Pearl Before Swine ch 26: Apologies

~THE SWINE~

Each new breath is a surprise. It also hurts. Everything hurts. The pain means I’m still alive, though that’s little comfort.

It takes me forever to get to my feet and even longer to reach the dorms. I stagger. I fall against trees, then walls, expecting each one to catch me in an eternal embrace.

The Pearl is easy to track, but I don’t know why I seek her. Lance took her. Even if she has the energy to heal me, he won’t let her. I shouldn’t let her either. She has no idea what she’s doing when she does that. I might end up with antlers. Or inside out. Or inside out with antlers.

What is this hard thing beneath my cheek? A stair. I’ve fallen again. I can’t get up.

I have to. Someone’s calling for the healers. They won’t like the color of my blood. I’m not sure what they’ll do with my body if I die. I’m not sure what they’ll do while I live either.

I crawl. One stair, two, ten. No. Oh, no. I must be imagining this salty-sweet scent. The islander can’t be with the Pearl. I told him, didn’t I, what she is? What she wants. He was supposed to run, but here he is, sprawled on the flat roof, hand lost in the Pearl’s dark hair. Dawn drenches the scene in scarlet. Her head rests on his middle, face turned away from me, and neither of them move. I am part of this drawing, just as motionless, watching for either of them to breathe.

He does, chest rising in the slow, deep hills of sleep.

She doesn’t.

This is my fault. I told the Koa what she was, what she planned. She’s a fragile infant, but she didn’t go down without a fight—he has several scorches. She managed better than I did.

What am I going to tell Mare?

I’m not.

An enhanced knife waits just beyond the fingers of Jun’s free hand. I scoop it up, and it fits perfectly in this human grip. My blood still paints its hilt with a faint firefly glow. Is it the one he speared through my side or the one he plunged into my heart?

The knife swivels in my palm, blade down. I can do this. One strike to take care of the Koa threat, then I’ll give whatever strength I have left to the Pearl and hope it’s enough.

Luminescence choruses beneath her skin—a sparkle like a horde of distant stars. Its song quickens as my fingers brush her cheek. She nuzzles into my touch, and warmth flows through me. Jun’s dark jacket wraps her, dusted in gold. Why would he cover her wounds like that?

I would, if I felt I had to destroy this beauty. I’d cover the parts I ruined.

This is my fault. Fix it, useless pig.

The scene swims. Bubbles of light and darkness pop. The knife falls vertical on Jun’s chest and stops. A hand encases mine, dark and stiff as new rock, and I know better than to fight it. The islander’s next inhale brings him to the blade’s tip, and soft, white fabric splits, as does the flesh beneath it.

He flails, but a second hand covers his eyes, and he falls still.

“Lance,” I say as loudly as I dare, “I invoke contract. The Koa is not on Koa land. There’s no protection for him here.”

His voice is that of a stampede. “This one belongs to Pearl now. Of his own volition.”

I hiss but still don’t dare to move. Lance taking the time to explain is a rare mercy. I expected hoof or horn to gore me without warning.

I still expect that. “He belongs to the Pearl, and she belongs to Mare. You know what’ll—”

“You haven’t figured it out?” A whisper and a laugh. He’s mocking me.

“Figured what out?”

At his shove, I fall into a backward somersault and hit the parapet with a grunt. My breath gurgles, and I can’t catch it. I, a Creature of the Sea, am drowning in my own blood. This human disguise needs to breathe air, and I’m not sure what will happen if it doesn’t get it.

I waste too much effort lifting my head.

Lance spins the knife casually between his fingers. “If the boy ends up in Mare’s hands, that’s his problem, not yours. I’m fairly certain he’s not sane anyway.”

I choke, tongue swollen and heavy. My arms extend in a bow, my chin against the ground, eyes steady on the Creature of the Land. Both the position and the words I force out are knives to my pride. “Deign to share your wisdom with a fool, Olden One?”

He huffs through a smirk and steps over the sleeping pair to stand on my fingers. “I’m here to ensure the Pearl lives, nothing less, nothing more. Should something befall her, I will answer to our Essences, not you, so let me put this in a way the fool can understand: Get lost.”

“I can’t. The bet—”

“The bet means nothing.”

“To you, but to her and to me?” I swallow. “It means everything. Mare’s leash isn’t as long as Terra’s.”

The cliffs of his face sharpen, and he shifts more of his weight onto my fingers.

I wince, but I don’t close my eyes, and I don’t look away. “To keep me from her, you’ll have to kill me.”

His head tilts just like the Pearl’s—just like Terra’s, probably. With the shift of angles, the color of his hair vacillates—platinum, pink, and celadon—before it settles on gold. The long spike of his bangs forms the silhouette of a horn.

He kneels. I no longer feel my fingers.

“You’re dying.”

