The Dark Magazine

No one thought too highly of the Ma’dān, and as Owens didn’t think too highly of himself either he chose to stay amongst them after the war.

Physically, they weren’t all that different from an Englishman. They had darker skin, of course, and darker hair they kept hidden beneath a keffiyeh or headcloth, but otherwise Owens thought them much the same. Many of the other Arabs hated the Ma’dān, though, considering them treacherous and violent—and many of them were—but as Owens had discovered in the four years he’d fought for King and Country, all men had dark, destructive appetites.

The Ma’dān had made enemies of both sides during the war, murdering and looting from vantage points within the marshes they knew so well. The marsh was where they lived. Seasonal marshes dried up in the autumn and winter months and temporary marshes came with the floods, but as a constant the marshes of southern Iraq gave them everything they needed, and for a while they gave Owens what he needed, too.

Six thousand square miles in which to lose himself or find himself. Whichever came first.

The waterways were a maze of barely visible lanes amongst the reedbeds, but Owens’ canoeboys knew where they were going. All he had to do was use the tin can in his lap to bail out the water whenever there was enough to warrant his attention—the bitumen was cracking and in need of a recoat—but even then he kept a keen eye on the reeds, watching for anything that might deserve the attention of his rifle.

Behind him, two canoes followed. Radhawi was in front. He nodded that all was well, and Owens nodded back before a comment from one of his boys brought his attention back to the path ahead.

Hatab wore his headcloth without a head-rope, twisting the cloth in place, and his shirt had been patched many times. He liked to joke his muscles tore the fabric, and that each patch and repair was a celebration of his physique: the boy was as slim as a reed. He was pointing now and the other boy, Tahir, nodded and they steered the canoe into a new channel. Previously they had been following a lane made by passing buffalo but now they were picking out their own route by instinct. Owens had learned to trust their instincts. Even amongst the densest reeds they could find the entrance to the smallest waterway. It was a great skill, and one they were certain to need as they passed into less familiar territory. Their tracking skills, too. Hatab boasted he could track a swimming pig. Tahir that he could determine types of fish by their wake as they passed.

As if he knew he was being thought of, Tahir turned and smiled. He was trying to grow a moustache but it was still little more than a patchy dark fuzz on his lip. He wore his hair in two long braids either side of his face.

“Filhu?” he asked. Stop and feed?

Owens shook his head. They had an hour or so before they’d need to think about camp. The boy patted a bag to remind Owens where the food was, should he be hungry, and returned his attention to the route.

Just as they emerged into an open area of water they discovered an abandoned canoe, half submerged on a mud flat amongst a bed of bulrushes. Owens had been cradling his rifle, but he took a firmer grip of it now as they approached. He wondered if an attempt had been made to scuttle the boat, or if it had simply been abandoned. He wondered, too, if it was a distraction. He looked left and right for an ambush but saw no one. Behind them, the other two canoes slowed to drift close.

The abandoned canoe was old. Much of it was rotten, the softer planks fallen from the ribs. It didn’t belong to their man.

Nevertheless, Radhawi checked the old boat over. He retrieved a punting pole from inside, tested its strength, and discarded it into the reeds.

It was enough to startle a heron from some hidden spot. It shook itself from cover and took to the sky with a sudden beating of its great wings.

Owens raised his rifle and fired and the bird fell, wings folded around itself and legs trailing behind. An easy shot, but the others praised his reflexes.

“What do you want to do, Sahib?” Radhawi asked.

Sahib. Friend. Killing something always made you a firmer friend of the Ma’dān .

Owens looked at the bank and thought it a suitable place. “Filhu,” he said.

Stop and feed.

The tent was warm with the light of a hurricane lamp, and with the heat rising from the men. The smell of the mud and reeds beneath their mats, together with the odour of damp clothes drying, leant the heat a cloying, earthy moistness that wasn’t altogether unpleasant. The tent was black goat hair and that held its own smell too, but it was the aroma of heron cooking outside that Owens focussed on. A heron was a good meal, providing as much meat as a sheep but with a stronger flavour. It would make a welcome change to the fish and rice they had been eating for the last three days.

The men had taken off their cloaks and the cartridges of their bandoliers caught the lamplight, glinting in lines like deadly constellations. Each man sat with their rifle in their lap or held upright beside them as they talked. One of the men was eying Owens’s weapon with open interest.

