Of Metal and Wishes by Sarah Fine Page B

tighten around my body. “She’s sick. I’m taking her to her father.”
    “He’s already out at the south dorm complex. More flu there. Give her to me. I’ll take her.”
    My fingers curl into Melik’s shirt, and his grasp on me turns to steel.
    “Oh, sir, she has the same flu the others do. This illness is very bad. Two of our group have died from it. Someone as important as you are should not risk catching it.” Even through my fevered haze I am able to admire Melik’s tact. And to appreciate the way he’s holding me like he’s never going to give me up.
    Mugo makes a contemplative noise. “Very well. You may take her.”
    Melik thanks Mugo and wishes him a good day before swiftly carrying me down the hall to the clinic. “May I take you to your bed?” he asks. “Or do you want me to put you on the examination table?”
    “Bed,” I whisper.
    He carries me up the stairs and lays me on my pallet. “I shouldn’t be up here,” he says. But then he gets me a cup of water and holds my head while I drink it. When I’m finished, he gently wipes my face and removes my shoes. He crawls up to my head, and I stretch my fingers to touch his face, to make sure he’s real. His skin is cold against my fevered fingertips. He holds still for me until my hands become too heavy and fall back to the pallet.
    “I’m going to fetch your father. Tell me, does he have keys to the front door of the clinic?”
    I close my eyes and focus. He’s asking me something important. “He carries them clipped to his pocket watch chain so he doesn’t forget them.”
    “And does anyone else have the key?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Good. I’m going to lock the door behind me when I leave.”
    I’m starting to drift away, but I swear I hear him mutter something about Mugo, and even hearing that name makes me tense up. Then Melik makes me forget everything, because his lips are pressed to my forehead, cool and soothing, and I want to tell him that this could be the only medicine I need.
    It’s over too soon, and suddenly I’m in a tiny wooden boat adrift in a boiling sea. Nothing above me but yellow sky marbled with red veins that pulse with my fluttering heartbeat. My feet are on fire; I look down to see the bubbling, roiling water seeping between the cracks in the hull. It covers my feet, ankles, knees, and I’m sinking, boiled alive, my skin peeling from me in layer after layer. Finally there’s too little of me left to hold the soft parts inside. My black conscience bursts free, slicking the water like oil. I watch it from below, blooming in inky swirls, coalescing to form Tercan’s face. His broken, bleeding foot. Melik’s eyes shining with tears. And then a silhouette, human, but something not quite right about it. One of the arms thicker and longer than the other, the head tilted in a funny, off-kilter way. My Ghost. My Ghost who is alive, who does awful, wonderful, cruel things.
    Then come the spiders, and their fangs are made of fire. They slash at me for ages, and it hurts even though all of me is gone already, tainting the ocean with my darkness. I scream but make no sound. I pray even though I don’t believe. I beg for mercy I don’t deserve.
    Until someone offers it anyway, and I sink into nothingness.
    I’m not sure how long it takes me to come back to myself. But at some point I wake up sweating and shivering, and my father is there. He wipes my face with a cool cloth. “You’re through the worst of it,” he says, squeezing my hand. “All you need to do now is rest.”
    He leaves me in the dark, and I lie there with my blankets wrapped tight around me. I have no idea what time it is or what day it is.
    That’s when I hear the scuttling.
    I’m so weak I can barely move, which hardly matters because I’m paralyzed with fear. Tangled in my blankets, I listen to the metallic scraping, the rhythmic clicking, the whir of tiny gears. It’s coming from the corner, by the air vent, or maybe it’s an