SSCS 02: Installment 29 of 32
How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
This is Installment 29 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
Which was why it took her far too long to realize that she smelled roses.
By the time she did realize it, it was too late; one of gran-Tom’s tentacles was already wrapping itself around her throat.
…How to Catch Flying Pigs, and Sea Monsters
Installment 29: 21.0906
“Mina-the-false-one is singing, but the song isn’t hers. Mina-pretty barely even dips her toes in the sea.” The Other One’s voice came out in a rough, evil rasping that shivered the hairs on the backs of Mina’s arms, and she found herself being arched backward, both by the compulsion – which she could feel in her bones wanted her groveling in the muck – and by the strength of the tentacles now choking her. In their grasp, she couldn’t have spoken, compulsion or no, and now she felt the squishing press of pig-muck beneath her shoulders, though she didn’t remember the fall and impact that must have brought her here. “Mina would have learned the call by now if she was worthy, but she hides herself away in the filth – see it matting in her hair. Why would you try to sing, Mina, when you know you are an unworthy vessel?”
And Mina’s face had been forced to the side and down, though the tentacle loosened enough now for her to draw in a gasp of air. Still she stayed sprawled on the ground of the pig pen, the compulsion call pressing down on her chest like an anvil, as though her body wanted to sink even lower than the muck. “I will be worthy, gran-Tom. I will be worthy. Please.” She found herself mumbling the words, gibbering them, really, voice gone high and thin. And now she was allowed to lift her head from the muck for this, because begging looked best with eyes that were pleading upward. “Let me show you, gran-Tom. Let me show you I am worthy.”
The tentacles had withdrawn, and Mina no longer felt like she was turning purple. As terrifying as that had been, it seemed the Other One wasn’t completely intent on killing her just now. However, Mina had a clump of pig-poop shoved up right next to her nostril, and she found herself both furious and reluctantly fascinated that the compulsion was strong enough to keep her from retching even though the full length of her digestive tract was clamoring to rebel against such a close and personal stench. But her mouth was still pleading that she was worthy, and the compulsion had let her lift up now to her knees.
“And what can the dry-stick Mina do to prove that she is worthy?” Gran-Tom’s tentacles were writhing forward and around Mina now, coming close but not quite brushing at her arms and cheeks, as though pretending at soothing while still recoiling from the filth she’d been coated in. “Her throat is so small and so dry. How could she ever be anything better?”
“I will show you. I will show you.” The compulsion had turned the words into a chant that forced Mina’s lips to shape them, even though the will to give them voice had receded. Instead there was a new overriding will now, and it was lifting Mina’s limbs, lifting her to her feet, turning her toward the door out and starting her running. One could never run very far on the spire (unless it was up and down stairs), but there was a pressure at her back urging her faster and fast. With a lurch that only showed deep in her gut, Mina realized that this was something even worse than being strangled in the muck and murdered, that the Other One was set on Mina’s own limbs doing her killing for her. And there was the garden, and beyond that would be only empty air.
Just then, a jangling of strange notes sounded from behind Mina where she’d run past, and the feeling of the compulsion inside her seemed almost audibly to snap. She tripped and stumbled her way to a stop – just short of the spinach beds, but then wobbling sideways, falling and crushing a tall clump of asparagus fronds that had been left to go to seed.
And the jangling stopped. “How much longer do you want me doing this, gran-Tom?” That was Hedwin, who was slouched down on a crate placed across from the entrance into the pig pens, holding a funny box and looking extremely bored.
“I think that was just about right, Hedwin,” gran-Tom answered, standing now in that entrance, looking grey and worn, and quietly, dangerously regal, just like herself. “You can get back to your chores.” Then she cast her eye over to Mina, crouched shaking half-inside the garden. “Come along Mina. For the next part we need to get down close to the sea.” And she turned away, heading for the spire stairs leading down.