Like a woman bent double and then bent again against the grain of her bones, crooked and knotted into a stance subtly wrong. Her neck twisted too far and hard, her long bony shoulders thrown back, her flesh worm-white and her huge eyes open very wide, utterly emaciated, her breasts empty skin rags, her arms outstretched like twists of wire. Her legs judder insanely fast as she runs until she falls forward but does not hit the ground, continues toward them, just above the earth, her arms and legs dangling ungainly and predatory, as (Gods and Jabber and fuck) wings open on her back and take her weight, giant mosquito wings, nacreous paddles shudder into motion with that sudden vibrato whine, moving so fast they cannot be seen, and the terrible woman seems borne toward them below a patch of unclear air.

What happened next came back to Bellis again and again in memories and dreams.

Gazing hungrily, the mosquito-woman stretches her mouth open, spewing slaver, lips peeled back from toothless gums. She retches, and with a shocking motion a jag snaps from her mouth. A spit-wet proboscis, jutting a foot from her lips.

It extrudes from her in an organic movement, something like vomiting, but unmistakably and unsettlingly sexual. It seems to come from nowhere: her throat and head do not look long enough to contain it. She veers toward them on screaming wings, and from the undergrowth come others.

Memories were blurry. Bellis remained sure of the heat, and of what she had seen, but the immediacy of the images shocked her whenever she thought back. The landing party almost breaks up in sudden terror, and random shots are fired in dangerous, chaotic directions (Doul barking angrily hold fire).

Bellis sees the first of the flitting mosquito-women skirting the cactacae, uninterested in them. They fly instead for the scabmettler guards, alighting on them (the muscular men moving only slightly under the weight of the fatless winged women), stabbing mindlessly at them with their lancelike mouthparts, unable to penetrate the scabs that armor them. Bellis hears the snap of cut leashes as the terrified pigs and sheep scatter in a trail of shit and dust.

There are ten or twelve of the mosquito-women now (so many so quickly), and as the livestock bolt they turn instantly to that easier prey. They rise on those thin wings, their heads hunkered, their hips and limbs loose beneath them, dangling in the air like puppets suspended from their elongated shoulderblades, their dark proboscises still wet and extended; and they descend on the petrified animals. They overtake them easily, descending with their half-random motion to block their paths and intercept them, their arms outstretched, their fingers wide, tugging hold of hair and skin. Bellis watches (she remembered moving backward inexpertly, constantly, stumbling over the feet of those around her but staying upright through force of horror), aghast and hypnotized, as the first of the she-anophelii moves in to feed.