Read Online State of Grace by Hilary Badger - Free Book Online

shaking turns into rocking. Forwards and backwards, side-to-side, Gil lurches all over the place. His arms are circling now, his mouth drawn back in a sort of snarl.
    Next Gil starts up this high-pitched moaning. His arms stop circling. Instead they rise up and reach out for Dot’s portrait like he’s not even controlling them, like Dot’s literally pulling him to her. In the middle of his moaning he starts to talk but not in words I’ve ever heard before. It’s just a whole lot of garbled letters.
    I want to ask him what’s happening but when I say Gil’s name it just gets lost in all the noise. Then his eyelids open. It’s like Gil can’t see me even though I’m right there next to him. His eyes are blank white. As in, no coloured parts whatsover. His head tips back. He’s really shrieking now, jerking and rolling and sweating and everything else. It’s like Dot’s portrait is watching him and only him, like Dot and Gil are joined by some invisible, unbreakable thread.
    Then he says, ‘Yes, Dot, I understand.’
    And suddenly, without any kind of warning, the whole thing is over. Gil flops sideways, all limp and wrung out. His head’s on the cushion, his hair’s brushing my leg and he’s breathing hard. I touch his forehead, brush away the damp silver ropes of his hair until he opens his eyes and gazes up at me.
    ‘Okay. Oh my Dot. Are you alright?’
    Gil’s eyes are back in the proper place, pale as a wolf ’s with huge black circles in the centre.
    ‘No-one’s ever seen me like that, except Brook.’
    ‘Are you, like, prehealthy or something?’
    ‘No,’ Gil smiles, ‘the opposite. That’s just what happens when Dot’s inside me.’
    He lets this sink in before he adds, ‘I can hear her, you know.’
    Gil says this like it’s so ordinary there’s no reason for me to act surprised. But obviously I can’t help it. I’ve never seen anyone do anything like whatever it was that Gil just did. Not in a dream, and definitely not in real life.
    ‘At first I couldn’t understand her. I only felt her. But now I see her too. Now she talks through me.’
    I feel this sharp stab of prehappiness.
    Gil sees Dot. She talks to him. It’s obvious he’s been chosen, that he’ll be singled out on completion night. Whereas Dot shows me stuff that isn’t real and definitely isn’t dotly. I don’t know what it means, but I don’t think it’s anything good.
    ‘What does she say to you? I mean, is this how you knew about the signs?’
    ‘I see our lawn, washed in pale golden light. Dot steps out of the fringe and takes me in her arms. She always says the same thing. “Defend the dotly”.’
    ‘“Defend the dotly”? I don’t get it.’ A bubble drifts between me and Gil. He waits for me to fill in the gaps, to figure it out.
    ‘“Defend the dotly”’ I repeat. ‘Um …’
    ‘Come on,Wren. Dot created you intelligent.’
    ‘But everyone’s dotly. It says so in the Books.’
    ‘We’re created dotly. Dot’s saying we don’t all stay that way.’
    Images whirl into my head and out again. Gil’s hands crushing that wren. Flames licking at the feathered body. Then those prenormal images inside my head. People who shouldn’t exist. Places that aren’t here. Can Gil tell just by looking at me? Does he know? Dot’s inside him so maybe …
    I have to act like Gil’s conversation is having no effect on me. Gil has to think I’m normal.
    So I say, ‘What other way is there to be?’
    Gil gives me this smile like I couldn’t possibly understand.
    ‘There’s happiness and prehappiness. Calm and precalm. Why not dotly and predotly?’
    ‘ Pre dotly? Is that a thing?’
    It pops out of me in this little squeak before I have time to think or moderate in any way. So much for looking normal.
    ‘Dot wants us to defend the dotly,’ Gil says, all cool and pale. ‘It’s simple logic there has to be something to defend it against.’
    ‘Totally,’ I say in a rush, trying to recover as fast as