Feeder

by Patrick Weekes

  —and then the world swallowed her up.

  11

  IARA

  She had never felt more helpless.

  There were half a dozen of the troopers, their wetsuits still dripping, holding spearguns trained on her and Tapper. Hawk, who thought himself so big and strong, knelt before the man called Kirk, trembling and crying.

  “Look at you, Mister Bautista,” Kirk said, smiling down at him. “Feeling a little uncomfortable now? You were fine for a while, and now you’re feeling everything that you didn’t have to feel, and it’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

  “Back.” Hawk coughed, still on his knees. “Put it back.”

  “See how easy it is, kids?” Kirk looked at Iara now. “You’re not quite as immune to the eels as you thought, and now you’re going to come with us and get all eel’d up, and soon everything will be fine.”

  “You will have to kill us first!” Iara proclaimed with a courage she did not feel, and under the words, added a tiny little click. She could not see Kirk with the echo. That had never happened before. She could see the guards, though.

  “Then we’ll kill you,” Kirk said, and shrugged. “It’s all the same to me, and it sounds like Hawk will be happy to get his eel back, so he doesn’t have to feel like a navy brat who’s been a loser at every school he’s ever gone to. As for you, well . . . we’ll still have the pieces, Miss Costa.”

  “What are you?” Iara asked, shuffling toward him and adding another click. The guards tracked her movement but did not fire, and now she had the triangulation and the picture of the room, and before Kirk could answer, she turned to one of the guards and said, “Kirk is an imposter, and you have to kill him to serve your mistress, Miss Lake.”

  The guard’s speargun wavered. “Wait,” he said, turning toward Kirk. “I think—”

  “Kill him,” Kirk said with an absent wave, and the other guards all turned and fired without hesitation. The guard screamed and coughed and fell to the ground, twitching, and a moment later, an eel slithered out from his body. “Congratulations, Miss Costa. You got someone killed.”

  Iara swallowed. “He was a puppet,” she said quietly.

  “Just like Mister Bautista,” Kirk said with an agreeable smile. “I mean, he didn’t have as much left, and who knows how much he’d have recovered, but he was still alive,” Kirk said. “That means his death is on you. Just like your parents’ divorce is on you.” He smiled and let go of Hawk, who collapsed, shuddering. “You see, Miss Costa, that’s what I am.” He started toward her. “When people forget what they are, when they think they’ve got a clean slate, I’m the one who reminds them.” Tapper stepped between Iara and Kirk, and Kirk clapped a hand on his shoulder. As Tapper swayed and trembled, Kirk gently pushed him out of the way. “I’m the one who drags them back down where they belong.”

  “Don’t listen to him, Ipanema,” Tapper said weakly.

  “Ipanema?” Kirk smiled. “Because of ‘The Girl from Ipanema,’ who was Brazilian. You know, she was a blonde. Not like Miss Costa here, who has some indigenous blood, enough that all the pretty blond people would look at her strangely even without the wheelchair.” He cocked his head at her. “The green hair is about the only part of people looking at you that you can control, isn’t it, Miss Costa?”

  “My parents did not divorce because of me,” Iara said, refusing to break eye contact with the terrifying man.

  “No, it was your father’s drinking, according to our reports,” Kirk said casually, “and I think you know why his drinking became such a problem. He couldn’t stand looking at his little girl anymore. Do you ever wonder if it might have been easier for him if you’d just died in that accident?” He smiled. “I mean, he’d still be sad, but he wouldn’t have to look at you.”

  Iara broke eye contact. More than anything in the world, she wanted to sit down. Instead she quietly said, “You say nothing I have not said to myself.”

  “But you forget sometimes,” Kirk said, and stepped in, hand raised. “That’s what I’m—”

  He broke off as a sudden roaring rumble shook the room, then looked over at the guards. “What is that?”

  “Hi, yeah, so!” Maya said from behind the guards. “You’ll never guess what happened to the air lock!”

  A waist-high wall of water swept into the room, sending clothing racks flying everywhere and sweeping the guards off their feet.

