Tentacle and Wing

by Sarah Porter

  We end up in another big room with round wooden tables. I guess most of the kids spent their free hour somewhere besides the lobby, maybe down on the beach, because there are about a hundred of us milling around in here. Feathers and spines and green-speckled arms stick out of Nirvana T-shirts and hole-filled pink sweaters. I look for adults, but I spot only two of them, Ms. Stuart, looking frazzled as she carries in a stack of plates, and an old Asian man in a plaid shirt with frayed cuffs. He’s pushing a cart full of big bowls of what might be stew and salad, and talking enthusiastically to a small dark-skinned girl with ruffling fins on both sides of her head.

  I knew that the first kimes were born just thirteen years ago, nine months after the accident, but now that I’m looking around, it’s sinking in. Marley and Gabriel are probably the oldest kids here, with me, Rowan, Ophelia, and a few others close behind. It seems like there are more of us the younger we get. Those tests they do on babies before they’re born must really mess up a lot. You could almost wonder if somebody’s letting us through on purpose.

  Then even with almost all the kimes dead or locked up, Chimera Syndrome is still spreading? Isn’t that what shutting us away here was supposed to stop?

  I wonder how many of them are my fault. How many are Marley’s or even Corbin’s. We’ve been the ones out there infecting people.

  This room has another sweeping picture window looking out on the ocean, and I stop and stare at the waves curling endlessly, the crest and pull and reach of water fracturing into a million slivers of light and rainbow foam. The stone wall ends at the bottom of the beach, but after that there’s a double chain-link fence, or really two fences spaced five feet apart, that push far out into the water. Razor wire coils along their tops, shining golden orange above the gold and silver water. I can just make out the line of fence, at least a hundred yards out, that encloses our patch of ocean. Beyond the fence there’s a tantalizing sparkle that fades into forever, or at least stretches all the way to Europe and Africa: places we’ll never be allowed to go.

  So even our “private beach” is inside a cage. I should have known.

  “Ada? Aren’t you going to sit with me?” Ophelia is tugging at my sleeve, so I smile at her and turn away from the water. I feel like I could lose myself in watching those waves, like if I stare long enough, I might disappear completely.

  “Are there really just two grownups here? To look after all of us?” I ask.

  “There are four. Ms. Stuart and Mr. Chu, who’s passing out salad? And then we also have Dr. Jacoway and Ms. Riley, but they’re looking after the babies tonight. They’re going to be exhausted tomorrow.”

  Right. Babies. It seems crazy to have so little supervision for this many kids; that must be what my dad meant when he mentioned the conditions here. “Why don’t they hire more people?”

  “You think they don’t try?” Gabriel says just behind my left shoulder. Why is he always interrupting? “It’s not like there are any grown-up chimeras, who might, ah, care about us naturally. And the adults who do live here can’t leave without people attacking them. Last time Ms. Stuart went into town, some creeps smashed every window in her car, and she had to get forty stitches because of all the flying glass. So who do you think is begging to take a job in this place?”

  “Then how do they keep the kids from just, like, going totally wild?”

  Gabriel grins. “They don’t. We try to help them and everything, but once all the littles are in bed, we do whatever we want. I’ve never had parents, but from what I’ve seen on TV, that’s a really different way to live. It’s like the normals are always saying. In here we’re just a bunch of savage animals run amuck!” He turns and darts across the room.

  So Gabriel wasn’t kidding about Ms. Stuart giving up the rest of her life for the kids here. I look at her crouching down to talk to a small boy with arms covered in hard greenish armor like a crab’s. She’s holding him softly while he talks to her, wide-eyed and serious, caressing her with a knobby hand. She’s almost as much of a captive as we are, then, except that she sacrificed her freedom by choice.

  At least it looks like Corbin’s settling in. I see him laughing with a group of other kids, and it seems like he’s already accepted how strange they are. A feathery girl is stroking his skin, like he’s the curiosity, and here I guess we are.

  There’s a soft flurry of movement overhead, and I jerk my head back to look. Something blue, like a puff of flowing silk. Then it’s gone.

