She Walks in Shadows(41)

“How DARE you touch her!?” I let him go and my fist thudded into the file cabinet again, driving the dent deeper. “How DARE you violate her tomb!?”

“It wasn’t me!” he wailed. His crossed his arms over his face protectively. “They only asked me to examine her! Please!” He burst into sobs. “I never meant any harm!”

A male of my own species would have responded with his own aggression, forcing me to prove my worthiness by crushing him. The swift capitulation of a Human male was like a sedative drug — it quenched my rage instantly, leaving me hollow. Grief filled my chest like rainwater in a blackened crater.

I retreated slowly from the desk, stepping backward onto the floor, resuming my bipedal stance.

“No,” I admitted. “It wasn’t you. Not you, personally.” I turned away from him. “It is the way of your people. You are all grave robbers and thieves. This place is a testament to that, if nothing else.”

I bent and gathered up the body of my ancestress, folding her with reverence into the suitcase, and emptied the box of her ornaments onto her shroud — heavy rings, chains and bracelets of electrum, all marked with the hieroglyphic script of Leng.

“Your mistake was to stray outside your own species, Doctor Beatty. Violate the tombs of your own people, rob each other blind, steal each other’s corpses and make puppets for all I care! But a woman of my race is no Truganini.”

As I locked the case closed, he spoke again. “She isn’t Human.”

I turned again. He had collected himself, although the storm of terror had left him red and puffy. “I don’t know why you’re stealing her,” he said hoarsely. “But you speak as if you’re related to her, somehow.” He swallowed, his eyes owlishly wide beneath his spectacles. “That isn’t possible, Miss.”

I pulled my lips back over my teeth. “She is my thrice-great grandmother. My people live longer lives than yours, Louis Beatty.”

“She isn’t Human.” He spoke more firmly now. In this, if nothing else, he was confident. “Her limbs, her skull, her hands ... she’s a hominid, yes, not Homo sapiens.”

“No,” I agreed. “Our species split apart over three hundred thousand years ago, at the dawn of a great Cold Age. We are still close enough cousins to interbreed, but the results ... are unpredictable.”

He pushed the glasses further up his nose with a palsied hand. “Was she really ... a surviving Homo erectus? In 1755?”

I huffed soft laughter at him, pursing my lips. “Has your own species not changed in the last 300,000 years? You can call us Homo jermynus, if you like. We do not care. Perhaps the name would comfort poor Arthur, in the Lands of the Dead. Things are always hard for mixed children.”

He stubbornly insisted, even though he was still shaking like a leaf. “You cannot be related to her, Miss.”

I moved toward him. “You think not? Why is that, Doctor Beatty?” I pulled the lips back over my teeth in a dangerous, aggressive leer. “Because you see a beautiful woman when you look at me?”

He looked up as I loomed over him. “Yes. You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“Your mind lies so that you can see the truth.” I laughed at him again. “Yes, I am beautiful, Louis Beatty. The women of a superior race are always ‘beautiful.’ You want to mate with me and make strong children. Offspring who will inherit my superior genes and survive the winds of the Great Plateau.”

His brow creased in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

“You will.” I caressed his face with a gloved hand. “My people walk the Wastes that span the world, Louis Beatty. Our ancient gates let us venture forth into many lands; the Congo was only one. Wherever we step forth into the world of Man, we are worshipped as gods and take mates as we please. Our children pass on the traits for golden hair, for blue eyes, or stronger bones. Wherever you see those features, you are seeing our descendants among you.”

I bent and kissed his tiny mouth in parting, then removed one glove to reveal the pale ivory flesh and golden fur beneath. I looked directly into his eyes and spoke a final command.

“You no longer have my permission to see what you wish to see, Louis Beatty. I command you to see me as I am.”

He gave a strangled scream at the sight of my true face, eyes wide in shock, and threw himself away from me with such violence that both he and his chair toppled over onto the hard stone floor.

I left him lying on his side, clutching his chest, as I patiently pulled the gray leather glove back over my strange hand, re-arranged the shawl to cover my mane, and picked up my suitcase.

“Rest easy, Great Mother,” I told her, speaking the language of the Plateau. “I am taking you home.”





CHOSEN


Lyndsey Holder

“KEZIAH,” I WHISPERED and my body vibrated with the thrill of saying her name in the space where she once lived, in the grounds that were still permeated with the thick miasma of her power.

I’d dreamed of her since I was small, though “dream” seems too insignificant a word to describe what we shared. She visited me at least one night a month, she and her strange familiar, always when I was asleep, but our time together wasn’t disjointed and vague like the dreams I was used to having. I was scared of her, at first — what child wouldn’t be? A haggard crone, and a rat with a monstrous face and menacing teeth, should have no place in the dreams of the innocent, yet here they were in mine.