The God Zoo
Sep. 24th, 2011 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hwrnmnbsolThe drug wore off. He knew, even before he opened his eyes, before he remembered his own name, that he had been drugged. Something powerful had knocked him out cold, but he was coming to now. He blinked; his vision swam. Wherever he was had natural lighting and was cool and dry. His fingers clenched the surface he was lying on; it was grass.
He sat up. He was in a kind of sheltered hollow, protected by rock formations and screened by vegetation. But the rock looked too clean, too unmarked. He rapped his knuckles against it. It was hollow.
Daylight filtered down through the branches of the trees, but he couldn't directly see sky. He squinted up at the vegetation above him. He thought he could see some kind of mesh netting overhead, just above the highest tier of leaves. Suddenly the hollow felt confining. He got up and slowly staggered through the gap in the 'rocks' that led out.
He was in a somewhat larger enclosure, all grassy and dotted with trees. There was a kind of platform-fort in the branches of one of them, and a tire swing hung from another. A deep moat surrounded the enclosure on three sides; a steep rock cliff boxed in the fourth. Beyond all that was mesh netting.
There were other people in the enclosure. A beautiful girl wearing a feathered headdress sat cross-legged on a flat-rock, her eyes closed in meditation. Other forms lurked in the shade of a tree. And beyond them, the jagged bars of a wrought-iron fence penned off a corner of the enclosure, and there was movement inside that too.
He walked into the open. The girl on the rock opened her eyes and looked at him with interest. He stretched, feeling the power in his muscles, the hidden mysteries that lurked below his skin. He remembered, then, who he was.
The girl hopped lightly down from the rock. She was long and lithe, with very serious eyes, and a ponytail all the way down her back. She approached him boldly and curiously, completely unafraid.
"I am Nuanatu, the Raven," he informed her, his speech still a little slurred. "I'm a God."
She nodded. "I know," she said. "We all are."
He met the others in the enclosure. Kera Elysian was the girl in leathers with the long ponytail. She was a war goddess. She showed him how she could smash a log with her bare hands. Nuanatu nodded. He'd seen similar things back where he was from; Ptambran the Bear was even stronger. There was also Fey Glynna, who was shy and wispy and couldn't stay focused on a conversation, and Nhur Nun, a wizened crone. Fey Glynna was attuned to nature in some way; she spent a lot of her time having conversations with thin air. Nhur Nun was a fairly standard goddess of knowledge.
Nuanatu jerked his head at the fenced-off end of the enclosure. "Who's in there?" he asked.
"Maw," Nhur Nun replied coldly.
"We don't like her," Fey Glynna said with feeling. Then she wandered off to find grass stems long enough to braid together. Nuanatu looked at the fence. He thought he saw something like a long nose poking through the bars, but there was a lot of vegetation on the other side; it was impossible to be sure.
"And what are you a God of?" Kera Elysian asked.
"I'm a God of getting the hell out of here," Nuanatu replied. He launched himself off the ground, and his huge beautiful black wings sprouted from his back and beat the air. Nuanatu drove himself upwards and darted for the netting that hemmed in the enclosure, even up high. He expected to part the strands easily, but the stuff was like woven steel. He heaved and strained, tearing at the string with his teeth, but it wouldn't give way.
An amplified voice sounded from just below him. "And here, if you hurry, you can see our newest addition to the exhibit," said a man holding a bull-horn. He was leading a dozen people along a concrete walk, just outside the pen. "Look up there! Isn't he a feisty one?"
Nuanatu stopped tearing at the netting. He perched on a high branch and looked all around. The mesh enclosed all top and sides, and the moat was deep and lined with rocks. He could fly on top of the cliff that framed in the back of the enclosure, if he wanted to, but it was built such that he would be visible from some part of the path that looped around the exhibit.
"Look at his lovely plumage," said the guide. "Nuanatu the Raven is a wind God, worshipped by the aborigines of Sularia. Gods of the primitive peoples are endangered, of course, and many have been hunted to extinction."
Nuanatu had to admit that there had been more than a few disappearances in the Overhome, the cloud-fortress above Sularia where the Gods dwelt. Ptambran the Bear hadn't been seen for many seasons, and it was thought that Uillish the Snake had retreated to the Deep Places – although now Nuanatu wasn't so sure.