“Khalaf, isn’t it?”

The man nodded.

Owens passed Khalaf his rifle. He had sold his standard army issue Lee-Enfield shortly after the war and replaced it with a .275 Rigby which, with its moderate recoil, superior range, and excellent penetration, was better for hunting. He asked for Khalaf’s opinion. The men he met on the marshes were always keen to talk about rifles.

Khalaf looked the weapon over and simply said, “Good.” When he handed it back, he drew the knife he wore at his belt for Owens to admire in turn, his rifle being no better than anyone else’s. The blade was narrow and curved and wickedly sharp. Many of the Ma’dān carried such knives, but Owens nodded and said, “Good,” and Khalaf seemed pleased.

“It was my father’s,” he said. “It was stolen from him. I had to kill to get it back.” His smile was wide and without menace. He simply wanted to be recognised as worthy for their venture, and Owens gave him the validation by clasping his shoulder and nodding.

The man they were tracking had also stolen a weapon. More than that, he had killed a woman. He’d claimed he thought her a wild pig and fired before he was certain, killing her by accident, and he’d pleaded inexperience with the rifle he’d borrowed to protect his crops, but the hows and whys of what had happened were not important. Amongst the Madan, a killing could only be appeased by another death or recompensed with fasl. Blood money. The man they were tracking had refused to pay the fasl and fled.

The sad truth of it was that more value was placed upon the stolen rifle than the fasl for a dead woman.

Owens returned Khalaf’s knife and excused himself to check on the food. He took his rifle with him.

Outside, two of the boys were repairing the canoe he’d been travelling in. They were heating the bitumen with a reed torch to seal the cracks, a temporary measure until the boat could be recoated. The smell of hot tar was thick and Owens turned away from it as he passed to stand upwind. Stars were shyly emerging in the purple of the sky. The moon was close to full, marking another month in the company of marshmen and Owens did not know when he would leave. When he’d told his Captain of his plans to stay after the war, the man had joked that Owens was only happy when scratching fleas from his shirts and chest hair. He had bid Owens, “Salam alaikum,” peace be on you, and Owens shook the man’s hand with, “Alaikum as salam,” on you be peace, but peace was no longer something Owens believed in. The war had done that to him. He had seen men do terrible things, had done terrible things. Men barely more than boys had become animals in battle, slaughtering and being slaughtered, and Owens couldn’t go home after that. Something in him had changed, and he didn’t know yet if it would change back. Or if he wanted it to.

A quiet noise behind him had him turn with rifle raised but it was only Hatab. He was carrying a platter of meat to the tent.

Owens lowered his weapon and followed the boy back.

“He has returned!” Radhawi announced, and said to the man next to him, “You must tell him about Hufaidh after we have eaten.”

The name sounded familiar to Owens but he couldn’t recall where he’d heard it and he was too hungry to think about it now. He sat back amongst them and they washed their hands then ate in silence. They ate the heron with disks of bread that tasted of the ashes they’d been cooked in. Afterwards they ate hard yellow cakes made from the pollen of bulrushes. Owens had grown to like the taste. When they drank, Owens offered his cup to Radhawi who laughed at the familiar joke between them, and he offered it to the other men who laughed as well. They would not drink from the same cup as an infidel.

One of the men spat and said, “English pig!” and Owens laughed with him.

“That is Barur,” Radhawi said. “Don’t listen to what he says. When a child dies very young, his brother is given an unpleasant name to ward off the evil eye, but Barur was named for how he looked.”

Barur snatched up his rifle and aimed it at Radhawi who laughed and took cover behind one of the canoeboys.

“Barur,” Owens said, “that means dung?”

Barur turned his threat on Owens, brandishing his rifle with his eyes wide and mouth open in mock rage.

“Save my sahib from Barur, Hashim,” Radhawi said. “Tell him about when you went to Hufaidh.”

Radhawi had redirected his joking, it seemed, for now the men laughed at the one called Hashim.

Hashim smiled. “I have not been to Hufaidh,” he said, “but I may have met a man who had.”

To Owens, Radhawi said, “It is said, that no man can look upon Hufaidh and remain wise in his mind.”

“What is this place?”

“It is an island,” Hashim said.

“It is a legend,” said Sabaiti.

