Heart Rot

❽ - EIGHT

He can barely breathe around the smell of leafmould. It is as heavy in the crevices of his lungs as stone.

A collar of sharpened sticks pierces his chest, scraping past rib and sternum. The fungal taste is replaced with wet, bitter, gumming together his teeth. The bone of his jaw warps and groans under the strain of trying to pry them apart - if only he can speak this can be over, if only he can speak he can beg mercy and it can all be well, but there is too much leafmould and acrid air and blood-gum pressing in, crushing his chest. Desperately he flings his head back, trying to force more space - all at once it ruptures. He feels every rib shatter, every vertebra, and white pain-light tumbles through the cracks and cuts the world into pieces.

He came to with a gasp. It was still dark - that was the first thing his mind recognized, and that was a long panicked moment thinking it was still true, he was lying as bone-fragments buried in humus right then. But then there was wool instead of leafmould under his cheek, and gradually the familiar curve of his hammock, the smoke of the low-burned hearth, the slow and reliable breathing of the others along their row filtered back in.

Comalpo pushed his blanket back and sat up, swinging.

"Comalpo?" Tliichpil's sleepy voice floated up from behind him. "Are you all right?" The creak of the hook and rustle of cloth told him that he too had risen; two soft footsteps, and he felt him standing behind him, close enough to touch if he only leaned back. "What's wrong?"

He dragged a sweaty palm down over his face. "I -" He shut his eyes, but that just brought the blackness back, so he opened them again. "I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

"You don't look fine," he observed bluntly.

"And be quiet. You'll wake the little ones."

Tliichpil's silence indicated he too was looking over Comalpo's head at their younger siblings, none of whom had so much as twitched. "Doubtful." He dropped businesslike to his hands and knees and slid underneath, appearing near Comalpo's feet. "Shove over," he said, and sat down beside him. The cloth tipped their shoulders together.

"Talk to me," he whispered, after a moment of silence. "What is it?"

"I don't know. Just a nightmare, I suppose."

"Thought you didn't get those anymore."

"Yeah. So did I." For a fraction of a heartbeat he was envious, that Tliichpil could talk about that from the outside. That had been his greatest shame, when he was younger and had no more to compete for that position: nights upon nights of waking up screaming and crying, his parents trying to talk him down and smaller Lotli and Tliichpil just watching with their eyes big as sun-disks. After a while, his mother had sent the two of them to sleep in the store-room, just to ensure that at least some of her children could sleep.

He wondered what they had thought of it, back then. He had never figured out a cause; it had just stopped happening after a while. Had they thought he was going to go mad, even that young? Had they thought it a signification that he was going to be the bad one, that there was something dark and frightening growing inside him even then?

"Maybe I scared you," Tliichpil said.

"Mm." He would have thought there would be more water, in that case; but dreams were tricky things, only very rarely making obvious correlations to events in one's waking world. "Anyway, it's all right. I don't want to keep you awake. Go back to sleep."

"You're sure?"

"I'm sure." He was glad the dark concealed the brittleness of his smile. Tliichpil petted his shoulder and got up, climbing back into his own hammock. "Sleep better," he whispered before Comalpo pulled his own legs back up and his blanket around again.