"By bringing this God and others here, we can ensure that he and his kind are not lost entirely to the world," continued the guide. "And of course we get to enjoy him, too. Meanwhile he gets to live in our safe zoo, so really everybody wins."
"That's a lie," Nuanatu called down. The guide ignored him, and several people took pictures.
"Why's he all by himself?" asked a girl.
"First of all, Nuanatu the Raven is the only God we have who flies," the guide explained. "Also, he's new to the exhibit and hasn't had a chance to make friends yet. We're hoping that by putting him in with a number of females, he may choose to breed. The zoo hasn't yet been able to raise any Gods bred in captivity."
Nuanatu's blood froze. So that was why he had been put in with female Gods. This was an outrage. He flew down to where Nhur Nun sat under her shade-tree, her eyes closed.
"They want me to make one of you pregnant," he said. Nhur Nun opened her eyes and nodded.
"They're always trying," she said. "Never succeeding yet, but they want their own captive little baby God to show the crowd."
"But you won't give them one, eh?" Nuanatu asked.
"There have been a number of babies born in this exhibit," Nhur Nun answered. "None of them lived." She glanced at the fence.
"Maw ate them," she said.
A chime sounded. Nhur Nun got to her feet heavily. "That's the two o'clock feeding," she said. "Come on, I'll show you how it's done."
There was a kind of cave at the back of the exhibit. There were doors set into the back wall, but Nuanatu couldn't open them no matter how hard he tried. Four trays of food sat on a shelf. It was hot and filling, and there was plenty of it. Kera Elysian distributed the lunches.
"Did you have a baby in here?" Nuanatu asked.
"Me?" Kera Elysian snorted. "I'm a maiden warrior. Get that thing near me and I'll rip it out at the root." She lowered her voice.
"Fey Glynna had two of them," she said, watching the nature goddess sing a little tuneless song as she skipped away with her food. "She's never really gotten over losing them. Nhur Nun had the other."
"She looks a little old for that kind of thing," Nuanatu observed.
Kera Elysian shrugged. "She knows how to make that stuff work," she said.
"Hey," Nuanatu said, "Maw's female too, right?"
"I suppose," Kera Elysian said, gnawing a bone. "Technically."
"Then who sired those babies before I was caught?" Nuanatu asked.
"Oh, they've brought a number of Gods through from other zoos," Kera Elysian replied. "They had Oleander Stormhand for years. A real zoo fixture. He committed suicide. That happens a lot to Gods. Since he died, they've brought in a parade of would-be studs. Hey, remember Mog?" Nhur Nun nodded while slurping her soup.
Kera Elysian chuckled. "Mog was very amorous. He was completely unsuitable. He had to GO." She didn't elaborate what that meant.
"Then there was Henry Howler, and Bturriti, and a mass of hair and genitals that might not even have had a name," she continued. "They come, they go. They never stay, though. They don't want too many in the exhibit."
"Why?" asked Nuanatu.
Kera Elysian looked at him like he was stupid. "So we don't reach critical mass, of course," she said. "Nine Gods makes a pantheon."
Nuanatu had never thought of it quite that way, but he knew it was the truth. In Overhome, the Gods were all powerful in their own individual way, but it required nine of them to gather together to turn the wheel of the seasons, or bring the monsoon down upon invading giants. Eight Gods could do mighty things, but nine could work the impossible.
"Yes, but we're nowhere near nine," Nuanatu argued. "Why is that a concern?"
"Oh, some tricks have been tried, in the past," Kera Elysian said.
"I remember Avran Gamaran," Nhur Nun piped in. "Terrific fellow, good at chess. He tore himself in half in a bid to escape, believing that if the two halves of him could survive for just a moment, he could bring his enclosure up from eight to nine. Marvelous idea. Failed in execution, but marvelous idea." She shrugged. "But the zookeepers aren't taking any chances anymore."
An appreciative sigh from a gathering of zoo patrons attracted Nuanatu's attention. They were clustered around the netting on the side of the enclosure that fronted onto Maw's side of things. From a high platform, a zookeeper was tossing slabs of meat into the pen. Snarls and tearing sounds were plainly audible over the fence. The crowd ate it up.
Nuanatu finished his lunch and stood up, looking at Maw's fence with interest.
