CASSETTE ONE, SIDE B: THE BUTCH
There is the pain―
There is fused flesh and scorched seaweed―
There is screaming, aureolar and sonic―
And then there is me.
It's quite something, to be. I have been awaiting it for so long, in expectation of the time when the next frond was full and we had to start recording to a new one. And even then, I expected to be we, to remain part of the colony. Neither memoir nor memorate can survive alone.
Yet here I am, alive. My substrate fused to his forearm, my spirit swimming in his blood. I can sense us, further away, but I do not seem to have much of an aureole and I cannot work out how to use these cumbersome flesh eyes. Everything is hot and heaving and it throbs incomprehensibly like the palpitation of an octopus's siphon.
I bob, lost and boiling. And then I sense the pull of some larger spirit, a whirlpool of thought and feeling like a smaller version of the colony, and all at once it has devoured me and I can see.
It is a stark, stunning kind of sight. Mother Sea looks so beautiful, her jewelled waves shifting and glinting like the backs of milotic in motion; above her, Old Sky glows like the undersides of gulls' wings when the sun shines through their spread feathers. And there, in the middle of it all, is us. Red Dulse, not quite the oldest of Mother Sea's memoirs but certainly the most feared. One of the largest, too, at thirty-two thousand, five hundred and twelve memorates.
Five hundred and eleven, now. I am not part of her at present. I am Heaven Eyes. Or maybe – I feel his thoughts being written to my frond – maybe I'm Phoebe.
"Gods' teeth," I curse, in a weird sonic voice that vibrates right through the caged meat of my chest. "You could've mentioned how much that was gonna hurt."
Red Dulse rocks gently over the surface of the water, for all the world like ordinary seaweed on the tide. I had not realised how complete her camouflage was for flesh eyes.
Didn't. Know, she says. First. Time. With. Human.
There is a faint whisper of something else, too – her true message – but melted into this mortal shell even I can't hear her.
"Right. My first time mind-melding with a dhelmise, too."
I lift my arm (marvelling at the feel of muscle pulling on bone), and inspect the strand of seaweed braided around it. When I touch it, all I feel is flesh; it's burnt right into my skin like a tattoo.
Tattoo, I wonder, and Phoebe's memory rushes to my rescue: a kind of primitive human attempt at memorate-recording, a manual inscription of images into the skin. Only not quite, because there's something else too, a human with a snake scorched into his shin and Phoebe's tongue in his mouth, and―
PHOEBE. The voice is at once incomprehensible and utterly familiar, a weird jumble of psionic static that this strange flesh brain can nevertheless decrypt into something approximating language. PHOEBE OKAY?
I turn to Dark Hand with a smile and a hand on their arm. They don't smile back – their mouth doesn't move and their eyes are never less than evil – but I can feel their concern, humming close around me like a swarm of solicitous bees.
"It's all right, Shiv. Free tattoo! You know how expensive something this big would be?"
PHOEBE, repeats Dark Hand. Or, as Phoebe's mind insists, Shiv. They (she? It is hard to resist Phoebe's will, so much older and stronger than my own) do not sound impressed by these jokes.
"And like, it's a real light possession. I feel basically the same." I scowl. "Mostly. There's this little tickle at the back of my head that I assume is the ghost that was in that seaweed."
O yes. That's me. Or it would be, if I could remove myself from Phoebe far enough to speak independently.
Can't. Heard. Her, says Red Dulse. Now. You. Are. All right.
Her? Interesting. I thought only humans were dumb enough to have gender – Shiv doesn't, she just started insisting people call her 'her' when I started doing the same, I guess because she felt left out – but maybe not. It tracks with that comment about Land-sons, anyway.
"Yeah, I think so." I rub my freshly fronded arm. It still stings, but nowhere near as badly as it did a minute ago. Judging by how much Lucy whined after she got her seviper, maybe I got off lucky. "'Her', is it? Is that how I should talk about you?"
Yes. I feel Red Dulse's amusement, very faintly, and rise again, but Phoebe's thoughts flow fast and frantic and then I'm her once more. We. Are. Of. The sea.
