Tentacle and Wing

by Sarah Porter

  I have to brace myself to reach in there. The creatures look slimy and pitiful, their gooey little feet kicking at each other as they swim. The instant my fingers graze the water, they start writhing frantically, trying to get away, their mouths opening and closing in silent, fishy fear.

  As gently as I can, I catch one just under its tiny arms and lift it. It feels as awful as I expected, and its heartbeat patters into my fingers. It flinches violently at the touch of air. Once it’s out of the water, we can both hear the noise it’s making: a long, wheezy, barely there squeal.

  “It’s terrified.” I hold it in the direction of the filtering daylight. “Rowan, can you see? Can I put it back?”

  “Barely.” He looks sick, his face working like he’s about to cry. “Oh, Ada, just let it go! I’m sorry I asked!”

  I lower it into the water and it splashes away, burrowing under its friends. A droplet splashes on my lip, and the taste is sharp with salt. I would have expected fresh water for things this froggy. “I’m sorry,” I tell them, though I’m pretty sure there isn’t enough human in them for language to mean anything. “Rowan, I could describe them for you?”

  “I got the idea.” Considering the kids we live with, and what we are ourselves, I never would have expected Rowan to sound so squeamish. “Ugh. Well, I guess it stands to reason.”

  “What stands to reason?”

  “Oh—​that if there are mostly human chimeras, there could also be chimeras that go the other way. Ones that are mostly animal, with pieces of us mixed in. Right, Ada? But those—​I don’t know, they’re still little, but I don’t get the feeling that they’re even conscious beings. They don’t seem any smarter than worms, or frogs. It’s like seeing what we are, but dragged down.” He shudders.

  So that’s what’s bothering him. He wants to believe that kimes are a glorious improvement on regular humans, and these seem like such sad, helpless creatures. They’ll probably have a worse chance of surviving than they would if they were ordinary tadpoles, even. Their feet aren’t as good for swimming, for one thing.

  The blue nestles itself around them. Tenderly, like a living blanket. What is it doing in there?

  “So how do you think they got here?” I ask carefully—​because I’m pretty sure someone must have created them on purpose, but why? If you wanted to grow a kime army, those tadpole things don’t look like they’d make the greatest soldiers.

  “Say you’re right about the parasitic algae, like you told Dr. Jacoway? Then algae that were carrying human chromosomes infected a frog, and she laid her eggs in this pool, and that’s what happened when the eggs hatched.”

  It sounds almost reasonable when he says it like that. “You think they just happened by accident?” I don’t know why I have such a strong sense that an accident had nothing to do with it—​that these creatures were made deliberately. And if these guys can live in salt water, they must be something more complicated than just a mix of frog and human genes. I don’t really know, but putting together creatures with that much complexity seems to me like maybe signs of intelligence, all over again.

  “Well, sure.” He seems surprised that it’s even a question. “We’re all accidents. And I guess the thing about that is that some accidents turn out a lot better than others.” He chokes up a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “See, Ada? This is why you shouldn’t worry about us being contagious. Even though I bet we’re not.”

  “What—​because if we go around spreading Chimera Syndrome, really fabulous beings like these creepy tadpoles will happen? Rowan, I’m, uh, not sure that’s logical.”

  “Ada, think about it! You talked about us coming from super-powerful algae. So where’s the algae?”

  Now I get it. “In the ocean.”

  “So Chimera Syndrome won’t need us to spread! The whole business of locking us up and putting Long Island under quarantine—​it’s all just for show! The government has no idea how to stop it from spreading, so they’re playing this stupid game to keep everyone calm. But the reality is, it’s just a matter of time. They can’t control the whole ocean. You see?”

  “Unless that algae went extinct a year or two after it got out of Novasphere, and ever since Chimera Syndrome has been spread by people like me! If it was spreading through the ocean, it would be all over the place by now. What would stop it?”

  Rowan shakes his head disapprovingly. “You’re so smart, and you just use your brains to make yourself feel guilty. It’s too bad.” He gives me a long stare, probably straining to make out my expression in the dimness. “It’s really too bad. But it doesn’t seem like you’ll let me talk you out of it.”

