Winter Tide Read online

  “You didn’t say anything when he asked.”

  “I didn’t want him to talk about Deedee the way he was talking about … other possible mates.”

  “You have to know,” I said, “how these people treat women who have children out of wedlock. It’s not right to subject her to that. Unless—you’re not thinking of marrying her, are you?”

  “Of course I’m not going to marry her. How much mourning do you think I want to do? But Deedee’s not a fool. She’s been made to play mistress to Dean Skinner, because he’s useful to the government—it’s better than what she was doing before, so she puts up with it. But do you think she hasn’t thought about how to get out of it?”

  “So you two talked, and she told you to get her pregnant as some … ornate letter of resignation?”

  “Don’t mock. You just sat around pitying her; I’m the one who did something. Of course we haven’t talked about it. That would be planning treason, or something like it, on her part. This way she can testify that the inhumanly charismatic Deep One seduced her—she couldn’t possibly have been expected to resist.”

  I looked up at my brother. “You’re inhumanly charismatic?”

  “They certainly won’t believe she wanted me for my looks.”

  A swarm of boys passed, raucous with shouted plans and friendly teasing. All were clean-shaven, pale, small-eyed, handsome by any ordinary standard.

  “Tell her,” I said. “It’s far better for her to lie to the state about whether she had a choice in the matter than for you to steal that choice. Even if not for her sake—suppose you want to teach the child our ways, later, and she flees inland? A few children who never knew themselves until they changed, or carried a touch of our blood and never knew at all—that was one thing when the bulk of our people were born and raised in Innsmouth, but is it all we want now?”

  “Is it?” he said. “Do we want to rebuild?”

  “I don’t know.” My thoughts coalesced: listening to myself, I learned what I believed. “But of the idea of our children never knowing their nature, always wondering until the change why they don’t fit in—I don’t want that. To me, the choice is to have offspring we can raise and teach, or to accept our place as the water’s last and youngest children.”

  What an interesting—terrifying—thing to think.

  “She’s not the sort of person who wants everything laid out cleanly,” he said. “Sometimes it even makes her angry. You saw.”

  “She might get angry either way—better now than later. I don’t care if you lay it out cleanly, or in subtle insinuations, or in Morse Code. Just have an actual discussion about the possibility of an amphibious child.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He traced a line in the snow-covered walk with the toe of his boot. “She won’t listen to you, if you try.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m not threatening to do so.” It occurred to me, seeing his discomfort, that after the camps I’d sought connections, while he’d fled them. Perhaps he needed this kind of baroque excuse to let himself get close to someone new. For all I knew, Dawson did too: in many ways her own brittleness seemed a match for his. “Caleb? Let her know that if she’d rather another way out, we’ll find one. I don’t want you to be another man she has no choice about.”

  He hunched his chin into his chest. “We’ve talked about that.”

  * * *

  December 1945: In San Francisco, the Nihonmachi—Japantown—regenerates in patches. The Kotos find a one-room apartment in a building shared with a dozen other newly released families, and every morning we scatter looking for temporary work that will let us keep the place, and then for better work that will let us save for a larger one. We all want something less reminiscent of the camp’s confining cabins.

  Caleb and I, who wake every day shocked by hills and mist and the scent of salt, vacillate among extremes. I walk for hours with aching feet, testing my reclaimed strength and reveling in streets full of strangers, then in a moment find myself clutched by panic to realize my brother’s out of sight. Caleb clings to me all night, drawing Kevin into our tangle when the boy wakes with nightmares, then screams at everyone when he finds an orange going bad in a bowl of precious fruit.

  After a month of freedom, Mama Rei has regular business taking in mending. Anna finds work at the laundromat. And I walk into a bookstore with a help wanted sign in the window and stand utterly still, forgetting my purpose entirely amid the heady scent, until the proprietor asks impatiently what I want.