  Iara dropped her crutches and dove into the water as the waves hit. For a moment there was the chaos of the water, throwing her everywhere, with clothes slapping her face like branches.

  Then she was back in her element, the girl who had swum the fast rivers even before she had become the Nix. The roar of the water was a message, a signal of direction and power and speed, and she heard the sloshing of clothing racks and the gurgling of the guards, and she knew where everyone was.

  Skimming along the floor, she pushed cleanly through the current to where Tapper clung to a shelf, huddled. She grabbed his arm, and for a moment he seemed like he would swing at her, but then he realized it was her, and he let her pull him away.

  She shoved away again, darting across the room, weaving through white water and clothing racks like they were rocks in the stream, Tapper’s hand clutching her own. She heard Hawk as he tumbled along the floor, still curled up tightly, and she went to him, took his arm, and pulled him into a tight embrace.

  “We need your strength!” she called, pitching her voice to cut through the roar of the waves. “Please!”

  As the water spread across the large room, its force lessened. She heard one of the guards, now back on his feet, coming toward them, and she pulled away from Tapper, dove down, pushed off the bottom with both hands, and leaped from the water with a punch that sent the guard toppling back into the water.

  By the doorway, Kirk stood unmoving, glaring in her direction. She sent him a dirty gesture as she splashed back into the water.

  Hawk was up now, clinging to a shelf with Tapper beside him. His eyes were haunted. “I want . . . I want . . .”

  “Hey!” Iara swam to him and grabbed his shoulders. “There is much pain in life, but it is not better to feel nothing.” Then she pulled him in and kissed him hard on the lips.

  “Are we doing friend kisses?” Maya shouted, suddenly beside them, her clothing in disarray from the waves and her blond hair slicked back. “Or is that a Brazilian thing that I am totally willing to be okay with? No offense.”

  “I didn’t know if you were coming back, Blondie,” Tapper called over the rushing water. “Took you long enough.”

  “You saw me leave?” Maya asked, and then, “Oh, right, your eyes. Yeah, sorry, I couldn’t think of a good way to help, so I broke the air lock instead!”

  “Nah,” Tapper said, “that was good.”

  Hawk was flushed from the kiss, but he still couldn’t look at them. “The things I said . . . Guys, I’m so sorry.”

  “It was the eel,” Tapper said.

  Hawk shook his head. “No. It was me, but me if I’d never had a bad day.” His voice was hoarse, but he was holding on to Iara now. “I’m such a tool.”

  “Yeah,” Tapper said. “But you’re our tool.”

  “It’s okay,” Maya said. “It hurts, but that’s life. Life is about hurting and getting better. You’re you, and you know who you are, and it’s okay. You’re okay.” She looked back to where the guards were pushing aside the clothes racks and getting back to their feet. Kirk was coming toward them as well. “And we should probably run.”

  Iara looked to the far end of the store, where the waist-high water rushed through a doorway leading into darkness. “Follow me,” she called.

  With a strong push, she dove back into her element and swam.

  LORI

  She came out somewhere else.

  It was dark, but it wasn’t the darkness of a room with the lights shut off. It was the darkness of someplace that didn’t have light, that didn’t understand what light even was . . . or maybe a place
that light couldn’t understand itself. It smothered her, enveloping her completely as she spun and swam and kicked, and there was no up, no down, nothing, and she couldn’t breathe, there was no air, there was—

  Her phone buzzed, and the light of the text on her notification screen was a beacon, blazing bright in the endless void. She clutched at her phone, pulled it from her pocket with trembling fingers.

  Handler: lori

  She unlocked her phone, and her cracked screen glowed even brighter, pushing back the dark. At the edge of the light, she could see shapes like the ones she saw if she closed her eyes and pushed hard on her eyelids, forms that twisted, whose edges never met cleanly. Where the light shone brightly, she saw that she floated in gently rippling liquid—not water, because the way it bent the light was different, but liquid nevertheless, glowing a deep and peaceful royal blue in the light before it faded to the otherworldly blackness at the edges.

