Twig

by wildbow

  Ashton nodded.

  He had to think for a little while to decide how to answer. It helped that Abby had fallen silent, one hand on Quinton, another arm rubbing Princesca.

  “Before, I said I would help you,” Ashton said.

  Abby nodded, looking up at him.

  “And I said I would help Nora and Lara and Emmett and the Lambs.”

  She nodded again.

  “If you need me to, I’ll help just you for now. I can talk to Duncan when he gets back, and he can figure out how to talk to others about the weapons. He’s good at that, he’s good at negotiating and politics, and he does care about you.”

  “It’s not that,” Abby said.

  “What is it?”

  “If I have to keep doing this, I want to learn how to fight. But I don’t want to learn how to fight. I don’t want to fight five days of the week so I can have the life I want on the other two. I don’t want to fight two days a week so I can have the life I want for the other five. I just want a peaceful life with my animals…”

  She sniffled, and her arm moved funny as she brought it to her eye.

  “Stop,” Ashton said, uselessly, urgently puffing out calm.

  “And I’m really worried—”

  He did his best to catch her before she toppled to the floor. He sank to the floor with her, holding her twitching body while Quinton bleated.

  Through the floor, he could feel the low course of fluids through Princesca’s body. He could feel the warmth of her and he could see why Abby had been drawn here.

  While he waited for Abby to calm down, the bioluminescence faded, the cavern went dark, and he had some time to sit and think.

  He wished he had a Good Simon book that was more about how to help friends in trouble. He would have made it the topic of the book he’d been asked to write, but he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do in this kind of situation.

  ☙

  “So this is what you were leading up to,” Sylvester said. “You catch me on a bad day when my mind, heart, and body are tapped out, and you just… what? Promise horrible things if I don’t kowtow to you?”

  Helen touched her hair and smiled. “A Helen kind of horrible.”

  Sylvester ran his fingers through his hair, pacing. “You’re doing just what Evette did. You all want your turns, and since you’re the figments of my imagination that represent instinct and… I don’t know, common sense? The senses? And Fray here represents… absolutely everything going wrong, or conspiracy, or… whatever. I don’t have the energy to do this. You’re staging your mutiny, working to push me out? A very complicated way of my self-preservation instincts saying ‘no more’?”

  He wheeled around. His voice was almost ragged, “Well, you can go fuck a fistful of nails, Fray! And you two—”

  Ashton watched Sylvester. He was preoccupied with watching Sylvester’s emotions, trying to piece it all together.

  Sylvester’s voice softened. “Don’t do the nail thing. But do leave me alone. I’m doing too many important things. Go away.”

  Ashton gave Helen a sidelong glance.

  “What if I say no?” Helen asked.

  “Don’t. No. You’re not allowed. Not today. I have things I need to square away.”

  “Like Jessie,” Helen said.

  “Like a lot of things! This is just inconvenient. So scram. I banish thee, and I refuse to accept you’re going to pull an Evette and say no. You two will stand aside. I will it so. Just this once.”

  He was gesticulating wildly, and in this, he used his hands as if to part the waters, to will them to move aside.

  Ashton looked at Helen for guidance. Wouldn’t taking Sylvester be better? They could get him help.

  But she gestured, go, and she stepped back.

  Ashton mirrored her movement, stepping away from her and from the door.

  Without a word, Sylvester walked through.

  Sylvester trudged off, casting one or two backward glances. He looked so hurt, so tired, so cold.

  “He asked,” Helen said, answering a question Ashton hadn’t voiced. “He didn’t ask nicely, but he asked.”

  “Abby wants to leave,” Ashton said. “She said so, a few days ago, before we came here.”

  Helen approached him, wrapping her arms around him from behind, and buried her face in his damp hair, mussing it up. He tolerated the messy hair and he puffed happiness at her.

  “You can’t tell. It’s a secret,” Ashton said, stopping with the puffs so he could be sure she listened. It was like the period at the end of a sentence, a stab of the finger.

