Chapter 16: Chapter 8, Part 1

I’ll try not to keep banging on about it, obviously. Luckily, in the time it had taken me to have my existential crisis, Nalfis and Tove had come over as well, which spared me trying to get anyone’s attention. I think I’d got theirs when I fell down. Nobody even felt like being funny, which was a rare feat over the course of my time with this lot. Humour was often our go-to emotional shield and/or crutch, but it had failed us here.

Tove said something about how we should move her, and I think the others agreed, although I wasn’t paying much attention. I snapped out of my trance when they began to slide each emaciated limb out of the cuffs that were no longer tight enough to hold them. I had a terrible premonition of dried, tearing skin and protruding bones, but luckily it seemed that there was enough elasticity left for her to be moved without falling apart. Small mercies. As her right wrist came free and was lifted off the arm of the chair, I could see more of the scarring across her forearm, along with a couple of rows of implanted brass studs, which I could barely guess at the purpose of. Her head was freed last, and there was a ring of bloodstained chafing around it where she had clearly strained against the tight skull-clamp. It sat just above her brow, running over her ears and behind her head; an ironic and torturous crown.

Once she had been maneuvered out of the shackles, Alf lifted her gently from the chair and laid her down on her back beside one of the eye windows. He intoned a prayer as he did, the first overt sign I’d seen of his faith, besides his holy symbol. His prayer finished, he stood back up, and we all stood around, looking at her. It’s like we all expected something else to happen. I think the truth of it all was that nobody wanted to think this could be it. A dead, tortured child. I might only have been 16, but I still felt like I’d been around the block by then, seen some shit. Hadn’t seen this though. It didn’t help that I could see so much of myself in her – the race, the age, physique. Even traces of the hair colour, and the scarring on her right arm. Very different scars, but even so. I wonder if the Gnomes put them there, or if you did, I thought. It was just one of many thoughts that were spiralling and compounding in my head, each adding their own layer of fucked-up and awful. I did my best to wrench my mind back to the here and now. I was helped by Nalfis’ gentle voice.

“What the Hel is this place?” he asked, voice barely above a whisper. We all had a decent idea of the literal answer to that – it was the control room of an ancient Gnomish war machine. But that wasn’t what Nalfis’ question was actually asking. It was asking why, if it was still apparently working, was everyone inside it dead? It asked why any of this had ever been necessary; it asked why a girl had been strapped to a chair and left to die; and above all it asked what we were still to learn here. I’m not sure if I wanted the answers to those questions by now, but I did know that I needed them.

“There were some records on the table,” I mumbled, “I’m going to have a look at them.” I stumbled the short distance over there, and practically fell into a seat. As I picked the report up, I could see the pages shaking. I noticed my trembling left hand – there was something about the strange wobbling motion that was completely hilarious. I dropped the pages and clamped my still-functional right hand over my mouth just in time to smother a laugh.

My whole chest shook with suppressed giggles. The occasional snorting or coughing noise snuck around the edge of my hand, which sounded really stupid and fucking funny. I knew I was ruining the mood, and I wanted to be considerate, but for the life of me I could not stop laughing. I tightened my prosthetic hand over my mouth, stronger than I could with my real one. The pressure built on my jaw, but all I could think of was how fucked this whole situation was and how stupid I was for not being able to control my own fucking laughter and how I could barely breathe and how my teeth felt like they were about to break and how I-

“It’s a response to stress,” Tove said, though as I looked up I could barely make her out through the film of tears over my eyes. Her hands were on my right arm, and she was trying to lift my hand away from my mouth. “Could you open your hand for me, please?” she asked, and there was that motherly voice again. It made sense, since she was being presented with a crying child. The only problem was that I didn’t think I could open my hand. Controlling the prosthetic was always a bit harder; it needed a bit more conscious thought, and that was in short supply right now. My lungs were starting to burn, and it was adding a whole extra distraction. I screwed my eyes shut, desperate to shut out as many as possible, and summoned as much concentration as I had left. It was like trying to calm one horse out of a whole stampede. All my focus was channeled into a single voice in my mind, getting louder while darkness crept in at the edges of my brain. PleaseopenpleaseopenpleaseopenpleaseopenPLEASE-

My hand snapped open as if the tension had been released from a spring. It was a good thing that Tove wasn’t trying to force my hand away, otherwise there may have been a comical fall. As it was, my arm just went limp, leaving her holding my hand softly in both of hers. My grateful lungs took in as much air as they could. I was no calmer than before though, and each breath was either hyperventilating and shallow, or cut off by the great heaving sobs I’d now set free, which wracked my body from diaphragm to mouth, and didn’t seem to stop. I felt performative and hideous – what right did I have to feel like this compared to her, and how must I have looked to the others?

