Tidelands: III-Three (40)

Galahad.

Tidelands is a weekly sci-fi & fantasy serial that publishes every Friday, emailed straight to your inbox. Part 1 is free to read, but you can keep up with the story by signing up for exclusive access, or buying ebook or paperback editions of the collected instalments as they appear.

“That girl you showed me – the picture,” Abi begins. “She was my sister.”

“I … I’m sorry. If I’d have known that, I’d—”

“Well, as I say, was my sister. What she is now, God knows.”

She picks up her bowl again, but just stirs the contents with her spoon and stares into the homemade whirlpool, before continuing. She’d always known Eva was different. Talking to herself, having conversations with the air, laughing at jokes no one else had heard. But it was mostly harmless, eccentricities. Give her an object, a ring, a book or a shoe, and she would tell you its story, where it had come from, who’d owned it. Just childish fun, Abi had thought, make-believe. But there was other, weirder stuff, things she couldn’t know – what people were thinking or feeling, things that were going to happen. And so Abi had eventually convinced herself that Eva was a Natural. Hard, Percy realises, with mental illness, especially with those close to us; we prefer to make excuses for their behaviour than accept the hard truth.