressure knocked the air from his lungs and he knew he was caught. One of the Nephilim had leaped up, wings beating, and landed with one foot on Ody’s back.

“Ody!” Rachel called out, slowing down and looking back. Paula grabbed her hand and yanked her back into a sprint with tears in her eyes. 

The father turned his glare on the nephilim, who stared back with an almost innocent curiosity. 

“Just do it, ten.” Snarled Ody. A white hot pain shot up his leg and dissolved any delusions of bravery, his courage spilling from his throat as he screamed in agony. 

The unholy forgery cocked its head and opened its mouth before launching down to tear at Ody’s face. He closed his eye and hoped it would be quick.

The pain never came. 

A foul scented mist sprayed across his face and he opened his eye to find the Nephilim falling away from him, Rachel’s stick shoved straight through the back of its thin, underdeveloped skull.

“Get up, ye silly fucker!” A pair of large hands yanked him to his feet and shoved him forwards. 

Korah! Ody grinned and bolted for the tree, wiping the blood from his face. Korah accompanied him. 

Behind them, the slower Mimics turned on their fallen brethren and began to devour it, tearing into its small body in a bedlam mob. 

Rachel and Paula had already made it to the tree and watched from one of the lower branches as Ody and Korah came charging for them. 

The dissatisfied squeal of unfed Mimics signalled that they’d stripped the corpse to its bones, and they once again pursued the fleeing family. 

Ody’s leg throbbed, he dared not look down for fear that seeing the damage would make the pain worse. 

“Almost there, lad,” Korah’s voice rang in Ody’s ear, “don’t drop yet!”

The sound of the approaching hoard tolled in Korah’s ears. The world slowed for him and his brows bunched. They’d run out of time. With as much strength as he had left in his old bones, he shoved Ody forwards. 

Ody turned back but did not stop. “Korah, what are ya doing!?” 

Korah just smiled at him before he was engulfed in pure, white feathers.

Something broke inside of Ody. He simply did not register what had happened, what was happening and what would happen should he not take the opportunity to run. His body moved of its own accord, carrying him to the foot of the conifer and up its scaly side until he sat on the branch beside Rachel and Paula. He could not hear Rachel screaming Korah’s name. He could not taste the False-Angel’s blood on his tongue. He could not feel the splinters in his skin. 

His eyes were on Korah and the coagulation of horribles who feasted upon him. 

He was screaming, Ody could tell that, but he could not make out what he was saying. It was a single minute before he fell silent, and before he finished his gruesome serenade he’d been reduced to a head and a spine and a wash of red in the grass.

Without the skill to climb in their youthful claws and without the ability to fly in their heretical beings, the Mimics grew bored and hungry and left the family to go and find some other unfortunates to feast on. 

Crossing the moon, the dwindling number carried on. Several days of empty grassland laid out before them, and yet none noticed until Rachel’s breasts once again ran dry and the sob of Epher snapped her out of her trance. It was another day before they found anything other than endless swaying turf, after splitting into three and spreading out. It was Paula who found the grove, a ritual of dead shrubbery circling a round, dirt nest filled with huge, strange eggs, each formed like a great pill as though their mother had squeezed them out of shape as she attempted to forbid their birth. The three met up once more at sunrise, following their own trail of crushed grass back to their meeting place. 

With Paula as their vanguard they marched on the grove, the brittle wall of dead branches raked their skin as they slipped between its cracks. When the invaders came to the edge of the nest, Paula’s throat grew dry.

They were met by open maws and begging cries. Each and every pill had broken, spilling their contents all across the nest. The innocents, big eyed and hungry, peeped and chirped and sang like tiny wingless Cherubs. They were naked, legs kicking and hairs slick with yolk. There were eight in total and seven still alive. One lay drowned in a thin, translucent film, curled and still with its long, hairy tail wrapped around it. 

Rachel took up an evacuated egg shell and ate it. Paula and Ody did the same, comforting themselves with the hope that the shells alone would satiate them. As the shells diminished, their hunger did not, and with it their dread grew. 

Rachel stared at the nest, now without shells, and her stomach rumbled. Her gaze turned on the deceased infant, shelled and glistening in the light of the judgemental sun. As she cradled it, she tried to focus on the tiny horns protruding from its bald head, she tried to remind herself that the babe was not of their kind and not of her blood. 

The family partook of its flesh together, leaving only bones to evidence its brief existence.

They were still hungry. 

Collectively, their eyes turned to the writhing newborns undulating like grubs in their nest as they attempted to crawl about. 

