by Chloe Garner
There was a thread of heat and light that she felt with a spot just behind the bridge of her nose, and she followed it, like the onset of an anti-headache, down and across the gorge, skipping across the creek without getting wet, and heading halfway up the other side, where a tiny tree was trying to make a life out of where it had landed, twisted by water and want for nutrients. It was between two of its spindly branches that she found rest, closing her eyes and drawing at the fountain of power there that connected her to everything around.
She could feel the hooligans, the furlings, Trevor. Today, she could even feel the river of dull unawareness going by overhead - people zipping past in their dozens, a sort of metallic gray stream. It was close. It would start soon. She could feel it from the buzzy energy around the furlings, the hooligans. One or two furlings got into preemptive fights, feeling it. They were waiting.
They were waiting for Sybil.
The girl was running at the lip of the gorge, full speed. Lizzie wanted to move, to yell, to stop her somehow, but she was beginning to get used to this, the breakneck way Sybil came at it. Surely she wouldn’t survive it this time, but there was nothing Lizzie could do to convince her otherwise. She hit the edge of the gorge without slowing, leaping out over the rocks and falling, tumbling, rolling over the rocks, a dervish without more features, from what Lizzie could feel of her. She hit the water at the bottom of the gorge just a few seconds later and lay in the water, unmoving but still stark in what Lizzie could see, still alive.
The furlings swirled around her, hissing and scratching and fights breaking out, converging on the bottom of the gorge the way Robbie had predicted. Robbie appeared at the top of the rocks, screaming and throwing rocks down the hillside. Other hooligans, less individually identifiable, streamed in, some down toward Trevor and others around the edges, with a few picking out spots on the sides of the slope and making nuisances of themselves. There was an unintentional elegance to it, the way they pushed and pulled the furlings around, an uncoordinated patternedness that was very much akin to how Lizzie thought a wolfpack would work, the members simply knowing each other well enough to react without seeing, to move as a part of a whole that they had almost no awareness of.
And then there was Lizzie.
Almost alone, except when Tristan wandered closer than he’d intended, almost segregated, except that she was tied to all of them, impotent except that she was the one standing on power.
It was all so frustrating.
The furlings fought and tumbled, chasing after this hooligan or that, sitting in a sort of trance as two hooligans fought - both on Robbie’s side, her side. Over there, one of Trevor’s people was battling with one of Robbie’s, trying to gain space, Lizzie thought, for the one who was pulling up plants and throwing them fruitlessly at the interstate. Sybil was drawing a frenzy of furlings, down at the water, and Lizzie worried that she was drowning, down there, the way they were acting. Had she knocked herself unconscious in her fall and managed to land in a spot where she truly couldn’t breathe?
Lizzie wobbled, the need to go down and make sure that the strange woman was okay counterbalanced with the knowledge that, if she left this spot, any balance the hooligans had managed to create among the furlings would be knocked off. The furlings would almost certainly blow up, and they would certainly, certainly do something destructive up on the interstate.
If she was going to do it, do it.
That’s what Trevor had said.
The furlings were going nuts, piling onto each other and starting dozens of fights around Sybil, and nothing Robbie or the rest of his side of the battle could do was distracting them. The chaos was growing everywhere, but particularly there at the centroid where Sybil lay.
If no one did anything, people were going to die.
If she was going to do it, do it.
She already had her eyes closed, but she let them fall harder closed now, feeling the well of frustration and power there playing against each other, like climbing opposite sides of a wall.
She strained, focusing, and they touched, just a moment of contact, and it was like a well of hot white light exploded up out of the ground. The furlings knocked back to both sides, a channel between her and Sybil, and she stepped forward, following the power rather than standing on it. It wasn’t about finding the pinhole in the earth that she drew power from, it was following the chasm of it that she’d opened up. Furlings fled left and right and she brushed them away with her hands, sending a wave of white after them. Her feet were solid on the rocks like it was smooth floor, and she hurried down to Sybil, where the furlings were still too preoccupied with their fights to know Lizzie was coming. She felt the hooligans up on the hillsides coming down, converging on her, throwing rocks, yelling, beating each other, but moving in as Trevor’s side fell to pieces and retreated.
Lizzie knelt as the swarm of furlings finally yielded, many of them simply disappearing, and looked at Sybil. The woman’s arms and legs were tangled and bent in wrong directions, but Lizzie had come to understand that where Sybil wasn’t double-jointed, she was very comfortable with dislocations from hard practice. What she did see that concerned her was that Sybil’s face was, indeed, underwater. She grabbed the woman’s shoulders, unwilling to drag her by her ragdoll arms, and she flipped her over.
And was shocked to find Sybil’s eyes wide open.
And even more shocked when Sybil bit her.
***
“I can’t believe you told her to do that,” Lizzie said, holding ice on the swelling teethmarks on her arm.
“I didn’t tell her to bite you,” Trevor complained. “She just does that.”
“I’m going to get syphilis,” Lizzie said darkly.
“Don’t think that’s how that one works,” Trevor said, putting his feet up on the coffee table.