  She realized that she had forgotten that she couldn’t breathe, but still wasn’t straining.

  And she wasn’t alone.

  Floating before her was a massive form, a rounded mountain of midnight blue with glittering pinpricks of shining silver trailing along the side. Above, or what seemed like above to Lori from where she floated, was a curving plane that stretched away from the mountain into the darkness, ridged with corded rivulets that broke the regularity of its surface.

  She felt a pull, and the strange world lurched around her. It came from between her shoulder blades, and Lori turned even as the world flew, and saw, curling overhead, a cable of ghostly white as thick as her torso. It pulled her around the enormous form, and by the light of her phone, Lori saw the rounded edges turn into something she could understand. The great mountain of midnight blue was the flank, and the curving plane was a fin.

  And as the ghostly white cord pulled her around, she saw the great fangs she had seen so many times before, five times her height in this world and jutting out of a gaping maw whose underbite sent them spiraling upward and bristling in all directions. Above those jaws, a tiny pair of eyes met Lori’s gaze.

  Handler: i tried

  Lori stared into Handler’s face for the first time, her legs dangling, moved slowly by gentle waves that flowed wrongly, curling in all directions.

  When she opened her mouth, the liquid felt hollow, moving away from her lips as though it were afraid of her. That gave her the courage to speak.

  “What are you?” she asked, the words leaving her mouth with little bubbles that weren’t quite round.

  Handler: sorry

  She read it, the words small and feeble on the cracked screen, then turned back to the great fanged maw.

  “You let me think I was a monster,” she yelled, “like you! All this time, you knew! You knew!” The words came out raw, ripping her throat with her fury.

  Handler: would u have believed me

  “You could have tried!” Lori screamed. “Instead you used me as your lure! You let feeders attack me, and you let me think I was one of them!”

  The great face with its huge maw and tiny eyes didn’t change expression, or if it did, there was nothing there that Lori could see.

  Handler: tried. u didnt want 2 hear

  Handler: had to learn 4 yourself

  “Oh, right,” she shot back, “like I had to learn about my parents?” The anger didn’t stop the tears, and they hissed on her face and twisted against the liquid that wasn’t water. “Because you didn’t tell me about them, either! What did you do to them? What did you do to my parents?”

  The ghostly white cord holding her twitched, and she dangled, arms and legs flailing for a moment, as the great maw loomed closer.

  Handler: mourned them

  One eye focused on her. Even tiny for Handler, it was as large as Lori herself, and the pupil wasn’t a circle in the same way that the air bubbles weren’t round, the same way that the shapes at the edge of the phone’s light didn’t come together at angles that made sense.

  Handler: your world is the shallows

  Handler: tiamat got trapped there

  Handler: the coral, me, we fled there

  “Fled what?” Lori asked. She was losing the anger, and she grasped at it desperately. “What were you running from?”

  Handler: i fled a big feeder, im small out here

  Handler: coral hid from leviathan, what tiamat wants

  The thing Tiamat wanted. Lori tried to remember what she’d said. “She wanted to make the coral scream. To summon the Leviathan, so it could . . . erase her from this world?”

  Handler: lev is 2 big, doesn’t fit in ur world

  Handler: strains the world through its jaws to catch little bits

  Handler: changes things but no 1 remembers

  “Like the water rising,” Lori said. “The thing Tiamat wants did that?”

  The enormous eye blinked.

  Handler: like parents

  Lori’s chest tightened.

  Handler: it came after miracoral

  Handler: world changed, like waves from fin

  Handler: water higher

  Handler: ur parents gone

  Handler: i saw u, ben alone

  Handler: no 1 remembered ur parents, no 1 helped u

  Handler: so i tried

  It broke across her like a wave then, and she coughed out a sob that bubbled away into the darkness. Another followed, and her shoulders were shaking, heaving with sobs that came from a place deep inside her she had forgotten for years. She squeezed her eyes shut and let the sobs pour out, wrenching her, shaking her free from everything.