"Don't go over there," Fey Glynna begged. "She ate my babies."
"I know," said Nuanatu awkwardly. "I'm sorry."
Fey Glynna slipped a slender arm around Nuanatu's waist. "You could give me another," she suggested slyly. Nuanatu felt a ravenous lust rise up within him, but he set it aside, knowing this was a facet of nature-power. He firmly extricated himself from Fey Glynna's embrace.
"Perhaps I will," he said, "later." He trotted warily to the fence and looked through.
Maw was a troll. She was completely stooped over, her enormous mouth hanging open just above the ground, but she was so large that the hump of her back was just as tall as Nuanatu. Her bulging belly and pendulous breasts actually dragged in the dirt, and her long pointy nose snuffled in the grass. She was hideous, but her black beady eyes gleamed with intelligence. She crunched on bones and cocked her head at Nuanatu like a bird.
"Mmm. Man," she said. "Hello, man."
"The name's Nuanatu, the Raven," he said. "You're Maw, the eater of babies."
"Just Maw, the Eater," she said. "I like to eat. I eat all things. Babies included." She turned her head, looking at Nuanatu with her other eye. "Are you going to make more babies? If you did, I might eat them."
"You're behind a fence," Nuanatu pointed out.
"Eh, the fence can't hold me," Maw said disdainfully. "Not with a baby in play. I let them think they can pen me in, but they can't. Eventually I eat everything."
"I don’t plan on making any babies," Nuanatu said. "I just want to get out of here. Don't you want to escape?"
Maw regarded Nuanatu seriously. She shuffled forward, poking her long nose between the bars. Nuanatu stayed where he was, unafraid.
"I dream of escape, sometimes," Maw said softly. "I remember the forest, full of life and wild things. Plenty of things to eat there. I would love to go back to the forest. Yes."
"Ever tried to escape?" Nuanatu asked. "I mean, really try? Obviously you're strong. There must be a way out, a way for Gods."
Maw snorted. She turned back to the pile of bones and began to pick them up one by one, like a woman collecting firewood.
"You should make more babies," she suggested. "I'd eat them one by one, like candy. It would be beautiful." She looked up and leered. "Or we could make a baby together."
"Would you eat that too?" asked Nuanatu.
"Of course!" Maw picked her teeth with a bone shard. "And twins run in my family, so we might have enough to split."
"You're disgusting," Nuanatu said. He left her there, picking up her collection of bones like a child cleaning up its toys.
**
Later, when the zoo was dark, Nuanatu made a nest for himself atop the cliff that overlooked the enclosure. He slept for a while, but a soft noise awakened him in the middle of the night. Somebody was scuffing and scraping as they climbed the escarpment. Nuanatu watched with his huge wings folded behind him, framing him in a comfortable bed.
The face of Kera Elysian appeared over the edge of the rocks. She hauled herself up, having scaled the cliff using her fingertips and bare toes. She squatted, watching Nuanatu warily.
"We should do it," she said finally.
That was a surprise. "What?" said Nuanatu.
"Dammit, I'm not a seductress; don't make this hard on me," growled Kera Elysian. "I'm not even really sure how this works. Let's just have sex and get this over with."
"What happened to being a maiden warrior?" asked Nuanatu. Kera Elysian slapped him hard.
"It's not my idea," she grated angrily. "But Nhur Nun says it would be a good idea. She thinks that she and I and Fey Glynna, and probably even Maw too, are all on the same cycle. She thinks you could knock all of us up, and she might be able to hide the pregnancies. Five of us, four babies. Nine Gods. Pantheon."
"Ah." He looked at Kera Elysian. She was hard and dangerous and not at all sexual, but he couldn't deny that she was beautiful.
"Listen," he said. "Let's go talk to the others and make sure we've got all the details of the plan down. I don't think we should be deflowering anybody unless the whole thing's clear."
"Fine by me," said Kera Elysian, relieved. She leaped out into space and landed in the middle of the enclosure in a crouch; Nuanatu flew down more sedately. The eyes of Nhur Nun and Fey Glynna glimmered in the dark from the doorway of the treehouse.
"Do you really think," Nuanatu asked, "that I can get all of you pregnant at the same time?"
"Oh yes," said Fey Glynna. "I've talked to the generative spirits. They all agree, this is the time. Tonight."
