Twig

by wildbow

  “Nnnnooo,” It said, again. “No.”

  “Yes,” the red haired man said.

  “Nno. Iii—I… God,” the primordial uttered the words.

  It could hear the response, the mutters, the surprise. Quiet, or disquiet.

  It wondered if it had achieved the desired effect.

  Even the man with the red hair, for the first time, seemed taken aback.

  The man did not respond, but only raised a hand.

  The primordial could see the cannon, and recognized the gesture for the signal it was. It threw itself to one side, so it might be flush against the side of one building, the shot flying past it—

  With a whistle to command it, the white spined thing put itself between the primordial and the wall. The shot from the cannon raked the primordial’s side and caught in its hind end, a cannon shot with a chain attached.

  Machinery squeaked as the chain was hauled back, and the primordial with it.

  “I… God!” the primordial uttered. “I God!”

  When it was pulled away from the cover of the buildings, there were more cannons to shoot at it.

  There was no other primordial to consume or absorb this creature. The men would finally pull it apart.

  It gave its body parts instructions, and those body parts obeyed. Scale became spine, which became hair.

  It had eaten meat and it had copied the meat, and it had trodden on weeds, copying those weeds.

  As the chains sank in, and other attacks were delivered, dissolving flesh, hampering the creature’s ability to move, to respire, to communicate and to think, the creature worked toward a singular task.

  Life was frustration and pain. It had been brought into this world to serve a purpose it did not understand. It had been kept from thinking, and had found its way to understanding all the same. Not enough understanding, but enough to name itself for what it thought it ought to be.

  “I’m sorry we let you live so long,” the red haired man spoke.

  The creature howled.

  Everything this creature was, the people were the utter opposite. Bitter, savage things, the creature hated them with every inch of its being, and every inch of its being worked toward a new task.

  Working small, working subtly, as it had learned to do from the beginning, it copied the plants and it produced seeds. Too small to host life, to be spawn, the seeds would nonetheless grow.

  The creature knew what came next. It had learned that in the beginning too. Pieces were cut away, and then given to fire.

  But maybe with enough seeds, some would survive the fire. Those seeds would plant themselves in human flesh, they would cause pain, agony, hurt, and they would be a bitter, stubborn thing, more tenacious than any weed, more efficient than any plant. Undying hatred given form.

  Others would settle into the human flesh that couldn’t rub or scour them free. They would flower, and they would scatter more seeds to the wind and the water.

  Red, the creature decided, to match the hair of the man it hated most.

  The creature would not let itself and its brothers be without consequence.

  Previous Next

  In Sheep’s Clothing—10.1

  I was still awake as dawn broke. It would have been quaint to say that the sun streamed in through the window, but Radham was conservative with its sunlight, and the Academy was a small fortress, surrounded by a wall. Even if the sky was clear, the wall meant that sun wouldn’t shine directly on the Academy grounds until mid-morning. As it was, it was a faint light, deceptively dim. I’d made the mistake of trying to gauge the time by the light in past visits, and found myself waiting a little too late to sneak out.

  Uncomfortable with tossing and turning all night, lost in thought, I’d propped myself up, sitting with my pillow up between my back and the headboard. I ran my fingers absently through Lillian’s hair, watching her eyes move beneath the eyelids. She dreamed. Sleeping next to her, Mary’s eyes were still: dreamless.

  I touched the edge of Lillian’s ear as I ran my fingers through her hair, and she squirmed a little.

  “Stop it, Sylvester,” she said.

  I shifted position, leaning over her to see better. Sure enough, she was still asleep and still dreaming. Even when disturbed in sleep, her mind immediately went to me.

  Gently, I tugged the sheets so they weren’t so twisted up near her armpit, then crawled out from under the covers, tucking them in around Lillian in the process. There was a blanket that was usually draped over the foot of the bed, one her mom had made, if I was remembering right, and between the three of us, we had kicked it down so it clumped at the footboard. I pulled it free and draped it over their feet.

