Fathom (24 page)

Getaway and Gone

B
ehind her, there came a tickling, sliding press that stank of old plants rotting and becoming rich. The creature sidled up to the crook of her back and beneath her, almost cradling her.

“I can hear you,” it said, shaping itself to match and hold her. “Not only when you speak, that isn’t what I mean. I can hear what’s inside, the way your body is changing and moving, transforming like a larva into something great and beautiful and strong.

“But,” it added, “I do not love you, except in the way that a craftsman might love his tools. I do not care for you except in the way that a scientist might ponder a particularly vexing problem, and think to himself, ‘I believe I’ve constructed an answer.’ I did not create you, my small-boned thing of fauna and flesh. But I
have preserved you in my own way; though not in any image of mine, and not as a companion, but as a tool. Even if I could create a new thing of my own power, I would not. I was never any god, nor parent.”

What were you, then?

It leaned itself back against the side of the boat, which bobbed and skimmed slowly across the water’s surface. Back on the sand, beside the pier, Nia heard footsteps pounding and the staccato press of horse’s hooves, too, riding up to the water and begging for the boat’s return.

But Mel could not hear them half so well, and he only waved a long, sweeping hand at them. He shouted, “I’ll be back again in an hour. Wait there. I’ll come back.”

The creature had not answered her question. When the shouting up on the deck had finished, the earthen thing spoke again. “I was a shepherd.”

Then where is your flock?

Sam came scrambling down to the canvas covering and he lifted a corner so he could see underneath. “Are you—?” he began, but when he saw the creature, he emitted a yelp.

“Hush,” the creature said. “I’m here, yes. You didn’t think you’d left me behind, did you?”

Sam stammered through the rest. “No, of course not. I hoped not. I mean, I don’t know what to do with her, obviously.” He raised the flap higher to let himself underneath with the stone girl and the monster, even though it would look strange to Mel if Mel were to see it. “But how did you get on board?”

“I have my ways,” it said.

I saw you
.

“She saw me.” It produced that facsimile of a grassy grin again, and this time it was tinged with pride. “Soon, she’ll be able to see much, much more. Like I was telling her, I can hear it—the way
the time is drawing nigh.” It pressed its head against her shoulder as if it were listening hard.

“You can . . . you can hear what’s going on in there?”

“Yes,” it said. “But I’m not listening for what she’s saying; I’m listening for what she might be feeling. It’s something like . . .” It searched for an example that it could borrow from the human behavior it had witnessed over the years. “It’s somewhere between waiting for an egg to hatch and thumping a gourd to see if it’s ripe. There’s motion within her now, finally. She’s almost ready.”

“Well. Okay, I guess.” Sam huddled down beside her, but as far away from the creature as he could get while remaining beneath the shelter of the cover. “So what does that mean—she’s going to hatch?”

“It means she’s quickening.” Sam’s face was blank, so the creature answered with easier words. “Yes, it means she’s going to hatch.”

Sam stared hard at the stone girl, whose features he could barely see for the shadow of the drape. “And . . . and then what?”

The creature did not lift its head from her shoulder, from the curve of her neck. For something that insisted it needed no companion, Nia thought it was an awfully clingy sort of creator.

“You don’t have any idea what’s going to happen, do you?”

It shook its head, rolling it in the corner where Nia’s neck met her arm. “You must leave, go back out there to that man who moves this boat. It will not do for him to see you here, or to wonder where you’ve gone. We are pursued, remember that. When we reach the end of the water, we must move quickly.”

“Right,” Sam said, and he started to untangle himself from the canvas.

The creature seized one of Sam’s hands, and it was an awful feeling, but Sam did not jerk away. “And there’s this, too. Keep us
covered. The night has eyes, and the water does, too. We must not be seen until there’s shore beneath us.”

Sam nodded vigorously, and, as he climbed out from under their private tent, he tucked the ends of the canvas around their edges and lashed them there with a bit of the boat’s rope. He didn’t tie them tightly enough to bind them, but it was enough to keep the ocean breeze from pulling too hard at the sheet.

The nearly cool air inhaled itself from around the creature and the stone girl, collapsing the thin shelter until it lay across them both so snugly that their outlines could be seen beneath it.

What kind of shepherd were you?

“What?”

You said you were a shepherd, and I don’t think you were talking about sheep
.

It changed the subject. “How are you feeling?”

Same as always
, she replied, which was not strictly truthful.

All the while that the creature had been discussing her interior workings, Nia had wanted to argue with him. She hadn’t felt any transformation within; she hadn’t been aware of any shifting in her personal chemistry, for all her guide insisted upon it.

But while it was quieter, and while she was lying there sheltered by the rough sheet and held in awkward repose by a monster she could barely describe, she was forced to admit that something was . . . off.

A stray current or a hard nudge of wind shook the ferry in an idle way, and with the sudden motion she felt it—a tiny slosh. Inside.

The creature lifted its head.

“I heard that one. Oh yes. It won’t be much longer now.”

And then she felt another liquid twitch inside her chest. And a third, lower—down in her bowels, like the onset of some dreadful gastric distress.

There was a burning, too. It began warm and gentle, but it sharpened itself until it moved between her ribs like pinpricks of fire, one after another, and then scores of them at once. Hotter it became, until something was boiling and she couldn’t get away from it; and then it was no longer boiling, it was melting—it was flowing and searing, lava and steam.

Nia tried to scream, but the creature did not budge or offer any comfort, except to say, “Let it come. Don’t fight it.”

