Winter Tide Page 13

  I heard voices before I saw them: three boys wearing foil-covered masks with long beaks, and feathers dangling from their hair. They looked like metallic crows, perhaps the sort to gather a collection like the one before us. One of them spotted Audrey.

  “Hey, sweetheart! Someone leave you here?” He waved the list of clues in what I realized was his only hand. He looked older than the usual run of college students, though it didn’t show in his demeanor. GI bill. “Have you seen a ‘blood-soaked rose’?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.” She pointed at a case with a garnet pin carved in the shape of a flower. “That’s probably what you want.”

  “Thanks, sweetheart!” He caught sight of me and frowned. “Hey, come over here.”

  I didn’t enjoy such orders at the best of times; I gave him my best withering look. “I beg your pardon.”

  He strode over, and I braced myself rather than back up against the statue’s case.

  “That’s a fishface for sure! I haven’t seen one of you since I was a kid. I heard rumors you were around again, but I figured someone was pulling my leg. I thought they put you all away for bootlegging!”

  Charlie looked like he was ready to deck the guy. I put a quelling hand on his arm and repeated, “I beg your pardon.”

  He glanced at Charlie and backed up. “I didn’t mean any harm. Just funny to see a fishface lady visiting her things, is all. That really your tentacle god there? They always said Innsmouth folk kept some pretty creepy stuff in their churches, but that takes the cake!”

  The other two were watching now, looking nervous, and one of them said, “John, don’t bother the lady. Either back off or take it outside with her boyfriend.” Charlie tensed under my hand.

  Audrey stepped forward, drawing their attention. “Why don’t you boys leave now? You’re not going to look smarter if you stick around.”

  John glanced at Charlie’s cane, and our would-be defender grabbed his arm and chivvied him into the next room. The third guy gave us an apologetic shrug, bent over the rose brooch, and scribbled a quick note in his pad.

  “Um,” he said. “Sorry about John—he gets kind of excited but he doesn’t mean any harm. Are you really from Innsmouth?”

  I was getting extremely tired of this. “Clearly not, since they killed us all for bootlegging back in ’28.”

  He blanched, but said, “I’m sorry. It’s just, I’m doing my thesis on local history, and Innsmouth is this huge hole—no one really knows what happened there.”

  “Of course they do. They’ve been telling me about it all week. Ask anyone.”

  It was Charlie’s turn to put a hand on my arm. The history student started to say something, then shook his head, muttered an apology, and left.

  “Would it be so bad to tell people?” asked Audrey. “About what happened, I mean, not the other stuff. It might shut them up.”

  “I don’t like the company he keeps,” I said. And didn’t like what he’d suggested about rumors. Skinner must still be talking about us, trying to learn the reason for our presence—and reawakening old stories in the process. “Besides, people have studied us more than enough.”

  As we left, I glanced back at the statue, and wanted very badly to go home.

  CHAPTER 11

  On Saturday morning Spector seemed distracted, more so when I mentioned the disturbing conversation at the museum, and acquiesced easily to our suggested plan. I supposed visiting Innsmouth followed logically from what he’d witnessed. He pled errands of his own, freeing me of the need to discourage him from joining us. Neko was pleased to come along: magic might only interest her in as much as it mattered to me and Caleb, but family was another matter. Audrey, when she arrived, looked as nervous as I felt, and I couldn’t blame her.

  The old Innsmouth road had grown jagged and pockmarked. And yet, as we drew closer, we found crews repairing holes and sealing all with blacktop. The scent of tar mixed with the tang of salt. Gulls circled and occasionally swooped to retrieve the workmen’s abandoned crumbs, announcing our approach with harsh cries.

  At last we entered the town. The old ring of dilapidated houses, long used to discourage tourists, had fallen into even greater decay. A few had been cleared entirely to make way for foreboding new foundations. Where once the true town stood within that ancient protective ring, now were broken windows and sagging porches, slumped chimneys and walls fallen away to reveal crumbled remnants of kitchens, libraries, nurseries. I knew every street. I hesitated, but did not direct Trumbull down the turns to what had once been our house. And of course, she did not ask.

