The Beasts of Barakhai Read online

  “I’ve never eaten a person in my life.” Seeing the opportunity, he added. “And I’ve never killed anyone, either.”

  Using her thumb and middle finger, Falima pulled back her locks, black as ink, thick, and shiningly soft. They fell instantly back to the sides of her head. “You killed Joetha, Ben Collins.” The blue eyes filled with ice. “Then you ate her. We found the remains in your possession, some in your very hands.”

  “What?” The suggestion seemed nonsense. “I didn’t have—” Realization struck with the force of a speeding truck. “Are you talking about the rabbit?”

  “Joetha,” Falima corrected.

  Stunned, Collins stuttered. “I couldn’t—I mean I didn’t—know . . .” He trailed off. It seemed impossible that he had discovered a society so tolerant of differences that its citizens considered animals on a par with humans. Why not? There are people in our world who do. He recalled incidents of loonies breaking into laboratories, murdering humans to “rescue” laboratory animals that swiftly perished in the wild. “I-I didn’t know. You have to believe me.”

  “I have to?”

  “Because it’s true. In my world, animals are considered . . .” Collins chose his words with care. “. . . our charges, not . . . our equals.”

  The blue eyes narrowed, as if Falima found his explanation impossible to fathom. “What is your switch-form?”

  The compound word made no sense to Collins. “My what?”

  “Your switch-form. Your switch-form?”

  The repetition did not help. “I don’t understand.”

  Falima spoke louder and with awkward sluggishness. “YOUR . . . SWITCH . . . -FORM.”

  Baffled, Collins regarded Falima blankly, then came back with the same volume and tone, “I . . . HAVE . . . NO . . . CLUE . . . WHAT . . . YOU’RE . . . TALKING . . . ABOUT.”

  Falima tilted her head. Her lips pursed, and she squinted. Clearly, she thought him a moron. “What are you when you are not a man?”

  “Not a man?” Collins shook his head. “. . . well, I used to be a boy.” He could not help adding, “My girlfriend thinks I still am.”

  Falima rolled her eyes. “So, you are hiding it. A carnivore of some sort, no doubt. Or a bear, maybe. They are always the ones that fall off their oaths.”

  Collins threw up his hands in surrender. “I honestly have no idea what you’re getting at.” He put the scattered details together. “Are you saying that sometimes you’re something other than a woman?”

  Falima’s hands clamped to her hips. “You rode me here.”

  “I did?” Collins’ eyes widened at the realization. “You’re . . . you’re . . . a horse?” The words sounded twice as ridiculous coming from his own mouth. One of us is entirely crazy. He studied Falima more fully, now noticing the minutiae that seemed too clear for coincidence: the large blue eyes, glossy black hair, and golden skin tone. As impossible as it seemed, he believed. Once Collins’ mind made that leap, worse had to follow. “Oh, my God!”

  “Yes, my switch-form is a horse. What’s wrong with that?”

  “That rabbit was . . . was—”

  “A sweet old woman.” Falima’s eyes narrowed again. “And you ate her.”

  Collins’ stomach churned. Bile climbed up his throat. “Oh, my God. My God!” Though nauseated, he felt certain he could not vomit and desperately wished he could. “Holy shit. My God. My God!” Nothing more coherent seemed possible. “I—” His voice emerged hoarser than he expected. “I . . . didn’t know. Where I come from, people are just people. Animals are . . . animals. All the time. Always.”

  Rage rekindled in Falima’s pale eyes, and she regarded Collins like some loathsome insect. “In Barakhai, you are a murderer and a cannibal. And you will be hanged midmorning.”

  Stunned dumb, Collins could only stare as Falima turned her back on him and strode swiftly beyond sight.

  Chapter 3

  Benton Collins sprawled on the floor of his cell, the stone warming to his body. His eyes lay open; he felt incapable of closing them. The irregular plank ceiling became indelibly etched on his vision: the watermark in the shape of a bottle, the knothole like an ever-staring eye, the spidery crack that emitted a steady patter of water droplets. You will be hanged midmorning. The words cycled through his mind, always in Falima’s voice, a death knell he had no way to escape. “I didn’t know,” he said to no one. “How could I possibly know?”

