You Will Grow Into Them

by Malcolm Devlin

  'Don't let him eat you, Jan,' she says. 'I don't think I could bear that.'

  Jan dismisses the idea. They've never been closer, he says.

  Looking at them, even in their new forms, she see this is true. Even in their old lives, they existed in a cycle of predator and prey, forever capturing and rescuing each other in ways she never thought to understand.

  Jan tells her about how her hair spills from the window like a waterfall of golden light; it drowns the avenues between the vast trees that were once tower blocks. It spreads further every day, crawling through the suburbs and into the city's central district.

  He tells her how the individual strands have thickened into barbs and brambles and branches of their own, so walls of thorns pack the avenues, and climb higher and higher.

  He tells her how there are still people in the city. Actual people, hu-mans, those who have resisted the changes that have claimed everyone else. They live with a conservatism they are fiercely proud of. They cling to the threadbare traces of the lives they once led. But their life is difficult now the city is full of predators, and the lower reaches of the brambled avenues are choked with the tangled bodies of those who have faced up to the new reality and been found wanting.

  Ellie is legend to them, Jan says. Her name is whispered in the enclaves of those who remain: sometimes as a curse, sometimes a prayer. All set out to climb the tangled forest to the fifteenth floor, but when they fall to the knife-like thorns below, no one comes to rescue them. Their remains are knotted amongst the vicious barbs of her hair; their homemade armour tarnished by the rain, bones picked clean by the same carrion that finds room to nest amongst the sprawl of branch and root.

  From street level, Jan says, the mass of bramble sweeps up to the open window, a great blonde arrow pointing to the room in which she sleeps. The tower is now a destination for the brave and the foolish: the men and women who view Ellie as a maiden to rescue or a monster to destroy. Let's say they congregate at the foot of the building and peer up at the room in which she sleeps. Let's say they discuss strategies amongst themselves. Whatever is said, they will fail. The hair will thicken amongst them; it will become barbed and thorny to draw their blood, the thorns will become venomous to corrupt it. It will grow through them, separating skin and bone and teasing them apart like paper dolls.

  But still they come with their little swords and their little quests. She feels them down there in the city. They pluck at the nerves of her like an endless stream of little brothers, come to disturb her while she sleeps.

  Sometimes, she dreams she is walking through the city as it used to be. The streets are grey and empty. Shops are boarded up and there are no cars on the road. She walks barefoot on the sun-warmed tarmac, taking turns left and right as the mood takes her. She remembers the park where her mother would take her and Louis when they were very small, but she cannot find it. A compact square of land, surrounded by smart iron fences, their rough ironwork smoothed and shining with green paint. Her own little island, her duck pond, her swings. Her mother would push her so she could believe she could fly. In her dream, she turns each corner hoping it will be there but each street is grey and long, diminishing into a distant and sterile whiteness. The streets are all the same. They are all indifferent.

  She lies in her room in flat 1512, asleep and awake, waiting for something she doesn't fully understand. Not love, she thinks. Not the square-jawed kid from the network TV show. She has read enough books and seen enough films to appreciate how she is expected to believe 'love' is what every girl wishes upon herself; as though it were a prize to be won and hidden away in a glass cabinet, never to be disturbed.

  Let it be something more meaningful, something that will make her engage with the world her dreams have transformed.

  She wishes she could reach for her books – they at least represent a love that makes sense to her. She sees them neglected, scattered on the bedroom floor, spines crumpled, covers splayed, pages yellowing, curling and damp. Their disarray upsets her with a force that takes her by surprise. Tears well in her eyes which she struggles to wipe away.

  She remembers how her mother used to tell her stories. In her quiet voice, confident with her fiction, she would spin magic for her. Ellie would interrupt her with questions and her mother would answer with barely a thought, extending the story indefinitely in all directions. And when Louis was small, she would do the same for him and Ellie would listen from her bed, her eyes closed as though the stories were for her alone. How could she have forgotten how her mother once fed her worlds?

  And somewhere tucked away inside of her, she feels something move. Her something, which has ripened inside of her since the city succumbed to change. It is a tentative movement at first, but as she stills to give it room, it becomes more confident.

