Page 18 of Tidal Creatures

“It’s a showing and a telling at once,” says Chang’e, and turns. “Follow me.”

Together, they walk deeper into the everything, and the gate is left unguarded.

Sinus Fidei

TIMELINE: AUGUST 17, 2017. FOUR DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

Isabella’s enchiladas are like nothing Kelpie has ever tasted, and she wants to keep eating until there’s no room left inside of her for anything but enchilada. They’re sharp and spicy and sweet and savory all at the same time, striking flavors on her tongue she never imagined possible. She wants to wallow in them. She has to fight not to grab the serving platters and empty them onto her own plate, glutting herself in a way that would be entirely inappropriate for a guest.

She’s never been a guest before, but Margaret was very insistent that she relearn proper manners after her accident, which Kelpie now supposes was Margaret making sure she was halfway civilized before risking her in the larger, if still limited, lab environment.

All her meals before this one were eaten in her room or the lab cafeteria, made in the same kitchen, nutritionally balanced and designed to flatter the humors of the researchers, keeping them in harmony with themselves. Maybe she never realized how limited the flavors of those “ideal” meals really were, but this is like discovering color after a lifetime of drawing in graphite alone. Graphite is a wonderful medium, and she’s always going to have a deep-seated fondness for soy noodles and faux meat, but this …

This is cuisine as poetry.

She cleans her plate and, when Isabella asks if she wants seconds, barely remembers to ask if it’s allowed before she accepts. Isabella laughs, and refills her glass of milk. She comments on how advanced Kelpie’s spice tolerance is in light of her unfamiliarity with the food, and it’s not until Luis leaves the table to take the dog out that her expression sharpens and she focuses on Kelpie’s face.

“You come from that lab they think we don’t know about?”

Kelpie blinks. “I— What?”

“The alchemists. They think because they’re the ones who wrote a rule book, they’re the only ones who understand the way things work. Arrogant fucks. You one of their projects?” Her eyes, which were so soft and kind a moment ago, are sharp, shuttered; she’s ready to defend her child and her home if she needs to, and Kelpie is the threat she’s defending against.

Kelpie shrinks back in her seat. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“But you do. That’s the first lie you’ve told me. How about we do it this way: you don’t tell me a second lie, and I might let you leave here still breathing.”

Isabella is terrifying. Kelpie would never have expected Isabella to be terrifying. She seemed so sweet until the threats started, and to be fair, she still isn’t reaching for a weapon—but that makes her more frightening, not less. All the people Kelpie knows, if they’re reaching for weapons, it’s because they feel like you’re worth fighting. Isabella doesn’t think she’s enough of a threat to warrant a fight. That stings, a little.

“It’s not a lie, because I really don’t understand,” says Kelpie. “I don’t think I’m a project, even if they built me. I’m pretty sure I’m a person, and that means I can’t be a project, not in the way you mean. I came through a door at the top of a very long series of stairs, and at the bottom of the stairs there’s a lab, or there was, anyway. I ran because a man came and said he was going to shut us down. He killed…” Her breath catches. Saying it makes it real. That isn’t even sympathetic magic: that’s just common sense. Once you speak something into the world, it’s true, in some way, even if it’s a bald-faced lie. Once she speaks the truth of Margaret’s death, it becomes true, and true things are real, and she doesn’t want to say it.

Isabella is still watching her with hard, suspicious eyes, so Kelpie keeps talking, even though she doesn’t want to. “He killed my supervisor because she worked on a failed project, and they don’t reassign people who failed. He killed her right in front of me, and she told him lies that should have meant he was killing me, too.”

“What lies?”

“She told him…” Another pause, another breath caught in her throat, like a stone she has to try to talk around. This one refuses to be dislodged, even when she forces herself to continue: “She told him I was a natural person who’d been in a bad accident, which is why I don’t look altogether like a natural person to folks who know how to look at me. I guess she convinced him, because what he did to her would have killed me, too, if I’d been natural, and men from the Congress don’t usually like to leave witnesses when they don’t want to.”

“Maybe he wanted to.”

“What?”

“Maybe he knew she was lying, and didn’t know whether you knew. Maybe he wanted to leave a witness, so he could see what you would do. Maybe he wasn’t sure whether you knew.”

“I didn’t,” says Kelpie, and it’s so ridiculous that it sounds like a lie, even though it isn’t. “I didn’t,” she repeats, more softly.

“Are you trying to convince me, or to convince yourself?” asks Isabella.

Kelpie looks sharply up, meets her eyes, and manages not to flinch away. Isabella sighs.

“You’re cowering like a whipped dog, and I don’t like that,” she says. “Makes me feel mean. I fed you, girl, and that means right now you have a certain amount of leeway here; can’t break bread with someone and then slaughter them in cold blood. Maybe that’s a rule we got from the colonizers, but it doesn’t matter when it’s the sympathetic law of the land, and it’s burrowed deep enough that it is now. I could have poisoned you when we sat down, if I’d wanted you dead and been willing to deal with the aftermath of Luis witnessing it. He’s a young, impressionable boy; he doesn’t need to see his beloved mother start killing people for what looks like no reason. His daddy’s about as magical as a rock—and sure, some rocks are plenty magic, but way more aren’t magic at all, and he falls into the second category. Luis hasn’t shown us yet who he’s going to take after.”

“You’re an alchemist?” asks Kelpie, mild fear flaring up into sudden terror.

Isabella looks offended beyond all words. “Please. Do I look like an old white man with a god complex? And if the answer to that would be yes, you have permission to tell a second lie after all, because I do not want to hear that.”

“You don’t,” says Kelpie quickly. “You don’t look like any of the alchemists I’ve ever met.”

“Yeah, they talk a good talk about wanting to equalize the forces of the universe by giving humanity access to the power that should have belonged to us all along, but if you look closely, you see that their version of ‘humanity’ is always very, very pale.”