Hashim nodded as if it could be both. “There is a great palace, and there are palm trees. The buffalo there are big, much bigger than in any of the marshes.” He gestured, measuring a height above his head. “But anyone who sees the place is cursed and can speak no sense. Their words are spoken out of order and no one can understand them.”

“Then how do we know about the palace and the palm trees and the buffalo?” Radhawi asked. Owens smiled, and a few of the men chuckled quietly, but most were listening closely to Hashim, though they had surely heard such stories many times. Owens had heard it spoken of before, he realised. A great sheikh had searched for it with a whole fleet of canoes. It was a story he’d heard told by way of an insult of one of the tribes, and someone told it again now.

Hashim shook his head. “The Jinns hide the island.”

Nobody joked at this. Someone explained to Owens that Jinns were malevolent spirits or shapeshifting demons and he nodded as if he believed them.

“Hufaidh cannot be found unless the Jinns will it to be so,” Hashim said. “And those who find it do not easily leave, though I once traded some food for an idol that the owner claimed had come from Hufaidh. The man was . . . Not wise in his mind. But I could understand his words. He said the idol was given to him as protection, but he was in more need of food and so I traded with him.”

Hashim paused, and perhaps it was for dramatic effect but to Owens it seemed the man was struggling with how to proceed.

“It was strange to look at,” he said eventually. “It was awful and it was pleasing.”

“Let us see it.”

“I did not like to look at it. At first I liked it, but then . . . ” He shook his head. “It was made of lead. I melted it to make bullets.”

Of course, Owens thought. Bullets were also awful and pleasing.

“What happened to the man?” Sabaiti asked, but Hashim didn’t know.

“When I traded with him, we were not far from here,” he said.

“Perhaps he went back to Hufaidh.”

“Perhaps it is close by.”

“Maybe the man we seek has found it, and hides from us there,” Owens said. He was joking but the men nodded as if it were possible.

“We will find him, wherever he is,” said Radhawi. “The Jinn will not hide him.”

After that, the talk turned to other things, but later, as they spread qasab mats and goatskins for sleep, Owens’ mind returned to Hufaidh and strange idols and he wondered if he would dream but he did not.

They found their man early the next day.

At first their progress was slow. The qasab grew tall and close, the tasselled stems as thick as punt-poles and full of shadows, and moving through it was arduous work, but eventually the channel opened into a wide lagoon. Several small islands were gathered at the furthest end. These were tuhul, some of them anchored but most of them free to drift across the water, floating islands that were masses of qasab and brambles.

“Sahib,” said Radhawi, and when he had Owens’s attention he pointed to one of the larger islands where a canoe had been pulled up amongst the reeds. It was not rotted like the last one they’d found, and inside with the paddles and punt-pole was a cloth bag of supplies. No rifle, though. Wherever he was, he had it with him.

The men moved quietly, drawing their canoes up onto the tuhul.

Tuhuls were made of layers of roots and rotting vegetation, and though the ground of it looked solid enough you would sink through if you stood too long in one place. Owens moved into a thicket of willow bushes, stepping over and around clumps of sedge and keeping himself low. With Radhawi to the right of him, he focussed his attention to the left, his rifle held down at his side but hands positioned ready to raise and fire at once. The ground was wet underfoot, spongy, and it was easy to see where someone had passed, trampled grasses and broken stems of qasab pointing the way.

Owens knelt at where a bottle had been dropped. A wick of cloth had been pushed into the neck and dates, squashed in around it, held it in place. An improvised lamp, still sloshing with paraffin and never lit. He showed it to Radhawi then tucked it inside his shirt so he had both hands free again for his rifle.

The next thing they found was rolled tent tied with cord and half submerged in the ‘ground’ of the island. The path from there was even easier to follow, the route so clear that Owens suspected a trap of some kind, but before he could say anything to Radhawi the man stopped. He did it so abruptly that Owens snapped his rifle up to shoot but no enemy presented itself.

Radhawi turned to look at him and shook his head.

“We have found him,” he said, and parted more of the reeds for Owens to see.

A small area had been trampled flat, and mats laid down as if readying for camp, though to camp on a tuhul would have been beyond foolish. It would have been dark, Owens allowed, thinking of the lamp. And perhaps he was frightened, not thinking straight.