Rachel reached for one who laid on its back. It met her gaze and reached to take her finger in its little fist. Eyes glistening, she turned from it and squeezed the sides of her head with her hands as though she hoped to pop her own skull.

Ody stood and patted her on her back, his voice came as a solemn rumble. “Leave te grove. Bot of ya.” He looked at Paula.

“What are you going to do?” Paula knew the answer and she hated it.

“It’ll be alright.” Was all he said. 

Now alone in the grove, Ody was left standing vigil over the squirming newborns. He drank in yet another forsaken breath and took up a stone from the side of the nest. It weighed as much as Paula once had. 

As he raised the stone over the horned head of one babe, his mind raced with justifications. Ya are not mine. Mine comes first.

The butcher emerged from the grove, the sordid stench of blood emanating from his soul, his hands gaudy with the liquid trophy of his barbarism. 

Neither Paula nor Rachel spoke to him, they simply acknowledged him with nods and he nodded back.

It would be another handful of days before hunger caught up with them again - before they came across the absent parents of their victims. 

Ribs unclad and sucking on their own tongues for water, the steppe blessed them with a hedge filled with berries, offset from their path South by a few yards. 

They stumbled to it and fell to their knees plucking sweet sapphires from the branches. As her stomach filled, Paula registered the satisfying burst of berries between her teeth, moistening her gums and soothing her chapped throat. Their skins snapped between her molars, the sound rattling in her skull. 

Ody turned to Rachel, whose gaze was still distant - unable to wash the taste of iron from her tongue no matter how many berries she ate - and held up four berries in the gaps between his fingers. “Rachel.” He drew her attention to him and then slid all four berries in between his teeth. He crushed them with a resounding pop. She stared at him with confusion. 

“Let’s see how loud we can get.” He elaborated.

There was nothing entertaining about the contest itself, but desperation to flee from the shameful quiet of the reality she’d been dropped into and Ody’s eager grin brought a small smile to her face regardless. “Sure.” Her voice squeaked from disuse. 

She caught two between her teeth, popping them with a light crack. 

“Ah, you're going ta need more.” Ody chastised. 

“My mouth isn’t as big as your’s.” Rachel clapped back. 

Ody snorted and lined his teeth with as many berries as he could fit, as did Rachel. Rachel snapped her jaws shut and ultramarine juices splashed across Ody’s right cheek. 

Laughing, Ody aimed as best he could and squeezed down on his mouth full - but the pop that followed did not come from him.

The three froze, Ody still with the berries unpopped in his teeth. 

Another pop came, tremendous enough to rattle their bones in their skin, and a sudden storm of dust and dirt blew over them as something crashed into the grass behind them. 

Ody whipped around and saw the silhouette of something with several feet of height on them laid on its side and scrambling with its feet in the air. He scooped up his family and ushered them around the bush, hiding on the opposite side of the shrub than whatever lay in the dust. 

Another crack followed by a scream of agony drew Ody to spy through a break in the branches as a second cloud of dust shot up into the air. Something huge crashed into the struggling beast and tossed it high into the air. It rolled, its feet groping at the grass until it found its footing and fled. 

As the dust dispelled, the victor watched as its kin grew smaller and smaller on the field. 

It was a Monk, bald and naked beneath the harsh blanching sun. Its gaze eternally fixed to the sides, its pinprick pupils black in its jaundice-yellow eyes. Its most notable feature was its exposed skull, proudly scalped beneath the light of the sun and coated in blood and crowned in uneven, thornlike horns which sprouted about in all directions. Instead of having a mouth, it had two curved teeth that protruded from its face, one mounting the other. Behind it swung a long, hairy tail that whipped and bounced stiffly behind it.

Ody’s stomach dropped and he hoped that the lingering scent of infant blood was only present in his own mind. 

The Monk turned its triangular head on the bush and dipped it to snap at the berries only to pause as it saw half of the bush entirely stripped. 

Paula tugged on her father’s arm and the three turned and ran. When Ody looked back, he saw the Monk staring directly at them, its gaze still to its sides and yet he knew that he knew they were there. With an excited cry, it gave chase. 

With Rachel ahead of the pack, suddenly the vacant grassland gave out beneath the group’s feet and they were sent rolling down the slope of a ditch. Rachel managed to slide head first, shielding her children from the falling pebbles. Ody hoisted her to her feet and they went sprinting along the voided river. The Monk leapt down into the shallow canyon and charged after the fleeing thieves. 

It caught up quickly and threw Ody high into the air with its bare skull. All breath left the father’s lungs, he barely registered that he was falling and only snapped back to reality with the impact of his back on the sundried dirt. 