But how could she not? She was being cooked, from her heart out to her fingernails—from her intestines to her eyelids.

“Stop struggling. You’ll only make it harder.”

How do you know?
she demanded.
You keep saying that you aren’t sure, and you—

She couldn’t go on. She couldn’t rail at him and survive the misery both. The pain was too strong, and entirely too much.

For the first time in years, she tried to breathe. She did her best to thrash and fight, to draw in air through a mouth that did not open and through nostrils that had been closed for too long.

She wanted to stretch and shift; but she believed with all her bubbling, stewing soul that if the shell of her skin were to crack, that she would not emerge in butterfly fashion—she would spill and light the decks, spreading flame like petrol that’s been sparked and splattered.

Let her die, or let her drip and trickle and leave behind the prison shell, setting the ferry on fire with the acid that was coursing—yes, she could feel it coursing now—through her veins.

Did she even have veins anymore?

She wasn’t sure. But she could definitely feel a pulse and a pounding. She could certainly detect motion within, where before there had been nothing but well-shaped stone.

She strained and stretched.

And something broke.

It cracked with a small burst, and even through all the amazing, blinding pain, Nia was taken aback. Once again, she tried to breathe. She went through the mental motions of taking a big, deep, full breath . . . and there was another crack, and something split—just a fraction of an inch.

“Yes,” the creature assured her. “Yes, now. Go on, but don’t fight so hard. Don’t tear yourself, and don’t thrash too much. You must be born quietly, and—” It closed its mismatched eyes as if it were looking at something, somewhere else. “—and quickly, too. There’s not half an hour before we reach the end of the water.”

Help me
.

“I can’t.”

Help me, please
.

“I can’t.”

Help . . .
“m—”

Her jaw popped, from reflex or from memory, as she tried to gasp out words.

The creature laid a flat palm across her mouth, not to smother but to hush. “Quietly,” it said.

“I . . .” Her skin was stretching, swelling, and coming apart. Seams were forming and widening, tearing, and revealing something softer underneath. Where the new skin hit the air, it felt like fire, and where it touched the burlap cloth, the fabric scratched like sand in an open wound.

She tried to writhe, but the creature held her tightly. Its outer covering of leaves and mold and shredded flecks of curly moss was abrasive to Nia’s fresh hide; its skin chafed against her and its strength was terrifying. Even as the creature restrained her, even as it was professedly weakened, its grip was like being pinned down by a tree.

Nia’s teeth bit through their gritty covering, filling her mouth
with gravel. She pushed it out with her tongue, into the creature’s hand.

It took the gravel and dropped it away, then returned to covering her face. And even though it had told her it could not help, it used gentle, sharp-tipped twigs like fingernails to peel away the stone covering from her eyes, where the muscles were not strong enough to shatter the rock on their own.

She tried not to cry as the stone came away like the rind from an orange, even though it hurt worse than any scab being picked away from a scuffed knee.

She whimpered and wheezed. She tried to kick, and her left leg straightened an encouraging bit, but the right one wouldn’t budge. Her right arm cracked at the elbow, then at the armpit, and for the first time in a long time, she could lower it.

Shaky and horrified, she beat her right hand up and down against the side of the boat until her fingers felt broken—but they were only free. Fragments of the shell hung between the webs and powdered themselves into dust when she squeezed them; larger strips collapsed along the veins on the back of her hand, and when she made a fist, the last of the crust on her wrist fell away.

With one hand fully clear, she was able to more easily escape the rest.

She reached for her other, frozen hand and pushed it hard, and when it broke it felt like all her bones were on the outside, breaking. It hurt like nothing she’d ever even heard of before, but any pain was worth it.

Her left thigh flexed and more stone split, revealing gray-white skin beneath. She braced her back against the creature, and against the side of the boat, and she straightened herself until she was no longer crouched and bent.

Left, then right, her ankle turned and cast away dust as it worked
itself loose. Her knee made a bursting noise when the joint bowed and snapped closed, then open again.

And side by side her legs were straight, and her back was straight. Her left arm was proving difficult, but she grasped it with her right hand and wedged it against her thigh, and finally that one, too, gave way.

Her neck was still coated with a thin scab of smooth rock, and her torso was held immobile by a vest of the formidable stuff, but she took more breaths. As deep as she could inhale, as hard as she could exhale—and fine fissures compromised the remainder of the sheath.

She coughed and sprayed more flakes; pebble-like fragments fell from her nose.

The creature wiped them away, and left his hand off her mouth.

After all, she wasn’t screaming. She was panting, pulling every possible bit of air into her chest and forcing it out, and then beginning the process anew—relearning how to breathe, sorting out something that once was unconscious.

“Good girl,” the thing told her. It took its hand and put it on her head, where it began to pick at her hair.

All this time it had been growing there, beneath the stone helmet that coated her head and dragged down the tendrils into tentacles harder than granite. And then, because no strength of hers would move it, the creature held her close and groomed her, pulling its fingers along and around and through the compressed locks. It scraped at the seam where the shell met her forehead, and it tugged the covering back to show the tresses underneath.

They were thick with dust, and matted beyond brushing. But when the creature extracted a strand with its mold-covered palms, her compacted mane was several feet longer than last she saw it.

The creature hoisted a small corner of the tarp, and let the
moonlight beam down long enough to see the way it glimmered, red-brown with flecks of gold, like a starfish.

It lowered the sheet again, and balled the excess fabric in its hand, pulling the sheet around her as it held her there in the dark, waiting for her to quit gasping.