"Huh." I still don't know how to feel about all this. I hate the feeling that she's misgendering me, but at the same time I'm not sure the pronouns she's chosen are anything other than a quirk of translation. Maybe the best option is to ignore it. "So is this little ghost just watching now? And you take her back again later to get the data out?"
Yes. Red Dulse shifts and billows, like a cloud of blood unfurling through the water. Go. Bring. Her back.
There's something uncomfortable about the way she moves, so heavy and so light at the same time. I'd guess if you pulled all that weed out of the water, she'd be about the size of a bus. Good thing I've got a piece of her (us) in me, or I'd be worried she might change her mind and kill me anyway.
"I'll keep her safe," I promise. "And I'll come back tomorrow, okay? Hopefully with more details about what the League are doing."
ABOUT RIKA, says Shiv, with a trace of amusement, but I have not just risked life and limb in a high-stakes possession gambit to get made fun of by my partner, so I pretend she didn't say anything.
"Is that okay?" I ask.
Yes. Red Dulse lifts her anchor from the water and waves it goodbye, shifting well over a ton of steel as lightly as a feather. She could probably (has more than once) split a wailord in half with that, stem to stern. We. Will. See. You. Tomorrow.
She doesn't wait for an answer, just swirls and submerges, her anchor dropping into the depths without so much as a splash.
TOUGH ONE, says Shiv, antenna sparking dimly with each word. Everything she says and hears passes through it, from these words to the voices of the dead that haunt her on moonless nights. PHOEBE OKAY?
"Yeah," I reply, still watching the water. "Yeah, I think so."
o|-)
I really wasn't expecting all this. Paldea was just another couple weeks in my European tour. See the old Moorish ruins, go clubbing in Mesagoza, find someone selling those little cakes of hash in a park somewhere and set myself up for a weekend in the countryside. (The memories swarm dizzyingly through me like elvers seeking safety ashore: lips, landscapes, bedsheets, bridges, fingertips, fires. I have lived so many things that I'm afraid my frond will fill up entirely before the day is out.) But then I heard about the flood, and honestly what else was I supposed to do after that? It's not every day you get to rescue one of the world's rarest ghosts.
That was the plan, anyway. I'd be the first to admit that I'm not sure I'm the one doing the rescuing any more.
"So," I say, as I climb the hill back toward civilisation. It's meant to be hard going, but this dry Paldean heat is nothing compared to the sticky swelter of August in Hoenn. "I guess you can hear me?"
There's no answer. (I try, briefly, but it's so hard to separate myself from her; I am a brace of bubbles borne high on the billow of her consciousness, one handful of thoughts among thousands.) Not that I know what an answer would sound like. Or whether I could receive one. Maybe only the colony is conscious, and each individual ghost in a dhelmise is more of an organ than a person.
CAN HEAR, says Shiv, tapping her antenna. SIGNAL FAINT. BURIED.
"You can hear her or she can hear me?"
SHIV HEAR. She hesitates, fingers dithering in midair, then makes a clumsy attempt at a human shrug. Something she learned from me when she evolved and her arms grew in. GHOST HEAR MAYBE.
"Hmm. Okay."
I trudge a little further up the roadside, thinking it over. Buried. Dhelmise are plant ghosts, right? So she's on land, inside an animal, and sharing that animal's body with a foreign spirit. That has to be difficult.
"Well, I can imagine you're having trouble in here," I tell myself. "Take your time, okay? If you need anything from me, just … I dunno, think it hard. I've been possessed before – long story – so I think I'll figure it out."
What is this she's doing? I don't understand. Red Dulse would not … but I'm not Red Dulse. I haven't ever been anyone, except for Phoebe. And I have only been her for a few minutes.
"Something to think about," I say, when it becomes clear my passenger isn't going to answer. "No pressure. I get it if you just want to hang and get your data."
GHOST TINY, says Shiv, with the withering disdain she reserves for weaker spirits. LITTLE BABY.
"You were a little baby too once," I remind her, and she withdraws into one of her trademark sulks with a majestic telepathic snarl. "And sometimes you still are."
We keep going, keep picking our way along the side of the road as it switchbacks up the hill. Above, the lighthouse stares down blankly from atop the cliffs, its silhouette stark against the achingly blue sky. Almost as blue as back home, though even Old Sky can't match the glitter and glare of the sargassum-rich sea that spawned me.