  “I know, and I won’t,” Helen said, and she wouldn’t because she was like that.

  “I was looking at Sylvester just now and I was thinking what if that was Abby standing there instead? Sylvester didn’t look very happy.”

  “There’s a difference,” Helen said. “They’re different.”

  “I know that,” Ashton said. He puffed out disgust and irritation and agitation. He could feel Helen snort into his hair. “I just wish I understood better. I really could only think of two ways she might end up happy, and this was supposed to be one.”

  “They’re different. Keep that in mind,” Helen said. “What’s the other way?”

  “I thought of asking Duncan to send her back to Sous Reine. I thought maybe we or I could chip in money and they could give her a job in the stables or somewhere and she could save money or something. I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”

  “Ask her before you do that,” Helen said.

  “Why?”

  “Because she might not be as happy doing that as you think she might,” Helen said. “And that’s if it works, if they let her go and if Sous Reine would take her.”

  Ashton nodded.

  “If you need help with any of that, little mushroom brother, you can ask me,” Helen said. “I’ll do what I can. But if you’re going to ask me for anything, sooner is better, I think.”

  “Why?”

  “Sooner is better,” she restated it.

  “Why?” he tried again.

  She bit into his scalp, far harder than was necessary, and then she let go of him.

  How are they different? Ashton asked, using his head instead of his mouth. He worried Helen would bite him again if he pressed her.

  He remained quiet, thinking, as they exited the little stable.

  It was a minute before he deemed it safe enough to say, “Mary is going to be so mad at us.”

  “Yes she is, little brother,” Helen said, smiling merrily. “Yes she is.”

  ☙

  Mary fired the gun. It was an intentional miss, Ashton judged, but it did a good job of making Sylvester jump a good few feet off the bed. The girl in the bed and Jessie looked spooked too.

  Sylvester scrambled to use the bed for cover, as Jessie did. The girl in the bed was furthest from that end of the bed, and simply froze.

  “Come here, honey,” Helen said. “Out of the way.”

  The girl in the bed brought a sheet with her to cover herself up, ducking down swiftly to pick up her skirt and socks from the floor.

  Still using the bed as defensive cover, Sylvester chuckled. The chuckle became a laugh.

  Ashton couldn’t see Sylvester, so he watched the other Lambs. Mary was calm, cool. Lillian had one hand on her face.

  Duncan looked… concerned.

  Helen was Helen.

  He tried to judge if he should use something or another on Mary. Mary was immune, but if he tried really, really hard and emptied his reserve, he might have been able to do something.

  Sylvester continued laughing. He raised his hands over his head. When Mary didn’t put a hole in either hand, Sylvester stood, and rounded the end of the bed, wearing only his pyjama bottoms. His back and shoulder were bandaged, and he had dark circles under his eyes that had nothing to do with how much or how little sleep he’d gotten.

  He approached, and when Mary didn’t shoot him, he threw his arms around her, hugging h
er.

  She pressed the gun to his head.

  “You got me,” he said, still hugging her.

  As he pulled away, turning toward Lillian, Mary seized his wrist, twisted his arm behind his back, and shoved him into the ground.

  Further twisting of his arm made him drop the knife of Mary’s that he’d palmed.

  “You got me,” he said, again.

  “We came for the Professor,” Duncan volunteered. “You were accidental.”

  “Well, you got him too,” Sylvester said, smiling.

  They were different, Helen had said. Abby and Sylvester.

  For a moment, Ashton thought he realized how. Abby had said something about it once. That some people were pulled, and some people were pushed.

  Abby was pulled toward that dream of hers. Of a simple life, of animals, and hopefully having friends near her. And it looked like Sylvester was pushed.

  It was a very tidy, satisfying answer, until Mary hauled Sylvester up off the ground. For a fleeting moment, as Sylvester took in the group, Ashton could read his expression.

  He’d looked like this as he rested between Jessie and the girl on the bed. Now, captive, gun aimed at him, his plans awry, he looked very much like he’d found his farm, his animals, and all of his friends.

