They stood with­in a cloud of flies, star­ing at the stink­ing hulk of meat.

It was the car­rion wreck of a cow, splayed on the gore-stained brown­ing pas­ture. Flies spi­raled from the hol­low of its ribs and bel­ly. Open, bereft of innards.

“I found her like this, my poor queri­da,” said a weath­er­beat­en man in a felt cap. “Please, help me repair things.”

The oth­ers, a pair of cut­ters, looked at him quizzi­cal­ly. “Farmer Jamaro, you know we’ll help,” said an oily-haired man. He held a hand­ker­chief to his mouth. “Pro­vid­ed you pay,” added the third, a pale woman with a long nose. “But we can’t put your cow back togeth­er.”

Mis­er­ably, the farmer shook his head. “No, no. Señori Louis, Clovette. My Firl­ish fails me. I beg you repair my rela­tions with the lemures.”

“The whats?” said Louis.

“The lemures,” said Jamaro. “The shades, dark spir­its. They have sure­ly done this, for they are angry with me and my fam­i­ly.“
Louis raised an eye­brow. “The spir­its killed your cow and abscond­ed with her innards?”

Jamaro bob­bled his head, shrugged. “Si.”

Above the ker­chief, an eye­brow raised. “I sup­pose we can try. Why do you think these, eh… lemures, are angered?”

The farmer grit­ted his brown teeth, shook his head. “I have no way of know­ing. We, my fam­i­ly, have always been in good terms, mak­ing lemuria often, to please them. Very good terms. Nev­er bad.”

Louis ges­tured with his free hand. “Where do they live, the spir­its? Can we speak to them in any way?”

“They live in the sea caves, the sacred grot­toes, but none are allowed to see them.”

At this, Clovette perked up. She tugged on Louis’ sleeve. “Good Messieur Jamaro, allow us a moment to strate­gize.” She took Louis by the arm and pulled him away.

Louis looked at her askance. “Qu’elle?”

Clovette spoke covert­ly. “Louis, we are dumb salauds. Remem­ber, when we killed the ugly crea­tures in the caves?”

“The stu­pid fishgut beasts? Who smelled of liv­er? We killed them for that swag the drunk­ard men­tioned, yes.”

“Yes. In the sea caves.”

Louis’s eyes widened. “Merde, we are stu­pid. We killed the spir­its.”
“And angered the rest,” said Clovette.

“Wait, wait,” Louis screwed up his eyes. “We can still make bank at this, I am cer­tain.”

“Oui. Try.”

“Messieur Jamaro,” said Louis, turn­ing to the farmer, smil­ing. “How do you pro­pose we appease the lemures?”

“Oh” said Jamaro, frown­ing. “Only a great lemuria would suf­fice.”

“A what?”

“Lemuria,” said Jamaro. “An offer­ing of food. A great one, for they seem to be angered deeply. I would do so, but I fear to show my face to them.”

The cut­ters met eyes. “Bring the uglies food. Not hard,” mut­tered Clovette. Louis raised an eye­brow, nod­ded.

“We can do it,” he said. 

The farmer smiled, clasped his hands. “Bien, bien. I will tell the butch­er.”

Clovette frowned. “For what?”

“For the offal, the food.”

The cut­ters met eyes, gri­maced. “Fig­ures,” mut­tered Louis, swat­ting a fly off his cheek. “Maybe we wo–”

“Where do we offer it?” inter­rupt­ed Clovette.

“Deep in the spir­its’ home. In the cav­er­nas, the halls of the dead.”

“What?” star­tled Louis. 

“The deep­est sea grot­toes.”

Louis looked as if to speak. Clovette cut him off. “We will do it at twen­ty-five per­cent more.”

The farmer shrugged, sad­ly. “I must see the lemures appeased, for my fam­i­ly. I must pay.”

At this, Louis huffed. “It will be done, Messieur Jamaro,” Clovette said. She stepped to shake hands over the dead cow. Flies alit upon their wrists. 

The cut­ters set off. Louis looked sour. Clovette spoke light­ly. “Mon ami, it is like we have gen­er­at­ed our own for­tune, with this job. Do not wor­ry your­self over his talk of caves.”

Louis shrugged. “You are right, bien sûr. We have faced the lemure spir­its already. Only have to feed them, now.”
“ ‘Spir­its,’ ” said Clovette. “How tough can they be?”

