“…in the province of Honan there was a roving gang who would settle for a while in one place, eat the inhabitants, and then move on.”

The baby wailed and the rascal scurried through the dust toward the canal embankment. All of a sudden consumed by a deep maternal rage, Suvee leaped over the wall too eagerly. When she came to earth her right ankle popped like a dried tree branch and she buckled and rolled.

‘No, not my baby! Not the baby!’

Despite the searing pain in her ankle, shooting up into her numbed hips she ran, if in an awkward hobble, as quickly as she might. She had no reasonable chance of catching the rascal—not in the short term. But she would follow him forever, to the ends of the earth; follow him until he starved to death if the need required!

After a dozen pain-filled strides she buckled again, and rolled to her feet on the embankment above the canal. Here at least was not dust, but dried and caked earth over which she might roll down the bank to make time.

She looked down at the muddy seep that was all that was left of this once deep canal upon which boats once plied their trade. Knee deep in the muddy water stood the rascal grinning up at her. Their eyes met and his turned bright as if he had stolen a pot of gold—and he had, her pot of gold, more precious than anything to her now.

Behind her she heard Bibi shout, “I have you lame thieving whore! I shall have your head!”

As much as she had once feared him she no longer cared and ran down the embankment with her broken foot flopping beneath her, screaming at the rascal, “My baby! My baby!!” Our baby!!!”

She collapsed at the base of the canal, where once water would have covered her. The dirty youth spit a gummy wad of mucus at her and turned to walk away.

‘Mother tree, if ever you hear me—’

She saw the water ripple brown and blue under the sun.

‘What? This is not so—cannot be?’

A hand—or was it a claw—reached up out of the muddy water and grasped the youth’s ankle.

The rascal stopped, dumfounded, and then made to tug his foot away as if he did not believe his own eyes.

His foot was dragged back down into the water to the knee. Then he looked with a start at his other foot, as if it had been latched onto as well, then he began to scream as other claw-like hands reached up from the muddy water and grabbed his knees and private parts, and then an elbow, and dragged him down into the water. He was gasping in silence seemingly unable to cry out as he was dragged under. Within a moment he was gone as the water all about churned furiously—and so was her baby gone.

Suvee screamed, “No! Give me back my baby!”

She had thought for a moment that Mother Tree had sent her roots up from the Onewomb to avenge her, and it had turned out to be nothing but some canal creature. She would not have it. Suvee hobbled on floppy foot into the water and looked down into the murky shallows.

She thought she saw something like a face.

“Give him back to me!”

A cold claw of a hand grasped her good ankle. Another then grasped her broken one, and held her fast. The water now settled enough that she could see into a murky face of muddy bone, a face that seemed like it belonged to now Arab. She spoke in her native tongue, “Give my baby back to me Water Spirit—give him now.”

A claw raised up from the water. Upon this claw the baby reclined in peaceful repose and looked into her eyes as she had once dreamed of her murdered baby boy doing. This baby now seemed to know her better somehow, she just knew it. She took the baby from the hand and held it to her breast.

The hands released her ankles and she felt the muddy bottom of the canal writhe like a great snake—or perhaps countless great snakes.

“Thank you Mother Tree.”

She then cooed to the baby and spoke her mind, “We must sit and sing thanks to Mother Tree. Sit with me.”

The baby seemed to understand somehow and smiled, smiled like a kind elder. Her foot flopped beneath her but the pain did not matter. No pain mattered any longer as she walked across the canal bottom and sat on her bloody rump, holding her baby to breast.

The fat fool with no member and no balls, Bibi had been his name, then came to the top of the canal bank and said some words, words that no longer had meaning, as she sang her thanks.

The baby looked into her eyes with a deep serenity and seemed to hang on her every note. Sweet moments passed.

The sack of fat that had once had a name was now at the base of the canal, snarling like an overstuffed baboon, making some kind of threat that might have mattered to her in a different life; that might have made some bound pleasure girl cringe.

On she sang as the food approached, claiming in some rude tongue to represent the diner, as if that made any sense. It neared her, then began to lift the first marinated morsel from the colony’s nutrient vect…

…She remembered vaguely singing of a doctor, a baby doctor, a doctor who looked after the well-to-do babies. It occurred to her at some point in this song that her baby was the most well-to-do-baby of them all—the best baby in all of this sunken garden of misery.

