Swerving and stumbling, cursing and laughing, Aunt Sally swept through the woods, wild as a wind off her beloved, far-off Gulf. Branches, leaves, and the shadows of branches and leaves leapt from her path. She kept trying to straighten as she plunged ahead, but she couldn’t get her spine around the goddamn knife Caribou had stuck in her, and she couldn’t reach it, either, so she gave up trying and hurtled onward. Like a harpooned marlin, she thought, the very air foaming in a wake around her, her skin glistening against the gloom. Running not to get away—since she’d already ripped her harpooner overboard and out of his life—but just to run.
Poor, sweet ’Bou. How well she’d chosen, all those decades ago, on the night she’d somehow singled him out and elevated him out of his ordinary, servile life into living. At least, to the extent that she’d actually made that choice, because she hadn’t planned to do anything other than feed, really. But somehow, blood, fate, perhaps even Policy had chosen for her. Matched him to her.
Policy. At the beginning, that had just seemed a game she’d dreamed up, a method for attaching numbers to dreams, thereby randomizing decisions she saw no need to make consciously. Eventually, to her monsters, it had become almost a religion, and even Sally herself had had fun trying to decide whether she was more High Priestess or Living God. At the very end, during her last years in camp, Policy had sometimes even felt like religion to her. A system for being, if not a reason. In all her years of living and preying, she’d never before had either.
If Policy had chosen Caribou for her, it had done so superbly. He had served her for decades. He had helped her keep their monsters safe. He had mapped out a whole new Monster Landscape to lay over the existing maps of the disappearing Delta, giving their evolving world form and landmarks and names. Every now and then, for rare, fleeting, and spectacular seconds, he had fucked her into forgetting (though exactly what she forgot in those seconds, she could never have said. Any more than any other living thing could, she supposed).
Finally, he had brought her Ju. Today, as his last gift, he’d told her who Ju was. In so doing, he’d tripped a lever not even Aunt Sally had imagined was there, dropped a gate she’d long since forgotten had contained her, and set her free.
Unleashed her.
Hello, world, she thought, throwing her arms wide, catching spots of sunlight on her wrists and ignoring the sizzling sensations. Loving the sizzling sensations. Thank you, ’Bou. I’ll never forget you.
Nor, apparently, would she jettison his taste anytime soon. No matter how many times she spat, it stuck to her gums and furred her tongue: rancid blood; fetal, half-formed skin-graft skin; bandage thread; and antiseptic.
Still. Having Caribou-residue in her mouth seemed a small price to pay in exchange for his final, magnificent offering. That last revelation, unveiled in that elegant, cultured voice he’d cultivated, or invented, because what culture had he ever known or been part of? Half closing her eyes as she rushed on, she called up his voice again. Listened to him tell her what he’d learned.
Ju is ours … Something brand-new in the world …
Brand-new in the world.
Her Ju. The truth was, Sally had known it, instinctively, right from that initial glimpse of the girl in the backseat of the Le Sabre as Caribou delivered her to camp. Certainly, she’d known by the time she settled the girl on her lap and fell into those winking, bottomless green eyes for the first time.
Yes. She’d sensed it all then. She just hadn’t let herself believe or even imagine it.
Now Caribou had confirmed it. His final sacrifice, and his most profound thank-you for the bonus life she’d bestowed upon him. She hoped he’d considered it worth it as she’d sucked him through his imitation skin and into her.
She was sure he had.
Approaching the edge of the forest, beyond which daylight raged like a brushfire at the lip of a break, Sally forgot the knife, somehow drew herself all the way straight, and let out a bellow that set squirrels screaming and birds flapping and fleeing their nests all around her. The tip of the blade jabbed at the back of her throat with every lunging step, burying itself deeper in or through her spine. Like Excalibur, she thought, denying the instinct to slow or wait and instead accelerating toward the light. Excalibur, lodged in the Lake of Aunt Sally, to be withdrawn only by the new, true Queen of the World.
With a scream like none she’d ever uttered or caused, and with Caribou’s revelation pumping down her veins, so fierce, so loud—like a goddamn heartbeat—Aunt Sally erupted from the woods into the sun.
Her plan was to race straight into the open and along the top of the cliff, defying the daylight, and continue racing all the way back to the abandoned barracks where she and Ju had set up camp. In her current mood, fueled by what she knew, Aunt Sally believed she could have withstood even a full-Delta summer sun, and this limp, mist-wreathed thing was a pale approximation of that, about as much true sun as Caribou’s burned and scabbed-over face had been the one she’d remembered. Compared to the jabbing and scraping between her shoulders and at the top of her lungs, the pain from this light barely even registered.
At least, that’s how it felt for the first hundred steps. Sometime in the second hundred, though, she caught herself glancing down at her forearms, checking for bubbling, liquefaction. She found none, of course. She knew the sun’s actual effects on her were sensory only, and possibly not even physical at all but entirely psychological. A warmth from back when it was possible to be warm; an array of colors from when her eyes could hold and process color, triggering memories of remembering, of clutching at moments as they thundered past. Yet that feeling of burning always proved virtually impossible to fight or ignore. Even on this mist-shrouded island, during this cloudless day that remained the color of drizzle. Even shielded and swept aloft by the marvels of this morning.
With a snarl of frustration, Aunt Sally staggered to a stop, tried to straighten again but felt the knife grind deeper into the notches in her bones. Sun spattered over her like sparks from a fire. Far ahead—too far—she saw the grassland. She’d have to get all the way there, then down the other side to reach the barracks and Ju, who didn’t know yet just how miraculous she actually was.
Aunt Sally could make it if she willed it. She could do anything, after all. She was the mother of monsters, bestower of Policy, dreamgiver. Lifetaker and lifemaker.
But she’d be a shuddering, weeping, staggering wreck by the time she got there.
Except she wouldn’t. The moment mattered too much, demanded the pomp and gravity only she could bestow.
Like a coronation. Because that’s what it was.
Throwing back her head, Aunt Sally let out one more savage scream. Of frustration, yes. Of hunger. But most of all, of unimagined, unbounded, limitless freedom.
Then she stumbled forward again, accelerating into a trot, then a sort of ducking, loping gallop. Here I come. To say hello. To touch the face of my reward, my most exquisite gift. To introduce you to you.
By the time she reached the top of the rise and started down toward the barracks, she was flat-out running, shouting Ju’s name.