There’s a point in the healing of a tattoo where it starts to get flaky. The weird art that you put on your skin just days earlier falls off in colourful, dead flecks. For Cygnus, his skin itched like hell. This tattoo was meant to represent words of great power but right now that power was the feeling of having rolled around in nettles. He lay in bed, lightly running his talons over the tattoo, trying to relieve that feeling without resorting to fully ripping his arm off. But those flakes are tempting. All it takes is one pick of a bit of dead skin too much and…
Cygnus yelped. He grasped his arm and writhed pathetically on the bed. That was not dead skin that he had picked at. When the pain subsided and he’d plucked up the nerve, he looked down at the scene of the crime. He’d somehow managed to pick just hard enough that he’d interrupted the pattern of the ink. If this had been a regular tattoo, this might have been fine but this had been intricately replicated from a book he stole from the wyrd bookseller in town. Cygnus had a lot of respect for said bookseller and their potentially magic books but not £2000 worth of respect. Fuck, he could vividly picture his tattooist’s disappointed face as he dragged himself back in there. There is nothing quite so crushing as the feeling of being so close to having something amazing and having it wrecked by your own lack of impulse control. There’s also nothing worse than someone judging you for your poor decisions when you were very clear that you had made the right decision to begin with.
Cygnus could only wallow in healing self-pity for so long. There was no way out of this other than going to find the artist. If the metro was still running and no one tried to bother him along the way, he reckoned he could get to her before the studio closed. Cygnus stood up, smoothed his fur to one side, splashed some blood on his face and whacked some cocoa butter on the tattoo. He left the flat, hoping the ink wouldn’t settle before he figured out how to fix this shit.
– – – – – – – – – –
Cygnus kept to the shadows. The light from the shops seared his retinas, which were becoming more cat-like than human. He nicked a pair of sunglasses from outside a gift shop and pulled his hoodie over his head to hide his ears. An ominous hunger roiled in his belly as he dodged people making their way home. As he raced down the metro stairs, the moon was at its highest point.
The platform was empty, lights flickering as he stepped under them, causing his fur to stand on end. Shit, Delia’s close. As the train rumbled into the station, he jumped into the tracks and laid down next to the third rail to mask his electrical aura. As the train slowed over him, he anchored himself to the bottom. Soon, he was whizzing down tunnels and counting the stops until he reached Argyle Place.
Cygnus let go of the train five hundred feet before the metro stop to avoid being seen. His body slid along the tracks picking up dirt and oil as he rolled to a halt. The tunnel was cold, yet his tattoo blazed. Soon, it would be too late. Cygnus stood, straightening his matted fur with bloodied claws. Took in a deep breath only to have his shades smacked off his face with an electrified whip. There in the darkness was the bright blue silhouette of an angel. Delia, I can explain!
– – – – – – – – – –
Give up, little demon, she replied, gliding through the air without visible motion, only her hand moving, almost teasing, to swish the whip. You’ve crossed the line this time, and I will see you serve penance. She sounded drunk with anticipation as she advanced toward him, the end of her lash catching the third rail and sending sparks high into the air. The closer she came the tattoo grew even hotter in her presence, pouring out heat, its light bleaching away the darkness in the tunnel.
Cygnus backed away, he could see she wasn’t going to listen to reason. As Delia raised her whip, his savage lips parted in a grin and he dove to the side—as the next train rushed at her from behind. She half-turned in surprise, but it was too late. There came a meaty smack as the blue figure was caught by the engine and was carried out of sight without a cry. The carriages barrelled past where he lay, the mortals being carried to who cares where.
He found his sunglasses. They were ruined, and he threw the bits back into the dirt between the rails. Smoothing his fur once more, he removed the dirt and oil as best he could, and made his way along the tunnel. There were still mortals on the platform, but Cygnus didn’t have time to wait—the Angel Dalia wouldn’t be stopped by a train, but it would slow her down. Whispering calming words to diminish the gleaming tattoo, he slid unseen from shadow to shadow until he reached a door marked ‘Authorised Personnel Only’, and tapped on it with his blood-stained claws. Who is it? someone called from within.
