Page 72 of Odder Still
Elspeth slips the drawing of the feather duster worm from my hand and squints at it. “Finfolk built the original city of Maraheem. There’re ways into the lower that your selkies don’t know about.”
Hope lights up Tavish’s face. “How do we get to them?”
All the fight deserts me suddenly, the last of my mental energy rushing away. I have nothing to add to this conversation. As Tavish was useless earlier, now I have no purpose. No purpose, but for a pair of legs that twitch to move and two hands in desperate need of something to bounce between them. I stand, giving Tavish a soft peck on the cheek, and leave them to their discussion, letting my anxious body wander so my mind doesn’t have to.
But no matter how far I go, I can’t wander away from the presence in the back of my mind, anxious and determined and almost as terrified as I am.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Louder than Words
In this war of multitudes, we climb the embankment.
Instead of a question, here is a statement:
“I am not the reason we’re falling apart.”
The consequences of most lies don’t emerge at the start.
ELSPETH TAKES US JUST past the abandoned selkie town, to a locked shack with an assortment of odd supplies and dusty scientific tools. They retrieve an atrocious watertight helmet of rusty brown, which comes to my shoulders and sputters air in awkward surges. After a quick explanation, they find a second one for Tavish.
The nasty thing blocks most of my vision and stinks of metal. It rattles ominously as I slip into the water off Elspeth’s equally ancient-looking boat. The flippers over the finfolk’s feet unfurl, and ripples in their neck flare into proper gills. Their clothing seems made for this, not soaking in the sea like my pants do, but gliding through it with the ease of an oiled seabird.
As we sink below the surface, the water rushes in around me, turning my helmet into its own little world, the only sound the gentle thrumming of the currents. Tavish grabs my arm, digging in his nails. His chest rises and falls so fast he almost appears to tremble, and little bubbles slip out the sides of his helmet. For all his life, the sea has been his home. This is the first time he’s had to fear it.
I pull him close until our helmets bump. “I’m here,” I whisper, even if he can’t hear me. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”
It’s not a promise I can rightfully make, in part because I’m no god, and in full because I won’t be beside him forever. Just like he won’t be beside me.
But the pressure of my touch must calm him, because slowly his panic lessens. Each step he takes across the sandy floor grows a little stronger, his grip on me no longer cutting off my circulation. Still, I hold to him the entire trek through the water, my parasite clinging to me in turn.
Elspeth leads us through kelp beds and into a castle of rocks where the only light streams from our helmets’ headlamps. Every time the constricted space seems to creep inward, flaying my nerves and dragging the air from my lungs, my parasite forces me to breathe deeper and curls its warmth into my stomach.
Finally our underwater cleft opens upward. We break the surface into a cavern, half lake and half flattened rock, with a metal door in one wall and an array of chests beside it. Tavish sits with his head in his hands, little hitches in his breathing, while Elspeth digs out a pair of gloves, a wig of shaggy, auburn hair, and a case of makeup to go with their black cloak. When they plop into the compact, low-backed wheelchair tucked behind the chests, they could pass for a dark-skinned half selkie obsessed with purple makeup and glitter.
Tavish pulls himself together enough to put on a fake beard. He strokes it so often I have to remind him not to accidentally pull it off, but it’s better than him picking apart his cuticles. I settle for a wrap of brown and black that flips up into a massive hood and tuck my hair inside it.
Tavish wants to immediately search for Lilias, to place all our bets on restoring himself as a functional, guilt-free member of the Findlay household and using bureaucracy to grant us access to the Trench, but I remind him that even when we knew where Lilias was, we still failed to bring her in. Whereas I know Ivor Reid’s bar fairly well and suspect that whatever path to the upper he refused to tell me last time, we could convince him to give it up now. Elspeth sides with me, and Tavish reluctantly gives in.
“I’ve been using this entrance for ages,” Elspeth explains as we leave their secret cave through a weathered metal door that leads into the dredge’s ruins. The mist coating its floor churns behind us, the fumes burning in my nostrils. “Mostly to aid my research. I’ve traded a bit with the dredgeheads for chemicals and, you know, other things.”
“The dredgeheads are the crime leaders down here,” Tavish adds before I can ask. His cane catches on an empty bottle, but he barely seems to notice.
“They aren’t so bad if you don’t infuriate them—wait, no, Tavish, the pillar!” Elspeth leans in their wheelchair, as though they can redirect him by sheer thought alone.
Tavish startles and follows their guidance too well, almost hitting a broken wall as he overcorrects. I consider stepping in, but the added chaos seems to distract him from his anxious twitches and incessant tongue chewing.
By the time we’ve worked our way up a rickety elevator out of the dredges, we’re all hungry. The lower’s bioluminescent algae lights shine at their full potential, and steam hisses from the ceiling. People crowd in and out of the tight alley passages and pile into dingy dining establishments. My parasite nudges me harder and more aggressively until we stop to pick up street food with a few spare coins that Elspeth supplies. As my sausage roll sinks into my stomach, it seems to stir the anxiety lingering there in nauseous bundles.
It only grows as we reach Ivor’s bar.
The sign above hangs unlit, the cage-like garage fronts pulled down over an empty room of ghostly barstools and tables topped by their own chairs. The soup kitchen sign is propped against a corner. A light still shines from the floor above, and a single, fiery voice echoes through the metal walls, just loud enough to make out the ire but not the words. It skitters along my brain without quite landing.
I can think of nothing better to say than “Fuck.”
I direct Elspeth and Tavish to wait at the resale shop across the street while I call softly into the bar. No one answers, despite the obvious commotion above. Attracting more attention by shouting seems reckless. I give the garage gates a little rattle instead. The lock near the floor clatters tauntingly.
My parasite could open that with ease, but I don’t trust it not to take me over the moment I do, if only by accident. It gives a soft, hurt vibration. I cringe.
