This Is Our Undoing by Lorraine Wilson

Author:Lorraine Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Speculative Novel
Publisher: Luna Press Publishing
Published: 2021-05-03T13:52:39+00:00

...

‘Lina!’

The song paused, minor keys sibilant. The world drifted, burned, echoed.

‘Lina.’ A crashing and voices and Thiago was there. Thiago beside her, his hands over hers so that they formed concentric layers over the metal and blood. A planet, an atom. Thiago was here and Lina began to cry. Because it would be okay now. It would be okay.

He had one arm bracing her, speaking to her, his voice an anchor in the same way the pain was an anchor. She could hear her own breath and could not tell if she was still crying because Thiago was asking her questions and it was so hard to understand.

‘How much morphine,’ he said as if he’d said it already. ‘I can see one vial. Is that all you took, Lina?’

Scrabbling in her bag, the needle, the short, separate pain like a piccolo in the dark. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, one.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m giving you another, okay? And I’m going to lie you down here.’ She didn’t think she would be able to move, but his hands on her were so solid and gentle that she went where they led her and then the ground held her along the length of her spine and she was so tired that the sky and the broken canopy above her looked like dreams.

‘Fuck, oh my god, fuck, she’s ... oh my god. What do we–’

Xander? He was here? Lina closed her eyes and the voice cut off as if blindness was silence. The pain sang a constant contralto and someone touched her hair very gently.

‘Lina,’ Thiago said. The fingers on her hair lifted, then returned, stroking. ‘Lina, we’re going to get the trap off you. I need you to hold still. I’ve got you, but try to hold yourself still, okay?’

‘T,’ Lina whispered.

‘Jesus fuck, I can’t see. All the blood, I think I’m going to be–’ cutting off again.

‘The spring is broken,’ Thiago said, and Lina thought he was talking to that other voice because he sounded so different. ‘You will pull it apart by hand. I’ll do everything else.’ There was a strange, strangled noise, but it was moving away from her or perhaps she was moving away from it. The pain and her pulse in her ears were shaking her into pieces and she needed Thiago’s voice but he was further away too. ‘Save it, Xander. We don’t have time. You’ll do what I tell you. Now.’

Xander, Lina thought. He was ... there was danger. She began to open her eyes, although it seemed surprisingly difficult, and the fingers moved from her hair to her eyelids, cool on her skin until she gave up the effort. A voice next to her ear whispered, ‘It’s okay, Lina. We’ll save you from the monster.’

The monster, Lina thought. The roaring and the pain. ‘Kai?’ she whispered.

‘Hush,’ he said, his fingers stroking her hair again. And then she could hear him singing. Her heart and the pain and his thin bird’s voice, they were holding her

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