by Sarah Porter
It doesn’t bother with paths. When I veer to avoid getting scratched up by the brambles, it pauses and waits for me. “So, hey? You can’t speak English, can you? Because we really need to talk. Or can you maybe communicate psychically or something?”
It just ripples in response, a living kite that doesn’t seem to feel the wind. I can see its reflection like a million blue sparks caught on the clustered grass seeds.
“Ms. Stuart is looking for you. But if you wanted her to know you’re here, you could find a way to let her know yourself, right? So does that mean you don’t want me to tell?”
We’ve reached a place where the meadow sinks into a deep hollow, and I have to sit and let myself slide down the flattened stems until it’s safe to stand again. The blue comes back to me, shapes a corner of itself into a hand, and deliberately runs its fingers through my hair. It’s different from a person’s touch, more like a bristling current blowing by, but it’s stronger than you might expect.
“You’re saying you could touch her, right? You just don’t want to? And I guess you know that nobody else can see you, and that’s why you’ve been coming to me?” Something occurs to me. “If you can make a hand, then you could also give yourself a head? That way we could do yes and no questions really easily, because you could nod?”
It doesn’t react to that. We’ve reached the margin of the woods, and it dives between the trees.
I slip in after it. The rustling canopy overhead gleams red with drowsy birds and clambering raccoons, and only a few loose hairs of moonlight drift through. The ground is much clearer here, so I can walk without worrying about thorns. I watch the blue pouring straight through tree trunks, but then it seems to remember that I can’t and starts swaying around them instead. For something so completely inhuman, it seems to know a lot about how people work.
Signs of intelligence, for real.
“You want to show me something?”
A spot at the blue’s edge boils up, rocking and flashing until it settles into the shape of a human head with billowing hair. It glances back at me, just like somebody looking over their shoulder. I’m sorry I suggested it. For a sliver of an instant, it looks exactly like Ophelia. Then like Gabriel.
Then me. It smiles in a sassy way that doesn’t seem like me at all and nods. Ada, it mouths, but no sound comes out.
There’s no point in screaming. I don’t know what it would do if I turned and ran away up the hill; would it overpower me, or infiltrate my mind somehow? A quick shudder runs down my limbs, but I remind myself that I followed it for a reason. It’s important to understand what it wants. I need to stay brave and not waste my chance.
It ripples on, but my feet stay glued to the ground now. I’m not quite ready to go tagging blindly after it into the dim woods, not before it answers a few more questions. After a moment it streams back, mouthing something with my name in it again. It takes a few tries before I make it out: Ada, darling. Come with me.
“What are you?” I ask. “Have you always been here? I just, I want to know you better.” If it’s as smart about emotions as it is about other things, then I’m sure it can hear the fear kicking in my voice.
It grins—which isn’t exactly reassuring—and whirls itself into a perfect, flashing sphere. There’s a horrible moment where I see my features stretching themselves around the globe it’s made. Then I glimpse a hint of thicker shapes; they look like continents. Is it saying it’s been around as long as the Earth has? But really, it could mean almost anything. It might just be telling me that time doesn’t make sense to it, that it spins by in a blur, something like that.
It bursts into fragments, and for half an instant I think it’s leaving. Then it gathers again and goes back to mimicking my head, and nods in a way that seems to say, Next question? I’m not sure this is going so well, but I’ll try.
“Why are you so important? What does Ms. Stuart want with you?” But that’s probably too complicated for it to explain, even if it knows the answer.
Or not. It’s smirking so viciously now that it’s like watching my face and Gabriel’s rolled into one. Then it changes and mimics him exactly, even its brightness shifting in a way that looks like the patterns in his skin. It mouths something again: a hollow whisper that I can’t hear but that crawls up my back anyway.
Power.
Power, Ada. They want power.
