For a Muse of Fire by Heidi Heilig

Author:Heidi Heilig
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-08-09T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

I can smell the midden long before I see it. At first it is just a hint of rot, the touch of decay—though still far too familiar after Dar Som. But as we trudge on and the afternoon lengthens, the scent swells like a poisonous mushroom, like a tumor. By the time we reach the fork in the road, where refuse wagons from the capital turn off the main route and trundle into the jungle, the taste of putrescence is sticking to the back of my throat.

We left my parents at the crossroad; they continued toward the long lines and the shantytowns outside the city gates while Leo and I waited for a dung cart to pass us on the track. Now we’re trudging after it. My feet ache, and my shoulders are red under the weight of the guns. Another early rain has left the road muddy and the air thick with steam. I hope for a cool breath as the green tunnel closes in above us, but it only traps the putrid humidity.

The cart moves slowly, pulled by a Chakran man under a wide-brimmed hat. His shovel and broom are thrown over the detritus piled high on the wagon—horse dung and rotting vegetables and the fly-specked carcass of a dead dog. It was a fine animal once, with a wide jaw and muscular shoulders, the sort the Aquitan aristocracy use for hunting. Now just another bit of trash.

“Walk slower,” Leo says. “The smell of that dog is about to knock me off my feet.”

“But the slower we walk, the longer we’re here,” I say, and he makes a face.

“Good point.”

So we plod after the cart, but when we pass a rumdal tree, I pluck a handful of blossoms, tucking one beside my ear and holding another up to my nose. Leo takes one and does the same, but it does little good. The smell only intensifies as we walk, until at last, we emerge again into the hot sun and a swarm of flies, both living and dead.

The midden is in a massive clearing at the base of the caldera—a swampy, stony field where instead of rice or sugar, the refuse of the city has been sown. Broken things, dead animals, waste, and detritus. And more souls than I expected. Things die here. Rats by the dozens; I might have guessed about those. But other things too—a handful of kittens, playing with the ties of the bag they were discarded in. Gulls and vultures, picking over the heaps just like their living comrades. Even a n’akela—cold fire—walking round the edge of the clearing. I try and fail to suppress a shudder. What must its death have been, here in the middens?

The street sweeper doesn’t stop to watch them, of course. He only trundles along a path that skirts the trees—the heaps near the main road are piled too high to climb. But when he peels off toward a collapsing mass midway along the glade, Leo and I continue on the little road.

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