The Wild Ba’Neesh Chapter Forty-One ©2019 Fay Thompson All Rights Reserved

Each of the Ba’Neesh carrying half of a dead body unloaded to the right just inside the cave entrance. Mick, carrying the lower half of Edda, did the same, feeling ghastly about the untidy pile of body parts. He knew he was in shock, he kept feeling cold and then hot, his brain refusing to think of anything but arriving. Now arrived, he sagged to the floor surrounded by equally traumatized Ba’Neesh. They had no food, nothing to look forward to as daylight painted the inside of the cave. The pile.

Mick squeezed his eyes shut as if to wall out the visual but it seemed stamped on the inside of his eyelids. He couldn’t leave Edda like that, starting to rot as sunbeams warmed her still cooling body. “We can’t leave them like this.” He said aloud.

Aenor, near the cave entrance was organizing two of the fresher teams to stand guard just where the rock spears opened to sight of the long sweeping valley below. No one grumbled but everyone grumbled. Mick could hear the pain of them inside his head, inside his own body, an echo or was it all one inaudible sound? He pushed himself upright and staggered over to the pile. He had seen historical footage of humans in the last world war stacked in piles like this, discarded. Edda wasn’t discarded. He pulled through the bodies to find her as if to put her back together. The tone inside his head shifted, a little angry, a little hopeful. He was too tired to lift Edda alone. Ba’Neesh came over to help him. He had her two halves. Now what?

The word Agnosin floated to the surface of his mind. He could tell it was from Elias although he thought he had heard the word too; he was just too tired to try to find it in the jumble that was his memories when he became tired. What he did remember was Iiyiko and her bones. He had to clean Edda. It became an imperative.

He had seen lots of animal bones. The Reserves Ranger Stations were all decorated with some animal or the other, usually taxidermy bones as the stuffed critters could attract predators. That from another safety class. How did they get from their bodies to their bones? That detail hovered like a question ready to pounce. He knew the answer. He didn’t want to know the answer. He was becoming expert at recognizing memories he didn’t want to explore or feel. He rubbed at the sides of his head wanting to stop the search inside his brain for ‘the way’.

He realized his face was wet and dirty wet. He didn’t remember when it started, this wet face thing, the soreness in his eyes. Dust now painted his wet face, he could see this on the similarly wet faces of the Ba’Neesh looking to him for the answer. He had to dig out the answer to that question. He moaned. Several Ba’Neesh reached forward to hold him up, to place hands any place on his head they could reach. It was a silent plea. It was the Ba’Neesh telling him they would journey into his memories with him. A single word surfaced. Boil.

How were they going to boil four whole bodies in a cave? They had nothing. No cook pots of any kind. He raised his head, the signal to the Ba’Neesh to withdraw their hands. “We have to boil them.” He said.

Aenor, now standing watching the cluster around the Soek nodded. “Agnosin.” She said. “We must clean the Beloved. We have water.” She pointed at the bath-tub sized pool dripping steadily with clean water. “How do we boil them, Mick?”

How? He got to his feet and walked over to look at the pool. It was a pool. He moved to the overflow and instinctively he cupped water to splash on his face, as much to wake him up as to clean the filth off of him. How to make the pool boil? It became a simple engineering question.

“We divert the dripping water first.” He said. “Find a shock blanket with plastic on it.”

Together they rigged the blanket so that the steady drip ran over to the overflow area of rocks leaving the pool to become still.

He knew it was easy enough to boil water, you just added heat. The problem was they couldn’t add fire close enough even if they surrounded it with fire, it would take too long and not get hot enough. He was pretty sure they needed to keep the water at a rolling boil, that was pretty hot.

He still stank of the fire they had used to disguise their path to the escarpment. Fire. He could mentally see the Ba’Neesh sending Vrill fire into the brush to burn. Vrill fire.

He pressed his right hand into the water and tried to summon Vrill fire. He got nothing. “We need to heat the water really hot.” He explained. “Vrill fire?”

“In water?” The Ba’Neesh closest to him sounded disparaging.

“Yeah, why not?” Mick pulled his wet hand back out, not even a good tingle. He was exhausted.

“Why not.” Aenor looked at the water and then at her hand. “The strongest of you chain up behind me and let’s see if juice boils water.” She said.

It did. In fact, the water boiled so fast and hot they all backed away a bit. “We will have to add water back.” Aenor said, “Edda first. How long to boil the Beloved, Mick?”