  “I have to go back,” Caleb tells us at dinner. There’s fresh salmon, rolled with rice and seaweed, to celebrate Anna’s and my newfound work. It tastes of home and freedom and strangeness, and I push down memories as I eat.

  “Back where?” Mama Rei asks. But I know what he’s tasted.

  “You want to go back to Innsmouth,” I say. “Caleb, there’s nothing there.”

  “You don’t know that,” he says. “Someone must have taken our books, looted our houses. The elders might still be around, too.” It’s hard to imagine: that anyone would wait for us so long, that they wouldn’t blame us for surviving. “Someone needs to go back and look.”

  “By yourself?” I ask. I put down my chopsticks, suddenly queasy as I imagine things we’ve lost, things that would be more achingly familiar than the raw fish.

  But he nods, and I can see his relief at admitting it. “I need to be alone for a while. I need to find out what’s still there.”

  * * *

  We were getting close to the church. Caleb craned his neck, blinking rapidly at the white-tipped crenellations. “Whatever we’re doing—I still want to save our books. Even if there are no children to learn from them.”

  “Agreed,” I said, though it hurt to think of them going unused.

  “We need help. The elders care about the knowledge those books hold, but I don’t think they really care about them as artifacts. They’re willing to put them aside. Maybe it’s Trumbull we should be talking to, if we want someone who cares about the journals, and the marginalia, and the family records inside the covers.”

  “You want us to ask that for a favor?”

  “By that, do you mean the ancient intelligence who cares little for our petty mortal concerns? Or do you mean the Yith who does what we’ve always known they do to survive, and has the nerve not to be ashamed of it? Because I don’t like those things either, but we may as well use the ‘Great Ones’ as people always have—deference and indulgence in exchange for legacy. She’s the one who got us into the library in the first place—even if only as a means to see the books herself. They must have a place to store records locally. Perhaps with one of their cults. I don’t really care, as long as they let us in without reservation, and as long as Innsmouth’s books are out of the hands of the thieves who stole them.”

  I started to speak, trailed off as rebuttals failed to coalesce. All I had was the gut horror of what Trumbull had told us—I did not want to ask her for help.

  He switched to R’lyehn: “It shows something about humans that we depend on the Yith for remembrance, but turn deaf to the cost until they say it plainly to our ears. Then we prate of scandal and horror. You don’t actually dislike the idea, you just don’t like how it tastes. You need to figure out what you really want, and what that’s worth.” He paused, and said more quietly. “We need to figure it out. With Audrey and Charlie. The three of you are all I’m sure of right now, odd as it seems—and if we don’t act together, I don’t think we’ll succeed at any endeavor.”

  “You…” I wasn’t going to put it off, as he had with Dawson. “You’re right, I think. I’ll meditate on it and we’ll talk, all of us. And I’ll think on Trumbull, too. Maybe it’s wrong of me to be repulsed by what she said—or maybe it’s wrong not to have been repulsed before.”

  “Of course we should be repulsed. But we have no control over who the Yith sacrifice. We do have control—a very little—over what redeems that loss. What’s remembered and preserved. I won’t be forg
otten, or have our parents forgotten, because I wish the Yith had found another way.”

  We stopped outside the church door. “Two days ago you wanted nothing to do with Trumbull, and were ready to let the land burn.”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m still angry. But if I’m not dying, I don’t have the luxury of letting that anger cloud my judgment.”

  “Do you want to come in?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  The church’s gas-lit interior was only a little warmer than the snow outside. The air within was still, held in place by stone and stained glass, broken only by a faint trail of cool wind as I passed the center aisle.

  No one else moved in the building. Any night in Innsmouth, a priest would have tended the temple: ensuring all was right with the altars and statues, waiting for congregants who might need a thoughtful ear. Dusk brings questions, and when darkness falls it’s a poor time to be alone with them.

  I was glad enough for the solitude, this time—I would hardly have asked the archpriest for advice on the confusion he himself had raised.

  I settled in the god’s embrace, and lit the altar candle.