"She would know," said Nhur Nun. "She's a flake – sorry, Fey Glynna, but it's true – but she knows her reproductive medicine."
"And can we hide it from the keepers?" Nuanatu pressed.
"I know a few tricks," Nhur Nun sniffed. "I'm patron of midwifery, you know. There are roots, herbs. We can birth the babies prematurely too. They're Gods, they'll survive."
"I see," said Nuanatu. "So that just means that Maw is the only wild card." The others nodded.
"She suggested I knock her up earlier," Nuanatu mused. "I guess we need to talk with her."
"Don't tell her!" begged Fey Glynna. "If she knows we're pregnant, she'll… stalk us." She shuddered.
"We have to tell her eventually, if we want her to cooperate as part of the Pantheon, and not eat its members," Nuanatu said gently.
"Better now than later," Nhur Nun agreed.
Eventually all four of them approached the fence, even Fey Glynna , who nevertheless wept softly. Nuanatu hoped he might fly over the fence and surprise Maw, but she was awake, peering up at the moon. She pressed her face up to the bars and snuffled with her long snout.
"Hello, it's the stud and the baby factory!" she said. "Good evening."
"I killed a troll once," Kera Elysian said conversationally.
"Bring it," said Maw, her black teeth glistening in the dark. "I'll eat it."
"Shut up and listen," said Nhur Nun. "It's important."
She outlined the plan. Maw listened quietly. Then she turned away from the others.
"Nine makes a pantheon," she said quietly.
"That's right," said Nuanatu. "I know you want to go back to your forest. Will you help?"
"Will I help??" echoed Maw, glaring at Nuanatu. "You just got here, and I'm supposed to help *you*? The question is, can you help *me*! I've been working at getting us out of here for years."
"And a fat lot of good that's done us," Kera Elysian snarled.
"Keep it down," Nhur Nun advised. She watched Maw creep back to the center of her bone nest. "Will you cooperate?"
Maw rested her head on the ground, and her eyes closed. "Great," said Kera Elysian. "She's going back to sleep."
Maw began to convulse, her humped back rising and falling in ragged pulses. "We don't need her anyway!" flared Fey Glynna suddenly. "The generative spirits will give us all multiples. I don't want the help of a baby-eater!"
Maw gagged, then retched. A flow of vomit coursed out of her enormous mouth. The stench was terrible. "Oh, for crying out loud," said Kera Elysian, turning away.
"No, look!" said Nhur Nun, fascinated.
Maw heaved, and vomit and solids began to tumble out of her mouth. Chunks of meat, tires and license plates, bits of rubbish and piles of undigested vegetation spilled out, heaping all around Maw's bed. There was a never-ending torrent of the stuff, half-digested or not-digested but all coated with slippery, stinking mucous. Maw worked at emptying her bottomless belly, vomiting up an old shower curtain and a pair of steel-toed boots and the seat of a toilet. Then, finally, all slippery and wiggling, three children came up. One was a four-year-old boy and the other two were babies. They were wet and messy but giggling and healthy.
Fey Glynna gasped. "My babies!" she sobbed.
"And mine!" said Nhur Nun.
"No, mine now," snarled Maw, her voice even rougher than usual from the punishment her throat had taken. "I've hidden them away for years, and I won't have them taken back now so you can lose them again. I just wanted to show you they're there. C'mon, kids; back in the pool." Maw opened her mouth wide. The two babies crawled in one by one; the older child made a show of being obstinate, but an impatient Maw stuffed him in behind the other two.
"We already have eight Gods," marveled Nhur Nun.
"That's right," said Maw, surveying the mess around her bed. "Well, I've got to get all this packed up again. Good luck with that escape plan, geniuses; sorry I beat you to the punch. I guess you'd better get cracking with your contribution, hey? We're still one God short."
Nuanatu and the three goddesses returned to the treehouse.
"Well," said Kera Elysian, "I guess I'm off the hook." She looked relieved.
"And I'm getting a baby!" crowed Fey Glynna. "To go with the others I lost, who aren't really gone! Oh, this is a happy day. Let's make a baby now!" She plucked at Nuanatu's skins.
"Just a minute, who elected you?" demanded Nhur Nun. She pressed up against Nuanatu.
"I know things," she purred. "Pleasing things."