Her baby was in no misery as she limped lamely along the street that cut through the slums from the canal zone. Somewhere beyond the huddled and ravenous masses lived the kind doctor, the baby doctor.

Her foot sounded so dead and crooked as it dragged along behind her. She was in her glory though; glad to be living, happy to have her offspring, content to serve the TruthSinger.

The rascals and ruffians that once worried her so; who had eaten poor Enice before the house gate, who had skulked at all hours trying to sink their claws and teeth into her soft flesh; they were there, all about. She sang softly to her baby as the starving packs of dirty people milled around in front of her and then parted nervously, all very eager to let her pass, seemingly terrified of her lame foot, as if that made any sense. Her foot felt fine, just sounded strange the way if dragged.

The sun kissed her wounds and made them crust over like they should. She remembered sitting under Mother Tree, bathed by the brown milk of Her roots, her wounds cleansed. How nice Her shade was, how nice it would be. After the many twists and turns that she unconsciously knew would take her to where the baby doctor lived, she came to another barricade, like the one used to keep the dogs in. A band of tough looking ruffians stood guard before it, one peaking over its top, a crowd of beggars and rascals all about.

As she came to a stop beneath the barricade these twenty or so men looked upon her with awe she thought, which was pleasant for a change. She heard Mother Tree speak to them. But they were just dumb Arabs and did not know the True Tongue, so she repeated the command.

“I would pass.”

A broad-boned ruffian with some years on him and some wisdom in his cruel eyes objected, albeit with some hesitation, looking ominously at her foot. “We, we dare not take down the barricade. It was placed there by the Commandant. The slayer known as The Khwarizm sits his horse on the rise in the road beyond. There is no quarter granted by the man without a face. They are burning the damned over there. We dare not venture over the barricade until after dark.”

She spoke with unnecessary kindness, “Take it down, and then put it back up when I pass, and I shall not be angry.”

A hundred eager hands rushed to the barricade to dismantle it. This took mere minutes and they were soon standing aside to let her pass, the pieces of lumber, furniture and carts and oddments in their hands ready to re-erect the barrier between them and those who they feared.

And so she passed, some looking away, some groveling in the dirt, some crying, some wide-eyed; all rightfully taken with the composure of her fine baby boy.

After she passed the barrier began crashing together among hurried words and curses. Up ahead was a walled compound to the right, and a row of houses and shops to the left. Smoke rose along the street across from the compound from what must have been many fires. Before the compound, at the rise in the road where the ground leveled off, sat a tall man, in a black turban that covered his face, upon the tallest horse she had seen. He regarded her with hawk eyes, and, from this distance, appeared to be quite a man.

She stopped her singing and looked down into the perfect eyes of her baby, “We should speak to this man about my evil mistress.”

The baby blinked as if he understood perfectly—which of course he did, good mothers such as she having such excellent understandings with their offspring. When he blinked with adult-like understanding he seemed to come out of a trance. Her baby was gifted in so many ways. She then heard her foot drag behind her though she had not moved it.

Suvee turned around, baby in arm, and looked down at her lopsided foot where it pointed out to the side. She then looked a pace behind at the friend she had not known she had. It was always so nice to discover unexpected friends. The greatest vulture she had ever seen—a veritable lion among vultures—was standing behind her, its tail feathers dusty from the long walk behind her. After all, vultures were not known for their trekking abilities.

She smiled, “Hello there. That was so kind of you. I had no idea you were even there. That looks heavy, and I’m sure you would rather soar into the cool sky.”

The vulture seemed very pleasant of eye, so she petted his great head, large as a dog’s head it was, and relieved it of its burden. As soon as she grabbed the greasy tuft of hair atop the large dark brown head the great bird took flight with a ‘wooshing’ flap of wings that caressed her skin so that she could feel every bead of sweat on her body.

She turned the thing in her hand and looked into its one eye, so glassy with perpetual fright that it moved her to giggle like a little girl who had not yet been sold and raped. “I know you—you are fat, memberless Bibi, and your mistress wanted to eat my baby.”

She then held the baby up in the crook of her arm and held the one-eyed head before it. “Baby, meet Bibi. Now let’s take him to meet that fine warrior. He will know where your doctor is, and I’m certain he knows how to avenge a girl with a rack of pretty heads all in a row."

Suvee, Baby, and Bibi made their way up the road toward the one warrior she sensed might understand her in this crazy land.