  At first, she assumes it might be what she thought she has been waiting for. Some floppy-fringed hero in foil armour who has come to her aid after all; promising a kingdom, claiming a heart. She almost laughs. Who would have thought he would choose such a curious window to swing through and save her?

  It only takes a blessed moment to realise it is something else. Because now she recognises the sense of it, the posture of it; its shape and movement so everyday, so familiar. It is her. It is Ellie. A her inside of her. A new and perfect self, testing at the edges of her chrysalis, impatient to be set free.

  Silently, Ellie coaxes her, and feels the way she crawls from her heart and up her chest to her throat. The Ellie on the bed, the outside Ellie, arches her back in pain because the inside Ellie is simply too big, already fully grown, her eagerness threatens to choke her.

  Strike off my head and my tail and cast them in the fire…

  Ellie claws at her neck, but her hands are weak and while the flesh bruises, she does not draw blood. She snatches at her hair instead, worrying at a golden strand until the thorns bud and bloom along its length like a blossoming rope of razor wire. She doesn't stop to think as she draws the fattened barbs across her throat. The wound yawns open raggedly, spilling blood and sap and sawdust. The pain is thunderous, but the release is so sweet. Here at last is the transformation she deserves.

  This is how she frees that which has grown within her. From the gaping hole, she claws out. From the gaping hole, Ellie calls out.

  And once free, she is everywhere and she is complete. She is the voice to fill the world and as she draws breath, rich and heavy with such stories to tell, spring comes to the city-that-was, her cave, her monument of stone. The trees blossom, the thorny undergrowth softens and flowers. A golden, late-afternoon sunlight spills through the avenues.

  In the flat on the fifteenth floor, Jan and Klee flutter around the room in concern, shrinking to tiny specks as Ellie rises, glorious and unseen. She will speak to them soon, and when they hear, they'll see. But until then, they see only what she has left behind and do not think to imagine anything greater.

  Witness this: they see a battered husk, already cooling, already growing moss, already taking root. They see how its skin calcifies into plates of bark and rind. They do not see the smile upon its lips, they only see how earthbound it is, how passive, how still.

  Her First Harvest

  'Oh, how quickly things changed! Why didn't happiness last forever? Forever wasn't a bit too long.'

  -- Katherine Mansfield, Her First Ball

  Nina's dress was made from synthetic silk; it was a pale silver grey which shone even in the thin phosphor lighting of Aunt Caroline's dressing room. Nina stood side-on to the mirror and twisted so she could see her back more clearly. The dress hung open from her shoulders, sweeping down in smooth symmetrical curves to meet in a discreet bow above her waist. Her exposed back struck her as looking unhealthy and pale in the thin blue light; her crop was barely more than a thick rumple of texture across her skin. It looked barely more valuable than heat rash.

  She frowned. She'd hoped the shape of the dress would exaggerate the yield; she'd picked Minnie's grey one for just that purpos
e. Minnie said she'd worn it for her first harvest ball. That had been six years ago and Minnie's crop hadn't needed exaggerating even a little. Four months after her first seeding and her shoulders and spine had been ripe with fat clusters of button mushrooms growing in the shape of a heart centred about her spine. Everyone said they'd been so beautiful, and Aunt Caroline told Nina how heads had turned when Minnie arrived at the Governor's House.

  Nina sighed. She had so hoped her own first crop would be a match for her cousin's, but her aunt shushed her when she tried to voice her concern.

  'Nonsense,' she said. 'This is your first seeding, it's to be expected. Minnie was just a bit different, that's all.'

  Aunt Caroline turned her back round, steering her by the shoulders. She held her at arm's length so she could get a measure of her.

  'Look at you,' she said. 'You look so beautiful and you'll only become more so, I promise. And besides, Minnie won't have any crop this year. None at all.'

  Nina smiled as bravely as she could muster.

  Minnie wouldn't have a crop this year because she and Barnabas were trying for a baby, a very different sort of crop that meant there were both exempt from being seeded.

  A voice called from downstairs and Nina's aunt smiled.

  'The carriage is here,' she said. 'Are we ready?'