"Oh, my," said Nuanatu.
"I'll be over there. Somewhere," said Kera Elysian awkwardly, pointing off into the darkness.
But nobody was listening.
He sat up. He was in a kind of sheltered hollow, protected by rock formations and screened by vegetation. But the rock looked too clean, too unmarked. He rapped his knuckles against it. It was hollow.
Daylight filtered down through the branches of the trees, but he couldn't directly see sky. He squinted up at the vegetation above him. He thought he could see some kind of mesh netting overhead, just above the highest tier of leaves. Suddenly the hollow felt confining. He got up and slowly staggered through the gap in the 'rocks' that led out.
He was in a somewhat larger enclosure, all grassy and dotted with trees. There was a kind of platform-fort in the branches of one of them, and a tire swing hung from another. A deep moat surrounded the enclosure on three sides; a steep rock cliff boxed in the fourth. Beyond all that was mesh netting.
There were other people in the enclosure. A beautiful girl wearing a feathered headdress sat cross-legged on a flat-rock, her eyes closed in meditation. Other forms lurked in the shade of a tree. And beyond them, the jagged bars of a wrought-iron fence penned off a corner of the enclosure, and there was movement inside that too.
He walked into the open. The girl on the rock opened her eyes and looked at him with interest. He stretched, feeling the power in his muscles, the hidden mysteries that lurked below his skin. He remembered, then, who he was.
The girl hopped lightly down from the rock. She was long and lithe, with very serious eyes, and a ponytail all the way down her back. She approached him boldly and curiously, completely unafraid.
"I am Nuanatu, the Raven," he informed her, his speech still a little slurred. "I'm a God."
She nodded. "I know," she said. "We all are."
He met the others in the enclosure. Kera Elysian was the girl in leathers with the long ponytail. She was a war goddess. She showed him how she could smash a log with her bare hands. Nuanatu nodded. He'd seen similar things back where he was from; Ptambran the Bear was even stronger. There was also Fey Glynna, who was shy and wispy and couldn't stay focused on a conversation, and Nhur Nun, a wizened crone. Fey Glynna was attuned to nature in some way; she spent a lot of her time having conversations with thin air. Nhur Nun was a fairly standard goddess of knowledge.
Nuanatu jerked his head at the fenced-off end of the enclosure. "Who's in there?" he asked.
"Maw," Nhur Nun replied coldly.
"We don't like her," Fey Glynna said with feeling. Then she wandered off to find grass stems long enough to braid together. Nuanatu looked at the fence. He thought he saw something like a long nose poking through the bars, but there was a lot of vegetation on the other side; it was impossible to be sure.
"And what are you a God of?" Kera Elysian asked.
"I'm a God of getting the hell out of here," Nuanatu replied. He launched himself off the ground, and his huge beautiful black wings sprouted from his back and beat the air. Nuanatu drove himself upwards and darted for the netting that hemmed in the enclosure, even up high. He expected to part the strands easily, but the stuff was like woven steel. He heaved and strained, tearing at the string with his teeth, but it wouldn't give way.
An amplified voice sounded from just below him. "And here, if you hurry, you can see our newest addition to the exhibit," said a man holding a bull-horn. He was leading a dozen people along a concrete walk, just outside the pen. "Look up there! Isn't he a feisty one?"
Nuanatu stopped tearing at the netting. He perched on a high branch and looked all around. The mesh enclosed all top and sides, and the moat was deep and lined with rocks. He could fly on top of the cliff that framed in the back of the enclosure, if he wanted to, but it was built such that he would be visible from some part of the path that looped around the exhibit.
"Look at his lovely plumage," said the guide. "Nuanatu the Raven is a wind God, worshipped by the aborigines of Sularia. Gods of the primitive peoples are endangered, of course, and many have been hunted to extinction."
Nuanatu had to admit that there had been more than a few disappearances in the Overhome, the cloud-fortress above Sularia where the Gods dwelt. Ptambran the Bear hadn't been seen for many seasons, and it was thought that Uillish the Snake had retreated to the Deep Places – although now Nuanatu wasn't so sure.
"By bringing this God and others here, we can ensure that he and his kind are not lost entirely to the world," continued the guide. "And of course we get to enjoy him, too. Meanwhile he gets to live in our safe zoo, so really everybody wins."