– – – – – – – – – –
He found his sunglasses. They were ruined, and he threw the bits back into the dirt between the rails. Smoothing his fur once more, he removed the dirt and oil as best he could, and made his way along the tunnel. There were still mortals on the platform, but Cygnus didn’t have time to wait—the Angel Dalia wouldn’t be stopped by a train, but it would slow her down. Whispering calming words to diminish the gleaming tattoo, he slid unseen from shadow to shadow until he reached a door marked ‘Authorised Personnel Only’, and tapped on it with his blood-stained claws. Who is it? someone called from within.
–
It’s Cygnus, he growled.
Sig-what? – he thought he heard snickering.
Cygnus. Open the fuck up. I haven’t got time for this.
There was a grunt of resignation, and the scrape of metal over stone, and then another scrape right in front of him – a small hatch opened in the door to reveal a pair of eyes glaring back at his. Bloody hell, are you always this lupine? No, don’t answer that. What’s the password, plushie?
Cygnus gave it with a huff and a snarl. I’mAGoodBoyGiveMeATreat. More puerile laughter accompanied the sound of the door itself sliding open, and he padded in. Here at least he was safe. He turned to address the doorguard. “Dalia ran into something large, fast and iron. She won’t be -” – and there he stopped, speechless. Looming impossibly behind the guard, bright as dawn and twice as cheerful, was the Angel Dalia herself.
– – – – – – – – – –
I do declare! I must have forgotten my manners, Angel Dalia sauntered over to the guard. She placed her hands on his shoulders and whispered into his ear. The guard smiled like a cat with curdled milk and moved away from Cygnus, walking back down the long corridor, the sound of his steps growing ever smaller in the distance.
Cygnus stared at Dalia. Are you okay? Something wrong?
Dalia blinked rapidly, flouncing her hair and crumpling it in her hands. I’m fine, she sighed. Just trying to get you out of trouble. Again.
Cygnus stood still for a moment. Dalia was bewitched. The work of the Devil, surely. A southern drawl? The guard simply marching down the hall? Madness. My dear, he began, won’t you come see me for a moment? I have something that might interest you. He knew he could outwit the Devil with a simple test.
Dalia nodded with a bob of her head and walked closer. He could smell a strange and foul odour coming from her body. Oddly, it was also a fowl odour, like the chickens from back home that he used to feed with his mother. The fondest memory he conjured then, feeding the chickens, the Gaussian blur of his beloved mother scratching lovingly behind his ears, rapping him on the head with her arcane walking stick when he poured too much feed.
Cygnus blinked and shook his head, knocking the memory away.
He pulled Dalia to his side and stared into her eyes. Can you tell me, what was the name of Ricardo Montalbán’s sidekick on Fantasy Island? I’m having a ghastly time recalling the old chap’s name. Help an old ruffian out with some lore?
Dalia hissed and screamed, her golden, shining hair and skin turning tar-black and bleak.
– – – – – – – – – –
As Dalia writhed in agony, the image of Fantasy Island began to instantiate in her brainspace, a blurry jpeg.
Slowly it became less unreal, though it remained indistinct, as if the waves crashing around her were pixellated sloshy slop from the GANs of cyberspace. She knew with dreamer’s certainty that she was standing on a beach and a weird little man was hurtling towards her in a golf cart.
De plane! De plane! said the man as he sped towards her in all dimensions. All reality seemed to flit through her senses as sand rushes through open fingers. The beach was selectively blurred like the approaching dad near the end of the movie Contact and the dad-ish pixel art renditions in the trailers for Shower With Your Dad Simulator 2015. Da-da. Dada. Dalia reached out to touch the man, whose name was tattooed on her perfect soul.
