Page 129 of The Pansy Paradox
He raises the Screamer caught between his palms. “We can start by bringing Gwennie a peace offering.”
A hinged Plexiglas container sits in the center of my kitchen table. Inside that, the Screamer hunkers down. It remains the size and shape of a crow, but its feathers, for lack of a better word, catch the light and fracture it into a prism of color.
In the office, Henry is sound asleep on the sofa. This worries me. If he’s been drinking tea and reapplying my mother’s salve, he should be alert by now, if not fully recovered. The house certainly reeks as if he has. I want to speak to him, find out for sure, but then Mort’s warning echoes in the back of my mind. And it’s one the Sight insists absolutely will come true with a single misstep.
Out of some sort of strange perversity, Mortimer has left me alone with Gwyneth. He claimed there was nothing to eat in my house, at least nothing that would feed four people. He’s right, of course. We’ve already inhaled the last of the food from The King’s Larder. I suspect he only wanted to escape further confinement with Gwyneth.
Earlier, she drew a couple of vials of blood, a routine sort of thing, she said, after the encounter Henry and I had. The bandage at the crook of my elbow itches. I expected another jab, but the needle slipped in without a sting. It almost felt like an apology.
“How long do they normally last?” I ask her now. The Screamer is pacing like a zoo animal trapped behind bars.
“It depends. Some, mere minutes. Others go on for days.” She adjusts a sensor that’s connected to one side of the container. “Once, one survived for two whole weeks, exactly, to the second it was caught.”
“Do you ever feel sorry for them?” Because I do, I want to say. I feel sorry for this one trapped and on display in my kitchen.
“I … it’s funny. I do.”
I nod. “Do you ever grow attached?”
“Agent Little.” Her voice is stern.
I glance up.
“They aren’t real,” she says.
“Aren’t they?” Despite its ephemeral nature, something about this lone Screamer feels very real to me, in a way that knots something in my chest, something I can’t quite name. A deep sorrow, perhaps, or a loss. I place my fingertips against the Plexiglas. The creature hobbles over and rubs its face against the spot as if it can feel me. It’s a very cat-like gesture, and while the thing isn’t purring, I imagine that it could.
“It seems very attracted to you,” Gwyneth observes.
They always have been. I sigh. “Not enough to catch.”
“Mortimer is?—”
“An anomaly,” I suggest.
“I was going to say oddity.”
My laugh is soft, since I do not wish to disturb the Screamer. It’s a strange and alien impulse, but one I can’t deny. “It’s dying.”
“They don’t really die.”
“Don’t they?”
She holds up her hands. “They simply vanish.”
“Isn’t that like death?”
She doesn’t answer. A moment later, a burst of light fills the container, followed by a puff of blue smoke, and then that, too, dissipates.
“You see?” Gwyneth shrugs and then pushes a few buttons on the sensor before detaching it. “Simply gone.”
I doubt anything about this is simple. She reaches over and loosens a hinge. The Plexiglas container folds in on itself, and she tucks it away in her hard-sided, silver briefcase.
“I’m going to go check on Henry,” she says.
I give what I hope is both a noncommittal and uninterested nod. “I’m going to make some tea if you would like some later.”
Gwyneth returns my nod and then leaves the kitchen without another word, her heels punctuating each step until the carpet in the office swallows the sound. I remain seated, contemplating the space that so recently held all my fears and all my pity.
