Chapter Twenty-Seven The Eclipse
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The Eclipse
The more time I spent in my human skin, the more human I became. Every step, every interaction became easier as I practiced. Emotions were overwhelming, but manageable. Organ and muscle functions were smooth, like a well-oiled machine.
Eventually, if I was consistent in being present in this world, as the rest of these people appeared to be, then I might soon forget what it was to know more than the ground I walked on. I would forget my nature altogether, and I would be able to be rewarded with a natural death.
To become human.
To be mortal.
But not until my . . . rather irked companion had fulfilled her purpose.
By now, I knew the environment around her home. Aisl Park was the busiest it got, most of the population crowding into the tall buildings, like anthills.
The clamoring and wobbling of wheels and hooves against cobblestone, rather than just plain dirt.
The trees planted meticulously along the sidewalk pristinely trimmed to prevent the fruits from staining the walkway.
These things did everything walking. They talked side by side, ate food packed in waxed paper, planned their days out loud or in writing, greeted each other in passing, read books, whistled for carriages.
This wasn’t just one time a day, but all times of the day.
The cemetery in Alton Heights wasn’t nearly as busy at all hours. People came to and from like a tide determined by labor schedules. I would imagine the other boroughs further removed from the center of the city couldn’t be nearly as busy, even if she hadn’t shown me Castor or Dieton yet.
A loud shriek stung in my ears.
Lucia had two fingers in her mouth, her whistle summoning a horse carriage to pull over hastily where we stood outside her home.
She’d planned an excursion, even though simply walking around was enough for me to get my bearings on the world. You didn’t need tourism to learn culture—in fact, all you needed was a busy place to observe and careful attention to food.
Of all the newly gained senses, taste was my favorite.
Not because it fed me—it didn’t. But the pleasure of physical flavor (rather than emotional) and texture made dining more of an experience than a hunt for sustenance.
I supposed eating people food was an adventure, if I thought about it that way.
She stepped into the cab, not even looking back to see if I would follow. At times I felt like one of her little pets, following her to and fro, here and there, at her beck and whim. No one in my lifetime had commanded me in such a way, yet I found I couldn’t resist her.
“Where to?” the driver called over his shoulder.
“Astraea Zoological Society, the aquarium,” she said before opening her father’s journal, the marking she’d made still prominent on the cover.
“What is that?”
Her eyes flicked up from her reading, her body turned to face me more, as if the journal were her own personal diary. Her bright eyes returned to the journal before she answered, “It is a place where you can pay to see creatures from the sea.”
“Creatures of the sea?” I crossed my arms. “Why would you pay when the ocean is right there?”
She closed the book, rather hastily. Frustration. Yes, that was it.
“Is my question really that much of a nuisance?”
“No”—her deep breath and twitching brow said otherwise—“this aquarium holds endlings. None of these creatures can be found in the ocean anymore.”
“How interesting.” I tipped my head to look out my window.
In all my time not on this earth, it had never truly dawned on me that the stars I came from could play such a role in other organisms’ lives.
Stars dominated as a motif in every aspect of their culture, from clothing patterns to old carvings on stone facades.
They named their stars, then named their cities after those.
My collection of stars was a popular depiction, the eagle patron often appearing on official buildings or monuments.
The three-eyed eagle was perched upon the entrance that our carriage stopped in front of.
The trip downtown may have been faster on foot, considering the midday traffic—foot, hoof, and wheel.
Lucia opened the door, her departure inviting in a burst of ocean air that suddenly whipped into the closed space. Some pieces of her hair escaped her elaborate braid, swimming in the quick breeze. She looked back at me, waiting.
The wind bit at my ears and nose, my eyes tearing involuntarily from the chill alone.
There was a tall building in the middle of a plain park.
We were at the end of the peninsula now, another shore far off in the distance.
The water was just as gray as the overcast sky.
Gulls sat upon the entryway arch, on and around the mighty bronze eagle staring down at us, daring us to enter.
Lucia stood beside me, even after the carriage had pulled away and pedestrians walked around us to enter.
When I looked down at her, her eyes were gazing up at the sky again.
Somehow, brilliantly, her eyes shone bright.
Even when the only light offered was dull and bleak, she was vibrant.
Lately, the energy she gave off was quite heavy, rich.
Depression always tasted thick, hard to chew, even harder to digest. It was a slow, sluggish ingestion that could keep you full for a while, but it wouldn’t feel good.
A couple passed, walking side by side. The male offered his arm to the female, who wrapped her hands around it. She smiled up at him as their excited chatter continued, then they disappeared through the dark door of the building.
I looked down at my arm, then bent my elbow in her direction.
Her eyes cut across to my arm, then up at me.
Maybe I really was settling into a human nature, because the simple gesture hurt a tinge.
Fingers wrapped around my arm.
She was holding me now. Just like that other couple. While it was one interaction, it felt like I’d done something right. A small victory in blending in.
“Ready?” I asked her.
“I should be asking you—this is your first aquarium experience.” A small upturn to the corner of her lips, then a squeeze of my arm.
With that, we ventured onward.
The aquarium opening was grand, ornate. The darkness beyond the glass doors was thick. There were no biolamps in the entrance. A hallway curved before feeding us into a grand circular room. Lining the walls, nothing but water.
