Winter Tide Read online

  Caleb struck a match and touched it around the edges of the interwoven boards. When they were crackling he held a cigarette to the flame, and lifted it to his lips. Then he shook his head and ground it in the sand. “It still hurts. Even after all this time. I’m not going to do that to you.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “If it hurts, why do it?”

  He shrugged. “I thought I was dying. Why avoid the pain? After that … punishing yourself gets to be a habit. And besides, it annoyed Trumbull—the Yith, I mean.”

  The summoning diagram hurt to draw. Not only physically, as the wet sand shocked me with unaccustomed cold. But the twining, pulsing equations of Mary’s spell intruded into my thoughts. Again and again, I checked my work for infection by those strange forms. I feared that instead of calling my elders for aid, I would draw in some other thing that waited eagerly for the access so recently denied. Or worse, I would call both together.

  “Check my work?” I begged Charlie. He put an arm around me and I swallowed tears. He looked over the spellwork, pronounced it good. I swallowed the irrational conviction that my oversight had bled into him through the confluence.

  Our fire leapt into the newborn winter night, and snow surrendered its form to enter the circle of warmth. A gust threw the flame sideways. I stumbled back; the borderland was thin between burning and freezing.

  Still, my bones warmed for the first time that day, and I pulled off my gloves. I couldn’t imagine shedding my coat, but I could face the night with more equanimity. Perhaps we humans were all creatures of flame, having gathered together around it long before we separated into our kinds.

  I took the bowl, brought from Trumbull’s house, and left the fire’s respite. Snow whirled against me, and the waves growled above the sound of the storm. I could just catch the glint of their whitecaps: ever-changing tendrils of a thing the storm barely touched. I knelt at the water’s edge, dipped the bowl during a lull between waves. The water sang to my blood, but its cold stirred the unearthly thing that pulsed there. Frigid filaments stretched eagerly into my damp fingers. Defiant, I licked my knuckles before retreating and tasted not the plain table salt from Trumbull’s kitchen, but the complex medley of minerals and shed life found only here.

  I spilled a little water on the diagram, passed it around so that we might cleanse ourselves. This I had not done at our first summoning, but today I needed it. Then the knife, and blood in the sigils. There was just enough, this time, to show faintly on the wet sand. I threw a pinch of blood-touched sand on the fire, bringing it with us into the calling. I felt the warmth pierce a little deeper.

  We chanted, weaving our voices around wind and wave and snow. The summoning rose, tasted us and knew us, passed on into the depths. And then we fell silent, and it was time for the hardest part of the ritual. We waited.

  Back at Miskatonic, Barlow paced and read aloud, glaring every time Mary interrupted with a question. Sally still took notes, now joined by Jesse, who caught what she missed when hearing faded. Peters read to himself, a scowl on his face. The cold seeped back in.

  “It’s your turn to tell a story,” I said to Audrey.

  She looked up, eyes dark in the firelight. “Now?”

  “Trum—the Yith was right. It’s an old tradition, and it helps. Besides, would you rather sit here in silence wondering how long they’re going to take?” I could have asked any of my companions, but I hoped the request would distract her, perhaps even help her hold against the things that fought to consume her.

  “All right, fine.” She rearranged herself, brushing sand off her skirt. She took a minute, but at last settled with her chin propped on her fists. “Once upon a time … do you guys say that? Or is it too easy to find someone who remembers the time?”

  “We say ‘It is written in the Archives.’”

  “That’s the same thing the Yith said.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but when they say ‘It is written in the Archives,’ they mean ‘I read this a while back.’ When we say ‘It is written in the Archives,’ we mean ‘Once upon a time.’”

  “Well. Once upon a time,” she repeated. Then: “No, I can’t. Not tonight. I’m sorry.” She pulled herself to her feet and ran away from the fire, down the beach. I shared a quick, startled glance with the others before going after her.

