Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 72
reminded that Ventus was not the natural environment it
appeared to be.
They rounded another arc of escarpment, and there it
was, right where the Desert Voice had said it would be: a
manse. Jordan hadn’t spotted the long rooftop yet, obscured as
it was by trees. Calandria smiled at the prospect of warmth and
comfort the manse promised.
Jordan was ignoring the view. In fact, he seemed to be
sniffing at something. She raised an eyebrow, and cleared her
throat. "What are you doing?"
"Death," he said. "Something’s dead. Can’t you smell
it?"
Damn if he wasn’t right. She should have been more
alert. Jordan had walked several steps off the deerpath, and
now gingerly parted a spray of branches. "Lady May, look at
this."
She looked over his shoulder. In a dark, branch-shaded
hollow of loam and pine needles lay a giant bloated object. It
looked like nothing so much as a big bag of mangy fur. At the
top was a kind of flower of flesh, which, she realized uneasily,
had teeth in it. As if...
"What is that?"
"Looks like it used to be a bear," whispered Jordan. Its
mouth had folded back to become a kind of red-lipped flower
atop the bag of flesh, and its eyes had receded into the skin.
She looked in vain for signs of its four limbs; save for the
vestigial head, it was little more than a sack of fur now.
A sack in which something was moving.
She stepped back. For once, Mason seemed unfazed. In
fact, he looked back, caught her obvious distress, and grinned.
"A morph’s been here, maybe two, three days ago," said
Jordan. "It found this bear, and it’s changed it. I don’t know