He cringed. “I don’t know. Gross. Till the meat falls off the bones. We need the bones as clean as possible.” He backed up another step and then stopped. He had to help Edda. He stepped forward again. He rolled her torso so he was behind her and then he lifted her by the armpits. The Ba’Neesh backed away. He slid Edda’s upper half into the pool. Thankfully, she sank. The Ba’Neesh brought her lower half and added that to the pool.

“We must keep the water hot, boiling.” He said. “Teams? I’m too weak and too tired.”

The odor of cooking meat wafted off the pool. The Ba’Neesh smacked their lips.

“Oh gross. Maximum gross.” Mick yelled out, wanting to run except there was no where to go and horribly, Edda smelled tasty. He was appalled. What was happening to him?

The odor had changed something for the Ba’Neesh, their tone shifted from dark to lighter. There would be food. There would be rejoicing of the transition. The dead were gifting the living. Half of them found positions around the pool and sticks to stir the water.

Mick sat as far away as he could, his back to the inside cave wall. His mind was at war with his body, with his alignment with the attitude of the Ba’Neesh. He heard the words, “The Lamentation has Begun.” A hum took over and soon he witnessed Ba’Neesh dancing across the silt floor, calling out Edda’s name and discussing her in Neesh. He couldn’t understand what they were describing but it created laughter.

All of this was wrong, so wrong. He yelled out, “You can’t treat her like this.”

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One of the Ba’Neesh whose name he couldn’t yet remember danced over and looked down on him. “She died in battle you fool. The best way ever. She blessed us with celebration of her success and the gift of her power, knowledge and ability. Why do you cry, did you not enjoy Edda too? Get up and celebrate her freedom. We will properly carry her with us. She will be reborn anew when it is the right time. You must help us. You must join in. You are Soek.”

He gasped. “It’s gross.” He yelled. “It’s disrespectful.”

“For a human, yes.” Aenor had joined the other Ba’Neesh. “It’s time you let go of the human idea of yourself you cling to Mick. It’s time you embraced being Soek. Come, eat of Edda. She is sweet, as always.”

Mick sobbed, he shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t eat my friends.” He said.

“Of course you can, you are hungry, in Vrill drop from the battle. This is how we cure that quickly; we eat of the Vrill laced flesh of our fallen. They honor us by feeding us. We remember now. We eat. We celebrate, then we bring the war to them carrying the bones of our Beloved. We remember.”

He moaned, disgusted and horrified by the delicious odor and the sounds of Ba’Neesh already pulling flesh from the body, pools of grease swirled around the pool. He wanted his body to display his horror by throwing up, instead it betrayed him by telling him he was really hungry. He wouldn’t eat her, he wouldn’t.

“Don’t damage the bone.” Aenor stated firmly. “Clean it. We clean it with the boiling water and our teeth, with great care fuck Mick.”

How had he gotten from the wall to the pool? He shook his head. Aenor used a stick to lever up one of Edda’s arms, already some flesh removed. She used her knife to cut off a chunk of the upper arm before letting the arm go back to boil more. “Tender.” She said, holding out some slightly pink flesh to him. “Celebrate Edda.” She ordered, Vrill lacing her words.

He glared at her and tried to maintain his resistance, but the Vrill was just enough to pull at him. Was it her words? Was she compelling him? He could escape responsibility by telling himself he couldn’t help himself. But, that was a lie. He took the piece of Edda’s arm and stared at it. It was rich with Vrill, almost like a flavor enhancer. Would he smell like that too when he died? It was a peculiar thought.

He’d never much thought of his own death except as an abstract. Did he want to be buried to rot in a box in the ground? It wasn’t like Edda could use her body anymore. That was wrong. Was it? Every bit of her was for the benefit of the collective group of Ba’Neesh. The body to combat Vrill drop. The bones to support Vrill use as a sort of battle weapon. What did he really know of death, theirs, his? Would he want to contribute to the success of things he felt strongly about or rot in the ground alone? How had Iiyiko ended up alone? The gravity of her plight now filled him. He recalled how intensely she had forced him to dig up her bones. Of course. She was alone, isolated, unable to help the Ba’Neesh. What had happened to her?

He took a bite. Better to die and live with your friends, your family, those you cared about, then to be abandoned in dark soil given only to bugs and worms. Edda tasted sweet. He wanted more. He squatted with the Ba’Neesh. Someone handed him a stick. Occasionally they talked about body parts and it was horribly gross and he discovered he liked it. He was Soek. Stop measuring himself to human standards when he clearly wasn’t human. He ate another piece. The water boiled merrily. He got up to help add more water to the pool and then found himself dancing, humming a song he didn’t know and spinning around with Ba’Neesh whose names blurred into Edda and out of Edda. He understood. As her bones released her flesh, Edda became more vividly alive to all of them. They welcomed her, carefully stacking first her small bones, then larger and larger into a pile on a rock. Edda was emerging again.