  Collins scraped his fingers along the damp stone in mindless circles, his back aching and his wrists throbbing with every heartbeat. This can’t be happening. People changing into animals? It can’t be real. He forced his eyes shut, hoping that, when he opened them, he would awaken from this nightmare. The darkness behind his lids was filled with shadows.

  Beyond his control, Collins’ eyes glided open to confront the same water spot, the knothole, and the crack. The water plopped steadily against stone.

  Collins awakened with no realization of having slept. Only the diffuse glow illuminating the prison revealed that morning had come. Distant voices wafted to him, unintelligible and intermingled with the occasional clink of metal. He sprang to his feet, the movement inciting a sharp pain through his back and right shoulder. The hard floor had stiffened him during the night.

  Four men entered Collins’ field of vision. They all wore the familiar rust and gold, swords, and batons. They also carried a rope.

  Terror seized every part of Collins. He flattened against the back wall of his cell.

  The men spoke to one another in their odd language, then gestured Collins forward.

  Collins did not move. “There’s been . . . a mistake,” he wheezed through a throat gone painfully dry. “I didn’t know. I . . . didn’t . . . know.” Enough time had passed that the rabbit no longer filled his belly, a constant reminder of a heinous crime. Yet he found it impossible to eat.

  The guards exchanged more words. Then, one stepped forward and unlocked the cage. Two of the men entered, one carrying the rope. The door clanged shut behind them.

  Collins measured the two with his gaze. Both stood shorter than his five-foot-eleven frame, and only one outweighed his one hundred fifty-five pounds. However, both moved with a wary dexterity that threatened experience and strength. It seemed as foolish to fight as to go willingly. The first would gain him bruises in addition to his sentence, but the latter would mean he had done nothing to avert his fate. Either way, he had nothing to lose but more pain. He was going to die. I’m going to die. Despite the time he had invested in it, the thought seemed beyond comprehension.

  The man without the rope, the heavier one, drew a loop in the air with his finger, an obvious gesture to turn.

  Collins only blinked, pretending not to understand. It seemed safer than insolence.

  The men conversed a moment, then nodded. They lunged for Collins simultaneously. He leaped backward, crashing against the wall with enough force to send pain lurching through his spine and breath huffing from his lungs. A moment later, they had him prone, arms pulled behind him. The ropes tightened around his wrists again, reawakening the previous day’s agony. He screamed.

  The guards shouted over Collins. The two hauled him to his feet, the door opened, and they all escorted him through the prison hallway. They went through another door, attended by two women in the standard uniform, then emerged into sunshine so bright it seared Collins’ eyes. He shut them, allowing the men to guide him blindly, stumblingly forward. Gradually, the sounds of a crowd grew around him, mingled conversations interspersed with an occasional call and sometimes pierced by a bark or whinny. He opened his eyes to slits, seeing a blur of faces, streets, and cottages in a glaze of brilliant sunlight. Then, he caught sight of the gallows towering over the rest, and he forced his eyes fully open despite the pain.

  Collins now saw that he walked through a village of mud-and-thatch cottages, shops, and mills. The gathering consisted of a teeming mass of people, as varied in appearance as Americans, except they all wore simple homespun: griz
zled elders and slouching adolescents, adults of every age, some clutching children’s hands or babies in their arms. The shadow of the gallows loomed over them. Collins pinned his attention on the vast wooden monstrosity. A rope dangled from its uppermost pole, over a high, warped platform with massive, metal hinges. Clearly, the rope went around the victim’s throat, then the platform was dropped, suspending him, by his neck, just above the level of the crowd. Him. Collins shivered. Him is me. He would feel his spine snapping, a moment of excruciating pain followed by absolute and permanent nothingness. Permanent. The enormity of death filled hismind with a terror beyond panic, the realization that the world would go on without him in it, that his time on this earth would end, not in years, but in minutes.

  Collins reared backward, against his captors, screaming in mindless hysteria. Their grips tightened painfully, nails gouging his arms, then his legs. He felt himself lifted into the air. He squirmed, desperate, howling, aware only of the complete and monstrous need to break free. Though Collins recognized forward motion, the significance of it refused to penetrate the thought-shattering horror that drove his fight.

