Chapter Five #2
Hyacinth opened her mouth, ready to scream. Now! Now it is screaming time.
“Oh!...What are you doing down here? Aggie? Where’d you go! Aggie!”
Hyacinth clamped her mouth closed. Not scream time. She grumbled to herself as she twisted toward the great depth of the lab. No one lets me scream. This house is a prison. She tried not to pout, but that was thrice now she wanted to scream and something stopped her.
The lab suddenly went dark minus the candelabra that was left atop a metal worktable.
Hyacinth furrowed her brows. It was, mere moments ago, when the basement of the manor was flooded with bright, surgical lighting.
Suddenly it was all shadowed and nothing but an amber glow to light her way.
Hyacinth tip-toed toward it, a moth following the warmth till her hands touched the workstation.
It was cold to the touch. Her muscles immediately retracted from it, but her brain didn’t register why.
Not at first. Not until she glanced down and saw the purple and black spiderwebs crawling all over her fingertips.
“Oh, drats, my apologies, I forgot to unattach that from the conductor. Hold still.”
“The conductor?” she murmured at the floating voice from the shadows.
While she could feel the vibrations of his movement, she couldn’t see a thing beyond the three feet of amber light.
The candles danced in front of her face, their tiny flames doing their best. Hyacinth held up her fingers to the light to see them better.
Appendages that didn’t feel like hers just yet still wiggled at her command.
Her eyes scanned the burned flesh and realized she knew that’s what it was.
Frostburn. “How did you do that? Does flesh do that when you touch something too cold?”
“Oh, no, not…normally,” the soft inflection was apologetic, but she wasn’t sure why the floating voice was sorry.
As she felt something come to stand behind the medical table again, hands were summoned from the shadows.
Large, pale ones made of thick hide, something durable.
Someone sturdy. The first thing she noticed was the size of them, the second was the stitching.
Someone sewed their hands from the wrist to the forearms, but the skin was a slightly different texture.
Not the same vessel. It was something internally, she noticed the small things and knew.
This voice, the person it belonged to was a collection of parts.
In all, four pieces that made up their arm from the elbow down, each section was from someone else.
“You were created…are you Austin?” she breathed, peaking up into the shadows.
The voice, the made person, was sneaky. Staying out of the candlelight enough that she could only make out a wall of smoke beyond the reach of the amber glow.
There were grooves and she could make out tusks, but nothing more defining than that.
“I am…and I was, in the sense you were created, yes.” The voice was more concrete now.
A shadowy outline of a person so tall she was forced to lift her chin.
Two of the candles blew out with a soft puff of air and she was left with just tiny flames to illuminate a white shirt hung over a torso.
Outside of that, she could see hazy shapes that made up a rectangular face, tusks, and broad shoulders.
Austin worked on her hands in slow, steady movements she didn’t feel.
“When do you finally feel like a person?” she blurted out as the pressure to speak the words finally grew too much.
Something flashed and she had the overwhelming sensation of being stared at once again.
All anyone had done since she awoke was stare.
Not in a harmful way, nor particularly cruel.
But it was as if everyone was watching for her to topple off a high shelf and shatter into a million pieces like a glass vase. “Instead of a collection of parts.”
A soft, wounded laugh bounced around the shadows as he finished wrapping up her fingertips in little bandages.
They covered up her nails, which was a shame because she loved those the best. However, they made the annoying pin prickling sensation stop going off.
Austin finally spoke with a sigh that made the candle flames dance. “I wish I could tell you.”
“Oh,” she exhaled, glancing down to her hands.
“I can tell you that it takes exactly thirty days from when we get a vessel stitched together, to wake them. I can tell you at exactly 30 days, the heart begins to beat on its own. Then two days after that, your body can start to take its own breath or swallow water if you’re aquatic.”
Hyacinth’s gaze rose steadily up to the shifting shadows once more as he stepped back from the table.
She heard the rummaging of hands under it till something low and buzzing finally cut off.
Then those large hands returned to the light.
They tapped at it hesitantly, as if testing it out, then finally pressed fully against the surface.
“But I can’t tell you when you stop thinking of yourself as a soul within a vessel and begin to see yourself as a person. Sometimes I still feel…”
“Like a thing stuffed in a bear?” the words bubbled up and out of her chest.
“Yessss,” he hissed with understanding.
“I don’t know what bears have to do with it, but I know that’s what it feels like.” She grimaced, staring up into the darkness.
“Teddy bears,” Austin corrected, a soft, jovial tune in his voice. “I can make you one, if you’d like.”
“Can I…inhabit the teddy bear?” She cocked her head slightly to the left.
“Uhhhh…actually…I don’t know the answer to that. We might have to ask Lord Rosemont if your magic transferred.”
“My magic? I had magic?” She gasped, eyes widening.
“Well, all Fae are, it’s why you have wings!”