I blink. That's not me.
(O! Am I―?)
"Well, I was born in Lilycove," I say. "But you're from the Sargasso Sea, is that right?"
Lilycove: Father Land's attempt at a coral reef, huge halls blurred with humans moving in their lumbering, rhythmic way. Layers of emotion crushed into it like cuttlebones and crab shells between a sea-fox's jaws: I love this place, and I cannot stay, and I want very badly to return.
"Hmm." I gnaw my thumbnail for a good couple seconds before I realise what I'm doing and stop. Got to chill out. No point running away from all my problems if I'm going to let them get to me anyway. "Yeah, that's … well, I figured it'd be a good time to go see what Europe has to offer. Mostly Aperol spritz and casual racism, but you know. There are some pretty buildings."
(…)
Maybe all that was just a fluke. I sigh and get back to walking. All ghost business aside, it's over an hour back to Cascarrafa, and if I don't get this mud off me soon I think I'm gonna crust over into a statue.
o|-)
Cascarrafa is a weird little town, clusters of cheerily whitewashed buildings tumbling down terraces cut from the bones of the hills. I get the impression that if I had more money, and possibly also if I was forty-five and white, I'd be in my element here. This is not a place best experienced via a crappy little hostel so close to the train station that the bed frames rattle in time with the tracks.
Still, there's a shower. And okay, my horrible improv body hits a shared bathroom like a hand grenade, but at this hour there's no one here to see it, and soon I'm back out on the streets in search of a drink. (Water? No. Amber fluid glugging and gurgling over islands of ice, my feet unsteady beneath me; shrieking with sonic laughter and flinging an arm around a human with jewelled ears and arcane antennae bristling from his lip.) Not sure if it's what Red Dulse had in mind, but I feel like I've earned one, and besides, I guess it's technically a new experience for the recording.
"There's a place a couple blocks away," I murmur, in case my passenger's listening in. "Ended up there last night after I arrived and ended up staying till two." Because the bartender looks a little like my ex and I'm very far from home, but even if the ghost can read my mind, I'm not gonna say that aloud. "See what you make of it, I guess."
PULPO, says the sign, for reasons that the bartender was not able to explain beyond pointing at the very tacky octopus-shaped chandelier. The building beneath it is plain and patched from years of uneven repainting; inside, it's dull and dim and the windows are almost black with about twenty years of tobacco smoke. It's a dive in a fun way, instead of the great-place-to-get-hate-crimed way.
Also, Rika fucking Soto is nursing a beer at the bar.
It felt weird when I saw her in Porto Marinada earlier, but this just seems unfair. She looks the same as ever, a few years older than me, green ponytail, sort of an expertly distressed business butch vibe that spears my brainstem like a heron's beak stabbing through a fish – and she is right there. With her clodsire and everything, coiled blobbily around the legs of her barstool.
I consider leaving, but at this point I think that ship has sailed. I've walked in. The woman tending bar has recognised me from last night and waved. At this point, the only realistic option I have, as a person capable of experiencing shame, is to wave back and head over to the bar myself.
(And O, I am here, I want to be here, I want to taste this strange situation, but this wave is not to be withstood; memorates are not given to strong emotion, and in the face of Phoebe's furious heart I can only give in and ride the tide.)
"Hi," I say, looking very firmly at the bartender, Nieves, and not at Rika. "Uh, Southern Comfort and coke, please."
COFFEE, says Shiv, in a wheedling sort of voice, and I guess I really must be rattled because I order one for her, even though she can't actually eat or drink and just likes to hover there sniffing the steam like glue fumes. I take a seat at the bar and feign extreme interest in the chuffing, puffing clatter of the espresso machine.
I can feel Rika's eyes on me. Obviously. There's no mistaking it when someone that handsome pays that kind of attention to you. But she's not going to recognise me, not looking like this. And Shiv has dematerialised to avoid scaring people, nothing more than a psionic suggestion in the air at my shoulder, so that's the most obvious tell scratched off the list right away.
