Tentacle and Wing

by Sarah Porter

  “Are you still hallucinating?” Gabriel asks nastily, still not looking at me. It seems like he’s gotten over being sorry pretty quickly. I shouldn’t have expected him to care about what he did for long, but I can’t help feeling disappointed.

  “Yeah,” Ophelia snaps before I can answer. “She absolutely is. She must have a serious concussion.”

  “Right,” I say. “Because if you can’t see something, it can’t possibly be there. Just like, since I don’t have wings, there’s no way you can have them, either.”

  “So what has she been seeing now?” Why is Gabe asking her when I’m right here? And he has the same hardness in his voice that I heard in Ophelia’s earlier. What’s going on?

  Ophelia shrugs. It makes her wings rustle. “Just random craziness.” Her glitter eyes turn my way; I think she’s staring at me intensely, though I can’t be sure. “Purple sharks jumping out of the sand, or something.”

  I’m looking back and forth between them. Rowan’s wading out into the froth, but Gabriel’s standing over Ophelia in a way that’s almost intimidating. His hands are on his hips, and a pattern like blue and gray worms is rippling through his bare chest.

  “I was thinking of telling Ms. Stuart. What Ada said last night.”

  “Don’t do that,” Ophelia says, too fast. “Gabriel, don’t!”

  “Don’t you think she should know?”

  I didn’t notice him diving, but Rowan’s gone. At first I don’t see him, but then I catch sight of a red blur so faint that he must be far below the surface. He’s swimming with a fast, silky, swerving motion, totally unlike a regular human would.

  “I think—” Ophelia bites her lip and rolls her dark stare my way again. “I think telling Ms. Stuart is a terrible idea. About those hallucinations.”

  I’ve had enough of whatever game they’re playing. “Sure. Why should Gabriel tell her? He’ll probably get the details all wrong, so it’s better if I tell her about my hallucinations myself. Oh, except that I saw that blue thing for the first time before the rock hit my head. Funny, right?”

  Gabriel’s eyebrows shoot up, and Ophelia looks half panicked, her mouth open like she’s trying to say twenty things at once.

  She doesn’t pick one in time, so Gabriel speaks first. “You said you can see more than infrared. Right?”

  “A lot more. I just don’t know what to call it. I see all kinds of stuff that we don’t have words for. I think maybe light moves differently for me.”

  He’s nodding. “That sounds potentially useful.”

  Ophelia grabs his leg. “Gabriel, no!”

  I’m starting to get it, a little. I’m wondering if Gabriel never completely believed I was hallucinating, not even last night. And maybe she didn’t, either.

  And if that’s true, then they can only think this is an issue because of what I saw.

  I gaze out at the water, thinking. Rowan’s vanished; there’s no trace of red anywhere in the silvery waves crashing inside our penned-in sea. Maybe he’s swimming so deep that the warmth of his body can’t reach through the water’s chill?

  Or maybe that’s him: that dim red smear streaking outside the fence.

  Right near a dark patch that might be a hole, now that I think about it. None of us can ever leave the grounds, Gabriel said. But there’s no way he doesn’t know what his best friend is doing. I can imagine how Scott Held and his followers would react if they knew about this; it seems like a crazy risk to be taking.

  They’re both watching me. “So what are you looking at now?” Ophelia asks, fake-casually.

  She shouldn’t even try with me. I have her completely outclassed. “It must be a seal or a porpoise?” I say, and point to where the back of Rowan’s head just split the waves so far out that to them it must be only a dark dot. “Something warm-blooded, anyway, but I don’t think it’s big enough to be a dolphin.”

  Both of them visibly relax. After last night, I can’t help resenting that they don’t trust me more than this.

  Rowan’s out there, free and wild in the ocean. He probably feels most truly himself right now, as he arcs his back and dashes under the waves.

  But I’ve just made myself into a lie again. I’ve disappeared from reality, and whatever is left is as fake as a unicorn with a papier-mâché horn.

  Chapter Eleven

  TEN MINUTES later, Rowan is standing thigh-deep in the sea, with a long, silvery fish flopping violently in one arm the way you’d hold a baby. His other hand keeps a tight grip on its tail. “Gabe!”

