“That was a wasp … oh, bother it. I know it wasn’t. Yes, like that, but it’s becoming more intense.”
Tea screwed up her face, trying to remember all the sensations of that first night. In the light of discovering Grant and Izzy’s whaiwhaiā, she’d considered and dismissed it as one of them giving her a metaphorical ‘kick’, but they didn’t have the connection to water like she did. “It comes and goes. I just … know it’s not connected to the eels or my skin. It’s something different again.”
“This has happened before?” Izzy wriggled her fingers in a gimme gesture, and Tea finally relented. Somehow Izzy’s hands were hard and soft at the same time. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I thought it was just me getting used to the heavy workload.”
Izzy massaged Tea’s knuckles, rubbing her hands between her palms like rubbing a dowel to start a fire, except the effect was cool relief trickling along her nerves. “There. That’s better. Hey look, your eelskin is coming in, nice and smooth. Well done.”
“Ow!” Tea pulled her hands out of Izzy’s grasp, strange relief clashing with the throbbing pain. “You said it would stop if I turned a little.”
“I said it would help you relax. Here. Let me put a cold rag on it.” Izzy squeezed out a rag in the bucket of water they’d collected for cleaning. “There. That better?”
“Not really, but thank you.” Tea hoped Izzy couldn’t see her blush in the low light.
“Has this strange pain happened before you came to the farm?”
“Hmm. I don’t know.” A memory intruded, dribbling heat back into the well created by the coolness. Tea caught her breath, her chest tight. “Well … no. That’s silly. I’m making it up.”
“No. Go on. Tell me. Nothing you tell me can be stranger than what we already are.”
“Well. Oh gosh. Robbie used to get into fights when he was out at dances. I somehow … knew before he got home. To be ready to clean him up. Like I felt the blows, too.” She bit her lip, tears threatening to embarrass her again. “If it was bad then, when he was close by, what is happening to him that I can feel it a world away?”
Izzy’s expression twisted into something Tea had never seen on her mother: a sharing of pain, a creating of space to let her feelings for Robbie sit and be nourished. She loved her twin more than she’d ever been allowed to admit, and now this. She’d pushed it away too long. They were connected by more than just familial ties.
The weight of Izzy’s gaze became too great, and Tea looked away. “Pass the tea, please.”
“Tea. Look at me,” Izzy pleaded. “You have to know what’s going on.”
“I do. I can’t …”
“I know Robbie. We’ve worked together. We’re friends.”
How can women and men be friends like that? Madness from the pain clashing and chewing on Tea’s thoughts. They’re supposed to get married if they like each other …
Izzy continued, “There’s this thing. When we’re in our animal skin. We can … reach out to each other. And it makes sense you’d feel Robbie much stronger because you’re linked by blood.”
“By water. That storm Grant talked about.” Lightning struck along Tea’s veins. “OW! Oh, bother it. That one really stings.”
“Tea, he’s at war—”
The tears were running freely down Tea’s cheeks now, the pain fluid, running all over her like the flow of the river. “I know,” came out as a strangled whisper. “He’s in battle. That’s what I can feel, isn’t it? I don’t know what to do. He’s all the way over there. I’m here.”
“You’re doing the best you can, fighting the good fight on the home front.”
“Don’t give me that propaganda!” Tea twisted her hands together like she wanted to break the bones to make the pain empty out of them. “I bet girls could fight and still be ladies, given half the chance.”
The dark hand of pain had worked around her neck and up her skull.
“Oh Tea. Here’s your, er, tea …”
A small moan was the only thing that could escape Tea’s frozen face.
“Tea? Tea! What’s going on? Tea! Oh, sh—”
Sky, land, and the water in between all smashed together in a furious chaos full of shooting stars and darkness black and crumbling as coal. The grind of muscle against skin, flesh against bone, blood through veins, the pulse of her heart filling her mind until she thought that was all she ever could and would be. The pounding sped up, slowed down, then she almost strangled on the silence. Her heart tripped over and started again.
Kick. Flesh in spasm. Knuckles cracking. Bones twisting back on themselves. Skin, like a thousand needles, shaping her to its will. A voice, but Tea couldn’t make out any words. It was deep and rough like a man’s, then higher and slower like a woman’s.
Shouts, muffled and distant, as if hearing them through wind and rain. A rattle, pennies in a tin. Stars exploding in languid arcs, ice-burn fragments sizzling through her edges.
She tried to stand, but her legs wouldn’t answer her call. She could only see staccato night.
And the pain in her arm! Hot and cold and fierce and she wanted to tear it from her, grow another, grow a different her …
Tea seeped back into herself, the light-dark chaos receding into a half-remembered nightmare. Her chest ached, as though her heart had almost succeeded at hammering its way out.
“There you are.” Izzy’s voice, warm and gentle. “You were gone a long time.”
Tea tried to speak, but only an eel-like hiss came out. She was lying down, her head on something soft and warm.
Izzy’s lap.
Izzy’s onyx eyes held her pinned down. Beautiful, so different to Grant’s guarded green gaze. Tea tried to pull away, but it only manifested as a frustrated twitch. No. Women don’t look at other women like that. It was wrong.
Maybe Izzy was concerned. Yes, that’s it.
“I’m fine.” Tea’s voice slurred like she’d had too much sherry after dinner.
Izzy helped her sit up. A relief not to be held in that strange way, but Tea also felt the loss of her warmth. “No, you’re not. That was something altogether different from the incident down at the creek. Where did you go?”
Tea tested out her arm. It held only a memory of pain now. “I think … I think I was in a battle.”
“With who? Where?”