– – – – – – – – – –
Time in the space between them seemed to move like treacle, and Dalia wondered whether that was down to anticipation or the shifting dimensions. Either way, the gasp she made when her fingers didn’t connect with anything was part shock, and part necessary gulp of air.
The man she had seen approaching dissolved into light, into mist, into…breath. She stood, drawing a deep lung full of her past into her chest. She tried to imagine the light wrapping around her heart – healing, and shielding, and free.
The world around her seemed to solidify, and she found herself alone, her skin glowing slightly pearlescent in the terracotta gloaming. She paused for a moment, testing how she felt, with the fragments of her past literally wrapped around her heart.
– – – – – – – – – –
There was the time she told her sixth grade crush she wanted to be a singer. He just laughed at her and she learned to keep her dreams to herself. Then when her second girlfriend brought her to an UMI concert and told her she can see her onstage one day. She learned some people are safer than others. Every piece collectively creating a rebus of her life, her past world. A meaning she can finally discern after a lifetime of longing.
True dark has arrived and the stars & planets have come to greet her. Her skin remains bright but my how the celestial guests outshine her. Still, her focus remained on her heart & this cascade of moments, the only things real to her now. She thought, “All I ever want was to make sense, but what could that possibly mean when I have no one now?”
Carefully prying each vessel from her heart, she set one aside on the ground. Aloud she whispered, “I may have been scorned, but just as much I have been well-loved. And I got to love in return. I’ve got to try.” With her bare hands she makes a divot at her feet, plants each memory about a meter between each other. They all start to glow, emitting sparks matching the luminescence of her skin. She starts to hum the first song she wrote to that girlfriend, Tara, to celebrate their third anniversary. Remembering the light shining from her lover’s eyes, the soft curl of her lips, how she grasped her own heart and couldn’t help but sigh.
– – – – – – – – – –
The puff of breath rose upward, unseen to the eye, but with determination. She has heard it said that the clouds that rain upon us are born from the wearied thoughts of the earthbound. And the direction of this sigh supported that idea. It would come back eventually, one way or the other. She lifted her hand to the air and felt moisture.
That was fast, she thought.
In a matter of moments yesterday’s fears dripped from the sky and as she turned back to the recently covered divots she was surprised to see that the memories were already beginning to grow.
The first two were strong, bright, bold, solid stalks, upright and clearly built to reach high places. She knew they would be. Equally the third and fourth, as expected, were not strong. They grew, yes, but were spindly creeping vines, weakly stretching across the earth in scratching and angular juts, as if possessed. The intital sparks of luminosity had faded from the vines, and so had the colour in the left side of her hair and her index finger. That was not good. These memories reminded her of the way zombies move when the torso has been detached from the legs, and that was a fact. She had
hoped against hope that they would be better than that. But given how pallid and weak they looked it was clear there was going to be more work to do.
Holding her head in her mud-caked hands she sighs another sigh and this time there is a low rumble from the clouds above, until now she hadn’t imagined she was connected in this way but before she can draw the breath back in there is a flash of lightning and a skitter of heavy rain, the splash before the storm. When there is any thunder at all, air pressure is high and she can feel it building now inside her head, like the idling of an engine about to engage for movement. Opening her mouth she
let out a shriek so bone curdling it would take flesh off of bone in the wrong environment. At that exact moment the longest and strongest of the memories she had planted in the divots only a quarter of an hour before bloomed with a flower as black as obsidian. Translucent, though solid, physically there through the corner of your eye, though eerily, not there at all when you looked directly at it.
The scream did not stop, it did not stop. Her mouth opened wider.
– – – – – – – – – –
A memory has form and structure but no substance; a scream likewise. The analogy is close enough. As the memory flowered around her, pressing in, the scream took on solidity. It shifted as the sound rose and fell, transforming in size, shape and consistency. The memory an ebon bloom, wavering in the rising winds. The scream coalesced into a great bumblebee, wings shimmering, vibrating to hold in place as colours rippled across the fur of it’s body.
