Page 96 of Odder Still
I accept the consequences of one final question:
Will you stay? Because I am here,
not just an imprint but a maturing inception.
The dawn of an era soon to appear.
I FEEL NOTHING WHEN the yellow ignit detonates. Not heat, though its light blinds me. Not grief, though it engulfs both Elspeth and Tavish, the devastating orb traveling so fast that they don’t even have time to turn and look. Not fear, though it expands ever closer.
I reach into it, toward the imprint of Tavish on the inside of my eyelids, reaching for the space I know he must be. The orb of light grows over my fingertips, working along them, up part of my thumb, around my first two knuckles. The skin within tingles; a numb, meaningless sensation as if my overwhelmed mind is failing to make sense of the truth.
And a distant part of me thinks I should be able to change this—I should have the power to take in its deadly energy and turn it into something life-giving. But my human cells resist the urge, too grounded in this world, in a reality marred by strict rules. Rules like death.
In a flash, the light vanishes. It leaves nothing in its place.
Gone are the archways of the gate’s upper side, the floor, Tavish and Elspeth, most of my fingers, half my thumb, and two of my knuckles. People from the lower districts stare up at us in horror from the level beneath. A scream arises, then a series of shouts. All I want is to go to the empty space where Tavish had stood.
All I do is sink.
“I’m here,” I whisper.I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
But there’s no Tavish to respond to me.
I draw in a sob and can’t seem to let it out again. The world turns to a haze, dark and light blurring into one, the clatter of voices echoing uselessly against my pounding ears. Iridescent blood seeps from the places my fingers and knuckles should be. It should hurt, but I can feel nothing over the pain in my chest. My aurora tendrils shimmer along the wounds and wrap a thin membrane of darkness over them, leaving only the flickers of rainbows and the faint memory that something there is missing. The same way a part of my heart has vanished. A part of myself, gone in a flash of unnatural light.
The aurora half of me takes full control, not like a parasite or a monster, but like a friend, gently lifting me off the ground. In the wake of the ignit’s destruction, the selkies come to their senses. The BA soldiers shout into their radios, their gazes leaping back and forth between the decimated laboratory and the pistols aimed at their heads while a fresh stream of rebels with makeshift weapons charges in from beyond the gate. No one calls to me, or perhaps the noise simply bounces off or blunders past. My shoulders shake, but no tears come.
I’m here…
The aurora half of me detaches just enough to wrap itself around my human half, disengaging from the rest of my consciousness to whisper,‘So am I.’
On shaky feet, it walks me around the edge of the hole the ignit’s detonation left. I can’t quite reach into the fabric that separates us from the other dimension, but somehow I know if I could, the gash the ignit once made would be closed over. Each step feels like a new death. I don’t want to be in a world he’s vanished out of. I need to leave, to transport myself into a cask of wine, to fling my threads into the sickness, to—
But I hold fast to the aurora part of myself, letting it reinforce me, stabilize me. As I come into the main gate, toward the ruins of the lab, something moves within their mess of sopping supplies. Tavish sits up. His wet hair sits askew, half plastered to his face and half sticking out, and his detached gaze looks unusually glassy. But there he sits. Alive.
I run to him and sweep him into my arms. My stub of a hand knocks against his side as I try to grab into his jacket, and the last of my energy abandons me so hard and fast that suddenly it’s Tavish who’s holding me. I laugh, then sob, digging my unaltered hand into his shirt and holding him close. “I thought you were gone.”
Tavish clings to me in return, his face nestled in my hair. “For a moment, I felt the oddest sensation, but then Elspeth pushed me so hard I went flying. Elspeth—” He lifts his head, tipping his chin as though listening. “Where are they—are they hurt?”
The moment replays in my head: Elspeth six full strides behind Tavish, their eyes going wide as they watched the ignit-tipped blade. In the gap where they once stood, I see nothing, not with my human eye nor my aurora one, not their ashes, not even the imprint of their energy. Wherever their body is, it’s not in this world. Considering the kind of ugly sickness that incapacitates the other dimension, I can’t be sure they’re even still alive.
That kind of optimism perished with my mother.
“Elspeth was taken by Glenrigg’s ignit exploding. They’re probably dead.” The words stick in my throat, bringing with them a metallic taste.
There are too many dead already. Sheona, dead. Ailsa, dead. Blue, dead. Maybe Lavender, too. My grief bubbles back up, raging against the warmth Tavish has left in my soul. I can see the same emotion in the shinning edges of Tavish’s eyes and the tremble in his lips. Elspeth deserved so much better. They deserved medals and laboratories and their name on a hundred more papers.
Not all the pieces fit together, though. “Elspeth was too far from you. Even with their wheelchair, they couldn’t have reached you in time.”
“I only ken what I felt,” Tavish replies. “Something like two hands on my shoulders. They flung me back.”
The aurora half of my mind buzzes with curiosity. But it withdraws back into my consciousness as an argument flares among the higher-ranking rebels, the namesTavishandFindlaybouncing between them increasingly louder. With the BA solders in disarray after the effects of Glenrigg’s ignit, the small lower-district force has pushed them into the glass-topped hallways that lead out of the plaza. Fresh rebels clamber through the main chamber to reinforce them, clearly spurred on by Raghnaid Findlay’s death.
I pull Tavish to his feet. “If we go now, we can still slip away quietly.”
Tavish releases a heavy breath. “I won’t run from the consequences of my actions. This city deserves better than that.”
As much as it hurts, I can’t disagree with him. Together, we work our way around the hole.
