Proteus-Chapter three

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Knock knock knock.

The noise against the door makes me jump, curled inside of the big bowl in the darkened room, among my soft blankets and threadbare pillows.

“I think you’re a bit confused,” the human says cautiously. “You’re the bloodthirsty monster, I’m the lone damsel in distress. I should be hiding from you.”
Knees at my chin, I stay quiet, hoping it will leave, like it should have done a long time ago.

I don’t want any trouble. I just want it to leave. And what is “damsel” supposed to mean?

It knocks again.

“Go,” I growl. “Go home caravan, leave potean-me be.”

“You do talk! Not just mimic!” the human shrieks in surprise.

I petulantly mimic the noise of the blast that killed my sister, and her death cries and gurgling. The human seems to take a step back.

“Look, if you were going to hurt me, you’d have done it when I doze off. Now come out so I don’t feel like I’ve chased you away in your own home.”
I make the noises again.

“You can’t be serious,” the human growls dryly. “You’re the shapeshifting, electricity-using monstrosity, and you’re afraid I’ll hurt you? That’s not how…that’s not how any of this works!”

“Human-River monstrosity!” I growl. “Protean-me just be alone. Go.”

“Do you have any idea how absurd this is? You could have fried my eyes out, eaten me whole, worn my face back to my caravan and eaten them, too, and you’ve locked yourself in a bathroom so I won’t hurt you?”
I’m beginning to wonder just how much human-River actually knows about us.

“Look, um…” it murmurs, light breaking beneath the doorframe. “I just…don’t want to be afraid anymore…and…I don’t think you do either…so…come out and let me teach you Go Fish?”

I sit quietly for a few seconds, contemplating the wisdom of its words. The first humans we met when we were turned out of our home attacked us first. That set a precedent that continued until there was only me. I suppose it…might be nice to have one human that doesn’t want to kill me.

I unfold myself from the bowl and unlock the door, sliding it open just a crack.

“Go Fish?” I ask quietly.

***

“You win!” human-River exclaims as I put the last of my cards aside.

“I win!” I repeat, the tip of my tail wagging with excitement.

When I catch her staring at it, I self-consciously slam the hem of my coat over it, and then draw it inside, along my back.

“What do you look like?” human-River asks, then flushes suddenly, like she shouldn’t have asked that. “I’m sorry…I mean…proteans all look different, so…I just…”

I draw back into myself again, knees at my chest, held tight by my arms.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to!” human-River says quickly, sitting up on her knees and reaching out with her hand. “I’m just curious, I don’t want you to be uncomfortable, though.”

“Uncomfortable, though,” I reply softly, tugging at the lapels of my coat.

Not even my siblings have seen me since I’ve been on my own. I’ve changed a lot, and humans tend react…poorly.

“I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Here, let’s play something else…” Her eyes gaze around the room.

I raise a finger, suddenly with an idea, and take off my gloves, revealing stormy-striped and spotted skin, not quite scaled, and long, hooked claws. I hold up my palms and beckon her close.

“Wow,” she blurts, looking at my claws.

I drop my hands, looking at the formidable hooks, and a scant amount of webbing leftover from my days in a tank. As I move to make a motion to put my gloves again, she intervenes.

“No—no, go on, what were you going to show me?” she asks.

Reinvigorated I hold up my hands, and beckon her to do the same. As she comes closer, my tail wags from under the hem of my gray coat.

“Like this?” she asks, holding her hands up, palm toward me.

“Like this, yes,” I confirm, pushing my palms out until she catches on, pushing her palms against mine.

“You’re…warm,” she muses. “I expected proteans to be…cold-blooded or something.”

“Stay,” I warn. “Still be.”

A gentle hum runs through my electrocytes. The energy flows through me, pushing against her palms. She smiles in delight as her frizzy, brown hair raises off her shoulders and floats in a cloud about her head. Grinning, she pulls away to touch her hair, creating a loud snap and a bright flash.

She flings backward, jumping against the wall, and I am crouching on the counter, trembling.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I mumble. “Protean-me sorry, spark bad, scary, sorry, sorry.”

“Calm down,” she sighs, sitting up and rubbing her hands. “It just surprised me, is all. I’m not hurt.”

“Sorry, human-River,” I tell her again.

“You did tell me to be still,” she points out. “I think I did something like that in a museum, once.”

“Sorry, human-River,” I say again.

“Stop being sorry and come down,” she sighs, standing up and approaching me, reaching out one of her soft-skinned, blunt-nailed hands.

I look up at her curiously. I shocked her and she still wants to touch me? Such a peculiar human. Most of them kept their distance when shocked, accidentally or not, by one of my siblings.

After a moment of hesitation, staring blankly at her hands, she picks my gloves off the floor and hands them too me.