  “You’re right, I won’t. Because I don’t want to lie to myself, Rowan. So how do we get out of here?” We scramble to our feet and turn toward the rubble where we slid down. The slope back up to the surface is only maybe ten feet or so tall, but the rocks are loose, and there’s not a whole lot else to hold on to.

  We walk back there and look it over. “If you climb on my shoulders, maybe you could grab those roots?” Rowan points. “I bet you could pull yourself up from there.”

  “Then what about you?”

  “I’ll wait while you go get help,” he says, and then stops abruptly. “Or—​we were going to tell Ms. Stuart about this, right?”

  I guess I have to say it. “And what if she’s totally aware of this place? What if this is one of those things I’m not supposed to know about, like that hole in the fence? I don’t need her to be any weirder about me than she is already.”

  Rowan gets one of his thoughtful looks. “I guess that’s a possibility. Okay. Then you didn’t see it. I’m the only one who fell down here, and you—​you’re pretty dirty, so we have to say something—​you tried to pull me out, and when you couldn’t, you ran back to the hotel. Sound good?”

  It sounds good if he sticks to our story. It sounds good, unless he’s planning to betray me. I look in his face, and it seems kind and honest and open, and I just don’t know whether to trust him. But I can’t think of a better idea.

  “Okay.”

  He crouches down and braces himself against the wall of scree while I clamber onto his shoulders and plant my feet as securely as I can. His fur and the softness of his flesh make it kind of precarious. He stands slowly, leaning forward into the slope for balance, and I straighten myself and reach for the looping roots. I grab the lowest one and yank; it’s strong.

  “You’ve got it, Ada?”

  “I’ve got it.” I heave myself up with all my strength, and Rowan helps by grabbing my sneakers and pushing up from below. Once I get a knee on the roots, it’s easier. I manage to pull my torso up onto the forest floor, then after kicking for a few seconds, I swing my legs around onto solid ground, too. I get to my feet and look down at Rowan’s round pink face, turned up to me. The sun is sinking at the perfect angle to frame him in a brilliant splotch of gold. “Thank you. I’ll be back as soon as I can, okay?”

  “I’m not going anywhere.” He smiles. “Hey, Ada?”

  “What?” I see something in his face, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe wistful is the right word?

  “Never mind. But thanks for not being too mad at me, about the spying. I would absolutely never do anything that could hurt you. I wouldn’t even think it. You know that?”

  “Not really,” I tell him. “I don’t know anything. But I want to believe that we’re friends.”

  “We’re friends,” he says, but there’s an ironic tension in his voice that makes me a little uncomfortable. “I’ll see you soon.”

  It seems like there’s something else I should say, maybe even something important, but I’m not sure what it is. So I wave to him and take off. It must be dinnertime by now, and everyone will be wondering where we are.

  There’s so much I have to figure out, but the whole time I’m running back through the woods and across the meadow, I can’t keep my thoughts together. Instead my mind is just a big mess of images: those part-human
tadpoles, Rowan’s face gazing up from the hole, and the spilled blood on the Novasphere parking lot, beaming with sunlight, that Dr. Jacoway talked about.

  And the blue just now, folding itself into a nest. The blue last night, pretending to be me, and a spinning globe, and then me all over again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  TWENTY MINUTES later, Ms. Stuart and Dr. Jacoway, Gabriel and Martin—​who is also thirteen and part beetle, with useless iridescent green wings and antennae and disturbing extra joints in his arms and legs, and who seems pretty seriously not bright—​are all following me through the woods. Gabriel has a coil of rope slung from one shoulder and a flashlight sticking out of his left pocket. Furious jags of color are running through his skin, even though I’ve told him five times that Rowan is fine. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him this tense.

  “Ada? You said it was in sight of the wall?” Ms. Stuart asks after we’ve been wandering back and forth for a while. “You’re sure about that?”

  I bet she knows exactly where it is. Why do we have to go through this charade of searching everywhere? “I noticed the wall through the trees, but it wasn’t that close. And there was a clump of paper birch trees maybe twenty feet away, in the direction of the water.”

