Swallowed

Chapter 25

25

Sunrise. I’ve been reading for hours. Shaking, I set the journal aside. Relentless pain throbs in my shoulder. My thoughts clamor, none of them taking hold for longer than a few seconds. I need more pills. Ben hasn’t come back. I’m cold. I pull the covers up. My mother—

My mother.

I force myself to finish the thought: My mother made a deal with the Planet to save herself and me. Me , already growing in her womb.

I don’t want to think about this now. I can’t think about it. The thought of Ben comes to the fore, and with it a heavy fear. He’s still gone, and I need to find him.

The early morning light makes the tent glow pink-pale, and I know the dawn will be sweet and mild, like every dawn on the Planet, and I hate it. Maybe it’s a bad sign, maybe I’m on the verge of a breakdown, but I feel strangely calm. Detached. In shock?

I take a deep breath, my lungs expanding and filling with cool morning air.

I drag myself out of the cot, and notice a cup of water and three pills on the bedside table. I take them, drink the water. Between the pain in my shoulder and stiffness from the cold, it takes a while for me to lace up my boots, but I manage it. Then I pull on my mother’s bloodstained jacket, biting back a hiss of pain as I do. I leave the journal where it is.

Ben is my priority.

As I step out into the morning, I pause, listening. I know Ben went looking for Julian, and the last time I heard him, he was in the plain. He’ll eventually find Julian’s things by the tree they used for target practice. That hungry fucking tree. On this insatiable fucking planet.

I close my eyes. I feel the grasses in the plain drifting like waves, the wind caressing their silver-green blades like a lover. But I don’t feel Ben.

Fuck.

I kneel, pressing my palms to the earth, turning my attention to the forest. I feel dew-heavy ferns, ancient trees, even the rush of the waterfall. But I don’t feel Ben.

Cold fear slices through me, more painful than my wounded shoulder. He’s gone. She took him.

I take off at a dead run.

The plain sighs, whispering sweet nothings as I charge through its hateful grasses. I crash through a spray of bright blooms, and I grab them in my fist, yanking as I pass. I hate this place. This horrible, too-perfect, miracle place. We were never meant to be here. We should have stayed away. But how could we, when it was built just for us?

How many others, I wonder, my chest burning with exertion. How many other lifeforms have come here, to a planet designed for them, and been swallowed whole ? Entire civilizations? Or was the Planet ours, all along, and she simply lay in wait for billions of years, hungry?

I don’t think so. She’s lush, robust. Full of energy. She is well fed.

My mother’s team, Darcie and Julian — they were just snacks.

And in the distance, I can make out the tree, stark against the verdant sea of the plain. Maybe I’m not too late. Maybe there’s still time to save him.

I’m already winded, my boots catching in the dirt, the grass clutching at me and slowing my progress. The grasses pull at me, relentless. And the wind blows against me, stinging my face, slowing me down. The tree never seems to get closer. An entire planet, working against me.

Who the hell do I think I am? Injured, exhausted, running full tilt toward the black pit of fate. My whole life, I’ve been no one. Nothing. The shadow of my mother’s worst memory. I should just stop. I should lie down right here and sleep until She takes me. She, who is so much more, and so much better than me.

My gait slows. I choke on saliva, trying to catch my breath.

The grass clings to me, strokes me. Maybe I’m exactly where I’m meant to be, closing the circle. The rustle of wind through the plain seems to agree. I could never save Ben.

But I’ll miss him so much.

You just have to be Jones. You’re more than enough .

His words come to me unbidden, a lifeline, and I cling to them. I think of his smile, the way he held me, and kissed my head, his touches so tender and so true. He is funny and real and kind, and so vividly alive. And he cares about me. Maybe even as much as I care about him. Ben sees something that I never had before. Something even my mother didn’t.

He sees me .

And there in the plain, my energy flagging, my heart threatening to break, I grasp onto the one thing that feels right. The one thing I can trust, the thing that makes me feel like I’m worth something:

Ben. My beacon, my anchor.

I grit my teeth and keep going.

The tree rises up before me. It’s impossibly perfect, a symmetrical statue against the sky, God-like in its form. She designed it for us, a beautiful tree to admire, to entice us. To make us let our guard down. The shallow clear waters of the oxbow-shaped river. The stillness of the dark, cool forest. The waterfall. All of it. Constructed just for us.

I can’t help the shiver that runs through me at the sight. The tree is dark, its bark swirled with silver grey. Thick gnarled roots curl into the soil, its branches reaching upward at perfect angles, pleasing in their composition. I can’t help but feel a sort of awe at the way the leaves fan out above me. The way the sky hangs purple above me. The grasses waving at my feet. This arresting feeling, this deep inspiration, the tightening waves of an orgasm — they are all a sort of worship, aren’t they? She asks for this before She takes us. Feed me, love me, know me.

“Ben,” I whisper and come back to myself.

There is Julian’s pack, nestled in the roots of the tree. A knot forms in my throat. This is where I saw them last, sinking into the trunk itself, the gaping maw. I feel the urge to retch, but something about the quiet tableau calms my stomach. I should be terrified, disgusted.

But it is so beautiful .

I walk slowly around the tree, the slam of my heart in my chest a million miles away. Drawing closer, I reach out my hand, clambering over the massive roots until my palm is flat against the trunk. Life pulses through the tree, vibrant, gorgeous life. The Planet may be a perfect construction just for us, a simulacrum of the evolutionary process, but it is alive. It’s real .

