The Standing Dead

'You two will load the offal onto the drag-cradles,' she said, when her mouth was free. She pointed to where five cradles were laid out in a line well beyond the shade of the tree. It was Carnelian who led Fern off towards them. Carnelian could smell them before he was close enough to see they were caked with gore. Infants screaming drew his attention to the open ground where he saw them chasing each other among rows of frames, many of which were hung with ribbons of flesh adjusting heavily in the breeze.

Carnelian grimaced at the filthy drag-cradles. 'What're we supposed to do?' he asked Fern. His friend gave a shrug for an answer.

The women were painting each other's faces red. Those that were done went to stand around the boulder tables testing the edges of the flints. Some had to be knapped sharp. Blood-faced, two women were appraising the saurian corpse as if it were a house they were about to demolish. Soon they were in among its bones, hacking away with their knives. The hunks of meat they released were caught by other women who lugged them over to the boulders, where they were sheared into slices and then ribbons. Carnelian watched as the girls began knotting these into ropes which they wound around their arms like yarn. Bloody to the armpits, the girls carried the meat away from the tree and draped it over the frames as if it were washing being hung out to dry.

Ginkga's voice carried over to Carnelian and Fern. 'You two.'

They exchanged a look of resignation and went to her. She confronted them arms red to the elbows, face the colour of fresh blood.

'You should take off as much as you can.'

Fern pulled off his robe and, reluctantly, Carnelian followed his lead. They both endured the ribald comments the women made about their bodies.

Ginkga offered them a bowl that appeared to be filled with blood. 'You're here to do penance for your insult to the Mother. You must wear her colour as we do.'

Fern scowled, but took the bowl. He kneeled and put it on the ground and motioned Carnelian to join him. Facing each other, they dipped their fingers in the bowl and smeared the redness over their faces under Ginkga's grim supervision. When they were done, she led them to their work. Shouldering the slimy sag of a lung between them, they struggled to heave it back to the drag-cradles.

Sweltering, they laboured, their torsos and their heads itching with gore. Carnelian had tried to make a joke about their red faces but Fern was not much inclined to humour. The sun had brought with it a plague of flies that swarmed the growing mounds of offal. A constant procession of people came to stare. Worst of all for Carnelian was the mob of jeering children that had collected, who hung around him as he worked, coming as close as they dared. Already weary, past nausea from the stench, their baiting was almost more than he could bear.

Fern gave him a look of sympathy. 'At least their antics are driving away the flies.'

Carnelian frowned. 'I'd prefer the flies.'

Fern chuckled.

'I'm glad at least it amuses you.' Fern looked concerned. 'I didn't mean -' Carnelian cut off the apology with his hand. 'I know you didn't.'

'If I asked her, perhaps Mother Ginkga would send them away.'

Carnelian began to shake his head, then winced as it adhered to the bundle of tendons he was carrying over his shoulder. The children laughed, delighted, and he growled, scattering them.

The Standing Dead haunt their nightmares. To see one of them here, doing this work…' Fern shook his head, frowning, himself overcome by the wonder of it.

'It's not that I'm blaming them,' said Carnelian. 'I just wish they'd leave me alone.'

They'll tire of it.'

For some time after that Carnelian despaired they ever would, but gradually the gang began to thin until the last few children were wandering back across the earthbridge, making for the shade of their mother trees.

The blaze of the sun managed to enter through Carnelian's slitted eyes to give him a beating headache. The air scorched his lungs. The sun was nearing its greatest height when Ginkga called for a break. Panting, brushing away flies, Carnelian and Fern scrambled for the shade of the Bloodwood Tree as if it were a river in which they might swim. As shadow slipped over them, Carnelian put his head back and groaned with pleasure. A delicious breeze cooled his skin. He saw two girls ladling water out from a jar that lay against the trunk of the tree. Fern called over to them and they came with slow, reluctant steps. They stood uncertain, staring at Carnelian.

Fern grew angry. 'Come on, fetch us some water.'

The girls ran back to the jar.

They shun me,' said Carnelian.

'Both of us. Do you blame them?' Fern opened his arms to display his grimy torso.

Carnelian chuckled. 'I suppose not. You look as if you've been peeled.' He laughed when Fern raised an eyebrow.

'Red's not your colour, Carnie.'

The girls returned with a bowl of water and some roasted fernroot which they carefully put on the ground in front of them. Fern insisted Carnelian drink first. When they had quenched their thirst, they went to sit with their backs against the tree. As they munched away at the fernroot, they gazed across the sun-bleached fernmeadow to the Newditch and into the wavering mirage of the plain beyond.

Carnelian looked round. Fern's red face was crusted black with blood. He was scratching his head, where the curls were stiff with brown matter. Glancing round, he saw Carnelian looking at him. Carnelian thought his friend's eyes very bright.

'Where did you get that hair?'

Fern frowned.

Carnelian looked away, narrowing his eyes against the glare of the world beyond the shade. 'Perhaps I shouldn't have asked.'

'My mother was travelling through the Leper Valleys on her way back from the Mountain when she became separated from the other tributaries. She was raped.'

The murmur of the women's talk was a buzzing of bees. Carnelian turned his head to look at Fern, whose chin was resting on his chest. His eyes were focusing on the fern-root in his hands that he was snapping into little pieces.

'A Maruli?' asked Carnelian.

Fern's chin dug into his chest. 'Smeared all over with ash, yellow-eyed with a ravener grin.'

'It must have been hard for you growing up here.'

'My mother protected me.'

'And, surely, so did the rest of your hearth?'

Fern turned to look at him. 'When I was born, Whin sided with those who urged my mother to expose me on the summit of the Crag.'

'But you're married to her daughter.'

'My mother claims Whin agreed to that because she shared her passion for reuniting their two matriarchal lines, but I don't believe it. As is our custom, I had tried to find a wife in another hearth. Because of the way I was fathered none would have me. My mother must have begged Whin.'

Seeing the anguish in those dark eyes, Carnelian fought a desire to embrace him.

'What's the matter with you?' Fern asked.

Carnelian did not know what to say. He could hear the women on the other side of the tree returning to work and used it as an excuse to rise.

'We'd better get on with it,' he said and, without even glancing at Fern, he strode off to the drag-cradles with their heaped, rotting entrails; their clouds of flies.

The Skyfather be praised,' Fern sighed, as Ginkga announced an end to the day's work.

With a grunt, Carnelian dislodged a quivering mass of membranes from his shoulder. They tumbled with a wet thud onto a drag-cradle, splashing him with mucus. He was past caring. Lifting his gaze to the west, he saw the sun was drowning in its own blood. At least the air had cooled.

'You worked well enough,' said a woman's voice. Turning, Carnelian saw it was Ginkga. He could see how hard it had been for the woman to make that admission.