  “The birches!” Dr. Jacoway exclaims. “Five of them, arching gracefully outward like the jets of a fountain? Pearl-colored in the gloom?”

  I think there were five trunks, now that I hear him say it. “That’s probably right. Do you know where they are?”

  “I do, I do. A favored spot of mine, on those rare occasions when I can steal a solitary hour. Not that I regret any of it, not a single moment of the years I’ve devoted to you children. You are my heart’s refuge. The only beings I have ever seen both strange and revelatory enough to make me feel truly at home . . .” His head starts rocking and I get a little worried that he’s completely forgotten what we’re doing out here, but then he snaps into focus again. “Come. We are much too far from the sea.”

  He turns and plunges in a waddling way into an especially dense patch of underbrush, cracking and stamping, and we all go after him.

  “Rowan?” Gabe yells. “Rowan? Where are you?”

  A responding cry, or maybe a moan, echoes dimly through the trees. If that’s Rowan, he must have been badly injured somehow in the time I’ve been away. I thought Gabriel was overreacting, but now urgency jolts through me, too.

  “Rowan, we’re here! We’re coming!”

  It’s getting darker, orange slices of sunset stretching ahead as we walk. In the dusk the birches stand out like arms reaching up for us.

  The moaning sound comes again, but this time it seems much too far away to be coming from anywhere near those trees. “Gabe? Do you think that’s him?” I ask. “I thought at first it was, but now it sounds wrong.”

  Gabriel just shakes his head without looking at me. It’s like he thinks this is my fault. I feel like snapping at him that Rowan was the one following me, not the other way around.

  “Careful, please,” Dr. Jacoway murmurs. “Gabriel, you are too impetuous. We can’t have you falling in as well, not when you’re carrying the rope.” He chuckles, so maybe that was his idea of a joke. All at once he veers left and drops to his knees, staring at the ground. Once I get there I can see how Rowan and I broke through a tangle of thin branches and vines on our way into that underground pit; maybe someone deliberately concealed the entrance. “Rowan, my dear boy, are you down there?” Dr. Jacoway shouts down, then cocks his head and listens. “Isn’t this the place?”

  He’s asking Gabriel; probably he’s completely forgotten who I am again.

  “This is it. Definitely. Isn’t Rowan there?” I drop down next to Dr. Jacoway. The sun has sunk low enough that not a single beam makes it into the pit, and as far as I can tell, the blue has gone, too. All I see is shadow. Maybe Rowan fell asleep so far back in the cave that I can’t see the glow of his warmth? “Rowan? Rowan, it’s me, Ada! We’re here to get you out!”

  Ms. Stuart just stands there with a strange look on her face. With the sun falling behind her, it’s hard to figure out what she’s feeling.

  That moaning yowl blasts through the woods again, and now I’m positive it can’t be Rowan. It’s deep and rumbling, but with a piercing, tinny warble at the top. It’s coming from the direction of the sea, and there’s no imaginable whale song or seal bark that could sound like that. A shiver crawls down my back.

  The weird thing is that Gabriel isn’t bent over the ragged roots framing the hole, screaming for his missing friend. He’s standing five feet away with his hands on his hips, staring into the distance where we all heard that cry.

  I try not to, but I start imagining what it could be. I saw the kimes in the pool. If there are other mostly animal kimes out here, some of them might be a lot bigger. A lot more vicious. Maybe that bellowing thing came ashore and reached into the hole with endless, many-segmented arms while Rowan gaped up at it, too petrified to run. Or maybe it crawled in from the darkness and throttled him before he even saw it. Now that I think about it, I didn’t notice a back wall in the shadows past the pool.

  “We have to go down there! The cave—​Rowan said it went back—​it might turn into a tunnel. We have to look for him.”

  Ms. Stuart raises an eyebrow. “Are you volunteering, Ada?”

  Gabriel definitely told her everything I said about the blue, because for the first time it’s obvious how much she dislikes me.