"That's a lie," Nuanatu called down. The guide ignored him, and several people took pictures.
"Why's he all by himself?" asked a girl.
"First of all, Nuanatu the Raven is the only God we have who flies," the guide explained. "Also, he's new to the exhibit and hasn't had a chance to make friends yet. We're hoping that by putting him in with a number of females, he may choose to breed. The zoo hasn't yet been able to raise any Gods bred in captivity."
Nuanatu's blood froze. So that was why he had been put in with female Gods. This was an outrage. He flew down to where Nhur Nun sat under her shade-tree, her eyes closed.
"They want me to make one of you pregnant," he said. Nhur Nun opened her eyes and nodded.
"They're always trying," she said. "Never succeeding yet, but they want their own captive little baby God to show the crowd."
"But you won't give them one, eh?" Nuanatu asked.
"There have been a number of babies born in this exhibit," Nhur Nun answered. "None of them lived." She glanced at the fence.
"Maw ate them," she said.
A chime sounded. Nhur Nun got to her feet heavily. "That's the two o'clock feeding," she said. "Come on, I'll show you how it's done."
There was a kind of cave at the back of the exhibit. There were doors set into the back wall, but Nuanatu couldn't open them no matter how hard he tried. Four trays of food sat on a shelf. It was hot and filling, and there was plenty of it. Kera Elysian distributed the lunches.
"Did you have a baby in here?" Nuanatu asked.
"Me?" Kera Elysian snorted. "I'm a maiden warrior. Get that thing near me and I'll rip it out at the root." She lowered her voice.
"Fey Glynna had two of them," she said, watching the nature goddess sing a little tuneless song as she skipped away with her food. "She's never really gotten over losing them. Nhur Nun had the other."
"She looks a little old for that kind of thing," Nuanatu observed.
Kera Elysian shrugged. "She knows how to make that stuff work," she said.
"Hey," Nuanatu said, "Maw's female too, right?"
"I suppose," Kera Elysian said, gnawing a bone. "Technically."
"Then who sired those babies before I was caught?" Nuanatu asked.
"Oh, they've brought a number of Gods through from other zoos," Kera Elysian replied. "They had Oleander Stormhand for years. A real zoo fixture. He committed suicide. That happens a lot to Gods. Since he died, they've brought in a parade of would-be studs. Hey, remember Mog?" Nhur Nun nodded while slurping her soup.
Kera Elysian chuckled. "Mog was very amorous. He was completely unsuitable. He had to GO." She didn't elaborate what that meant.
"Then there was Henry Howler, and Bturriti, and a mass of hair and genitals that might not even have had a name," she continued. "They come, they go. They never stay, though. They don't want too many in the exhibit."
"Why?" asked Nuanatu.
Kera Elysian looked at him like he was stupid. "So we don't reach critical mass, of course," she said. "Nine Gods makes a pantheon."
Nuanatu had never thought of it quite that way, but he knew it was the truth. In Overhome, the Gods were all powerful in their own individual way, but it required nine of them to gather together to turn the wheel of the seasons, or bring the monsoon down upon invading giants. Eight Gods could do mighty things, but nine could work the impossible.
"Yes, but we're nowhere near nine," Nuanatu argued. "Why is that a concern?"
"Oh, some tricks have been tried, in the past," Kera Elysian said.
"I remember Avran Gamaran," Nhur Nun piped in. "Terrific fellow, good at chess. He tore himself in half in a bid to escape, believing that if the two halves of him could survive for just a moment, he could bring his enclosure up from eight to nine. Marvelous idea. Failed in execution, but marvelous idea." She shrugged. "But the zookeepers aren't taking any chances anymore."
An appreciative sigh from a gathering of zoo patrons attracted Nuanatu's attention. They were clustered around the netting on the side of the enclosure that fronted onto Maw's side of things. From a high platform, a zookeeper was tossing slabs of meat into the pen. Snarls and tearing sounds were plainly audible over the fence. The crowd ate it up.
Nuanatu finished his lunch and stood up, looking at Maw's fence with interest.
"Don't go over there," Fey Glynna begged. "She ate my babies."
"I know," said Nuanatu awkwardly. "I'm sorry."
