Savages

31: Mind and Matter

The black sky hung low and close, muffling everything. Brock, Hegri, Judit and Jaddy were as silent as the dead sheep and her stillborn lamb.

What is a life, anyway?

Muscles and mucous membranes and mutation; multiplying cells, dividing cells, a tumour, a baby...matter, just plain matter, and none of it meant anything.

Life, death. It was all the same meaningless slime in the end.

Judit didn't mind. She didn't care about anything. She was nothing, no thing, just pulpily mutating matter, an unfeeling mass of skin cells, water, dead sheep, grass and dag.

"What do you think we should do with it?" Jaddy said eventually, his voice wobbly and tiny, almost drowning

yes,

d
r
o
w
n
i
n
g

in the barble of the brook. He coughed, and repeated himself.

(Sannah wouldn't have been on that boat if it wasn't for me)

"We should move it away from the water," Brock said flatly. He didn't move, and he didn't look up.

(Sannah wouldn't be on the water if it wasn't for me)

In the water

"In case it contaminates it?" Hegri's glance darted around the others, his eyes all whites. No one responded. "In case it contaminates it?" he repeated. "Could it contaminate it?"

No one responded.

"Will it?" Hegri's voice was rising. "Will someone skitting answer me, please? Is it going to contaminate the beck or not? Brock? Why is no-one listening to me? Brock?"

Brock didn't answer, his shoulders crumpling slightly where he sat on the ground, his head still hanging, inches from the mutated lamb-thing, face hidden in his hands.

(Brock wouldn't be like that if it wasn't for me)

"Brock?" Hegri repeated, louder, stepping forward. "Is it—"

"Kin," Jaddy hissed, and Judit looked up at him from her own place on the ground, on the other side of the fleece-blood-slime-sheep-matter to the unresponsive Brock. Jaddy was shaking his head at Hegri, eyes wide. "Just leave it."

Hegri turned to Jaddy, frowning, and the two seemed to have a short, silent conversation made entirely of exaggerated facial expressions, and on Jaddy's side, meaningful looks at Brock's prone form. There was something almost comical about it.

Judit felt like she was floating on an ocean of bile. Something inside her moved, and she thought she might be sick.

Hegri shook his head, narrowing his eyes angrily.

"Maybe we shouldn't just leave it," he said. "Maybe I'm sick of always skitting just leaving it. Maybe I want to deal with something, out in the open, just for one skitting time, okay? Which means I want to know if we need to move this thing before its dagging juices get into our water and kills us all. Brock!" He screamed the last word.