  She couldn’t say how long it went on, only that when the darkness receded again, she was pressed against something, a vast form that was stronger than she could imagine, but yielded ever so slightly under her touch. Her phone was buzzing, words glowing on the cracked screen.

  Handler: is ok

  Handler: im here

  Handler: ur ok

  “I’m not,” she whispered. She felt it . . . felt Handler beneath her hand. “How come Ben gets to remember them?”

  Handler: im tied to him like 2 u

  “What?” Lori felt a panicked lurch in her stomach. “Does he . . . do you use him to hunt—” She broke off as her phone buzzed twice sharply.

  Handler: no

  Handler: hes 7

  “So Ben remembers them because he’s connected to you.” She took a shaky breath. “Why can’t I?”

  Handler: ben wanted 2 remember

  “And I didn’t?” she said, and balled her fist against Handler’s side. “I wanted to forget my own parents?”

  Handler: if it let u not hurt

  Handler: guess just 1 of those things

  “It didn’t work.” Lori sniffled and closed her eyes again, her breath still shaky but coming back, and let her head rest on Handler’s flank. “I was still hurting. I just couldn’t remember why.”

  After a long moment, her phone buzzed, and she opened her eyes and looked down.

  Handler: yes. ur right

  Handler: should have tried more 2 tell u

  Handler: not good protector

  The white cord pulled her away from Handler, and now, as she drew back, she could see Handler’s other flank. Terrible rents marred the midnight-blue skin, ragged wounds from which flecks of silver glittered as they drifted into the water. Jaws, Lori realized, jaws large enough to have speared Handler the way Handler speared most normal feeders.

  Handler: tiamat

  Handler: she’ll keep looking 4 u

  Handler: thinks u can help bring it

  Handler: she’s wrong tho, im 2 small

  Handler: u get ben & be safe

  “What do you mean?” Lori asked. “You can . . . you’re not . . .”

  Handler: new name 4 u both

  Handler: will be on phone

  Handler: stay away from coral,

  Handler: it can lure leviathan

  Handler: so that’s what tiamat will want

  “Wha
t?” Lori flailed against the cord, trying to pull herself through the liquid that wasn’t water back toward Handler, but it was no use. She drew back farther, until most of Handler’s massive form disappeared into the darkness.

  Handler: u r smart and brave and good, lori

  Handler: live good life

  Handler: sorry couldn’t do more

  Then the darkness was complete, and it swam around her and pushed until there was no her left, and she slid and fell, the ghostly white cord pushing her out and away.

  She landed in her parents’ bedroom, the carpet rough on her hands, just in time to watch her phone’s battery die.

  BEN

  Splash Zone Play Space was fun, even if Jenn didn’t like going in the play area.

  Lori didn’t like going in the play area either. She usually sat at the tables and drank a soda and looked at her phone while Ben ran through the obstacle course or went down the slide into the ball pit. Sometimes she would come to the netting that separated the inside from the outside and yell over the noise of other kids to ask if Ben was okay or if he needed anything. Lori worried a lot.

  Ben had asked Jenn if he could have a snack a little while ago, and she had said to come back in half an hour. He hadn’t looked at a clock, but he had gone down the slide twice and had a really fun play fight with a big boy who had red hair and a Ninja Turtles shirt, and they had shouted Power Rangers moves while throwing balls at each other until a Splash Zone Lifeguard in a bright red shirt came by and said that they weren’t supposed to do that, and then both Ben and Ninja Turtle–shirt boy had pretended not to know that they weren’t supposed to do that and said sorry. So it had probably been half an hour.

  He climbed up the steps, which were purple and made of the same padding that all of the floor was here in the play area, and then waited for an Indian girl wearing a pink princess dress and a sparkly silver Splash Zone Birthday Crown to go down the slide first. Then he hopped onto the slide and whoosh-bounced down after her, laughing as the slide heated and stuck under his clothes and sent him tumbling, so that he rolled into the ball pit with a crash of hard plastic flying everywhere.