The tanks were large and completely lined in lead-coated iron frames. Their extravagance and complicated details didn’t disguise the fact that these were cages; they glorified it. Motifs of the constellation patrons were scattered in details hidden in the ironwork.
There were small open pools toward the middle and scattered about. Small, juvenile humans touched the clear water, letting little fry peck at their hands. Quick squeals erupted upon touching a disgruntled crustacean.
The visibility of the dark room was surprising without any built-in lights. But then a small shimmer occurred when the water lapped against the glass. The small plankton in the biolamps filled the tanks for visibility and, I suspected, environmental balance.
Something like a bullet through water. It was so quick it made me question if it was really there. Even as I stepped closer to the glass, the water was just a foggy blue.
The dart again.
Then it swished past the glass. A whiskered friend, playful as it swam in loops. Its sleek skin allowed it to cut through water like a lead bullet.
“What is that?” I stared, then two more of the species joined it.
“A seal,” Lucia said, looking less impressed than I.
“A seal,” I repeated. I moved along the glass until I reached the neighboring tank. This one was full of rocks and strange plants.
Small fish bumbled from rock to rock like pollinating bees. Learning about the animals in books was one thing; it was a different thing entirely to see them—especially through the eyes of a new body and an open mind.
“Coral,” I remembered, from one of the books in her library, “and octopus.” I laughed, pressing my finger to the glass as I looked back at her. “They look just like the illustration.”
She nodded tiredly, standing beside me to see it.
Her face neared the glass, and the light from the water made her markings look like they were glowing again.
The more time I spent in this body, the more I felt some sort of understanding about her. There was a sense of longing in her, always. Not just as a cure for loneliness, but a desire to know things. Except it was like the more she understood, the more stoic she became.
My hand twitched by my side; her hand was right there. I could touch it, tuck my fingers between hers.
My pinkie brushed against hers.
First she looked down at her hand, then up at me. A wave of melancholy settled in my chest.
“Why does the aquarium upset you?” I asked.
Her gaze hardened for a moment before it settled. It wasn’t my intention to intrude on her mind, or her feelings.
She shrugged as she thought, returning her gaze back to the water. Her brow furrowed, much like it did when she was trying to read or when she had to do any mathematics on the margins of whatever scrap paper she could reach.
“All of these animals are the last of their kind,” she said. “The octopus,” she said, pointing, “is one of the most intelligent species on this earth.”
I stared back into the water. The octopus tucked itself comfortably between the corals, the blue rings on its skin flashing when fish came too close.
“Yet she is alone, and she can’t bring back her species. She will never know another like her, and she will never know the world she came from. She will only know a tank, her handler, and feeding time.”
“Why do they not return them?”
“Because we’ve ruined their home, and we must accept that this one, we couldn’t save.
” She sighed, lifting her chin as she took in the scene.
“All of them. We’ve let them all down. And we now have a quiet ocean.
First the corals, then the fish species dwindled, then everything that comes after it.
The whales were last, and no one has seen any for at least eighty years.
The only pieces of them we have are skeletons and recordings of their songs. ”
“Why prevent the inevitable?”
Her brows further tensed.
“If they are the last, why keep them?”
“The thought of being the last being on Earth is scary for us. Preservation is important to most. They want to remember, despite how many things they may never know because they accidentally destroyed it. These animals are that, but more tangible. Trapped for display, to remember them for as long as we can. But also a reminder of what we’ve done, and what could happen to us too. ”
“Do you want to be remembered?” I stared at the side of her face; she still refused to look directly at me.
“No,” she said, beginning to walk to the next tank, “I don’t think so. I think some damage can never be undone, so there is no point.”
“Is hope not part of their keeping? There must be some, if enough people thought it was important to save them, even in memory.”
We stopped in front of a darker tank. We couldn’t see anything at first. Then, emerging from the dark, a blue glow.
“Jellyfish,” she said, “these can be found in the wild, but they stay in the depths, safe from us.”
“Us,” I repeated, touching the glass.
The translucent form moved, in no rush. The bell shape puffed along, its trailing ribbons twirling through the water as effortlessly as smoke from a candle. The creature was remarkably large. But what was truly remarkable was its lack of . . . everything. No brain, no organs, yet alive.
“Maybe it’s as old as you,” she said.
Was that a jest?
She had a small smile in the corner of her lips. Yes, a jape.
“Well, one thing we may share in common is not remembering something as trivial as age.” I tilted my head to follow the creature.
Her smile stayed, and that was victory enough.
The visit troubled me some, a deep lost feeling trying to dig its way out. A strange feeling. The more I thought about how little time I had left with her, the more it upset me. It wasn’t death I looked forward to anymore. A new momentum was growing inside me, an urge to discover.
But not for me, for her.
I could do what I’d come for. The goal was to be in my human skin enough to where I’d forget how to be a shadow, forget where I’d come from, and become as human as the rest of them. But I couldn’t do that without her fulfilling her purpose, and even the thought made me uneasy now.
Maybe it was my human gut forming, the uneasiness. And I was being truthful—she had changed my mind. But she couldn’t be in this world much longer. The longer this was prolonged, the worse the balance would be thrown off. It was only a matter of time.