Looking at the dead man sprawled in the reeds confirmed the frightened part.

The man lay sprawled at a stand of reeds and brambles, his legs splayed and seemingly gone from the knees down, sunk into the base of the tuhul. His arms were open wide, hooked around the reeds to keep the rest of him upright. He’d been eviscerated, his stomach opened to spill stinking strings of intestine onto his thighs. Owens fancied he could see them steaming still, in the morning air. He’d seen a man shredded open like this in the war, strung on wire, but that man’s face had been a contortion of pain. This man had died in fear. Many do, Owens knew. He’d seen them surprised by death then frightened by what might come after, but this man . . .

“His face,” said Hashim.

The others had gathered with them, a dozen men looking at one whose face was gaunt with horror, his mouth an open, hanging pit. There was no vacancy in the look of his wide, wild eyes. It was as if they still beheld the terror of dying.

Radhawi squatted to retrieve a rifle lying across the dead man’s lap. Guts snaked from where they were draped over the barrel and spooled into the marsh. He inspected it. “Not been fired.” He wiped the weapon and gave it to Sabaiti who looked it over and nodded.

“Fasl has been paid,” he said.

“Look at his hand,” said Owens. “His right hand.”

It was bloody, coated to the wrist. In the reeds beside him was his knife. The curved blade and much of the hilt was also bloody.

“He fought back,” said Radhawi.

Owens shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“He got them,” Radhawi said, and mimed a slash and thrust as if gesturing would make his claim more convincing, but Owens said no. “What then, sahib? Tell me.”

Before he could say anything, the spongy ground seemed to tremble and the reeds around them shuddered before parting with an eruption of movement. A bristling, snorting mass of muscle thundered into Radhawi and knocked him down before tossing one of the canoeboys aside. It struck Owens, too, but as he spun with the impact he brought his rifle to bear on the creature.

It was a boar, standing four feet high and as long as a man was tall, and it turned to barrel through them again.

One of the men cried out as he fell, clutching at his side. Another was struck to the ground and trampled.

Owens couldn’t shoot—there were too many men he might hit now he’d turned—but he saw Sabaiti raise his retrieved rifle and fire just as the pig slammed into him. The rifle went high, and Owens felt a hammer blow to his chest that seemed to smash his ribs like glass. It knocked him to the ground. Tahir, beside him, fell too.

Men cried out warnings and panicked instructions as the pig moved amongst them, and Owens heard at least two more shots as he felt carefully at his wound. He could feel sharp fragments of bone splitting out from his skin but when he looked down he didn’t see shards of bone but pieces of broken bottle protruding from his shirt. He was wet with paraffin, not blood. The bullet had struck the lamp he’d been carrying.

Tahir had fallen beside him and Owens checked him and saw a quarter of the boy’s face was gone, cratered outward from the eye socket where he’d caught the ricochet. The boy twitched, not yet done with dying.

Owens grabbed his rifle. He used it to get up then pointed it left and right for its target.

The rest of the men had dispersed, spreading out as much as the space allowed so that they stood in a loose semi-circle around the pig that ran first at one and then another of them. Owens had seen cornered animals act viciously, but this one had a clear route to flee if it wanted to. Instead, it chose to attack the men before it, focussing each time on the ones who raised their rifles. Each of them abandoned their shot to dodge the beast instead.

The Rigby was slippery in Owens’s hands because his grip was slick with paraffin, but he took aim at the pig and when it came at him he was resolute. It came at him huffing and grunting and was upon him the instant he fired.

The pig squealed, a terrible high-pitched shriek. Even shot, its momentum carried it forward and it butted Owens down, tearing a line out of the man’s thigh. It stumbled to its face, squealed again, and was still.

“Are you all right, sahib?”

Blood was spilling from between his fingers where he held at his wound but he risked a look and saw it wasn’t bad. It was bleeding profusely, but someone handed him a strip of bandage and he wrapped the wound tight as others took care of wounds of their own. Another of them had been gouged like Owens. Sabaiti held at his stomach, still struggling for breath. He was looking at Tahir who stared up at the sky with one sightless eye.

Owens looked for Radhawi and saw the man squatting down at the pig. It lay on its side, blood spilling to the watery ground and puddling in the bed of the tuhul. Radhawi pulled back the flesh of its mouth to show Owens the curve of its tusks. “Big for a sow,” he said, then noticed Tahir.