“Pa!” Paula whipped around to see her father laying in the dust, wide eyes turned skywards, mouth twitching open and closed as though he were suffocating on air. Rachel yanked the girl and almost fell when she refused to budge. 

“Keep moving!” Rachel snapped at her, reaching for her shoulder. Paula threw her shoulder from the mother’s grasp and jumped to fetch a hefty stone from the dirt. 

The Monk turned in a wide arch on Ody, waiting for the dust to settle before charging once again at the staggering bandit. 

Paula launched the rock as hard as she could, despite Rachel’s protests, and struck the circumcised head of the beast.

It continued its charge unbothered.

Mouth agape, Paula watched as it closed the distance between itself and her father. Rachel covered her face.

Standing in the clearing dust, one eyed and dazed, Ody stared down his own reflection in the bloody skull of the monster. 

It was the trill of a Non-Mimic Nephilim that brought the Monk to a pause. It raised its head and skidded to a halt. 

Another rattling squawk. Ody’s heart halted in his ribcage. 

Again, another squawk, closer this time.

Without a second glance at the bandits, the Monk thundered down the ditch and scrambled up the ledge to flee into the grassland. 

Rachel pulled Paula behind a smoothed boulder, sanded long ago by rushing water, and pressed her finger to her lips at her. 

Ody limped across the exposed riverbed and towards the boulder, mouth wide as hoarse pants scraped their way out of his neck. 

“Come on, come on.” Muttered Paula, watching her father one-leggedly haul himself towards her. 

He stopped, hunched and half-lame, and gasping. He fell with a dull thump and Rachel had to hold Paula in place as light footsteps crested the ledge of the ditch. 

Through his eyelashes, Ody met the blank gaze of the figure, black in the sun like the reaper himself, and he closed his eye.

It slid down the slope, pebbles and dirt falling loose and clacking against the arroyo floor. Ody felt its cool shadow over him and grimaced. 

Something bluntly prodded against his shoulder and he flinched. 

No pain came to him. His nerves gave way to confusion and he opened his eye, only to be met with a blue eyed child staring down at him, holding something small and white in his right hand and wearing a vaguely concerned expression. 

Their escape from the ditch was in itself a sisyphean task. Ody grasped at the crumbling walls of the arroyo, Paula and Rachel pushing him up by his legs, the child too short to be of any assistance in this endeavor. With great effort, Ody was given to the ledge and rolled away from its edge, panting in the grass. Paula, Rachel and the Child followed him, standing over him. 

“We’re going to need to stay here for a while.” Paula concluded nervously. “Hopefully the Monk doesn’t come back.”

Rachel turned her gaze on the Child, narrowing her eyes. “How did you do that?”

The Child met Rachel’s gaze and lifted the white thing which he gripped tightly in his small fingers. “Baby nephilim throat bone.” He answered simply. 

“How did you get your hands on that?” Rachel contemplated the Child with suspicion. 

“Stole it.” 

“How?”

“Found its bones outside that mountain.”

Rachel glared at him. “How long have you been following us, then?”

He shrugged and swiped the side of his hand beneath his running nose. “Haven’t been. Just heading the same way.”

“Shelter?” Asked Paula.

The Child nodded 

Rachel sat down beside Ody. “Well, don’t let us keep you. We’re not going anywhere until he can walk again.”

“It’ll take you.” Said the Child. “It’ll take you in the night. Monks don’t like thieves.” 

“We don’t know that, maybe it’s gone for good. And we don’t have food for you.” Said Rachel.

“We-” Ody rasped. “-We don’t got food at all. May as well let him stay.”

Paula stayed silent. 

Ody continued to debate, even as Rachel scowled. “And - and he saved us. Can’t just let him run off alone like that.”

Rachel looked to the Child, meek and visibly ill. She sighed and relented. 

Together, they bivouacked in beds of grass and weeds. The Child blew into the bone, the blasphemous spectral lullaby carrying them off to sleep. By the time the Child fell asleep, any beast in the area had vacated, for fear of the damned hoard seeking them out in the dark. 

It was two days before Ody could stand and walk. It was three before the family came across a lonely tree, feasting on the rotten remains of its fallen kin, and they fed on its fruit and Ody and Rachel danced about it deep into the night, singing stories exploits long passed and the name of their shared fallen lover. Paula sat watching the tree so intently that when Ody looked at his daughter he believed for a second that the ancient wooden structure mat very well be speaking to her. Absently, Paula wondered to herself what stories the behemoth would have if it had a mouth to tell them. The Child silently ate his share of rations, the fruit cumbersome in his gaunt arms.