“Power to do what?” I ask. It still has a head, but it isn’t anyone in particular now, just a bubbling of humanish features, eyes and mouths gliding at strange angles. A blue hand holds something round and semi-flat—a petri dish, like the ones I saw in Ms. Stuart’s office? Then it morphs again, first into crashing ocean waves, then into a tumble of animal fragments: antlers and snouts, a beating hawklike wing, a coil like a snail shell, but there are still human mouths swarming through it all. It’s so much like my dream, but with a racing chill replacing the sweetness I felt then.
All the mouths are laughing.
Rowan must have been wrong about my self-control, because the next thing I know, I’m crashing into branches, stumbling over roots, and I don’t even remember deciding to run.
Chapter Fifteen
WHEN I wake up, I’m in my bed, and after a few minutes stretching against my sheets, I realize what’s weird about that: I have no memory at all of how I got here. I remember the woods, the blue brightness reflecting off the tree trunks and the undersides of leaves; I remember that laughing tangle of faces and wings, I remember panicking. Then nothing.
As I think it over, I realize that’s a good thing. If I’d been awake while all that was happening, I’d definitely have some memory of scrambling up the hill and into the unlit maze of our hotel. So the whole episode must have been a very vivid dream. The blue didn’t come for me last night, or try to take me somewhere, or mouth silent words that could only be meant as a warning. I’ve just been wondering about it so much that it sank deep in my mind and gave me a nightmare. That’s the only logical explanation.
As soon as I have that all figured out, our alarm clock goes off. Ophelia flutters sleepily and sends a glass of water on her nightstand plummeting to the floor. It bounces on the carpet instead of breaking, but her shoes and the book she left spread on top of them get soaked.
“Darn.” She’s up on one elbow, smiling at the mess. “When I was little, I knocked stuff over all the time. I’d start flapping without meaning to and break everything. And then I got the idea that that was why my parents didn’t want me and I started tying my wings down with old tights. I thought somehow my parents would know how hard I was trying to be what they wanted, and they’d show up at the gate and take me home with them.” She started the story bubbling with happiness, but now each word comes slower than the one before until they’re grinding like teeth. “Ms. Stuart made me stop tying them, and I was so angry I wouldn’t leave my room for a week. I thought she didn’t want anyone to love me, ever. See? I didn’t understand anything.”
Ophelia has never asked me a single thing about my parents or my life before I came here, and I know why: she’s too afraid of how it would make her feel. I slide out of bed and start digging around for clothes and a not-horribly-musty towel.
“What if they wanted to keep you and it was just that they were too scared of being attacked? You’ve seen how psycho people can get, like the mob that night. Imagine if we were living in a regular house and we didn’t have a gate protecting us. Your parents could have been, not even afraid for themselves, but afraid of what would happen to you.”
I was trying to comfort her, but her mouth twists bitterly. “You’re always talking about how scared normal people are. I think you don’t want to admit that they’re actually just mean. How would you even know?”
“Because I grew up with them. My mom was terrified. Not of real chimeras, because there weren’t any around, not as far as she knew. But just of the whole idea. Like, that people might not be exactly human someday.”
“Gabriel says we’ll neve
r be able to completely trust you as long as you keep making excuses for them. And calling them scared is totally an excuse.”
My heart jars hearing his name. It’s like part of me believes my dream last night was real and now I have to be very alert whenever anyone mentions him.
“Maybe he’s just saying that to make himself feel better. About acting so stupid that he almost got me killed.”
She’s up now in front of the window. Morning sun streaked with the shadows of roses dapples her back and falls on her translucent wings so sharply I can count the petals.
“I don’t want to believe him, Ada. When you look at me, I feel like you see me as—new and exciting, like we could all be miracles just the way we are. Like you really believe we’re the start of something amazing. But when you talk, it’s something else.” She isn’t looking at me. “I’m not the only one who worries about it. Even people who like you a lot wonder how much you’re on our side.”
When I went to bed last night Rowan and Ophelia were still on the beach, and maybe after I left they were talking about me. Is that who she means?
