Composite Creatures Caroline Hardaker (smart books to read TXT) 📖

into her breast. “Jasper. Jasper. Get here now.”

I reached up a hand to stroke the low part of Georgie’s back.

“It’s OK, Georgie,” I sang. “This is Nut. Like a walnut. She lives here, with us.”

Georgie wailed and pushed her face hard into Margo’s dress, her fists clenched over her ears. Margo started clicking her tongue in Georgie’s ear, just like we used to do with Nut when she was newly-made and she didn’t know language.

Margo stepped away from me, leaving my hand trailing in the air.

“You’re disgusting. What are you both doing? What are you thinking of?”

“Did it escape or something?” Adam’s voice was soft and slow, as if he addressed someone who might not understand him, someone who needed guiding to the light.

Or maybe Adam was afraid. Yes.

“I need to–” Art slipped by Adam through the doorway.

“Wait, Art.” I folded my arms, cool as you like. “This is our home, Nut’s home. There’s nothing wrong with this.”

“Yes, there fucking is!” Adam bellowed. “It’s unnatural.”

But now that Nut was out, so was I. I’d not felt this serene in months. All the layers were peeled back and I waved my stamen, flashed my golden pollen.

“She’s the most natural thing in the world. How is this any different to you living as a family? How is Nut any less of a life, just because she wasn’t born?”

Margo cackled, her face wild and flicking between Adam and I. She gasped, starting words but never getting them out. “You’re mad. Mad.”

Adam joined in, his voice high, harsh. “How can you compare it? It should be in a fucking institution. I didn’t even think they let you keep them at home anymore.”

Adam looked at Nut full in the face. “Jesus, Arthur. It even looks like you. How can you look at that every day?”

It even looks like you.

Of course she did. She had Art’s eyes, his lips, his nervous grasp of the ear. She loved books and magic tricks. She’d inherited his assets and picked up his habits. She was as good as his daughter. We would never have children, that was in the contract. But he would have her. Our blood.

Art cleared his throat. “It’s temporary. She got sick in the loft. She’ll be put in an incubator when we can afford it.”

Anger. I felt anger now. What did it have to do with them? With Adam, or Margo, or any of them? They didn’t have an ovum organi, they didn’t know. And how dare they say all this when Nut was sitting there, listening? They were invaders, unwelcome, unwanted, disgusting. Dirty. Smudging their dark ideas over white. Spoiling, staining, growing foul.

I lifted on pillars of hot air, sweeping them all up with arms glowing like iron red from the furnace. I could have gathered hundreds of people in those arms, and rushed them off the face of the earth.

“Get out. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.”

Margo was already at the foot of the stairs, cramming on her stilettos and shoving Georgie’s slippers in a tote bag. Jasper stood by the front door, staring at the top of the stairs where Art was attempting to drag Nut back onto the landing. I pushed them all aside and threw open the door onto the cold night. Bullets of rain swept in on a twisting wind. Margo flounced out without another look. Adam pushed Jasper out the door with a firm hand on his shoulder.

“Think about this, Arthur,” Adam called up the stairs. The double bleep of a car unlocking. An engine. A sob.

Rosa stood behind me, held firm between Mike’s hands. Her face was wet, shining like a mirror, her lips peeled back over her gums. Her cheeks were marked with little half-moon indentations. She was fixated on Nut between her fingers, blinking frantically, trying to clear away a nightmare.

“Oh Norah. It’s so horrible. I never knew.” Rosa let out a high whine. “She’s you.”

A slight shake and Mike was directing her towards the door. She pressed the pad of her palm over her mouth, biting the flesh.

“How could you? How could you? How could you?”

And we were alone. And later the chimes were striking midnight. And the fireworks were filling the night’s universe with fire and smoke.

18

How could you? How could you? How could you?

How couldn’t I?

Art stood halfway up the stairs, bobbing his head towards the door, chewing the air. Behind him on the landing, Nut’s face peeked around the bannister, her lips parted, her tongue tasting the icy draft.

I looped the chain through the eye and tested the handle, once, twice, thrice. I wanted to be with Nut, close her ears to the world. My first instinct was to make sure she wasn’t upset, that she knew she was loved. She did understand language, I know she did. She replied to me, she muttered back.

I folded my legs beneath me a step or two before reaching Art and seized Nut’s face between my palms. I closed my eyes and it became Art’s face. I knew them both just as well as each other. Moving my fingers over the skin; it was smooth, a high arched nose, a prominent chin, seeded with bristling hairs. His cheekbones. My thumbs smoothed over lips, so soft they could have not existed at all, and above – Nut’s eyes were open wide as if she heard more with the whites. I let out one long breath, and so did she, low and rattling.

Bones in a jar. Moths’ wings against paper.

Her face was his face, yes, but it was broken. She was already missing a tooth. And I couldn’t look at her without feeling utterly, utterly ashamed that I’d let this happen. No – that I hadn’t even known that it’d happened.

Art was still standing beside us on the stairs, watching the door. I reached up, held his hand, squeezed. “Art, sit with me. It’s just us again.”

He looked at me, a complete blank. “I didn’t want them to go. I didn’t