She fell to her knees, splashing into the mud. The screamble-bee had taken all her energy from her. It buzzed over head, trying to push against the wind, seeking out the memory flower. She lowered her head, trying to recall which memory it was. Would it give life-enriching mnemo-nectar, rich story-pollen? Or might it snap shut, the dark trap mouth of something from the hidden depths of her past, one that stained her soul.
In her peripheral vision the psychedelically coloured scream-bee nuzzled hungrily at the black petalled flower that had grown from the memory. Almost too-exhausted to move she turned her head, looking directly at it. Insect-and-blossom vanished as the memory replayed itself. The day that all this started, on the Crown Hill, when her friend betrayed her, the government fell and the memory and magic became entwined.
– – – – – – – – – –
Her friend had sent a message that morning: Meet me at noon by the rosebush. Bring the book. It’s important. No other explanation. They never took the book from its hiding place out into public. It was too dangerous. But she couldn’t refuse this request, not after how long she’d been waiting for some contact, any contact. And she had to admit she was intrigued and even a little excited. Were they going to read poems in public? Risk art residue leaking into the atmosphere? Was this the secret plan her friend had alluded to months before?
She had arrived at Crown Hill a quarter before the hour, unfolded a thin blanket beneath the roses and reclined with her leather bag for a pillow. Watching the memory replay shimmer before her eyes now, she saw what she hadn’t seen then. Emptiness. Silence. No other people. Strange for the busiest park in the city on a gorgeous afternoon. How had she not realized it was a trap? She felt nauseous but continued to watch. The minutes excruciatingly slow. Her naive past self sky-gazing, hopeful, trusting. Oblivious to what was about to happen. Oblivious to the eerie stillness. Oblivious to the dark blur on the horizon.
Never again, she thought. I will never trust again. She watched as the dark blur grew bigger and closer and the murder of crows came into focus. She watched as the crows swooped down and surrounded her on the thin blanket, their caws reverberating, their wings threatening shadows. She saw herself clutching her bag and pulling and screaming in what looked like a cartoon game of tug o’war. She shut her eyes. She couldn’t turn off the memory but she didn’t have to keep looking. She knew what happened next. The crows of course had won, had captured the precious book of poems and all the power and magic held within those pages. Those pages she had helped to guard for years, kept safe for years, gone in the blink of a crow’s beak. She had denied memory-knowledge of the texts, lied convincingly and they had believed her. She’d lied so well she almost believed it herself. But poems have a way of living inside you, threading through sleep and dreams and waking hours. They’d been scratching beneath her eyelids these past weeks, fragments on her tongue, beneath her nails, in the hairs left on her pillow. The poems were determined to come back. Why now? she wondered. But she knew. Her pulse quickened even as she tried to blot out the image of her former friend.
– – – – – – – – – –
She remembered him in the time before the Darkness. How proudly he had stood in the Hall of Memory and sworn his loyalty to the kingdom. How eagerly they had welcomed him, trusted him with their stories and how quickly and easily he had betrayed them.
She remembered how she had taken him to the Well of Memory. How she had let him drink from the Bucket of Belonging. How she had even shared her ladle with him. What had once been an innocent even pleasant memory now felt stained with the knowledge of his betrayal.
He had brought the sun god to their hiding place, the one near the Tree of Longing. And it was from there the sun god had stolen their light. And then the bird army had come. The crows had taken not only their light but their joy. It was only through the collective poems that had begun to poke through her skin like shards of hope that they might begin to recover what was lost. The poems had returned to her on the eve of his betrayal as if the words were rising up against his act of selfishness. As if the metaphors conjured in the ceremony of fealty could restore what he had severed The words that came to her first told her how to begin.
– – – – – – – – – –
The words held their shape for a moment. But soon they began to swell and crack, melting into a cocoon. Within the membrane something grew and pulsed. Words stretched until they no longer had meaning.