  Though I did not seek mementos, sometimes a glimpse of half-rotted fence or vacant lot, or the screaming of the gulls, would call a trivial childhood moment into vivid awareness.

  At last we came to the row of waterfront markets, stalls now collapsed into piles of salt-eaten clapboard. Trumbull parked, and we clambered over the dunes. Patches of snow clung to the sand. Wind rattled the stalks of dry beach grass, the sound so improbably loud that I could imagine not only the town, but the ocean beyond, become lifeless in our absence. Audrey, Charlie, and Neko pulled their coats tight and tugged their hats low around their ears.

  I had forgotten how much San Francisco’s rocky beach, embraced into the larger landscape by mountains and the shining reach of the new bridge, differed from this. The dunes hid all the land beyond, making a world of ocean edged only with a ribbon of damp sand. I slipped off my shoes and stockings, let my feet recall the feel of the sand, how it shaped itself around my skin and slumped in after, leaving shallow outlines to await the tide. Near the horizon, the thin black line of Union Reef lay bare and uninhabited. Behind it and far below, I knew, the outpost town of Y’ha-nthlei marked the true boundary between the civilizations of land and sea.

  “You don’t actually get cold, do you?” asked Charlie. He leaned heavily on his cane.

  I spread my arms to the ocean. “What do you think?”

  The waves slid onto the waterline and retreated, but I could see that the tide was rising. Beside me, Caleb shed shoes and jacket and ran down to the water.

  Audrey rubbed gloved hands together and ducked her chin against the wind. “Is that necessary? For the ritual, I mean?”

  “I imagine that for people of the air, it would largely result in frostbite. I don’t recommend it.”

  Trumbull wore coat and hat, but acted less affected by the cold than the others. She gazed out over the water, holding herself very still. It occurred to me that for all she affected indifference, the ocean was one of the few things to survive all her tenure on this world. It must mean something to her, to see whole remembered continents shaped into unrecognizable new forms.

  I, too, would see such change. I tried to imagine not only Innsmouth gone, but the dunes and beach eroded into a wider ocean, or crushed up into new mountains. I could not, and yet in the deep cities of the Atlantic architects already planned how they would adapt to aeons of seismic metamorphosis.

  I found a fragment of driftwood, and with it began to draw the summoning signs. I made certain to include Trumbull’s alterations. The world still felt deserted save for the six of us, a response to our summons as unimaginable as the drift of continents. At last I called the others to join me. Trumbull checked my work, Audrey and Charlie asked after the details, and all added their own blood to the central sigil. Caleb and I were most careful; we did not know the variant signs that would focus the summons on our elders, and the spell must recognize us as callers rather than targets lest we waste our efforts entirely. I recalled rituals where the blood of dozens blackened the sand, but today the ground soaked up our scant sacrifice without darkening.

  As we began our chant, the rhythm of the waves and the steady roar of wind forced us to raise our voices, and still drowned them out more often than not. Air and ocean sang another chorus, descant to our human tongues.

  The last of the chant died away, leaving only that descant. “Now we wait,” I said.

  Minutes passed,
shading toward a full hour. My impatience grew, alongside a fear not yet fully acknowledged. Caleb and Neko wandered down to the water and began flicking tide-smoothed pebbles into the waves. Audrey fidgeted, closed her eyes and tried to breathe evenly, fidgeted more, took out a cigarette. I stood and checked the progress of the ocean’s advance, worried whether we had placed the spell high enough. At the tideline, tiny holes washed shut as the waves covered them, appeared again as they were exposed to the air. My father had said they were burrows for some manner of mollusk; I crouched to watch them, trying to reclaim my youthful fascination. Eventually I wandered back to the ritual site, trailed by Neko and Caleb.

