Affinity

by Dianne Wilson

  He kept his eyes on Runt but choked to see Runt with see-through skin pulled tight over darkness, just like his own. His heart clenched in his chest. Another blink and Runt wore flesh once more.

  The small boy eyed the water warily, but Zee’s voice was gentle, “Don’t be afraid. Here is so much love for you. Come!”

  The water swirled around her as if it were alive, lapping up against her, pressing closer—a loving being delighted at the return of a friend.

  Runt dipped a toe and the water seemed to welcome him too. With a quick grin at Kai, the silent boy stepped into the pool. He stood ankle-deep, wiggling his toes as if feeling them on the end of his feet for the first time. A deep chuckle bubbled through him. He sank deeper into the water, surrendering to the glow that enveloped him.

  Zee was laughing too, one hand supporting Runt’s spine as he floated on his back, making a lopsided angel in the water with his arms and one working leg. Zee’s full attention seemed to be on Runt, and she washed his hands with utmost care.

  Runt lay back, floating on the living liquid, buoyant and free.

  Watching them, Kai felt grubby and old. He sank to his haunches, tracing patterns in the pale sand with his fingers. When he looked up again, a faint black mist hovered above Runt. It dissipated as morning mist before the sun. More came from Runt, oozing through his pores, escaping the confines of his see-through skin. Darkness was leaving him, and in its place, glorious, clean light made him glow like Zee.

  Under the caress of the water, Runt’s tangled dreadlocks slipped free from their knots. A lifetime of dirt clouded the water, but swiftly disappeared, leaving behind shiny brown hair that hung just past his shoulders.

  Zee got to work on Runt’s damaged leg. She rinsed off the blood, working carefully not to cause more pain. “Bite marks,” she said to Kai, all the while keeping eye contact with Runt, who lay back, oblivious. “Only darKound teeth can cause this much damage.” She began scooping water over his thighs, working down towards his ankles.

  Curiosity drew Kai closer. Before his eyes, the wounds—red and bleeding, began to diminish. With every handful Zee poured over him, the swelling reduced until jagged tears came together. Skin reunited with skin, knitting together and smoothing over, leaving no trace of the wounds that had nearly cost Runt a limb.

  Kai wiggled his shoulder blades in discomfort. His own sores radiated pain, a constant burn that ate away at him. Would the water…But he was cursed with Affinity, there would be no loving acceptance from the water for him. At best there might be pain, more judgement. Touch the water and you’ll be taken out. He pulled away so fast his foot slipped and he landed hard on his rear.

  Yeah, probably not.

  7

  Gran had fallen asleep halfway through her tea. Evazee uncurled her fingers from the cup, careful not to spill, and placed it on the tray next to an untouched biscuit. For a moment she considered drinking it, but cold tea just didn’t do it for her. Better to find a vending machine and get something hot.

  The corridor was empty, the lull between visiting hours. Gran’s private room had some benefits.

  Evazee found herself at his bedside again—the young man with spiky hair. Pulling a chair up to his bed, knees pressing into the metal rails, she leaned forward on her arms. Sleep hovered close, but she resisted. As she rested her forehead on the cool sheets, she prayed for his broken body, restoration of his mind. Her spirit engaged with Heaven, drifting in an embrace of listen and speak. Images shot through her mind too quick to grasp. A crying woman with long, curly hair, a boy wandering a deserted street, lost…a flood of images so strong, she shot up as if zapped by lightning. OK, Jesus, I get it. There is more to this guy than a broken body that needs fixing.

  She thought of the letter in her pocket. It would be right to put it back. What was she thinking by taking it? She pulled it out of her pocket and opened the cupboard to return it.

  “You back?” Carla pushed through the swing door, checked her watch, and frowned.

  Evazee felt heat creep into her cheeks. She straightened quickly, shutting the cupboard door with her foot, tucking her hands behind her back, trying not to look guilty.

  “I don’t think you should be here. He needs rest.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t…” she coughed to cover the noise as she crunched the paper into a ball that fit in her palm. “I was just leaving.”