The cocoon pulled taut, revealing the form within. Unpracticed limbs jabbed forth and ripped the membrane. Liquid grief came pouring out. More limbs emerged, insectoid, grasping. Pinkish skin unfolded to reveal an eye, black and darting. When the creature looked upon its creator, it opened a mouth between its legs and cried.
She made no sound, disgusted with the thing that her poetry had birthed. It flailed on its back, screaming through the toothless hole of its mouth. Her first impulse was to crush it, grind it into the floor with her heel. But the thought of killing it disgusted her more than the thing itself.
– – – – – – – – – –
She turned her head away. The creature squelched at her, piteously. Well, if it was her creation, and she couldn’t bear to destroy it, she would have to become its caretaker. It was the responsible thing to do: look after it until it was grown enough to gain a life beyond its creator. If she should be so lucky.
It was still nascent; perhaps it could be shaped, developed, moulded into something more palatable. But the more she looked at it, the more she could see the echoes of the poetry it had come from. The more of herself she could see in it.
The revulsion did not disappear, but she was already growing accustomed to the wretched little thing. There was something endearing about it, if she squinted her eyes and looked at it sidelong – its skin pulsed as it wriggled on its back, trying to right itself. She took the creature into her hands. It was warm and its skin was thick and doughy, only a little bit slimy. It gurgled – no, it purred!
– – – – – – – – – –
Not being able to stomach the sight of the creature any longer however, she placed it into a glass tank which lay at the side of her workbench. The heavy lid was already prepared with holes ready to house any living thing that may need further study. Conveniently, the tank had only recently been emptied of the odd corvid that she had found the week before.
_________ then went over to the window and took out a standing mirror. She held it at the perfect angle to reflect the moon. Full and heavy, the satellite seemed to groan with its own weight in the sky as __________ whispered words only a handful of people still understood.
It didn’t take long before the moon began to quiver, then slowly, slowly, without a sound, it became smaller and smaller until it almost disappeared. __________ reached out her hand through the open window and the still black night, and plucked the moon from where it hung. Without ceremony, she placed it on her tongue, closed her eyes and smiled. She could see everything.
– – – – – – – – – –
As she worked the moon over in her mouth, pressing it up against the ridges of her palate and counting the clicking against her teeth, the space behind her eyelids became a spectrum. Like daylight refracted through a prism, the darkness dispersed into multitudes. It sped away from her, rolling, swelling. The moon found the open stretch of gum at the back of her jaw where a wisdom tooth had once anchored. She bit down gently on the cosmic marble and opened her eyes.
The new shades of night broadened at the edge of things, warping at the spaces between the material. The deepest shadows behind the leaves outside her window bulged.
It’s alive. Everything is alive.
Her chest swelled as she looked out across dark, space, time. In the periphery to her left, something was moving. A thickening of shadow and light. The past, playing itself out in muted hues. And in the periphery to her right…
To her right, the future. Shapes twisted in the dark, rippling like sand on a dune. The harder she tried to focus on what Time was conjuring, the faster it moved and changed. She wasn’t aware of her decision to move towards it, her hand stretching out as it had moments before to take the moon from the sky. She reached, and just as her fingertips met the edge of the known she realised with a jolt that she should have been concentrating on what was behind her.
– – – – – – – – – –
An ocean of obsidian stretched behind her, meeting her here on the shores of Time, but fading out of sight as it reached toward the starless horizon. The water bore no reflections, only presenting an inky abyss: It was impossible to tell where the sea ended and sky began. Beneath her, the tide’s gentle ebb and flow tugged at her feet, but some impossible distance in front of her lurked the danger: A whirlpool was coalescing, centered around a single point, swirling like a black hole, and slowly, hungrily growing.
Inaction would mean inexistence. Though she had arrived here against all odds, for but a fleeting moment in the ineffable chaos, the churning darkness ahead threatened to collapse this realm upon itself at any moment. She knew what she must do. With her right hand open, she reached once more to the Future, and let it wash over and into her: So bright, yet so dark, but bursting at the seams with possibility. Her left hand clutched tight to the Moon, as if releasing it would be like waking from a dream, slowly forgetting the details until there was nothing. As she began to wade through the black sea towards the vortex, her only path forward was clear: Embrace the chaos and enter the maelstrom.
