The Belly of the Beast

Ch. 51, The Pool

We both agreed that we couldn't stay in the dead level long. The Top had killed an entire level, and spread a lie throughout the Beast to keep it secret. If they knew we had been here...well, our days were already numbered without adding another reason to kill us. Still, neither of us were eager to rush back unprepared or unarmed. We decided that we should explore, to see if we could find any weapons to give us an advantage in the Jackal Letter Trial. That way if Skull and the others cornered us again, they wouldn't find us so helpless.

Together, we began to explore the strange, lonely world of the N's.

Most of the rooms were empty, but a couple hours in we passed into a room that made me stop and smile. Everything in the room had been modeled to look as if we were in some sort of tropical jungle, with chairs painted green hidden beneath the foliage. Plants clung to the walls, with leaves bigger than my head and flower so bright and dramatic they could only be fake. Curving between the greenery, fitted with boulders and rocks made to mimic a real forest, was a turquoise pool of water.

"What is this place?" I said, examining a leaf and finding it plastic. Why on second earth would you have a plastic plant next to a body of water?

But Dagger didn't seem to find anything strange about the room, or the useless plants. "It's the public pool." He looked over at me, genuine curiosity in his voice. "Don't you have pools in the Belly? You must have learned to swim somewhere."

I laughed at the idea of an area to swim for fun. "Sure, we learned, because one of the engineers fell into one of the big water tanks and drowned. But we weren't supposed to swim in them." Not that it ever stopped us.

I made my way over to the pool, peering down into the clear water, and the way it still rippled. Water ran through the entire Belly, and there was no way to skip a level, still, it felt like a waste to have so much clean water here. I leaned closed and sniffed. "This water smells funny though."

"It's chlorinated. So it doesn't grow bacteria and is safe to swim in."

"How can you be sure?"

He pointed to a spot nearly hidden beneath the leaves. "The filter is there." Then he stopped, and smiled. "Did I just know something you didn't? Guess I'm the brains of the operation now. Maybe I can become an engineer after all this"

I laughed, "Well if I ever get back to the Belly, I'll put a good word in for you." Dag didn't seem to think anything of my words, walking deeper into the strange room, but they stopped me short. Till now I hadn't considered what would happen if I won the Letter Trials. I wouldn't go back to the Belly, but to some new life on the Top. The thought was unsettling instead of reassuring. It doesn't matter. All that matters is finding Xyla.

Before me, Dagger trailed his hands through the water, casting ripples that caught the light and reflected on his face and across the room, like we really were in a jungle, and he was just a boy gathering water for his girl and... Bloody Beast, Z, what the hell are you thinking?

"Do you think it's true about winning the trials?" I blurted out, leaning out to look over at the water. It was a beautiful turquoise shade I'd once seen in a book with mermaids and pirates and a flying boy. A lagoon, I think they'd called it. "If you win the Letter Trials you get a new letter and a perfect life on the Top?

Dagger shrugged, and I couldn't read his face as he stared away from me. "Why go to The Top when we've got a deserted level here? With an entire pool to swim in?"

"Only problem is figuring out if anything is living in it." My thoughts instantly went back to the shark creature from the last trial.

"I already thought of a solution for that."

I would have expected it from Xyla, but I was completely caught off guard when Dagger's arms swept my legs out from under me, his smiling lips so close to mine I forgot to struggle.

Then he tossed me into the pool.

His laughter was the last thing I heard before the water swallowed my protests. I floundered to the surface, spluttering and spitting out water. Dagger laughed as I surfaced, and splashed him with water.

"So the humourless Dagger can laugh. Glad it only took throwing me into a pool."

He smiled, and then stripped his shirt off, and I pretended to be vitally interested in the pool's bottom. Then he set down the satchel with the bible, put his arms together and dove in beside me. I splashed him when he came up, and we spent a few minutes like that, laughing and playing like we really were just two people with nothing better to do than waste the day away.

Later, we sat together on the edge of the pool, trailing our feet in the water, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Mine were a confusing mix of the dead woman, the riddle, and trying not to look at Dagger with his shirt off.

"You think it's bad to be enjoying ourselves, while others are killing each other?" Dagger said.

I sighed, and then laid on my back on the cement, a chill running through me. Unlike the shirtless Dagger, my clothes were soaked and I wasn't nearly brave enough to take them off to dry. "Dagger, at any moment in the world, someone is killing someone, falling in love, dying or being born. You can't care about all of them."

He watched me with a bemused, searching look.

"What?" I sat up, pushing my now even wilder hair back, feeling a surge of self-consciousness at his gaze.

"You're kind of a contradiction, you know that?" His lips twitched.

A contradiction? Was that a good thing or a bad thing? "How so?"

"You took the lowest letter as a name when you could have chosen any other. You killed men, but you also tried to save them. You care that the Top killed an entire level, and yet you tell me you can't care about everyone. So which one are you?"

I contain multitudes. The line came to me, from a poem I'd long forgotten the name too. But why couldn't I be all of them? Maybe I was tired of only being a Z.

"Not as much of a contradiction as you," I said instead of answering.

I could see my response surprised him. He turned back to watch the pool, his words cautious, "How so?"

"You could have killed me, but you didn't. You teamed up with a Z, when you could have chosen any other partner."

He shook his head, staring out over the water, again the heaviness seeming to settle over him. "It's different. I... deserve to be here. If you knew what I'd done. . . "

"Then tell me. Tell me why you entered the Letter Trials."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

His voice was soft, agonized, as if it hurt him to speak the words. "Because then you will leave me too." He stood, striding away from me.

"Dag, stop." I followed him deeper into the room, when he froze, his next words stopping me dead.

"There's someone here."

"There can't be." The room, once quaint and cozy, now felt dangerous. I followed his gaze through the false greenery, every nerve standing on end.

Dagger cleared his throat, and then called out, "I saw you. You can come out now." His voice disappeared into the fake trees and palms.