  As the hospital door swished shut behind her, Eva made her decision. She pulled out the letter. Before her conscience could kick in—she had tried to put it back, after all—she slipped a finger under the flap, unfolded the worn pages, and began to read. By the time she reached the last line, her cheeks were wet. She checked her watch for the date and time. He’d missed it.

  This was beyond terrible.

  ~*~

  Kai tucked another broad leaf around the sleeping boy. He’d watched in silence as Zee had tended to his wounds, wrapping them in light that dissolved all that was wrong. His own sores itched, burned, and seeped black goo that made him feel like a leper. But he didn’t ask. He couldn’t. “So I take it you’ll be vanishing again soon?” It came out harsher than he’d intended it to.

  She waved away his question as if it had never been asked, “About Runt…”

  “You’re changing the subject.” He thought her eyes were about to roll, but they didn’t. So she had some self-control. Impressive.

  “Runt is a girl.”

  “What? Don’t lie.”

  “Trust me, she’s a girl.”

  The carpet had been yanked out from under Kai so many times the last few days, his head threatened to split in two. He dropped to his knees, eyes level with hers, “Zee, talk to me. I’m…I’m losing it. I can’t do more weird. My life has been one long marathon on a cracking bridge. So many times my feet have come down on what should be solid but isn’t. This ‘girl’ thing. I—” Words failed him and he sank back, a hand over his eyes.

  “I’m not holding out on you. It works better when you find Tau by yourself, when each Truth you uncover is your own discovery.”

  Runt muttered in her sleep and Zee re-tucked a stray frond, avoiding his eyes. “She really is a girl. But back to you. The truth is you’re the first I’ve ever met here like this.” She fell silent, wrestling inside. “I don’t know how to get you back.”

  “I don’t buy it. Why won’t you tell me?”

  “Are you completely deaf? Or is it just me who you won’t listen to?” Zee paced back and forth over the rough grass, speeding up as she went. She stomped over to a large rock a little way from the river, fury barely contained.

  For a moment Kai thought she might kick it. He hoped she would. Hopping around on one foot might humanize her.

  “Maybe you’re right. It’s all a big conspiracy to trap you here. I’m on the bad guy team, sent to lure you in with my charms. Trap you here forever.” She wiggled her fingers in the air as a hypnotist would.

  “Zee, c’mon. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I guess you think I have some secret super power. I can just snap my fingers, say a magic word, and Voila! A magic gateway home will appear.” She clicked her fingers and flung her arms to the side, opening them wide in a grand gesture. A shimmery line appeared in front of her. Rotating to vertical, it split open with a loud hiss creating a doorway through the air. Things on the other side looked dim, wavering heat waves, unfocussed sepia. Cars driving in a street, a bus…no, wait!

  The bus. He’d been hit by that very bus.

  Zee’s eyes shot wide open. “I was joking. What is this? It wasn’t me, I didn’t do it.” She was breathing too fast, red spots rode high on her cheeks. She kept her arms stretched wide, inching away from the buzzing gateway.

  “Actually, you kinda did. Maybe this is it. The way back.” Kai reached out, stopped just short of touching. His fingers shook. “That must be the bus that caused this mess.” Blood pumped through his brain double-time. “Am I dead?” Pulse flicked wildly.

  Zee turned slowly
, still not daring to lower her arms, “No, Boy. You’re not dead. I think you’re trapped in the spiritual realm.”

  Kai stared through the opening. He stumbled forwards a step. There was a way back. A faint gleam of hope sparked in his belly. Another step.

  The ground beneath his feet erupted under him as if a giant mole were breaking ground. Kai fell back with a yell, missing Runt by a hair.

  A dark figure exploded through the earth mound, his hands wrapped around a metal, umbrella-shaped contraption which he held overhead. It was big enough to shade six people. It spun in a blur. Some sort of digger. He flew up in the air before landing solidly on his feet with a thump that shook the ground. He pressed a button on the side of the machine. It folded up into itself with a hiss and a click and lay on the ground, a solid rod of smoking metal with a long cord attached to one end that remained hooked on something deep in the hole.

  The man wore brown leather, a shifting shade that made Kai’s eyes slide. A stench rolled off him, something Kai couldn’t place, a combination of rotting leather, and earthworms. It made his stomach turn.

