Hovering
***
As soon as they would let me out of the Healing Centre, Melts Blue Ice drove me to the morgue.
"You're sure?" he asked.
I nodded. I had to know if Alex was alive or dead.
We walked into to see the clerk.
"I want to see the latest human bodies," I said briskly, trying to stay numb, "I will be able to identify them."
"To what purpose?" the clerk asked.
"To send them back to their families. Their human families."
"That's not possible. The humans are attacking us. A state of war has been officially declared. There is no contact with humans."
"Then take them back to where you found them. There is no reason to keep them here."
"There is no reason to risk Souls on such a suicide mission."
"The humans will not be there anymore!" I looked away and made myself be calm. "Look, please, just let me identify them. One day their families might want to know what happened to them. It'll be much easier to ID them now than in 5 years time."
He looked from me to Melts Blue Ice and back. Finally he led me into the morgue. The cool air and the bland stainless steel cabinets couldn't hide the sense of decay.
"They've already been post-mortemed," he said, "They're just waiting for space in the queue for the crematorium." I froze and Melts Blue Ice bumped into me.
"They were post-mortemed? Why?"
He shrugged.
"Research. Wild humans are rare."
I pushed away that thought, and another popped up. There was a queue for the crematorium? What if Alex was already in the queue? What if- I shut down that train of thought too. Just deal with this first. One thing at a time.
I took a few deep breaths and made myself follow them. He pulled out the first drawer. Ford slid out, hard as rock. I could see him leaping onto Henry from behind, grinning and holding on frantically while Henry twisted crazily this way and that, trying to throw him off.
"Name?" the clerk said, waiting with pen poised above a chit.
"Ford Sammi," I said finally. He slid the drawer shut and opened the next. Sarah was lying there, large stitches holding her chest together, tipped in frost. Sarah had been playing with her niece last time I saw her, lying in the grass, looking for beetles.
The clerk waited, pen hovering impatiently.
"Sarah Gammerson," I said, turning to Melts Blue Ice, my breath catching in my throat, "She had a daughter-".
"No children here," the clerk said, sliding the drawer shut and moving on to the next one.
"Are you sure you're up to this?" Melts Blue whispered. I nodded, biting my lip.
The next drawer was open and waiting for me. I advanced on it slowly. I could see dark hair sticking up. Dark like Alex's hair. I forced my feet to keep going. I stared at the unfamiliar face a long time.
"That's Karl. I don't know his last name," I whispered. The drawer clicked shut and I ran for the rubbish bin, retching.
"That happens a lot," the clerk was saying to Melts Blue Ice.
"If you're having second thoughts-" he called.
"No," I said, panting, holding tight to the sides of the bin, "I want to finish."
There were six in all. None of them Alex. A soon as the final drawer slid shut I left Melts Blue Ice to say our goodbyes and went to sit in the car. I stared at nothing and let the tears fall. I heard the car door open and pulled on my seat belt automatically.
"I'll make sure they get home, Flame," Melts Blue Ice said softly.
"Thank you," I whispered finally as he returned me to the Healing Centre.
***
The Healing Centre had retained custody of me because I didn't respond appropriately to their tests. I didn't answer their questions properly, I didn't show the right range of emotions, I didn't integrate with the other patients. I tried to make them a cup of tea once and froze half way, hit by a memory of sharing hot chocolate by a snowy road. They didn't appreciate me freezing for no apparent reason. They thought I was traumatized by the way the humans had treated me. It was partly true. Alex was human. Most of the time. Except when he was hog-tying me and abandoning me to go kill Souls.
This from the man that had volunteered his own body to host 2 souls. Who had risked his life for mine more times than I could remember. That loved my son like his own. That I thought I knew. That I thought loved me. And that I couldn't help but still be desperately in love with. I hid his jacket in my bed and breathed him in until even his scent was gone.
My thoughts wandered wildly. One minute I would be furious with him for abandoning me, for fighting. The next, I'd give anything to be back with him, feel his hand in mine. I had the attention span of a butterfly, constantly flitting from thought to thought. Melts Blue Ice called it my 11 second memory, and became adept at keeping up with my mental leaps.
I was allowed to watch movies. They didn't think it was good for me to just stare at the wall. So I stared at a screen. It made them feel better anyway. My attention span didn't allow me to absorb much of the plot. Their collection was far ranging, including even the earliest movies. I made sure to choose at least as many cheery ones as other ones, in case they kept track. There was an old Russian one called 'Alexander Nevsky', and I knew I had to see it. A movie about an ancient Russian Alex was as near as I was going to get to mine.
It was a film glorifying fighting even when there was no hope of survival. More and more like my Alex. The stiff, jerky, movie Alex said "It is better to die on one's land than to leave it," and brought back a conversation from long ago.