  The snow closed in quickly, though I could still feel a scrap of flame where I’d spread our mingled blood. Audrey hadn’t gone far—I found her a little way along the sandbar where the dunes pressed forward to meet the storm surge. She stood shivering, clutching herself tightly, letting the edge of the surge crash over her leather boots. She gasped frigid air, held the breath behind gritted teeth, released it and waited long for the next as if suffering some mortification. I touched her forehead, still bare despite all her layers. She winced, but leaned into my touch and after a moment began breathing more evenly, if a bit too quickly.

  “All the stories I know are lies,” she said. “And I can feel it in me, growing stronger. I’ve been able to feel it all day, the dark thing, whispering and shouting and trying to change me and it’s doing it, I can feel it. And I can feel the cold thing too, and it’s winning, I can feel it winning—I don’t even know how much of me will be left by the time it takes over.”

  My heart sped to pace her rising panic. I found some corner of calm I hadn’t known I still possessed, and pushed it at her. “You can do this. I know you can. I’ve seen you keep Trumbull out, for the gods’ sakes.”

  “Trumbull was different. She’s … slippery. Meant to move from body to body without catching on anything. These things are inside me; the dark thing is a part of me. It’s them, it’s the Mad Ones trying to make me one of them.”

  “Trumbull said the madness wasn’t heritable.”

  “Trumbull said they might have put in anything, during their experiments. It slept until something triggered it, but now it’s making me like them. I feel so angry at everyone, and I keep pushing it away, and it keeps coming back stronger and stronger. When you asked for a story I wanted to hit you—I wanted to, I don’t even know, break you. Like in my dream. I don’t think I could, and I’m glad, but suppose that changes too? I learn so quickly.” She pulled back from my hand. “You should cut me out of the confluence.”

  “Audrey, no!”

  “You’d all be okay without me bleeding into you—you’d be able to help Sally get better. She may be an idiot, but if you can get the cold thing out of her, she’ll still be a good person.”

  “You’re family.”

  “You’ve barely known me for a week.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But I know you. We won’t leave you to face this on your own.”

  She crossed her arms. “You’re being an idiot. You’re so much more important than me; you’re literally the last woman of your people who can still have babies. Your elders will tell you the same thing. They’ll kill me out of hand if they think I’m a threat to you.”

  I stared at her. “You think that? Is that why you ran off?”

  She lurched as if on the verge of some violence, but pulled herself back. “No. It’s why I came.”

  “Audrey…” I didn’t dare touch her; she seemed as if she might bolt at any moment. “They won’t. They wouldn’t. They know what we have.”

  “I didn’t expect comforting lies from you of all people.”

  I squatted, making myself small. I dipped cupped hands into an inrushing wave, dashed cold salt water against my eyes. It hurt, but it cleared my head. “Audrey, please believe me. The universe is a dangerous place, with little comfort to be found. I’ll do all I can to prevent it, but you could die of the cold, or of the dark, or of the void-touched storm. My family aren’t always nice, and they do what they must to protect their own. But they know that when the universe doesn’t care, someone has to. If we don’t care, we lose ourselves, even without Mad Ones changing our blood.”

  She laughed bitterly. “If everyone thought like that, Christians would still be getting gobbled
up by lions.”

  I’d read of such things in a history class, but didn’t want to argue the difference between self-sacrifice and holding on to something worth defending. It didn’t seem like it would help. I licked my lips. “There are animals that feed solely on Christians? Why didn’t anyone tell us?”

  That got the desired laugh, less bitter. “You need to learn more about the last two millennia.” She squatted beside me, and with an abrupt sweep of her arm splashed water on her own face. “Ow. That does kind of help.”

  “Let’s go back to the fire. No sense arguing over what the elders will do when they’ll be here soon enough—and no sense trying to talk me into something I’m never going to do.”

  “Fine. Throwing a fit just made me colder, anyway.”

  By the flames, Caleb was explaining to Trumbull more of what she’d missed. Dawson sat near him but, eyeing Spector, did not quite touch. Charlie nodded at us with a worried expression, but no one was forward enough to ask for a report.