“Can you hear me?” I breathe.

A breeze picks up, lifting tendrils of my hair, caressing my neck and ears.

I can hear you , She says, not in so many words. But I understand Her.

Something crunches under my foot. I bend to pick it up. Ben’s walkie. My chest clenches. He wouldn’t have left it here, not without purpose. I imagine him wrenching it from his jacket as the tree pulled him into its womb, hot and throbbing. Maybe he was calling for me. Maybe he was pissed, fighting. Maybe he didn’t know what was happening until it was too late.

I stare at the device in my hand like it’s the alien thing, so different from the tree, the Planet, the seed that gave me life.

“What do you want from me?” I whisper.

She doesn’t whisper back.

I drop the walkie, and it clatters against the roots. Ben was here. Ben, whose mouth on mine was everything. Whose touch was more perfect, more real, than any tree or waterfall.

In a rush, everything comes into focus. My throat burns. I hear distant screaming, and a moment later realize it’s my own voice.

No, no, no .

“Ben!” I cry hoarsely, pressing my ear to the tree. As if I’ll hear him inside, calling for me.

Nothing.

But the wind, laughingly, almost smug against my skin, confirms he’s there, just beyond reach. Just like the others, he was swallowed up.

I slam my fists to the trunk, over and over, raking them down the rough bark until I’m bleeding. Blood from my hands drips down to my elbow.

“Give him back to me,” I beg, my throat raw. “ Give him back .”

But she doesn’t reply.

This can’t be it. This can’t be how I lose him.

I sob brokenly and press my forehead to the bloody bark. No . I was not put in my mother’s womb just to relive her worst trauma. She knew that I’d come back here, but she also believed in me. I can do more than just this. Ben saw it too: I’m Jill Jones. And I’m a stubborn bitch.

The wind picks up, the grass undulating like waves all around the island of this tree. This fucking bitch. This celestial monster thinks she can have whatever she wants. But there’s one thing she won’t have, and it’s Ben.

“Give him back to me,” I say, ice-cold.

The tree remains motionless, impenetrable.

I won’t give up that easily. I’m the daughter of a planet. I’m Gaia, given form. I have power, too. Power enough to save him.

“You can’t fucking ignore me forever, bitch.” The words fall molten from my mouth. “Give him back to me.”

Why should I? The wind seems to say, laughing, swirling around me, picking up my hair and tossing it over my eyes.

I turn to face the plain, bracing myself against the tree. “Because I’m your daughter. I understand you. And I know what you want, because…” I remember Ben’s hands on my skin, his tongue and fingers and cock inside me. I remember the forest coiling around me as I came. I remember the ecstasy beyond anything I’d ever felt before, the rising pleasure and indescribable crash of climax. The worship . The admission feels like a purge, a horrible truth: “Because I want the same thing.”

Ahh , says the wind. And?

I could leave this place right now, just like my mother did. I could declare the Planet non-viable, a danger to humanity, and off-limits. The ECE would listen to me. It would be the second time an entire team has gone missing, and at that point, the circumstances won’t be ignored. Maybe the world will accuse me of murder, just like so many did my mother. Or maybe I’ll walk away scot-free, left to live whatever life I have left in peace.

But I know deep down that if I leave now, I’ll never escape Her. She’s part of me. She’ll poison me from within, haunting my dreams. And She’ll bring me back, helpless to resist Her call.

I could stay here then, allowing myself to be taken, just like them. I could become one with the Planet. Part of me swells at the thought, knowing that I’m ready. I’m a woman, but I’m also Her . The beating heart of everything living here, an unending hunger, desire; the crash of waves upon a shore. It would be so easy to stay.

Or I could do what my mother did. I could save the one thing I give a real shit about, the one soul I would do anything to keep. And for that, I can make a bargain.

“Listen to me, you cunt,” I grit out.

The wind whips at me, pulling on my mother’s jacket. Tree boughs bend in the gale, leaves fluttering away into the wind. Clouds gather above in a sudden storm, black and white-edged. She’s angry. Trying to put me in my place. I won’t let her.

“Give Ben back to me, unharmed ,” I shout above the wind. “And you’ll get what you want.”

For the first time since we arrived here, rain begins to fall. Heavy, pelting drops. They sting my skin with cold, and I’m forced to crouch, gripping the tree roots to keep myself from blowing away in the gale. She’d rather drown me than grant this one fucking thing.

“Give him back to me,” I scream, drowned out by the downpour. “Give him back to me, and you can have them. All of them. We’ll go back to Earth, we’ll tell the ECE you’re viable.”

I’m drenched to the bone, hair plastered to my face. My mother’s jacket flaps around me as if it’s trying to drag me into the storm. I shrug it off, and it flies up into the sky, disappearing against the black clouds. The pain in my shoulder is gone. I feel nothing but desperate power sloughing off me as I scream at Her. The rain steams as it hits my skin. I could crack a fissure in the ground so wide it breaks the Planet in half. But not even that would stop her. Only this can.

“There are billions of people on Earth,” I yell up at the roiling sky. “They’ll come here. They’ll colonize. If you’re patient, as years pass, they’ll build cities. We have the technology, the infrastructure, to bring millions here. We’ll make you our new home.”

My throat hurts from screaming into the gale. The pain in my shoulder returns, and I gasp, clutching at it with freezing-wet hands.

“Let Ben go,” I murmur, my words swallowed by the wind, “and I promise you’ll be fed.”