  Gabriel splashes out to meet him with the bucket. I’d thought maybe they were blowing off their chores, but actually they’re probably doing their job right now. Rowan flings the fish into the bucket, and it thumps wildly against the orange plastic. Rowan’s wet fur gleams, sleek and slippery.

  “What would you say that guy weighs?” Rowan asks, and Gabriel hefts the bucket experimentally.

  “Six pounds? Maybe seven. So if you can get five more this size, we’ll have plenty for everyone.”

  “I’ll try,” Rowan says, and slides away again. It’s amazing how smoothly he dives, like a needle vanishing in silk.

  And then Gabriel glances at me, his face taut and self-conscious. That fish is obviously way too big to have squirmed through the links in the fence. “So, they swim in here when they’re still tiny and then get stuck inside when they grow. Rowan doesn’t catch them until they’re older. We have to conserve.”

  I nod, blank and bland. It’s depressing how easily I’ve gone back to pretending. “That makes sense.”

  Maybe I’m overdoing it a little. I get the impression that there’s something suspicious in the sparkle of Ophelia’s eyes.

  “I’m going to head back,” I tell her. I stand up, and sand cascades down my legs. My hair is clumpy from the salt. “I try to practice my violin for at least two hours every day. I hope you won’t mind.”

  “Go ahead. But on a normal day when we have chores, you won’t have that much time.” She’s still mad at me, but not like she was before. “Hey, Ada? I’m sorry we were fighting.”

  “Me too,” I say. “It’s something I’m really sensitive about, people telling me that what I see is weird and I shouldn’t talk about it. But you didn’t know that. I’m sorry I got so mad.”

  She glances around. Gabriel is still twenty feet from shore, waves bursting around his waist as he waits with the bucket. Her voice falls to a whisper. “You can tell me whatever you want. Just, don’t tell everybody. I mean, if it isn’t already too late.” Her head gives a tiny jerk in Gabriel’s direction. “Please?”

  “Who’s everybody?” I bet I already know the answer. It’s strange, though, because she seems so kind. I thought all the kids here completely loved her.

  Ophelia’s biting her lip. She lifts a hand to hide her eyes, I think as a substitute for the way a normal person would lower their eyelids. Then she beckons me closer and I bend down.

  “Anyone who might tell Ms. Stuart. But you just got here, so you won’t know who that is. I’m safe, though. So stick to me.”

  Safe again. She has no idea how sick I am of safe, and anyway it never works. But I nod. I’ll try to get more information from her later, when we’re alone. “I’ll be more careful.” Ophelia gives me a thank-you smile.

  I scramble over the lip where the meadow drops down to the beach and weave a little until I find the path again. The whole time I’m climbing the hill, the mystery of it drums in my head. Why is Ophelia so worried? What does she think Ms. Stuart would do if she found out what I’ve seen? And does that mean Ms. Stuart knows about the blue, even though she can’t see it? Does everyone?

  I kind of had the impression that Ophelia is in love with Gabriel. If she’s ready to work against him, the situation must be pretty serious. But why?

  Once I reach the top, I turn to look back at them. Gabriel’s still out in the ocean, jumping to ride the bigger swells as they roll in. His wet back shines silvery white, and the orange bucket bobs besid
e him. Ophelia’s gone back to reading, lying face-down so her wings can spread out on the breeze.

  And way out past the fence I spot Rowan, a tiny reddish brushstroke on the water’s silver peaks. I turn and walk three more steps, then stop again. Was there something out there in the water with him?

  I look. I have no idea what it is, but right beside him a rippling shadow hangs just below the surface. It’s enormous, maybe fifty feet long, snaking with an impossible complexity. There’s no hint of red: that thing is as cold as death. I nearly scream out to warn him, though at this distance there’s no chance he would hear me.

  But the longer I look, the less it seems like that twisty shape is attacking him. They’re close enough to touch. I can see Rowan’s red brightening as he rises up and rests on the water’s skin, then slides playfully over what might be the creature’s head.

  I can’t make out what’s happening at this distance, but I could almost swear they’re friends.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Say it with your violin, Ada. Whatever you see, describe it in music. Never words. Music is safe.

