Pearl Before Swine ch 24: Knives

~THE SWINE~

This pride doesn’t fit me well, like an outgrown shell pinching off my breath. I should not fight with these humans. It’s stupid, reckless, and will get me caught, especially if anyone sees the color of my blood. I’m trying to keep my distance, but that scene of her and the islander tangled in each other, lips and all, sets fire to my bones.

Of everyone, why would she choose him? It’s like balance demands that her curiosity of the Koa equal Mare’s loathing for them. That’s all it is. Curiosity. That’s all it can be. If it were genuine care, she would realize how much danger she brings him.

He can’t love her. If this enigmatic human emotion is a plant, then I can’t allow even a seed to exist in any human, and especially not him.

He wanders the woods, lost. Not that he doesn’t know where he is. He can go back to Professor Baker at any time, but he refuses to return without the Pearl, and he doesn’t know where she’s gone. He doesn’t remember the Creature of the Land that took her. Lance is very, very old and very dangerous.

Another silhouette flickers between the trees, lupine with a generously bushy tail. She watches but never comes closer. I didn’t know there were any of Terra’s Wolves left. I’ve never met any of these oldest complex Creatures of Essence, and I’ve never desired to. Their idea of entertainment is leading fools to cause their own demise.

I expect her to interfere as I approach Jun, but maybe I’m enough of a fool without her help. I try to persuade him to go back inside. He cares for the Pearl. He feels loyalty toward her, twisted as it is among humans, but I still understand it. These are emotions I have experienced myself, but love? I’m not sure how to recognize it.

How can I spin this into a happy ending? At this rate, the Pearl will take him back to Mare. She’ll win the bet. It will mean my failure, but if I can claim this islander as a gift?

Jun will die, and Mare won’t make it quick. She adores the ones that scream, and the ones that try not to? Those delight her even more.

I will be kind. He thinks I’m out here searching for the Pearl, that we have that concern in common and it is what furrows my brow. He even lends me one of his science-enhanced blades in case we run into trouble. His back is turned toward me.

One thrust, one thin pane of metal through the spine will end this worry for good. Halcyon is right: If Jun dies because of the Pearl, no human will trust her.

I can do this. I have to do this, no matter how my hand jitters as I turn the dial on the knife. Sharpest edge, quickest kill. It won’t hurt him, not if I do it right. This is the best way.

He turns, gaze on the weapon and brows drawn in question.

I answer with a pointed look toward a chaotic pile of rotten logs. Dusk’s light shies from its hollows, preparing for the fourth sunset since the bet began. Half of the week is gone.

A nod acknowledges the direction, features widening in hope, and Jun slinks toward the downed trees. He really is beautiful. If not for the scar on his forehead, Mare would keep his teeth.

I walk with him, sucking in a deep breath. It’s for the best. He won’t understand, but it is. Now. Do it.

The knife launches forward.

He ducks, then backpedals, and the blade slices in front of him. Before I can angle it at his heart, his hand vices my wrist. His back curves, throwing me over his shoulder, but I grab at him. My legs knot around his ribs and pull him down with me.

All my breath leaves as my spine hits the ground. I should have paid better attention to where the knife was. It comes down with all Jun’s weight and impales my side. As its curved tip sinks into the dirt beneath me, his knee on my throat cuts off my squeal.

Golden blood pours from the wound. Not quite liquid, it wafts, dusting his jacket, his face, his dark lashes and hair. Its glow reflects in his eyes, and against that, they look black, like the darkest moments before sunrise.

A different dawn slides over his face. “You’re not human.” Two more knives slide from their sheaths. One hovers above my eye, the other above my heart. “Show me your true form before you die.”

“I can’t shift on my own.” My words are a jumble, more slur and squeal than anything else. Every hard-earned exhale and every thought of movement saws the cut wider. “Mare has to—”

“You’re hers?” His thumb toggles a dial. These are weapons designed to kill Creatures of Essence, and he just put them on their highest setting. Sharpest edge, quickest kill, after all. His hands tremble, though. Good. He fears Mare, as he should.

