The Scar - China Mieville [257]
The grindylow swam in the air. They flickered, sending quick S-curves down the lengths of their extended tails, rippling them liquidly. They moved their arms in a random dance, like submerged swimmers controlling their buoyancy, clenching and unclenching their webbed claws.
They were absolutely quiet. Even with their hideous faces turned to her, Bellis was wooed by their languid, constant, silent motion. Their bodies were level with hers as their tails eddied in the air, suspending them above the floor.
One of them was adorned with a mass of necklaces in stone and bone. It was streaked with human blood.
Oh gods and Jabber look at you, thought Bellis in a kind of frantic croon. Look at you. You’ve come so fucking far . . .
The grindylow waited.
“Here . . .” Bellis’ voice was spastic with fear. She held out the statuette to them, gripping it carefully, scared that it would slip from her violently shaking hands. “I have it for you here,” she whispered. “I brought it. So you can leave now. You can go.”
Cold and quiet as abyssal fish, the grindylow merely watched her, flicking their tails.
“Please take it,” she said. “Please, I brought what was stolen from you. Take it, and . . . you can leave. Back to The Gengris.” Leave us alone, she prayed. Leave us be. The statue was heavy in her outstretched hands.
With a swift flash of his tail, the necklaced grindylow swam closer to her through the air, close enough to touch.
Bellis flinched violently as Silas Fennec screamed at her, “Bellis get out!”
The grindylow twisted its head toward her, quizzical, the blood that fouled it running in all directions across its skin, against gravity. With a languid yawn it opened its jaws.
Bellis flinched, let out a cry.
But from within its throat came a deep, breathy cough. Beadlets of blood from its teeth spattered the statue that Bellis held. Then another cough, and another, in careful rhythm: uh . . . uh . . . uh.
The grindylow was laughing.
A horrible, incompetent parody of human laughter.
The grindylow stared at her, unblinking, as she lowered her quivering hands. It clenched its teeth with a stone sound, then opened them again, and with its mouth held open and still, its throat flexed with the precision of human lips, it spoke.
“You think this?” the voice whispered, without nuance or intonation. “You woman think this is what was taken? For this you woman think we cross a world?
“We siblings cross from the dark cold of the lake, from pabulum towers and the vats, the algae palace, from The Gengris. We track this place across two four eight many thousands miles, many thousands. Tired and hungry and very angry. Many months. We siblings sit and wait under your place, and hunt, and at last find word, always looking for this man. This robberman, thief. For this?”
The grindylow began to ebb back and forth in front of Bellis, watching her, still pointing at the figurine.
“For this you think we came? This stone thing? Our magus fin? Like primitives you think we abase before gods carved in rock? For hocus-pocus in trinkets?”
The grindylow snatched out, and Bellis gasped and pulled back her hand, letting go of the statue as if it were hot, and the grindylow caught it before it had begun to fall. It hefted the rock figure, holding it up to its face. It stroked its cheek with the filigree of skin.
“There is essence here, but still, for this?” The throat gasped. “You think we are children, we siblings, to cross the world for a puissant toy?”
With a long, exaggerated, slowed-down motion, the grindylow swung its arm in a great arc, curling the figurine through the air with a dramatic, petulant movement, releasing it. It must have been traveling very fast, but Bellis could see it clearly as it spun toward the bars, its arms tucked tight around a coiled-up tail, exquisitely and unpleasantly rendered, its gross mouth puckered and ready, its one eye glinting