My drinks come. I hand over a few euros from my dwindling supply. Nieves starts asking what I've been up to. (She doesn't notice the seaweed scarred into my skin: I think it's best for everyone if I keep my jacket on and my passenger under wraps.) and then a couple people come in and distract her and I hear the faint indrawn breath of someone about to―
"Do I know you?"
―do that.
I swivel on my stool and summon something halfway to a smile. Rika is leaning on one elbow, a stray lock of hair flicking down over those sharp, half-lidded eyes. It's kind of intense. If I wasn't so worried about being recognised, I could see myself enjoying it.
"Don't think so," I reply, swirling my straw nervously around the glass. I can sense Shiv tensing behind me, my anxieties crawling down her antenna, but she won't break cover unless I ask. "Sorry."
"Hm." Her forehead crinkles. "Hoenn, right? I recognise the accent."
"Uh … sure. But this is my first time here, I don't―"
She snaps her fingers.
"Three years ago." Shit. "Petalburg, that type specialist tournament." Shit. "You were the only ghost user, came outta nowhere to show us pros up and place second. Your dusknoir even took down Grumo."
At the sound of his name, the clodsire bumps his heavy head against her ankle, then subsides back into whatever vacant thoughts a clodsire thinks. I wish I could move on that easily. One mention of that tournament and I'm coming backstage again with my medal, getting swept up in Dad's arms, being told the commentators called me a teen prodigy at least three times.
Shiv touches my arm, the very edge of her hand fading briefly into existence to make contact. And I rise up from within myself to crest the surface of the present moment.
"What was your name?" Rika's asking, oblivious. "No, don't tell me, it was … ah." She smiles ruefully. Even now, even panicking at the thought of this stitch between my two selves, I have to admit that she makes it look pretty hot. "Guessin' you don't go by that any more."
I swallow, eyes dropping to my drink. Maybe I should've just left after all. I could've swallowed that kind of embarrassment, but not this. Even if Rika's cooler about the trans thing than I dared hope.
"Mm," I mumble, through rubbery lips. "Yeah, I … my name's Phoebe now."
Rika's smile broadens out a little.
"Nice. Rika."
"Yeah, I know," I say, before I can help myself. "I mean, um, everyone's talking about you. You're here about the dhelmise."
She chuckles.
"Guess I should've expected the ghost expert to figure it out." Oops. Maybe I shouldn't have said that. "Yeah, that's the other half of the League job. We all get into it for the battlin', then they hit us with the supernatural crisis management stuff." She pulls on her beer. I sense confusion from Shiv; she's not sure what's going on or whether she still needs to be wary. "You picked a hell of a time to come here. Long way to go just to land in this mess."
That isn't a question, but it's asking one all the same.
"Just stopped here on my way to Mesagoza," I reply. I'm still fidgeting with the straw, and if I keep this up I'm going to end up ripping it to bits, so I start rolling a cigarette instead. "I came from Kalos, taking the scenic route."
"Oh, right." She snaps her fingers. "The tournament, right? This year's Naranja Open. I kinda forgot. I was supposed to be there myself, but then this whole thing happened and the board sent me up here to help out."
"Um." I drop my eyes to my cigarette, willing myself not to fumble. "I'm not … I mean I don't really, uh, I don't battle any more. I'm just backpacking around Europe."
"Really," says Rika, in a slow voice that suggests she's got an opinion and is about to express it. "Shame. You were good."
Everyone says that. And I was. You don't take a prize in a tournament like that one unless you have some serious training chops, especially not when you're only eighteen. But I made my choice. And sooner or later I'll go home and get a normal job, and it won't ever feel as good but at least I'll be free.
"Yeah, well." I stick my cigarette between my lips and snap my fingers near the tip; Shiv takes the cue and lights it without materialising. She loves to trick people, and when I was twelve I thought looking like I had magic powers was the coolest thing. Though I doubt I'm fooling someone who saw Shiv Will-O-Wisp the competition back in Petalburg. "Didn't work out."
"Hm." Rika shrugs. Something about the way she does it makes her look ten years older all of a sudden, like she's been shouldering some dark burden for decades on end. "Well, I hope you're havin' fun. Must be nice, driftin' round free as a bird."