“I think I see both sides. My mom was pregnant when I left. So, Ophelia, if the baby dies because I infected my mom, how could I feel okay about that? I would be a murderer. That’s all I’m saying. I understand why they’re scared, because I am too.”
I don’t say, You’ve been in here all your life, so you’ve never had to worry about anything like that happening.
“Well, what if the baby is like me? Or what if she can fly for real? Would you still feel bad, if you wind up with a little sister who’s an actual faerie? Normal people don’t even use the sky, anyway, except for airplanes, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t belong to us.”
It’s one of those funny moments when you can see into someone else’s mind. I feel like I’m watching every daydream Ophelia ever had, all filled with the flash and spin of dragonfly people: a whole kingdom of them, somersaulting over the treetops. She’s waiting for that day so passionately that it sends a twitch through her wings, even if she won’t be alive to see it. And I know what I should say: Are you kidding? It would be awesome if I had a sister like you!
But I can’t do it. “I’d still feel bad, because it would be hard for her. Just like it’s hard for us.”
She starts to turn and stops abruptly with her wings quivering, watching me from the edge of one faceted eye. And I know it was the wrong thing to say, and she’ll think it means I’m not trustworthy. Though not trustworthy for what?
I think of what the blue said in my dream. They want power. That might be true for Gabriel, but I’m sure that’s not what Ophelia’s wishing for. I’ve seen her dreams like they were shining straight into me.
She wants the sky.
“Ada?” Ophelia has turned around now as she shimmies one of her chopped-up shirts past her hips and shoves both hands into the sleeves. Of course she can never pull on anything over her head. “What happened to your legs?”
I guess there is a stinging sensation in my calves. I’ve been doing my best to ignore it.
When I look down, both shins are scored all over with deep scratches and smudges of dried blood. Just as if I’d run in a frenzy through blackberry bushes, with no awareness at all of where I was going. I stare at my legs and then back at her, and I just can’t make myself answer.
Chapter Sixteen
IT’S A hot day and there’s no money for air conditioning, so every window in our conference room is propped open with ancient textbooks or donated boots three sizes too big for any of the kids here. Dr. Jacoway comes shuffling in to give us one of his dreamy lectures on science. He’s an old man, as fat and gray and sad-looking as a storm cloud. Below his too-short pants his ankles pouch in such thick rolls of ashy flesh that, if I didn’t know better, I seriously might think he was a kime too, maybe part walrus. A few of the younger kids start giggling, just watching him walk in.
“Origins,” he murmurs, then waits, maybe for us to be quiet or maybe until he can remember where he is. “How many human myths—and please know I include you in that heartbreaking category, human, yes, Homo mutandus every one of you children—concern origins, whether of some aspect of our universe or ourselves? The origins of life, thought, the sun? Now we have a new origination to consider: yours.”
There’s an awkward silence, but except for a few titters, no one interrupts. Everyone knows this is just how Dr. Jacoway acts. He stares into the corner, and his face looks like it’s melting down a drain. It took me a few days to get over constantly worrying that he was about to start sobbing.
“So: tell me the story. How did the chimeras come into being? Make it mythic, please, my dears. Make it a grand enough narrative to be worthy of you. Give yourselves something to live up to.”
He falls silent, and his eyes roll sleepily from one face to the next. Is he actually waiting for someone to raise a hand? What’s the point, when everyone knows the story anyway? There’s nothing all that mythic about a bunch of bored scientists at Novasphere getting sloppy and dropping a test tube or whatever happened. We all look around at one another, eyebrows raised and antennae fidgeting.
The totally amazing thing is that Marley puts up her hand. It’s a shock, because as far as I can remember, she hasn’t spoken once in class, just slumped in the corner with a book. And even though she kept turning the pages, you could tell she wasn’t really focused on them.
Dr. Jacoway doesn’t call on her, just gapes in complete bafflement. Marley looks almost too abashed to talk, but then she does anyway.