  “You got me,” Sylvester said, not for the first time. “Sorry Jessie.”

  Previous Next

  Gut Feeling—17.1

  “You got me,” I told the Lambs. My face was pressed against the ground. “I’m sorry, Jessie.”

  Jessie had sat up in bed when the gun had fired. In the enclosed space, the sound had reverberated off of the walls. The sound of the shot rang in my ears, and feathers continued to fall all around us.

  “Don’t be sorry,” Jessie said. She remained where she was. She’d reached over and picked up her glasses, but she hadn’t budged from her spot.

  I was sorry, though. That I wasn’t able to put up more of a fight, that I was glad about this reunion, even if the long term wasn’t something I wanted to think about. Even considering the idea of being taken back, facing Hayle and my old doctors—

  I moved, and Mary asserted her grip, making me wince.

  “Please be gentle with him,” Mabel said. “His shoulder—”

  “I know about the shoulder,” Mary said. “If he wants me to be gentle with it, he should stop trying to be clever with knives.”

  “No more cleverness here,” I said. “I’m rather too tired for cleverness.”

  “Let’s hope,” Mary said. “It’s a long trip back to civilization, and I’m not in any mood for games. If you push me, I’ll hurt you, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

  My eyes fell on a large feather that had fallen to the floor a short distance from my nose. I puffed out a breath and blew it a little distance across the floor.

  “No interest in hurting me at all, huh? That shot at my knee suggests otherwise,” I said. I was trying to keep my tone light.

  “That was different,” Mary said. “Call it a warning shot, a reminder that I remember.”

  “An intentional miss?” I asked. “Good excuse, that.”

  She pressed the gun against the back of my head. “Don’t tempt me to shoot you, Sylvester. I’m the one holding the gun because it would probably bother me the least.”

  “Right,” I said. I smiled.

  I didn’t push my luck any further. Waking up, my senses had been jumbled. Now that I’d had a bit of time to get my thoughts all orderly, I was able to shift my head into a better mode for analysis and strategy.

  I knew who I was up against. Foolhardy as it was, given my recent misinterpretation of reality, I drew on the phantoms, bringing forth images of Lillian, Helen, Mary, and Duncan. The shadows mirrored the Lambs, sticking close to them, looking over shoulders, or sitting on nearby surfaces, looking over the Lambs’ heads.

  I looked for Fray and Mauer and I didn’t see them. Evette was conspicuously absent, too.

  Damn Fray, damn her for toying with me like this.

  “You’re going by Jessie now?” Lillian asked.

  “Yes,” Jessie said. “I wanted to put some distance between myself and the original Jamie.”

  “And you’re pretending to be a girl now?” Lillian asked.

  “If I am, I was pretending to be a boy before too,” Jessie said. “I wouldn’t disagree with that.”

  “What’s this?” Mabel asked, sounding uncertain.

  This wasn’t how I’d wanted to have the conversation. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have the conversation at all. Jessie seemed willing to field this, but I just wished it wasn’t in the midst of a crowd.

  “Jam—Jessie is—” Duncan started.

  I really wished it wasn’t Duncan supplying any answers.

  “I’m an experiment,” Jessie said, before Duncan could go further. “Nothing either way except scars. The only thing that really made me a ‘boy’ before was that it was in the Academy’s paperwork and files, and they weren’t even that committed to it.”

  It was hard for me to read Lillian’s expressions from my position on the ground.

  “I’m just saying, my doctors referred to me as Project Caterpillar four hundred and sixty eight times in my recollection and Jamie’s written records, while only referring to Jamie seventy one times. They referred to me as ‘it’ two hundred times and ‘he’ two hundred and thirty times. I don’t think they cared that much. So what’s tying me down?”

  “I thought you were a wonderful boy,” Lillian said. “Gentle, sensitive, thoughtful.”

  “Thank you,” Jessie said.