“I know.” Two syllables, each a sob. I use my pinned hands to inch closer to the Pearl.

“Get the Toad to heal you.”

Saburra hates that name or any reminder of the form Terra crafted when he gave her to Mare as her first complex creature. That’s exactly why Lance continues to use it.

She would heal me, and I need her to, but Jun is here. Lance protects him despite ancient agreements between Land and Sea, and Saburra will start a fight she can’t finish.

Lance probably hopes for that. He’ll find it amusing.

“I’ll call her for you.” He releases my hands and lands a palm atop my head.

My shoulders hunch, and I claw across the gravel. A desperate stretch brings my fingertips to the Pearl’s elbow, my mind reaching out to hers with the tiniest voice. ‘Please, Pearl.’

I don’t know what I intend. She won’t—can’t—heal me. She can gulp the last of my strength as a parting gift and apology. I hope she does win the bet, and I hope the human she chooses somehow survives because there’s no way I’m doing either of those things.

Lance’s fingers curl in my hair and lift me until I dangle level with his burnt-copper eyes. “The smallest of the Swine asks for wisdom, so here it is: The leash never gets longer if you don’t pull on it.”

I squirm and scratch, though I know I shouldn’t. He holds me beyond the parapet, and it’s a long way to the ground. Shadows spill beyond the forest, muting the sparkle of morning dew on the clipped grass between the trees and the buildings. Their soft darkness will do nothing to cushion my landing.

I fall, not because I wiggled free or hurt Lance. He let me go. Saburra would wish herself wings. I hit the grass like a sack of wet rocks. A gilt cloud surrounds me, brilliance against murky gray.

I curse Lance and my own weakness, running through every foul word in my vocabulary—most learned from tortured sailors. I thought it hurt before, but now? Bottle this and call it agony. Tell no one to open it. Ever.

Footsteps approach, but I can’t turn to look. I think I stare into the sky, but nothing registers beyond formless gold and gray. Arms take me from the ground. My back is damp and cold. Everything is cold. Everything still hurts. I shiver, and a voice speaks. I don’t understand the words, but the melody tells of worry.

Shadow, then a different kind of light, the kind they keep in their electric bulbs. The cold wins as hands pull open my jacket. I lie on something soft—a couch? Fire pours into my wounds, and I squeal.

“Sorry, but these look bad. You have to stay still.”

He holds me down, and the fire returns—in my chest, in my side. It meets somewhere in the middle, gnawing at me from the inside out. He has to stop. I can’t get him off. This is worse than Issoria shooting me, worse than the stab and twist of Jun’s knife.

With a scream, I wrench us off the couch and pin him on the floor.

“You are a terrible patient.”

I know this voice—my roommate. Not Vidal, the other one. The one who wants the Pearl and knows too much. Now, he’s seen my wounds and my non-human blood.

“Leave it,” I rasp. “Don’t look.”

“As if I didn’t already know what color your blood would be. Just be glad I didn’t call the healer professors.” His face slides in and out of focus, an expression made of rigid lines.

He shoves me off him, and the ceiling of our room with its contraption of swirling gears and leaves fills my view. It directs a frigid gale at me, and I curse it, too. Yet, I lie still and let him try to fix me with icy-hot potions and needles and thread. I smell like yesterday’s meat, but I’d like to stay alive if it’s possible.

“Why are you saving me?”

He pauses, warm, steady hand pressed against my side. “Part of my studies, I guess.”

Studies, right. He recognizes us despite our human disguises. He’s part of the human’s plan to destroy us. Does he know how to sew us up because he’s cut us apart before?

The stiff outline of a sheathed knife bulges against his thigh.

“Well, thanks.” So slowly he doesn’t notice, I slide the blade from his pocket.

*

~THE PEARL~

I watch him sleep. In the lulls between inhale and exhale, weightless wings flutter between my ribs as my eyes trace the full fan of Jun’s lashes, the crooked slope of his nose, the curve of his cheeks, and the strong angle of his jaw. Then, movement breaks infinity’s spell, and my wings crumble. My heart sinks in the mud of guilt, further each time.

Glossed scarlet burns dot Jun’s lips and neck, some pale, some livid, some dark as if drawn by ashes, embers, and coal. I press my fingers to the worst at the corner of his lips, and he flinches, but I do not wish him to awaken yet. With a glow like a sliver moon, energy seeps from me to him. He stills, relaxes, and with the gradualness of sunrise, the wound pales to his coppery tan.

It’s like kissing a star, he said in the woods. Please tell me I’m not actually on fire.

In the night, he trembled beneath my caresses. I pressed into him tighter to smooth those nerves like fabric, with weight and heat. Each time he startled, I feared he would not return, but he did, again and again. Now, I see that he should not have. He should have said something, not borne it in silence and half-hitched hisses.

