The Devourers Read Free

in the breeze.
The music of the bauls is unearthly now, their howls and shrieks like banshee wails. The lights are swaying, cutting white trails in the air. The kitten is coiled in my lap. The scrabble of paws, outside.
    The stranger shakes his head.
You don’t interrupt the storyteller,
he says with a gentle smile. I can feel the swamp outside, the city gone, the beasts gathering for the hunt in the misty wilderness. My fingers tighten around the kitten. The tent is an oasis of light, hot smell of electric lamps. Wood smoke. Wilderness encroaches.
    Close your eyes.
    She heard me in her sleep, this baul woman with dirt in her hair, her lips sticky with just a little oil. It is clear that she remembers my warning, but she has not run away. Perhaps one of the bauls is her father, or mother, or sibling, or friend, or lover. It does not matter. She will not leave them behind. She begins to sing with them now, her scared voice strained. She remembers my smell, senses it now beyond the fire, in the tangle of the dark.
    More of us come from the horizons. The scent of cow’s blood, a slaughter on their muzzles. They have eaten. But their hunt is not over. Their eyes weave trails as they run, leaping fireflies tracking their loping gait. They flank the group of humans, cutting off escape.
    The full moon watches through the clouds, eager for massacre. With a bark of exhaled air, the clatter of tusk on fang, we spring. The bauls’ song is loud, and beautiful in its imperfection. It is their last. I run with my pack. My tribe. The bauls are surrounded. They sing till the very last moment.
    The first kill is silent as our running, a glistening whisper of crimson in the air. The last is louder than the baying of a wolf, and rings like the bauls’ mad song across the marshes of what is not yet Kolkata. I can hear the howl as I run with this human in my arms, into the darkness, away from the shadows of slaughter. The howl curdles into a roar, enveloping the scream of the last dying minstrel.
    But she is alive, against me, shivering against my dew-dappled fur. She is alive.
    —
    I open my eyes. The tent is still here. The city is outside. Mosquitoes feast on my neck and arms, leaving welts.
    “You can guess the rest, I’m sure,” he says.
    I wipe a sheen of sweat from my neck, shaking my head. “I think I got a bit much of your smoke,” I mumble. But I know whatever just happened wasn’t me getting a contact high. I feel like I’ve just woken from the most vivid dream I’ve ever had. “Don’t tell me, you run away with this baul girl and live happily ever after. Never mind that you kidnapped her, and got her family and friends killed in front of her.”
    “Happily ever after,” he says. “Isn’t that ironic, considering I’m sitting right here, right now.”
    “Immortality is a side effect of lycanthropy, is it?” I ask. Remembering the kitten, I give it some more attention. It mewls, eyes narrowing to sleepy slits.
    “Please, Professor. A lycanthrope is a person who mistakenly believes they can turn into a wolf. I’m not a person, I don’t turn into a wolf, and I’m not ill. What I am has no basis in science or medicine.”
    “My mistake. You didn’t answer my question, though. Are you saying you’re immortal?”
    His shoulders twitch. A silent laugh, perhaps. “Take what you will from my story. I never said that I was the hunter in the tale. It could have been one of my ancestors. A story passed down.”
    “I closed my eyes and I saw it. I smelled it. I don’t even believe you, and I felt it. I felt it.” I shake my head. “Are you a hypnotist?”
    “I happen to be a good storyteller.”
    “Modest,” I mutter, and shake my head. “So you’re rationalizing after telling me you’re a werewolf.”
    “Half werewolf. And, Professor, I am merely showing you the benefits of rationalizing a story. There are none. Stories are fiction. Made up.”
    “You told me that story was true,” I remark, feeling