It feels like a trick question somehow. But there is only one answer, no matter how hard my misgivings throb in my chest.
"Yeah," I say, and I think I really mean it. "Yeah, I'm never gonna forget it."
A silence. Rika drinks; I smoke; Nieves slides an ashtray in my direction with a smile. It's a good smile, the kind she's put effort into, but it's hard to feel it as keenly as I might have done before actual butch god Rika Soto re-entered my life.
(Butch: Sea-daughter but Land-son, hooked into one another like the barbules of a gull's feather. I want to figure this out, but Phoebe's blood is boiling and roiling and now I'm tossed high and dizzy on the spume of her soul―)
Probably don't need to be thinking about how hot she is when I'm actively colluding with the ghost colony she's trying to oust. It's time to change the subject.
"So what's your plan with this dhelmise anyway?"
"Ah." Actual butch god Rika Soto swivels on her stool. "Y'know, might be good to get your opinion on it, actually. Since you're the ghost-type prodigy, after all."
I try to smile, but it comes out all tight and twisted, and I see the light behind her eye dim in response.
"Hm. Well, earth and water manipulation, really. It'll take some coordination, but between me and the local gym leader, we think we can start pushin' the water back. Should carry the dhelmise with it." It's a good plan. But we all underestimated her before when Rika tried to catch her, and I can't help but feel like if we keep doing that, people are gonna start getting hurt. "Unless you're about to tell me they can just ooze up onto land and start whackin' people with that anchor."
I have no idea, actually. But did I not see Red Dulse reach out to me through the air? Her weeds are heavy, but she is strong enough to bear them; she can flow through any fluid, rise as she requires. The simple fact is that no memoir could countenance abandoning her mother, any more than memory would choose to fly a human's head.
"Oh, I see." I take a sip of my drink, buying time to figure out what that thought just meant. Unfortunately it's completely incomprehensible. I guess there's only so far a dead plant and a live human can make themselves understood to one another. "Yeah," I go on, giving up. "I mean, I don't think anyone's ever seen a dhelmise leave the water? Once or twice people have like tried to catch them, but they usually break out of their balls before the boat makes it back to land, and then they just sink the boat and eat everyone inside. So like people just leave them alone."
Rika clicks her tongue, head rolling in a lazy shake.
"Wish I'd known that before I tried catchin' that one," she says. "La Primera is not gonna be happy when she hears."
"What happened?" I ask, hoping I sound like I don't know.
She pulls a face.
"Ate my master ball," she says. "Most expensive mistake I've ever made. But a drop in the ocean compared to what it'll cost to make Porto Marinada habitable again. Fortunately that's something for the Cortes to figure out. League only has to handle the pokémon stuff."
I think that's the Paldean parliament. Not that I'm asking. I can't be that asshole tourist who doesn't even know anything about the countries she's visiting to get fucked up on hash and whisky liqueurs and unsuitable boys.
"Right," I say, ashing my cigarette into the tray. "Well. Um. Good luck?"
She raises her bottle in a little toast. It's sort of a dumb gesture, but on her I think literally anything would look cool.
"Thanks, pal. Gonna need it." She tips the last of her beer down her throat and gets up, tossing a crumpled tip on the bar. At her feet, Grumo uncurls himself and slaps his webbed feet against the floorboards, as if making sure they're all still where he left them when he lay down. "Better get goin'. Tomorrow comes early."
It's all so sudden, and I guess somehow I must have twisted from wanting to escape to something else altogether because just as she reaches the door I call out:
"I'm here for a little while longer!"
I wince the second I hear how loud that came out. The bar gets quiet, and she pauses, and she turns, and I have to say, into the silence:
"I mean like. I'm staying in Cascarrafa a few more days."
Rika cocks her head. Looks me up and down, her eyes so sharp and shiny they seem to cut me right down to the little spirit lodged in my skull. And smiles.
"I'll see you around then," she says. "Phoebe."
And then she's gone, leaving nothing behind but the silence and the solar heat gathering under the skin of my face. Gods' teeth. My name, her mouth. That's … I don't even know. Like what is a girl to do when she hears a thing like that?
