Pure Chapter 38 Summary

Pressia (Fairy Tale)

• Make sure you fasten your seat belts, because this chapter is about to get wild.
• So Pressia isn't too happy that Bradwell is going to surgically remove the chip from her neck. She tells him he can't do it.
• This prompts them to argue, and Bradwell accidentally says he only saved her because he owed her grandfather.
• Oof, wrong thing to say, Bradwell. He didn't really mean it that way.
• Tension fills the room and eventually Partridge gets them back to the subject of Our Good Mother.
• Bradwell insinuates that Partridge didn't tell Our Good Mother everything he needed to.
• It dawns on Pressia that the swan wife story might be what is important, so she prompts Partridge to tell it.
• We've heard his account of the story before, but not the whole thing. Remember, earlier he ended the story at the swan wife's child retrieving the wings from the well, giving them to his mother, and her flying away with him.
• Ah, but it doesn't stop there.
• The swan life takes the little boy to the good king's land and tells him about the bad king's plan to make fire roll down from the mountaintops and destroy everyone in its path.
• The good king falls in love with the swan wife and gives her a daughter—his gift to her.
• But they couldn't stop the fire in time, and the swan wife has to seek safety for her children.
• She takes the boy and returns him to his crib, and she gives her daughter to a woman to raise.
• When the swan wife tries to fly away for the last time from her son, he grabs her feet and begs her to burrow underground so she can watch him.
• She leaves her wings and crawls into the earth; and it is because of the boy's sooty hands that she has black feet.
• Oh, so the inscription about the phoenix in the swan pendant means his mother will return to him.
• And the pills? She was trying to make him resistant to coding. Ah, that makes sense now.
• But something isn't right according to Bradwell.
• Apparently he had heard that story before; it's a Japanese fairy tale.
• But there's no good king, or daughter, or fire, and the swan flies away at the end.
• So Partridge's mother was giving him a code, not just a bedtime story.
• Bradwell surmises that the good king was Japanese and knew what they were doing when it came to Hiroshima. And the swan wife was a messenger to him.
• Is your head spinning? Have you had a lightbulb moment yet? Well if you haven't, don't worry… because Pressia hasn't figured it out yet either.
• Why does OSR know Pressia? And why is she assigned to find Partridge?
• Bradwell has the answer: Pressia is the daughter from the good king. She's Partridge's half-brother. They're both children of the swan wife.
• Mind. Blown.
• Unless you picked up on it way earlier. If you did, then good for you.