The Vorrh

being; he was like a white sack, limp and vacant, only standing because he did not have the wisdom to fall.
    The hunter and his grandfather approached the dead creature, the old ghost pulling the arrow from its dryness and passing it over his shoulder to Tsungali. The old man’s eye never left the grey carcass as he circled his gnarled hand above his head. He thought he knew what it was, but could not believe how far it had strayed from perfection. Lifting the hand of the slaughtered creature, he parted the fingers, removing the moss and lichen that clung there. The fingernails had turned into horny claws, and two of them passed through the old ghost’s tangibility and hooked themselves into him. He ignored this and continued his investigation, pulling at the tendrils of ivy that grew under the skin, alongside what had once been veins. As he did this, the flesh fell away like parchment from what had once been a human hand. The first human hand.
    Tsungali lifted the bow, fitted the dart and bent it with all his strength, pointing its attention into the shafts of light.
    * * *

    From the moment the arrow left the bow, followed on its journey by the duo of earnest spirits, his vision started to fail. The sound of the bow echoed behind Sidrus’ eyes, which in turn quivered in his head and lost focus. His skin crawled with a shiver that had previously been the avatar of Mithrassia, but this was something else, something altogether different. It must be the blood, he thought, or else the thrill at the beginning of his repair. It was as though his entire body was alive with thousands of ants, running over and inside his changing skin, rewriting his structure and purpose. He came to a murky pool and plunged his white head into its brackish waters to wash off any last traces of Williams’ death. The water felt cool and cleansing against the heat of his purpose, his exposed body embraced by the closeness of the trees. He emerged and dried his wrecked face carefully on his shirt, breathing heavily into its comfort. When he opened his tight, button eyes, all that lay before him was mile upon mile of black, desolate peat.
    * * *

    Ghertrude’s hands were damp and she was flushed with the child as she walked through the echoing, empty hall. Mutter was elsewhere. He spent most of his time in the stables or cleaning the yard; only invitation lured him into the house these days. Now that she was larger, he seemed more bashful, yet incapable of averting his eyes from the protuberance.
    She walked over to the basement door and unlocked it with the key she had carried in her wet hand for the last two hours. The nails were loose and fell to the floor with the soft, disintegrating sounds of liberation. She unchained the padlocks and pushed into the waiting kitchen; the warmth of disinterest still pumped at its enigmatic heart. She ignored its invitation to stay and think, to let time drift, and went to the dented panel.
    She was a very different shape now, and had to adjust her new balance in the tightness, easing herself down the stairwell and squeezing through the narrow entry, stepping at last into the room where the puppet had broken beneath her feet so long ago. The memory of her most forgotten dream enveloped her. She edged, cat-like, across the space. No trace of the haunting action was evident: no stains; no cobwebs; no history. She entered the next room and was somehow unsurprised to see Luluwa, sitting on the crate that had laid open since Ghertrude’s last visit; she was still and soft, her stiff brown hands resting on her thighs, head bowed. Ghertrude observed her calmly, waiting for direction.
    ‘You are the one who broke Abel,’ Luluwa said in her high, sing-song voice.
    ‘Yes,’ said Ghertrude.
    Luluwa raised her polished head; her eyes swivelled between their brown surface scars, looking for the question that Ghertrude’s observation had not yet formulated.
    ‘I hear the child,’ Luluwa said. ‘I hear the squalling of the movement; the child sucks at your interior, and thrashes with its limbs.’
    Ghertrude suddenly understood why she had not recoiled from Luluwa instantly, why she had not been immediately shocked to see her. Two eyes of cunning observation now adorned her face, surrounded by scars, as if the sockets and lids had been smeared with a hot knife. Her features had been altered with an amateur technology that had misunderstood the perfection of both the new and the original material: it was a