The Runes of Norien

Raddia stood outside the coop, trying to stifle her dread. Despite the protective overgarment covering her head, torso and extremities, which ensured that the stench and foulness of the chickens wouldn’t come into contact with her milcloth, she always dreaded entering the cramped, gloomy coop to gather the eggs; of course she had long ago accepted that this was part of her duties, just as Gallan’s was the far more hideous butchering, bleeding and skinning of the animals they ate, but still she would give anything – if she had anything, which she didn’t – to be relieved of this particular task.

  Part of her fear was the structure itself, built of murkwood, whose bark was the toughest and darkest material found in Lurien, and thus considered suitable only for beasts; once she stepped inside, stooped and cringing, the coop felt like a trap, the only way out of which was by confronting an even greater fear: to shoo away the hens, who never abandoned their nests peacefully, stick her hand inside the putrid tangles of excrement-spattered straw, and collect the eggs carefully, all the while being attacked from all sides by the fluttering monsters and their leader, a brown rooster who often flew as high as her head, perched on her shoulder and jabbed relentlessly at her mask, trying to tear through the hardcloth mesh and poke her eyes out with his beak.

  And the deceptive quiet and stillness – as if nothing lived inside – heralding the havoc that would break out moments later, always brought to Raddia’s mind the hush that came over everything (the rustle of the bushes, the buzzing of the bees, even the Sacred River’s flow) immediately before a shower of ether milk: countless drops that fell from the sky rapidly, cold and completely transparent – a fact which many Lurienites took as a sign of primordial purity, letting themselves be drenched by the clear liquid and even drinking it, but which Raddia feared beyond words, thinking it an onslaught from an alien world she knew nothing about and couldn’t trust.

  Raddia held her breath and listened; nothing stirred within the coop; the hens were still asleep, but soon they’d be up and fighting her with all their might, like fierce, feathered Makers defending their young. The words of Navva, Raddia’s female Maker, echoed in her mind: Plants and animals are vile, envious creatures; their inferior Substance will leap inside you and destroy you given the slightest chance; killing them is the only choice.

  And yet these crude and stupid creatures had claws and beaks, hooves and horns, sturdy barks and untearable roots – and what did they, so wise and superior, have in their lieu? Protective garments and the terrible knowledge of their inescapable mortality. In the middle of the red sky, when half-thoughts and dreams ruled the mind, Raddia often imagined being a flying bird or one of the ancient murkwood trees which grew in the Southern Mists and which no one dared approach, much less cut down; rumour had it that they had been there since Lurien’s earliest days, and that their real name in the Original Language meant ‘that which cannot die’. (Though no one knew for sure; certainly no Maker would ever proclaim a mere tree to be so powerful).

  Looking up, Raddia saw the redness of the sky dissolve in widening pools of white, like a milcloth glove slowly pulled off a hand. She shouldn’t dally any more; soon the rooster’s piercing call would awaken the hens, and her task would become ten times harder. So, bracing herself, Raddia opened the small door, crouched inside and closed it behind her; then she stood motionless, letting her eyes and nostrils adapt to the dimness and the stink; and then she noticed something strange.

  It appeared that, for some reason, the hens had laid their eggs on the coop’s bare earthen floor. Raddia took a step and felt one of them, unseen, get crushed under the heel of her boot – but instead of the sickening crack and the stickiness she expected, the thing, though squeezed, felt curiously resilient. She cautiously stepped back, and then a beam of whiteness snuck through a gap in the wooden wall, illuminating the centre of the coop – and for all her wariness, Raddia couldn’t help gasping in terror.

  The thing she’d trodden wasn’t an egg but the severed head of the rooster; and scattered about lay the heads of the hens, their lifeless eyes glinting horribly and their carcasses strewn all over the coop, as if death, in claiming them, had gone mad.