Fey Glynna slipped a slender arm around Nuanatu's waist. "You could give me another," she suggested slyly. Nuanatu felt a ravenous lust rise up within him, but he set it aside, knowing this was a facet of nature-power. He firmly extricated himself from Fey Glynna's embrace.
"Perhaps I will," he said, "later." He trotted warily to the fence and looked through.
Maw was a troll. She was completely stooped over, her enormous mouth hanging open just above the ground, but she was so large that the hump of her back was just as tall as Nuanatu. Her bulging belly and pendulous breasts actually dragged in the dirt, and her long pointy nose snuffled in the grass. She was hideous, but her black beady eyes gleamed with intelligence. She crunched on bones and cocked her head at Nuanatu like a bird.
"Mmm. Man," she said. "Hello, man."
"The name's Nuanatu, the Raven," he said. "You're Maw, the eater of babies."
"Just Maw, the Eater," she said. "I like to eat. I eat all things. Babies included." She turned her head, looking at Nuanatu with her other eye. "Are you going to make more babies? If you did, I might eat them."
"You're behind a fence," Nuanatu pointed out.
"Eh, the fence can't hold me," Maw said disdainfully. "Not with a baby in play. I let them think they can pen me in, but they can't. Eventually I eat everything."
"I don’t plan on making any babies," Nuanatu said. "I just want to get out of here. Don't you want to escape?"
Maw regarded Nuanatu seriously. She shuffled forward, poking her long nose between the bars. Nuanatu stayed where he was, unafraid.
"I dream of escape, sometimes," Maw said softly. "I remember the forest, full of life and wild things. Plenty of things to eat there. I would love to go back to the forest. Yes."
"Ever tried to escape?" Nuanatu asked. "I mean, really try? Obviously you're strong. There must be a way out, a way for Gods."
Maw snorted. She turned back to the pile of bones and began to pick them up one by one, like a woman collecting firewood.
"You should make more babies," she suggested. "I'd eat them one by one, like candy. It would be beautiful." She looked up and leered. "Or we could make a baby together."
"Would you eat that too?" asked Nuanatu.
"Of course!" Maw picked her teeth with a bone shard. "And twins run in my family, so we might have enough to split."
"You're disgusting," Nuanatu said. He left her there, picking up her collection of bones like a child cleaning up its toys.
**
Later, when the zoo was dark, Nuanatu made a nest for himself atop the cliff that overlooked the enclosure. He slept for a while, but a soft noise awakened him in the middle of the night. Somebody was scuffing and scraping as they climbed the escarpment. Nuanatu watched with his huge wings folded behind him, framing him in a comfortable bed.
The face of Kera Elysian appeared over the edge of the rocks. She hauled herself up, having scaled the cliff using her fingertips and bare toes. She squatted, watching Nuanatu warily.
"We should do it," she said finally.
That was a surprise. "What?" said Nuanatu.
"Dammit, I'm not a seductress; don't make this hard on me," growled Kera Elysian. "I'm not even really sure how this works. Let's just have sex and get this over with."
"What happened to being a maiden warrior?" asked Nuanatu. Kera Elysian slapped him hard.
"It's not my idea," she grated angrily. "But Nhur Nun says it would be a good idea. She thinks that she and I and Fey Glynna, and probably even Maw too, are all on the same cycle. She thinks you could knock all of us up, and she might be able to hide the pregnancies. Five of us, four babies. Nine Gods. Pantheon."
"Ah." He looked at Kera Elysian. She was hard and dangerous and not at all sexual, but he couldn't deny that she was beautiful.
"Listen," he said. "Let's go talk to the others and make sure we've got all the details of the plan down. I don't think we should be deflowering anybody unless the whole thing's clear."
"Fine by me," said Kera Elysian, relieved. She leaped out into space and landed in the middle of the enclosure in a crouch; Nuanatu flew down more sedately. The eyes of Nhur Nun and Fey Glynna glimmered in the dark from the doorway of the treehouse.
"Do you really think," Nuanatu asked, "that I can get all of you pregnant at the same time?"
"Oh yes," said Fey Glynna. "I've talked to the generative spirits. They all agree, this is the time. Tonight."
"She would know," said Nhur Nun. "She's a flake – sorry, Fey Glynna, but it's true – but she knows her reproductive medicine."