  What I see is that everyone here is lying to me, even after I almost got killed trying to protect them. They’re playing some messed-up game I can’t begin to figure out. And they’re getting twitchy about the possibility that I can see things they’re trying to keep secret. Like that hole in the fence. Like the way that Rowan is hanging out with some kind of sea serpent, or whatever that thing was. It definitely didn’t look like anything that should be a real animal—​more like something that escaped from an old myth. And I bet Gabe and Ophelia know all about it.

  I can’t describe that with music by doing vibrato exercises or even whirling my way through Mendelssohn. I grab my violin and bow, and at first my hands are so tight with anger that my tone is horribly off and screeching. Then I start to focus on the sound, and I let myself go, improvising a moaning pulse in A-minor that starts out slow and then gets faster, fiercer, higher. It’s not like I’ll ever get to play onstage again or enter a competition. I’m stuck here forever, so I might as well play whatever I feel like.

  I play rows of jagged teeth flashing in the water. I play those teeth until they’re mirror-bright and stretched to the size of skyscrapers. I play a hungry mouth that erupts from the ocean like a city, ready to devour everyone here. I disappear in notes that pound and wail, jump and bite. Because I’ve lost my family, and the people who were supposed to accept me for what I am have turned out to be liars, liars, liars.

  “Ada?” Ophelia’s standing in the doorway. Her eyes have the same incomprehensible shimmer as ever, but her mouth is wide and shocked. It’s almost like she could hear the accusation sawed out by my bow. “Um, wow. That was intense. I’m sorry to interrupt, but Ms. Stuart wants to talk to you.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “RIGHT NOW?” I ask. Now that I’ve stopped playing, I feel like I’ve been yanked out of a dream and everything is still a little confused. “Do you think Gabriel told her about me?”

  Ophelia looks over both shoulders, then comes in and shuts the door. “I don’t know! He came back up here with Rowan to bring the fish to the kitchen, and he wasn’t gone for that long, but maybe he had time to say something. I asked him not to, you know I did. But sometimes it’s like all Gabriel sees are his big ideas about . . . people like us, and what he thinks is our destiny. He cares way more about that than he does about—”

  She stops, chewing her lip, but I know what she was going to say anyway.

  “So why don’t you want Ms. Stuart to know what I saw?”

  Ophelia just shakes her head. Her face is turned toward the corner, but she can probably still watch me from the glittery edge of one compound eye. “That doesn’t matter,” she murmurs at last. “You still have to go talk to her.”

  My heart is fluttering, but Ophelia might be worrying for nothing. I got here yesterday, so maybe Ms. Stuart wants to check on how I’m doing. “Where do I go?”

  “I’ll show you,” Ophelia says, and brushes past me. I follow her out of our room and into the long hallway lined with numbered doors. I didn’t pay much attention last time we went this way, but now the walk seems to take forever. I watch the green and gold leaf pattern on the rug slide by, the blotches of bright paint and flattened gum, the scribbled ballpoint flowers and lumpy dragons crawling up the walls. Ophelia’s shoulders are tense, and her wings rustle nervously as she walks, and as we turn around one corner after another, she never looks at me.

  We reach a short flight of stairs going down with a single unmarked door at the bottom. “That’s her office. And, Ada? She’s really smart. She always knows when someone isn’t telling the truth. But if you can avoid saying too much in the first place, then maybe she won’t guess.”

  Then Ophelia turns, one wing grazing my cheek like crisp cellophane, and darts back down the hall before I can say anything. But if anyone is actually on my side in this place, it’s probably her.

  If.

  So I walk down the stairs and knock, my blood surging so fast that whispers flood my head. A touch as slight and silky as a feather skims up my back, bringing shivers with it, but when I glance around, there’s nothing there. It must just be because I’m so nervous.

  “Come in.”

  And I do. It was only yesterday that I got called into another office, but now that seems so long ago that the memory of Mr. Collins, and of all the cruel things he said, warps in my mind. “Ms. Stuart?”

