Page 32 of Humans Don't Have Horns
“Why didn’t you approach me until now?” I frown at the surreality of it all.
“You were with other humans all the time. Humans are not to be trusted,” she says matter-of-factly. Yet I’m human too. “The demichads are a plague. They eat all mammals in their way. Leave nothing. We barely survived their last attack. Most of us were eaten, and many of those who were not eaten were left with nothing to hunt and starved to death. It was a desperate time for all predators but especially those who, unlike humans, only eat prey.” Daton told me that after the demichads attacked, direwolves and other predators attacked humans on Amada more frequently.
“I’m afraid I have absolutely no idea how the demichads can be killed,” I tell her. I don’t even know how I can understand her and why. Or where I can go now that I’ve woken up. People seem to be trying to kill me everywhere I go. Daton and I planned to warn the Mongans about the demichads. But now he’s gone, and I don’t know how to do any of this.
“I know where you can find answers. I will take you to the fungi.” I frown in confusion. Fungus? Like mushrooms? But then she turns to leave without another word. This direwolf was true to her word the last time we met. Her pack did not harm us. So I follow her.
We walk silently for several hours. My face and chest throb from yesterday’s beating, and my mouth feels swollen. The dark Mountains of Doom loom on our left as we walk northeast. The direwolf leads me into the thickest woods I have ever seen. We walk through enormous ficus trees. The trunks are vast here, and the canopy is dense. So dense that sunlight can barely penetrate. It’s no more light than dusk, and heavy mists curl between the trunks and my legs. The woods feel ancient and present. As if there is a being that watches me. The hair on the back of my neck stands up. The direwolf stops.
“You were serious about the mushrooms.” I frown at the ground. It is packed with different types of fungi. Some have bright-red caps adorned with white spots, some with green-tinted caps and white stems and gills, and some with red bodies shaped like sea corals.
The direwolf tilts her head as if trying to make sense of my humor. “The fungi consume everything in Amada. They nurture all that grows in it. They keep all living beings’ knowledge.”
So here lies the answer to how to defeat the demichads? Even if what she says is true, how do I get answers from them? “Am I supposed to eat one?” I ask the direwolf.
“They are poisonous. Eat them, and you die. You need to lie down. They will pull you to their roots if they want to give you your answers.” To the roots? Underground? I don’t like the sound of that.
“What if they don’t want to give me answers?” I look at the fungi gingerly.
“Then they will kill you.” I’m not sure if her tone is unchangedbecause she’s a direwolf or because she just doesn’t care. Sounds like there are a lot of ways for me to die here. And even if they don’t kill me, I’m not sure I want to be pulled to their roots, whatever that means. But what else is there to do? And there has to be a reason I can understand the direwolves and the demichads. There must be a bigger picture. Right?
I sigh and lie on the ground, not entirely sure why. I wait for about an hour, but nothing happens. “It’s not working,” I say to the direwolf.
“You have the patience of a day-born pup,” she replies. She is located a foot away from me. She sits on her haunches there and has since I lay down.
“It has been at least an hour,” I mutter to myself. I’m getting scolded by animals now. The sun sets, and I still lay on the ground. I’m getting cold, hungry, and thirsty, and I have a growing need to pee. It doesn’t help that my face is swollen from Ashar’s kicks. My nose and jaw are broken. I need to find porezh eggs if I want to fix it instead of just lying here in this eerie forest. The direwolf doesn’t leave her spot. I decide to try to sleep. When morning comes, I will leave. This mushroom thing is getting ridiculous.
I close my eyes, but sleep never comes. The night gets deeper. I hear the crickets calling their mates and the owls searching for prey. I feel something crawling around me, and I open my eyes abruptly, trying to get up. But my body is already attached to the ground, with long fungi stems roping around me. Panic washes over me. I feel trapped, without control over my body. I lay here for hours, but I was so skeptical about the entire thing that it didn’t really frighten me. I’m frightened now.
