She can’t help herself. She laughs.
“Christ,” he says, and at the sound of her old nickname she bursts into tears. But he keeps on: “Did you know that the penis of the Argonaut mollusk was detachable? These male mollusks had a sacrificial way of impregnating their female counterparts.” The lights in the room flicker and die, but he keeps speaking. “The male had one arm longer than his others, known as a hectocotylus, which is used to transfer sperm to the female. The arm stored up the sperm, and when the male found a female he wanted to mate with, he would detach the arm during the mating process. I often think of that.”
Between laughter and sobbing, Christine manages: “What else is left in that obscene mind of yours?”
“Well, since you asked, the genitalia of the female spotted hyena—you remember what those look like? Hyenas?”
She nods.
“That of the female closely resembled that of the male: the clitoris was shaped and positioned like a penis, and was capable of erection. The female also possessed no external vagina; the labia were fused to form a pseudo-scrotum. The pseudo-penis was traversed to its tip by a central urogenital canal, through which the female urinated, copulated, and gave birth.” A low electronic voice articulates a danger warning. But Trinculo does not pause. There would be no repairing what he’d set asunder; only he knew what he had done to their otherworld. Only he knew how to undo it.
“This unusual trait made mating more laborious for the male than in other mammals,” he continues, “while also ensuring that rape was physically impossible. Of the female, that is.” He pauses. “Leopard slugs had long blue penises that jutted out from the tops of their heads.” He stares off into space, then adds, “Don’t even get me started on the corkscrew penis of ducks.”
“This is what you are pondering, at the end of life?” Christine asks gently, lovingly, perhaps more lovingly than she’s ever asked anything before.
“Life,” he says, “I’m thinking about life. How good it was. Could have been, if the order of things had been different. Might be, next time. In a way, you and I? We are the proud parents of what’s going to happen down there. I’m sorry about this next bit, because I’m awfully late, but I wanted to be sure to get this in.” He looks up at her, his eyelids missing, his nose mostly gone. “Happy belated birthday. You moon-breasted skysong. You wet and ever-blooming perfect.”
She leans in, opens her mouth to his, and lets their souls merge.
In a matter of days, they, and everything alive left in CIEL, will burn in the radioactive solar flares of the sun. That life-giving star. That fiery death’s head.
Chapter Thirty-One
Leone’s body on Earth. It’s the only life I’ve ever wanted. Bringing her home is the death of me, I know. I don’t care. She’ll live. She’ll become. Whatever that ends up meaning. Some story we don’t know yet untied from all the ones that have come before.
“Why death?” Leone sits propped up against a boulder, looking out toward the sea at the mouth of the Blue Grotto. My head in her lap. The sun muted and laden. She’s still weak, but her body will eventually heal.
“It’s the least I can give,” I say. “My body will create a mega catalyst of sorts.”
She coughs.
She closes her eyes, listening to the waves scoop up and drag the rocks on the shore, clicking like a new language. It seems true that everything from this moment on will be a new language. Every element and body and energy redirecting itself, making different patterns and forms. When she opens her eyes again, her pupil, cornea, iris, all look like micronebulae.
I sit up. The stone in my throat throbs enough to choke my voice from me.
I curl into Leone’s torso and nestle my head between her jaw and shoulder. The body is a real place. A territory as vast as Earth.
What used to be the sun is setting, kissing the lip of the water in the distance. It’s beautiful, but different than before. It looks . . . It doesn’t matter, someone will make up new words for it. I smile. Tears fill my eyes. I try to picture Leone’s face, every detail, her neck and jaw and shoulders.
“Where’s this special suicide supposed to take place?” Leone asks.
“Sarawak Caves. When you feel up to it. I want you to be there. I’ve learned a new way to travel.”
Leone laughs.
“And it’s not suicide,” I correct her.
“Why there?”
“Biodiversity,” I say. Leone stares at me without emotion. Or with something bordering on incredulity. “The other choice was underneath the ice near what used to be Russia.”
Leone looks back out at the water. “Good choice. I approve. Russia’s cold as fuck.”
Leone struggles beneath me so that I have to surrender my former position hidden against the warmth of her flesh. I hold her tight, speaking over her shoulder.
Leone sits as upright as a slice of shale. Her eyes bullets. “I hate you.”
But I know she’ll do anything for me. “Leone?”
“What?”
Nothing comes out of my mouth. I try to make my torso and arms into a sentence. I try to give her the words through my body. I want her to fall in love. I want her to fall in love so hard it hurts. I want that love to be something I’ve never even imagined. With everything left in me, I want to say something beautiful. Something unlike anything that’s ever been said between two people—not in the history I’ve known, anyway.
I point to the dusk—to the place where the sky and its fading light meet the dark and depth of the water, where soon the sky, stitching star to star, will reflect the black sea perfectly.