  “Ada?” Ophelia is towing me toward a table, so I sit down next to her. She turns her chair sideways to leave room for her wings. They’re folded down her back, and the tips brush the floor. “What is it?”

  “I thought I saw something.” Something I’ve definitely never seen before. What was that?

  “You think you’ve got special vision,” Rowan says cheerfully. He’s carrying plates and salad to our table, but then he sits across from us instead of just leaving everything and going somewhere else. That means Gabriel will join us, too, and then no one will get a word in edgewise. “Wait till you see what Gabe can do!”

  Sure enough, he’s coming back with our bowl of stew balanced on both wrists, forks bristling out of one hand and a pitcher dangling from the other. He’s close enough now to hear us.

  “You mean his eyes are different somehow?”

  “It’s not his eyes.” Gabriel and Rowan smile slyly at each other, like there’s some big joke I’m not getting. Gabe pulls up a chair as Ophelia helps set everything on the table. “Your eyes just see in black and white, right, Gabe?”

  “Yeah, black and white. Terribly boring.” He’s grinning for some reason as he curls one hand on Ophelia’s arm. She’s wearing a sweatshirt with most of the back chopped out; it’s lilac with a pattern of pink and red hearts. I’d be annoyed if I were her, but she’s smiling too; whatever the joke is, she’s in on it. “We should trade demonstrations, right? We’ll test Ada’s infrared, and she can test me.”

  “You want me to test you for black-and-white vision?” I say. “Um. That sounds fascinating.” I keep glancing up at the ceiling, hoping to spot that gauzy blue something again. Maybe I just imagined it. It’s been such an insane day, and maybe it’s gotten to me more than I thought.

  Gabriel hasn’t moved. He must still be holding Ophelia’s sleeve. But all at once, I realize his hand has vanished. It’s like somebody sneaked in and sliced it off his bluish-white wrist while we were talking, but there’s no blood I can see and no one is screaming. I’m so startled that I jerk back in my chair, and all of them crack up laughing.

  Oh. It’s so funny to them because his hand is still right there. It’s lilac and covered with a pattern of red and pink hearts. It even has the exact same wrinkles her sleeve does. His skin has actually bunched up to mimic the folds underneath.

  He’s giving me a demonstration already. I hate to be impressed by him, but I am, a little. He moves his hand to the side of the aqua and yellow striped salad bowl, and two seconds later identical stripes flow through his skin.

  “How do you do that?”

  He stifles his laugh. “Being part cuttlefish has its privileges.”

  “Cuttlefish?” I don’t even know what that is.

  “Well, or it could be some kind of squid or octopus instead. But cuttlefish is a good guess, because they have completely amazing resolution with their colors, like I do.”

  My mom would think his color-changing skin is a hideous deformity. I wonder how she’d react if she could hear how self-satisfied he is about it.

  “But—​if you can’t even see the colors, then how can you copy them?”

  Rowan’s started serving everyone stew. It doesn’t look too bad, some kind of mixture of chickpeas and vegetable chunks. “He can’t see colors with his eyes. That doesn’t mean he can’t see them.”

  It takes me a moment, but then I get it. “You’re telling me Gabe can see with his skin?” This has to be the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard.

  “Like
, your shirt?” Gabriel says. “Totally gray from here. But now?” He reaches across Ophelia’s plate, pretty rudely, and touches my shoulder. “Dark purple.”

  “She’ll never believe you if you aren’t blindfolded,” Rowan objects. “You could just be faking.”

  I’d love to hear what Ophelia’s vision is like, but she might not want to talk about it. She’s being awfully quiet when she isn’t laughing at Gabriel showing off. Her wings stir behind her, flicking with opal light.

  And I’d completely forgotten about Marley, but now I see her. She’s off in a corner at an empty table, staring down at her plate and not eating. I told her I’d help her stay strong, and now I’m letting her huddle up miserably in her own little Team Normal.

  Rowan watches my expression change. “We’ll ask her to sit with us tomorrow, I promise. I thought tonight she needed space.”

  “Thanks, Rowan,” I say.

