Linnet

Before

Linnet was born in southern Lesotho to a single mother who worked desperately to keep her safe despite their rough neighborhood. She was a sociable, happy child, and her school years started off entirely normal; she knew several other albino children, and so was never ostracized. Everything changed when she was twelve and the news started broadcasting about disappearances of albino adults and children, murdered and mutilated and sold to witch doctors. Linnet’s mother, terrified, withdrew her from school and forbade her from ever, ever leaving the house. But it was too late. Someone, perhaps an onlooker or a neighbor or even her own schoolteacher, sold Linnet out, and they broke into her house while her mother was out working, sweeping her out in a gunny sack and into a waiting car before she could even scream.

The moment she could see again, the hunters opened a trapdoor, dropped her in and kicked it shut. Linnet didn’t cry. She stayed very, very still like her mother had taught her until the footsteps faded away, and started to feel the walls for a latch. It was so dark, and the room felt huge, there was no furniture at all, and everything smelled overwhelmingly of blood. Linnet bit her lip, struggling not to scream, when she found something that felt like a round lock and a wire grate below it, very near the floor. She lay flat and heard someone breathing behind it, shallowly, like they were exhausted or very sick. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I’ll get us out.” Tugging at the end of the grate, she pulled on the mesh until it unravelled and twisted it until the wire snapped free. She shoved it in the lock and jiggled; after several long minutes she heard something click. She quickly braced herself against the door and shoved, hoping against hope that it lead to her escape, and yelped when she pitched forward and down a short staircase instead. Faint light shone from a crack in the wall, and Linnet saw —

A lean, skinny streak of a creature. The cheeks full and round, but Linnet knew without knowing how that it was starving: the floor was scattered with stones glossy with blue-black blood.

It stared at her. Its eyes were very, very wide.

Paralyzed with fear, Linnet could do nothing but stare back at the pitted, clawed hands, the bloodied human face. From the neck down its body was almost completely cratered with fist-sized wounds.

“Who hurt you,” she breathed, pity breaking through the terror, and it jerked back. For a moment its gaze was almost sane; then it jerked past her and slid up the staircase before Linnet had time to flinch. When she darted back into the room it was ramming its tail against the wood, each hard slam echoing with splinters. When the door was shoved in she could hear men shouting, running down to see what was wrong. Linnet’s vision was blurring under the harsh electric lights, but she saw it sway in place, just like a snake, before turning to look at her.

“Go,” the voice rasped, and Linnet ran.

She ran for a long time. Each slap of bare feet against pavement rang in her ears as she hurtled into unfamiliar alleyways at the least blur of movement, curling up small with her hands over her face as the curious footsteps stopped, then moved away. Homeless children weren’t unusual, where Linnet lived. She had to get to her mother. She had to go home. But she was lost, it was getting brighter, and in the midday sun she would be entirely blind.

She closed her eyes. “Follow the sound of water,” she muttered, remembering what her mother had once told her. During the rainy season she could hear the swollen Tsedike river rushing past from her bedroom. That was it. She would hide in the reeds for the day, listen to the travelers’ gossip, and get directions to walk back home. Mind made up, Linnet straightened — and felt a clawed hand land heavily on her shoulder. Every muscle in her body seized up at once, but as she choked on a scream she heard the low whisper, “I knew you were like me.”

She was dreaming. She had left it there hours ago, just outside the trapdoor, to face all of those men alone. “I’m sorry,” Linnet breathed out, and the ghost answered, “No. You set us free." It turned her around, claws gentle against her skin, and a horrified sob tore from her throat as she saw that half of its body was just — gone, a ragged flap of loose scales hanging against the wound. The skin above the missing arm stretched taut as it swallowed, blood and gore matted across the hollow collarbones, and Linnet shut her eyes. From behind them she could still see a vision of sharp teeth, cut to points. For a long time there was no movement at all, nothing but terror and exhaustion and the pain of her rubbed-raw soles, until a wave of stale air blew across her face.

"They are coming for you," the creature said, and silently pressed its only hand across Linnet's face. As she thrashed for air it breathed into the shell of her ear, "I will set you free."

After

There was blood in Linnet's mouth and salt in her eyes. Her fingers sunk into the wet ground, but she couldn't move. An impossibly heavy weight was pressing down on her from every direction, and she couldn't shake it off no matter how hard she struggled, heedless with pain. It felt like being burned but a hundred times worse, like the sunlight was incinerating her flesh from the inside out. Linnet couldn't scream through the cold foreign mass in her mouth; instead she bit down and felt it give under her teeth, and the pain melted under the tide of delicious sensation. When her (blunt blunt wrong) hands made no headway she gnawed at the body above her, tearing away long strips and gulping down as much as she could swallow. By the time Linnet had broken the bones and sucked down the marrow she felt sated, immeasurably stronger, but also abruptly very tired. She tossed the carcass away, rolled onto her side, and fell asleep.

She woke to two-thirds of her coils submerged in murky water, the reeds pulled out in long furrows where she'd thrashed blindly through the mud. Inky blood shone clear through the ragged crescents of her nails. There was no pain. Linnet looked up at the sun, blinking, and didn't know why she'd expected it to hurt. She could hear noises, distantly, and waded without urgency into the river, sighing at the coolness against her skin. As she swam with the current she saw boats, rickety wooden things that still dwarfed her, small as she was, and these she instinctively avoided, keeping close to the bottom of the shore. Eventually the commotion and clamor faded, and the cluttered dwellings gave way to rolling fields of long golden grass. When Linnet poked her head out of the water she could see cows grazing lazily near the riverbank, some close enough to lunge towards — too large for her, though, and she was full anyway. The water here was deep and calm, the smooth walls soothing against her scales. She closed her eyes and let herself drift.

When Linnet jolted awake, she was already falling. Her sense of balance completely disappeared as she twisted and tumbled with the waterflow, and it was only sheer luck that her underside took the weight when she hit the floor. She lay there, stunned, too slow to react when a noose slipped around her middle and pulled her up to the surface. She was pulled up and thrust onto dry land, dozens of intrigued eyes peering down at her. Blocked in by a circle of boot-clad feet, unable to hide or get away, Linnet snapped desperately at the hands of the strangers who reached for her, but they only laughed or whistled in appreciation as sunlight glanced off of her translucent fins, lit up the delicate lacing around her waist and back. Huddled into herself, she heard the crowd murmuring to each other, low and speculative. The words were beyond her understanding, but she knew enough to be afraid.

Suddenly a thundering exclaimation sounded through the air, and through the shifting space between legs Linnet saw the crowd part for a dark woman in a full white dress who strode up the path and started speaking to her captors in a rapid-fire language that she could not understand. They parted a little, and Linnet could have fled then — the water was not far off — but her attention was captured by the woman's full brow, the commanding tilt to her jaw, the arresting confidence of her dark eyes. Her captors spoke in complaining tones; undaunted, she gestured rapidly back in return, and one by one they picked up their nooses and nets and trudged away from the crowd. The others soon dissipated, casting curious glances back at her coiled-up form, until the only person left was the woman staring down at her with her hands on her hips. Now it was just the two of them her gaze was patient and unguarded, as though she was waiting for someone who wouldn't arrive and had resigned herself to it. After a long while she said something, softer than before, and Linnet looked shyly up at her; when she turned on her heel and began walking back to the house, she followed, coils casting shadows in the sand.