What came first, the sword or the sheath? For the engineers, it was the former. They shaped the sheath to fit the blade, but you already knew that didn’t you, Uncle? After all, it’s in your nature. Did you ever care about my dear cousin or was crafting her the last gasp of a dying habit?
Gama hesitated, stepping in a pool of water as the walls, damp and slippery, constricted, gears spinning above her head, clicking into place as a row of metal disks slapped together—a strange mixture of metal and flesh. She needed to be careful. Sippero’s nasopharynx was an unpredictable minefield with uncharted polyps, slippery mucous, and a swollen adenoid.
Wait, a swollen adenoid?
Gama got down on her hands and knees, feeling the tissue, warm, red, infected.
She sighed.
Why was Sippero keeping secrets from her?
Her face turned red and her wing beat furiously against her back.
This was no time to hesitate. The air smelled fresher, an opening ahead, bright lights causing her to squint. He was surfacing for air, and now was her chance.
She stood but her leg sunk into the floor up to her thigh, her slipper pulled off, caught in currents of plasma beneath the muscle.
“Oh, Sippero, come on!” Gama struggled, pushing at the tissue. “This isn’t fair, and you know it!“
The walls convulsed, his diaphragm pulsing like a heartbeat. Was he laughing at her?
“Sippero! Give me back my slipper!”
She saw her shoe slide under the vesicles and down past his epiglottis, deep into his thoracic cavity.
“Ugh, fine!” She pulled her leg free with a schlock, tossing her other slipper down his throat. “Keep them!”
Gama felt a splash of saltwater across her face, the floor turning vertically, and a rush of air whipping her hair behind her ears. She fell on her belly, slipping into the darkness, but grabbed hold of a polyp, dangling over the edge. The walls convulsed, and her grip loosened, hanging by the tips of her fingers.
“Sippero, please, let me go!”
The light vanished, the sound of crashing water ringing in her ears before being lost in the suffocating deep. Gama slipped, plummeting into his throat and striking her head against his epiglottis like smacking a firm pillow. She dropped into his trachea, cilia slowing her fall and escorting her out. She clawed at the ciliated surface as the tissue maneuvered her upward and tossed her into his esophagus.
Gama dropped like a stone and skipped against the ruby-red walls, thick with mucous. She watched his tonsils, swollen, pale, with red spots, disappear, the floor of his stomach rushing to meet her, the taste of failure bitter in her mouth.
A tentacle caught her leg, forcibly stopping her descent, nearly pulling her knee from its socket. She yelped, dangling above the ribbed surface of his gastric folds, her hair and the tips of her fingers barely touching them. Gama sighed, her skirts piling in her face, dripping with mucous.
Mother would be furious.
Her slippers fell from the opening, striking her legs, and dropping next to her face with a thud. They didn’t bounce, just stuck in the tissue like a sword in stone.
“Owe,” she said.
The walls of his stomach rumbled, the heat of Sippero’s breath against her neck. “Good try, Gama.” His voice sounded in her ears as if he were next to her, so sickeningly pleased with himself. “You’re so beautiful, Gama!”
“Yeah,” she snorted. “If you split me from crotch to forehead and throw away my left side.” Gama’s head hurt, something pounding in her ear, the teeth in her scalp clicking, grinding, causing her pain.
“Why are you so hard on yourself?” Sippero asked.
Oh, she didn’t know the exact details. It might have something to do with the fact that she had to trim her forehead teeth every morning or that her wing needed to be dipped in whale oil before it dried and cracked, or maybe, just maybe, and Gama was stretching with this one, it had to do with the mouth in her belly button. The one she had to feed three times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, before it nibbled on her right side, pinching her so hard she screamed at night.
“When you look like I do, you learn to take compliments with a grain of salt.” She sniffed, bending herself upward to untangle her leg. The angle was too sharp. She grunted, falling back, her fingers grazing the floor. “Hey, when were you going to tell me you weren’t feeling well, huh? I saw your tissue upstairs, you know...”
The walls rumbled, pools of grey liquid forming between his gastric folds. “I didn’t want to worry you. Please don’t be mad… You’re beautiful, Gama!”