  “I’d—​rather not go alone. But even with the flashlight, the rest of you might miss Rowan in the dark somewhere, and I won’t. I mean, if he was knocked unconscious somehow.” Of course, if those tadpole things in the pool are Ms. Stuart’s experiment, she’ll probably find an excuse to keep me out of the cave. She’ll want only people she trusts to see them. “So yes, I’m volunteering.”

  Unless she knows exactly what’s making that cry. It could be another one of her special projects. Maybe she’s so fed up with me that she’ll send me down there knowing I won’t come back.

  She gives me a nod, but her mouth stays grim. If the tadpoles aren’t her creation, then who else could be responsible? Dr. Jacoway is just too out of it, I think.

  “No one could say that you lack for courage, Ada. We can use the rope to lower you first. I’ll follow. Gabriel and Dr. Jacoway should wait here.”

  Gabriel whirls on her. “I am not waiting! Ada can sit around while we go search for Rowan. Ms. Stuart, if she’s getting—​I mean, you know it’s serious. Rowan wouldn’t just run off into some tunnel when he knew we were coming.”

  “She?” I ask. No one answers. I don’t think he was talking about me, though.

  “Ada raised a compelling point. This is precisely the kind of situation where her abilities can be most useful to us.”

  “Then you wait here. Ada and I will go. What, are you worried that I’ll lose her for you?” Gabriel might be rude to everyone else, but I’m not used to hearing him talk to Ms. Stuart this way; she and Rowan are the only two people I’d guess he genuinely loves. More than anything that’s happened so far, the snapping shows how agitated Gabe really is.

  So what was he about to say? If she’s getting angry? If she’s getting hungry? Could she mean that long, rippling serpent shape I saw out in the ocean?

  “The last time you and Ada undertook a mission together, Gabriel, it didn’t turn out especially well. I don’t doubt your commitment. Your judgment is another matter.”

  Gabriel grins harshly. “It turned out great, actually. We haven’t had any more trouble with normals screaming at the gate since then. What happened that night must have really freaked them out.”

  Ms. Stuart might hate me, but not enough to be happy with Gabe basically saying that getting me bashed in the head was a fantastic idea. She gives me a quick, embarrassed look.

  “What about me?” Martin asks sleepily. “I’m stronger than any of you.” His antennae twitch. No one answers.

  Gabe smirks, pivots away
from us, and flings himself down into the hole. The rocks rattle under his body, and he crashes with a gasp. It takes me a moment to realize that he carried the rope in there with him, so there’s no chance of anyone else getting lowered down gently, either. Whoever goes is going the hard way.

  “I’m okay,” he calls up. I can see him down there in the dark, a red shape hunched on the rocks. He’s clutching his ankle.

  “Gabriel!” Ms. Stuart yells fiercely. “Gabriel, forcing the issue is in no way acceptable behavior. Get—” Then she realizes how absurd it is to order him to climb back up here. That’s why he took the rope with him: so there would be no choice. She snorts and turns to me. “Ada? Are you still volunteering to go, even though your companion is clearly a reckless idiot?”

  From something in the tone of her voice, I know she’s angry in the way parents get when they’re very afraid for you. Out of all the kids here, Gabriel is the one she truly loves as her own son.

  “I’m still volunteering,” I say. “Rowan is my friend too.”

  Her eyebrows contract just a bit. “In the outside world, adults have the luxury of being precious about the safety of children. We don’t have that here. All we have are common resources and calculations as to how best to use what we have. For Rowan’s sake, I would stake a great deal. We are using you now, Ada: using your abilities to find a boy we all love. I want to make sure that’s clear.”

  “You aren’t using me,” I snap. It’s hard to face slamming into that hole again, but I shift myself and sit on the edge. “I’m not going to find Rowan for you. I’m using myself to help someone I care about.”

  She smiles. “By all means, think of it that way. If you prefer.”

  I don’t say anything, just push off with both hands. The darkness opens around me like a wound, and the rocks clamor and jump at my back. I wasn’t prepared for how much sliding down would hurt now that I’m already bruised. I land in a swirl of bouncing stones and skid five feet before my body wheels to a halt.

  Gabriel’s got the flashlight out. He’s aiming it into the pool. His right knee is bent like he’s trying to keep his weight off that ankle.