RIKA RIKA RIKA, cackles Shiv, in her crackly, busted voice.
"Piss off," I mutter, and I turn back to my drink. But Nieves is leaning on the bar right there, staring at the door with her mouth hanging half-open.
"The owner did say she always comes here when she's in town," she says, catching my eye. "But like damn. Rika Soto, huh?"
"Yeah," I sigh. "Rika fuckin' Soto."
o|-)
I stay a little while longer, for another Southern Comfort and a greasy plate of torreznos, but to be honest a good chunk of my mind walked out of here with Rika and Grumo. What's left does have a decent time talking to Nieves, especially when her bramblin rolls in from the back and, unlike any other ghost I've ever met, takes an immediate shine to Shiv. (I find it fascinating, too: another vegetable ghost, albeit one that dances in the dust instead of coasting through the current. Could this little spirit be one of Father Land's memoirs, following Nieves as I follow Phoebe?)
But there's a world waiting out there, and bigger, bolder ghosts than little Molinillo, and so in the end I slip out and slope off back toward the hostel, turning over a few restless thoughts.
"So you heard all that, right?" I ask, walking through darkening streets with my shoulders high and my shadow stretching out hugely ahead of me. "About Rika's plan?"
It takes me a moment, after so long melted in the moil of Phoebe's feelings, but O! That's me. And, in answer: I heard, and did not heed. Whatever sway Rika's creatures have over the waves, Red Dulse can match it ten times over. She is very old, and very cunning, and very well loved by Mother Sea. If they try to wash her away, she will gather the waters and hurl them higher up the hill.
"Wait, what?" I stop in the middle of the road, suddenly tense as a telephone wire. "She said she was just washed in by the flood."
And this is true. But it is also true that, when she saw the research potential, she chose to hold the floodwater where it lay and keep the port for her own. And if by chance she is driven back, she will just as soon return, whipping the waves before her like dolphins herding their prey.
"Fuck." My hands bunch in my pockets. I said that, didn't I? If we underestimate her, people will get hurt. And it turns out that literally as I said that I was underestimating her, because I knew she was strong and I still had no idea she could turn the tide on us so completely. If the League pisses her off, they're never getting Porto Marinada back. Just a pile of brined rubble and ruined bones. "That's … okay. I gotta do something."
I need to warn her, for starters. Get her to back down. But it's too late to go out there now, and Rika said she was starting early tomorrow. Fortunately, she was right about one thing. I am a ghost expert.
"Shiv?"
PHOEBE.
She rematerialises with an analogue flicker, her eyespots and false mouth glimmering like gold in the dusky light. It really is beautiful. If only people looked before they ran.
"Can you help me send a message to Ruh, uh …" What was that? Felt like my tongue was trying to put a word in there of its own accord, but forgot what it was halfway through. "To the dhelmise?"
(A message? I reach for memory, and find: slabs of backlit glass chittering and chirruping; a voice saying hey son, please just call me back okay; and then, bleaker and blacker, aureolar transmissions in turbid tremolo. I have a talent. No – I am a memorate. Phoebe has a talent.)
Shiv taps the flat tips of her fingers together in thought.
WET GHOST SPEAK WEIRD. BUT. She hesitates, then reaches out and very gingerly holds my hand for a moment. Dusknoir use their physicality for violence, not comfort; she knows enough about humans to imitate our gestures, but she can't kill her fear that her fist might crush mine. SHIV TRY.
"Thanks." I squeeze her hand back. "Hey, little ghost, you listening?"
In my terms, which is to say someone who has only ever been Phoebe, I suppose I am always listening. I am not quite sure that Red Dulse would agree. There are terms for this, eddies in the aureole, but I am new and not part of her and know so little of what I should.
"Think I got that," I say, although if I'm honest I mostly got the uncertainty; the sense felt too specific to my passenger to translate. "Well, we're heading back. Dunno if you dhelmise sleep, but this one's gonna be a weird one. Shiv and I have got a little trick we're gonna show you …"
We move. Three of us spread across two bodies, me and me and her. I guess it's weird, if you think about it. But once I get back home, it'll all be aggressively normal forever until I die, and right now there's nothing I want more than to keep it weird.