Interlude 12

Interlude 12: Godly Plate of Whale

    As an abrasive wind tears through the layers she wears, numbing any flesh it finds, Minulet thinks to herself that the inevitable cannot come soon enough. The sweat that pools under the plaster cast is hot and itchy until it dribbles out by her wrist, where a comb of thin icicles has already begun to form. She lost track of time a while back; the concept of days is meaningless here. This planet's sun looped lower and lower above the horizon after they arrived, until one day it simply never reappeared at all.
    The good news, then, was that they had crashed very near one of the poles, and finding warmer climes was as simple as picking any direction, and walking that way until the situation improved. Simple in theory, at least, but there was nothing easy about ceaseless slogging through waist-high snow drifts against a relentless wind. After the crash, the situation was quite grim, and there was quite a bit of debate about the proper course of action; some of Koron's crew wanted to remain behind, and try to pull the Koruth ship out of its watery resting place, but she had sided with the Koruth, who unanimously agreed that it was better to die marching than lying down.
    Regret was pointless; she would have been almost as cold and miserable if they waited out the winter in the ring-shelter they had built out of the escape pods, and their food would have run out sooner than later, as well. The night here was absolutely spectacular when ethereal ribbon-lights appeared, rippling across the Great River, filling the sky with so much color. She allowed herself to feel grateful to be alive, despite everything.
    Eventually, though, the ice begins to thin underfoot, and little patches of vegetation become thicker and more frequent, and then they are trudging through a forest of squat, needle-laden trees. Soon after that, the foliage is so thick that Minulet loses any sense of direction, but the Koruth are expert navigators, or at least confident ones. Their confidence bears out when the forest gives way to grassy plains that drop swiftly into the sea.
    The horror that waits at the shore is almost too much for Minulet to bear, although she has seen a great many horrible things in her life. The great whales have lumbered onto the beach, dragging their ungainly bulk through the sand with their stunted, muscular legs. Hunters, armed with spears and pole-arms, pour off of pursuing vessels and onto the backs of the fleeing beasts, and begin to carve great chunks of living flesh from their bodies. Blood flows in great rivers, staining the white sands red.
    The hunters, or perhaps butchers is more appropriate, work forward from tail to head, stripping the great whales to the bone, making piles of the organs, huge quivering, oozing piles that stink in the sun. By the time the butchers reach the whales' heads, the massive beasts are finally, mercifully dead, or near enough for them to begin to saw off their true prize; the whales each wore a vast horn-rimmed skull plate that must have done very little to enhance their swimming, but probably served some ritual purpose.
    Nokule and his kin are fearless, and do not seem to be at all repulsed by this barbaric slaughter. Within minutes, after wading through knee-deep gore, he has somehow arranged passage across the sea aboard one of the vessels. Nokule wears an expression of grim satisfaction when he tells Koron's crew this.
    "Are they Koruth as well? Is this a Koruth world?" Nashokul seems distracted. Minulet thinks he already knows the answer to both these questions, but he's trying to make sense of his universe, and this strange new role he plays in it. Nokule laughs, grim.
    "They speak your language, enough to understand. This life," he gestures at the massacre winding down behind him, "is all that they know. The stars hold only demons for them."
    "At what cost?" she asks, sensing that he has not said everything he has to say. What he says makes her wish she had not asked, though with her arm not yet mended, there is very little she can do to help, other than carry ropes and hooks. The sun is already rising again by the time the whale meat has been packed in ice and salt, and Minulet is exhausted, the urge to vomit now spent.
    As the last of the long boats are hauled up on deck, Minulet leans against a salt barrel, and stares at the long shadows cast by scraped-clean ribs of the beasts. But the beasts live and breathe still, she thinks, the truly savage ones who look not so different from herself. When they speak, their voices sound like hers, or not so different. Their laughter sounds like her laughter, their smiles look like her smile.
    They have promised to take these people whom she thinks of as family, more out of convenience than any real attachment, to the north, and to civilization, but she wonders now, as the bones sail away toward the horizon, if the word has any meaning.