  Lillian kept a pitcher on the desk with a glass. I grabbed the pitcher and found it empty. Walking to the bedroom door, I leaned against it, my ear pressed against the wood, listening. I waited until the only footsteps I heard were receding ones, and then opened the door.

  For the sake of Lillian’s future, we’d gone to Lugh. We’d walked away from tens of thousands dead, the loss of a team member and his dog, the loss of my left eye, and a city in flames. That was without touching on the fate of the person we’d been sent to find, the enmity of one of the more powerful people in the Crown States, and the near end of human civilization because of some very misguided experiments that both sides had ended up using to force the other side’s hands.

  With that in mind, it was hard to put into words the feelings that drove me as I left Lillian’s room and brazenly walked down the hallway of the girl’s dormitory, making my way into the girl’s bathroom. All that trouble to give her a better shot at becoming a professor, and here I was, running the risk of getting her kicked out of the dormitory.

  A part of the feelings were a desire to raise my middle fingers to all of the aforementioned incidents. Not giving voice to the vague frustration and bitterness I felt, but giving action to those feelings. Getting caught and dragged in front of people that mattered would give me a chance to attack that nebulous reality, and to attack it in a way I was comfortable with.

  I cranked the sink on and set the pitcher down in the basin to fill. I could hear voices and noises from around the corner in the bathroom. The earliest risers were showering. I thought about peeking, gave it serious consideration in a ‘what if’ way, and found myself genuinely surprised at the lack of interest I felt.

  Two years ago, I might have done it, to sate my curiosity. A year ago, I would have wanted to do it and pragmatically decided not to. Now… I was more interested in sitting on that bed for another few minutes than I was in spending an hour in the showers.

  Footsteps approached. I cranked the tap off, gauged the direction, and then stepped into the nearest bathroom stall, closing the door. I watched through the crack as someone with a towel wrapped around them made their way to the showers.

  A few moments later, I stepped out, finished filling the pitcher, and quickly, silently walked back to Lillian’s room, letting myself in.

  I set the pitcher and glass beside Lillian’s bed, then made use of a notepad and pen at her desk. There was already writing on the top of the notepad. A date and a time, with a word underlined three times. Parents.

  I’d lost track of my days during Lugh. That was either today or tomorrow.

  Filled the pitcher in the bathroom. Drink lots. It will help with the headaches.

  Got shoulder put back together last night. I said you’d look at it so I wouldn’t have to go back for follow-up. I think we should meet for lunch, you can check my shoulder, yell at me for leaving your room while people were up and walking around, and we’ll talk with everyone? If you’re going to be busy, let Mary know when you send her back in our direction.

  Will be at Lambsbridge. Might leave to go to the Shims, have to let the mice know about Gordon and Hubris.

  I held the pen over the page, contemplating what I had already written. The impulse to leave my room had been partially some misdirected, nebulous need to strike back against th
e forces that seemed to be making everything so damn difficult, but if I admitted it to myself, a big part of it was imagining the look of horror on Lillian’s face as she read the first line and the line about people being up and walking around.

  I thought for a long few minutes about the sign-off. When I put pen to paper and wrote, though, it was impulse more than a culmination of those long minutes of thought.

  Love you,

  ~~Sylvester

  I almost crumpled up the paper right there, second-guessing myself. It was true, I told myself. I was terrible at being honest, I retorted. It was worth it, to imagine the look on her face changing from horror to something else as she read it, was the counter-point. But what if that something else was sheer awkwardness, a different sort of horror? What if Mary read it instead of Lillian, would that be bad, knowing she’d lost Gordon, and that the loss was, discounting the hours of sleep she’d managed, only a few hours raw?

  We had gotten off the train, only to immediately be split apart, sent for care and for debriefing, converged just long enough to share news, and then been split apart again. Rather than wait for the rest of us, Mary had gone to spend time with her best friend, to talk and to cry in private, and the two of them had turned in early.