“You didn’t… I mean, I’m not—” Her face flushed, blood pooling in her head. “Can you, um, let me go now?”
“Gama, I love you. I will never let you go!”
Her heart skipped a beat, and her wing snapped against her shoulder.
He loved her!?
She blushed, her palms growing sweaty.
It’s not like she didn’t already know, but to just say it out loud like that? Gawds, this was embarrassing.
“I—” Her antennae beat against her hips, the ridges along her inner thigh making a buzzing noise as she subconsciously rubbed against them.
Say it, damn it!
Gama sweat, her freckles swelling and her fingers shaking, strumming the indents to change the pitch of her summer tune.
“Gama, what’s wrong?” he asked.
She chewed on her lip. “Sippero, I—I love you too,” she said. Gama’s blush deepened, suddenly aware that she was hanging upside down while wearing a skirt. “Don’t look!” she shouted, shoving the fabric between her knees.
Damn it, what was happening to her? She pinched her cheeks, her wits loose, and her emotions in chaos. She’d told Anastasia and Anya not to play with her heart like this… Gawds, she’d have words with her half-sisters when this was over.
Tears sprung from her eyes.
Would this ever be over?
With Gama trapped in the belly of her biomechanical paramour, the only way to escape was to break his heart. It was a prison that reeked of her mother’s handiwork. After all, Morta couldn’t have her daughter interfere with the Isomerase again.
How bad had the world become in her absence? Was there a world left to save, or was it another plane devastated by the cycle of hunger and violence? After so many years, did her mother even remember her anymore?
“Gama, Morta loves you. I love you. Please don’t go. My world is gentle and safe. I will protect you no matter what!” Sippero’s voice grew frantic, the tentacles around her ankles squeezing tighter. “The world outside is broken and dangerous. I cannot bear the thought of that place hurting you!”
“Oh, Sippero,” she said, gently patting his gastric fold. “I can’t return your feelings. Don’t you see? It’ll be dangerous for us to pursue this any further.” She looked at the ring on her finger—a golden half serpent, fangs poised above her knuckle, an arranged marriage with the dreaming sultan, Morta’s gift celebrating Gama’s flowering womanhood. “She saw to that.”
The Gnatu were born to serve, but this was different. Sippero was her retainer, programmed to protect her, to love her. He was one of the seven great leviathans who carved out a palace of coral so she could be closer to her half-sisters.
Her heart swelled.
That she developed feelings for him only sharpened her mother’s weapon. Gawds, matters of the heart were so confusing.
She sniffed, rubbing her eyes, pragmatic and romantic love warring within her.
Anya, Anastasia, why can’t I have a little of both? Gama thought, smiling sheepishly.
“Gama, Morta did it to protect you. The dreaming sultan can save you from the curse of Daedalus in return for your hand in marriage. You’ll become the princess of the great dream! Doesn’t that sound wonderful?!”
Gama frowned.
She’d never met the sultan of the umbral moon, but she’d heard he approved the match without question. That’s when the serpentine ring wrapped around her finger. Politically, the marriage benefitted her greatly, granting her the title of a duchess with all the power and control afforded a woman of that stature. She was on par with Morta now, her half-blood curse diminished, and the voices that once plagued her more distant. Maybe Morta did it to save her, but as the fangs of that golden idol grew closer to her knuckle, she felt exhausted, the coming of a deep unending slumber.
“Sippero,” she said, her body swaying like a poorly strung, white-haired, chandelier. “When the serpent sinks its fangs into my finger, I will never wake again. You know this…”
“But you will dream, Gama, and I will be the guardian of your dreams keeping you safe beneath the tumultuous waves of the void.” He sounded so proud as he said that. A boy ascending to knighthood to stay by his princess’s side.
“Please, Sippero, let me go. I can still make a difference before my wedding night, but I have little time left. Please, death must return to the peninsula!”
“No, I will never let you go!”
“Come on, just this once. Don’t argue with me. Aren’t you my retainer? Don’t you have to do what I say?” She swung her arms, but only made the swaying worse. “Don’t make me pull rank!”
“I’m your retainer and am charged with keeping you safe. Sometimes that means protecting you from yourself,” Sippero said. A vesicle dropped from the ceiling, gently stroking her cheek. “I love you, Gama, now and forever. Don’t you want to stay with me, too?”