  “What for?”

  “Not automatically hating her.” Or me.

  “Rowan is way too nice,” Gabriel says. “But if he’d heard Marley going on about what freaks we are earlier, I bet even he would admit she’s not worth it. Nobody’s better at automatic hating than normals.”

  “I don’t think most normal people hate us,” I snap. I’m sick of him interrupting every single conversation I have with anyone. “They’re just scared!”

  A clang shreds the air. A scream of metal on metal. It doesn’t sound that close, but it’s still pretty loud.

  Everyone stops talking at once, looking around at one another, and some of the smaller kids are whimpering. Another violent clang rings out. Is somebody trying to smash down the gate?

  “Get down here!” a voice booms. It has a staticky growl like it’s coming through a huge amplifier. “Show yourselves, you cowards! Our tax dollars pay to feed you abnormal scum, so we’re here to get our money’s worth. Get your sick faces down this hill where we can see you!”

  Ms. Stuart is up with her hands on her hips, stomping toward a pair of sliding glass doors on the far side of the dining room. She can’t be going down there alone!

  Gabriel raises his eyebrows at me. “Just scared? Aw, that must be so hard, to live in constant terror of vile kimes like us! Who knows what horrible things we’ll do?” Then, before I know what he’s up to, he grabs hold of my wrist and pulls me to my feet. “Ms. Stuart, stop! They’re not here to see you. Ada and I will go talk to them.”

  Chapter Seven

  SILENCE CRASHES down like a wave. Everyone is staring at us, and heat rises in my cheeks. I never said I’d go, but if I try to back out, I’ll look like a coward in front of everyone. And of course Gabriel was counting on that.

  “You and Ada,” Ms. Stuart says sharply. “Gabriel, has it crossed your mind that Ada was taken from her family just a few hours ago and that some sensitivity might be called for? Dragging her in front of a screaming mob doesn’t quite meet that standard.”

  Gabriel shrugs that off. “We look like their own kids, Ms. Stuart. So we can make them feel ashamed of themselves.”

  Something starts slamming rhythmically against the gate. All around the room kids are clutching each other in balls of massed feathers and bristling fur. A tiny girl bursts out wailing.

  “You mean, you want to exploit Ada to make them feel ashamed. Did that occur to you as soon as you saw her, Gabriel? Of course a pretty, human-looking girl could be useful strategically. But Ada is not here to be a weapon in your war.” She stalks across the room to us, white-knuckled and fuming.

  War. So even Ms. Stuart talks that way?

  “And if they break in here? Rowan would be fine, at least until he came ashore. But what about everyone who can’t just hide underwater? What would they do to Noah, or Destiny, or Ophelia?”

  There’s a shriek of feedback from the amplifier. “You little freaks better come to us now! If you don’t, we’re coming for you. You think we can’t ram through this gate?”

  “I’m going,” I say. Hearing those words coming from my mouth fills me with cold nausea. “Not because of Gabriel. I just don’t want the younger kids to be so scared.”

  “Ada, it’s more dangerous than you realize. We don’t know what weapons they’re carrying, but we do know that they’re enraged, and probably drunk to the point where they’re not in their right minds. You have nothing to prove to us.”

  But even as she says it, Ms. Stuart’s voice is wavering. And the truth flashes in my mind: she thinks I can help protect everyone, the way Gabriel does. It’s just that she hates to see me like that, as a potential tool instead of as a kid.

  Gabriel grins. His skin is bone white and his blue eyes gleam; oh, so he thinks this is fun. “Let’s do this.”

  He tries to take my wrist again, but I yank it away. I’m not letting Gabriel pull me along like it’s all his decision. We zigzag past everyone and slide back the glass door, and then we’re both running down the hill, the grass at our feet streaked gold and blue with falling sun and long shadows.

  Headlights pierce between the black bars of the gate: a heavyset pickup truck reverses, then slams forward again with a horrible metallic squeal. I can see the blurred reddish silhouette of warm bodies massed close together in the dimness under the trees. A fiery plume spews into the air above them. Those people brought a flamethrower? There’s a babble of shouting voices and what looks like two men up on the truck fighting over something.