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” she says in a soothing tone. “It was an accident.”

“Accident,” I repeat, not sure on that one.

“Yeah, you know, when something bad happens, but nobody meant for it to happen,” she explains as I put my gloves on, take her hand, and climb down from the counter. “Sometimes things just happen, and sometimes people aren’t careful.”

“Protean-me aren’t careful,” I agree, reflecting on how I shouldn’t have shown off like that.

“No, you did fine!” she laughs. “You told me to be still! I’m the one that moved!”

I mimic her laughter quietly.

“Can you do that for any sound?” she asks, looking stunned.

“Any sound, yeah,” I answer in her voice.

“Okay, yeah, don’t do that,” she commands. “That’s really creepy.”

“Sorry, creepy,” I answer quietly, sitting on the edge of the counter and dropping her hand.

“No, just…my voice,” she explains quickly, offering her hands again. “Anything else is fine.”

I make the noises I hear from birds in the early light hours. This makes her smile.

Once I’m down from the counter, my ribbon-like, barbed tail just barely not hiding inside my coat, she asks what to do next. Not wanting to use my electrocytes again, I give it some thought, and then ask for her cards.

“Cards,” I say, pointing at her pocket.

“Okay, yeah, sure,” she replies, handing the deck over to me.

I flip through it, pick out three aces, the red one she called “hearts” and the two black ones. I hold up all three cards, then put the two black ones symbol side down, then hold up the heart. I then place it symbol side down, and then mix them up quickly, trying to hide which ones I move where. She seems to have difficulty picking them up from a flat surface, but my claws make it easy.

“Okay, I have a protean teaching me to play three card monte. Alright,” she laughs.

I like it when she laughs.

She studies my hand movements until I’m finished, clearly trying to keep track of the heart. It takes her more than one try to find it, but as the game progresses I make it even harder by reshuffling during every failure.

“That’s hardly fair!” she smiles.

The rain is beginning to let up a little by this time so, regrettably but inevitably, it is time for human-River to begin getting ready to go. She eats some of the flesh-tubes, offering me a few cans for my trouble, eliciting an uncontrolled retching noise.

“Yeah, not everybody likes them,” she muses. “Ordinarily I’d say ‘you don’t have to like them, they just have to keep you alive,’ but you seem to be doing well enough.”
Feeling like I should do something to return the gesture, from the pile of my pretty trinkets, I offer a sliver of bone scored with the first thing I saw upon leaving home: that bright light in the sky.

“Oh, thank you,” she smiles. “You don’t have to…”
I wave her hand away to show that I insist. She tucks it into a pocket where I sense the warmth of her heart, and then looks up at me and takes a deep breath.

“Well, since you’ve been such a gracious host, I feel like I still owe you. So…would you like a name?”
I tilt my head quizzically.

“Name self?” I ask, thinking about what Bismarck told me about names.

“Some people do,” human-River explains. “Some people reach a turning point in their lives and pick something that suits them, but humans are generally named by our parents.”

I think of my parents, flesh and eyes and teeth and tentacle, and wonder if Bismarck spared them. He might have, seeing kinship there, or he might have seen himself as the great savior freeing them from their prisons forever, hard to say.

“Well, I was thinking…if you like it,” human-River continues, “about a man called ‘The Master of Lightning.’ It came to me when you did the hand thing…there’s a famous picture of him sitting in his lab under machines all lit up with electricity, and he’s just…drinking his coffee or reading his newspaper or whatever.”

I don’t know what “coffee” or “newspaper” is. I do know machines, placed near the tanks for the humans to stare at, or in them to keep the water clean. Some didn’t seem to do anything but light up, but the longer the lights were on the happier the humans got.

“His name was ‘Nikola,’ so…” she breathes. “If you like it, I thought it could be your name, too.”

“Nikola,” I repeat, tasting the world. I think of my electrocytes, how the humans seemed to like me the most to make the lights come on, how it feels when I’m hunting, or the rare time I’ve had to use myself to ward off rival males or scavengers.

“Master of Lightning,” I tell her. “Nikola-me likes.”

She laughs softly. “If I ever see you again, I’ll work on teaching you English.”

“Yes, please,” I agree. “Teach English.”

The door to my den explodes open like the tanks when the humans turned on us. Three large humans barge in, brandishing the weapons that spit fire and metal, smelling of fear and rage.

As an automatic response, my electrocytes open. Electricity crackles around me.

“Calm down, Nikola, I got this,” human-River states in a worried tone. “Dad, I…”

The big one in front levels the stick of his weapon at me. I cast my palm at him, sending electricity up it to make him drop it. In error, I take my eyes off the other two, and the one on my right levels his weapon at me.

The last thing I remember seeing is the beautiful shards of glass catching the light as I am thrown through the window.




Chapter four