I’ll tell him what he needs to hear. He’ll run. He’ll never meet her.

“Pearl’s not human either.”

He nearly drops the knives, and I’m not sure he means to breathe the word he does. “What?”

My hand crawls toward the blade in my side. I have to get up, get out of here while he’s distracted. He will kill me. I don’t doubt that for an instant.

“Pearl belongs to Mare, too. She doesn’t care about you, Jun. She can’t. She’s just using you to win a bet.”

*

~THE PEARL~

Familiarity peeks around this stranger’s every edge. It rides in the way his stride devours the land, in how the light plays with his skin same as it does the ruddy brown of the leaves silhouetted above. Beyond them, a deepening mauve claims the sky, pierced by pinpricks of white. I see it only in my periphery, eyes stuck on the one who carries me.

He seems human, features broad and angular as if painted by a thick brush. Though he appears little older than the students here—mid-twenties at most—some spirit about him feels ancient, one part wise, two parts dangerous.

As I think this, he grins, and the eyes that alight on me burn with the molten amber of aged sunflowers.

I open my mouth to share one epiphany, but much more spills out in a breathless rush. “You are a Creature of the Land! What is your name? Has Terra sent you? Why? You cannot interfere in the bet, not unless—”

His deep chuckle rolls through my every hollow. “Terra said you were full of questions.”

Indeed, I have many more. Though the chiseled planes of his muscles are statuesque and rock hard, he is no Golem. He must be a complex Creature of the Land, equivalent to a Sea Swine or a Sky Dragon. He belongs in Terra’s Company, but why have I never met him? Are there others? Why would they leave Terra in loneliness?

What is his true form? Surely, the human looks are a façade. The last messenger Terra sent caused a disturbance, then was smashed. Not even in desperation could the Swine crush this giant.

“Are you also a centipede?”

At the edge of the trees with the university’s residence wing pale in the last of the sunlight, he halts. “No, Honey, we don’t compare any part of this”—his free hand sweeps a gesture along his body—“to a bug.”

I flatten my expression, too reminded of the human disgust Pike used as an excuse. “It is not an insult. Bugs play an important role in nature.”

“Ah. See, I do not, and that’s what I like about me.” His yawning strides resume.

I summon the strength to straighten, watching the forest shrink behind us. “Wait! We cannot leave Jun out there. And Sal—”

The plea becomes a choke as a breeze, chilled with the promise of winter’s distant but inevitable crawl, strokes my shoulders and collarbone where Aurora melted away my jacket. She only touched Jun and Jag, yet she burned them badly. Merely grazing her belly melted a metal rail around the chasm.

Sal’s strangled cry returns to my mind. Aurora wrapped him like a snake at least twice. She not only touched him, she carried him, and who knows what she did once beyond our sight.

Want. Mine. The two words she said about Sal. They fill my throat with sand.

“Lupa will look after them, probably. Sorry for sending off your human toy, but ones as young as you are easily distracted by pretty things. With the Koa around, I wouldn’t have gotten a proper introduction.”

“You have yet to introduce yourself anyway.” I squirm but remain trapped like a vine between tangled boughs. “Take me back or let me go.”

“So you can do what?” He snorts as a door clangs open and the university’s steel and steam innards swallow the deepening sky. “If the Koa isn’t smart enough to go unsupervised for a few hours, he’s not worth it.”

“But Mare—”

“You don’t have the strength to challenge Mare.” He locks me in the crook of one arm and lines my face with a hand. Tingly warmth seeps through my cheek and spreads to the depths of every bone. “You can’t give Sal the last bit of yourself.”

“He is hurt, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You implied he needs healing.” I struggle to rise, but the pooling warmth carries a planet’s weight. The words are meant to be sharp. Instead, my tongue lulls along them as if over foothills.

