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

the storybooks I read at school or the stretching cats in Mum’s paintings. She captured wild things amidst the slow tide of extinction. She looked over her shoulder as the planet moved forward. And even now, I still see that garden in glorious technicolour. No roses are that violet, no trees are that ferociously green.

When Mum hollered for me to come in, usually hours later, she’d run her fingers through my hair, pulling out the tiny twigs and leaves. If I’d caught the sun, she’d stroke white lotion over my face with broad motions. It smelled like lavender, only slightly off. She’d ask me what adventures I’d had, what I’d seen and done, and when I told her I hadn’t seen anything, I hadn’t discovered anything, she tutted loudly, clicking her tongue, and held me across from her between those strong worldly arms.

“But you know more than you did this morning, so you’ve brought something back with you, haven’t you?”

I woke up in an empty bed, too soon. It wasn’t yet light.

The label on the bottle had said the pill would work for twelve hours, but here I was – awake and wearing the same prickling skin. I lay on my side, my hands pressed to my thighs, clutching myself as tightly as a life-raft.

Alone.

This was a new silence. The clock’s tick was a meteor, the silence between was the swoop of an owl. The pause had a soft, wobbling quality. Above me the ceiling groaned, and swayed like the sail of a ship. Voices, ghosts, or neighbours – it didn’t matter. I’d never heard the neighbours before. I didn’t even know who they were.

This felt OK. Nothing burned or ached. Perhaps this was peace.

Alone, I had no one to answer to, no more questions. I could summon company at the stir of a memory, turning it to shadow with a flick of a fingertip. If only I could live in there.

I squeezed my sides with hands that would have normally sought out the firm mass of Nut or Art. If I listened hard enough, could I hear them still? Did they leave a part of them here, even when they were gone? I’m sure if I’d walked into Art’s study I’d have been bombarded with what he heard every day – words and mantras and verses pasted on the walls. But I wasn’t ready for that. It was enough to listen to the paintwork, and to the house for the thumps of its bleeding heart.

Would I be able to feel it, at the point one of them ended? And which would I feel the most?

For how long would Nut have lived out there if we’d left through the back door? How long before she’d become pink and raw, all light too bright, her lungs full up with smoke?

Cruelty. It would have been torture.

I looked at the clock and saw it was only 6.27am. They wouldn’t be in surgery until 8am. I lay there, stranded between getting up to distract myself or reaching out to feel what Nut and Art were experiencing. Was Nut scared, in an unknown place? Art had promised to stay close to her for as long as he could, despite Fia’s grimace. Despite not moving a muscle, my heart hammered against my chest. It might’ve been that no matter what I did I’d feel it – the draw of the knife, the heavy lift of hands.

When they made the new Nut, would they use the same stem cells as the first time? Would she fall asleep, lulled by drugs, and wake up anew? No ache in her jaw, no cut in her belly? There wasn’t anything about it in the manuals. They made it sound like the end of one ovum organi and the beginning of the next just… happened. As if Easton Grove hadn’t anticipated the question. No fuss. No confusion.

But now I needed to know what made up Nut, how much of her was love, and how much would be the same as before. Would she know me? Would she remember her last frightened moments? Quite possibly the original DNA samples were finite, but even then each sample would contain new cells, and so yield different results. Or are all ova organi cloned from one single perfect embryo? That must be it. Nathan said she’d be the same Nut, exactly the same. I had to believe that. They wouldn’t say it without it being true. Caregivers don’t take, do they?

I’d have liked to be there when they made her again, but I wouldn’t ask that. Instead, I wrapped myself in one of the blankets they’d left behind, monogrammed in gold with “Property of E.G.”, and thought solely of her when the clock struck 8am, as a way of saying goodbye. For the next hour, my hand held my heart in one piece as I imagined my second ovum organi being born and delivered to me in her vulnerable and dependent state. This would be my chance to do it right from the start. No dark time in the loft, no confinement. I’d need to make sure everything was ready for her here, from the softest beds to the juiciest toys. Maybe I’d give her toys from the beginning this time; she did love them. It’d be perfect. I’d learned so much, I could do it better than before. Give Nut a better start. My stomach fluttered with the delicious thrill of it all.

Art would be back in two days. He would be spending his thirty-ninth birthday recovering from Nut’s birthday gift, a new piece of himself that was only one year old. I considered getting out the easel and carrying on our birthday tradition, now that it was Art’s turn to be captured. But I couldn’t remember his face well enough to copy it. So as I lay there, I imagined Art’s body next to me, socks on the floor, his glasses on the bedside table. Scars spelling out a