SSCS 03: Installment 20 of 35
Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
This is Installment 20 of this year’s SSCS. If you want to start at the beginning of ‘Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About’, go here! If you want to know what the heck an SSCS is, go here!
Previously…
Poked in the ribs by the dandelion plate and leaning my tired face against my hand, I could just see the bits of the red scar where it trailed up to my wrist.
There was definitely a strange texture to it, which its proximity to my face and the light stabbing in through the bus windows seemed to amplify. It looked like the whole length of it was imprinted with something that looked like thin, tiny little feathers, or maybe like dandelion petals. Like somehow I’d been both careless, and meticulously repetitive with the texture plate right now hanging heavy in my pocket.
…Those Monsters We Have Dreamed About
Installment 20: 21.0321
Either way, I’d had too little sleep to think clearly about it, and the rest of the bus ride passed in a haze of jostling shoulders and lurching stops. The too-bright light coming in through the windows filled me with a queasy dread and the miles to my factory seemed to stretch forever.
At one point I thought I felt my arm burning again, but I’d turned my face away from it, eyes shut, trying to pretend I could half-sleep, and so I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just my nerves burning with fear of what I’d find once I got to the factory.
Even though it was later in the morning, the scuffed steel factory door at the end of the alley with its battered paper lantern looked just the same as on the first day I’d come. And, same as on the first day, the same silent man opened the door to let me in before disappearing into the glasshouse without a word. The rusty green doors on the opposite wall of the courtyard seemed to leer at me though, and when I looked at them, the full force of terror that I’d been managing somehow to avoid up ‘til now washed over me. I couldn’t even climb the crumbling stairs up to the workshop, but instead sat down on the lowest one, hands on my knees, breathing in and out and staring down at the muddy brick of the tiles beneath my feet.
I really wished I knew what day it was.
“Sacrifice girl! What are you doing down there? Stop dawdling. You’ve got one day left before the Minister comes to try to make a good impression.”
At the sound of Elka’s rusty-nail voice I froze, not even breathing. Then, before I quite knew what was happening, hands on both sides came under my arms and hoisted me to my feet, turning me around to face the stairs. One of them was Lily, though she let go and stepped back as soon as it became obvious that even two-abreast going up those narrow stairs was going to be pushing it. The other one was the man who opened the door. Had he been watching me from the other side of the glass? Had he told Elka I was here?
“Come on, Jhaani. You can do it.” The voice was Lily’s, now coming from just behind me as we stumbled up the stairs, her hand set at the small of my back.
“But it hurts,” I whispered, and realized as I said it that that was what was draining my energy and my ability to focus. I could feel the pain, still or again, burning in my arm, this time in what felt like a wider swath than before, and extending further up beyond my elbow. When Lily had lifted me, she’d jostled the edge of it, and now I was hyper-aware of where the fabric of my tunic rubbed against my upper arm. It set up a sympathetic resonance across my skin, so that it felt like the burning had spread to a patch just below my shoulder-blade as well. I didn’t like being pulled up the stairs, but the thought of exerting enough energy to climb them by myself was almost more than I could bear.
“We’ll get Jack to put the salve on it,” Lily whispered back. “But we need you to keep working. You must.”
“But they can see me,” I pleaded back at her, not even sure what I meant, but burning with the terror beneath it. The door-man’s hand jammed beneath my arm to lift me felt like the stranger’s hand clamped around my arm on the bus. They’d been watching me. Was this the terror that Maia and the other girls had felt? The reason why they’d jumped? I didn’t want to jump from anything, but I didn’t want to face the half-bell Template again either. I didn’t want to see the pattern that was supposed to get shaped into the center.
“Not yet. Not yet.” I was saying the words over and over as they dragged me through the foggy stink of the workshop, still stumbling, now shaking. “Not yet not yet not yet!” More frantic as we got closer, until Lily relented and directed me out onto the rail deck rather than turning that final corner to where the Bell Template would be waiting.
The doorman, still silent, let me go there at last, and the feeling like I’d escaped something was so strong that I could only cling to the crumbled wall for long minutes, the burning still searing my arm but not as bad now that I was free. I could feel a smoggy breeze on my cheeks up here. I could look out past the shabby buildings all the way far enough to see the rusty glint of a junkyard, and know that I was still far from them, still free.
When a warmth touched my shoulder, I didn’t move my eyes, but I drew in a long breath I’d been holding, then felt my terror seep away as I breathed out. “Will you stay with me for a little bit, Jack?” I asked.