The Girl in the Green Silk Gown by Seanan McGuire

Author:Seanan McGuire [McGuire, Seanan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780756413804
Google: gjbLtAEACAAJ
Amazon: B0768Z8K7T
Barnesnoble: B0768Z8K7T
Goodreads: 36579216
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2018-07-03T05:00:00+00:00

* * *

I am correct: it does, in fact, suck. Drinking a full bottle of water and then pissing at the edge of a deserted parking lot, holding onto a tree branch and hoping you’re not squatting over poison oak, is about as nasty as it sounds. Every noise from the shadows around me is terrifying, a sign that I’m about to die with my pants around my ankles. It is not easy to piss when terrified, which seems entirely unfair, given how many people I’ve seen wet themselves in fear. Apparently, when scared enough, the bladder does the opposite of whatever the bladder-haver wants.

Biology is stupid and cruel and should feel bad about itself.

But I drink and I pee and I drink and I pee, and when the water runs out Apple produces a bottle of something red and sticky-sweet from inside her bag. She won’t tell me what’s in it, and I stop asking after her second refusal. I just gulp it down, feel my insides roil in protest, and go back to what I was doing before.

I’m peeing for what feels like the hundredth time but is probably only the tenth when it feels like something snaps inside my brain, literally snaps, with a crack that should be audible to everyone around me. I have the self-awareness to fall forward, onto the dry, unforgiving parking lot. That’s about the last thing I have control over.

When I was a kid, we used to take sponges and hold them under the tap until they were so heavy with water they felt like they were going to explode. Then we’d go outside and throw them at each other, breaking the heat and monotony of the summer. I feel like one of those sponges. I am filled to bursting, and it hurts, it hurts, I have no way to stop or slow it down, and it hurts.

Hands are grasping my upper arms, pulling me upright, away from the ground. A voice I don’t know but should is snapping, “Get her legs. She’s going to hurt herself.”

I’ve already hurt myself, haven’t I? Something warm and wet is trickling down my forehead, too thick to be urine, in the wrong place to be tears. It must be blood. I’ve already hurt myself, and what’s the point in trying to stop me from doing it again? Pain is the lot of the living.

Then another snap shudders through me, and thought becomes impossible for a time as I buck and writhe.

“What’s wrong with her?” Another voice I ought to know, another piece of information missing. The world is shattering, falling down in diamonds of uselessness.

“She was never meant to be cut off from the roads! They’re all trying to assert dominance at once, and we’re on the old Atlantic Highway. There’s a fucking firehose plugged into her brain.” I recognize this voice now, know the desperation and the fury it contains: Apple.

“Make it stop.” The second voice has to belong to Laura. They’re the only ones here, aside from me, and I’m not saying anything.

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