  The man’s skin was pale and free from any trace of the dirt he’d just tunnelled through. The man rolled the folded digger aside with his foot and shouted at Zee, “Stay there! Don’t move!” He strode toward her, wolf-like.

  A twisted sense of wrongness filled Kai.

  “Zee! Go!” It came out as a whisper, tight and desperate.

  In a moment that stretched for painful seconds, Evazee’s gaze flew to Kai, Runt, and the man closing in. Indecision paralysed her.

  “Zee!”

  Instantly the hazy way snapped shut and Zee disappeared, her face contorted in conflict as she left.

  The man in brown growled and swore. A second man came through the tunnel, throwing off a harness that linked him to the digger. A third came, then a fourth.

  Kai stopped counting as the leader shifted his focus to Kai.

  His eyes were a vacuum of darkness, no colour in the iris, even the whites were all black. A shifting, coppery snake-light made circular patterns on his forehead, radiating from an ebony circle in the centre. As he moved, it flared then subsided, turning almost invisible, a faint scar. A branding.

  Kai’s insides turned to water. He’d seen that mark before.

  More bodies came from the hole. Soon there was no escape.

  “Pack! Fall in.” The man in brown barked the rough order, never taking his gaze off Kai.

  Kai was surrounded. There was no escape. He inched away from Runt. Maybe they were far enough away for her to go unnoticed. He couldn’t face the thought of her being in the clutches of this bunch.

  Wolfman grabbed his neck in both hands, sharp-nailed thumbs pressing deep into his throat, crushing his airway. Kai fought the urge to cough. The sharp edges would cut skin. This guy needed a manicure. His breathing shallowed, setting stars to dance across his vision.

  “Open it.” His voice was a raspy hiss over a deep bass undertone, a hypnotic combination that both wooed and repulsed Kai. It was at once a command and a reasonable request from a loving benefactor.

  He’d be a fool to ignore it. He should do what this creature asked of him, to please him. “Can’t.” A fiery streak of rebellion flashed through him, resisting the coercion.

  The pressure on his throat increased. Obsidian eyes burned into Kai’s. “Then you must call your friend back.”

  Kai counted twelve men advancing in on him.

  “Can’t.” Forcing the word out took effort. It came out barely louder than a whisper. Talking and having his throat crushed took special skills that Kai didn’t have. A warm droplet of blood trailed down his neck. He’d been right about the nails.

  “Then you’re coming with us. Vin, Dax—hook him up. We’ll make him talk back at the O.S.”

  Kai allowed himself to be dragged toward the hole without putting up a fight. Anything to keep their attention away from the small girl sleeping tucked beneath a palm frond. Giving Runt the best chance at surviving was the only thing that made sense.

  Vin and Dax—one hunched and scraggy, the other all knotted muscle and hairless, Kai had no idea which was which—tied his hands and wrestled him roughly into an empty slot in the shoulder harness. Both had the deep, night eyes and squirming copper snakes on their foreheads.

  The umbrella shot open again. Spread to its full height, it stood barely taller than Kai. Metal clicks filled the air as the others chained in, hooking connectors with the ease of experience. Kai fought down the urge to fight, to run.

  Wolfman aimed the contraption at the hole in the ground and pressed a button.

  The engine kicked in with a soft hum, jolting Kai as it pulled him underground. He went in head first, and the harness kept his upper body close enough to the central cord for him to grasp it in his bound hands, but it left his legs flying out behind him. This seemed to be how it worked. A few more minutes and Runt would remain undiscovered.

  A rear-line digger shouted, “Wait! There’s something else here. It’s a kid.”

  “Bring it,” Wolfman roared from up front.

  The tunnel, hardly wider than his shoulders, swallowed Kai. He gagged at the stench of the tunnel, the moist reek of underground. Yet even the smell could not shake the thought eating through him like smoking acid: they had Runt.

  ~*~

  Evazee pulled her coat tighter against the nip in the breeze. She’d chosen to walk, hoping the crisp morning air would help her stay awake. Third night in a row of little sleep. Dreams of purple trees and the boy from the hospital plagued her. She woke feeling as if she’d run marathons. Too many nights of this and she’d go loopy.