  The first time we’d called the elders, the day had been calm and bright, and roiling waves heralded their arrival. This time—with the waves already high and the wind howling—they appeared silently in the flickering half-lit shadows around us.

  Trumbull gasped and pushed herself back from the fire, and a dozen scaled heads swiveled to stare at her.

  “You’ve found trouble quickly, Aphra Yukhl,” said my grandfather. I leapt to my feet and threw myself against him. Salt-damp arms enfolded me.

  At last I pulled myself away. “I’m glad you came. I don’t know what to do. We’ve gone from trying to retrieve our books to trying to keep someone else from misusing them dreadfully, and … and we’ve been hurt.”

  Grandfather held my chin and looked at me carefully, examined my companions over my shoulder, then lifted his head to sniff the storm. “The Yith fled home, I gather.”

  “Yes.” Trumbull rose to join us and extended her hand. I caught only a slight trembling. “Hello. I’m Dr. Catherine Trumbull. A pleasure to meet you.”

  I moved aside and Grandfather took her hand in his larger one. “Obed Marsh. A great honor.”

  “We have rituals, don’t we?” I asked. “To help people returning from the Archives? Some sort of guidance?”

  “We do,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. He bowed and introduced himself to Trumbull. “There is also a book, On the Rise and Fall of Stones, which you might find useful. But first it seems we have a more urgent situation. Tell us, child.”

  He gestured to the campfire, and the rest of us made room for the archpriest, Acolyte Chulzh’th, and my grandfather. The remaining elders stood guard against whatever might come out of the storm. Spector twisted half around to see Jhathl standing post behind him; she nodded and bared a sharp-toothed smile. Spector nodded back and after a moment’s hesitation turned firmly to face us. Snow hissed to steam against the leaping flames.

  I introduced Spector and Dawson as trustworthy representatives of the government, and then once more explained how we’d come to this point. With Trumbull, I’d had to cover everything, but could give only the barest outlines. For the elders, there were parts I could easily gloss over, others where I shared all the detail I could recall, hoping they might pick up on some clue of which I’d been unaware. Archpriest Ngalthr quickly proved himself attuned to my story’s subtleties, though not in the way I’d desired.

  “Hold,” he said. “Do I understand that you’ve decided to rebuild the spawning grounds?”

  I’d intended to bring that up in private. “Yes.”

  Grandfather—now sitting between myself and Caleb—put his hands flat against the wet sand and closed his eyes. “Thank the gods. I am glad you thought better on it.”

  I bristled internally, but kept it to myself. He had a right to be relieved, to have opinions on the spread of his own blood. “We had many reasons to do so,” I said. “But we must deal with this other trouble before it’s possible.”

  The description of Mary’s summoning ritual, if nothing else, diverted the conversation.

  “Are they mad?” demanded Chulzh’th.

  “So Professor Trumbull—so the Yith suggested,” I said. “We were fortunate to have her there, and more so that she stayed long enough to end it rather than fleeing immediately. But she took their memories, and did something to the brain of their best magical theorist that made her illiterate. Their confusion is making matters worse, but telling them about the Yith wouldn’t improve matters at all.”

  “She did—illiteracy?” Chulzh’th sounded exasperated. “I never heard the Yith were idiots.”

  “I’ve seen this before,” said Ngalthr. “She’ll have lost not only letters, but even the ability to draw a lion or a skull as a sign to warn of danger. To the Yith, those who cannot create and understand permanent symbols are scarcely beyond brute animals. The most terrible possible fate, and an absolute barrier to further work.”

  “Humans are less easily discouraged,” said Grandfather. “Someone will read to her, write for her. She’ll only become more determined to break through the mysteries that have scarred her.”

  “Perhaps,” said Chulzh’th. “They claimed her as their secretary. They may not want to admit the importance of her lost skills. It takes a man of imagination and confidence to acknowledge such genius in a servant.”

  “Mr. Barlow has more imagination than you might expect,” said Spector.

  Grandfather leaned forward, long fingers steepled. His talons clicked gently. “His team’s experiments are not blasphemous, merely foolish. But people are likely to die of their foolishness, and the question becomes how many they’ll destroy alongside themselves. Or how many can be saved, if we stop them quickly.”