With a deep breath, she jumped into the swirling chasm of darkness. Everything and everywhere was converging around her, Space and Time forming an endless mobius knot of all creation. It took everything she had to keep her sense of Self intact, to avoid assimilation with the singularity. With the Future inside her and the Moon in her hands, a geyser of power welled within her, enough power to overcome the pull of the void. She closed her eyes and envisioned her destination, willing it into existence, anchoring herself to that place at that time, and when she opened her eyes, the chaos was gone and she was there.
– – – – – – – – – –
Eyes blinking in the sunlight, she looked out and saw the others looking at her. She moved quickly and took her place at the edge of the stone circle. You took your time, the voice next to her was sarcastic, and she tensed, knowing if she had had more control she would arrived a few minutes earlier.
Irritated, she muttered I’m here, that’s what counts, and looked around the circle, realising that she was not the last. She heard the pop, then felt the breeze caused by the displacement of air and turned to see someone had materialised and was moving towards their place in the circle. Just one more to arrive, she thought, and everyone will be here. One per universe was the rule, and nothing could be done unless all were present.
Another pop, and a bedraggled figure appeared, falling to the floor exhausted. They unsteadily picked themselves up and filled the final position. She felt the others in her mind, their thoughts becoming one and their knowledge shared. Something was wrong: physics had changed. The unthinkable had happened, matter was collapsing, and it was a miracle that they managed to make it here before their chosen singularity dispersed. A moment passed, and once again, she back was in her own head. Shocked at the information she had gained, she headed towards the collapsed figure.
– – – – – – – – – –
Her smooth-soled court shoes slipped and slithered on the grimy cobbles, and she wished she had had the foresight to bring some kind of stick or staff to support her – even a parasol would have done. Nevertheless she managed, with difficulty, to retain her footing and composure – if not perhaps entirely the dignity befitting her station – as she made her way along the dimly lit, foul-smelling thoroughfare. A nosegay against the stench of human and animal excrement flowing freely along the gutter at each side of the poor street would have been a useful accoutrement, but alas – she made do by holding a pocket handkerchief, mercifully still strongly scented with Dr Kwinkelfrank’s eau du jardin des bêtes humâines, over her nose. The passers-by, whether pedestrian, on horseback or in pony cart or buggy, gave her a wide berth and seemed entirely oblivious to the bedraggled figure lying prostrate in the very middle or the roadway.
He lay face-down – or rather chest-down, face turned to one side, arms and legs bent in the attitude of a man running for his life. His clothing was extremely odd: pantaloons of a single colour and entirely without ornamentation, running the full length of his legs, but clinging tightly about the ankles, which were bare; a jerkin in the
exact same colour and fine cloth, with a hood or cowl such as one of our holy men might wear, tied with drawstrings at the neck; his footwear was entirely fantastical, in shape and motley, garish hues unlike anything she had ever encountered before, the soles thick and corrugated with strange geometrical patterns. She could scare believe
what she had just learned: that this, in the future, would be the dress and appearance of the toiling masses.
His dark features were rugged and not unattractive, his beard meticulously trimmed and shaped in the manner of an aristocrat. His eyes were open, unblinking. She leaned over him, opened her mouth to address him, to give him the instructions she had received while in Madame de Vestibule’s head, but found that the only words she could produce were: Ou est le bon-bon? She tried again, but again, all that issued from her mouth, but louder this time, almost in a birdlike squark, was: OU EST LE BON-BON?!
– – – – – – – – – –
Nadine clasped her hands to her throat, as if to muffle the unwelcome voice, and took a deep breath. She had been warned this might happen – returning from psychic journeys often carried the risk of bringing echoes and fragments back to the mundane world. Madame de Vestibule called them ‘hitch-hikers’; they could be benign, mischievous, or outright malevolent. Taking slow deep breaths, she reached into her pocket and crushed the sprig of fresh herbs within: a simple grounding charm against whatever sugar-loving imp had seemingly followed her back.