  “Hello, Ada.” She’s sitting at a steel slab of a desk gushing with papers, but she turns her chair around to face me. Mixed in with the papers behind her are lots of bright objects that must be presents from the smaller kids: crudely painted smiley-face rocks with glued-on yarn hair, tangled pipe cleaner necklaces. Scraggly homemade mobiles bob below the ceiling. Her lids are puffed and bluish around her small muddy eyes. She obviously doesn’t sleep enough, but her smile is warm. I feel a little throb of doubt: how could someone who cares so much be my enemy? “I owe you an apology for what happened last night. I never should have allowed Gabriel to involve you. He feels our situation too deeply, and it makes him reckless. I’m glad to see you’re up and about. How are you now?”

  “I’m okay,” I say. “And I wanted to help.” It’s a narrow room squeezed even narrower by sagging bookcases down both sides and piles of cardboard boxes. There isn’t a second chair, but she waves toward a cracked blue cooler near her desk, so I perch on its edge. Papers poke out from under the lid; I think she might be using the cooler as a file cabinet. Petri dishes lie scattered on its lid, too, all of them filled with a dim reddish grit like dried blood or maybe rust. I shuffle a few of the dishes to the side so I can sit farther back.

  “I know you wanted to help. It showed a very generous spirit. Do you still?”

  Is there something strange in how she’s looking at me? Her shoulders are high and tense, and light from the one small window pricks off her eyes like needles.

  “I mean, Gabriel said we all help here. With chores and everything.”

  I already know that’s not what she’s talking about. She shakes her head impatiently; her hair is so short and stiff it doesn’t move at all. “Ada, we are here for a reason.”

  What? That’s the kind of thing my mom says when she doesn’t like the way a conversation is going and wants it to stop: We’re all on this earth for a reason—​except of course for kimes like me; we’re just an ugly mistake—​or everything happens for a reason. Then my dad will wait till she’s out of the room and say, So the laws of cause and effect tell us. What your mother neglected to mention is how many of those reasons are perfectly terrible.

  “That’s what my mom says,” I say.

  Ms. Stuart’s head hasn’t stopped shaking. “I’m not speaking in platitudes. I mean, here in this precise location. It’s no coincidence that our founder, Dr. Gilbert, chose this place. He was searching for something, and Dr. Jacoway convinced him it might be here. You might not recognize it in him, Ada, bu
t Dr. Jacoway sometimes has—​remarkable flights of intuition. A sensitivity, perhaps.”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about, but that’s not the only confusing part. “Searching for what?” I ask.

  “I hoped you might already have noticed unusual phenomena here. There was something you said to Gabriel . . .”

  I feel like my blood is lifting up inside me. Like it’s grown a hundred wings, all beating at once in my ears. That’s it, she knows about the blue, and for some reason, that means trouble for me. I can barely make myself answer. “Yes?”

  “That you see infrared, but some other things as well. You mentioned that when we first met you by the gate, Ada Lahey.” She gives me a look like she’s inspecting me somehow, then picks up a file folder bristling with bent papers. Her forehead is creased, and there’s a weird tension in her eyes. She holds the folder straight up as a blind and spreads out her other hand behind it. “That’s how you knew what you were, you said.”

  This again. I don’t bother waiting for the question. “All five. You’re stretching your hand out as wide as it can go. Except just now you pulled your thumb in. Now you’re making the okay sign, with your thumb and forefinger in a circle.”

  She drops the folder and leans toward me. “Indeed. That checks out, then. And the other things you see, beyond the infrared? What is that like?”

  Oh. My heart settles again. Maybe Gabriel didn’t betray me, at least not yet. Why didn’t I go along with Ophelia’s story that I had been hallucinating from my head injury? She was trying to cover for me by talking to Gabe about those purple sharks, to make it seem like everything I’d said was equally pure craziness. I understand that now.

  “I don’t know what to compare it to. I’m not sure there are names for all of it.”

  “Ultraviolet?”

  “Probably. I see pretty intense blues, in clouds and stuff. Where I think other people don’t.”

  “There are a few species whose vision goes beyond that. Who can see types of polarized light invisible to every other creature on the planet. To put it simply, they see light that moves in ways the rest of us are blind to. Does that resonate at all with your experience?”