  “Maybe,” said Audrey hesitantly, “it’s not working?”

  “You are remarkably impatient creatures,” said Trumbull. “Do you think they’ve been sitting out on the reef for twenty years, ears cocked to respond instantly to your first call?”

  “No,” said Caleb. “But they might have given up on us by now. If they’ve all returned to R’lyeh to await the death of the sun, they’re well beyond our reach.”

  “Impatient,” Trumbull repeated. “And with no sense of how time scales. Your elders may be young, but after even a few millennia, twenty years is nothing. Certainly not long enough to give up on their remaining spawn.” Her voice turned steely. “Wait.”

  Caleb’s gaze hardened. “I apologize, Great One.” He hunched his shoulders to look up at her, mimicking a child’s fawning cadence. “Please, Great One, will you tell us a story to help pass the time?”

  I winced, and braced myself for either scathing reply or equally scathing dismissal. Instead she leaned back and stretched, digging fingers into cold sand. “That is a tradition of proper age and sense. Although if you prefer mockery, I need not.”

  Caleb affected nonchalance. “Go ahead, by all means.”

  “Hold on a moment,” said Audrey. She glanced between Caleb and Trumbull. “I’m missing something—what’s she? If she’s not one of you?” Neko, who would never have asked, stilled to hear the answer.

  Trumbull looked at me, amused. “Haven’t you told her?”

  “You didn’t say I could.”

  “I admire your discretion. You didn’t seem the sort to keep things from your students. After all, she is here.”

  I sighed. “Audrey figured out my nature on her own. Or came close enough that it made more sense to tell her than to let her speculate.”

  “In two days? Impressive.” Trumbull turned dark eyes on Audrey, who met her gaze defiantly. They locked stares, and then Trumbull’s eyes widened in shock. Only a moment before they returned to their usual bland amusement, but it was enough.

  I pushed between them. “Professor, I’ll thank you to leave my student’s mind alone.”

  “Calm yourself. I am perfectly content with this body; I was merely testing. Your student has a strong will. I would have had to work much harder to hold her.”

  Audrey’s breath had quickened, but she managed to match Trumbull’s own sangfroid. “That tells me what you can do—and it’s impressive—but it doesn’t tell me what you are except for three inches taller than me and in need of better glasses.”

  Trumbull smiled, an incongruous expression. “I am an archivist. I record and remember the history and knowledge that would otherwise be lost.”

  “And not human. Not even like them.” She jerked her elbow at me and Caleb.

  “Most of those who live and die on Earth are not human. Best accustom yourself.”

  I forced tension from my shoulders. “Needless to say, this requires discretion as well.”

  “I’m not Jesse,” said Audrey. She leaned back on her elbows, letting the wet sand cling to her sleeves. “I want to do magic, not boast about it. And I want to hear that story.”

  Trumbull nodded, and I relaxed further. This, at least, we had survived. And Audrey’s reaction made me feel again that I’d chosen well.

  Trumbull wove her fingers together and apart again, a not-quite-human mannerism that brought to mind the tentacles and lobster-like pincers of the Yith’s best-known form, the legendary “cone-shaped being.” Yet that, too, was a stolen body. I wondered in what ancient form she first heard this story, what she recalled as she translated the words for a human tongue.

  “It is written in the Archives,” she said, “that the human species in its infancy came perilously close to extinction. An incursion from beyond the solar system—its nature doesn’t matter, for it did not find these worlds congenial and passed on swiftly—left plague in its wake, and the young species reduced to only a few chance survivors.

  “Less than a thousand all told, they gathered near the mouth of a great river. There they huddled, pooling their resources and trying to protect themselves from the mindless but deadly forces that the invaders had left in their trail. Of course, being young and inexperienced they could not agree on what form that protection ought to take. Over weeks of argument, three factions arose.”

  The wind blew a fine cold spray off the ocean. I blinked salt across my eyes and imagined the African warmth of that river delta, and humans so rare that they must put aside all disagreement beyond the immediate crisis.

