Waterwight Breathe by Laurel McHargue

Author:Laurel McHargue [McHargue, Laurel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780996971133
Publisher: Strack Press LLC
Published: 2019-03-09T16:00:00+00:00

~ 21 ~

BEFORE WE REACH the castle, Harmony breaks from Kumugwe’s side in a bizarre, staggering motion and screams.

“No! Not now! They can’t do this to me! Don’t let them do this to me!” She continues to lurch unnaturally, and Kumugwe looks at her as if witnessing a new life form—with awe, fascination, and a touch of horror.

“What has possessed you, child of my heart?” Kumugwe wraps his arms around her to contain her movements and looks to me as if I know the answer. “Fix her, girl! Fix my child!”

“But I don’t know what’s wrong! Harmony, talk to me. Who are they, and what are they doing to you?”

“My birth parents planted a chip in me somewhere like the chips they’re putting in their creature army! Lilith has a control, I saw it when we were in the cave putting the skeletons into the squishy bodies, and when she moved a button on it, my arms and legs moved in ways I didn’t want them to move! Look! I can’t stop!” Her limbs struggle against Kumugwe’s unbreakable embrace. “They must be testing the monsters!”

Harmony stops lurching for a moment and we all wait to see if she’ll start again. We let her words sink in.

“This chip, my child, what does it look like, and where is it within you?” Kumugwe releases her and turns her slowly, looking for where such a chip might be.

“I snatched one from inside one of the blobs before leaving the underwater cavern laboratory and I put it in a pocket, but I lost it. It was made of metal, a tiny thing, no bigger than Celeste’s smallest fingernail. It must have washed away in the giant wave we swam in before you were trapped, father. I don’t know where it is, but I want it out of me!”

Harmony looks at me. They all look at me.

“You brought me back to life, mysterious girl. Surely you can find this small chip.” Kumugwe raises his eyebrows, juts out his lower lip, and looks at me with a boyish expression of hopefulness.

“And you helped save me too, Celeste,” Nick says. “If you do that falling apart thing and look into Harmony’s eyes, maybe you’ll be able to see where the chip is and, I don’t know, get it out or break it or something.”

A smack of spectacularly intricate jellyfish swirls around us, their tendrils trailing behind gracefully, their bodies emitting flashes of brilliant light in colors rivaling the nacreous clouds in Odin’s realm, and they give me an idea.

“Harmony, I’ve seen you change your body several times. Can you make yourself transparent? I know it sounds crazy, but maybe we could see inside you if you could. Kind of like those jellyfish?”

She looks at the jellyfish and reaches her hand out to touch one as it passes. It wriggles around her arm and when she giggles, I feel the tickle. It flashes and leaves her, joining the swarm of others on their way to who-knows-where.

“I don’t think I can, Celeste.

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