not? Then drag them away to kill. Not even the lowest shape-shifter kind sinks so low. Honor. There’s more honor to the worm.”
“He keeps calling us dogs,” the young one said.
“We followed you for a year,” the middle one said.
“Why grab me now?”
“I told you time is nothing to us, nor is haste. It’s your friend who took a year.”
“Awhoa! Sister, look at his face. Look how it falls when you speak of the friend. Did you not yet see in your mind-eye that he betrayed you?”
“Nyka. That is his name. Was there strong love between you? You thought he would never sell you for silver or gold, and yet how do we know his name?”
“He is my friend.”
“Nobody ever gets betrayed by their enemy.”
“Nothing, he says. Now he says nothing. Watch the face. It’s drooping longer. No sting like betrayal’s sting. Watch the face,” the young one said.
“It turns into a … a … scowl? Is it a scowl, sisters?” the old one asked.
“Come out of the dark so you can see clear.”
“I think the boy shall cry.”
“Take heart, boy. He sold you to us a year ago. In that time I think he might have even grown to like you.”
“He just like gold coin more.”
“Do you wish that we kill him?” the middle one said as she stooped in front of me.
I lunged at her as far as the chains would let me, but she did not even flinch.
“I can do this for you. A final wish,” she said.
“I have a wish,” I said.
“Sisters, the man has a wish. Should one of us attend to it or all three?”
“All three of you.”
“Give us this wish, we shall hear it,” said the old one.
I looked at them. The middle one smiling as if she was the healer woman come to touch my forehead, the old one cupping her ear as she looked at me, the younger one spitting and looking away.
“I wish you would stay in hyena form, for though you are a hideous animal and your breath always stinks of rotting corpse, at least I didn’t have to bear you in the mockery form of women. Women who make me ask what kind of woman smells as if she shits from the mouth.”
The old and young ones howled and changed form again, but I knew the middle one would not allow them to touch me. Yet.
“I wish to see the view of the gods, when I kill each of you.”
The middle one threw herself at me as if to kiss. Indeed she grabbed my head as if to kiss and parted her lips. Sisters, she said, and both ran to me as women, and grabbed my arms. Strong, strong women, they held me down no matter how hard I struggled. She moved in to kiss my mouth, but moved her lips upward, touching my nose, brushing my cheek, and stopping at my left eye. I closed it before she licked it. She took her fingers and pried it open. She covered it with her mouth and licked the eye. I yelled and struggled, jerked my chest up and tried to nod my head out of her grip. I screamed before I knew what she was doing. Then she stopped licking. And started sucking. She pressed her lips around the eye and sucked, and sucked, and I could feel myself pulling out of my own head, sucked into her mouth. I screamed and screamed but that made the other two laugh and laugh. She sucked and sucked and all around my eye was dark and hot. It was leaving me. It was leaving me. It was forgetting where it should be and leaving for her mouth. My eye, she sucked it until the whole thing plopped out of my lids and into her mouth. She pulled it slow. She licked around it once, twice, three times and I think I said no. Please. No. Then she bit it off.
I woke up in total dark. They raised my arms up and my face rested on the right. I could not touch my face, even though surely that had been a dream? I did not want to do it. I could not touch my left eye, so I closed the right. Everything went black. I opened again and there was the light on the ground. I closed again and everything was black. The tears ran down my cheeks before I even thought to cry. I tried to bring my knees up