The Vorrh

all. The hands of your first son, Thaddeus, have this day been removed. They have been crossed over and sewn on backwards, right to left and left to right. His palms will always face outwards. He will receive the best medical care until he is healed. His hands will be useless for work, but perfect for begging. You may save him from such a future, but not from the operation. That is the price you owe to us. Be calm, Herr Mutter, and remember our care and protection of your family over all these years. Accept your wrongdoing, repent, and return to our favour.’
    When Mutter ventured home that night, he dreaded the reality that the voice had promised, but hoped that it might have been a delusion, a befuddlement. He entered his home with permafrost rotting his heart. The rolling wave of warmth and the hug of coiled noise did nothing to thaw him. His wife took his heavy topcoat and seated him at the solid table as his daughter, Meta, brought him a mug of thick, black beer. He watched them flurry back and forth with steaming pots and clanking plates. The sumptuous energy of home, rich and seamless, stirred the glow of continuity out of the shards of necessity. The food was served, and everybody are enthusiastically. But Thaddeus’ chair was empty, and Mutter stared dumbly at his meaningless dish, its smell arousing nothing within him.
    ‘Where is Thaddeus?’ he choked.
    ‘Oh! Wonderful!’ his wife chirped. ‘A letter came with the possibility of employment, so he went to the eastern quarter; he should be home soon.’
    The table fell away and sharp, inward tears fell to make a razor chain of slow constrictions inside his throat; it tightened with every joyous mouthful his family ate. No one noticed the change, not even his lifetime wife, and he swamped his horror and guilt in thick, heavy beer that stung with each strangled gulp.
    Thaddeus did not return that evening. Nor was he seen the next day, or the one after that. Mutter went to the warehouse and knelt in his son’s absence; he gave his word to the building that he was, forever, a loyal and unflinching servant. He returned to his duties, weighed down by despair.
    Early the next day, Thaddeus stood outside the family home, a worn exhaustion in his confused but settled eyes. He was immaculately dressed in a silk suit, his hair elegantly styled like that of a prince, his beautiful new shoes shining in the dusty sunlight, his wrists bandaged, his hands open at his parents’ door.
    * * *

    His prey was edging along the river, as predicted. Tsungali heard him coming half an hour before he appeared, and watched through his binoculars as he entered the light: just another ignorant white man, carrying too much equipment on his back. Then Tsungali spotted the bow. The sight jolted him and his instincts kicked hard against his better judgment. He set the glasses down and adjusted the rifle; his entire attention was drawn along the barrel, anticipating the sights: an elemental flaw in marksmanship, and a lethal practice for a sniper. His mind stopped; there was only the rifle.
    The white man pressed himself against the rock, inadvertently presenting his greatest area of target as he nimbly sidestepped the path. Tsungali squeezed the trigger. The Enfield barked deeply into the gorge and the man fell from the path. The hunter worked the bolt and re-cocked the gun, then searched the bank with his glasses to locate the body. It was not there. He stood to see if it had fallen behind a rock, or somehow slipped into the water, but there was no sign of the dead man or his equipment. He had vanished.
    He gathered his things together quickly, and started wading across the river, the rifle held across his chest. At the halfway point, his eye flickered between the distant bank and the fast, icy water speeding over the smooth, irregular pebbles. As he stopped to pull his twisted boot free from a stone, the first arrow struck. He saw nothing until the flaring blue pain. The arrow went through his hand, piercing the stock of the Enfield and coming out the other side, its broken head digging into his ribs. He bit hard and flailed in the water, trying in vain to locate his adversary. The second arrow hit him in the teeth, smashing through his mouth and breaking his clenched jaw. It fractured the hinge and severed the strings of muscle that held it in place, exiting close to his pulsing jugular vein, where the shaft pointed behind, like a bent quill. His ruined mouth was full of blood