She sighed, wrapping her arms around as much of him as she could, enveloping herself in his warmth.
How could she say no to that?
Gawds, her mother really had created the perfect prison.
— ✦ —
“I see something, um, reddish pink?” Gama said, scratching her forehead. She wasn’t exactly sure. It was hard to see through her skirt as she hung by her ankles from the ceiling.
“Hmmm, I need more,” Sippero said.
“Fine, uh.” Gama lost feeling in her foot, blood pooling in her head, and her hair sliding across the floor as she swung like a pendulum. “It’s, uh, kinda pulpy?”
“Pulpy?”
“Yeah, you know, like squeezed fruit, I guess?” Now Gama’s fingers were tingling, face flush as a single strand of hair tickled her nose. She blew it away, but it kept coming back.
“It’s my pancreas,” Sippero said, the walls rumbling.
“Duh.” Gama snorted, that hair now lodged in her nostril.
Uh-oh.
The itch gathered in her nose and spread deep into her throat, nesting in her diaphragm. Gama took a deep breath. She could hold it. She had to hold it. No, not now. Not now!
“Achoo!” The force of Gama’s sneeze sent her flying like a child on a swing set, the cilia from Sippero’s omentum tightening around her ankle as she bashed against the walls, smooth like a pillow. Now the world spun, her hair tangled into knots as her foot throbbed. “Ow!” Gama shouted. “Okay, that’s it, Sippero! You let me down this instant!”
“No.”
“Ugh!” Gama kicked Sippero’s omentum with her left foot. “Let!” her claw dug into the tissue. “Me!” Another blow and the fat quivered. “Go!” Her left foot sunk into the ceiling, an empty capillary wrapping around her ankle and holding fast. She fell back, arms dangling, the tips of her fingers grazing the floor, defeated.
“Promise me you won’t try to escape and I’ll let you go.”
Gama’s face turned bright red, and she balled her hands into fists. “I refuse to make promises I can’t keep! I won’t do it, Sippero!”
“Hmmm.” The walls rumbled again. “I spy something blue.”
“Oh, no you don’t! I’m not playing ‘I Spy’ with you for the next fifty years!”
“Promise me,” he said.
Gama flailed, trying to claw at the tissue that held her ankles. Then, her stomach growled, the sound echoing like she was the epicenter of a massive earthquake that left the town square in shambles, with over two hundred missing yet to be confirmed dead or alive.
“Um, Sippero?” Gama’s freckles swelled, shielding her belly with her arms as if the useless gesture might take back the utterance of her stomach’s broken oath. “Let me down, okay?” Gama could feel it, the incisors within her belly button poking and prodding like a kitten teething at her mother’s breast. “This isn’t funny anymore. Please, Sippero, I’m being serious. Let me go.”
“Promise me.”
“Absolutely not! What part of no isn’t getting through your thick skull!” Gama shouted, the last of her strength spent. “You’re so stubborn.”
“So are you,” Sippero said, his tissue moving, pulling her towards his diaphragm. “Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
She sighed, fingers trailing above the floor, ankles caught in another ciliated escalator, a one-way ticket back to Sippero’s stomach, again. This time, she didn’t make it past his inferior vena cava. No thoracic cavity for her, nope, not this time. Damn, if only she hadn’t tripped up at the mesenteric lymph nodes and face-planted in that Peyer’s patch. Gama was getting tired. She knew it; making stupid mistakes wasn’t like her.
“What’s wrong?” Sippero asked.
What’s wrong? How dense was he? She’d slap him if the effort wouldn’t leave her hand in shambles. Oh well, at least her current situation put things into perspective. Gama finally knew why those flying rats on the peninsula were so grumpy all the time—hanging upside down? Yeah, that sucked. She couldn’t feel her toes anymore.
“Nothing,” she said, crossing her arms.
Gama heard a knock at the door. The one that separated the seen from the unseen. Somebody was using the isomerase. There was always a scratching noise for those who listened as if there were an invisible knot holding the seam. Maybe there was. Worlds had to be kept separate somehow, right?