  “We’ll not start another war with the surface over this,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. “Opening the outer gates is dangerous, but it isn’t the only way to destroy at such a scale.”

  “They endanger the spawning grounds,” said Grandfather.

  “So would a war.”

  “It certainly would,” said Spector. “Much as they annoy me, you may not try to kill my colleagues. I have been doing my very best to argue for a more cooperative relationship with the Aeonist communities, Deep Ones included.”

  “We’re supposed to be cooperating to stop dangerous cults,” I said. “Whatever they do or don’t worship, right now Barlow’s group fits that description. Why haven’t you sent me to infiltrate them?” I said it sarcastically, even as it occurred to me that he’d done precisely that. “Never mind. I won’t make you say it. Grandfather, we have a more immediate problem. The outsider that the Yith banished left something behind. There’s a piece of it in Audrey, and another in Sally—and it’s reaching into me. I don’t know how to get rid of it.”

  Ngalthr scowled. “That is the risk of a panicked banishment. Let me see. Aphra Yukhl, I can examine them most safely through you.”

  Audrey sat very still as I held out my arm, let Ngalthr cut another stinging sigil. My awareness was shallow this time, but grew sharper as I sensed the expanding core of ice within Sally, the cold and dark battling within Audrey. And realized that I ought to have warned him …

  Ngalthr sniffed deeply and then leapt up, hissing at Audrey. She leaned back, baring her throat. “Well, go on then.”

  Neko pushed herself between them. “Ngalthr-sama, don’t. She’s no more a monster than the rest of us.”

  “When did you learn?” Ngalthr asked me.

  “The Yith figured it out a few days ago—after our last visit. She said the madness wasn’t heritable.” Ngalthr visibly relaxed.

  Audrey drooped. “It is now,” she said. Neko put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Do you recognize the thing in her blood?” I asked.

  “I’ve only dealt with the Mad Ones once,” said Ngalthr. He shuddered, a ripple of light against crest and scales. “Not enough to recognize the scent on your last visit, but it’s grown stronger. I’ve never looked directly at their blood.” He flexed his claws. “N
ot with my inner sight.” He put his skin once more against mine, and I felt his minute examination as he probed through our shared connection. Chulzh’th crept close and placed her smaller hand beside his. Together they covered my entire forearm. Their scent, salt and fish and cool musk, mingled with burnt wood and the crackling immediacy of the stormy air.

  At last they sat back. “I’ve never seen anything like the way your blood is fighting,” said Ngalthr to Audrey. “But the outsider, that is a known danger. And, unfortunately, a tenacious one.”

  “Is it a risk to the rest of the confluence?” asked Audrey. Her voice shook.

  “Perhaps. But except for what’s come into Aphra from Sally, the outsider hasn’t truly spilled over yet. Should it defeat you, it might attempt to use your body for its purposes, for whatever time it could maintain your living form. It could not do so for long: they are blind, probing things, trying to manipulate laws and senses that they cannot comprehend.”

  “Can you do anything about it?” she asked.

  “I know what to do for a man of the water,” said Ngalthr. “Unfortunately it is a dangerous process, and depends on the sufferer having both finely developed magical skill, and great endurance of the body. Two scarcely-trained children of the air—or of the air and rock—are unlikely to survive.”

  “I don’t care,” said Audrey. “I’d rather die than have either of those things take me over. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  Ngalthr crouched before her. He touched a claw to her forehead. “I am not in the habit of torturing young girls to death.”

  She took the claw between her fingers and moved it down to her neck. “No need. Aphra has a knife, if you’re squeamish.”

  “No!” I said. I checked my waist to confirm the blade still securely sheathed there. “Stop doing that—if the archpriest doesn’t have an answer, we’ll come up with something, but we’re not giving up on you.”

  Ngalthr retrieved his claw. “I know this is hard, child,” he told her. “You have a few hours yet, before you must choose between death and surrender.”