With con­fi­dent step, they set off across the scrub­by pas­ture, through the buzzing wrecks of a hun­dred gut­ted cows.

A sum­mer’s breeze slipped through the kitchen win­dow, through hang­ing pans and sway­ing sheafs of basil. Heady, seda­tive, laden with sea salt and the sweet­ness of orange groves in full fruit. Neath the win­dow, sprawled on a coun­ter­top, dozed a fat gin­ger cat. By the hearth, in a crooked chair, slept a plump old woman. Nary a hint of black remained midst the grey of her nod­ding head.

“Non­na!”

The kitchen door banged open. A young boy in over­sized boots charged in, waved a flop­py hare over­head.

Non­na grunt­ed, blinked awake, smiled at him. “Digo, cuc­ci­o­lo. You have had luck.”

Digo swiped a lock out of his mud­dy face, pre­sent­ed the kill to his grand­moth­er. “Snared him by the gul­ly. Please, can we have a stew?”

“Yes, but you must let me teach you to butch­er it.”

“Yes!”

Non­na rose with effort, beck­oned Digo to the counter. She lift­ed the cat by the bel­ly, and, as he protest­ed and wrig­gled, moved him to the floor. With lined, thick hands, she brushed off the worn wood­en sur­face, retrieved a pair of shears and a knife hang­ing over­head.

“Give it to me,”  said Non­na. Digo did. “And pull up that stool and watch.”

Stool legs scraped over stones tiles. Digo perched beside her, near­ly taller even while sit­ting.

Non­na took up the hare, felt and bunched the skin about its legs. “You gath­er it up, the skin, and cut here.” She point­ed with the knife and did so, at the ankle joint.

“Both legs. You can tear it, if you are strong. Then down the bel­ly.” She gripped the skin, and, with force, shucked it free of the pink car­cass. Digo watched, nod­ding. The cat cir­cled below, meow­ing aton­al­ly.

“You just snip off the feet and head.” The shears crunched as she did so. The lat­ter she took, shook before the excit­ed cat, and tossed out the open win­dow. A gin­ger flash fol­lowed, purring. Digo grinned.

Non­na chuck­led. “Every­one gets to eat.”

She took up the knife, point­ed at the pink and veiny hare­flesh. “Watch care­ful­ly at this. The gut­ting. Cut here, through the bones.” They split wet­ly under her blade. “And tug the guts out from here.” Non­na picked out the entrails, piled them neat­ly on the coun­ter­top.

“For Gati­to, too?” said Digo, grin­ning, swing­ing his legs.

“No, no,” said Non­na, smil­ing. She took up a lid­ded wood­en bowl, scooped the pale innards inside, and cov­ered them. “We put them out tonight. Very impor­tant.”

“Why?”

Non­na looked to him, ges­tured with the bowl. “For lemuria, Digo. For the spir­its.” She put the bowl down, nod­ded seri­ous­ly.

“Every­one gets to eat.”

Spirits

In the warm, sea­side hills of Alagór’s south­ern coun­try­side, where ancient spir­i­tu­al­ism and Avethan faith com­bine, folk believe in spir­its.

They believe in lemures. Shades of the rest­less dead. Revenants clad in cob­bled flesh and coiled organs. * They come at night from their chthon­ic sea-cave haunts to demand sus­ta­nence at the doors they knew in life. ** They mill and they moan, bang­ing on walls, low­ing wet­ly for suc­cor. If they find what they want, a sim­ple offer­ing of spare offal, they will depart. If they are denied, they’ll take their meal anoth­er way: Vio­lent­ly, from the bel­lies of self­ish folk and their live­stock.

To pla­cate the lemures, vil­lage folk prac­tice a mod­est rit­u­al offer­ing: They leave a por­tion of spare entrails, saved from the week’s meat, in a bowl on the doorstep on sab­bath-night. By morn­ing, it will be gone; tak­en by the lemures. This offer­ing is known as lemuria. 

The coun­try­folk of the balmy South have prac­ticed lemuria since years immemo­r­i­al. They hold it among the cen­tral ten­ants of their faith. To feed the depart­ed is less a bur­den, less an action tak­en under threat, than it is an act of char­i­ty. To them, the spir­its are pitiable things; wretch­es who suf­fer in a cursed after­life and know no bet­ter than to beg and to hurt. To offer them a spare chick­en liv­er once a week is the small­est, the only pos­si­ble gift. Char­i­ty to humankind is among the req­ui­site dic­tates of Aveth, and, to those who believe, lemures are still human. 