  She checked the name on the letter, SandSky Gallery. It had to be here somewhere. The houses in the street stood old and square, with gables and corrugated metal roofs. All of them had been converted to business premises. Like an older lady going back to work after years at home, each building had been squished into a corporate mould. Walls painted ochre or coffee, the gardens no longer playgrounds for tumbling and laughing, but neat and organised to advertise of the efficiency of the occupants. An optician with his name in reserved letters on a gold plate, at least three estate agents...she lost count as she kept walking.

  In the midst of all the right-angles, stood a pure white building that swelled like a wave in frozen motion. The front façade defied all the rules, curving and flowing as if the bricks were flexible, punctuated by strips of glass running the full height of the wall. A sparkling pattern of salt-white sand and multi-coloured stones like dove eggs patterned the walkway to the door. In fluid silver cursive, the name was embossed on a metal plaque—SandSky, and beneath it in print—Photographic Gallery and Studio. Doors open at 9 AM. It was 8 AM now. A whole hour to kill.

  Drat.

  ~*~

  Their trip through the tunnel was a blur of dirt and deep shadows. They broke ground in a clearing surrounded by a slum of shacks filled with black-eyed people.

  The stench of sweat and despair was almost enough to make Kai want to crawl back in the tunnel. From being tied, his wrists bled not blood but blackness. He shut his eyes and swallowed, and when he opened them his blood was red again. Somehow it didn’t help at all.

  A huge metal digger erupting in their midst didn’t seem unusual for the slum dwellers. None of them showed any surprise or fear.

  Kai swung around to take them all in. A crowd of them shuffled closer, all dressed in rags, looking more dead than alive, spines bowed under invisible weight too heavy for them to bear.

  Kai understood fear. He’d lived his life in its shadow. He knew that fear and death were close friends. This lot weren’t afraid because they were a breath away from being dead already. He could read it in their empty eyes.

  Wolfman collapsed the digger, waited until all the pack were out of the ground and unhooked before pressing another button which retracted the cord. One of the men swung the contraption onto his back and they set off.

  Kai’s captors marc
hed him through the crowd that melted away before them, offering no resistance. Kai kept his gaze forward, avoiding the vacant stare of the slummers and not daring to show an interest in Runt. His gut said it was her only hope. His fists didn’t agree, itching to connect with some noses. The battle inside him raged.

  A boy flew from the crowd and landed smack in their path, clutching his belly. His opponent, a skinny thing, taller by a head and filled with rage much bigger than his ribs could contain, threw himself at the boy. “Hold still! I wanna hit you.” The boy on the ground uncurled in a second, aiming both feet at Skinny’s midriff. They connected with a crunch, sending the bigger boy reeling back.

  Two of Kai’s captors grabbed the boys, picked them up and tossed them into the crowd. It happened too fast for the crowd to react, and the boys landed on bodies, not hard dirt. Human bowling at its finest.

  The bowler sneered, “Shove off! You’re in the way.”

  Dazed, the two disentangled themselves from the people they’d landed on and ran off together, all antagonism gone.

  Kai puzzled over it. Had they staged the whole thing to show off their skills? It could be that they thought acceptance to the Pack would give them a better life. Looking at the sad apathy of the crowd, Kai could believe it.

  Everything here was grey. Slum shacks, sky…people. The monotony of it went on for miles. In the centre of the town rose a towering block of ebony at least six stories high. The building grew taller as they got close, an imposing block of midnight.

  At Wolfman’s touch a hidden door slid open.

  Once inside, the pack left down different passages, leaving Kai in the care of his new friends, Dax and Vin.

  They dragged him down a passage lit green by torches at intervals along the wall, blazing with strange fire that never flickered and gave off no smoke. The same glassy stone that covered the outside of the building lined the windowless walls on the inside. The walls shimmered and sparkled, as if the particles in the wall were gathering the faint light and playing with it, tossing it to each other for fun. It was utterly beautiful, yet the air was foul. Rubble and bones covered the floor, coated in thick dust all down the passage. It didn’t make sense. It was like using an exquisite jewellery box to keep a collection of bugs and snails.