Chapter 17 The Lamb Speaks
THE LAMB SPEAKS
“IS HE TALKING to you right now?” Jackson said, and Ella looked back at the couch.
Lambspeak sat there, waiting for her to engage with him, perhaps like he had multiple times in the days before. Ella focused on him, but still had no words as her mind tried to piece it together. She’d tried briefly to interact with him. She hadn’t realized how well it had worked.
Every daydream, every wandering thought, every reflection into her past or future had been an open gateway for him to walk through.
“You need to stay focused on the present. Tune him out.”
She blinked as Jackson’s voice interrupted her focus, annoyed to find him standing near her. Her confusion evolved into anger and she glared as she stood back up.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was you?” She approached him, driving him close to the exit. “I thought it was you. All afternoon! And yesterday!”
“All afternoon?” Jackson paused. “He was here all afternoon? You can see him that clearly?”
“Yes!” she shouted back. “And of course I had no idea, because someone couldn’t just be honest with me!” she nudged his chest, pushing him back toward the door.
She knew Jackson didn’t fully deserve her anger, but she was infuriated to feel so caught off guard and needed to direct it somewhere.
She’d just kissed a Strike! Her mind spun through all of the hours she’d spent talking to him.
She could hardly remember how much time she’d actually spent with the version of Jackson that stood in front of her versus Lambspeak.
Her confusion mounted into a firestorm of feeling.
“I didn’t realize he’d show up so quickly, Ella! He shouldn’t be so clear to you so soon. Have you been talking to him? Trying to communicate with him?”
“No!” she half lied, slamming the door and locking it.
“Ella!” Jackson called back. “Don’t let him get inside your head.”
“Too late!” she said, walking back over to the chair opposite the couch. “You should have told me. I can’t do this. Not right now. Not with both of you.” He kept knocking.
“Ella, I mean it! I can help you, alright? Let me back in! We can block him out together.”
Ella closed her eyes, and focused hard on Lambspeak, allowing her mind to follow where she’d met him only moments ago. When she opened her eyes again, there he was, the knocking of the present moment silenced as she focused on another point in time.
“I’ve been trying to reach you too,” Lambspeak said. “I thought it might be better for Jackson to tell you first, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen you. It’s nice to be around.”
“You’re in the future. Right now?” she said, furiously trying to sort herself out.
“Yes. Of course, you found me in the past in Jackson’s memories because he communicated with me in the past. It’s all a little complicated, but it’s safe to assume that at this point I am everywhere but the present… at least for now.”
“We still know each other in the future?” she asked sharply, questions lining up much faster than Ella could organize them. If her understanding of the world was a bookcase, it had been toppled over, and now all the books were scattered across her brain. She struggled to assemble them again.
“Yes,” Lambspeak said, “you see the empire Paris is hoping I’ll help build.” He paused as if giving Ella space to ask another question, but she was still filing through them by importance and so he continued on his own.
“By this point, we have a longer history,” Lambspeak said. “Every now and again when I can’t see you for a long time, I visit past versions of you.”
“For what?” she asked incredulously, enraged about the kiss and flustered by the disruptive knocking she could hear tugging her back to the present.
“To see you. That’s all,” he said, “You have a fundamental distrust of power, Ella. It’s something that’s always been a point of friction for us.
You became a figurehead of a growing group that opposes the existence of Strike in any form of government.
It’s non-violent, for now. Or you are, at least. It all started as negotiation,” he turned the handle of the teacup, spinning it in a slow circle on his plate and in an almost hypnotic gesture.
For the first time, Ella noticed the gloves for what they were.
“Some espionage sure, that you aren’t quite sure if I know about yet. You’ve gotten quite good at hiding your thoughts, but you have a few tells, ones that developed mostly after you started trusting me again and our negotiations broke down into something more…personal.”
His eyes flickered back to hers. “I agree to your demands to get you to come back, and you started creating them as a pretense to meet. Although, it’s been a few weeks by now.”
The familiarity of the kiss made striking sense, and disgusted, Ella shook her head.
