Chapter 34 Arthur
Arthur
If I had the capacity to scream myself out of the monster’s prison, I would have already torn my throat to shreds. Instead, I watched as the beast in control of my body stomped away from the wild hive, the spirit’s accusation spinning through me.
Could that really be my mother? Was that how she saw me?
Not as a man. He is something worse.
She’d clearly upset the monster, if the pounding rhythm of our heart was any indication. Though I couldn’t hear the monster’s thoughts anymore, our body spoke a language we both understood. Our lungs were working overtime, and tension made our already sore muscles even stiffer.
Even in my frozen state, this body was still mine. I knew how it panicked.
The monster had tucked Eva under its arm as it guided her away from the spirit of the wood. Now it hurried her through the trees, so impatient to get back to the meadow that it didn’t seem to notice Eva’s limp or labored breathing until she pulled away at the base of the hill.
“What was all that?” Eva demanded.
The monster didn’t stop walking. “The hell if I know.”
Anger stretched a hollow in my empty chest. It couldn’t talk to her like that.
When the monster didn’t offer more, Eva lumbered behind. “What did she mean,” she puffed, “when she called you a devil?”
An emotion I didn’t recognize from the monster swirled in my belly. “I am no devil,” it snapped at her.
“Well, obviously,” Eva muttered. Near the top of the hill, she caught up and snagged us by the sleeve. “Hey,” she said. I took in her eyes, bright and bloodshot. One of the bees had stung her neck, leaving it swollen and red. “Will you please just talk to me?”
“Don’t feel like talking.”
“Well, I don’t care,” Eva snapped back. “Because that wasn’t normal, Arthur!”
The monster snorted. “Since when are we normal?”
Honeybees swirled in the air overhead, calmer now that we were back in the meadow. Maybe they hadn’t belonged to the hive we’d stolen from, or maybe they’d realized the harvester wasn’t someone to be feared.
“When we were in the pit, you said something. We were sinking and you… you said there was something inside you.”
The monster’s alarm spiked inside our shared body.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Her irises were a study in vivid blues, searching my face. “You’re lying to me.”
Everything inside me stretched to the verge of pain as I tried and failed to move something, anything, to scream, to whisper, to be in my body again. But it was useless.
“You were scared,” Eva said softly, stepping closer. “And it wasn’t just because of the pit, was it?”
She was so clever, so close to the truth, and I trembled inside my prison of ice, regretting every opportunity I’d ever had to tell her about the monster where I’d stopped myself because of shame.
If she’d only known, maybe she could have helped me.
Why was that so easy to see now, when I could do nothing about it?
The monster’s nervous laughter sounded more like a stranger’s than it did like mine. “Eva, I don’t think—”
“You never call me Eva,” she cut in. “You call me Ev. You and no one else.” Her voice cracked, the confession suddenly, painfully intimate. She stepped forward with a wince, leaning her weight on her walking stick. “Who are you?”
The monster balked. “What?”
“You’re not my Arthur.” Her brows knit together. “He was right. I do know him. And you… you are someone else.”
My heart beat a solid thump, thump, thump.
Eva took my hand and flipped it palm up. “You keep tapping on the side of your leg,” she said, her blue eyes studying my face. “He’s still in there, isn’t he?”
A shiver of warmth rolled through me, reaching past the monster’s ice.
She saw.
It didn’t matter that I was hidden away; the bee girl saw me, just as she always had.
The monster’s disbelief filled every hollow where our wills entwined. It yanked my hand out of hers, an instant loss of summer heat. “He’s not your puzzle to solve, Eva.”
When the monster stepped back, Eva followed as well as she could, leaning on her walking stick. Bug hopped along behind her, meowing. “He’s not yours either,” she snapped.
Am I not?
I didn’t know where or to whom I belonged. For a long time, I’d been a tetherless creature, as unbound as the air that carried a flock of migrating birds overhead, craving the very roots that my mother had seemed to fear so desperately.
“No.” The monster’s voice took on an edge. “But I am his.”
Eva’s eyes blew wide.
“And I am taking him home.” The monster turned and stomped in the direction of the shed.
Its resolve settled inside my chest, but whatever it was thinking, whatever it was planning, was lost to me.
I couldn’t see the details of its thoughts anymore.
I could only feel the way its intent manifested in the body we shared.
Eva followed close behind. “You’re running again?”
Those words cut to the bone. I wanted to tell her, No, I am here! I want to stay! But the monster ignored her, stomping up over the crest of the hill and back into the meadow. The flowers seemed almost too brilliant now, a sickening sway of sugary cereal held in the meadow’s bowl.
There was something else different too. I couldn’t put my finger on it as the monster stomped up to the door of the shed, Eva puffing in close pursuit. I hated that it could be so petty as to leave her behind when it knew she was hurt.
I was so consumed with my thoughts that I almost missed the moment the monster brought our body to a rough halt. We stared, shocked, at the shadowed form sitting on the cot in the shed.
He cut a figure like a knife, his presence instantly ringing alarm bells inside me. The man sat on the edge of the cot, legs spread, his forearms resting on his thighs. One hand hung loosely over his knees, holding a gun.
The monster’s disbelief bled into my own.
“Lenny?”