I find the egg in the garden. One-hundred and four steps. I think yesterday it was buried by the snow, behind the brown mushroom caps, only today the sun is busy melting.

I didn't bring the backpack. I was only here for the crawling fungi, the capped mushrooms, the seal's-fur herbs, last night's heartbeat forgotten like a dream. But now the egg's in front of me, blood pumping softly.

It is speckled magenta, like the mother knew her child was bold enough never to need hiding. Or the mother knew her child would never survive in hiding, here in the tears of summer's melt.

I set the mushrooms I have gathered cap-down, beside the egg, and run a hand across it. It vibrates, faintly, to these curse-wielding hands. I recoil at its touch. The warmth.

Four blinks, one exhale, and I touch it again and it still vibrates. I lift it from the snow and it is as big as my head, but lighter than a skull.

I leave the mushrooms, since they will not wander like crawling fungi. Walk one hundred steps to the house, cradling a strange egg's warmth to my stomach. I close my eyes, in front of the paneled door. Imagine me, slow dancing, a living, breathing creature cradled under my heart, under my skin.

I snap my eyes open and yank the door and Skeleton Cook is waiting there, to catch the magenta speckled egg when I stumble. Skeleton Cook cradles it, goes to keep it warm, pile some blankets around it, use the sitting room I never sit in. The tapping of Skeleton Cook's calcaneus foot-bones dwindles, and I crumple to the floor curled around my empty stomach.

Okay, brain, let's remember: the way his deep eyes gazed into yours, at your lips, like you were landfall to his drowning. You'd only ever seen a real bakery once in your life, but he made you think of it often. The way his hand in yours looked like somebody mixing two flavors together. They way his red lips must have looked melded to your violet ones, eyes closed, hands trying to melt your skin together.

This was back before, when you were a boy, when you were so terrified of your bodies touching that not everything you told him was the truth. Religion, true, but you would've given that up for him in a heartbeat. You already had, had already forgotten nearly all of this religion--you only remembered that they never chased dreams of putting together skeletons, pooling blood with magic, cursing crushed flower petals just to see how fast they'd die. You told him it was because of your people's religion.

Brain, you killed your first person before you knew the difference between a girl and a boy. You killed her by mouthing the words to make her heart too weak to pump blood. Kolariq found you the next day, before the funeral. He offered to teach you. Offered to teach you how to kill, better, gather blood and bones and words entirely for cursing. The opposite of healing.

But remember: if Kolariq never found you, you never would have found him. Him, who called your eyes sea kelp, brown and pale. Him, who saw the ways your body didn't quite fit you, even when you tried to hide it from him. Him, laughing in the water. Him, holding you like you imagined you could hold a child--but you couldn't. And he couldn't. And he is gone now, brain. And I am here now, brain.

I crumple to the floor, curled around my empty stomach. Four blinks, one exhale, I walk one hundred and twelve steps to the garden to gather the mushrooms. The crawling fungi. The seal's fur herbs. I walk one hundred and sixteen steps to the house, aquamarine blood staining only one side of my soaked-through bandages.

***

I go to the heart of the cave one more time, with the backpack, and tear off the bandages again. I point, and the blood flows, filling to the rim of the jar. Opening the backpack, I take out the flee-berries, the ember moss blossoms. The knife crushes the berries on the jar's rim. I plant tiny blossoms in the sticky juice. And I put the glass-ice lid on top, twisting it so it is entirely stuck. I breathe the words, through my prickling, naked lips, and the blossoms wilt. The juice sings. The jar seals, a capsule removed from time by the sweetest scent and an intoxicating song. Even time gives in, sometimes. Especially if you curse what it loves.

I plaster new bandaging on my face. Setting the jar on the shelf, I grab the backpack to return it to the cave's throat, leave the fake refrigerator that has always been fake. The Skeleton Cook is dancing in front of the stove, because he thinks a full jar means I might eat dinner, but my stomach heaves at the mushrooms bouncing in his hands.

So I go and say hello to the cat. I raise her from the rug she is sleeping on, all dull-yellow bones and missing teeth. If I tilt my head I could picture the sweeping tail that proclaims her as a sea cat, but those bones were missing when I found her.

The cat circles around my knees, bones clanking. I sit beside the scratchy couch, toss the rug over her, and pretend to pet her. If I close my eyes, the clanking bones could almost sound like purring. If I close my eyes, the fibers of the rug could almost be fur. Which is why I don't close my eyes.

This is just a skeleton sea cat, covered by a rug, bones clanking because the invisible strings holding her together aren't quite strong enough. That happens, with missing teeth. Missing tails.

I stand, and go back to the freezing kitchen. Skeleton Cook has managed to put unmelted water in a skillet, where the mushrooms bob. The heat comes from the rock, half sunk into the floor, old and hot. I wouldn't pull guts from them even if I had no other rocks. Because this rock is generous. Likes heating things up. I give them scraps, sometimes. For the favor.

The water steams, and Skeleton Cook dances in front of the stove, stirring mushrooms. He plucks a seal's-fur leaf from the counter and places it on the water, where it spins around like a madfishers's boat, green in a maze of beige icebergs.

Skeleton Cook stops dancing when he notices me watching. The leaf boat in the skillet quits spinning. So I go back to the room with the sea cat. And stare at the speckled egg in the corner, by the wood wall, in a nest of blankets. I don't let my fingers touch its smooth surface again, or ask what creature this holds and how long they have slumbered under the snow before calling. I don't let myself picture myself slow dancing, a baby slumbering beneath my skin.

I pet the sea cat under the rug.

***

For the record, brain, I never liked the taste of salt water. The same goes for tears. But the memory of you, him, Kolariq and the other boys, rises in me. And we are no longer sitting at the table in the alcove, eating sodden mushrooms and melted orange crawling fungi, sweetened and spiced by the oils and veins of my garden's herbs.

Dear brain, you crouched in the water, feet digging into the wet sand, staring furiously at the red blood you were supposed to be maintaining in a circle against the tugging waves. Though you were doing it badly. He grinned up at you, and since he practically asked for it you swept a hand to claw a gaping hole in his circle of underwater blood.

The ocean, while you were distracted, pounded yours to nothing. Kolariq sighed from the shore at you failing your lessons, his wide skirts fringed wet. You'd stared at those skirts, once, until Kolariq explained they were worn by a man owning land, a family. You revolted at the thought. Less so when he explained that he had never had anything of the sort. Kolariq just liked to get them bloody. You still frowned, wondering how anyone could own anything. Even their own skins. Even their own blood.

He--not Kolariq, he--tackled you, laughing, and you both splashed under. It was startlingly clear, that salt ocean tinged with blood--and the image of him, hair framed by sunbeams slow-crystallizing in water, lives etched in stone in my mind.

I finish eating. Stomp up the creaking wooden steps. I leave Skeleton Cook to clean up my plate at the empty table. I find my bed, like it is a seabed, but this one only smells of one skin, mine, and it is trying to hold back salt tears from mixing in my blood.