  It all came home moments later.

  The noose tickled, then hugged Collins’ neck, and he went utterly still. It’s going to happen. It’s really going to happen. I’m going to die. A hopeless rationality filled him, a strange relief from the previous panic. And I’m not going down in the history books as the hero who faced his end bravely. His mind slid to a story he had read in junior high, about a man hanged from a bridge who hallucinated a grand escape in the moments before death. He wondered if it really happened that way and realized that no one could possibly know. He would, but he could do nothing with the information. If only I’d gone to the Johnsons’. If only I hadn’t followed that rat. If only I hadn’t eaten that rabbit. Regrets followed, the inability to apologize for small misdeeds, to say good-bye. He thought of all the things he would never get to do: hold a job, marry, coddle his children. Visit Disney World.

  A man said something Collins could not understand.

  Collins laughed hysterically, screwing his eyes shut. Then, the floor fell out under his feet, and he felt himself plunging. He tightened the muscles of his neck and face, bracing for the final impact.

  The fall seemed to last forever. Then, a jolt shocked through his groin. Agony cramped his stomach, and he tumbled forward. His nose struck something hard and hairy, driving more pain through him. The crowd roared. Collins forced his lids open. Immediately, wiry hair slashed his eyes, and he shut them again. He felt forward movement, gaining momentum. The noose lay heavy on the back of his neck. He dared a shuddering breath, and air glided silkily, surprisingly easily, into his lungs.

  The crowd continued shouting, sounding like they were in an open air sports stadium. Collins sat, splay-legged, on something warm and furry that carried him at a rocking sprint away from the gallows. He remembered the name of the hanging story: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” though the significance of knowing it eluded him. Pitching his torso back, without the use of his still-tied arms, he wrenched open his eyes again. His breaths came in pants, due to shock, not pressure.

  Farm fields flashed past Collins, and forest loomed ahead. Behind, he heard yelling. The noose remained around his neck, trailing a length of rope. He sat astride a horse, its black mane whipping into his face, one golden ear forward, the other flicked backward. A set of saddlebags lay slung across its withers. Falima? he wondered, doubting the possibility. She had seemed so hostile toward him the previous night. He eased more steadily onto the horse’s back, not caring who or what had caught him, only glad that he had at least a little longer to live.

  The horse lunged around the trees, racing between trunks with a speed that quailed Collins. He wished for the use of his hands. Weight shifts and knee pressure seemed woefully inadequate to keep him astride as the animal kept up its breakneck pace on narrow deer trails through dense tangles of forest. Then, as if in answer to his wish, the ropes loosened on his wrists. He fingered them, his exploration rewarded by frayed areas where it had, apparently, broken. He twisted it blindly over fingers, hands, and wrists, hampered by a warm, sticky liquid. Then, the rope fell away, freeing his hands. He pulled the noose from his neck, rubbed his bleeding wrists, and seized handfuls of mane.

  The horse loosed a low nicker and slowed, slogging through denser brush and between more tightly packed trunks. Something buzzed past, irritatingly close to Collins’ ear. He swatted at it, missed, and turned his attention to the terrain. The horse wallowed through tangles of brush, forcing Collins to flatten against its neck or side to avoid braining himself on leaning deadfalls and shed branches caught in the crotches of other trees. Time and again, he jerked a leg onto the horse’s back to rescue it from being crushed.

  Collins had done some riding with his high school girlfriend and realized he could steer the animal better than it could randomly pick its way along the trail. Taking up the rope intended to kill him, he fashioned it into a raw bridle, essentially a loop with reins. Gliding up the horse’s neck, he flicked the coil around its nose.

  The horse made a sound deep in its throat but otherwise seemed to take no notice of the rudely fashioned tack. As panic receded, Collins considered his situation. He rode on a horse that might, at other times, be human, possibly even Falima. The animals he had thus far seen acted exactly like the creatures they resembled in his own world, except for the too-friendly rabbit. Joetha, he corrected, cringing. Apparently, while in “switch-form,” they lost their human memories and fully became animals. He wondered if all humans here had an animal-form, whether he might acquire one if he remained here too long, and how much control they had over the change.

