Boots Upon the Snow: An Invocation of Namira

Oh Carrion Queen, I hear their boots upon the snow, soft sound of sinking teeth and cirrhotic liver. Oh Domina of Degradation, do you make out the words worming their whisper way through whiskey-whiskers rigid with rumrime, the rotting rancid thoughts they throw up into the world through the whiskey-whisper words, the sujamma steam of boozy breath.

“Just a sip papa,” the boy begs, “Just to keep warm. It ent my first. Just a sip, papa.”

“Lookeer, Haming. Boy's a man, now. Couldn't put his arrow in a deer an hour ago, and now he's a man grown,” caws Pa, says Skjor.

“What'd you earn a sip for, Jolgeir? Scared off all the game, like as not,” Haming, Skjor's helping hand, spits, shoves.

Look down this hill, O Spirit of the Septuple Squalors, see their scarlet skin, shiver-shrivelled and Sanguine-stained, soon-shrouded and sooner shredded. Meatmade men, snow-saved and spring-spoiled, to be toothtorn and gumgnawed.

“With them ears of his, shaking like two great reeds,” Skjor says, “Like them bony hands he has shook aiming at the deer. You'd think he were half an elf, the long-eared, skinny-cocked little turd, but,” Skjor's B is belched, bilious, barely backheld barf. “he ent clever enough to be no elf, he ent good enough with a bow.”

“Maybe some Breton blood, a reachman rape child,” hahas Haming, “Put in her belly while you slept off a drunk.”

“How dare you wish me a cuckold?” Skjor screams, swings. Knuckles knock neck, Haming hollers. Skjor stumbles, sujamma spills in the snow. Skjor spins to turn to the boy behind his back. “You trying to sneak a sip, boy?” Skjor swings again, jolts Jolgeir, “You loosen that cap like you loosened your mother? Ruined her. Ruin everything.” His sallow sclerae's sickly shade, snow stained with piss, goes pale prick-pink and wild with random rancor. Skjor submerges son in suffocating Sujamma-snow, sings: “Take yer sip, drink it down/take yer sip, drink or drown.”

Breathe, oh Great Darkness, breathe in the stench that splits the snow smell. Slept-in scents, sour sweat and furs, flin-flecked and faintly fecal; pants pungent with putrid puke and piss. Inhale, Empress of Indigence, the mazte-musk and meanness, the son's fecund fear itself a father of fraternal fight and flight in this, the womb of winter. Smell his bowels release, not just the pouring out but the small something being drawn inward.

“Ho, on the hill,” Haming points, pulling Skjor's sight from the son submerged in snow. Jolgeir rolls on his back, breathes blissful-then-bitter breaths as his brain thinks better of being glad he is alive. Skjor follows the finger's path, past the pines, up to a path of prints in the snow. “We may yet eat today.”

“Unless the boy sends this game running, too,” Skjor scowls, stretches a leg in a halfhearted kick. Jolgeir rolls, reflexively, from Skjor to Haming.

“You,” Haming says to the form at his feet, “my hands are too frozen for skinning, and yours are useless for hunting. Take my knife so you can make some use of yourself.” Jolgeir's belly bolts back, flinching in the face of the freezing steel, when he tucks the knife under his shirt.

Taste, oh Loving Mother of All Decay, the succulence of the snow that slows the blood on its way to your tongue, the synaesthetic sweetness of the Skjor's screams as he clutches his knees, as he is torn open. Haming's horror, hot as the hoarfrost is cold, held on his face when his throat is taken with the noise inside. Jolgeir's joy, instant and impatient for their dismemberment to turn to death. The blood steaming on snow like warm winter wine.

“Taste, Jolgier,” says the hiss of the snow's steam. Take this, my offering, oh Namira: the soft sound of sinking teeth and cirrhotic liver, like boots upon the snow.