“Sabaiti,” Radhawi said.

The man only glanced at him. Then he looked to his rifle and cast it aside. “It is cursed with death,” he said.

That’s every rifle, Owens thought, but he said nothing. It was a silence the others took up as they carried the boy back to the canoes. They took the dead man, too, and the boar as well, trussing its feet to carry over a pole.

At the canoes, a man called Badai drew their attention to several others coming to them across the lagoon. There was no question they’d been seen. The boats were heading straight for the tuhul.

“They heard the shots,” said Radhawi.

“Whose territory is this?” Owens asked.

“There is some debate on that matter.”

“Great.”

Being in someone else’s territory could be dangerous at any time, but if the area was contested the danger increased as either tribe would suspect them rivals.

“I think they’re women,” Badai said.

He was right. There were a few men, but even in the canoes of mixed sexes it was the women who were sitting in front to paddle, which was very unusual. Owens had never seen it, in fact. He pointed it out to Radhawi.

“Perhaps they are mustarjil,” he said.

Mustarjil. Women who lived as if men, working as men. They would sit in the mudhif and eat with the men, and when they died they were honoured with rifle fire like men. Owens had met several before, but never he’d never seen so many at once. There were a dozen of them over four boats. It would make for a well-matched fight if it came to that. Mustarjil also fought as fiercely as men, perhaps more so.

“Salam alaikum!” Radhawi called to them.

They did not reply immediately, and Owens felt the men around him tense. He knew without looking they would be holding their rifles a little harder, and a little higher, but when the women were close enough to speak rather than shout, one of them said;

“Alaikum as salam.”

She was punting the lead canoe which drifted now towards theirs. She said something quietly to the others in her boat before asking Radhawi, “Why are you here?”

“Hunting.”

It wasn’t a lie in itself, but he didn’t point to the man they’d been tracking. He pointed to the boar.

The woman bristled as if she knew he was trying to deceive her, and those with her muttered amongst themselves.

Again, there was tension amongst them, like a taut drumskin waiting to be struck.

Knowing he was an unusual sight in the marshes, Owens stepped forward to be seen more clearly, a distraction of sorts, but the women showed him little interest.

“Yours?” a woman asked Radhawi, and for a moment Owens thought she meant him, but she pointed to where a man and boy lay dead.

Radhawi said, “Yes. We are taking them home.”

The woman nodded. Then she pointed to the boar and said, “Ours.”

Two of the other women stepped into the water and went to the animal.

One of the men, Barur, began to protest, but Radhawi quickly hushed him. A pig was a small price to pay for trespassing.

As the pig was transferred from the canoe, some of the other women disembarked from theirs to take positions in those of the men and before there could be any further protest the men were told, “You must come with us. We shall eat, and honour your dead.”

They crossed the lagoon and followed a series of waterways that threaded upon themselves before opening up again into an open expanse of water. A black mound, rising gently from surrounding reeds, was their obvious destination, an island of solid ground with a natural cleft perfect for the mooring of the canoes.

As they neared, Owens saw a number of buffalo, the largest he had ever seen in the marshes. Some of them stood by the water’s edge, huge, bulk-bodied animals with curved horns as thick as a man’s arm. Others rested in the water with only their heads and muscled backs protruding. The women guided a sure course between them and the canoes slid to a stop on the reeded bank. Immediately, two of the women unloaded the shot boar. They caressed the animal almost tenderly before heaving it from the canoe.

Nobody spoke. The men looked from one to the other for communication, and with the threat of hostility gone a few of them openly appraised the women anew. The women, though, went about their business as if the men weren’t there, heading into the bulrushes and allowing them to follow if they so wished.

The men followed.

Yellow rushes stood like a wall around the island and they followed a short path through to discover a cleared space where some thirty or so houses stood. Some of these were little more than rushes gathered together as a cone, much like an upended nest. Others, similarly constructed, were longer and arched like short tunnels, reed mats fitted to qasab frames and draped with animal skins and cloth.

Dominating them all was a large mudhif. Eighty feet in length, it had seventeen arches. A single huge mat made the roof, while others hung as panels from the roof to the ground. As the weather was warm, many of these had been propped up to leave the inside open, a vast inviting space large enough to house the whole village at once.