"And can we hide it from the keepers?" Nuanatu pressed.
"I know a few tricks," Nhur Nun sniffed. "I'm patron of midwifery, you know. There are roots, herbs. We can birth the babies prematurely too. They're Gods, they'll survive."
"I see," said Nuanatu. "So that just means that Maw is the only wild card." The others nodded.
"She suggested I knock her up earlier," Nuanatu mused. "I guess we need to talk with her."
"Don't tell her!" begged Fey Glynna. "If she knows we're pregnant, she'll… stalk us." She shuddered.
"We have to tell her eventually, if we want her to cooperate as part of the Pantheon, and not eat its members," Nuanatu said gently.
"Better now than later," Nhur Nun agreed.
Eventually all four of them approached the fence, even Fey Glynna , who nevertheless wept softly. Nuanatu hoped he might fly over the fence and surprise Maw, but she was awake, peering up at the moon. She pressed her face up to the bars and snuffled with her long snout.
"Hello, it's the stud and the baby factory!" she said. "Good evening."
"I killed a troll once," Kera Elysian said conversationally.
"Bring it," said Maw, her black teeth glistening in the dark. "I'll eat it."
"Shut up and listen," said Nhur Nun. "It's important."
She outlined the plan. Maw listened quietly. Then she turned away from the others.
"Nine makes a pantheon," she said quietly.
"That's right," said Nuanatu. "I know you want to go back to your forest. Will you help?"
"Will I help??" echoed Maw, glaring at Nuanatu. "You just got here, and I'm supposed to help *you*? The question is, can you help *me*! I've been working at getting us out of here for years."
"And a fat lot of good that's done us," Kera Elysian snarled.
"Keep it down," Nhur Nun advised. She watched Maw creep back to the center of her bone nest. "Will you cooperate?"
Maw rested her head on the ground, and her eyes closed. "Great," said Kera Elysian. "She's going back to sleep."
Maw began to convulse, her humped back rising and falling in ragged pulses. "We don't need her anyway!" flared Fey Glynna suddenly. "The generative spirits will give us all multiples. I don't want the help of a baby-eater!"
Maw gagged, then retched. A flow of vomit coursed out of her enormous mouth. The stench was terrible. "Oh, for crying out loud," said Kera Elysian, turning away.
"No, look!" said Nhur Nun, fascinated.
Maw heaved, and vomit and solids began to tumble out of her mouth. Chunks of meat, tires and license plates, bits of rubbish and piles of undigested vegetation spilled out, heaping all around Maw's bed. There was a never-ending torrent of the stuff, half-digested or not-digested but all coated with slippery, stinking mucous. Maw worked at emptying her bottomless belly, vomiting up an old shower curtain and a pair of steel-toed boots and the seat of a toilet. Then, finally, all slippery and wiggling, three children came up. One was a four-year-old boy and the other two were babies. They were wet and messy but giggling and healthy.
Fey Glynna gasped. "My babies!" she sobbed.
"And mine!" said Nhur Nun.
"No, mine now," snarled Maw, her voice even rougher than usual from the punishment her throat had taken. "I've hidden them away for years, and I won't have them taken back now so you can lose them again. I just wanted to show you they're there. C'mon, kids; back in the pool." Maw opened her mouth wide. The two babies crawled in one by one; the older child made a show of being obstinate, but an impatient Maw stuffed him in behind the other two.
"We already have eight Gods," marveled Nhur Nun.
"That's right," said Maw, surveying the mess around her bed. "Well, I've got to get all this packed up again. Good luck with that escape plan, geniuses; sorry I beat you to the punch. I guess you'd better get cracking with your contribution, hey? We're still one God short."
Nuanatu and the three goddesses returned to the treehouse.
"Well," said Kera Elysian, "I guess I'm off the hook." She looked relieved.
"And I'm getting a baby!" crowed Fey Glynna. "To go with the others I lost, who aren't really gone! Oh, this is a happy day. Let's make a baby now!" She plucked at Nuanatu's skins.
"Just a minute, who elected you?" demanded Nhur Nun. She pressed up against Nuanatu.
"I know things," she purred. "Pleasing things."
"Oh, my," said Nuanatu.
"I'll be over there. Somewhere," said Kera Elysian awkwardly, pointing off into the darkness.
But nobody was listening.
