Page 75 of If Looks Could Kill
“And that produces a… a person whose touch creates new Medusas?”
“As far as I can make out, it’s the only way we are created.”
Pearl’s head reels. “This,” she whispers, “is beyond bizarre. It beggars belief.”
Miss Pearl ignores the critique. “It serves as a check upon us,” she says. “A Medusa mustn’t be too quick to kill. Too indiscriminate. What if she makes another of these men?”
Pearl sinks back into her chair. “He can’t be killed.”
“Oh, I’m sure he can be in more ordinary ways.”
“But he’s immune to… what we do.”
Miss Stella unravels a stitch. “Partially, I expect. You can still stun him. Frighten him.”
“So thisman,” Pearl says, “can just go about, ruining life after life.”
“Think of it this way,” Miss Stella explains. “He has nowhere to hide. He sows his own destruction. The stones underfoot become land mines, if you will, to blow him to pieces.”
Pearl refuses to accept this. “And he leaves behind him girls whose lives are—”
“Electrified,” Stella says. “Graced with power so they neednever bow to a man again.”
The tentacled arms of Pearl’s dream encircle her. Yes. Yes. Never again.
Imagine if, on that day, so long ago, she had been as she is now. Imagine how her life would be different today.
But if so, she might never have found the heavenly grace she received in the aftermath.
Far better to have never needed it. And where, indeed, was that grace now?
Stella sets aside her knitting and rises from her chair. “I trust you know that the bitterest blows of life can strengthen us,” she says quietly. “You’ve joined a chosen sisterhood.”
Pearl tries to clear the fog from her brain. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Are you saying… do you mean it’s a good thing, when a girl, like me, becomes a Medusa?” She watches Miss Stella’s placid expression in disbelief. “You’re in favor of a world with many more of us?”
Miss Stella pauses. “I grant, an all-out Medusa trend might arouse the wrong attention.”
Pearl wants to scream.You think it’s just fine, what has happened to me.
“It’s true,” Miss Stella says, “that many newly hatched Medusas don’t survive for long.” She shakes her head. “But those who do, the strong and intelligent ones, like you, go on to greatness.”
“And as for the others…?”
Miss Stella’s voice is gravelly. “It can’t be helped.”
Many newly hatched Medusas don’t survive for long.
Miss Stella takes Pearl’s hands in hers. “I can teach you,” she whispers. “I can help you.”
Pearl has no response to this.
“Forgive me,” Miss Stella says shyly. “I know we’ve only just met tonight, but… I am old. Time is fleeting. I feel for you, my dear. I do. We could help each other.”
This idea is so opaque to Pearl that she can barely comprehend the older woman’s words.
“I daresay your former life is closed to you,” Miss Stella whispers. “But you can make your homehere.We can make it comfortable.”
Livehere? Pearl glances around at the cobwebby shadows.