  'Yes, Aunt Caroline,' said Nina.

  'Wonderful.' Aunt Caroline's harvest gown was a pale blue and her crop was strong this season; she had been seeded with an experimental variety that was particularly decorative, fat pink toadstool caps hung from long fibrous stems. They looked like bright jewels, rippling across her back as she swept out of the room.

  Nina considered her own reflection one more time. Maybe the light was just unflattering; maybe her crop wasn't so bad after all. She reached around gently to push her fingertips against the larger bulbs, growing in a line up the small of her back. They felt soft and powder-dry. They moved fractionally as she brushed them. She imagined the roots of them inside her, spidering under her skin

  Aunt Caroline's voice called her from downstairs and Nina snapped her hand away guiltily.

  'Coming, Aunt Caroline,' she said.

  She took a final look in the mirror before she turned off the lights. She swept up her bag and her light summer shawl to wear once her crop had been harvested, then ran downstairs to meet her aunt and her cousin in the hallway.

  *

  The carriage was waiting outside the house; it looked like a balled fist of iron suspended between four enormous wheels. Its door was wide open and a walkway had been laid joining the steps of the house with the steps of the carriage.

  The drivers were standing well back, buttoned up to their chins in oilskins. They each wore thick goggles and facemasks.

  There was a light wind, which whipped her harvest gown up around her ankles and she caught herself pressing her hands down to keep it in check. She saw how Minnie had taken the seam of fabric in one hand to counter the slack. She tried to do the same, clutching a handful of her gown at her hip and pulling it tight.

  'Don't crease it, Nina,' her aunt said.

  'Sorry.'

  Inside, the carriage was plush and warm. It was round like a bathysphere, upholstered from top to bottom with cushioned velvet. There were porthole windows on each side, surrounded by rubber filters which pumped and wheezed like steam bellows; but the glass was thick and so smeared and dirty on the outside that only a fraction of the late afternoon light teased through and there was little chance of seeing anything outside.

  They took their seats, Nina and Minnie on the one side, Aunt Caroline on the other.

  One of the drivers slammed the door shut and spun the handle to lock the seal.

  Nina glanced at Minnie and smiled. Minnie didn't see her; she was staring ahead, lost in thought and blind to everything else. She was probably thinking about Barnabas, Nina thought. He wouldn't to be joining them at the ball. Since they hadn't been seeded, he said it was a waste of time. Nina had heard raised voices in the house, but she hadn't said anything, Aunt Caroline certainly wouldn't appreciate her doing so.

  The carriage engines rumbled into life and the whole vehicle started to hum and vibrate. A putt-putt-putt sound from the exhaust chimney rang against the chassis and gathered tempo. There was a high scraping noise as the gears shifted somewhere beneath them and then the carriage lurched forward with a roar.

  *

  They reached the Governor's House in good time, and waited in the carriage as the drivers hosed the chassis down, stripping off the soot and grease that had built up over their journey. As they did so, Nina felt the temperature shift slightly, and the coolness was welcome. The journey had taken the best part of an hour and the atmosphere inside, whilst polite and silent, had threatened to superheat the air around them like a kettle and Nina was feeling quite faint.

  When the door opened, she almost leapt at it, but Minnie set a hand on her knee to still her and the two cousins waited for Aunt Caroline to disembark before them.

  'Are you nervous?' Minnie asked her when they were alone.

  'No,' Nina said, 'of course not.'

  Minnie smiled.

  'There's no harm in it.'

  Nina frowned. Minnie hadn't needed to be nervous for her first ball; her yield had been something special while Nina's was not. If her crop had been anything like as big as Minnie had produced, she wouldn't be nervous at all, she'd be marching down the walkway straight-backed and proud. She waited until her cousin had stepped down from the carriage before she moved to the door herself.

  The Governor's House stood in the lee of the hills that rose up behind it like grey flints, hacked to sharpness by something primitive. The house was built in the same silver-grey slate that characterised most buildings in the colony, but it was bigger and grander than any other Nina had seen; three stories tall, with a wide portico, fringed with black, glittering columns. It looked to Nina like a set of jaws opened wide, inviting her to be consumed.