All around, people were busying themselves with the daily tasks of village life and they barely acknowledged the arrival of strangers. Some were milking buffalo. Others were making small bricks of the dung to burn as fuel. At several fires, women were slapping dough onto platters and the air was rich with the aroma of cooking bread. Owens found himself drawn to watching two women pounding grain with heavy pestles at a large mortar and he felt a moment of shame at finding something erotic in the way they’d bend at the hips, taking turns in a rhythm of work that had them grunting and sweating. They had gathered up their long gowns and tied them shorter between their legs. One of them saw him watching, spoke to her companion, and the two of them exerted themselves all the more loudly as if to tease or provoke him.

Owens looked away.

The women they had followed into the settlement had dispersed to mingle again with their people, but one remained to lead them into the mudhif. It was cool beneath the roof. The pliable reeds that formed the arched columns had been decorated with henna handprint patterns. The area inside was divided into three by short platforms, one of which was piled with goat hair sacks of food and folded clothing and rolls of blankets. There were carpets, and a scattering of cushions decorated the mat floor except where a large space had been dug open for a fire.

“Rest,” the woman said. “Someone will come to dress your wounds. Then you will eat with us, and we shall consumate a new friendship.” She nodded to them, or perhaps it was a quick bow, and then she left.

They were not alone for long. First their wounds were cleaned and dressed and then there was the ritual of making coffee, which was strong and bitter but restorative and the men, despite their recent ordeal, began to relax. Part of that could be attributed to the trio of young women who sang to them. Familiar songs at first, but also songs Own had never heard before. Several times he had to ask for someone for an explanation of meaning.

“Hunting songs,” Radhawi said. “They honour the boar, and they sing of feasts.”

And though it must have happened gradually, it seemed to Owens that without announcement the mudhif was suddenly full. There were few men, surly and watchful, but the women made them feel welcome. Young boys lit lamps and hung them around the mudhif.

“When did it become dark?”

No one had an answer for him, although more fuel was added to the fire as if Owens’ question had been a complaint, dried blocks of buffalo dung releasing their familiar, pungent odour. Grasses, too, with a sharper, less pleasant smell, were added to the flames and the smoke paled. Owens moved deeper into the mudhif to escape fumes that made his eyes water and as he resettled, more women arrived with attractive platters of honeyed treats and meat.

“Eat!”

The meat was delicious, succulent, tender chunks that fattened the rice with rich juices. Like famished men, they devoured it quickly.

“Eat,” they were told again. “You will need your energy!”

Drums were fetched, and tambourines, and after the skins had been tightened over the fire there was music and the men were urged to dance.

Owens, though, felt giddy and lightheaded. Thinking it was perhaps the acrid smoke from the fire, he excused himself for some fresh air. Alcohol was forbidden amongst the Ma’dān, but he staggered from the mudhif like a drunk man.

Outside, night had fallen, and it felt to Owen like many hours had passed in the span of a single one. A fat moon looked down upon the marshes with her sisters the stars and Owens hoped their cool light would do as much to clear his addled mind as the clean air. He felt strange. Like he was wading through silvered water.

The village had emptied itself into the mudhif but Owens was not alone outside. A wandering buffalo paused to rub its shaggy body against one of the palm trees near the mudhif as if it, too, wanted to dance to the music pulsing from inside.

“There is a great palace, and there are palm trees,” came a voice out of the dark.

It was Hashim.

He said, “The buffalo there are big, much bigger than in any of the marshes.” He gestured, measuring a height above his head.

“You’ve said something like this to me before,” Owens said.

Hashim nodded. He looked back at the mudhif. “The women here are like that idol I once owned. Pleasing to look at, but . . . ”

“Dangerous,” said Owens. “Like bullets.”

“Yes. Like bullets.” He looked at Owens. “The idol looked, in parts, like a woman.”

“Which parts?” Owens asked, but Hashim said nothing else.

“Come on,” Owens said. “I’m still hungry. Let’s find what might be left of that boar.”

But Hashim was already gone, and Owens wondered if he’d even been there at all. He wondered, too, if there had been something in the mudhif fire that muddled his mind and stirred his appetite. He really was very hungry.

He stumbled his way to the place he’d seen them take the boar and announced himself with, “Salam alaikum,” at the door and, receiving no reply, entered the house thinking it empty.

