Page 59 of Tidal Creatures

“Your friend has a tail,” she says.

Kelpie feels like she should contribute something at this point, so she says, “Your hair is green.”

“No, it’s not,” says Kim.

“I mean, it looks white, mostly, but when the light hits it at the right angle, it’s green,” says Kelpie. “I didn’t know human hair could look like that. It’s really pretty, but if we’re saying obvious things, it’s the most obvious thing about you.”

Kim starts to protest, then stops, and frowns at her. “It won’t dye. I’ve tried, even though it makes me sick to my stomach to even think about dyeing it, but then the dye rolls right off as soon as it’s dry. That’s chemically impossible.”

“‘Impossible’ is a thing people say when they want something not to have happened and don’t have a good reason why it wouldn’t,” says Kelpie.

Kim stands up straighter, color leaving her cheeks. “Get out,” she says, voice gone cold.

“What?” asks Kelpie.

“What?” echoes Smita.

“That’s what Leigh used to say when—that’s what the alchemist who raised me used to say, and I hated her, and I’m not going to sit here and listen to whatever one of her students has to say, even if you are orange.”

“I wasn’t one of Leigh Barrow’s students,” protests Kelpie. “I never even met her! The lab where I worked didn’t open until after she was already dead! I’m pretty sure that’s where I was made, since waking up there is the first thing I can remember. They told me it was because I’d been in a really bad accident that scrambled up my head, and since I already knew how to talk and do a lot of simple things, like dressing myself or running the autoclave, I never had a reason to think they were lying to me. But Leigh Barrow didn’t teach me or create me or anything, and I can’t know what of the things I’ve learned are bad to say if people chase me away as soon as I say one of them!”

Kim pauses. “You’re artificial?”

“You didn’t pick up on that just by looking at her?” asks Smita dryly.

Kim shoots her a sharp look. “She could have been a modified human. They came through the lab sometimes, people who’d decided two hands weren’t enough, and given themselves prehensile tails, or feet like monkeys. The other alchemists scoffed at them behind their backs, called them ‘Moreaus’ and acted like they were fools for making themselves less than human. I always thought they were braver than the other alchemists.”

“Braver? How?”

“A normal alchemist is so dangerous because they look just like everybody else. At least the ones who push themselves outside the bounds of what can be considered ‘normal’ give people a fighting chance to know they’re in danger. And no, most people don’t believe in magic anymore, so they wouldn’t necessarily see those modifications before the alchemist attacked, but alchemists aren’t wizards wandering around with nasty wands they can point at people and shoot spells out of. They need to get close enough to open a vial or throw something in your direction, or have the time to set runes and triggers for you to stumble over. But if an alchemist who’d modified themselves attacked somebody, and the person lived, they’d be able to find who hurt them. They’d be able to see it. Can’t not believe in what hurts you.”

“Meaning they lost deniability,” says Smita, slowly.

Kim nods. “Yeah. So I thought she’d just been messing around with her own composition for fun, or because it was useful, or hell, because she thought orange skin made her tits look great! Who knows why an alchemist does anything?”

“I’m not an alchemist,” says Kelpie, voice tight.

“Then what are you?”

“I’m…” She pauses. There are so many possible answers. None of them are good, or easy. Part of her hates the man who came to examine the lab, because he killed Margaret, but he didn’t do it fast enough to stop Margaret from telling her the truth. The truth is complicated. The truth is oozing all over everything like alkahest, melting it away, turning it into something new. She was happy with the lies. She was happy believing she had a family missing her in faraway Florida, that one day she’d go back to them, that one day she’d be a normal human woman, and not have to worry all the time about someone seeing her on the street and knowing her for something made, not born. She knew who she was, and where she belonged, and she was happy.

And now she doesn’t know any of that. Is she a lab technician? Is she Artemis’s Hind? Is she a person who got hurt in an accident, or is she someone’s science project? Even that question isn’t as simple as it seems on the surface. Construct or cuckoo, manikin or monster, there are so many options for a made thing. She worked on the projects that apparently created her, she knows they used Baker’s seed material at their root: she’s a cuckoo, and the longer she stands near this girl with the cornsilk hair and the golden-brown eyes, the more she recognizes her as kin. They’re vessels filled from the same well, not sisters, but … cousins, maybe. Distant relations spun on the same wheel and fired in the same kiln.

“I’m Kelpie,” she says finally, and the words are flat on her tongue, like water that’s been sitting out in the open air for too long, allowed to turn stagnant and stale. “That’s all. They made me in the lab. I used to think I was one of them, and now I think I may be something they invented. The only thing I’m completely sure of is my name, because at this point, it’s mine, and I’m not giving it back.”

“She’s a cuckoo, like you,” says Smita.

Kim blinks several times, and then, to Kelpie’s surprise and dismay, fat tears start rolling down her cheeks. They’re not like Margaret’s final tears: they’re just water, not her eyes melting out of her head. Wiping them away, Kim turns to face the desk, no longer looking at Kelpie or Smita.

“There are no cuckoos like me, except my brother, and he’s not enough,” she says, voice gone dull.

“I don’t understand,” says Kelpie.

Kim sniffles—a thick, snotty sound—and turns back to Kelpie, still crying. “They made us to embody the Doctrine of Ethos, and we were supposed to be perfect,” she says. “They used everything they learned from every failed pair, and they made us. We were going to manifest. We were going to catch the Doctrine. We were so close. We were going to be perfect, and we were going to be free, because as soon as we manifested, we were going to blow those bastards down. We had a plan.” Her expression is pleading, desperate for Kelpie to understand. “All we had to do was survive long enough for them to give us what they made us to carry, and we could walk away, me and my brother, the living Doctrine. But instead, the last round of failures somehow overpowered the man who made us all, and they claimed the Doctrine, and then they wouldn’t give it back.”

She turns her face to the wall. “They took what we were made to carry, and they carried it away. Tim and I, we’d been entangled since before we could walk. I didn’t know where he ended and I began. And suddenly we were two separate people, with two separate bodies, and it was so wrong it hurt, and there was nothing we could do about it. There’s still nothing we can do about it. No one knows whether the Doctrine is going to get addicted to being human and stick around the way the other forces have. Maybe when Roger and Dodger die—if they die—it goes back to being nebulous and unconcerned with humanity. Or maybe it sticks around. Either way, it won’t choose us. By the time they’re dead, we’ll be old. It’ll want better hosts. Clean hosts. Hosts that didn’t already fail.”

“I’m sorry,” says Kelpie, awkwardly. “I don’t know much about the Doctrine, really. All Margaret ever liked to say was that the alchemists working for James Reed had managed to incarnate it, and then the cuckoos who were supposed to carry it went rogue and ran away before they could be properly put to use. They’re real scared about it being out there in the wild.”