  It’s common to meditate on the gods and their functions—though any priest would tell you those functions, the personalities claimed for them, the divisions among different species of deity, are simplified for the understanding of the young, with the priests themselves very much included in that category. There’s risk in defining the indefinable. Still, the stories serve purposes: guides for worship, mnemonics for virtues and fears, ways to consider the unknowable without being entirely overwhelmed.

  Iä, Dagon, guardian of waters, steadfast. And yet absent from Innsmouth when needed.

  Iä, Hydra, defender of waters, fierce. And absent too—here I could imagine Her well enough to feel bitter about that, as I could not in the museum. It had been a while since I’d prayed to Innsmouth’s presumed patrons at any length.

  Iä, Cthulhu, bringer of life and death, ever patient. I’d always felt most comfortable with the Sleeping God, and more so now. Cthulhu listens, and never promises aid that cannot be forthcoming.

  Iä, Nyarlathotep, herald of knowledge. A favorite of the Yith. But I considered the psychopomp’s customary role: showing the path to what was hidden, ensuring that wisdom could never be fully censored or forbidden or lost. I imagined a black-robed figure treading the echoing floors of the library, entering the stacks that Miskatonic’s guardians thought theirs alone, and smiling. Of course, it would as smilingly open those doors for Russian spies as for us. Nyarlathotep doesn’t play favorites, or try to protect anyone from the consequences of newfound knowledge.

  Iä, Yog-Sothoth, maker and keeper of gates.

  Iä, Azathoth, void and melody.

  Iä, Shub-Nigaroth, mother of fear. I had never understood that cognomen, had taken it as a joke when Mother simply said that children were terrifying. Have you not just told me of my own daughter’s death? Now, thinking of Grandfather’s raw mourning, I believed her—and feared further understanding. I thought on that fear a long time, and reached out to touch an encircling tentacle.

  A whisper of motion, a breath of ice, told me that someone else had entered the church. I froze, but didn’t blow out the candle. I stood and faced the nave, ready to argue for my presence.

  After staring so long into the flame, the rest of the church appeared dim and deeply shadowed. My nostrils flared, and brought me the scent of snow and musky cologne, some odd chemical astringence, and below that the more natural musk of a nervous man of the air. Boots scraped the floor, and at last my eyes picked out the form of Jesse Sadler. I felt a wave of irritation before recalling that Leroy was a good friend of his. The astringent scent was from the hospital, and he had every right to seek me out.

  Although hadn’t Leroy and Sally sworn not to mention my family?

  “Miss Marsh?” he called hesitantly.

  I stepped to the side. “You’re welcome to join me.”

  He trod into the circle of candlelight. “Please don’t be angry. I kept pressing them—I knew that Audrey hadn’t gone to Innsmouth. Finally, after she left, Sally told me to ask you. I thought I might find you here.”

  Apparently Audrey’s lessons in effective deception went only so far. “Suppose I tell you that what happened isn’t likely to be a danger to you and yours again, and that you’re better off not knowing? Because both those things are true.”

  “Then I would agree that you’re probably right, and leave.”

  I sighed. “And promptly do everything in your power to investigate?”

  He sank to the floor before the altar, kissed two fingers and touched them to the stone. “I’m a biology minor. I know the track and sign of every animal found in eastern Massachusetts. There are no wolves. If there are monsters, they fall within the scope of my major—and they could carry all manner of infection, or have developed a taste for my best friend’s blood. So no, I can’t leave be.” He shrugged and spread his arms. “I really hope Sally wasn’t hinting that I ought to bring some sort of weapon and force you to help. It seemed like a terrible idea—but if you’re going to grow claws and attack me, you may as well do it now.”

  I shuddered and sat beside him. “I’m glad you didn’t. I’ve had a horrible day already.”

  “I heard those weird government people arrested a bunch of girls earlier. That wasn’t you and Audrey, was it?”

  “That was me, yes. But not Audrey, who’s more sensible than to come in through a guarded gate. They let us go, anyway.”

