Interlude #2
It scurries toward me, antennae waving frantically. I can’t hear the rapid clicking of its tiny legs, but I feel the vibrations ripple through the water, a nervous energy against my skin.
"Oh, don't bother, Pip," Bolt's voice crackles in the water. "He's not a paying customer. He's a stray."
The shrimp—Pip—pauses mid-scuttle, tilting its helmeted head.
Beady black eyes study me with unnerving intensity.
Then, without hesitation, it fearlessly scales my arm, its tiny legs finding purchase on my scarred skin.
It reaches my shoulder and begins to meticulously pick at a stubborn patch of algae that has taken root there.
I freeze completely.
No living thing has touched me since the Anvil. No living thing has touched me since Vaelis.
The precise movements of Pip's legs are strange against my deadened skin, but not unpleasant. There is a deliberate gentleness in its work, a purposefulness that feels almost like care.
"He actually likes you," Bolt observes, the mental words laced with dry amusement from within his copper cage. "It seems he has terrible taste in company."
Slowly, I sink down into the fine white sand near the copper bars. The intense heat from Bolt's glowing body radiates outward, wrapping securely around my shivering shoulders like a heavy blanket. The shrimp continues its work, small but steady movements across my skin.
I close my eyes.
The terrible silence remains inside my head, a void where my voice once was. But here, amidst the electric crackle of the Eel and the busyness of the Shrimp, the silence feels a little less heavy.
Just for a single night, I tell myself. Just to rest my muscles before returning to the cold.
Morning reveals the House of Drift's true nature.
A violent grinding shudder rips through the sand beneath me, jolting me from a shallow sleep.
My eyes snap open to the copper cage. Bolt pulses with brilliant blue light, his serpentine body wrapped impossibly tight around the rusted pistons.
He is forcing his own bio-electricity through the human machinery, converting his life force into mechanical power that drags this colossal shell across the dead silt.
He is the living engine of this impossible vessel.
"Stop gawking, shark," his voice crackles weakly through my nerves, the light at the edges of his body flickering like a dying ember. "Food. This heap of garbage cannot run on plankton and spite. Go find me something dead. And something green for the Shrimp."
An order. A directive.
My mother's commands once filled my days, but this feels different. Bolt doesn't command from authority. He commands because this shell needs functioning parts, and I am one of them.
I propel myself through the kelp curtain into the crushing cold, my iron scraper clutched in one hand.
The Wastes yield what little they can. My eyes, not the dead sonar that once guided me, scan the gray landscape. I discover a heavy stone-crab half-buried in silt and tear it from its hiding place. Nearby, a mat of black-moss clings to a rock formation—Pip's meal.
Inside the shell, I split the crab's armored shell with my bare hands, the crack resonating through the chamber.
The meat tumbles into the copper cage, and Bolt consumes it in one savage lunge.
The protein surges through his system instantly.
His blue light flares brighter, and the mechanical hum of the engine strengthens.
"Acceptable," Bolt's mental voice grunts, the words sharp with static. He scrapes his jaws against a copper coil. "You have your uses. For a mute shark."
Useful.
The word is small. But in this place of decay, it is enough to keep my heart beating.
My heavy fins pivot, turning me back toward the copper cage where Bolt lays. His blue light pulses in a steady rhythm, casting strange shadows across the engine's rusted pistons. His golden eyes fix on me, unblinking in the bioluminescent glow.
The cage is unlike the crude engine that powers this mobile home.
Its copper is polished to a mirror sheen, ornate in a way that feels ancient and deliberate.
Red gemstones, each the size of my thumbnail, stud the upper rim, catching the eel's blue light and throwing it back as blood-red glints.
There is no lock, no hinge or bolt. The cage floor is a mesh of fine copper wiring, spiraling inward to form a tight ring directly beneath Bolt's midsection.
My fingers twitch with curiosity, reaching toward the impossible craftsmanship.
"No!"
The voice explodes in my mind before my fingers make contact, a crack of static that sends me jerking backward. Bolt's body has gone rigid, his light flaring so intensely that spots dance across my vision.
"Do not touch the cage," the mental words bite, sharp as electric teeth.
I hover, my hands held away from my body, a gesture of question and disbelief.
"I mean it, shark. There's no getting me out of here."