It was not. In fact, he had intruded on a woman as she finished dressing. There was another with her, and she scowled at Owens as he apologised, but the woman dressing was not embarrassed or offended and she bid him stay a moment. “You are the brave warrior,” she said. “You shot the boar.”

“Yes. I’m looking for it, now.”

“Still hungry?” She gestured the other woman away when Owens nodded, he assumed to fetch more food, but when she was gone the woman said, “A man has many appetites,” and grabbed a fistful of his shirt to pull herself close and put her mouth to his. Owen pushed back before it became a kiss and she retreated willingly, but she held his hand where he’d placed it on her and after a moment lowered it to her breast and moved close again and this time he did not force her away. Women who engaged in sex before they were married were killed to restore a family’s honour, but Owen thought of this only briefly when she put her hands into his trousers and pulled at him with eager skill. Perhaps with no fathers or brothers here to punish them, the women had no fear. Perhaps the lack of men heightened appetites of their own.

She used one hand on him and pulled at her own gown with the other, bunching it up around her waist. He felt the coarse hair of her crotch against him where the nakedness of their bodies touched and he felt the heat of her on his skin and then she was urging him down upon her to the mats of the floor. He went to the ground and inside her so hard that she grunted with the force of it. It had been a long time since he felt a woman under him, and he moved on her with a frantic passion she encouraged and returned. The only resistance came when he tried to pull her gown the rest of the way from her body, but she turned over beneath him and allowed him then, arching her bare back to his chest as he clutched hungrily at hers. His movements behind her kept a pace with the distant mudhif drums and with his eyes closed it was like he was there again, the music loud around him as they bucked against each other like animals. He leaned over to smother her throat with hungry bites and she turned her head so her mouth could find his and their kisses were filled with their noises while the drums beat. He grabbed and he groped, enjoying one of her breasts then the other, and another, then another, two full rows of them heavy and swaying under her, and with the feeling of that finally registering it seemed her mouth or his was suddenly filled with teeth, large teeth, too big, and he broke away with a frightened squeal as he finished inside her.

He pushed himself back from her body and slapped a hand to his mouth, probing for whatever he’d felt there. For moment, instead of a woman sprawled on the floor before him there was a boar, its back thick with bristly hair, and Owens cried out a second time, turning from the sight to kick and crawl away across the ground.

When he looked back, the imagined boar was gone and the woman sitting where it had been was raising her discarded garment to dress again. She had two breasts. There was a fresh scar just above and between them, puckered and pale against her dark skin, but then the gown dropped down over her body and he looked to her face.

“Strong, brave warrior,” she said.

Owens yanked at his clothes, hurrying to dress himself, to get away, and she laughed.

“Just a man with a rifle,” she said.

He fled.

He ran to mudhif to warn the others, holding his breath against whatever poison fumes had filled the room, but he was too late.

Several men were enjoying the women as Owens had done. He saw naked bodies bristling with thick hair and open mouths distended with the wicked curves of tusks, faces distorted into snouts and beady eyes gleaming in the lamplight. Around them their companions watched and laughed and encouraged the coupling, reaching to squeeze at nearby teats or stroke at where there was hair. Some of the men grunted like they were pigs themselves, and Owens saw Radhawi take another man’s knife to hold with his own at either side of his mouth, mimicking what he saw before him with curved blade tusks. Then he lowered his face to the lap of an amused friend beside him and opened the man’s stomach with a violent shake of his head.

Owens clutched at his own as if it had been him, but the others only laughed or ignored it altogether. Even the man attacked merely looked down at where Radhawi nuzzled him open, and when the wound was wide enough he reached inside to disembowel himself while Radhawi moved on to eviscerate another.

More men took up blades and those not rutting were cutting instead, each other and themselves, just as he thought the man on the tuhul had done. They made troughs of their bodies and the women fell to feeding with glee, goring for more in an orgy of wilful bloodletting. They snuffled in the cavities of men.

One of the women looked up from the swill her face had been in and saw Owens. She wiped blood from her chin with a hand close to cloven and said, “Filhu.”

Stop and feed.

He wanted to tell her no, but his mouth was full of tusks and he was hungry.

Originally published in They’re Out to Get You: Volume One: Animals and Insects, edited by Johnny Mains.