Reading time: approximately 9 minutes
Hello my darlings! đ Welcome to the second half of Nettyâs story. Sheâs having a really intense day.
If you missed the first half of this story, you can read it here.
The doorway to our apartment is still open from when we left it this morning. Sylvie and I bunk in the residential section built by unaltered humansâthe mer section is too cold for me, the liz section too hot for her. Besides, I like the yuld arched rock hallways, and the smooth, honey-colored plaster walls in the apartments.
I walk through the living area to our bedroom. On the threshold I have to reach out to the door frame for balance. The sight of the unmade bed we left just a few hours ago freezes me in place. I canât. I canât understand how we wonât be getting into it together tonight. How can my life now be so far away from where it was this morning? I let numb incomprehension fill me. I donât want to keep going.
I stand there until my feet ache, until I have to shift my body weight, until I have to lower my hand from the door frame. Living things canât stay still forever. Thereâs no choice but to move.
I walk over to the bed and grab my shaggy pink sweater from off the bedpost. Sylvie made it for me, three years ago. It cost her a whole month of replicator time, but the hint of blue iridescence in it matches my scales perfectly.
Donât put it on, I suddenly think. Iâll wear it out, and thenâŠ
And then. All her and thens have already happened. There are no more and thens for Sylvie. I would cry, but Iâm not mer enough for it. Sylvie was, though. Sheâd cry for me, and Gerrald, both of us with all-black liz eyes that canât tear up with emotion.
I yank the sweater over my head, my arms into the sleeves. I feel like Iâm a wildfire, like half of me is a scorched ruin. The other half is still raging, completely uncontained, decimating everything I have left.
I slam open the drawer under our bed and snatch out my carrisak. I go to our bookshelves and start dumping books on the ground.
âNettyâŠâ I hear Gerraldâs deep, rich voice from the doorway behind me. I can hear forgiveness in his voice. I should be glad of that, but it doesnât mean anything right now. I keep pulling everything off the shelves. Those manuals are here somewhere.
âOh, Netty.â I pause for a moment to glance over my shoulder at Gerrald. He looks pure alb, with his strong jaw and wide shoulders, built like he could hold up the world. But his black eyes reveal the one drop of liz that landed him down here with us in the Ossuary. His nervous, uncertain stance reveals the good his time down here with us has done, far away from the rigid certainty that a son of the Alb Nation was expected to project at all times.
âMayve and I planned to have a wake before the service,â he says. âHybrid tradition, just like you wanted. Two days from now.â I turn back to the bookshelf.
âWho do you want to invite to be in the receiving line?â He asks.
I feel that wildfire inside me blaze up and roar. I donât even know why Iâm so angry at him, but Iâm furious. I pick another book off my shelf and slam it down on the floor hard enough to echo.
âYou can sleep here if you want,â I say. âIf you feel like you need to be closer to her, or whatever. Didnât you always complain about how far away your room is from ours?â Maybe he said that once, I donât even really remember. But itâs what comes out of my mouth. Some nights, we invite Gerrald to join us. Invited, I mean. Not anymore. I lean over to peer into the lower shelves. Ah, there they are.
âWith you?â Gerrald asks. I laugh because it feels like a terrible thing to do. It sounds terrible. I sound terrible. Gerraldâs hands clench and unclench, like he maybe wants to pick me up and throw me across the room. Maybe thatâs just what I want him to do.
I reach into the back of the shelf and pull out two books. One is slim, the other is textbook-thick. Both are so old they are made from real dead trees, yellow and spotted with age.
âGood bye, Gerrald,â I say as I stuff the two books into my carrisak. He watches me and doesnât say any more. I walk past him and he doesnât reach out to stop me. I think of how he used to bury his face in my hair, thick and wavy as a mer but alb white instead of dark blue-black. I think of how gentle his kisses were. I think of how he would grin and tickle Sylvie to make her laugh before he slid his hands under her shirt.
Itâs a shame neither of us can cry.
Two hours later, Iâm pulling the thinner manual and a flashlight out of my carrisak. I swing the carrisak back onto my shoulder and balance the manual on my forearm, almost dropping it. Iâm completely graceless down here in the dark, well below the Ossuary. Sylvieâs sweater helps stabilize my core temperature a bit, but Iâm liz enough that the cold slows me down. I canât go into full torpor, but down here in the ancient storage caves below the City, where the sun hasnât shone for centuriesâif everâI feel like my brain is padded in towels and my fine motor skills have deserted me.