I move my fingers to another charred spot where his jaw meets his throat. “Tell me you liked it at least a little?”

“Probably. He must be at least a bit of a masochist to come here.”

“Pike!” I whirl toward him with a louder gasp than I intend.

He sits on the low wall lining the roof’s edge, arms on his knees, flute balanced in one limp hand. The other rakes through his sand-colored hair. “Don’t be angry. I came to apologize to Jun. For the things I could control and the things I couldn’t.”

My head tilts, dipping my loosed hair over one shoulder, where Jun’s charcoal jacket smells of smoke. “What do you mean?”

“Music is beauty given form.” He grips the flute. “I didn’t understand how anyone who heard it couldn’t love it. They had to feel the same connection to it that I do, but obviously, that’s not the case. I pushed it too far, and for that, I’m sorry.”

My gaze hops between the two young men, one peaceful in sleep, the other slumped as if his fingertips weigh more than the world. “I cherish your music, Pike. Should you not save the apology until the one who needs it awakens?”

“Let me have this practice run.” He slides off the parapet, and the gravel crunches beneath his knees as he works his blue jacket off his shoulders. “My people have done some horrible things, things I can’t apologize enough for. If I could change them, I would. I’m trying. Someday, we’ll have a civilization under the ocean. I’m working on a device right now that lets us breathe underwater, but as I’ve said, my relationship with the sea is complicated.”

“You really do love the sea. Perhaps that is why your connection to music is so strong.” I clip the last few words, unsure of what this could mean. Does my appreciation of his music reveal the Sea’s chains within me? Is it a clue that I belong there after all?

Pike’s brows hop in a caricature of a shrug, and his eyes flutter before settling on me. The midmorning light pales their lagoon depths. “Believe me, I know the terror of being superstition’s prey.”

His discarded jacket wrinkles in his lap as he rolls up his shirtsleeves and presents bared forearms. Scars stripe their delicate side, stretched by his growth, somewhere between pink and brown.

Distance enters his expression, a soft glaze coating his eyes as he glances toward Jun. “The armada was caught in a tempest. Someone suggested a sacrifice would soothe Mare, and I already belonged to the sea. They spilled my blood over the bow. Mare didn’t show because she doesn’t exist, of course, but we did survive. Then, because it had worked before…”

He leaves the sentence floundering in implication as I touch a raised line on his wrist. Each arm hosts at least six marks, though some, like the one beneath my fingers, are remnants of multiple slashes.

I peek at his face. He stares at me, lower lip caught in his teeth, nostrils trembling as he hauls in a deep breath.

“Superstition is stupid, and it needs to change. When I first saw Jun at the train station, I shouldn’t have spoken to him, being a child of the sea and all, but he had that scar on his forehead, and I thought, ‘Here’s someone who looks danger in the eye and tells it he’s not afraid. He’s going to change the world, and I hope we’re the same brand of idiot.’”

Nicks dot his knuckles from carelessness at his building projects.

I trace them and whisper, “Your blood is red.”

“Well, yes.” He chuckles. “So, anyway, should I edit any of that before I say it to Jun? I mean, obviously I’m more scarred, but his is on his face, and he might not…”

Thunder for my ears alone drowns Pike’s rambles. His blood is red. He is not the Swine that Jun stabbed. More than that, he is not a Creature of Essence at all.

“What would you do,” I say slowly, and as if pulled by the same string, his mouth closes while his brows rise, “if Mare were real?”

He shrugs. “Try to get on her good side, I guess? Same with nature that does exist. We don’t need to be stronger than it or destroy it. We need to work together. Like, storms never bother fish.”

He is human. This child of pirates is sweeter than honey, with music more enrapturing than any riptide. He chases peace, not a tragic desire to kill Mare.

The surest way to protect Jun is to not take him with me, and if I do not take Jun…

“Pike, could you love me?”

His sightline flicks from me to my islander. “I thought I was friendzoned. You want a harem or something?”

My mouth opens, all the bet’s details lined up in my throat, yet hesitance grips my tongue. If I bring Pike to fulfill the bet, will Mare claim foul because of his relation to the sea? He is human, yet I cannot grant her any excuse to discount my win. One must consider all angles when working a scheme. If she snares me in a technicality, the loss will be my fault for stepping blindly into it.

I should tell Pike anyway, recruit him as an ally as I planned when I thought him to be the Swine. Yet, if I convince him that Creatures of Essence exist and I am one, will he judge me for wanting Jun? I know my likeness to Mare. I fight it, pummel it, lock it deep within.

Pike looks at me with the core of a grin. I cannot stand the thought of it crumbling into revulsion.

“I must go.” I stand. Jun’s jacket hangs like a tent on my tiny frame, and I wrap it tighter. “Please make sure no one hurts Jun.”

Continued in chapter 27

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