Chapter 298 - 289 — Not Today I

Chapter 298: Chapter 289 — Not Today I

The kitchen smelled of toast and the radiator was knocking.

Nyra had her exercise book open at the table with her chin about four inches off the page, wings out and folded loose over the back of the chair, horn up through her hair. There was a pencil behind her ear and another one in her fist and a third one, James noticed, on the floor under her seat.

Alice had the chair by the window.

Nobody had given it to her. Nobody had said anything about it. She had sat in it on the second morning, and then the third, and it had been about four weeks now and James had stopped noticing until this second, when his mother came across with the pan and stopped.

"Wing."

Alice looked at her.

It was a good three-quarters of a second, and there was a whole conversation in it, and James kept his eyes on his tea.

Then Alice moved the wing.

His mother went past to the hob without a word and put two rashers on Nyra’s plate.

---

"James."

"Mm."

"*James.* Which one’s the verb."

He looked at the page for approximately a second and a half.

"The second one."

"It’s a *noun*."

"Then the third one."

"That’s a *full stop*." Nyra put both hands flat on the table. "You’re not even reading it. You’re looking at it and not reading it, that’s not the same thing—"

"Nyra."

"He’s not even *looking* now."

James’s mother put the pan down and turned around, and she did not ask Nyra anything.

"What are you at?"

James thought about lying and did not bother.

"Thirty."

His mother did not go still and did not put a hand to her mouth. She picked the tea towel off her shoulder and folded it in half.

"When are you going in?"

James looked at the corner of his vision, where `[FLOOR 30 AVAILABLE]` had been sitting since the top of a stone terrace nineteen hours ago, unopened, the way a letter sits on a hall table.

"Not today."

Nyra’s hand had been travelling toward his sleeve.

He only saw it because he was looking down at the exercise book — the small fist coming across the table, halfway there, not yet decided about itself.

It stopped.

Then it went back and picked up the pencil, and she said, "It’s the *second* one, by the way," and started writing again.

Nobody said anything else about it. His mother turned the rashers.

---

She got through two more pages before she abandoned them entirely.

"Right. Watch. Watch, watch — *watch*."

"I’m watching."

Nyra stood up, put both feet flat on the lino, and rolled her shoulders back twice.

The horn went first. It always went first now, no bracing, no scowl, just down into the hairline like something being lowered on a rope.

Then the wings.

They came in slower. She had her eyes shut and her hands opening and closing at her sides, and James watched the whole thing fold down and in and away until there was nothing behind her but a jumper.

She opened her eyes.

"Hall," she said, and went.

He heard her go up the hall, and turn at the front door, and come back — nine or ten seconds each way — and she came through the kitchen doorway still concealed, still human, with her chin up.

And her shoulders were creeping toward her ears. Her breathing had gone shallow and high in her chest, the way it went before it broke.

James saw it and did not say anything.

Two seconds later Nyra saw it too.

She let it go herself. Sat down on the chair, blew out a long breath, and the horn came back up and the wings came out over the chair back at a completely ordinary speed, without knocking anything over.

"That was better," James said.

"I know. I got the hall *and* back, last week I only—"

"Not that."

She stopped.

"You stopped before it went," he said. "Last week it went and then you noticed. This week you noticed and then you stopped."

Nyra thought about that for a moment and looked slightly annoyed to be pleased about it.

---

Alice had been reading a newspaper she had no interest in for about ten minutes.

"Do you have to do this?" Nyra asked her. "The — all of it. The shoulders and the breathing and the whole—"

"No."

"Ever?"

"No."

"That’s really unfair."

"Yes," Alice agreed, and turned a page.

Nyra made a face at her and stood up to go again.

The horn went down. The wings started in.

The right one came in clean.

The left one got to about half and then the shoulder blade under her jumper pushed out again, and Nyra’s whole face screwed up trying to force it.

"You are pushing harder on the left," Alice said, without looking up.

"What?"

"You are treating them as one thing and they are two. You push the left harder because it is worse, and pushing it harder is what makes it worse. Do the same on both and let the left be slower."

Nyra stared at her.

Then she tried it.

The left wing came in behind the right, a full second later, but it came in — and she held both of them, and her shoulders stayed down for once, and she got about four seconds longer out of it than she had managed all week.

Alice turned another page.

James saw the whole thing and said absolutely nothing about it.

---

The television was on with the sound down and it was Floor 29 again.

Not the Captain. Nobody was replaying the Captain.

What was on a loop across every channel, every feed, every phone in the country, was eleven seconds of a red line running across a stone terrace, dead straight, sixty metres, into a lit arch — and then no more red anywhere.

They had it slowed down. They had it beside the Floor 28 clip. They had it beside the Baldwin clip from three weeks ago, the three of them stacked in a row across the screen, and a caption underneath that said THE SAME LIGHT? with the question mark doing a great deal of work.

James’s mother stopped drying a plate.

"Is that the thing from the prince?"

"It behaves like it," James said.

"That’s not what I asked."

"It’s what I can answer."

She looked at the screen a bit longer. The clip started again from the top.

"And it went towards thirty."

"Looks like it."

His mother put the plate on the rack, and then she stood there with her hand on the edge of the sink for about four seconds, not looking at anything, before she picked up the next one.

That was all of it. She did not mention his father. She did not say *don’t go*. She dried three more plates and asked Nyra whether she had eaten the tomato.

---

**Maeve:** *HQ. Ops have pulled everything off 25, 28 and 29 and cut it together. All five. Before anyone thinks about 30.*

**Cillian:** *"anyone." you mean james*

**Maeve:** *I mean James.*

**Finn:** *on my way*

James read it twice — not the content, the fact of it.

Four weeks ago finding that footage would have meant him, at two in the morning, scrubbing through six hours of his own broadcast and three foreign forums with a notepad.

Now there were people in a building whose whole job that was.

"I’m going into headquarters," he told Nyra.

"When are you back?"

"Half five."

She looked up from the book. "Half five."

"Half five."

"Right," said Nyra, and wrote something down.

---

Alice stood up and got her coat without being asked and without asking.

She concealed everything in the hall on the way to the door — wings, halo, tail, walking the whole time, no pause, no breath.

Nyra watched her do it from the kitchen doorway with her arms folded and an expression of profound personal injury.

"One *day*."