Thyla - Kate Gordon [64]
In the middle of them all, so perfect and peaceful she might have been dreaming, lay Ms Hindmarsh – your friend, Connolly. I’m sorry. I don’t know how she died. I don’t know who did it. I don’t know if it was Thyla or Sarco, or even Diemen. But she’s gone. If it was a Thyla who did it, you’ll forgive us, won’t you? You’ll forgive me and Isaac? We had to do it, Connolly.
She made us do it.
I looked over at Perrin, who had moved away to stand with Harriet. She had her arm around him. I felt a stab of jealousy but I brushed it away. I didn’t even know Perrin. There was no reason for me to feel this way and yet … I closed my eyes and I felt his lips on mine. I felt his strong arms around my waist. And it wasn’t like a dream. It was like a memory. But that was ridiculous, wasn’t it? I was just being silly. He was a stranger, and he was rude and ungentlemanly.
And he was a Sarco. And I was a Thyla.
I turned to Isaac. His face looked just as grim as Perrin’s.
‘Are we going to move them?’ I asked. ‘Are we going to bury them?’
‘We don’t move them, Tess. You really have forgotten everything, haven’t you?’
‘I’m remembering,’ I said, defensively. ‘Just … not this part. Yet.’
Isaac sighed. ‘All right. You have to get it all back soon, though, okay? It’s bloody annoying.’ He broke off and looked over at the bodies. ‘Look, Tess,’ he said. ‘It’s already starting. That’s why we leave them.’
I looked again at the bodies. My stomach churned as I saw parts of them had turned to dust. They were fading away.
‘They rot and then become the soil we walk on,’ Isaac continued. ‘It happens much more quickly than it does with human corpses. They’ll have joined the soil again in a matter of minutes. Their bodies won’t be seen or found. The Diemen bodies will disappear, too, but they become blood that seeps into the soil. In this way, the humans they have murdered – whose blood they have fed upon – become part of nature and, I suppose in a way, alive again. It’s natural for us, Tessa. Only humans bury their dead. And besides, they were dead already, technically.’
Dead already. As I was.
Isaac must have noticed the pained look on my face, because he shook his head and said, ‘That came out wrong, Tess. Sorry. When I say they were dead – when we are bitten and we gain the ability to shapeshift, to change from human to Thyla or …’ Isaac glanced over at the other pack across the clearing, and his voice became a growl again, just for a moment. ‘Or Sarcos, our old lives die. Our heart stops beating and our lungs stop working but, with the next gust of wind, we breathe again and our heart starts to beat again, and we are born again. A new life. Even if some of us are never entirely free of our old lives.’
I knew without asking what Isaac meant. Even though he had a new life as a Thyla, he would never stop trying to defeat Lord. And even though I was changed, too, I would never forget my mother’s death. I would continue to try and make it right.
‘When this new life ends though, Tessa, we become soil, just like everything else. We’re all equal in death.’
So that is how I died. I was bitten. I stopped breathing. My heart stopped beating. And this is how I will live. Thyla.
‘Did you always know it was me? That I was Thyla?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ said Isaac. ‘You have been by my side this whole time. For more than a century and a half.’
‘Then why didn’t you tell me?’ I blurted. ‘Why didn’t you tell me who I was?’
Isaac looked at his feet. ‘Because it was me who made you like this. I always felt guilty for it. I wanted you to have a chance to be normal again, even for just a little while.’
‘You made me Thyla?’ I whispered.
‘After Lord killed your mum, I knew you’d be next. He had his sights on you. You’d known I was a Thyla for a while, of course, although you didn’t know the name for it. You caught me one night. You sneaked out of bed, and you found me in the courtyard at the Female Factory, looking like this. You begged me to change you then, but I resisted. I thought that maybe if I just looked