“I could never…” Never what? A striking image of Peter’s slaves erupted through her brain with so much clarity that she wanted to wince, memories of Marnie lying naked in Yun’s arms, sold out and empty in a life that had been too much for her to stand.
Her heart began to race with terror as the memories struck her brain in brief, sharp glimpses.
Lambspeak smiled, a smile not so unlike one of Peter’s that hit her with the faintest sense of nostalgia. “No need for that,” he said, as if to curb the anxious direction of her thoughts. “It’s not the Strike of me that you fell in love with anyway.”
Ella’s expression faltered, and Jackson’s knocking reeled her right back into her seat where she stared at an empty couch.
Love? Lambspeak had just so clearly watched her thoughts and her feelings unfold. He knew her. He knew her better than she knew herself. He knew where her life was headed.
But still. Love? She’d never been in love, and it had become a point of pride. The word struck something deep and long abandoned at her core, a longing wrapped in steel and coated in dust.
Jackson was quiet now. The silence on the other side of the door was louder than the knocking had been. Teeth clenched, she threw the door open, Jackson stumbling as he’d been leaning against it.
He opened his mouth and she cut him off, “Why are you so scared of the future?” she said sharply. “The future is changeable! It’s always changeable! There are so many different futures!”
“And Lambspeak has systematically managed to eliminate the ones that he doesn’t exist in,” Jackson said.
Ella’s mind only raced faster.
“I’ve thought through every option,” Jackson said, “which means so has he.”
“Well, I haven’t! Other people haven’t.” She gestured to her chest. “I have free will! I have choices!” She stormed past him and whipped back around.
She didn’t have to fall in love with him. She didn’t have to fall in love with anyone.
“You’re not irresistible, you know that?” She shouted as if to assert the thoughts in words. “You’re just like everyone else!”
Jackson stared, completely dumbfounded before she tore around the corner and paused. In the strangest of moments, she finally understood what it had been from her conversation with Jackson that had stuck out to her the days before.
She turned back around the corner and walked coolly past him, standing over the map she’d been staring at. Jackson didn’t speak, coming up behind her in a cautious way.
Her finger settled on the map. “Here,” she whispered.
Jackson looked over her shoulder, at where her finger had settled. Depicted in The Quiet on the far corner beyond the mountains was the temple to the Spirit of Death.
“To the Spirit of Death?” Jackson asked.
“Interesting choice,” they both turned to find Paris approaching the doorway. “I heard yelling.” She eyed them both knowingly as she entered the room, perusing the map. “Lovers’ quarrel?”
“We aren’t lovers,” Ella said with so much force that Jackson seemed taken aback.
Paris seemed to watch him accusingly which only exacerbated the confusion on his face before she added, “Death is at the complete opposite side of the mountains. We didn’t build anything specific for Death since the idea itself is defined by vacancy.
It’s an empty valley. It’s mostly just criminals that go there to hide from the Imperia, seeing as most people don’t really want to explore it. ”
“I can take you there if you want,” she heard from the couch, looking over to see Lambspeak swirling the tea in his cup before looking up at her with an almost innocent expression on his face.
Ella blinked back into the present and Paris smiled. “Tell Lambspeak I said hello, will you? Jackson never passes on his messages anymore,” she said, Jackson standing behind her with a dark expression on his face and crossed arms.
“He said he can take us there,” Ella said, watching Jackson.
“It’s three weeks’ worth of arduous traveling otherwise.” Paris walked past them, leaning back against the doorframe of the exit. She was dressed simply in all black today, her hair tied high above her head with long, golden earrings that flickered as she lifted red nails to play with them.
“There’s no rush,” Jackson reminded her. “I know you feel like there is but, there isn’t.”
Ella looked between Paris and Jackson.
“I can heal your arm too,” Lambspeak popped in again, taking a sip from the cup as he maintained eye contact with her. Ella shut everything else out as she approached the chair across from him and eased down.
“You can’t pretend that you’re offering to help for no reason at all,” she said.
Lambspeak watched her for a long time, at last setting the cup down and putting it on the table in front of them. He leaned back and rested his arms behind the couch in a gesture of confidence and openness.