"We have to fight for what we believe in," Alex was saying.
"You have to strive for what you believe in," I had said, "You don't necessarily have to fight. You have to pick your fights." I had thought his silence meant I had convinced him. It seemed I had been wrong. Part of me wished I had kept going, convinced him that fighting was not the way. The other part couldn't believe I had wasted precious time with him arguing.
Now it seemed that fighting was more important to him than peace, than… me. I guess it never came up when we fought for the same goal. But now we were on different sides. And suddenly I'd found out where I stood with him. I had thought he respected my beliefs, even shared them. But now I went over everything I knew about him and picked out different angles. He could kill, for instance. He killed Foreks. He had aimed a gun at Falling Smoke. I'm sure he would have killed anyone at the desert camp if they had attacked again. He had been willing to kill me the first time we met. I tried to convince myself he was only going to injure me, but I didn't believe it.
Could all of that really be attributed to self defense? Maybe I was safer here. But the thought made my heart argue furiously.
***
The other activity I could make an effort for was swimming. I'd sink into the cool water, blissfully surrounding myself with liquid emptiness. Somehow the tiny waves got into my head and quietened my thoughts, til I felt a seamless part of the cool swaying nothingness.
Bobbing and rocking with only my face and the tips of my fingers above the water, my ears listened to the heavy silence and occasional deep vibration of bubbles rubbing their skins against each other in the race for the surface. I had started out life with the Sea Weeds, feeling trapped at the time, longing to be free. It had taken 3 lifetimes of living in a gaseous atmosphere to appreciate the freedom the underwater world could give.
I floated, waving my arms back and forth with no sensation but the water trembling through my open fingers. Out of the pool, I dreamed of feeling the loss of the weight that dragged at me above the water. Here, I could finally be weightless, momentarily free of the heavy loss that engulfed me elsewhere in the Healing Centre. I wondered where it went. Whether it dissolved and diluted into nothingness, or whether it joined the larger hole of loss that the water contained, and I only couldn't feel it because I couldn't feel its edges anymore.
As I toweled my hair, I watched the yoga class in the front room opposite the pool. I thought vaguely how strange it was that people should put themselves into such silly positions with such seriousness.
"Have you tried it?" another patient asked me once. I shook my head, not up to finding the words to communicate socially with people that day.
"It's a lot like swimming," she went on, as internally I panicked that I would be trapped into having to speak to her, "Calming, but energizing somehow too." I smiled at her and turned away. My mind had already flitted to something else anyway. I had been encouraged to try yoga when I had been pregnant with Bhask. But I had been already fully occupied with grief for Icefire and wonder at my new body, constantly changing.
I wondered briefly if it was worse to grieve for a dead mate or one you didn't know was dead. But I couldn't concentrate on it and flitted to another thought.
***
Melts Blue Ice or Diane would bring me news of the world outside the Healing Centre. Attacks on Souls were increasing. The Souls had begun to retaliate, building walls around the cities, issuing travel passes only to those who had business coming in or out, making cars harder to hot-wire.
I knew all these changes would be making it near impossible for the humans to get supplies. I hated to think of the conditions in the camps now. I could understand why they were hijacking the supermarket trucks. In retaliation the Souls painted all of the trucks black, so there was no way to guess what was inside them. I felt like the humans were getting further and further away.
"I want to ask for a pass out," I told Melts Blue Ice one day as he sat down in the visitor's chair.
"You are free to come and go from the Healing Centre. You don't need a pass out for that," he said, but he was evading what I meant.
"I mean to go outside the city," I said clearly, "I want to find Alex. And Bhask." Melts Blue Ice rested his lips on his hands for a moment, nodding.
"I would seriously advise against that," he said eventually. I frowned.
"Look at it from their perspective. A Soul that has spent an awful long time with humans. That there are rumours has family amongst the humans. Now you've left them, and come in here; that's good. But leave the city and they'll assume you've crossed over to the other side. They won't trust you. They'll think you've chosen the enemy."
"I'm not choosing sides, I'm choosing to be with the people I love."
"They are not going to see it like that. They will not see why you would want anything outside the city walls."
"You're saying I'm effectively a prisoner here."
"Effectively, yes. But a city is a big place to be a prisoner in." Funny how tiny it felt to me.
"But I'm not advising against it to keep the Souls onside. Think of it from the human's perspective. The Souls are the enemy to them. They are going to have a really hard time coming to terms with living with one. Worse than before. And I don't think your family will stand for that, do you? What sort of position does that put them in? With their own people? Best case scenario, no one will trust them. Worst case, people are going to try and kill you, and they will have to get in the way. Do you really want to put them in that kind of position? In wartime? It's impossible."
After a long moment, I nodded.
Everything was impossible.