  He nodded. “I don’t like having those people on campus. Miskatonic minds its own business, and they just come barging in here like they know anything about us. Are they looking for whatever got Leroy?”

  I rubbed my arms as if against the chill. I brushed my hand across my forearm and the sigil that connected me to Sally, caught the echo of tension and boredom in her distant skin. “No. Them arriving today is—not coincidence, I think, but not directly connected, either.” I weighed whether to warn him that they were interested in his old friend Kirill. “As for what attacked Leroy … he ran afoul of my family.”

  “Your family have claws?” His eyes flicked downward, and I held out my long-fingered hands with their ordinary nails for his inspection.

  “Some of us. Give me a few years.” Explaining this to him was a terrible idea—but it was late, and I was tired, and I couldn’t see a good way around it. Perhaps I needed lessons from Audrey as well. “Leroy was rude to her. She was rude to him. He hit her, and she was hurt enough to fight back. I don’t think she gained any taste for his blood—she helped us save him.”

  “Huh.” He leaned back, and it took me a moment to interpret the expression on his face as a sort of horrified wonder. “I don’t suppose they’d talk to me? It must be an amazing thing, going through that kind of change—I mean, I assume you don’t just grow claws?”

  I stiffened. “I thought you believed there were things beyond human understanding.”

  “Cosmic mysteries that can’t be understood through science, sure. But this is biology.”

  “We’re not some sort of experiment for your edification.”

  He held up his hands, placating. “Sorry—I didn’t mean to upset you again. But you can’t blame a guy for being curious.” He reached out and touched my cheek.

  I should have slapped him at once for taking such a liberty. Instead, I’m ashamed to say, I froze. He took that as invitation, and drew my face toward his. His breath smelled of burnt meat and a horrid mixture of fear and excitement, and it spurred me into motion. I pushed him back—harder than I intended to, harder than an ordinary woman of my size could have managed. He flung his arms back and managed to avoid hitting his head against the stone wall of the shrine. He lay still for a moment, blinking rapidly.

  “Mr. Sadler,” I said, drawing from script. “I’m afraid you have misunderstood me entirely.”

  “Yeah.” He sat up, rubbing his neck and eyeing me mor
e cautiously—though with no less desire. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any offense.”

  “So long as you keep your hands to yourself, we’ll forget that it happened.”

  He nodded, and examined his arms. They looked bruised, and I caught a whiff of blood. “I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I won’t try it again. I take a girl at her word. Safer that way—especially with you!”

  I tried to reclaim the trail of our conversation. “That may be. I don’t think you’d get along with my family, either, and I hope you’ll respect my not making introductions. As for this afternoon—Miss Ward told me about your tryst with her and Mr. Price.”

  He blanched. “She told you about that?” He swallowed, added quietly: “She was … I mean, we didn’t…”

  “As long as they were both interested, it doesn’t change my opinion of you”—irritating and smarmy, with extremely foolish ideas about magic—“but she told me as surety for her silence, and I won’t hesitate to tell those who will object, if you start talking to people about my family. We’ve suffered greatly when others knew of our presence, and all we want now is to be left alone.”

  Jesse nodded hurriedly. “I understand, I really do.” He stood, started to back away. “Uh—is there anything I should know? To help Leroy?”

  I shook my head. “At this point, they’re just ordinary wounds. I did everything I could for him before he went anywhere near the hospital.”

  “Gotcha. Okay. Good. I’ll see you around.”

  I waited until the door creaked shut and I could no longer hear his boots. I knelt before the altar, curled against myself until my forehead touched the cool marble floor, and wished for the vastness of the ocean between me and all men of the air.

  CHAPTER 18

  I slept poorly. No sickening dreams whose reality I might deny—instead, I startled awake a dozen times, convinced that a particular camp guard loomed in the door to check on our slumber. Once I woke Neko as well, whimpering the man’s name, and she shivered and put her arm over me.