  Collins steered the buckskin around a thick, low-hanging branch. It ignored his gentle pull, so he increased the pressure, then drove his opposite heel into its flank.

  The ears jerked backward. The horse reared with a sharp squeal, then followed Collins’ instruction. The horse’s reaction flashed guilt through him. Perhaps the horse did retain at least some of its human understanding. Suddenly he remembered the dogs’ unwillingness to share his feast in the field. They must have some crossover between human and animal time. Otherwise, the dogs would never know they could not eat meat.

  Collins had acted from impulse, accustomed to steering horses with reins and heel strikes. The horses back home had always taken these techniques in stride, a standard and accepted form of communication. Apparently, people here had a different way of making contact with their horses. He had tried talking to the rabbit and had received no response or indication that it understood. In the field, the guards had used a rope on Falima’s horse-form, so she had to have some experience with being led. Nevertheless, he resolved not to kick her any more.

  Something buzzed past Collins’ head again. This time, he caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a large bumblebee or horsefly zipping past him. Human, too? he wondered, then dismissed the thought. No world could support even a hundredth as many people as bugs.

  Collins turned his attention back to the horse. “Hello,” he tried. “Are you Falima?”

  The animal gave no indication it understood, though one ear did rise from its previous position, plastered angrily against its head.

  The ride continued for hours, the horse ignoring every attempt by Collins to end it. Pulling back on the rope only made it raise and shake its head. Verbal explanations and, later, exhortations were met with nothing more than a few flicks of its ears. When he tensed to leap from its back, it quickened its pace dangerously, tossing him back into his seat. Eventually, Collins gave up, settling into the most comfortable position his sore thighs could find, flicking off the rope, and allowing the animal to take him where it would.

  Finally, deep in some clearly unexplored part of the forest, the horse stopped. It dropped its head to graze at weeds poking around deadfalls and fallen clumps of leaves, then shook its entire body. The sudden movement caught Collins off guard; a
grab at the flying mane barely rescued him from a fall. He slid down the horse’s side, dislodging the saddlebags and clinging only by his hands. Mane hairs bit into his fingers.

  The horse responded with an abrupt toss of its head that tore his grip free, as well as several strands from its mane. Collins dropped to the ground, rolling, hands protecting his head from a chance movement of the animal’s hooves. It placidly returned to grazing, paying him no attention at all. The saddlebags lay on the ground.

  Carefully, gaze fixed on the animal, Collins eased the saddlebags to him. Made of some natural fiber, the saddlebags yielded easily to his grip, much lighter and flimsier than the leather bags he had used in high school. Its well-crafted shape and metal weights sewn into the central areas kept it in place despite the lack of a pommel. He unlatched one of the two buckles and peered at a bulge of fabric. Hoping for something to replace the sweatshirt he had left to block the door crack in Daubert Labs, he pulled free several pieces. He unfolded a brown dress wrapped around a braided rope halter and lead, followed by a royal blue tunic that looked child-sized. Three knives thumped to the dirt, then a canteen and a stoppered crock. He worked the stopper free and peered inside, discovering a moving mass of what appeared to be enormous bugs. Startled, he dropped the crock. Three black beetles rolled to the ground, bearing a striking resemblance to the round objects he had seen on his salad in the prison cell. One opened its wings, then lifted soundlessly from the ground. The other two followed a moment later, and Collins recorked the crockery.

  Collins discovered several more articles of clothing, in varying sizes, including a green tunic and cloak as well as a pair of brown britches that looked as if they might fit him. He pulled the tunic over his head, leaving the lacings undone. It felt odd, the fabric rough against his chest; and it was strangely tight in some places and loose in others. At least it kept him warm. The other pack contained more clothing, another canteen, a parcel of white paste resembling Play Doh, his cell phone and watch, and three pairs of wood-and-rope sandals. He also found a few hard rolls, wrinkled apples, and a wrapped packet of something that looked and smelled like the curds he had tasted on a field trip to the cheese factory in sixth grade.