Prisoner. The word forms in my mind, a silent accusation against my useless tongue. My hands mimic the shape of bars, fingers curling around nothing.
Bolt nods, settling slightly. "Yes. Touch that cage, and I'll shock you. I have no say in it. It's what will happen. It'll be the last thing you ever touch. Don't try."
The water grows still around us. No say. My hand rises to my throat, fingers pressing against the deadness there.
"Yes, a curse," Bolt's voice crackles, softer now, tinged with something like recognition. "Similar to what you're dealing with. I wonder, shark, what did you run your mouth off about to get this form of punishment, hmm?"
I look down at the white sand floor, the tiny grains blurring as shame burns in my chest. I feel his eyes on me, studying the scarred map of my face. My attention moves to Pip, who is meticulously cleaning algae from the shell's inner entrance. My finger points toward the tiny creature.
"Who, Pip?" Bolt's mental voice shifts, the static clearing slightly. "Pip didn't do this to me."
My hand makes the barred gesture again. Trapped.
Bolt laughs, a sound that manifests as a shimmering ripple of blue light through the water. "No, he's here of his own free will. I have my life to thank for him. He's a brave little one. Not very handy for catching food though."
Pip overhears, and before I can wipe the smile from my face he makes a furious gesture with his tiny limbs, his antennae twitching with indignation. He scurries off to clean the outside of the shell, a tiny storm of offended dignity.
A routine soon settles in.
I hunt for Bolt, fueling the engine with dead things from the silt.
I patch the deep fissures in the calcium shell with resin I harvest from strange tube-worms. I scrub the green oxidation from the copper coils until they gleam in Bolt's light.
I remain still while Pip meticulously picks debris from my scarred scales, his small appendages surprisingly gentle.
I do not speak. I physically can't.
But in the quiet evenings, when the Wastes turn pitch black outside and Bolt dims his light to a soft ember-glow, I take out the silver mirror.
Tonight, my finger traces the jagged line of the scarred throat reflected in the silver glass.
Vaelis. The name forms soundlessly behind my teeth, a ghost moving my lips against the surface of the mirror. The image wavers, distorting the pale face staring back at me from the polished metal.
Is he safe behind the coral walls? Does the warm current still kiss his crimson fins?
"Who?"
The mental voice cracks like static, sharp enough to make me flinch. My heavy hand slams over the mirror, smudging the reflection. Bolt's serpentine form glows brighter, his golden eyes fixed on me through the copper bars of his cage.
I shake my head slowly, denying the question even as my heart pounds against my ribs like a trapped fish.
"Don't lie to me, shark," Bolt's thoughts rasp against my mind. "You stare at that piece of glass like it's a window. There's someone on the other side, isn't there?"
My fingers tremble as I set the mirror aside, then dip into the fine white sand. With deliberate, shaky strokes, I carve a shape into the floor.
A crown.
Bolt's response is a violent snort of blue sparks that illuminate the chamber in searing flashes. "A royal betta? You're pining for a Reef Royal? No wonder you look so miserable. Royal Reds are nothing but pretty scales and suffocating politics."
My eyes narrow. I wipe the crown away with a sweep of my palm, the grains cascading back into formlessness. He's not like that. My hands form the denial, my head shaking with it.
"They all are," Bolt insists, his blue light pulsing with cynical energy. "Take it from me, shark. I lived in the brightest, warmest waters of the reef. I've seen them with my own eyes."
He spits a bright spark of electricity that grounds out with a sharp crack against the heavy iron shackle securing his neck to the engine. The metal groans under the strain.
"Their palace is a gilded cage. Like this one."
His body twists against the rusted iron chains, the links groaning where they bite into his scales.
"The deep has a cruel way of making your outside match the rebellious ugliness they accuse you of.
It strips away your beauty and binds you to your own wreckage.
I left my life behind, only to find myself here.
But I decided I would rather drag this miserable tin can across the barren abyss than be an obedient, hollow pet for their high court. "
His golden eyes focus on me, sharp and ancient, holding a heavy exhaustion that seems wrong in such a powerful creature.
"You're better off here in the dark. Silence is better than their beautiful, suffocating lies."
I look to the silver mirror resting in my lap, its surface reflecting only the dim blue glow of Bolt's prison.
Maybe he's right.