“I think we’re being punished by God,” she says, so softly it’s hard to hear her. “For how people have hurt the planet so much, and made so many species go extinct. So, like, now we have to be the animals. But it’s not fair, because we’re just kids! We’re not the ones who even did it.”
By the last sentence her voice is cracking. The whole room falls into a stunned silence, and Marley buries her face in her crossed arms. It’s the second time she’s said something a lot more interesting than I would have expected—but even bigger than that, Marley used the word we.
“I rather consider you children a great blessing, my dear,” Dr. Jacoway says, with an awkward little laugh. “Please don’t envision yourself accursed.”
I get up to go sit beside her, to try to comfort her somehow. She sees me coming and jumps up, crimson-faced, and storms from the room. The door slams, and there’s another aching silence.
“Poor child,” Dr. Jacoway murmurs. “Well, let her go for now, let her go. Any other thoughts?” Silence. I think about following Marley, but it seems like she’ll just get mad if I do. Maybe Dr. Jacoway is right.
“Um, probably it was a retrovirus?” Rowan says at last. “They experiment with retroviruses for genetic engineering anyway, because viruses like that copy themselves over DNA that’s already there. So, say, if they engineered a really powerful virus and then it mutated and started shuffling random genes around?”
That’s what a lot of people assumed. My dad explained to me once why that couldn’t be right, though. But it’s a relief to think about an explanation so calm and rational after Marley’s. It’s like Rowan’s voice cleared away all the tension, and everyone can start breathing normally again.
Dr. Jacoway nods to himself at the front of the room, his eyelids drooping like he’s listening to a symphony. He never looks anyone straight in the face for more than half a second. “Insufficiently glorious, I think, Rowan. If we were seeking to explain, oh, a genetic tendency to acne, or to pattern baldness, that might be a story adequate to the case. But it’s much too trivial to account for anything so astounding as yourselves. Try again.”
Ophelia laughs sharply. “The sun got bored with regular humans, so it burned holes in their DNA and replaced it with coiled-up sunbeams that pretended to be DNA from different animals! And it was a great invention, because the chimeras were the most magical thing the world had ever seen.”
She has her glas
ses on and I can’t tell where she’s looking, but the words seem aimed at me—or maybe at Marley, even though she can’t hear them.
I rub my legs together, feeling the scabbed ridges of my scratches. I know now that can’t have been a dream last night, no matter how much the idea that it was real scares me. I just wish I’d been brave enough to find out what the blue wanted to show me.
Dr. Jacoway sways on his feet, mulling Ophelia’s version. “Pretty,” he admits at last. “A pretty story. That’s a beginning, certainly. But it lacks the fervor, the bite that transcends mere prettiness and attains the genuine sublime. Real myths aren’t quite so self-serving, in any case.”
Gabriel snorts in irritation and flops his head down on the table. His skin crawls with blue and lavender static.
“It couldn’t have been a virus,” I say. “That’s what my dad told me. Viruses can insert genes into DNA, but not very many genes, because they’re just too small to carry that much information. We have entire chromosomes copied from other species. Like, if you imagine we’re books, then a virus could slip in a few words from other animals, but we have whole chapters! There’s no way a virus could do that.”
Dr. Jacoway turns to me, blinking as if I’d thrown a bucket of water over his head. “Ha. And where did you come from, inexplicable child? Another one, indeed, in the space of ten minutes! Have I seen you before?”
He knows all the kids he helped raise from the time they were babies, but he can’t seem to remember me or Marley at all. I’ve been introduced to him three times already. There’s a new flurry of giggling.
“I’m Ada. I got here almost a week ago.”
“Your dad, you say, no less. Homo mutandus by analysis, then, but by neither appearance nor upbringing? A wisp of the other under cover of sapiens? Am I correct?”
Almost everyone is fizzling with stifled laughter now. Ophelia has one hand clamped over her mouth. I try to tell myself that it’s the situation that’s funny, and that they’re not laughing at me.
