The Kingdoms

by Natasha Pulley

He saw them both shift, now that they were having to say it aloud and unshrouded in academic language. He understood now why the dons were pushing to use English. Science words were French words. English was a test to see if an idea made sense without decoration.

In someone’s drawing room, being polite over fine china, the man would have been ugly. There were burn scars down one side of his neck and around his eye. He had turned his head away from an explosion just out of time. In the sea, he was different, and however damaged, he didn’t seem so much like a man as something else that only happened to be a similar shape, and perhaps one that belonged more in saltwater than on the land,

There was something frightening about being told things he’d said but of which he had no recollection. His body had been up to all sorts of things without him.

He was just starting to get up when his entire soul cramped. His heart locked and he couldn’t breathe, never mind move, and everything in him was shrieking, as if he’d thrust his hand into a fire. The second he stopped trying to leave, it eased.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t him. It was something else; someone else.

all the time in the world