Chapter 4 of 5·6 min read·First light through midmorning
The First Salvage
The storm-mutant had stopped moving, but its filaments still reached for the refuge.
I saw them twitch through the gap beneath the rib brace as Vey and I prepared to leave. The strands had gone gray with dust. Their tips still curled whenever the breeze shifted, tasting for warmth.
Vey tightened the woven sling around her injured leg. “We can take the upper route. There’s less of it caught in the bones.”
“You’ll need both hands on the slope.”
“I’ll use the good leg.”
That was how she answered most offers of help. I adjusted the sling so it held her ankle without pinching the puncture on her back leg. She watched my claws, ready to tell me if I had got it wrong.
Behind us, the other refugees waited inside the hollow. One had a short length of rib ready to wedge into the entrance if we pulled the brace free. The other held a loop of gel silk. Neither looked eager to touch the carcass. I couldn’t blame them.
“We’ll be back before the sun clears the ribs,” I said. “If the strands move toward the entrance, pull the brace tight and don’t touch them.”
The one with the rib nodded. The other glanced at Vey’s leg, then at mine. My shell’s second crack had been sealed with a smear of gel silk, but the line still showed through its surface. We were asking other injured creatures to watch a door we had made from a dead one’s bones.
Vey went first. I followed, keeping my cracked side turned away from the rough stone.
The air outside still had the storm’s sour, wet smell. Spores clung to the ribs in pale clumps. In sheltered places they had begun to swell again, each one holding a bead of fluid. I kept my mouthparts shut and watched where I placed my feet.
The mutant lay pinned under the rib shard. Its feeding knot was crushed, and the hard shell around its thorax had split under the weight. Strands lay across the carcass in a loose web. A few had dried; others remained slick and faintly pulsing.
Vey pointed to a bare strip of bone above the body. “There. We can reach the thorax from there.”
“Then we don’t cross the strands.”
She tested the first step with the end of a thin bone splinter. The stone held. We climbed around the carcass, keeping our weight close to the rib wall. It took longer than stepping straight over the web. That was time spent with less of the mutant’s matter brushing against us.
At the split in the thorax, I found the gland.
It was a soft, pear-shaped sac tucked beneath the front plates, with a narrow duct leading toward the feeding knot. The duct had torn when the rib fell. A translucent secretion had dried along the plates in a thick ridge. Where it touched the bone, the tissue had bonded hard enough to hold even after the storm’s dampness.
Next
The new passage smells of fresh marrow, but Ossik must learn what lies beyond it before the residents commit their growing refuge to an unknown space.
Vey leaned close, then pulled back. “That’s what made the strands stick?”
“Part of it. The filaments carried the secretion. The gland made it.”
“So it could bind the silk on our door.”
“If we can keep it from bonding to everything else.”
The sac tightened under my claw. I jerked back. A clear bead swelled from its torn duct and stretched toward the nearest surface.
Vey caught the edge of it on a dead leaf. The bead clung there, stringing into a thread as she lifted the leaf away.
“Useful,” she said, “if we can make it behave.”
A strand at our feet shivered. Another answered from beside the carcass. The movement passed through the web in a slow ripple, traveling toward the slope we had climbed.
Vey’s eyes went to the puncture on her leg. She pressed a small pad of dry moss over it.
“Any pain?” I asked.
“Since the puncture. No change.” She shifted her weight. “Keep cutting.”
I used a sharp splinter to separate the gland from the surrounding tissue. The muscle around it was still tight, and the torn duct kept leaking. When I cut too close, the sac burst against the leaf. The secretion ran across its surface and fastened the leaf to the bone beneath.
We lost a third of the gland in that spill.
Vey stared at the stuck leaf. “That’s enough to learn from.”
It was also a reminder that the carcass did not owe us clean tools or a second chance. I cut the remaining sac free with more tissue around its base, wrapped it in the leaf, and tied the bundle with a length of gel silk. The secretion did not reach the tie.
We took a strip of muscle from the shoulder and a handful of dry, untainted plates. The muscle would need careful cooking, but its fibers were dense and rich with stored energy. The plates could be cut down to patch the outer brace.
The web began to tremble again before we finished. This time the motion came from the carcass’s far side. A filament had slid loose and brushed the stone, drawing a thin line of moisture behind it.
“Time to go,” Vey said.
I had wanted the whole shoulder. I looked at the muscle we had already secured, the gland wrapped in its leaf, and the pale spores swelling on the ribs above us.
“We have enough.”
We came down the slope the way we had gone up. Vey made each step carefully, one hand against the bone wall. I stayed below her, ready to brace her if her injured leg slipped. She didn’t ask for help, and I didn’t make her take it. At the bottom, one filament curled across our route. I placed a flat shell plate over it and stepped across. The thread stuck to the plate instead of my foot.
When we reached the entrance, the refugees pulled the brace aside just far enough to admit us. The gap closed behind us with a soft rasp of silk against bone.
Nobody cheered. They crowded around the wrapped gland instead.
“That is smaller than I expected,” one of them said.
“It’s the part that matters,” I told them. I unwrapped it on a broad scrap of shed shell. “A little will test the bond. We’ll save the rest until we know how it dries.”
We needed a surface that could bear weight, so we chose one loose edge of the entrance’s gel-silk layer. I put a drop of secretion on it. The gland fluid crawled along the strands, filling the spaces between them. Vey held the edge steady with a rib splinter while I set a thin plate across the wet patch.
The secretion clouded. It hardened slowly, drawing the silk tight against the plate.
I tapped the patch with one claw. It held.
Vey lowered the splinter. The plate stayed in place. For the first time since the storm, the entrance had a layer that joined bone, silk, and scavenged shell into a single surface. The group leaned closer. One refugee ran a careful claw along the edge, then looked at me.
“It’ll take a little more,” I said. “Not all of it. We should keep enough for repairs.”
Vey sat beside the marrow pocket and peeled the leaf away from the shoulder meat. “We can decide after we eat.”
The meat went into a shallow hollow in the bone with a spoonful of marrow. I watched the first pieces cook, checking the color and texture for signs of contamination. The storm-mutant’s tissue smelled sharp and mineral-heavy. We left the gland aside. Nobody needed its residue in their food.
When the meal was ready, each of us took a small portion. Vey ate slowly, favoring her good leg as she sat. The refugees divided the rest without asking who had earned the larger share. That small act mattered more than the taste. We had brought in material from the thing that had nearly torn through our door, and now it was food in our bellies and weight in our walls.
After we ate, I studied the hollow’s side wall. A shelf of old bone narrowed into a seam where two ribs met. The seam was packed with pale mineral deposits and scraps of dried tissue. It might hide a second pocket. If we cleared it, we would have more room for stores and a place to work away from the entrance.
Vey followed my gaze. “You think there’s space behind it?”
“I think the ribs continue. The bone pattern says there should be a gap.”
“We can open it once my leg holds.”
“You’ll need to rest it first.”
She looked down at the sling, considered the swelling near the puncture, then nodded once. “After the next meal, I can help clear the loose material.”
The rest of us took up the work in turns. We braced the side wall with a rib splinter and began chipping away the mineral crust. The adhesive patch at the entrance held as the hollow shuddered under each blow. When the last slab came loose, I caught it before it struck the floor.
A cold draft slid out through the opening. It carried the unmistakable smell of fresh marrow.