When the bones were properly counted and all accounted for, the Ba’Neesh skimmed the pool of the skin and remains that would not be eaten, using a shock blanket like a tarp.

Mick helped. They took what was no longer Edda to the far side of the escarpment while being guarded by others, to cast it off a high point for the birds and animals to also celebrate. They returned to clean the pool, fill it and boil Merlada.

Mick knew he slept, curled against a couple Ba’Neesh. Then he was wakened to eat and dance Merlada into freedom, and then Adelheid and Elke, two he didn’t know well. The party went on for three days and nights before it was done and they had four piles of bones.

He selected a finger bone from Edda. He had decided early on that he must have her connected to him forever. She was his first Ba’Neesh friend. Aenor took Elke’s bone, two others took a bone from each of Merlada and Adelheid. They used the knives to make holes. Mick strung his on the string with Iiyiko making a knot between them to keep them from touching. The Ba’Neesh worked their bones into their hair as beads.

Then they emptied four of the packs and Mick showed them how the Beloved was properly packed. He took Edda’s bones into his pack. Aenor watched this thoughtfully, she took Elke and the other two took Merlada and Adelheid. There was just enough room in the top of the packs for a medical kit and a few small items like a sewing kit and packets of water pills. They went through the rest of the stuff to pack the other five backpacks. Clearly, all of them knew it was time to leave the cave. They returned the pool to its normal drip and cleaned out evidence of their presence but the odor of sweet dead Ba’Neesh permeated the stones themselves. At full dark, they slipped away, now twenty-five of them.

They all knew where they were going, to get Elias. Aenor did a quick sigil sketch and they followed her. Mick noted she was using very little Vrill. He adjusted his pack straps for best comfort and tried to think, not think, about the Agnosin Ritual and the Lamentation of the Beloved. He carried a Beloved, belonged to two. He would need to find Iiyiko’s bones soon. His responsibility. He hadn’t understood that. He knew his Vrill was stronger but, as Aenor said, he was weaker than the weakest Ba’Neesh. His gift, she said, was to lead them, not to fight their battles for them. He sort of understood that. He knew Edda’s boost on his back would improve him. He needed to be as strong as possible for the Ba’Neesh.

His long-delayed fury over the capture of Elias and what that likely meant, now rose, as if released by the completion of the Lamentation. It was time to free Elias. Aenor assured him Elias still lived and was within the roughly thirty miles or nine leagues of Ba’Neesh sensing range. Aenor would say nothing of his condition. Mick could guess. Alive meant the opportunity for recovery.

They moved quickly toward their objective. Mick noted that the Ba’Neesh now teamed up naturally, they ring scented and whistle hooted to convey simple information. They were tightly focused on the unknown traps Mick assured them would be in place. The closer they came to Elias’ location, the more likely the traps would be present.

The first they found was a trip-wire. Mick followed it to a sensor pinned to a tree. A simple directional device that would send images of any disturbance to the wire. Unsophisticated. Aenor, testing the Seeker, had each team run what she called tiny seekers looking for wires. They found many and soon decided an entire perimeter was being described by the overlay of wires. Not a new defense, something older. This suggested to Mick that they were approaching a well-defended, high-security facility.

They climbed high in the trees for daylight and watched drones fly from a location north of them. These weren’t tracers, nor were the operators interested in animals in trees as the area had been repopulated with numerous animal species by the Reserves Act, years ago. The drones were hunting on the ground and seeing nothing.

As Mick and the Ba’Neesh watched, the drones returned and left every four hours in an overlapping schedule. Automated. That didn’t mean no one was monitoring the footage but, as Mick said, likely the technicians assigned to such a task were bored.

They took even greater care to remain dispersed the next night as animals in pairs were low-value targets. They had estimated the likely time for each drone to cross in and out and climbed trees during those periods. It slowed them down. All of them were eating berries, nuts and tubers and even some raw meat, no one’s favorite.

Eventually, Aenor trilled. That was the agreed sign that they were near.

Mick came forward and saw, nothing. “How close.” He whispered.

“Hidden.” She said, pointing.

It was dark, Mick gave that rationale for why he missed the slight distortion around the fully cloaked pill-box-like entry. It was another of the fixed camera projection units, again, old school tech, this place had been protected by security devices for years. Underground. He didn’t like that but as Elias was down there, that’s where they would go to get him.

(Ah. The Lamentation of the Beloved! Such fun to write. J Enjoy!)