Sheri S. Tepper by Necromancer Nine

Author:Necromancer Nine [Nine, Necromancer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7 - The Blot

I was accepted among the water oxen as a water ox, that is, after I had laid hands upon the real beast enough to know how one was made. I had already learned it was easier to become something entirely imaginary than to become something which had a recognized form and movement of its own.

Thus, for the first few hours of wateroxship, it was necessary to admonish myself to keep my head down, my tail in motion against the flies, my floppy feet out from under one another. Being a fustigar had been easier for me, once, but then I had seen fustigars every day of my life. Water oxen were more rural animals, certainly smellier ones. Dolwys whispered to me that I could stop monitoring my own behavior when the smell no longer seemed foreign. It did not take as long as I had expected.

I learned in the transformation to pick up bulk, a thing I had not known before. At first inert, as one maintained a form the excess bulk became incorporated gradually into the flesh of the creature. When one shifted back, there was a certain bulk left over. Some Shifters, as the hillock had in Schlaizy Noithn, simply gained and gained until that network of fibers which made Shifters what they were was stretched so far it could not assume its original form. It was all in this network, so Mavin said. She had already harvested the flesh left over when Dolwys and Swolwys had Shifted back into human form. It was too scattered to make chops, she said, but it would make good soup. I confess a certain queasiness about this. I did not like the thought of eating what had once been a part of my cousins. They laughed at me when I said this, making me feel very young and foolish. Nonetheless, I did not like the idea and was glad it was not put to the test. Instead of soup, I learned to eat grass.

I learned that Shifters had a jargon of their own, almost a language. Changing back into an original form was called "pulling the net," evidently from that network of fibers which transferred more or less intact from creature to creature, from form to form. One could "be" a bird with only about half the network. One could "be" a water ox with about two-thirds of it. What was left over simply lay about inside, doing nothing, available to "become" other things, clothing or whatever. It was all very interesting.

At any rate, by morning I was an unremarkable water ox, driven from my graze to a wagon and hitched there, able to see Izia whenever I swung my head in her direction. Laggy Nap had at last decided to go the final few paces of his journey, into the shadowy courts of the Blot. The gates were open when we approached. They looked as though they had been open for a generation or more, hinges rusted and hanging, metal doors bent and sagging, grass pushing up between the stones.

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