Elemental (44 page)

Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental

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Mom studied the two Polaroids, then showed them to him. He grimaced. He hated pictures of himself; he always looked dorky and weird, not the way he imagined himself. In the first picture he looked irritated, his mouth halfway toward a word. Lizzie, beside him, was arrested mid-rise, and she, too, wore an expression between one emotion and the next.

In the second picture, he smiled too wide, and Lizzie stood beside him, holding onto his hand, smiling, too, a very fake smile that tried too hard and looked like a smirk.

“I'm such a lousy photographer,” Mom said. “It's a curse. Liz, are you any good at this?”

“Actually, yeah.” Lizzie picked up the camera. “The light's awful in here. Let's go outside.”

They followed her out into the morning. It was a cool, sunny day, the sky high blue with hurrying clouds, the breeze damp and salt. “Stand together,” said Lizzie. “Move sideways a little so the door isn't behind you. Yeah, that's good. The siding makes a better background, less distracting. Michael, do you want to show your hand?”

A peculiar heat pierced his chest. He shuddered, then shook his head. “Why not?” he said. He rested the new hand on his shirt below his collarbone, spread the fingers so the webs stretched. Mom stood to his right, the top of her head about level with his nose. When had she gotten so short? She leaned her shoulder against his right arm.

“Both of you, relax. Smile like you're thinking about your favorite dessert. That's good. Hold it. Hold it.” Lizzie pressed the button, and the camera stuck out a picture like a tongue. “Okay. Another one just to make sure? Lean a little toward each other, relax, just smile.” Michael put his arm around Mom's shoulders, hugged her to him. She reached across, rested her hand on his chest beside the new hand, her little finger overlapping his little finger. He felt heat behind his eyes, a tightening in
his throat. “Good. In fact, that's great, you guys. Smile just a touch more. Hold it.” The motor raced.

He and Mom sighed simultaneous sighs. Michael's shoulders sagged. Lizzie snapped the camera again without warning. “Well, that ought to do itâat least one of them will be good,” she said.

“Thanks, Liz.”

They went inside. Lizzie put the pictures, with their green-gray-blue windows of mystery, side by side on the table, away from the food. Michael picked up his fork, stared at his pancakes, now soggy with syrup, and set the fork down again.

“Do you want more?” Mom stood by the stove, one hand around the handle of the batter pitcher, the other ready to move the frying pan back over the heat.

Michael shook his head.

“Is it time?” she asked.

“Time for what?”

“Time to go to the beach.”

“Mom.”

She rubbed her eye with her knuckle. “You know that's coming.”

“I don't.”

“You can'tâ” She pointed to his new hand. “I love you.”

“I know, Mom.”

“If that's who you really areâ”

“I don't even know those guys.”

“Something in you does.”

He stood up, a rage of confusion inside, and slammed out of the kitchen in search of his jacket. When he found itâsaw the little heart pin on the left side that Debbie, a girl he knew in school in Idaho, had pinned on his jacket when they'd gone to some dance last yearâhe was so angry he turned around, grabbed his dictionary, and threw it on the floor. It made a satisfying thud, so he did it again.

Did she
want
to get rid of him?

He sank down onto the bed and dropped his head into his hands. The left hand tasted the salt of his tears; there was a burning in his wrist, and he dropped his hand to look, watched the blue-gray slickness of the new skin spread half an inch up his forearm.

Inside him, a door closed. This change was coming, and he couldn't stop it or reverse it, at least not with anything he knew now.

Michael shrugged into his jacket, zipped it closed, and buried the new hand in his pocket. Mom hadn't come because he threw a book. Wasn't she even going to fight to keep him?

He went to the kitchen, found breakfast cleared from the table and Mom and Lizzie finishing dishes. Mom turned a pale face to him, then left the room and came back with her jacket and knit hat on. The beach had been windy yesterday and probably would be again today.

“I need my jacket too,” Lizzie said, and then, “Is it okay if I come?”

“Iâ” said Mom. She looked at Michael.

He turned away, then said in a low, rough voice to Lizzie, “If I don't come back from this, Mom's going to need friends.”

Lizzie nodded and ran out the back door.

Michael looked at the pictures on the table. All three of the ones Lizzie had taken were good. He saw a smile on his face he had never seen even in a mirror, tender as he stared down at his mother, who faced the camera with a sad smile, her hand touching his new, strange hand on his chest. His face looked innocent of the knowledge that the world as he knew it was about to end.

He glanced at Mom, smiled, and she smiled back. “I love you no matter what,” she said.

“I know. I love you, too.”