“She could have died,” Lizzie said.
“She knew that,” Trevor said.
“I thought she didn’t want me to be able to do it, anyway.”
“It was kind of a bet,” Trevor said slowly, and Lizzie looked up at him sharply.
“What? If you win, you’re right, if she wins, she’s dead?”
He shrugged.
“Not sure either of us worked it out that far.”
Lizzie felt her eyes widen.
“Didn’t work it out that far? You talked her into drowning herself, and you didn’t think she might die from it?”
“I knew you’d get to her,” Trevor said. “Not a doubt in the world.”
“The interstate was plenty,” Lizzie said. “You didn’t have to ramp it up that high.”
“I did,” Trevor said, now sober. “You didn’t figure it out until you thought she was going to die.”
“She was going to die. You saw the furlings, the same as me.”
Trevor shrugged.
“But she didn’t.”
“That’s…”
“Crazy?” he offered, raising an eyebrow. She widened her eyes at him and he grinned. “I can say it now, because you’re one of us. When I say that crossing the street causes car wrecks and hurts people, you don’t say that I’m externalizing guilt or something dumb like that.”
She laughed and looked at her arm again.
“She bit me.”
“Yeah, I probably should have seen it coming,” he said, pressing his mouth to try not to look too amused. She glowered, which didn’t help.
All in all, she was proud of herself.
Like, really, really proud.
She’d done it, and it had felt natural. Right. Like she could have done it any time she wanted to, if she’d just known to want it. Trevor was watching her like he could see her thoughts.
“It wasn’t how Lara did it,” he said. “If you care. You can’t teach an angel how to do anything, because what they do is about them, not about being the angel.”
“Thought you said there weren’t any rules,” Lizzie said, feeling surly and playful. He grinned into his hand.
�
�I did, didn’t I?”
She nodded. He had such a great smile. She loved, oh, how she loved making him smile. There was a twinge in her stomach, and he stood like he’d seen it, like he’d reached out and caused it. She put the ice down on the counter and stood, holding up a hand to argue with him, just to have done it, but he was too fast for her. He tangled himself around her, slamming back into the counter again, and she kissed him hard. He twisted her head to the side, forcefully but without demand, pulling at the skin of her neck with his mouth. Her breath caught and she dropped her head back another inch.
***
She woke up on the floor.
Robbie was looking down at her.
That was not what she’d expected. At all. She tried to get her elbows under her, but nothing worked.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Trevor left,” Robbie said. “Stay down and tell me what happened.”
She closed her eyes.
“That’s why I asked you,” she said. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me what you remember,” Robbie said, picking up her hand and putting it between his.
“We were making out,” she said, then rolled her head to the side in the best exasperated she could manage. “Did Sybil give me epilepsy?”
“No,” Robbie said dismissively. “What else?”
“How much detail do you want?” Lizzie asked sarcastically and he leaned back onto his heels.
“Good point. What about when you blacked out?”
“That’s it,” she said. “Only I was on the other side of the counter.”
She had no idea how she’d gotten onto the linoleum, but now that she was down here, the underside of the cabinets were filthy. She’d get after that once she could sit up again.
“I think Trevor brought you over here,” Robbie said, sounding uncertain. “You’re cold.”
“I am,” she agreed. He shook his head.
“You weren’t cold, when we got home.”
“Wasn’t I?”
He shook his head. She blinked, getting some feeling in her arms again and managing to sit up this time. Robbie let go of her hand to let her get her balance as the room swayed.
“I feel drunk,” she said. “But not happy. Just drunk.”
He licked his lips.
“Trevor left.”
“You said that.”
“He slammed the door when he left.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“So?”
“He doesn’t do that,” Robbie said. “He likes sneaking in and out. That was the only reason I came out and found you.”
She frowned at this, feeling motion sick.
“I did it,” she said. “Maybe that’s what this is.”
“Maybe…” Robbie said, looking at the door again. “Let’s go get you in some hot water. I need to call Trevor and see where he went.”
She nodded and let him help her up, which took a couple of tries, but eventually she managed to stay on her feet, leaning on him.
He helped her back to the bathroom, where he filled the bathtub as full as it went then, giving her one more concerned look, which she waved off, he left, and she stripped, rolling into the tub less than gracefully.
She wasn’t sure how long she was in there - she might have fallen asleep - but when she opened her eyes again, Trevor was leaning on the side of the tub, the side of his face crooked in his elbow.
“We’ve got a problem,” he said gently.
“Yeah, Sybil is contagious,” Lizzie said, and he shook his head. As she watched, a furling’s shoulders emerged from between his shoulder blades, spine rolling away from his and arms pulling free of his arms, finally its tiny fuzzy head pulling up and out of the back of Trevor’s skull. Lizzie flew into the far side of the tub as the furling grinned at her, then sprang at her. She turned her face away, anticipating impact, but there was none. She opened her eyes to find vanishing bits of fur floating on the water. She looked up at Trevor with cold shock. He nodded.
“We’ve got a problem.”
