PodCastle Miniature 88: Communion - a podcast by Escape Artists, Inc

* Author : Jei D. Marcade

* Narrators : Jen R. Albert and Graeme Dunlop

* Audio Producer : Peter Wood

*

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PodCastle Miniature 88: Communion is a PodCastle original.





Rated R

by Jei D. Marcade 

read by Jen R. Albert and Graeme Dunlop

A PodCastle original!

The mice come when Vyozhka calls them, her breath whistling through shattered teeth, brittle fingers tap-tapping on the temple floor. A storm-blown teak juts over the rubble of an outer wall: the mice scamper in along its ridged bark to patter across rain-slicked flagstone. Oily vines dangle through cracks splintering across the vaulted ceiling, and from them dip globular pods that pulse amber, making the mice’s shadows flicker and dart.

When the first brush of whiskers tickles her palm, Vyozhka peels loose lids from the twin ruins of her eyes. The ichor pooled at the bottoms of her sockets spills over the bronze curves of her cheeks, thick as honey; the mice lap at it with tiny pink tongues.

Leaving broken trails of damp across her skin, the mice climb the dark matted ropes of her hair, their fur the same magnolia white as the spell-struck thread that stitches shut her lips. They gnaw at the creepers binding her wrists and ankles and throat, nuzzle into the hollow of her collarbone, and chirp to her in the gloaming:

they will come again

when the brightsky breaks

to hew your limbs

to mine your bones for silver

Vyozhka struggles to inflate her punctured lungs. Her sternum buckles outward, jagged edges jutting from the flayed skin of her breasts. (Whenever the bone knits itself together, her captors crack it again to monitor the progress of her heart.) It hasn’t been long since the last harvest, and the nascent organ, small as a rosebud, sways in the cavity of her chest with every labored breath.

She stands and nearly collapses in on herself, her spine bowing beneath the weight of her upper torso. Her belly gapes between ribs and pelvis, the meat and muscle long since carved out and parceled. She packs the space with mice, filling in the absences of kidneys, bladder, spleen. Bracing herself against the wall, she slides one tentative foot in front of the other.

Then Vyozhka staggers from the sepulchral monument that, in gladder times, rang with paeans to her holy name.



The second sun has already begun its descent when Hedran maneuvers his coracle around the partially submerged wreck of a larger craft, mindful as he does of the massive upturned tortoise shell lashed to the side of his vessel.

He skims the surface of the water with his net and dumps another clump of pale blue algae, brimming with soft light, into the shell. Later, his village will trade the best algae in the city and bottle the rest to illuminate the bridges that connect their stilt homes.

The boat lists, and Hedran peers through the murk in time to glimpse a pale shape pass beneath the hull, twice as long as Hedran is tall. He swallows and paddles gamely on.

Each year, Hedran has to venture farther into uncharted waters to find healthy blooms of algae. He doesn’t mind the solitude, but the creatures out here, too bold by half, unsettle him. Long-legged birds with blunt beaks and bone crests stalk through the water, almost close enough to touch. On land, something grunts and chuckles loudly, hidden by dense foliage.

After a time, Hedran steers toward the bank. He secures his vessel to the protruding roots of a mangrove tree with a tether of braided creepers.

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