  “This is, necessarily, an oversimplification. There were more than three opinions—probably there were a thousand. But it is true that three of the most powerful priestesses put forth plans, and that most of the survivors eventually aligned behind one of these leaders.”

  Audrey leaned forward. “Just priestesses? No priests?”

  The look Trumbull gave her seemed almost fond. “Of course there were priests. But in those days humans had not yet learned how to magnify the power of a single drop of blood. Even the simplest magic required males to bleed themselves to weakness, or take blood from a wounded enemy or a successful hunt—and as humans hunt and fight in packs, often the blood would dry while those who laid claim to it squabbled. A female, however, could build much power from her monthly courses. And while she could do no working when pregnant, many spent the full period of gestation preparing a single powerful spell to draw on the blood and pain that attend childbirth. Most would simply use that power to protect themselves and their offspring—but those who sacrificed that safety for some greater goal were much admired.”

  I caught quirks of movement, amid her twining fingers, that might have been language with different limbs. “As it happened, these three priestesses each carried offspring near to term.

  “One priestess, a traditionalist—in so far as such a young species can be said to have traditions—called on humanity’s old allies of wind and fire. This was a good choice and an easy one. Fire has been tool and traitor for every earthly intelligence. Air, too, is a familiar force: one that grows from life and feeds it in turn.

  “The second priestess called on the solidity of stone, the shelter of caves, knowledge that forms like jewels deep in the earth. It was a dangerous choice, but it served her followers well for a few millennia.

  “The third priestess thought on the gods who are said to sleep in the deep ocean, the strange forms and ageless predators that thrive there, and she called on the protection of the sea. This was a good choice but a hard one, for while humans already lived on land, breathing air and huddled around fire pits, the sea did not know them and they did not know the sea. To accept its protection—” She paused and cocked her head.

  I turned to follow her gaze, and saw the waves break in a surge of iridescent shadow. A rush of scale and crest and talon, and a dozen tall, well-muscled elders bared needle teeth at our little group. They brandished tridents and wands and naked hands ready to ward or attack. Dark eyes looked coldly down.

  CHAPTER 12

  Charlie scrambled back in a panic, stopping only when he realized that the elders pressed close behind as well. Neko shrank against me. Only Trumbull and Audrey, along with Caleb, kept still—though Audrey’s stillness felt a brittle thing.

  It had been a long time. “Grandfather?” I asked.

  The tallest of th
e elders, a broad man with green scales shading into purple along his arms, bent and flared his nostrils. Neko squeaked. “Aphra Yukhl Marsh,” he said. His tone pitted delight against anger. He continued in R’lyehn: “And Caleb Nghadri. Are these mortals your captors? Say the word and we will rend them.”

  “No!” I put my arm around Neko, doing my best to make my affection apparent. I switched to English. “Grandfather, these are friends and allies. Allow me to introduce my students: Charlie Day and Audrey Winslow. My sister-in-adversity Nancy Koto, called Neko. And”—I paused as I sought and translated the appropriate R’lyehn title, which I’d never before had cause to use—“a member of the Great Race of Yith who prefers at this time to be called Professor Trumbull.”

  Obed Yringl’phtagn Marsh looked them over slowly, then nodded. The others lowered their weapons. Two trident-bearers whirled on their heels and dove back into the waves. I could no longer resist, but disentangled myself from Neko and leapt up to throw myself against him. He wrapped his arms around me and I buried myself against the smooth scales of his chest. Their complex patterns—barely perceptible beneath my fingertips—the strength of his embrace, the scent of salt and algae and oil, all enveloped me, familiar and welcome.

  He sniffed my hair. In our own tongue: “You’ve been sick, but your blood is healthy now. Where have you been, child? Where are the others?”

  I shook my head against him. “Dead.” R’lyehn was not a language for circumlocution. “Unless you found survivors after the raid.”