  “It meant a lot to me, growing up, that I had one or two boys around me that I could contrast with my dad and with Sy. If it was just my dad, Sy, and Gordon, and maybe a little bit of Professor Hayle, I might have gotten a warped idea of what boys were about. I appreciated that you were part of the mix, and now that’s gone. I don’t think it’s fair to say you had no ties to it and you could just throw it away like that, when we spent so much time together being bookworms together, and figuring out our way through things, talking about things…”

  “But how much of that was me and how much was my predecessor?”

  “You and I had conversations, Jessie. We hung out. I visited you regularly, between my classes, I participated in the rehabilitation and life skills, speech training and everything else. I tried to brace you about Sy not being over the loss of the first Jamie.”

  “I’m not disputing that,” Jessie said. “But that doesn’t answer my question. Can you really draw a fine line between the time you spent with my predecessor and time you spent with me?”

  “Yes,” Lillian said, and it was clear she was upset. “It was really very emotional, mourning Jamie while getting to know you in those early days. My memory might not be perfect, but when it comes to sorting the before and after, it felt different. You two were different. Yes, again, I can draw a fine line.”

  “Okay,” Jessie said, looking a little caught off guard.

  “And I’m annoyed and hurt that you’re ignoring my points.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jessie said. “But we have to continue to grow and change while we aren’t together.”

  Lillian made a face. She met my eyes for only an instant and then flinched away.

  Jessie continued, “That dark cloud that hung over things was another part of it. Something I want to stay away from. Every interaction for too long was tainted by association. There weren’t many clothes I liked that weren’t also his style. I needed a clean break.”

  “I understand, I really do get it,” Lillian said. “It makes a lot of sense, and as much as it makes sense I think it kind of sucks that I’m here and I barely recognize you. I wasn’t a part of the conversation or the change, and neither were any of the other Lambs. It sucks—”

  She paused, looking at me, then looking at Mabel.

  “This sucks on a lot of levels,” she said. “We didn’t plan on cornering you like this, we didn’t even plan on meet
ing you, and then you guys forced our hand by getting to Berger before we did.”

  “I know,” Jessie said.

  “It doesn’t feel like a good day,” Duncan said. “It’s a win in our column, for what very little it’s worth, but it doesn’t feel good.”

  “Well said, Duncan,” Lillian said.

  “For what it’s worth,” I said. I tried to stand up, but Mary was sitting on me, and I didn’t have much strength in my shoulder. “I can’t say the situation is good, but any day I get to see all of you is a good one.”

  “He’s being sappy,” Mary said.

  “He’s up to something,” Lillian concluded.

  “No, really,” I said.

  “You come across as far less sincere when there’s a knife lying on the floor about two feet from your hand,” Duncan said. “Which you took off of Mary and presumably intended to use on one of us.”

  “Okay, hi there Duncan, how’s it?” I said. “And the knife was more because this would all be terribly sad and pathetic if I didn’t put up some sort of fight. Lamb cred. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Who were you going to take hostage?” Lillian asked.

  “Alright, wait,” I said. I’d just woken up, my eyes were bleary, my shoulder hurt from the damage done with the scalpel and the way that my twisted arm was pulling at the wound, and I needed to focus, with no time to get my brain organized. “Wait, let’s do this in order, so it all makes sense. I’ll have you know that hugging Mary was because I was genuinely happy to see you guys and it was politically difficult to choose who to hug. You and I have bad blood, Helen might hug me back in her Helen sort of way, I don’t know what Ashton’s got going on these days, and given the choice between Mary and Duncan, I’m going to choose Mary, even if she’s got me in an armlock with a gun pointed at me.”

  “I’ll try not to take it personally,” Duncan said.

  “Ha ha,” I said, with a more genuine smile on my face, to downplay the dismissal. I was trying to keep up the patter and the good mood. In this tense atmosphere, anything I could do to be the light in the darkness would go a long, long way. It could win over hearts and cement my position.

  And besides, I didn’t want this reunion to suck in the same sorts of ways the last one had.