Page 71 of Odder Still
“What if it writes?” Tavish asks. “Maybe it doesn’t need to speak. You said it can control your arm; can it write to us instead?”
Elspeth whistles. “Ah, you’re a genius.”
I kiss Tavish’s hand before letting it go. “Can we borrow the notepad?”
Elspeth pushes it into our grip. They scoot their chair as close as possible, leaning so far into my field of view that I have to nudge them back a little. A single piece of glitter flutters along the notepad page.
I wait. My parasite doesn’t ask for permission, but it takes control of my muscles gently, as though expecting me to protest. It drags the pen, forming loops and lines. As the text unfolds, it’s obvious it’s not writing at all, but an elaborate series of connected swirls in an intricate arrangement.
I slap down the pen. “That’s nonsense.”
It retracts like a wounded animal.‘It’s trying its damnedest.’
The desperation and pain leaking from it turn my stomach into a knot.I’m sorry.I feel like it should be harder to apologize after everything it’s put me through, but the more I look back over our last few days, the less I’m convinced that it’s done anything to hurt me after all.In the subconscious cracks of my memories, I feel its fondness, feel the love of a dangerous creature who wants desperately to be held, wants to believe its sharp claws don’t cut just as easily on accident as they do on purpose. Maybe some of those times it saved my body, it was trying to saveme, too, even if it can’t quite seem to also protect me from the tendrils of itself that dig a little deeper with each salvation.
I don’t think it’s your fault, I add, trying to be gentle.Youaretrying your damnedest, and I appreciate that.
My parasite responds by curling around me, burying itself deeper into my consciousness as it trembles. I tremble with it, us, together. We grieve.
Elspeth scrutinizes the pattern. “Mayhaps this isn’t nonsense, just something we can’t yet make sense of. An aurora’s form of writing?”
As they try to take back the notepad, my arm jerks under my parasite’s will, hope rushing through us. My parasite snatches so hard that the paper comes free. It flips it over and draws on the back, its motions ragged and frenzied now. When it finishes, there’s a picture of a stalk topped in dozens of feathery tentacles.
I stare at the alien thing, my own confusion warring with my parasite’s optimism. I know what it is, yet I can’t picture it. I can feel it, though: the creature I connected to—inhabited, perhaps—at Lachlan’s secret lab.
“It sketched a feather duster worm.” Elspeth’s gaze shoots expectantly to Tavish.
“They’re the Findlay Inc. auroras’ hosts, aren’t they?” I ask.
My parasite warms in response, a deep purr rattling it.‘Communication.’
So they can help us speak. I slide my fingers over the drawing of the strange underwater creature.You connected us with one in that dream. Can you do that again?
Its uncertainty bleeds into me so strongly that I almost tell it to stop whatever it’s doing. Too late. We move, our arm reaching out, but this arm—the one attached to this me—it stays cradled around pen and paper, even as I can feel deeply, firmly, from my fingertips to my bones, that we are grabbing someone’s hand. The world snaps into three.
The grassy hills, Tavish and Elspeth staring at me. Lachlan’s secret lab, a white-coated figure blocking most of the view. And another place, one dark and quiet, hauntingly familiar, just not to me.
The other hand grips ours tighter, and I feel, again, the sensation I couldn’t quite identify last time. It feels like weakness. Like struggle. Like pain. An idea spills into us, not in words or sounds or even emotions, but in something more primal, like one magnet being drawn to another:‘Come.’
My parasite agrees with everything in them. This is it, my solution, its purpose, our answer. But finding our way back into Maraheem, through the upper and the Findlay Estates and all the way to Lachlan’s secret laboratory—
‘To the Trench laboratory itself,’my parasite corrects. Its use of Raghnaid’s voice sends a shiver down my spine. Reaching the Trench might be a little easier, but not much.
If I find a way to get you there and see whatever you want through, then you’ll leave me be?
Its sincere agreement floods in, mixed with tinges of sadness.
Then why not leave now? I’ll complete my end of the bargain, and you can latch properly to something else while I do.
‘The aurora seems to provide the host with additional energy. The hosts grow… stronger.’Its presence throughout my body tingles, and a mixture of emotions bleed from it, desire mixed with distrust. Distrust I probably deserve.
Silt-breather.I think I’m talking to us both. As the thought fades, I realize what this means, for me, for Tavish, for the terminally illuswe’ve been nursing fruitlessly. It means one more journey, one more shared destination. A little stability before the eventual coin toss.
One more last hope.
“If we can reach these auroras, they can help. I think they can tell me what mine is saying or at least what it wants.”
Tavish taps his nails against his cane. “If we could get into Maraheem and the upper, maybe there’s a chance I could slip us into the Trench, but that all means nothing, since the moment we come within sight of a gate, they’ll arrest us.”
