Composite Creatures, Caroline Hardaker [best ebook reader for laptop txt] 📗

that which we make, don’t we?” He patted the leather folder on the coffee table. “It’s in our code of ethics. A lamp lights and extinguishes.”

Fia sat forward. “Norah, Nathan’s been doing some work for us writing our new code of ethics. It’s just been signed off, which means everything you’re feeling is understood. Studied. It’s acceptable. Natural, even. It’s all part of the process. Once you’ve read the manifesto you’ll see that everything we’re doing is morally sound.”

If Nathan knew the ethics, maybe I could make him see?

I shuffled across on my knees, ignoring the hot fire of pain on the coarse jute rug. “But a lamp is just an object. This is a soul. What happens to that when she’s all used up? Does your code of ethics cover that?”

Nathan leaned into me and held my shoulders firmly, pinning my arms to my sides. It was intimate, and I felt loved, by a near perfect stranger – yes – but it was still beautiful. Like floating in a warm pool. A geyser, bubbling with kisses, scented with lavender. From Nathan’s fingers poured golden honey to fill my bones. He lifted the mug of sweet tea to my lips again.

“If she has a soul then that belongs to you and Arthur. And won’t that feel wonderful, to become one with it again?” He turned to the window, at the grey sludge of sky. “It’s bad out there, Norah. She’s not made for it. She’s raw. Where safer for her to be than where she can be warm, loved, remembered?”

What was he saying? Did he mean here? In my house?

He looked back at me with soft eyes. “We took your stem cells to make her. All this is returning her to you. And think about it – when she returns to Art in body then he’s taking on a part of your genetic material too.”

“How amazing that’ll feel,” Fia hummed. “How together you’ll be. So much love.”

The ticking in my head had been replaced with cotton wool. I licked my lips. “What’s in this tea?”

“So much love,” Nathan whispered.

Unity. Love. The room was slipping in and out of focus. They were still missing the point. “But Nut will be dead. Where’s the love in that?”

My voice was quiet. Nathan stroked my hair away from my face. His eyes were as green as sea glass. “We make another from the same material. Another ‘Nut’, you call her? Another one. Exactly the same. So you’ll always have her with you until the day you die. She’ll outlive you, Norah. She’s not going anywhere.”

“Really? Another Nut?” I daren’t believe it. “The same?”

Fia smiled with her lips tight. “And newer and fresher and cleaner. All little again and covered in fur.”

“The same,” promised Nathan. “Born again. Whole and happy and unspoiled.”

20

In my second year of university, when I was around nineteen, Aubrey would wake me up first thing with a shake of my shoulder, whispering, “The sun’s out, let’s go play.” She never took stillness for an answer, and would jiggle the bits of me she could find to irritate me – first my arm, then my wrist, and finally rocking my body side to side under the covers until I, moaning, buried my head under the duvet and finally relented.

Even though I’d sit there sullen, squinting through sleep at my bowl of Crunchy Nut, I couldn’t help but feel a spark of excitement. When Aubrey was in one of her good moods, only good things could happen. She grasped new people with fire in her belly and always made sure she pulled me into the mix. It didn’t matter whether we drove to a new city or to a rural retreat for the day, it never took long before grey-faced flies were caught in Aubrey’s web. Sometimes she brought her guitar and played on a park bench. Bees would swarm to the honey, and I – already drunk on nectar – would sip on an iced tea and drink in a share of her gold.

We achieved nothing, those days. We’d return to the flat with empty hands and empty pockets, the same way we’d left. But this was a cause for celebration. If we returned home without baggage then we were free and weightless for the next adventure, our internal worlds all the richer for memories.

Years earlier, if Mum had a prospector or a buyer visit she’d send me out into the garden to play, much in the same way. Our garden was long and splayed out at the far edges. You could follow a little gravel path around a small copse of trees in the centre, and if you didn’t mind your shins getting scratched by the nettles you could follow the path all around the hawthorns until you ended up at the opposite side of the house, where an apt patch of dock leaves sprouted, ready for you to pick a fuzzy petal and rub where it stung.

“You don’t need a toy, make your own fun,” she’d say, propelling me through the back door with a glass of juice “Make something good and bring it inside.”

If I’d gone out on my own whim, I’d have been stuck for what to do, but the fact that she’d told me there was fun to be had meant I had to find it. But every time I ventured out, I forgot my previous exploits and had to learn my mistakes again. I’d flip over stones to inspect the wrigglings beneath, forgetting that I found the curling woodlice repulsive or that a worm’s squirming reminded me of the parts of a person that should be on the inside. I’d decide to look for sweeter creatures: minky mice with wrinkled noses, chocolate moles poking from the soil like a bristly flower bud. Maybe even a naked chick, fallen from a nest in the trees. My hunts always ended in disappointment.

My idea of the natural world was a fairy tale, based on