Page 17 of Odder Still
But I take the cot, happy not to be sleeping on the Maraheem lower-city streets. I’m less afraid of Lilias, who must know I escaped but should assume I’m fleeing along the coast, and more daunted by the idea of my scarf falling while I sleep. In the undersized cot, I tuck my neck to the limp pillow, my feet against a bucket of red paint and a pair of stained brushes, and face the low shelf that blocks my view of the door.
I think of stealing the biggest bottle of whiskey in Ivor’s liquor cabinet, but I don’t. I think of taking the butcher knife to the thing in my neck and ending this chaos one way or the other, but I don’t. I think, also, of Tavish. He drifts through my flighty dreams as a phantom, a laugh, a signpost at the bottom of an empty pit.
At some point in the night, the bar’s gated front rattles. Someone passes behind the shelves. They ascend the stairs into Ivor’s home compartments, their key jiggling in his lock a moment before it opens.
A deeper, darker sleep takes me then, surrounding me in a black fog that’s not the shadowed grey of the Murk at midnight but a true void, rainbows flittering through it.
I jerk awake to the feverish scalding of the parasite against my skin, cords of its heat searing into my nerves until it feels like their sting and I are one and the same. I slap at the creature, and the burn flares before fading away. It leaves me panting and moist, trembling from my bones outward. I glance around, then slowly peel back my scarf and crane my neck. My own chin blocks most of my view of the parasite, but the skin along my shoulder looks wrong, where it meets the creature: rotten with rainbows.
Bile chuffs up my throat. I quickly rewrap the scarf to keep from heaving, but the image remains, those blisters and gashes of color creeping into my body, carving up my flesh. I have never felt so much like the mists from whence I came, as though a heavy breeze will blow me away. This parasite is a rising gale.
I can’t stay here and let it disperse me.
My filthy socks come off, and I shove my bare feet into my mostly dried boots. I give a few hopeless tugs to my outfit. Ivor’s bucket of cherry-red paint looks sharp and stunning compared to the dirty, faded reds on my vest. Without that contrast to put it out of focus, my skin holds a warm auburn beneath the brown. But there’s no river people to hide my heritage from here, and the selkies’ most common skin tone is nearly the same level of pink. I don the vest, tug up my collar, roll my sleeves, and head for the bar.
Ivor Reid chops onions behind the counter. The handle of his knife rattles with each slice. “Bridies’ll be done in a bit, if you want one.”
I have no idea what a bridie is, but nothing sounds palatable right now. “I’ll pass, but thanks. And thank you for everything. You’re doing good work here. If I could help…” I can feel the floor through the soles of my shoes, reminding me I’m not a part of this world.
Ivor’s smile shines. “If I required anything in return, it wouldn’t be good work, now would it, laddie?” He digs into his pocket and pulls out a bronze coin I recognize as a cheap piece of currency that covers street snacks and trolley rides. He tosses it to me.
My thumb and first finger catch it on instinct, flipping it across my knuckles before depositing it into my pocket. “I suppose not.” My lips tug but fail to rise. I tap my fingers to the bar. “You don’t happen to know a way into the upper city that doesn’t involve going through a gate?” I keep my voice low, casual, but it seems to hit him like a scream.
He wipes the back of his hand along his cheek. “Those ways aren’t worth the risk.” There’s a rumble beneath his words, not a storm but an earthquake. “Trust me. Stay in the lower districts, out of the way, or leave Maraheem entirely if you can, but don’t sneak into the upper city, not with everything that’s going down.” His eyes gleam. He sets down his knife and leans across the counter, clasping my arm. “Get somewhere safe, while you’ve got the chance.”
I grant him the best smile I can muster—a sharp, bitter thing that eats through my cheeks the way the parasite eats through my neck. “I wish I could.”
As he lets go, my drooping scarf catches on one of his torn fingernails. It tugs a strand loose, ripping a gap in the fabric. The scarf slips. I pull it back up and tuck it beneath my chin, but Ivor still stares, his gaze wide and rigid.
“You’re—” he starts.
“Nasty rash, isn’t it?” I move away.
He steps toward me and bumps into the counter. That seems to finally yank him from his shock. Before he can ask more, I slip out of the bar and jog down the street. As the commuting masses engulf me, I try to throw off my anxiety. Ivor will never see me again. In this overcrowded maze, I’ll be just as lost to him as I am to Lilias.
CHAPTER SEVEN
One Very Excessively Bad Plan
I am emotions echoing:
back and forth, back and forth.
Resurrecting darker, emptier—
cinders in the hearth.
MORNING IN THE LOWER districts is like evening in reverse. People flow with the ease of fish schools and the noise of a marketplace. The conspiracy theorist already sits on her corner, a pamphlet in one hand and a dingy, black coffee in the other. The trolley clatters by, people shifting out of the way and pouring back onto the street like waves on a beach. Some of them tap the algae-filled streetlights as they walk, making them burn a little brighter. The ceiling machinery sounds a bit squeakier, the air cooler but no less humid.
I head for the nearest gate, asking directions every few streets as the twisting tunnels and looping stairways throw off my sense of direction in a way that the convoluted interwoven branches of the swamps somehow never could. Down here, it’s as if there’s no north and south any longer. Everything exists in one disordered, twisting labyrinth built of hollers and laughs and sobs solidified into this rusting, half-green metal maze.
As I near the gate, the ceiling opens and the street widens, letting the trolley turn a circle in front of a listless fountain with a seal-tailed statue summoning a gurgle of green-tinged water, its bronze form exhausted by a buildup of grime. The stairs beyond are all but empty. At their base, three workers paint over a red symbol as a guard watches, the Battery Arms insignia of aBand anAboasted brightly on his grey-and-white uniform.
The trolley crawls to a stop behind me, releasing a wave of steam. As the vapor clears, my blood goes cold, and the parasite boils against it. Lilias stands there, a hat flopping against her back and one hand still on the trolley exit. She scans the square, eyes sharp, looking for something—for someone. Her gaze lands on me, and her lips curl in a triumphant snarl.
Someone knew I would be here. Someone must have told her.
Her expression sparks a montage: My boat drifting through the fog just after I’d sent for the aurora that now weaves itself into my body. My anxiety increasing with each half hour that lapsed, until it seemed to take physical form in Lilias shouting demands for more, faster, immediately, or else, more and more disbelieving each time I told her I was working on it. Her fury finally turning into her boot against Blossom’s side, over and over, until the poor caiman couldn’t hiss, then couldn’t move, then couldn’t breathe. And her final statement, the only one that managed to sear itself properly into my memory:You have two more of these nuisances, I’m told?