The fungi keep growing around me, covering my abdomen, my chest, and at the end, my face. They will suffocate me to death, and I can do nothing to stop it. I think of Siean. Is this how it felt for her to die? I try to pull my hands but in vain. My mouth and nostrils are covered with dirt, and I can’t breathe. Then I’m strongly pulled with massive power deeper and deeper underground. I see nothing, only feel that pull and the dirt pressing against me.
“Inhale, Lian,” a metallic voice commands me. But how can I possibly breathe down here when dirt covers me? “Inhale or die,” says the metallic voice. There is no urgency to it or anger. No feelings whatsoever. My lungs burn. And I realize that if I do not breathe, I will die. I inhale through my nose and am surprised when there’s no dirt in my nostrils. Instead, fresh air fills me. But I don’t understand where it comes from. I open my eyes and am surprised to find I can see.
I’m in a placenta of some sort, filled with warm fluid. I’m floating inside it. But it’s not water. It feels denser and oilier. There’s something stringy attached to my nostrils, and air flows through it. I can see the soil around it and the dense roots. They are everywhere. They glow purple in the dark, like the placenta I’m in. I feel warm and protected. It reminds me of being cuddled as a child with my mother. I want to stay this way forever.
“Welcome to the heart of Amada, Lian. We have waited for you,” says the metallic voice, and the fungi answer all my questions but one: Why me?
***
Amada spits me out of her with great force. I have quite an ascent to the ground’s surface. My body aches from the collision with the ground, but my teeth are no longer broken or missing. My jaw and nose are healed, and so are all the rest of the bruises inflicted by Ashar. My eyes struggle to adjust to the light after all that darkness. Every fiber in my body cries in protest from being pulled out of the protective placenta. My mind is overwhelmed with all I have learned from Amada and the things that are expected of me. And all the things I no longer desire.
So long I wandered without knowing my destination, without knowing my end. Not only for the last weeks but for the past nine years, perhaps my entire life. And now I’ve learned it only to realize I was deemed unworthy.
The weight of the world was laid upon me. I don’t understandwhy I, of all people, would be given such responsibility, or how I am supposed to achieve the change I was guided to create. But Amada spoke to me, told me everything about what I was expected to do, and then punished me with the promise of hiding herself from me from now on and made it all even more impossible.
There is more than one god, and once, the Goddess was their Queen. I don’t know why Amada disengaged from the Goddess. A rift formed between them, and Amada does not want to be worshipped as the Goddess craves. Amada wants only her harmony. Because here, Amada is life and death. The fungi are her emissaries, her archive, and her executors. And if we do not stop flooding her with our blood, she will kill all of us the day after the solar eclipse—two months from now.
She’s had enough of our blood, of our destruction. She is a mother threatening to punish her child, but the punishment is not of a motherly nature. What mother threatens to kill her child?
The demichads have not attacked yet. She keeps them at bay. She will unleash them on us a day after the solar eclipse. And if I fail, there will be no survivors. No Puresouls and no Mongans. No mammals. So yes, it would be a tremendous understatement to say I am overwhelmed.
When I get up, the direwolf waits for me. She howls to me, but I can no longer understand her. She tilts her head to the side, observing me, realizing that ability is lost for me now.
Time was strange while I was in that placenta underground. Slower in a way so what Amada had to tell me took far longer than a human conversation. Instead of a few hours, I spent a week in that placenta, as Amada informed me. I can’t waste more time. I need to save Daton before they kill him. He is crucial to the path Amada has spun. I will fight for him despite his betrayal. I will not fight for him because of how I feel for him. No, it is only Amada’s instruction that set me in motion. I will act to save Amadans. And he has a part to play, a distance to walk on the path Amada had spun. At least, that’s what I prefer to think. I don’t ponder the apprehension the merethought that any harm will happen to him awakes in me. He made his choice. He left.
It will take me too long to reach the swamps. I groan in frustration. His trial will be in the evening. I’ll never be able to get there in time.
The direwolf suddenly squats to allow me to climb her. I don’t know how she knows where I need to go. I’m not sure even if she does. She is not a horse or a dog. She will never be housebroken. And yet her faith in Amada is so great she is willing to let me ride her. Words of thanks—of awe, even—die in my throat.