  Their carriage was only one of many, circling the wide driveway and disgorging their passengers in pairs and groups. A light mist had softened the air, diffusing the sharpness of the carriages' edges and making their phosphor lamps flare brightly and disperse, like a procession of will-o'-the-wisps.

  And then there were the people. Dozens of them, picking their way across the walkways to the front doors. Men and women, each heavy with their crops: mushrooms, brackets, bells and anemone; each extravagantly dressed in brocade, velvet, lace and muslins. Minnie had told her some people wore real silks too, imported from off-world.

  'They make it with worms,' Minnie had said. 'Can you imagine such a thing?'

  Whatever they wore, everyone looked so beautiful and so keen, each leaning forward with a barely contained anticipation, mirroring Nina's own.

  Aunt Caroline fussed with Nina's gown. Smoothing it with her hands, standing back critically to inspect her work.

  'There's my girl,' she said. She held up a hand inviting her to lead the way.

  Nina inclined her head and did so, conscious she could hear Minnie and Aunt Caroline speaking in hushed conversation behind her. The walkway crackled under her shoes and ahead of her, a pair of footmen stood by the door of the house, dressed in the livery of the Governor's staff: green and gold herringbone with polished flint buttons, their hair tied back with charcoal coloured ribbons, expressions locked in neutral.

  And at Nina's approach, they snapped to movement and swung the doors wide.

  *

  'Stay with me, dear, or you'll get lost,' Minnie said.

  The music hadn't begun yet and Nina didn't have time to appreciate the scale of the place before her cousin had swept her through the crowds to the powder room.

  The room was thick with other women, a mass of them pressing in towards the vanity counters arranged at the far end. There was a smell of rich eau du cologne mixed with the earthy, sweet smell of all the crop varieties, and the room roared with competing conversation.

  Ag
ain, the variety of the guests impressed her. She watched as the other women fought to secure a spot at the mirrors, where they patted their hair and retied ribbons, inspecting themselves critically for any sign their journeys had diminished their preparatory work. They were dark and fair, old and young; their crops were wide and diverse. Many were growing simple button mushrooms like hers, but others were cultivating toadstools or other bell fungi. Some were covered with dense amorphous shapes like swirling, jagged fins that sloped around their shoulders; others were simply covered in light dustings of brightly-coloured spores, which glittered across their backs like fish scales. The crops were bred to be sturdy but Nina was impressed how, even though there were so many women squeezed in the room, everyone seemed to instinctively avoid brushing against each other's growths. 'Come,' said Minnie, 'Let me see your crop.'

  It was such a crush, Nina felt quite overwhelmed, but she did as she was told and turned around, lifting her arms.

  'May I?' Minnie said. Even though they were cousins, it was poor etiquette to touch another's crop without permission.

  'Of course,' Nina said.

  She felt Minnie's fingers brushing across the back of her, but she couldn't tell what she was doing.

  There was an excitement around her. The women in the powder room worked around each other; there was frenetic talk and laughter. From somewhere outside, Nina could hear the sound of distorted strings.

  'Minnie,' she said, 'the music—'

  'Not yet,' Minnie said. 'They're only tuning up.'

  She steered Nina towards the mirror and turned her so they could see her back.

  'There,' Minnie said. 'How does that look?'

  Nina's eyes widened. Her crop hadn't grown but there was a contrast in the colour of the bulbous shapes growing from her back that made them stand out from the paleness of her skin.

  'What did you do?'

  'Only powder.' Minnie smiled. 'You look beautiful, Nina, let's go find mama before the music begins.'

  *

  A broad hallway led them to the ballroom; a sizeable space in a roughly oval shape. Like most of the buildings in the colony, the walls were cut from dark grey stone that reflected the light as though it were polished glass. The walls were hung with bright pendants, embroidered with the insignia of the top tier of the United Colonies. A square dance floor was marked out by pillars in the centre of the room, above which a great glass dome showed the shifting clouds above. Beyond the dance floor, the orchestra were establishing themselves on the raised stage and around the periphery of the room, tables and chairs were gathered and the guests had already started finding places to call their own for the evening.