Now what?
I had never even killed a chicken for dinner. I steeled myself, waded to the far corner where the water was deepest, andheld it under the surface of the water. It struggled briefly—very briefly—then went limp.
It must be a better death than having your guts bitten out.I knew that was true. It made no sense that my vision was going blurry.
I held it down long after I was sure that it was dead, because I wasn’t sure if I could do this twice. The warble began to pulse more frantically, squirming as it too drowned, and I gritted my teeth and kept holding the poor limp body underwater until nothing was moving at all.
“I’m sorry,” said Saul, as I laid the sodden rabbit on top of the others.
“Yeah,” I said. I scrubbed at my eyes with my sleeve. I was being foolish. “It’s fine. It’s not fine, but… it’s fine.” I took a deep breath. “They’re trying to feed you, aren’t they? The flies.”
Saul nodded.
“How?Why?”
“I believe they figured out that I was starving to death.”
I shook my head. “No… I mean,how? They’re insects. Some of them feed their own young, but feeding you?Whywould they do that?”
“Because they don’t want me to die, I assume. Much as I might wish to.”
I paused. “Oh. That’s why you want them to stop, then.” Silly me, thinking that it might be because it was horrible to bite into a live squirrel.
“Yes. They feedonme and now theyfeedme, but I don’t…” He trailed off and began coughing, a dry hack as if something was trapped in his throat.
“Can’t you just… not eat what they bring?” I asked, when he had finally quieted.
Saul sighed. “If you were dying of thirst and someone poured water in your mouth, could you keep from swallowing?”
It seemed to me like there was a significant difference between swallowing a mouthful of water and eating a rodentdown to the backbone, but what do I know? All I could do was offer him my extra biscuit, and he’d already turned that down.
“It’s just that what they’re doing makes nosense.” I started hacking at the hole again. “Wasps lay their eggs in caterpillars so that the larvae have something to eat, but they don’t start feeding the caterpillar.”
“And I’m the caterpillar?” Saul gave another clicking chuckle. “These are… special, I think.”
I paused for a moment. Certainly they were enormous, and I hadn’t looked too closely at one. Were they a different species than the ones I’d drawn? Something that showed unusual behaviors?
It wasn’t hard to imagine Halder hearing of a strange new species and deciding to test it out on someone he despised. Someone that had been in his power. If he’d shot Saul and Saul hadn’t died outright… yes, I could see that.
“Did he ever say anything about them? About the species?”
Saul’s lips twisted. “He might have. I can’t say that I was always in the most receptive mood to listen. I know he kept bringing new ones down. Most of them died, until finally some didn’t. But even if they weren’t special before, they are now.”
I started digging again. I was becoming very fond of this hole. When I got out of here, perhaps I would give up being a naturalist and just dig holes for a living.
No, I probably wouldn’t, because even now I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Special how?”
Saul was silent for a few minutes. I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep. I hit another rock and started prying at it, but only succeeded in bending the edge of the pan.
“They’ve fed on me,” he said at last, clear reluctance in his voice. “I don’t know what that would do. It doesn’t usually happen that way.”
It was my turn for silence. The rock was at least the size of my head. I excavated around the edges, turning those words overin my mind, trying to make them fit, and eventually gave up. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“It changes things. They’re different now, I think. They grow faster, anyway.” He said something I didn’t quite catch, that might have been “same as us,” or “shame on us.” One of the two, anyway.
“That smacks of Lamarckism,” I told him primly, getting my hands around the rock at last. I braced my foot on the wooden board and threw my weight against it. The rock popped loose unexpectedly and I dropped it, because the alternative was to have my fingers smashed, and fell back into the water with a splash.
“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Cold water spread through my skirt and my drawers. I stood up, slapping futilely at my dress. Saul snorted with laughter.
