Page 57 of Odder Still
Alarm vibrates through my parasite. It tightens around my lungs. I choke, planting my feet to keep from falling, and reach with my mind for the panicking creature.Easy there, easy.The gentle coo is hard to push out, saturated by my parasite’s emotions and dragged down by the undercurrent of my own shock and horror, but together we cling to each other, slowly winding back into something resembling stability.
‘Something wrong!’it cries, repeating my words over and over, each time more frantically than the last.
No, unfortunately, I think you’re right. There’s something very, very amiss with that ignit, something that I’ve never seen before. Something even the creator of ignits has no knowledge of, despite being the only one who truly knows how they work.But we can’t fall apart now. Tavish needs us.
At Tavish’s outburst, the sentries have stood, their guns at the ready. Behind them, Glenrigg’s inhabitants glance our way, some like we’re a curiosity, others a warning. They usher their children down streets, toward the center of town, but the wilted way it’s done seems not out of fear—at least not fear of us.
My parasite unfurls at the thought of protecting Tavish, and I feel it bury its panic until what’s left brushes against my own emotions without taking control. We both focus on the sentries.
One shines faintly, teeth pointed and eyes reflective orbs in the low light, his body delicate in a way that off-puts his clear marks of a predator. A pixie, I assume. He comes barely to the waist of his taller finfolk companion, her hulking body forming a menacing shadow. Dusky teal tinges her skin, and her dark hair flares like each strand is made from a silky version of the fins along her limbs and the webbed flippers that curl over her otherwise humanlike feet.
She checks her rifle. “We’re shipping these ones back, aye? There’s only two of them.”
“Better safe than sorry.” The pixie balances his weapon against his shoulder. “One’s definitely a selkie. And the other…” His eyes narrow as he says it, flicking back toward me. His brow tightens. “What the—”
Holding Tavish by his arm, I lift my free hand as nonthreateningly as I can. As nonthreateningly as any ignit-immune scientific marvel in frayed fishnets can possibly be. “Please, don’t shoot.”
The pixie’s flash of confusion turns to shocked terror. His rifle lifts in a motion too definite, too automatic. He shoots.
All the energy I’ve absorbed from the ignit roars through me as I grab Tavish, covering him with my lamentably thinner body. The impact of the bullet feels like fire and fury. But just as soon as it comes, the pain dissipates, the metal pushed from flesh, replaced by new black stripes in our back—my parasite’s black stripes in mine.
A growl leaves us—or me—or us. Definitely us, emotions compiled, anger and affection so unanimous I can’t separate mine from its. We snarl, “That was exactly what I said not to do!”
The finfolk responds by shooting as well. We take this bullet as we did the last one, but I feel our energy diminish. And with this second shot, I feel, too, the way my parasite leaches through the muscles where the metal hits, spreading and sinking deeper, crisscrossing itself along what little untouched skin remains on my back. I can’t take another hit. And I can’t give up another inch.
But my parasite keeps impelling, tearing, penetrating. I gag as it lurches up my neck, digging into the soft tissue beneath my jawline and splintering along the inside of my skull. My vision wavers, pops, and slides. The colors flicker, turning to a silvered veil. Through one eye, I see pieces of a person, or perhaps a person in pieces, the same broken shards my parasite used to mimic me in my dream.
That will not be me.I scream—me, and me alone.
My parasite flinches so hard it makes our body twitch. I feel its flesh resting in every place it dug, now filling down my back and netting parts of my cheek, just above the bone, but its presence curls into a whimpering heap beside mine, bringing all of its emotions with it.
The change feels like having the life zapped out of me. It takes all that I am to focus through the sudden exhaustion and pull Tavish behind a boulder. He flops to the ground with an intoxicated giggle. I join him, trying to collect the last slivers of my energy. Even with my parasite pulled in on itself, the ignit’s waves still turn into power beneath my skin. It helps.
Across the clearing, the pixie and the finfolk argue.
Tavish grabs my face in both hands. His eyes stare straight through me, but some deeper, fuller part of him stares into me instead, like he’s examining the pieces of me that aren’t visible from the outside. “I think I’d like to love you,” he whispers. “I think that very, very much.”
Through my confusion and fatigue come little, heart-aching bursts of hope. It’s all I can do just to look at him, this beautiful, precious man. I’m not entirely sure what he’s confessed, or whether he even knows himself, but whatever it is, I want it.
And it galvanizes me in a way no ignit energy could match, as though my heart is falling over itself to agree:Me, too, I feel the same. Impossibly and irrationally, I feel the same.
“I think I’d like that, too.” I squeeze Tavish’s fingers in mine. “Just not right this minute.”
Letting him go, I launch over the rock, sprinting and leaping the line of cylinders that project the ignit energy in the same motion. The sentries both take an instant too long to aim for me. I tackle the pixie, knocking his much smaller body down with a swipe of my foot against his calves and an elbow to his face. Blood trickles from his nose. I twist his rifle from his grip. With a twirl, I aim it toward his finfolk companion.
She slowly lowers her weapon.
There’s the tiniest splash, then a grunt, and the click of a pistol being cocked. My whole body goes numb. In those six seconds of distraction—those six seconds where I turned this pixie and finfolk’s world upside down—the same has happened around me.
An older finfolk stands with us on the rocky ledge, water still draining from the bundle of ropes that fall over her flat chest. Her stringy, sea-green shorts stick to her legs, an ornamental rope holding them up. The finlike locks on her head flare and twist like a thousand coiling snakes, completely devoid of color. She points her readied pistol into the clearing, where a swaying Tavish hovers over the machine. The ignit’s yellow glow reflects oddly off his disconnected eyes, blending the whites with his grey irises, and he smiles in a detached way, completely unaware of the bullet prepped for his head.
My parasite coils back through me. It presses against my edges, doubling my panic with the weight of its own.
“Don’t.” I drop my stolen rifle. It clatters on the stone; the chaotic, ruthless rattle mimicking the feeling in my chest. Anguish spills from me, coming from places so dark I’d forgotten they existed, soft as a rain of little, pink petals and fetid as my mother’s stale corpse. “Please, don’t shoot him. We’re here only for sanctuary and to speak to one of your scientists. We don’t want to hurt anyone.” I swallow, glancing at the pixie, who has his nose pinched in both hands, eyes watering. My heart pounds. “Please.”
The finfolk gives me one sidelong peer out the corner of her eye, not enough to waver her aim. “He’s a selkie.” Her voice is guttural and dusky. It reminds me of the things that lurk at the bottoms of deep lakes.
“He can’t change that.” My protest comes like a plea, gracious but for the wail right down its middle.