“Sippero, somebody’s opening a rift,” Gama said, testing his grip on her ankles.
“Shall I let them in?”
“No! Of course not! I’m not decent, you dolt!”
Gama looked up towards her feet, but the effort left a kink in her neck, her skirt piling in her face. She grimaced. There was a scuff on her thigh and red smears across her blouse from when she tussled with that Peyer’s patch. Her hair was a mess, and what was that smell? She needed a bath. She needed a change of clothes. She needed to get the hell out of here!
“Shall I let them in?” Sippero repeated.
“No! Didn’t you hear—” There was a change in the wind—a cold draft causing her right side to break out in goosebumps. The door was opening. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Promise me.”
Now she could hear the hinges groan, a weave undone, opening the gate. Then, a horrifying thought crossed her mind.
What if the person knocking at the door was Morta? If she saw her now so soon after she ruined her last dress…
Gama scrambled, looking back wide-eyed for her missing slippers, noticing the tear in her skirt and the mucus stuck between her toes like webbing. Morta would be furious, and Gama’s shin and backside trembled, a memory of that woman’s sharp hand imprinted in the nerves. Imprisonment in the belly of a whale was nothing compared to what Morta was capable of.
“Don’t you worry, my beautiful baby girl.” Gama could hear the words almost as if she were whispering in her ear. “I can do so much better.”
Gama sweat, droplets beading along strands of her white hair and onto the floor. “Please, Sippero, I-I promise, I won’t scratch your throat ever again.” Her voice trembled, wing beating against her back so fast it was a blur.
“Promise me you won’t try to escape!”
“No, please, anything but that. I’ll give you anything but that.”
Too late, the gate opened, the last threads of reality undone like a shoelace. The unseen weave let go as a sharp draft blew in from the between.
Gama squeezed her eyes shut, waving her arms in front of her. “Morta, please, it’s not what it looks like! I swear it was an accident! It will never happen again!” There was silence as she gritted her teeth, waiting for a raised voice and an efficient hand.
Nothing came.
Slowly, Gama opened her eyes, peering between the small spaces of her fingers, but there was nothing. Sippero was quiet, the world around her losing its color like wet paint from a canvas in the rain. She dropped her hands, confused, the tissue around her ankles trembling. The capillaries let go, and she plummeted from the ceiling, landing face-first on a cushion of fat.
“Gawds, Sippero!” She wiped the mucus from her face. “You could warn me when you’re going to do that!”
He didn’t respond. The corridors, empty, cold, and lifeless.
“Sippero?”
“Ah, the newly crowned duchess, Dūramgama. Congratulations are in order, my dear.” A voice she didn’t recognize echoed, stirring something within her, primal, raw, fear. “I always heard you landed on your feet, disappointing.”
“Who are you!?” Gama shouted, standing quickly, angling side-face, her hands poised above an invisible weapon. She felt naked, defenseless, her hands shaking.
“Come now. There is no need for that” The door between worlds swung like the open suture of a surgically cut cocoon, the strands of reality snapping like threads pulled too tight. She felt a cold draft taking the breath from her lungs, ice forming beneath the gate. He stepped through, a machine far distant from her retainer. There was no flesh, only metal, polymers, and loose rubber. His face was shaped like a lens, the bellows of his neck stretching like an old camera. He had many hands, fingers, and toes, grasping blades, spinning disks, and knives. “I’ve come to speak with you,” it said.
“You didn’t answer my question.” She spread her legs, dropping into an eagle stance, easy for a quick escape. “Are you a Gnatu?”
“Morta never spoke of me?” His head twisted, eyeing her positioning with curiosity. She was no threat to him. “You can call me Bastion. Think of me as your grandfather.”
“How did you use the Isomerase? Did she let you in?”
“No, Morta doesn’t know that I am here.” The gears beneath Bastion’s throat spun, and he made a chuckling noise, electricity snapping from the rods positioned along his spine. “The isomerase existed before my daughters. It’s a part of me. Of course, I can use it.”
Gama gulped, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, and goosebumps forming along her arms.
This machine radiated authority, not submission, and something was beating beneath those bellows, the remains of still-living flesh. He wasn’t just an instrument, but something that either was or had been organic.