The South­ern­er’s Lemuria is not unlike the tra­di­tions of the super­sti­tious Awnish of the far North, who leave gifts in respect to local älves. Though, unlike älves, who may pro­vide good for­tune in the form of sur­rep­ti­tious favors, offer­ings to lemures offer no ben­e­fit sans free­dom from harass­ment and pre­da­tion. Also, unlike Lemuria, the tra­di­tions of Awn are viewed by out­siders as harm­less idio­syn­crasies, bereft of spir­i­tu­al mean­ing. † Offer­ings to the lemures, how­ev­er, are viewed rather dif­fer­ent­ly by the wider Coast.

Parasites

To vis­i­tors from oth­er lands, lemuria seems a bizarre prac­tice indeed. The coun­try­folk’s char­i­ty to mis­er­able spir­its looks, to the wider Coast, like the will­ful feed­ing of bonafide mon­sters.

To them, lemures look appear as depart­ed ances­tors, but par­a­sitic, sham­bling organ­isms that both con­sume and con­struct their bod­ies from entrails and assort­ed car­rion. †† The South­ern­ers’ ancient, char­i­ta­ble tra­di­tion occurs as a per­vert­ed solu­tion to the prob­lem of a mil­len­nia-long mon­ster infes­ta­tion. A solu­tion not for human­i­ty’s favor, but for the ben­e­fit and nour­ish­ment of lemures.

As schol­ars define them, lemures are a sort of par­a­sitic scav­enger. Vague, head­less skele­tons of car­ti­lage and weak mus­cle which depend on sur­ro­gate tis­sues to func­tion. Dri­ven by rude instinct, lemures cloak their weak frames in found tis­sue; cob­ble togeth­er a rude, per­son­al anato­my. They come to resem­ble motile piles of peri­toneal con­tents, squelch­ing and lurch­ing and drag­ging them­selves about with peri­staltic arms of gut.

By what phys­i­o­log­i­cal pow­er lemures fuse offal into a func­tion­ing, gross whole, none can say. What can be said is that it does­n’t work for very long, as lemures hunt con­stant­ly to replace their decay­ing body of organs. Only a lemure’s soft, head­less inner skele­ton remains and grows. That, and its small mouth-claws, sit­u­at­ed at the ends of bor­rowed intesti­nal ten­ta­cles, which are suit­ed for han­dling and har­vest­ing flesh. To delay their decay, lemures hide from day­light, most often in the depths of sea caves, where the brine soothes them, or in the dark of aban­doned struc­tures.

Much to the dis­may of the coun­try­folk who fed them, lemures have become a pop­u­lar tar­get for errant cut­ters in recent years. The sea caves where the squelchy spir­its make their hives, hav­ing been revered and undis­turbed for mil­len­nia, are quite full of trea­sure from both mod­ern days and ages past. The lemures, who often drag bod­ies back home in order to break down their organs, have inad­ver­tent­ly col­lect­ed a wealth of pock­et­ed gold. Smug­glers and pirates, long ago wise to the shades’ spir­i­tu­al fal­si­ty, have also made caches there for cen­turies by lur­ing the mon­sters out with piles of cow intes­tine, then deposit­ing their swag behind for the beasts to inad­ver­tent­ly guard. For the temp­ta­tion of gold, cut­ters would cer­tain­ly dri­ve lemures to extinc­tion.

In response to sud­den pre­da­tion after com­fort­able ages of hand-feed­ing, the lemures of the placid Alagóran coun­try­side have begun to adapt their behav­ior. In some vil­lages, rather than qui­et­ly accept lemuria every week, the mon­sters are instead hunt­ing. Slay­ing and gob­bling vil­lagers and beasts alike, and, on the nour­ish­ment and strength of their entrails, grow­ing ter­ri­fy­ing­ly large.

Hulk­ing lemures trailed by cov­eys of small­er kin are rumored to wan­der the hills and olive groves even in day­light, mil­i­tant and hun­gry. Cut­ter gangs, town mili­tias, and mon­sters slay­ers face them with equal sure­ty, though their loss­es are high­er than ever before. Despite loss­es, few long for peace with the lemures.

Few, save the coun­try­folk and their mod­est char­i­ty.

Note

This post comes with spe­cial thanks to Semi­urge.