I only noticed now, with her close, that her eyes were all white as well. The old one went off in the dark but her eyes popped out of the black.
“And what sisters? You boy-beasts who change to women, what are you?”
They all laughed.
“Surely you know us. We are the beasts where the woman do the tasking and the men do the tasks. And since men have made it that the biggest cock rules ground and sky, does it not make sense that woman should have the biggest cock?” said the middle one.
“This is a world where men rule.”
“And what good has come of your rule?” the old one said.
“There is game, there is bush, there are rivers without poison, and no child starves because of the gluttony of his father, since we put men in their place, and the gods willed it,” said the middle one.
“He don’t remember any of them. Maybe we cry. Maybe we make him cry,” the young one said.
“I would tell you how many moons have passed, but we do not fear gray in the hair, nor the crook in back, so we do not count moons. Do you not remember the Hills of Enchantment? A boy with two axes jumped a pack of us, killing three and maiming one. Who could no longer hunt, became prey.”
The other two groaned.
“Women doing what they do. Protecting their young. Nurturing, providing—”
“Feeding them whatever young child you were too glutted to feed yourself.”
“That is the way of the bush.”
“And should you come across me with half of your cub in my mouth, would you tell yourself that too is the way of the bush? Fuck the gods, if you are not the shiftiest of creatures. If you are in the bush, and of the bush, why do I smell your fucking stink in the city? You roll in the street and grovel like a mangy bitch to the women whose children you snatch at night.”
“You have no honor.”
“You bitches have me down in a hole full of man bones, and the smell of children you murder. A group of you killed ten and seven women and babies over twenty nights in Lajani until hunters killed them. Until I passed through and asked why does everywhere reek of hyena piss, they thought they were hunting wild dogs. I see your ways. You shift form to move among children, do you not? Then drag them away to kill. Not even the lowest shape-shifter kind sinks so low. Honor. There’s more honor to the worm.”
“He keeps calling us dogs,” the young one said.
“We followed you for a year,” the middle one said.
“Why grab me now?”
“I told you time is nothing to us, nor is haste. It’s your friend who took a year.”
“Awhoa! Sister, look at his face. Look how it falls when you speak of the friend. Did you not yet see in your mind-eye that he betrayed you?”
“Nyka. That is his name. Was there strong love between you? You thought he would never sell you for silver or gold, and yet how do we know his name?”
“He is my friend.”
“Nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy.”
“Nothing, he says. Now he says nothing. Watch the face. It’s drooping longer. No sting like betrayal’s sting. Watch the face,” the young one said.
“It turns into a … a … scowl? Is it a scowl, sisters?” the old one asked.
“Come out of the dark so you can see clear.”
“I think the boy shall cry.”
“Take heart, boy. He sold you to us a year ago. In that time I think he might have even grown to like you.”
“He just like gold coin more.”
“Do you wish that we kill him?” the middle one said as she stooped in front of me.
I lunged at her as far as the chains would let me, but she did not even flinch.
“I can do this for you. A final wish,” she said.
“I have a wish,” I said.
“Sisters, the man has a wish. Should one of us attend to it or all three?”
“All three of you.”
“Give us this wish, we shall hear it,” said the old one.
I looked at them. The middle one smiling as if she was the healer woman come to touch my forehead, the old one cupping her ear as she looked at me, the younger one spitting and looking away.
“I wish you would stay in hyena form, for though you are a hideous animal and your breath always stinks of rotting corpse, at least I didn’t have to bear you in the mockery form of women. Women who make me ask what kind of woman smells as if she shits from the mouth.”
The old and young ones howled and changed form again, but I knew the middle one would not allow them to touch me. Yet.
“I wish to see the view of the gods, when I kill each of you.”
The middle one threw herself at me as if to kiss. Indeed she grabbed my head as if to kiss and parted her lips. Sisters, she said, and both ran to me as women, and grabbed my arms. Strong, strong women, they held me down no matter how hard I struggled. She moved in to kiss my mouth, but moved her lips upward, touching my nose, brushing my cheek, and stopping at my left eye. I closed it before she licked it. She took her fingers and pried it open. She covered it with her mouth and licked the eye. I yelled and struggled, jerked my chest up and tried to nod my head out of her grip. I screamed before I knew what she was doing. Then she stopped licking. And started sucking. She pressed her lips around the eye and sucked, and sucked, and I could feel myself pulling out of my own head, sucked into her mouth. I screamed and screamed but that made the other two laugh and laugh. She sucked and sucked and all around my eye was dark and hot. It was leaving me. It was leaving me. It was forgetting where it should be and leaving for her mouth. My eye, she sucked it until the whole thing plopped out of my lids and into her mouth. She pulled it slow. She licked around it once, twice, three times and I think I said no. Please. No. Then she bit it off.
I woke up in total dark. They raised my arms up and my face rested on the right. I could not touch my face, even though surely that had been a dream? I did not want to do it. I could not touch my left eye, so I closed the right. Everything went black. I opened again and there was the light on the ground. I closed again and everything was black. The tears ran down my cheeks before I even thought to cry. I tried to bring my knees up and my foot stepped on it, slippery and soft. They left it there for me to see. The goddess who hears man’s cry and returns the same cry mocked me.
I woke up, feeling cloth on my face, wrapped around my eye.
“Will you now say that you will kill us, we mockery of women?” the middle one said. “I wish to hear of your rage, or your savage talk. It entertains me.”
I had nothing to say. I wanted to say nothing. Not to spite her, since I didn’t want that either. I wanted nothing. That was the first day.
Day two, the old one woke me with a slap.
“Look how little we feed you and yet you still piss and shit yourself,” she said.
She threw me a piece of meat with the fur still on it. Be glad it’s fresh kill, she said. But I still could not eat raw flesh. Eat it and think of him, she said, then went back into the dark. She changed slow and it sounded like bones cracking and joints popping. She threw another piece at me. The side of a warthog’s head.
Day three, the young one ran in as if somebody was chasing her. She of the three liked changing to woman the least. She came right up to me and licked my shoulder and I flinched. I knew the heh-heh-heh was not a laugh, but it felt like mockery. She made a sound I never heard before, like a whine, like a child saying EEEEEEEEE. She opened her mouth, flattened her ears, and tilted her head to one side. She bared her teeth. Out of the dark came another hyena, smaller, the spots on the skin larger. She EEEEEEEEE’d again and the other one came in closer. The hyena sniffed my toes, then trotted away. The young one changed to woman and yelled at the dark. I laughed but it came out like a sick man’s laugh. She punched me quick in the left cheek, and again and again, until my head went dark again.
Day four, two of them argued in the dark. Present him to the clan, the old one said, for now I knew her voice. Present him to the clan and let them judge him. Every woman in the clan deserves a bite of his flesh. Every woman is not my sister, said the middle one. Every woman did not raise her cubs like my own, she said. Revenge is true, but not just for you, the old woman said. But I shall have it, the middle one said. No other woman has longed for this day, no other. The old one then said, Why not kill him, then, kill him now? You should hand him to the clan, I say this again.