“There is no need to be frightened, child. If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve already,” Bastion said.
“What did you do to Sippero?”
“He’s preoccupied with an abnormal string of code. I had to make sure that you and I could speak privately. He’ll be fine. I promise.”
Gama lowered her hands, but never left her stance. “What do you want?” she asked, trying to steady her trembling arms.
“First, to return what you lost.” He produced a blade from within his chest. A familiar weapon with eyes on the pommel, a sword that sang to her, calling like a child eager to return to its mother.
“My sword!” Gama fell out of her stance, her heart pounding, longing to feel the weapon in her hands once more. She took it, a feeling of ecstasy racing through her veins, whole again and never to be parted. She drew her sword, the steel of Kath’le Kal vibrating like a tuning fork, matching her frequency. “Thank you. I-I’ve missed this.” Gama was breathless. Her heart grew calm as she cycled through her stances, waving the blade as if she were a dancer and the sword her instrument.
“Perhaps one day I’ll share with you the origin of that steel. To tell you why you feel so alive when you duel. It’s in your blood, child, as it was once in mine. To think that among my granddaughters, you would manifest a blade. You are your mother’s daughter, the call of battle heavy in your veins.”
Gama remembered the joy with every blow—a worthy opponent. Yes, Morta was better than her, a height Gama had yet to reach. There was such pleasure in knowing that. The world was so boring before but now there was color, ruby red, blood. Gama covered her mouth, the sight of Morta’s wound flashing before her eyes. She didn’t feel so good.
“I hurt her. I didn’t mean to do that,” she said.
“A duchess of familial love. The duality of your nature must pain you so, but, child, I offer a chance for you to make it up to dear Morta,” Bastion said.
“What do you mean? Be straight with me.”
“This world of yours is already lost. The angels of Millia Gnu Aye have descended, and your mother has gone mad. Soon your home will end where all the scrapped peninsulas reside, in the depths of the Origin Well. However, I offer you a chance to make a difference.” Bastion stepped forward, his long neck circling her, the light of his lens illuminating the walls. “I abandoned this place many moons ago and began constructing a new garden, one that will guide the uninfected peninsulas into a new age, but Morta is stubborn and has, once again, chosen to defy me.”
“How am I supposed to convince her?” Gama asked, sheathing her sword. “You don’t think I tried to talk to her?” She outstretched her arms. “Look where that got me.”
“I don’t need you to talk to her. I need you to act as her substitute while she is away. This new garden mustn’t fester, and the infection has to be cut before it spreads.” He offered his hand, brass knuckles flashing beneath the luminescent light in Sippero’s stomach.
Gama bit her lip, staring at the creature’s hand. “If I go with you,” she said. “Will I ever see Sippero again?”
Bastion curled his fingers one by one, closing his hand into a fist. “I won’t lie to you, Gama. Your fate is already sealed, whether or not you take my hand. As a concubine of the great dream, you are already bound to another world, and I’ve never known the sultan of the umbral moon to share his wives.”
“Instead, what I’m offering you is a chance to give yourself the life you never had. In my new garden, you and Sippero have yet to be born. Don’t you want to have a part in painting that canvas?” Bastion opened his palm once more. “Take my hand and we can write the future of this new world together.”
Gama’s lips quivered, tears gathering in her eyes as she laid her hand on his. “I could write a better future for us?” she asked. “But I can’t cut fate like my mother can. I was never a proper vessel for Atropos.”
Bastion’s grip tightened, the lights along his spine glowing bright red. Gama panicked, tugging at his arm, but it was too late. In a flash, he drove a spinning blade through her chest. She convulsed, white-hot pain shooting through her body, blood dripping from her lips. Her sword slipped through her fingers, dropping to the floor. “W-why?” She spit up blood, her strength ebbing, darkness gathering around the corners of her vision.
“To have power over death, you must first face it,” Bastion said, lifting her body off the ground and whispering in her ear. “Fear not, child. If you’re your mother’s daughter, no death I visit upon you shall ever be lasting.”
Gama coughed, reaching for the slimy folds of that Peyer’s patch. “Sippero, I love—” she gasped, slumping over, the darkness claiming her.