Page 49 of Finding Her Heart
You know nothing. Let me go.
"Be us. We know, we know, we know the evil of men's hearts, we know who killed Papa. Come to us. Be us. And we will give you all the knowing. Be queen. Be mother. Be mate." A hundred focused intentioned shoved on the front of her brain, driving the spike of an icy poker at her mind, trying to get in. The thick nail head at her forehead competed with a niggling inching wave of needle pricks on her skin, inside and outside at once. They would squeeze the marrow from her bones, and draw out her memories.
She didn't want to be a queen.
They were the Many, the Hive, the Hungry, and they were lonely and empty without her. She could see them, boiling like maggots in the dead before her eyes. Looking like clear-skinned beetle larva, the Hive shed their skin again and again to become the creatures with claws and feet.
They were not meant to breed. But this planet gave them life. And like the Orki, all women born on Dorsus were compatible with them. War brides even more so.
"You are us. We are in you." A thousand of them said it against her ear, and she realized she shouldn't know what the hungry children looked like.
No human who was not a queen would know that.
No.
They pushed at her forehead, sucked out her history, pulled at her jaws. A deep booming voice demanded, "You must drink."
She wouldn't.
"Are you sure you aren't a little poisoned by the creeping dark? Are you stained? Who that is human would refuse clean, when a little water does redeem?"
This was the creeping dark and it had poisoned her. It would stain and she would never be clean again. Only could stop them and make her clean.
They hated water.
They pulled at her jaw, massaged her throat. The demand to drink pounded through her like a hammer blow. It was nearly a compulsion to obey, but she wouldn't.
"Are you poisoned by the creeping dark?"
She was. This was poison in her body, poison from the hungries who had scratched at her, dragging her to a hole to stuff her down. She was fighting a poison, and somehow, she had to flush it out of her system.
"We can tell you everything. We can tell you what you didn't know you needed to know. We can show you. Our children eat the dead, and the dead share their stories."
The needles deepened and the poker at the center of her forehead struck deep.
Instead of taking her memories, they pushed one inside of her:
It was late at night, and he couldn't sleep. The twin red moons were a glare through the window of the bedroom he shared with his brothers. Only his oldest brother didn't have to share or sleep in a bunk, he had his own bed. It was small, close, rolled under the bunk of two, but it was his and his alone.
Benjere's belly twisted at the thought of it. Born too late, nothing he did would earn him that bunk. Or his own room. Annabell Roe had her own room.
Her own room off the kitchen, next to Mama and Papa. Maybe if he was born first then he would have his own room.
Maybe not. Maybe he wasn't good enough.
It was hot in here. With six boys in one, room it was always hot and smelly. He couldn't take it, so he decided to do what he usually did. Go outside.
It was the middle of the night, but two full moons made the world look like it was covered in blood. Since he was the second oldest, he got to help with the butchering. He'd seen buckets of blood. The smell was awful. Turned his stomach and made him vow to eat only vegetables until he smelled it cooking. That always changed his mind.
Mama pig was awake. She wasn't a mama yet, but her belly bulged, and her teats were swollen. It was her third time around, and Papa said she was a good mama, but Benjere thought she wasn't cause when he tried to hold the piglets she'd chase him out of the pen. A pig bite was not a thing to mess with. Everyone knew that.
Mama pig didn't have a problem with Annabell, though. Not a bit. Baby Annabell could go into the pen with Pa, plop herself right in the mud, hug and kiss the pink piglets like they were puppies and Mama pig would just snort at Annabell's hair until she giggled.
Stomach growling, he went over to the vegetable garden. He'd have the carrots, his favorite vegetable, they were about ready, and a fresh carrot was always good even with a little dirt. Climbing over the fence, he pulled and ate one, threw the cap at Pig Mama. She ate it right up. Not much a pig wouldn't eat, he knew.
One carrot. Then he pulled three by accident that weren't ready. Pulled one more and a beet plus three, eating the vegetables under the red moon. He tossed the mess to the pig.
Pig momma oinked at him, and he oinked back. She lifted her snout in the air in his direction, making her snuffling piggy noise. She was a big old thing, and Papa was really proud of her. Short and barrel-shaped, she was still so fat and solid she probably weighed more than the cow. Her hair was coarse and stiff, with spots that reminded him of a rock. She was pretty ugly. Plus, she had those nasty tusks. Benjere had gone with Papa and Annabell to talk with some Orki who came to the village, and two of them had tusks just like Mama pig. Benjere had told Papa how stupid those Orki looked with those pig tusks and asked why Papa bowed to them so much when they looked so stupid?
