"OK," I said reluctantly. "But there's one condition."
"You're in no position to set conditions," Mr Tiny growled.
"Maybe not," I agreed, "but I'm setting one anyway. I'll only do it if you guarantee me a free memory. I don't want to wind up like Harkat, not knowing who I was, obeying your orders because I've no free will of my own. I'm not sure what you have planned for me once I become a Little Person, but if it involves serving as one of your fog-brained slaves..."
"It doesn't," Mr Tiny interrupted. "I admit I quite like the idea of having you toady to me for a few million years or so, but my daughter was very precise when it came to the terms of our agreement. You won't be able to talk but that's the only restriction."
"Why won't I be able to talk?" I frowned.
"Because I'm sick of listening to you!" Mr Tiny barked. "Besides, you won't need to speak. Most of my Little People don't. Muteness hasn't harmed any of the others, and it won't harm you."
"OK," I muttered. I didn't like it, but I could see there was no point arguing. Stepping up to the edge of the pool, I shrugged off the blanket which the Little People had draped around me shortly after I emerged from the Lake of Souls. I stared into the dark green liquid. I couldn't see my reflection in it. "What-" I started to ask.
"No time for questions!" Mr Tiny barked and nudged me hard with an elbow. I teetered on the edge of the pool a moment, arms flailing, then splashed heavily into what felt like the sizzling fires of hell.
Chapter SEVENTEEN
Instant agony and burning. My flesh bubbled, then boiled away. I tried to scream but my lips and tongue had already come undone. My eyes and ears melted. No sensation except pain.
The liquid stripped my flesh from my bones, then set to work on the marrow within the bones. Next it burnt through to my inner organs, then ate me up from the inside out. Inside my head my brain sizzled like a knob of butter in a heated frying pan, and melted down just as quickly. My left arm - just bone now - tore loose from my body and floated away. It was soon followed by my lower right leg. Then I came apart completely, limbs, charred organs, tiny strips of flesh, bare pieces of bone. All that stayed constant was the pain, which hadn't lessened in the slightest.
In the midst of my suffering came a moment of spiritual calm. With whatever remained of my brain, I became aware of a separation. There was another presence in the pool with me. At first I was confused, but then I realized it was the flicker of Sam Grest's soul which I'd carried within me since drinking his blood at the time of his death. Sam had passed on to Paradise many years ago, and now this final shard of his spirit was departing this world too. In my mind's eye a face formed in the liquid, young and carefree, smiling in spite of the torment, popping a pickled onion into his mouth. Sam winked at me. A ghostly hand saluted. Then he was gone and I was finally, totally alone.
Eventually the pain ceased. I'd dissolved completely. There were no pain sensors left to transmit feelings, and no brain cells to respond to them. A weird peace descended. I'd become one with the pool. My atoms had mixed with the liquid and the two were now one. I was the green liquid. I could sense the hollow bones from my body drifting to the bottom of the pool, where they settled.
Some time later hands - Mr Tiny's - were dunked in the liquid. He wiggled his fingers and a shiver ran up the memory of my spine. He picked up the bones from the floor - being careful to scrape up every single piece - and dumped them on the ground of the cave. The bones were covered in molecules of the liquid - molecules of me - and through them I felt Mr Tiny putting the bones together, snapping them into small pieces, melting some down, bending or twisting others, creating a frame entirely different to my previous form.
Mr Tiny worked on the body for hours. When he had all the bones in place, he packed them full with organs - brain, heart, liver, kidneys - then covered them with clammy grey flesh, which he stitched together to hold the organs and bones in place. I'm not sure where the organs and flesh came from. Perhaps he grew them himself, but I think it more likely that he harvested them from other creatures - probably dead humans.
Mr Tiny finished with the eyes. I could feel him connecting the orbs up to my brain, fingers working at lightning-fast speed, with all the precision of the world's greatest surgeon. It was an incredibly artistic undertaking, one which even Dr Frankenstein would have struggled to match.
Once he'd finished with the body, he stuck his fingers back into the liquid of the pool. The fingers were cold this time, and grew colder by the second. The liquid began to condense, becoming thicker. There was no pain. It was just strange, like I was squeezing in upon myself.
Then, when the liquid was a fraction of the size it had been, with the texture of a thick milk shake, Mr Tiny removed his hands and tubes were inserted. There was a brief pause, then suction from the tubes, and I felt myself flowing through them, out of the pool and into... what?... not tubes like those which had been stuck into the pool, but similar...
Of course - veins ! Mr Tiny had told me the liquid would serve as my fuel - my blood. I was leaving the confines of the pool for the fleshy limits of my new body.
I felt myself fill the gaps, forcing my way through the network of veins and arteries, making slow but sure progress.
When the liquid hit the brain and gradually seeped into it, absorbed by the cold grey cells, my bodily senses awoke. I became aware of my heartbeat first, slower and heavier than before. A tingle ran through my hands and feet, then up my newly crafted spine. I twitched my fingers and toes. Moved an arm slightly. Shook a leg softly. The limbs didn't respond as quickly as my old limbs had, but maybe that was just because I wasn't used to them yet.
Sound came next, a harsh roaring noise at first, which gradually died away to allow normal sounds through. But the sounds weren't as sharp as before -like all the Little People, my ears had been stitched within the skin of my head. Hearing was soon followed by a dim sense of vision - but no smell or sense or taste, since - again, in common with all of Mr Tiny's creations - I'd been created without a nose.
My vision improved as more and more blood was transferred to my new brain. The world looked different through these eyes. I had a wider field of view than before, since my eyes were rounder and bigger. I could see more, but through a slightly green haze, as though staring through a filter.