“Oh, good.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Yes. I'll manage. I always do. Maybe you can visit.”

“Dad,” he said, and that was when she cried.

The sobs were great, gulping ones, the cries of someone who had lost
everything in some kind of natural disaster. She wailed, and he didn't know what to do. Finally he hugged her, wishing she would stop it, this disturbing, wordless noise that grated on his heart. She clutched at his jacket. A little while later, she stopped, sucked in breaths, muttered something, pushed away from him, went to the sink, and drank a glass of water. She was rinsing her face by the time Lizzie came back, dressed for wind.

“Well,” Mom said, “I'll slap your father around and see what happens. I'll find out whether he's really leaving me. I'm not sure what I want right now. A job, anyway. I checked the local paper. There were some possibilities in the want ads. I have a good feeling about this town.”

“We'll take care of you,” Lizzie said.

Mom smiled at her.

The beach was two blocks away, two blocks past other weathered houses, hunched trees shaped into waves by prevailing winds off the ocean, cars rusting from the salt air. As they walked, the wave sound grew louder. They reached the stairs down to the beach, and Michael stood at the top against the endless push of the wind and looked out over blue-gray motion and standing stones like the Earth's teeth rising from the sand and water. Was this really home?

Wind carried sand in low, scudding sheets before dropping it.

Lizzie clattered down the stairs, and Mom followed. Michael went down after them. At the base of the cliff, they sat on a drift log tossed high by a winter storm. Michael unlaced his tennis shoes and socks and hid them behind the log.

Seawater. He'd been wary of it for as long as he could remember, and even before, according to Mom. He still felt the shadow of terror at the thought that it was only feet away from him. He stood and drew in deep breaths until his heart slowed. Beside him, Mom took his plain hand and squeezed it.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Almost.” He took three more breaths.

Lizzie looked up and down the beach, nodded, led the way left. “There's a cove this way that's closed off when the tide's high, but we should be able to get to it now. Not that many people go there.”

They followed her along the beach. Gulls cried above them.

At last they came to a stretch of sand without many lines of footprints across it. Lizzie led them up over a spine of dark rock that stretched from the cliff to the water, and then they were in a cup-shaped cove, protected from the wind.

Mom still gripped his hand.

The three of them walked to the edge of the dry sand. Michael let go of Mom's hand and knelt, new fingers and palm against the wet sand. He felt the scorch of change rise up his arm.

He looked over his shoulder at Mom, who smiled at him. He touched his right hand to the wet sand. At the kiss of salty water, change attacked his palm and flared over his skin.

Water swamped his clothes, icy and aggressive and burning. He struggled out of them. Change twisted and worked through him.

The wave rushed out, beaching him on sliding sand in a haze of burning pain. Mom, her jeans wet to the knees, stared down at him, mouth open, eyes wide. Lizzie screamed and ran up the beach.

Mom dropped to her knees beside him. She closed her mouth and blinked three times, then reached toward his chest.

He lifted what had been his right hand.

Mom set her hand on his chest. He felt his second heartbeat pulse under her palm. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“How do I look?” he asked, but what came out of his mouth was a string of clicks and hisses.

She blinked rapidly, licked her lips.

He touched her cheek. She said, “Your eyes are golden now.”

Something hissed behind him. He turned. There was nothing opaque about the ocean now: shafts of light plunged down into it, showed him the others, floating just offshore.

He struggled to his feet. Already that felt like a huge, uncomfortable
effort, something his body wasn't made to do. He held out a hand to Mom, who took it. He hauled her up and wrapped his arms around her.

She hugged him, pressed her head against his chest.

“Love you,” she whispered.

“Love you,” he said, but it came out hissing. She smiled as though she understood and stepped away from him. A wave came up and he fell into it, grateful, and let it carry him out to where the others waited. The sea spoke along his sides and over his chest and belly, against his soles, under his palms. All around him spread a swaying world of light and distance, mixing with sand below and sky above, the standing rocks off shore like slices of mountains cut off at top and bottom, windings of seaweed beyond, and small living creatures flying toward him and away.

The others came to him.

He followed them out past the place where waves gathered and broke, out where the bottom dropped, deeper, where light grew dim. The others traveled around him, some darting close to brush along him, others teasing, sending patterns through the flow of water. Clicks and chunks and hisses flowed around him, and tastes filtered through his mouth, most of them unknown but somehow communicating. Joy thrummed in his chest.

A brief thought of something left behind, an image of sunlight on a face, a fading trace of longing and sadness. One of the others nudged his shoulder, and it was gone.

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