Chapter 26 #2
I nodded. It was odd. His spoken voice held the same accent as his words fizzing in my mind, and I swung my feet, scaring the fish. “It’s beautiful down here.”
Saying not a word, he tossed the hair from his eyes and scanned the far side of the underground pond.
It was difficult to hear him in my mind, seeing as he was working hard to keep me out, but his body language said it all. “Pluck, I know it won’t be easy without the last stick, but if we do nothing—”
“The world will not change,” he said, lifting his hand to study his fingers. “I may as well wear this form, seeing as I’m making the same mistakes again.”
I looked at his hand pressing into the fractured cement beside me, wanting to take it in mine. The regret tickling my thoughts was his, and I wished he’d solidify up a little more so I could give him a hug or something. “It’s not your fault Marty ran away,” I said, fishing.
It is, echoed in my thoughts, bitter and sour.
If he wasn’t saying the words aloud, I was probably getting close to what was bothering him. “How so?” I said softly. “She’s not your weaver.”
Pluck tossed another stone in with hardly a splash or ripple. I…fizzed awkwardly in my mind, his confusion flooding me. I…I demanded too much and frightened her. I was angry that she wasn’t more than she is, and I shamed myself.
A small smile quirked my lips. “She was caught as much as you were. I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You didn’t hurt her.”
“No,” he agreed, and then, But I wanted to punish her. I…I used to be more like Thoth.
I turned to him, trying to keep my shock hidden. “You were against weavers?”
No. Never, he thought with a pained decisiveness.
But I did questionable things for ideas that I thought were worthy.
Hurt and killed people to protect an idea.
Not a person, but an idea. When I thought you were in danger, I became what I had been before.
He took a slow breath. “I don’t want to be that again,” he said aloud.
I picked a pebble free of the cement and tossed it in to scatter the minnows. “Ideas are often fragile and deserving of more protection than we give them,” I said, and Pluck grimaced.
“They’re nothing without the people to uphold them,” he said.
“I want a return to the balance, but I’ve seen the cost in both myself and the world.
Perhaps it’s more than I’m willing to pay again.
It was clearly more than Marty was willing to give.
She knows her limits, and I berated her.
I’m no better than Thoth trying to manipulate others to fulfill his own needs. ”
“She’s fine,” I insisted, and he shook his head.
“It’s not what I did, but what I didn’t do. I could have helped her find her courage. Instead…” He hesitated, his almost-there skin phasing. “I wish you’d never seen me as a person.”
I leaned into him until my shoulder went numb. “What does that have to do with anything?”
He wouldn’t look at me, but his emotions churning through mine were chaotic. “It was as a person that I did the most damage,” he finally said, eyes lowered. “When I wear that form, I feel as if I’m being drawn back into a life I don’t want…and dragging you with me.”
My breath slipped from me as I finally got it. “That’s why you avoid a human form.”
Pluck was silent, but the guilt rising through us both was answer enough.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But it’s not the same. It can’t be. We know what Thoth is doing.”
“And yet people are again ignoring the truth because change is uncomfortable.” Grimacing, Pluck threw a pebble.
It made hardly a splash, golden and green as it sank to the bottom.
He looked depressed and resigned, and a sigh shifted his narrow shoulders.
“Thoth is behind all this misery, but in Thoth’s mind, I am to blame for it.
If I had done nothing, ignored you and let you believe you were a Spinner, none of this would be happening. ”
“Yeah? Well, Thoth is psychotic. You haven’t done anything wrong.
” I tossed a pebble in. It hit with a heavy sploot, the ripples mesmerizing as they caught the light coming up from the bottom.
The tiny waves were like the pulse of the universe, all swells and troughs.
“I’m the one who confronted Thoth and let him damage my ability to make a field. But, Pluck, maybe it’s not that bad.”
Pluck turned to me, his expression resolute. “Petra, I could hear you,” he said, and my lips parted at the guilt in his thoughts. “When Dana trapped me in the bottle? I could hear you through the glass, but you couldn’t hear me.”
“You could hear me?” I flushed, remembering my thoughts. All of them.
A faint, understanding smile flashed and was gone. “Not everything,” he said. “Just what you directed at me. I…I tried to reach you. I couldn’t.” His head dropped. “I lack the innovation, or the skill. I’m not enough. I thought I was, but Thoth is going to—”
“Pluck, stop.” I touched his arm, and he looked at my fingers. “You were in a bottle. Shadow…”
“Can’t get through glass,” he finished sourly. “But your thoughts did.”