But before she could attempt to speak a third time, a sudden hum filled the dark room, and the embers in the fireplace sprung back to dancing life. The flames formed a shape – a human figure! – which stepped out, and bowed smartly to her. The bon-bon? It has been with us for the duration. How curious that it should matter to you now.
The glowing figure’s voice was low and pleasant, and as it spoke, its features coalesced into those which Nadine had so recently studied: a perfect replica of Mr Dalton, who still lay supine and wide-eyed on the chaise-longue. The doppelganger strode towards the paralysed original before she could object, and with the air of a magician procuring a rabbit from a hat, removed a gold-wrapped confection from his breast pocket. Are you having an out-of-body experience, sir? Or are you something else which has taken his shape? This place is warded against lies. She kept her tone measured, disguising her surprised relief that her own voice had returned to her.
– – – – – – – – – –
The doppelganger didn’t answer at first, but held a hand out toward Nadine with the sweet splayed across his palm. She recognized it as the hazelnut confection her grandfather used to covet at the holidays.
For you, the figure said in a voice unlike Mr Dalton’s even though the lips matched his exactly. I recall you like this particular variety.
Nadine paused then, realizing that her own skin had an unusual glow about it, something unnatural…and she suddenly couldn’t be sure if her memory of the sweets or of Mr Dalton or anything in recent history was her own or something implanted there for nefarious purposes.
– – – – – – – – – –
Maybe, she thought, the glow is from the sweets, and maybe, she thought, I should stop looking for nefariousness everywhere. But her mind was spinning. She decided to turn it to lovelier things. She would count the flavours of the sweets. The calming effect surely worked as well as with sheep. All the berries: strawberry, raspberry, blackberry. Maybe blueberry, cranberry? Then pineapple. Lemon. Lime. She stopped short: her glowing skin was changing hue with each flavour that entered her head, from red to pink, yellow to green. Nadine felt like a neon sign advertising some garish show in Vegas. Enough.
She walked to the sea shore, peeled off her multi-coloured skin and draped it over the nearest rock. She stroked her scales, sparkling turquoise in the sunlight, then dived straight down to the seabed. Her favourite stone was covered in algae. She scraped it off and sat down. Better. A flash of red on the coral reef caught her eye. Was that a strawberry bush? And then her mind was off again, wandering in a field of strawberry bushes with her grandfather, holding his hand as he told her the tiny white flowers would transform like magic into fat juicy fruit.
She shook her head, sending a shoal of fluorescent plankton scudding. She supposed she’d had grandparents but she’d never known them. And she’d certainly never been in a strawberry field, with or without an elderly relative. Her special place wasn’t working. Had the encounter with Mr Dalton shifted something in her? Nadine swam back to the surface and pulled herself onto the sand. Her skin was lying where she’d left it but now it was as grey and dull as the far side of the moon.
– – – – – – – – – –
The coarse grains of the sand, cold as the water she’d just been in, chafed against her slick belly. The friction a discomfort, unnatural. The sea pawed at her, foamy and fretful. It wouldn’t hurt to be with it once more, would it?
In the swirl, the sounds were muffled, softer. This is home, she said, though refracted through water, the words rippled away from her. And within minutes, the silver menace of a shark, all gleaming teeth and deadly tail. She scrambled to the shore, slipped her skin on again, walked away, the seagulls jeering at her back.
He knew, somehow, that she’d returned. He brought oysters, like curls of briny snot. He kissed her, lemony tang, bristly moustache. His teeth were like pearls, lustrous, perfectly formed. She longed for him to bite her. She opened to him, a different unzipping. In the morning he was gone, and she thought of his teeth, and how he had hidden them. A shell held to her ear, the sea, calling, calling.