  Weighing the pros and cons of leaving that line at the end, the four-letter word that seemed to have so much importance, I felt like there were more cons than pros, that it was a dreadful mistake.

  That feeling had lingered with all of the important actions in my relationship with Lillian, which was reason enough to keep up the pattern. I put the letter face-down by the pitcher, the edge of the pitcher on the corner of the page so it wouldn’t blow free when I opened the window.

  For Mary, I wrote another note.

  We didn’t get a chance to talk last night. I’ve missed you terribly. I’ll be at Lambsbridge or the Shims. Lillian is going to want to bury herself in work to avoid thinking about things and stressing about her parents. It will probably be her big project for next fall. I invited her to lunch, don’t push too hard if she says she doesn’t want to come.

  You should come. Because Jamie has stuff to tell you that Gordon wanted to pass on. I’m 95% sure it’ll help. And because I’ve really missed talking to you.

  ~~Sylvester

  I bent over to give Lillian a kiss on the head, then stood from the bed, gathering my coat and boots. I circled the bed and put the paper down on the other bedside table, nearer Mary.

  Her hand went out, pinning the paper down against the bed. Eyes awake. She was alert, eyes sharp and hawkish.

  I tapped the paper. She took it, sliding it along the bedside table before unfolding it.

  She took a short while to read, and then looked up, giving me a small nod. She smiled just a touch, but she also looked very sad.

  Very Mary. Crisp execution, to the point. I wondered if she didn’t want to look brittle in front of me. Were the tears and the human side of Mary reserved for her best friend, now?

  I opened the window and climbed out. I took the time to lock it behind me, then made my way to the ground. My shoulder ached.

  There was a skeleton guard at the front of Radham. Whatever had happened at Lugh, it hadn’t reignited the war. Things had faded, there was no checkpoint, and the Academy was no longer a morass of warbeasts and soldiers amid student. I could see four or five people, already up and most of them already showered, making their way here and there. It was a far cry from some of my earlier visits.

  It was a long and eerily quiet walk from Radham to Lambsbridge. The only sound the entire way was when I hopped and let my feet crunch against the road, just to make sure I hadn’t gone deaf, and five minutes later, the whistle of the train coming in, a single, hollow hoot, muted because the hour was early and the train driver didn’t want to disturb everyone in the city. The rain had been replaced with a wet snow, so there wasn’t even any patter, while it remained just as wet as always.

  I let myself into Lambsbridge, and very quietly removed my boots and coat, making use of one of the countless boot-cubbies and the countless hooks in the front hallway.

  Mrs. Earles was already up, working at the counter.

  “It’s going—” I started.

  She jumped, went very still, and then put her knife down before turning to look at me.

  “—to be a very hard day, I think,” I said.

  “I think so, Sylvester,” she said. “Please don’t spook me like that while I’m holding a knife.”

  I nodded.

  “Apples,” she said, indicating the cutting board and the knife. She turned her attention to the stove and scraping the bottom of the pot of porridge. I slid a stool over to the counter and stood on the lowest rung to better see what I was chopping. It wasn’t that I couldn’t, before, but a little bit more height made the job far easier.

  “Were you out all night?” she asked, while I cut the cores out of the apples.

  “Yeah.”

  “How are the girls?”

  “Exhausted.”

  She stopped stirring. I wasn’t sure why. The stirring resumed.

  “I left them notes before heading back. Would a picnic lunch be out of the question? I can do all the preparation. I’ll stay mostly out of the way, and do some extra work to make up for being a hassle.”

  “A picnic lunch is fine, Sylvester. I can prepare it in advance.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I talked to Professor Hayle last night. I was thinking about a stone, somewhere at the back corner of the property, where the stone fence meets beneath the tree,” she said.

  Jamie didn’t get a stone.

  “That would be nice,” I said.

  “For him, for you… and for the little ones. I think it would help them.”

  “Everyone liked him,” I said.

  “We did.”

