Human women, she came to realize, were very breakable. If she’d wanted to live, she might have felt grateful to the solemn chief who had made her a monster.
But Saaral didn’t want to live.
She’d lain in the tent that first night, shaking and weeping as she held the cold body of the boy she’d drained of blood. She would not move until the hunger struck her again, and that was just before the dawn began to break. She fell into blackness with her stomach twisted in knots.
And woke with another struggling victim. This time, it was an emaciated woman. Her hunger didn’t care. By the time she realized she’d killed again, the woman lay with dead eyes staring into the blackness of the small tent where they’d thrown her.
The third night, it was a goat.
Then another child.
Then a pig.
A man.
She vomited up the blood from each kill, only to lap it from the dust when the hunger took her again.
The fourth night she woke in darkness, Saaral tried to hang herself. But though the leather strips she twisted around her neck held and her body hung loose from the tent supports, she did not die. She did not even lose consciousness. And that was the way the girl learned that she no longer needed to breathe.
A few nights later, she snuck out of the tent and found a dull blade stowed in a bedroll. She cut her neck from ear to ear, feeling every inch of the knife as she searched for death. She lost her vision at some point, but woke the next night with her captor grunting between her thighs, her healed throat was burning with hunger, but the flesh between her legs burned with pain. She raged and screamed, beating him with her fists, knowing it was useless. Then she turned her face to the side, and blood ran behind her eyes.
She didn’t try to speak.
The girl they called Saaral was passed from tent to tent after that. Mostly, it was her captor who fed her and raped her. Other times, it was one of the men who seemed to please him. She never saw the frighteningly beautiful chieftain again. Within the small camp, her captor led the men. Most of them were human, but they followed the monster’s every command.
Saaral spent most of her first summer searching for death, only to be disappointed. Once she learned the sun could burn her, she tried to crawl outside, but exhaustion took her before she reached the searing rays. Her captor tied her from that night on.
His name was Kuluun, and he was powerful. His fangs were thick and long. When they weren’t covered in blood, they glowed like small white blades in the night. Saaral tried to smother him once. He’d looked like he was sleeping. He wasn’t. Kuluun laughed and slapped her across the tent. Saaral felt her jaw unhinge, then slowly shift back into place. Then he tossed her to one of the humans who had pleased him by driving a small herd of ponies into the camp the night before.
The human kept her for two nights. On the second one, Saaral snuck out of the tent, tying a rope from her neck to one pony’s saddle before she kicked it and hoped her head would pop from her body before anyone noticed she was gone.
Kuluun caught her before she reached the edge of camp, dragging her back as the men laughed around her. Her rage-filled screams were shredded by the wind as Kuluun beat Saaral in front of the fire until the blood ran from her back and she fell silent. Then she felt her back knitting together as she lay in the dirt and he raped her again.
By the time the leaves began to change, the hunger for blood had eased, and Saaral had stopped screaming.
When the first snow fell, she gave up any hope of death.
The monsters called themselves the Sida, and they could fly.
Not like birds. They moved through the air as if they were swimming in invisible streams. They caught rivers of wind that carried them over the plains, often dropping from the sky to capture and kill the way that Kuluun had taken her that first night. There were only three of them. Kuluun, along with his brothers, Suk and Odval. Their chief, the monster who had bitten her neck, and another of their brothers were traveling on other parts of the plains. It was Kuluun who was in charge while they were gone. The others in the camp were humans who followed the Sida, hunting and offering up captives and animals to the monsters as if they were gods.
Saaral knew they were not gods, for she was one of them now, though she could not fly and she barely held control of her body and senses.
Why they had decided to keep her, instead of killing her like they did most women, was a mystery. Why was useless. She was one of the Sida, even if she was unwilling. She began to listen to the language, though she still spoke to no one. She listened when she washed clothes for the camp. She listened when they growled and grunted between her legs. She listened as she roasted the meat they ate and when she rode next to them as they moved south to warmer places. She listened to everything.
The humans rode ponies, like all raiders did. The ponies also carried the tents and skins that they used to shelter themselves from the sun.
The tents weren’t like the large dwellings made by the people of the plains, who moved from place to place with their families and animals. These tents were far smaller. For shelter, not living. Kuluun burrowed into the ground like an animal, then put the low tents over the opening, sometimes he buried himself completely with dirt before the sun rose. Saaral often woke to find herself buried next to him or one of his brothers, when Kuluun let them borrow her. It terrified her. But as winter grew more bitter, Saaral grew stronger and more coordinated. She watched how Kuluun moved. How he fought with Suk and Odval. She watched silently from the dust, though she still did not speak.
Soon, there were more.