I finally balance the manual and get the light shining on the inside cover. Thereâs my old map, the one I drew a dozen years ago. The faded, unsteady lines are sharp to my liz eyes. Itâs clear that the staircase ahead is the last one, and the abandoned lab is the second door on the left after it. I click off my flashlight and tuck it and the manual back into my carrisak. I adjust to the low mosslight kept alive by the damp walls, slick with river water that seeps through the caverns.
I slide my boot carefully down the first step of the stairway. My feet are numb and with my cold-impaired reaction time, I donât want to fall and crack my head open in the dark. I could scream for hours and no one would hear me. I know because we had, Sylvie and me, when we found this place.
It takes an eternity, but finally I am down the stairs and safe on flat ground. I can see entryways to a dozen rooms lining the hallway, each one looking like a flat, dark portal.
I walk into the second darkness on the left. I pull out my flashlight again and click it on, aiming the beam to the back corner of the abandoned lab. The huge bank of machines is still there, covered with old, grimy cloths. Just like weâd left them after our huge fight.
The smell of damp dust and cold metal reminds me of the details of that day: Sylvie had pushed me hard enough that I had staggered back against the wall, knocking over some small boxes. There they are, still tumbled down. Sheâd been so angry sheâd lost control of her mer reflexes, her third eyelids filming over her eyes, the gills on her neck riffling open with a sucking sound, her stiffened fingers jerking apart even though she didnât have the usual webbing between them.
This could change everything, I remember she yelled at me. This could fix us all, this could get our people out of the Ossuary and back up into the City with our families. We are staring at redemption and you are too much of a coward to even try!
Thereâs a reason genetic tampering was outlawed, Iâd yelled right back. Itâs dangerous. We could kill ourselves trying.
We each deserve to make that choice, sheâd said. Itâs not like we asked to be hybrids. We were thrown down here, like prisoners into an oubilette. I lost everything, Netty. We lost everything. But this can fix it. I can be full mer, for real this time. You can beâŠ
Her certainty had stumbled over me, like always. Most hybrids lean toward one genetic line. Gerrard is alb with some liz genes. Sylvie was mer with some alb. But I am a nightmare of melded genetics, a horror for most to look at. My blue mer skin is marred with patches of liz scales in blue instead of standard green. My eyes are liz black, my hair is alb white, and I am small and stocky enough to have more than a little yuld genes.
You could become mer, Sylvie had said. Then you could be with me.
I am already with you, I had said. Arenât I, Sylvie?
Silence then, like now. I remember hearing her swallow as she choked back the words: you know what I mean.
I had broken that silence in the past. We would never have met, I had said. Youâre acting like you were Sylvrania and you failed your mer gene test and now youâre Sylvie. But thatâs not how it works. You were always Sylvie. Even before the test, you were a hybrid and they didnât want you. They just didnât know it yet. You were never one of them. Sylvrania is a dream. The Ossuary is your home, Sylvie, and we are your family. We love you. They donât.
But⊠Sylvie had whispered, barely any breath behind the word. Sheâd looked at the machines for a while. Slowly, her fingers had relaxed, and all her mer reflexes had calmed. Sheâd shaken her head, tears running down her light blue cheeks, and had pulled the cloths back over the machines. I had helped her. When they were covered up, we had gone back up out of the dark. Weâd never talked about this place again. Because she had chosen the Ossuary. She had chosen me.
Are you doing what you think she wanted or what you want?
She had finally embraced being hybrid on that day. Hadnât she? Sylvie always participated with us in mer holidays and celebrations.
Doesnât matter now, because now she is dead. Killed by a common genetic variant, one we would have eradicated from her system if we had used these machines and tried to turn her into a full-blood mer.
I want to scream. But the remembered echoes of our argument hang around me in the damp air. I canât shake the feeling that if I scream now, my noise will be all I remember and her voice will be covered up and lost forever.
The wildfire inside my chest burns itself out as it eats my heart, leaving only ashes. In the cold and silence, I pull the cloths off the ancient genetic engineering machines, too late but finally ready to try.
Thanks for reading, my darlings! The next story from the City will be out soonâyouâll get to meet a young Gerrald, soon after he was sent down to the Ossuary. Life isnât always what you were told it wasâŠ.
Oh Em GEEEEEEEE. This is amazing. The way you fleshed out the opening and the use of backstory. Ah-May-ZING!