  Gabriel said that we look like their own kids. Can he really control his skin? So far it’s burst into a tumult of colors every time I’ve seen him get upset. If his whole plan is based on the two of us passing for normal, what will happen if he loses it in front of a bunch of violent drunks?

  I can’t think about that now. The truck accelerates again, and the gate groans with the impact. We have to make this stop.

  We’ve reached the bottom of the slope, where the shadows grow denser. They spot us and a shout goes up. I don’t really know, but I guess they see us only as two dark, basically human shapes running in their direction. Gabriel takes my hand, and this time I don’t pull away.

  We charge straight into the beaming headlights and stop twenty feet back—​out of range of the flamethrower, probably, but that won’t help us if someone has a gun. The whole mob stops yelling. Their faces press forward in a row of glowing ruby blobs. The last of the sun is fading behind them, so to Gabe they probably look dark, with barely any detail on their faces.

  “You wanted to see us?” Gabriel calls. “Here we are.”

  I glance over at him, and he’s doing a great job of looking like a regular, handsome human boy. So far, anyway. In front of us the crowd is murmuring in confusion. We’re nothing like they expected.

  “You’re not the ones we had in mind,” a man booms in reply. He climbs up onto the cab’s roof and stands there swaggering on spread legs. I see the speakers now, up on the back of the truck; maybe those men were wrestling over the microphone. The guy on the cab has it now. “Why don’t you send down some of those bug-faced brats you’re hiding?”

  A few shouts follow that. A fist pounds on the bars. For a moment there, it seemed like Gabe’s plan was working, but now I can feel their madness starting to seethe again.

  We can make them feel ashamed—​because it’s harder to look at us and pretend we’re not kids. My whole job is just to be a person, then, and hope that they’ll see I’m a person.

  I let go of Gabe’s hand and step forward. “Hi,” I say. “I’m Ada Halcyon Lahey. I’m in seventh grade. I think maybe you don’t understand, but there are a lot of little kids here. You’re frightening them. Could you please go home?”

  And then I notice for the first time what most of them have in their hands. Rocks and a few gasoline-reeking bottles with rags stuffed in the tops. My legs go rigid, and my breath clumps like ashes in my throat.

  “Little kids?” the man with the microphone sneers. His shirt is white against the dimness, and the red heat of his blood makes it glow like a lantern. He’s thirtyi
sh, dark-haired, muscular. “Or little kimes?”

  I have to answer, but I can’t make a sound. I feel cold and brittle, as if I could shatter at a touch.

  But then Gabriel is beside me. “Which are we?”

  The man looks him up and down. “Who knows? We can’t see everything you’ve got.” A few people titter, but at least that didn’t get a big laugh.

  Gabriel pulls his shirt over his head and drops it on the grass. He’s still as blank and pale as paper, just the ruby of his body heat shining softly as he walks past me. Straight toward the gate.

  “You don’t expect a twelve-year-old girl to take off her clothes for you, do you? But you can look at me, if you’re so curious. So what do you see? Would you be proud of yourself if you hurt me?”

  There’s a brief silence, then someone mutters, “What are we doing here? Let’s just go.”

  He’s only a couple of yards away from them when I see it start: rippling amber and bronze and blue lap up his naked back like flames. His skin seems to light up in every cell—​so he has some kind of bioluminescence, which makes the illusion of fire a lot more convincing. I’m behind him so I can’t guess what the crowd is seeing, but I can hear them gasp as the colors beat higher, starting at his waistband and whirling up to his shoulder blades.

  “My God!” a voice yells. “He’s burning! He’s burning from the inside!”

  “Gabriel!” I call. “Come back!” I thought he was just getting too emotional to control himself, but he laughs. Loud and harsh.

  He’s doing this on purpose. His skin looks like fire-flooded glass now all the way to his hair. The people crushed against the gate start to shriek and stumble over one another, fighting to get away from him, and he still keeps on advancing very, very slowly. He’s being incredibly brave, but there’s also something appalling about it. He’s enjoying their fear so much.