The Power(12)

She’s tired and hungry all of the time, so that a light-headed feeling has become part of her, pleasant in its way. She can hear the voice more clearly when her muscles are buzzing like this and it’s been a while since her last meal; it’s tempted her to stop eating in the past, particularly because she’s sure the tones of the voice, its low, amused rumble, are the notes of her own mother speaking.

Allie doesn’t really remember her mother, although she knows she had one, of course. The world began for her in a bright flash when she was somewhere between three or four. She had been at the mall with someone, because she had a balloon in one hand and a snow cone in the other and the someone – not her mother, she’s sure of that, she’d know that – was saying, ‘Now you must call this lady Aunt Rose, and she will be kind to you.’

It was in that moment that she first heard the voice. When she looked up into Aunt Rose’s face and the voice said: ‘Kind’. Sure. Uh-huh. I don’t think so.

The voice has never steered her wrong since then. Aunt Rose turned out to be a mean old lady who’d call Allie bad names when she had a little to drink and she liked a drink most every day. The voice told Allie what to do; how to pick the right teacher at school and tell the story in such a way that she didn’t seem to be saying it artfully at all.

But the lady after Aunt Rose was even worse, and Mrs Montgomery-Taylor was worse than that. Still, the voice has kept her safe from the worst harm all these years. She still has all her fingers and toes, though that’s been a near-run thing, and now it’s telling her: Stay here. Wait for it.

She walks into town every day and explores every place that’s warm and dry and where they don’t throw her out. The library. The church. The little, overheated museum of the revolutionary war. And, on the third day, she manages to sneak into the aquarium.

It’s off-season. No one’s minding the door so hard. And it’s only a small place, anyway; five rooms strung together at the end of a line of stores. ‘Wonders of the Deep!’ says the sign outside. Allie waits until the guy on the door has wandered off to get a soda, leaving a ‘Back in twenty minutes’ sign, and she flips open the little wooden door and walks straight in. Because it’s warm, really. And because the voice told her to look everywhere. No stone unturned.

She can feel there’s something here for her as soon as she walks into the room full of brightly lit tanks with fish of a hundred coloured kinds patrolling the water back and forth. She feels it across her chest, in her collarbone, down to her fingers. There’s something here; another girl who can do the thing she can do. No, not a girl. Allie feels out again with that other sense, the one that tingles. She’s seen a little bit about it online, other girls saying they can sense if another woman in the room is about to discharge her power. But no one has it like Allie has it. Since she first got her power, she’s been able to tell at once if anyone around her had any at all. And there’s something here.

She finds it in the last tank but one. A darker tank than the rest, without the coloured, garlanded and fronded fish. It contains long, dark and sinuous creatures waiting at the bottom of the tank, stirring slowly. There’s a meter-box to one side of the tank with its needle at zero.

Allie has never seen them before, nor does she know their name.

She puts her hand to the glass.

One of the eels shifts, turns and does something. She can hear it. A fizzing, cracking sound. The needle on the meter jumps.

But Allie doesn’t need to know what the box is to know what just happened. This fish made a jolt.

There’s a board up on the wall next to the tank. It’s so exciting that she has to read it three times, and keep herself under control or her breathing goes fast. These are electric eels. They can do crazy things. They give shocks to their prey under water; yeah, that’s right. Allie makes a little arc between her finger and thumb under the table. The eels stir in the tank.

That’s not all electric eels can do. They can ‘remote control’ the muscles in their prey by interfering with the electric signals in the brain. They can make those fish swim straight into their mouths if they want to.

Allie stands for a long time with that. She puts her hand back on the glass. She looks at the animals.

That is a mighty power indeed. You would have to have control. Why, but you’ve always had control, daughter. And you’d have to be skilful. Why, but you can learn those skills.

Allie says in her heart: Mother, where shall I go?

And the voice says: Leave this place and go from here to the place that I shall show you.

The voice always did have a Biblical way with it, just like that.

That night, Allie wants to settle to sleeping, but the voice says: No, go on walking. Keep on. Her stomach is so empty and she feels peculiar, light-headed, troubled in her mind with thoughts of Mr Montgomery-Taylor, as if his lolling tongue were still licking at her ear. She wishes she had a dog.

The voice says: Nearly there, my girl, don’t you worry.

And out of the darkness Allie sees a light, illuminating a sign. It says, ‘Sisters of Mercy Convent. Soup for the homeless and beds for those in need.’

The voice says: See, I told you.

And all Allie knows after she crosses the threshold is that three women take her up bodily, calling her ‘child’ and ‘sweet’ and exclaiming when they find the crucifix in her bag because this is the proof of what they’d hoped to find in her face. They bring the food to her while she sits up, barely conscious, in a soft, warm bed, and that night not a one of them asked who she was and where she’d come from.