I took my hand away, rubbing my cold fingertips together to warm them up. “I’m not a shadow.” I hesitated, a sick feeling dropping through me. “I’m not a weaver, either, if I can’t fix dross inert and it breaks on me.”
Pluck’s head snapped up. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?” I demanded.
He stared out over the water, struggling for words. “I don’t know, and that’s the problem. I’ve always known, and now?” He looked at my hand again. “You’re using energy in ways I know nothing about. Can’t even sense. You’re at the top of a wave, and I’m at the bottom.”
I rubbed my fingers together. “I could feel dross through a glass bottle as well, and I swear, I thought I heard someone else in my head a few minutes ago.”
Pluck’s eyes hazed as he looked over my shoulder. “Benny?”
It wasn’t jealousy pinching his eyes. Is it? “No,” I said, flustered, and he grimaced.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” I said again, remembering the stray thought that I had first assumed was Pluck’s but knew in my heart wasn’t.
“Maybe?” I added, and at his gesture of encouragement, I closed my eyes to better hear the rise and fall of the big bang echoing against the edge of the universe.
Benny, I thought, sending it on the back of a single twisted thread.
Nothing returned to me, and feeling silly, I opened my eyes. “No,” I said, and Pluck’s lips twisted in a sour knowing.
“Mmmm.”
It was bland, almost accusing, and I followed his attention to the sudden light flickering at the hole near the ceiling. It was a mage-made light, and my pulse hammered. “Benny?” I called in disbelief when I heard a small rockslide.
“Shadow spit!” came faintly from the far side of the rubble. “Petra, where…Oh!” There was more clinking, and the light brightened. “How did you even know this was here?” he said, voice loud as he peered in through the opening.
“I followed Pluck,” I said, but I felt unreal as Benedict moved a few chunks of concrete to make the opening bigger and came in. Had he heard me? On some level, had he sensed my call? “Is everything okay? Are they back?”
“Ah, Herm is. He’s fine. Talking to Marty.
” He hesitated, then committed himself to the slow slide down, the dross from his light looking like ocean phosphorescence trailing behind him.
I’d be worried it might bring the ceiling down on us, but it was nothing compared to what already lurked in the corners lighting the space like candles.
“Whew, made it.” Benedict held his light higher. “Wow. Where did the water come from? It’s not city water, is it? This is amazing. You think it’s safe?”
“I wouldn’t drink it,” I said. “It’s got fish in it.”
Pluck began to haze. His feelings of guilt and heartache lifted through me, and I reached for his hand, flooding his thoughts with acceptance and forgiveness. He was my shadow, and there couldn’t possibly be anything I couldn’t understand.
Benedict’s shoes ground the grit as he came closer.
His eyes flicked to Pluck’s hand in mine, and Pluck pulled away.
“So…you don’t mind being a person anymore?
” Benedict asked, and Pluck made a noncommittal shrug, his hands a hazy nothing.
“That’s cool. I’ll admit I was feeling left out when you and Petra talked. ”
Pluck’s silhouette flickered when Benedict sat on my other side, and not wanting him to go shadow, I elbowed him, accomplishing nothing but freezing my funny bone.
Oblivious, Benedict dangled his feet beside mine and stared into the water. “Huh. Fish,” he said. “I’d heard there was a reservoir under St. Unoc. That’s why they built the artists’ commune here in the first place.”
Ask him, fizzed through me, and I started.
Ask him what?
Ask him why he came down here, Pluck insisted.
I glanced at Benedict now using a stick of rebar to play with the fish. The dross created from his light dribbled into the water, looking like a living thing as it coiled downward in search of more dross. He was clearly checking on us.
That he was there when you called him is inconclusive, Pluck insisted, his green eyes squinting in annoyance. Take his hand and think on him as if you were trying to touch his thoughts.
This was really uncomfortable, and I huffed.
Please, Petra. Humor me.
Fine. “Ah, hey,” I said as I fumbled for Benedict’s hand. “You think we can hide out here for a while? Maybe everything will blow over if we just do nothing.”
Smiling, Benedict lifted our joined hands and kissed my knuckles. “I’m game.”
His fingers were warm in mine, and exhaling, I listened to the universe, joining my thoughts to a ribbon of dark matter, feeling it catch the wave that flowed over us. Benny…
Benedict gasped, startling me. I looked up as he scrambled to his feet, his hand pulling from mine. Eyes wide, he stared at the water, not me. “Where did it go?” he said. “I saw…” His gaze dropped to my hand. “Um.”