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed this before, but you have a very interesting hand, Indy.” Again it was Tove who spoke, in the kind of conversational tone you might use to compliment someone’s new haircut. I lifted my eyes away from the floor, looking at my hand as she trailed her fingers over it. It still had the glove on, but that didn’t hide the shape. “Which way do your fingers bend?” she asked. I did my best to show her, curling my hand into a fist in a single jerking motion. That was about the limit of my fine motor control at the moment. Because of how the hand was attached, the fingers still bent inwards (i.e. towards the other hand), but with my thumb at the bottom of the fist instead of the top. (It’s easier to picture if you try it yourself: cross your arms in front of you, then turn your palms to face the other, and make your hands into fists. See where the thumbs are?)

Tove turned my hand over in hers again, gently prising the fingers open and generally being curious about it. “So you have two left hands?” she asked. I half-nodded, though I was hardly paying attention. My mind kept racing, my chest kept heaving, and my eyes kept crying. “Does it annoy you when people say things like ‘oh I’ve got two left hands’ when they mean they’re not good at something intricate?” she continued. The thought had honestly never crossed my mind, and I gave a slight shake of my head. “Huh. Well that’s nice of you because it would probably really annoy me. If you did something with this hand,” she lifted it slightly, “would you describe that as right- or left-handed?” I just shrugged. “See, these are important questions. I would definitely have come up with answers for now so I could make stupid jokes somehow.”

“What sort of stupid jokes?” Nalfis butted in.

“You know, the sort where you confuse people, or make silly comments about how difficult it is to be a right-handed left-handed person in this world.”

“That would definitely count as a silly comment,” Nalfis agreed.

“Exactly! And replacing the word ‘right’ in everything with ‘left’ is compulsory, especially when you have such a good chance to say you’re all-left instead of alright.”

“Well maybe not everyone is as childish as you Tove,” Alf added. Tove smiled at that.

“Then maybe they should be,” she declared. “But only the fun kind of childish.” She studied my hand again, and a more serious expression overtook her. “I can imagine most children would be quite unkind about something like this,” she was looking at me now, but I kept my gaze locked onto my hand, and no higher. “Were they?” she asked. I shook my head, and in a croaking, hoarse voice, in between the occasional sob, managed to eke out an answer. “Didn’t have it,” I rasped. “Born normal.” Normal isn’t the kindest word to use in that case, but I was feeling fairly unkind towards myself at that point. Try not to imitate me.

I could hear her confusion when she kept talking, and her naked curiosity. “So… what is this?” I was distantly aware that I was no longer sobbing, but I wasn’t feeling energetic. I nodded vaguely towards the hand, giving permission which Tove took, undoing the strap that kept the glove tight around my wrist. She hesitated briefly, maybe seeking confirmation. My eyes had already fallen back to the floor though, as I waited for the humiliation I knew was coming, freak that I was.

“That must be one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in all my years,” Nalfis said. I knew it. I felt a lump forming in my throat as shame mixed with the pain of rejection, and all I could do was try not to start crying all over again. He continued talking. “And I think it’s bloody marvellous.”

Eh?

Alf picked up the thread. “I’ve been around a few centuries, as you keep kindly reminding me, little gremlin that you are – but I’ve never, in all that time, either seen or even heard of a moving hand made of metal and wood. I have to say I’m impressed.”

My cheeks were heating up with an unfamiliar, horrifically confusing, warm kind of embarrassment. I dared to look up, and caught Tove quickly snap her eyes back to mine from where she had been staring deeply at my hand. She looked a bit sheepish, like she’d been caught peeking. “Sorry,” she murmured, “but it is very cool.” Her eyes kept flicking between looking at me, and studying my hand. I was gobsmacked. “Where did you even get it?” she asked. My throat had barely recovered, but I managed to croak out an answer.

“I built it,” I whispered. She stared at me, confused.

“You built it?!” she asked. Her question was both incredulous and loud. The other two had stayed further back until now, demonstrating the sort of stunning bravery so classic of men who are presented with a crying person – especially a crying person who might not be a man they can just tell to ‘man up’. I mean, picture the horror: they might even try and talk about their feelings, or hug you! Terrifying.

Regardless, as it had become safer to approach, they were slowly doing that, and so they heard Tove’s reply. They made some quizzical noises, and hurried the rest of the way over. The questioning began, and I was not ready.