“That’s where furlings come from?” she asked. He frowned.
“You’ve never seen it before?”
She shook her head, and he shrugged.
“Basically as long as I remember.”
“That’s terrible,” she said, and he shrugged again.
“It’s normal.”
“I’m so sorry.”
His face was pained, but gentle, a look of genuine love that she didn’t think she’d ever seen that clearly in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, frightened.
“You’re leaving,” he said softly.
“What?” she asked, sitting up and sloshing water everywhere. He lifted his head and pressed his lips.
“They’re unpredictable, so there’s no telling, but I’d guess you have a couple of days, and then you need to be gone.”
“Gone where?” she demanded, and he shrugged.
“Wherever angels go. I don’t know.”
“How am I supposed to know?” she asked. “I’m not going.”
He nodded.
“You are. Robbie is packing an overnight bag for you, save the stuff in here. He wants you gone in the morning.”
Her eyes widened.
“What?”
“He just watched his wife die, fighting this,” Trevor said. “He’s not going to let it happen to you, no matter how much it hurts.”
“But you need me,” Lizzie said. “And I just got it.”
“In retrospect, we might have taken a while longer, getting you trained. They were probably waiting for you to be ready.”
“I’m not going,” Lizzie said. He offered her a hand and pulled her to her feet, pulling a towel off of a bar and wrapping it around her shoulders, then rubbing her arms.
“Not tonight,” he said. “But…”
“No,” she said. “I’m not.”
He nodded.
“Robbie couldn’t say goodbye, but I can. I wanted thirty more years like this, but I always knew we wouldn’t get it. Anything else was just a matter of probability.”
She blinked. She was crying.
“No.”
He nodded.
“I’ll stay with you until you go, but you have to. They will kill you, Lizzie. We all know it. And no one is going to let you stay here and let them kill you. Not without a fight.”
“Then fight,” she pleaded. “Please. Help me find a way to stay. I can’t go. I don’t know how to do this. Not without you.”
He shrugged.
“No one does. You figure it out. Come on. You need to get dressed.”
She shook her head, then her knee buckled. He frowned.
“I shouldn’t even stay. They’re going to keep attacking you as long as you’re here, and they’re just going to keep showing up, as long as I’m here.”
She shook her head.
“No.”
He hugged her. She wasn’t sure she could remember another time that he’d hugged her, and that frightened her all the more.
“Come on,” he said, helping her out of the tub. She wanted to turn back to let the water out, but she didn’t have it in her. She just let him lead her out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, where she put on pajamas and slid into the bed, exhausted and overwhelmed and core-deep afraid of what was going to happen in the morning.
“Come here,” he said, settling her for her head to rest on his shoulder. She shook her head and he hushed her.
“Sleep,” he said. “You don’t know when you’re going to get safe sleep again, and you’re going to wish you’d taken it while you could.”
She crushed her eyes closed, trying not to cry, but her heart shook her chest and her mind buzzed with pointless arguing, and it was a great many hours before she finally slipped into a manic, wrung-out sleep.
***
In the morning, there was a bag next to the door.
She made breakfast, like she couldn’t see it.
She
was exhausted from a lack of sleep and because of the furlings that kept launching themselves at her, often when she least expected it. She understood how she’d blacked out, that first time. If she wasn’t focused when they hit her, it jolted her brain like the upside down section of a roller coaster, and she had to hold onto something for a second while she sorted it all out again.
Trevor came and sat in his chair in the corner, not talking to her, and Robbie got up a few minutes later and lay down on his couch wordlessly. As she cooked, hooligans drifted in one by one, Dennis and Sybil among them, and took their seats.
It was like the first day. The agitation, the silence, the way everyone saw her without looking at her. She sat down on her seat of the side couch and ate her breakfast as if nothing was happening.
Nothing was happening.
When she’d cleared her plate, Robbie got up and gently took it, carrying it to the kitchen.
“You need me,” Lizzie said softly.
“Doesn’t matter if you die,” Sybil said to the ceiling.
“The furlings always win,” Dennis said, playing one fork of his tongue across his thumb and looking at the door. She shook her head and frowned.
“It can’t just be like that. We’re people.”
Trevor stood up.
“Will you take her stuff out, Robbie?” he asked. Her brother skirted by her with her purse and snatched her suitcase, the same one she’d brought here, and disappeared out the door, leaving it open and letting in an astonishingly white dawn light.
Trevor crossed the room and took her hands, pulling her to her feet without lifting. She shook her head.
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You are,” he said, coaching a nod. “Because you’re going to live. Okay? You go out there and you live.”
She shuddered, blinking fast.
“Goodbye, angel,” Dennis said.
It echoed around the room forlornly.
“I’m sorry I bit you,” Sybil said. Lizzie closed her eyes.
“No,” she whispered, but now her feet were moving and the door closed behind her. She clamped down the corners of her mouth so they wouldn’t wobble. The look on Trevor’s face was pain, but a kind of weary pain, like he’d known it his whole life. She shook her head, and he nodded. A car door closed, and Robbie appeared around the curve in the walk.