“I see I’ll have to pick words carefully around you.”

Like a villain that tiptoes around truth? He terms himself my friend, yet I know nothing of him. I want to trust him as a Creature of the Land, but wariness nibbles at the small hairs on the back of my neck. If he is loyal to Terra, I should have met him before now.

My eyelids weigh even more than my limbs, but I prop them open with a pleading stare. “If you took me back to Sal, you could heal him.”

“Could. Could.” His face hardens, every feature sharp as a thorn. “I will not reward him for meddling where he ought not. Feeding you is generous enough.”

Emphasizing his point, the power flowing between us sputters, and something primal within me reacts. My hands cover his and dig into the cords of sinew. They sniff out his vast stores of energy and draw it as if with a tornado’s inhale.

They get more than energy. Needles drive into my skin, each one trailing tiny chains. It is not merely a gift. It is an intention to trap.

As the walls transition from metal to the wood and paper screens of the hallway outside my room, I know I need to break this connection. Yet, my deepest self is still a tiny stone devouring all the sand it can, growing bit by bit. Despite how it prickles and stings, what this Creature of the Land offers is tastier than sand.

I stay still, limp and cooperative, focusing on the tip of that one spike of hair across his forehead. “How do you know the way to my room?”

“You leak energy like prey with a flatulence problem. One simply has to follow the trail.” He stops outside my door.

“I do not want to go in there. I want to return to Jun and Sal.”

And Pike. Where is he? Did the Swine go back inside alone after I chased Jun? Would he help me heal Sal?

“Sleep a while, stubborn infant, before you annoy me too much.”

Flame dances within my cheeks. So what if I am an infant. I have spent too long without a voice to allow my words to fade without acknowledgement now.

“Put me down.”

When he fails to comply, I say it louder. The third time is more than a shout. It rattles the walls and boils the blood beneath his skin, but his grip tightens.

The door flings open, and Tulip stands in its place, already partway through an exclamation. “…think you’re doing, you great…” Her voice slows, softens. “Mountain of muscles.”

She leans against the doorframe, lips quirked like two ships caught in a whirlpool as her eyes sweep him from head to toe and back. One hand remains hidden behind her.

Her timbre drops an octave. “What’s your story?”

“He is a Creature of the Land,” I say, and her brows become rising crescent moons. Her mouth draws a tiny o.

He smiles at her, planes and angles somehow forming a feather-like delicacy. “Pretty ones get to call me Lance.”

“Alright, Lance, care to explain the giant holes in Pearl’s shirt?”

My broiling emotions drown his response as their steam puffs my cheeks. He allows pretty ones to call him Lance, yet he did not offer me the name. Does he not find me pretty?

I need to be like Tulip and claim the privilege without even a blush, but words refuse to fit together. Only a jumble of nonsensical vowels streams from my throat as I tumble free. Yanking away from him is like ripping the skin from my flesh. Everything burns, and tears simmer in my eyes.

Tulip is there, arms around me in the softest hug. “Did he do this to you?”

If she still refers to my shirt’s ruined state, no, Lance had nothing to do with that. If she means the tears trekking down my cheeks and my trembling lip, yes, those are his fault.

She tucks my forehead beneath her chin and glares at Lance. “Get out of here, Mr. I’m Too Tall to Fit Through the Door, before I do something you’ll regret.”

Panic weaves my fingers into the wrinkled sleeves at her elbows. She cannot send him away. Already, what little he gave me ebbs. I am the smallest of candles, drowning in my own melted wax. “I need his help.”

She glances down with a narrowed expression, then hefts my weight onto one hip. “You need cleaned up and made decent first. Muscles can wait out here.”

Yet, as we enter our room, Lance follows.

Tulip whirls on him, an object glinting in her outstretched hand. “Do you not have ears?”

He grins, one brow lifting beneath the lone spike of his bangs. “Is that a hairbrush?”

