The Broken Heavens by Kameron Hurley

Author:Kameron Hurley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857665638
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2019-02-15T16:00:00+00:00

19

Death was overrated.

But then, so was recovery.

She had done enough of both to know.

She had been mangled, mutilated, infected and left for dead before. The second time wasn’t any more fun than the first. The injuries themselves were far worse this time, of course. Or perhaps she had forgotten how excruciating the infected wounds from those wily court predators had been. The mind had a habit of dampening the details of trauma over time, surfacing them only when violently triggered.

Her mind processed her surroundings slowly, as if moving through treacle. Close quarters. Warm. Very dark. Cramped. She lay with her knees tucked up to her chest and her arms squeezed tightly against her sides, and there was something… pulsing and moving around her and… through her. Something slick and alive. She began to tremble violently.

She kicked out. Met resistance. She was in a very small space. Kicked again. Wood. A trunk? What? She began to rip at the slimy growths sticking out of her body. As she pulled them free, she felt a great sense of both pain and relief, like yanking out a splinter or a bad tooth.

More kicking. Spitting. Huffing. Then she pushed up, and the ceiling gave way. Her space filled with dim blue light. She yanked away more of the growths as she tried to sit up. They were some kind of vine. As she pulled them out, her body released pale amber streamers of ooze. Her skin closed quickly around the wounds, almost instantly. She marveled at it. How incredible.

A sharp pain in her sternum made her double over. She tipped her head over the end of her enclosure – a box? a trunk? – and heaved and gagged, nauseous. Blackish vomit spattered across the floor. She clawed at her chest, at the source of the pain, and felt a cold, raised lump in the center of her core, just below her breasts. She pressed her palm against it, triggering another wave of pain. The raised mark had three curved edges and a long tail. Her body broke out in a cold sweat.

She peered at the great round room. It that smelled of musty loam. Underground? Like a cairn.

Disoriented, she tried to get out of the trunk, and stumbled over the lip of it. Crashed onto the floor.

“What’s this? Oh!” A voice. Footsteps, soft.

“The fuck?” she muttered, trying to raise her head.

“Hush now,” a soft, airy voice.

Fuzzy images: a smear of red cloth, a distorted face. The dim orange flickering of flame flies.

“How did you wake me up?”

“I didn’t. You were a box of bones.”

“A what?”

“You were not awakened. You were recreated. That’s what she told me, anyhow. And it appears it was true.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“It was.”

“What’s the catch?”

The fuzzy image resolved itself as the figure leaned over her, showed its teeth. A little old woman with sagging jowls and loose, bare skin on her arms that hinted she had once been much more substantial. Puffy white hair crowned the skull, shot through with moss and tiny branches.

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