  My voice dropped a little. “When someone dies, there’s this need to memorialize them, you know? To leave a marker that this person who was so important to us was there. A stone. Memories.”

  “Yes. I think—” she very nearly said ‘you‘re’, referring to the Lambs as a group, “—he’s lucky. There are so many children here who got to know him, who will remember him in different ways for the rest of their lives.”

  “But that’s just what I was getting at,” I said.

  Chop. Cut. The apple parted.

  I shook my head a little. “That’s not him. Do you have any idea what an absolute bastard he was? In the best way, but in bad ways too. He was stubborn, and he packed a mean punch. He won most fights he picked and he rubbed people’s noses in it. Sometimes that was with me, just play, and sometimes, it was some poor shmuck who worked for some guy we were after, and he’d break their knee, crack a few teeth, and literally rub their faces in the dirt.”

  “I don’t think I should be hearing any particulars about what you’ve been doing.”

  “You can put a stone out there with his name on it, and the children will remember, but the righteous bastard will get forgotten. The injustice of how he had to go will get forgotten. A few years will pass, and we won’t be people. We’ll just be some notes on pages in Academy record books, footnotes in newer projects.”

  “I don’t think that’s true at all,” she said. “Lillian will remember.”

  “I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”

  “Would you rather do something other than the stone? If you have any ideas, I could raise them with Professor Hayle.”

  Gordon had drawn parallels between each of the Lambs and the conventional elements. He’d been the flame. Rather than cold stone, set out for the rain to erode, a flame would be so much more appropriate. So much more of a pain in the ass to look after. Doubly appropriate, in that, but not so possible.

  “No,” I said. “A stone would be very nice. But can you let us think, decide for ourselves what gets written on it?”

  I felt her hand on my damp hair. “Okay, Sylvester.”

  She wasn’t allowed to be moth
erly, as far as I could figure it out. Not allowed to interfere, even, which was probably why she hadn’t commented on my disappearing to Lillian’s, or finding Mary in my bed. With some of the younger charges, even some of the needier not-so-young charges, she would give some special time and attention, but with us, from the very beginning, she’d been hands-off. That simple touch, coming from her, was the equivalent of a warm, encompassing hug to someone else.

  I had to blink extra hard to keep my vision clear enough to see what I was cutting.

  Kenneth was the first one down the stairs. He was new, and I’d barely spent any time with him, what with me disappearing to Lugh. Seven or so years old. Too young to know Gordon, but he’d sensed the atmosphere in the house, and it had affected him. He had been one of the ones crying last night. Not necessarily because of the loss, but because others were upset, and he hadn’t yet found any emotional footing.

  I quickly cut the remainder of the apples for the porridge, then joined Kenneth, lifting him onto the bench at the long table and plopping myself down beside him. I reached for his stuffed animal, a rabbit, and lifted it up, moving the head and arms, adopting a fighting stance, and had it start punching the kid. He was smiling after a few seconds, fighting back.

  The others started to make their way down. Fran and Susan, who were a pair now that Eliza had gone off and gotten herself adopted to a nice family, the twit.

  And Rick.

  Mrs. Earles seemed to notice Rick’s arrival. It was hard not to. He was bigger than Gordon. Bigger than Gordon had been, rather. Nearly eighteen, facing the prospect of having to move out and fend for himself, he had become even weirder in recent years. He was always helping out, always striving to get stuff done before Mrs. Earles could do it, playing a little too much with the little kids, well beyond when others would have lost patience.

  They were great, like a dozen little brothers and sisters, but nobody liked spending more than five or ten minutes at a time with their younger siblings, let alone an hour or more.

  Rick was nearly two hundred pounds and an inch or two shy of six feet tall, a natural Bruno without any physical modification to him, that he had a baby face without a hair on his chin, and weirdly intense eyes and manner, though it might have only been me that could put a finger to the eye thing. He hadn’t had any luck finding work, too young looking for the hard physical work, too big and scary for the gentler, customer service work.