“You don’t want to be on the wrong side of my hairbrush, trust me.”

Hands raised, Lance returns to the hall. The door steals him from sight, then a second door closes.

As Tulip sponges me down, I stare at my jacket and shirt, peeled off and abandoned on the floor. “I apologize. You worked so hard to teach me how to clean it each day, and now the garment is ruined.”

“It’s just a silly shirt.” She huffs stray hair away from her face. Over the past few days, their red has deepened into a rusty shadow. “It doesn’t look like you were hurt, at least. On the outside, anyway.”

“Not on the inside either. Not really.” To her silence, I pour out the events of my day, from Sal’s lessons at sunrise to how that advice burned to ash this evening with Jun. I speak of how I gave my all to heal him and of how much more Aurora took. I tell of Halcyon’s revelation about my lack of connection to an Essence and end with, “I need to grow stronger.”

Is this a goal Lance can help me achieve? I do not want his help with the bet. I want to win that fairly, on my own power. In the forest, he said old Creatures of Essence know tricks, and he would teach me. Does he listen now through the thin walls? What does he think?

“I don’t like how many of these creatures are showing up here,” Tulip mutters. “You with your bet is one thing. The Swine made sense, too, if he followed you, but why is Halcyon here, and Aurora, and possibly an infant Essence that Beau knows something about?”

I still need to ask him what he meant. If the new realm is not Night, what other place is there, and what does it have to do with Southern Shores University?

The chasm outside Great Mind’s Café fills my mind. Darkness and water. Silence and a never-ending roar. Does it lead somewhere? Is there a place beneath the sea?

I lose the battle against my drooping eyelids. When they reopen, I am again in Lance’s arms with power trickling between us. It teases, denying me more no matter how hard I pull. The Creature of the Land sits on Tulip’s desk chair, russet skin and bright hair in sharp contrast to the scribbled papers pinned to the wall. Little time has passed. Evening still glitters outside the window.

“But if the Swine—” Tulip cuts off as she notices my wakened state. She leans against the closed door as if to prevent Lance from darting off with me.

“I have already figured out that Pike is the Sea Swine,” I say too loudly as I sit up. My body swims in one of Tulip’s black undershirts, its billowing wrinkles like clouds against a night sky.

They exchange a look, communicating in some language of eyebrows.

“Pearl,” Tulip begins.

Lance’s voice, though seemingly no louder, crushes hers. “You’re here to prove you’re a smart little stone.” He taps me on the head. “That’s what the bet is really about. Not love. Scheming.”

My face scrunches, and my shoulders hunch. “Am I incorrect? Is Pike not the Swine?”

“Terra worries for you amid the human’s designs, though he should be more concerned about your reckless self-sacrifice. I’m only here to make sure you live.” He shakes his head and rolls his eyes with a snort. “If I tell you who is or is not the Swine, isn’t that cheating?”

I bite my lip. “Not if I trick you into telling me.”

“Oh, please do.” He laughs, and it is the sound of branches creaking in the wind, of sap oozing from an ancient tree. I want to be clever enough to make him laugh like this whenever I wish. I would like to call him big brother.

I stare, head tilted. “Lance, what do you really look like?”

A knock sends a jolt through all of us, deafening yet somehow hesitant. Tulip spins and cracks open the door.

“Is your roommate here?”

My feet launch toward Jun’s voice despite the sting of leaving Lance.

“It would be better if—” Tulip does not finish as I yank the entrance wider with every intention of leaping on my blue-eyed human.

His gaze hits me like a falling tree, and I halt, breath trapped within. He stares like a panther about to pounce, every line as rigid as a mountain facing its thousandth storm. Gold gilts him, shimmering more than it should in the wan hallway light.

Sal said Creatures of Essence have golden blood. Why would Jun be covered in that blood?

He speaks with no timbre, only air. “We need to talk.”

Continued in chapter 25

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