Winter Tide Read online

  Grandfather turned to me. “You carry a less personal link, however.” He took my arm, and I pulled it back. “Aphra Yukhl, we need no longer fear that she’ll betray us.”

  “Without me, she’ll fall to the cold.”

  “Then let her! You risk more than just yourself.”

  “We have a few hours yet to choose between death and surrender.” I stood. “Give me the time to think this through. I’m going for a walk, and no one is killing anyone before I get back.”

  Away from the heat and light, I looked back to check on them. I heard murmurs, but the fragile peace appeared to hold for the moment. That was good. Though the cold inside reached eagerly to meet the lesser chill without, I needed to be away from the fire’s complexities, alone with the ocean and the storm and my own confusion and fear.

  I’d seen for myself, over and over, that there are pains and ends that cannot be avoided. There should be no shock here. And yet I’d known too, when I said that I’d mourned too much to risk children, that I’d never grown inured to the pain.

  As much decision as there was to make, it wasn’t even mine. It was Audrey’s and Sally’s to deny or accept, to surrender or fight to a more dreadful and protracted defeat. But Audrey still looked to me. And I had no answer to give her.

  I knelt and dug my fingers into wet sand, felt the granularity of shells and stones ground fine by the relentless waves. I traced lines that added up to no spell, and sifted foolish ideas. Draw the cold thing into me (somehow, miraculously) and endure the treatment that Audrey and Sally could not. Find some other Yith (tonight, on whatever continent they made their current abode) and demand access to magic that no human had ever been permitted. Pray, and receive an answer.

  Each idea was more impossible, more hopeless. And yet, I wasn’t ready to give up. As Grandfather had reminded me, humans were not sensible that way.

  I thought of sand and storm and ocean, wind and wave and fire. Ways of reaching out, fighting, holding to what we wanted.

  The suggestion taking shape in my mind didn’t solve our problems. It didn’t save Audrey or Sally, didn’t retrieve our books or lever Barlow’s people from the library or stop their deadly experiments. And yet, trembling with cold where I could once have stood naked in the gale, it was all I could think of.

  CHAPTER 27

  “Could you ease the storm?” I asked Ngalthr. “Just here, around us? Or is it too strong?”

  “I can soften the tempest,” he said. His gills flared briefly against a gust of snow, closing tight when they found only open air. “You are too sensitive to the cold tonight. This isn’t safe for you.”

  “The outsider’s making me cold,” I agreed. “That will pass soon enough one way or another. But that’s not the reason. I celebrated Winter Tide with Charlie this year, on the West Coast.” The archpriest nodded approval, and I went on. “But it isn’t the same. I don’t know that it will help, but looking at ourselves under the stars, seeing where we are … either it might make it easier to think of something or … or it could be a cleansing, if…” I looked at Audrey, who nodded as well. “If there’s no way to save Audrey. If we can’t do anything else, we can bear witness. Do something other than be scared.”

  “I’d like that,” said Audrey, thin-voiced.

  Ngalthr dipped his head. “The timing of the ritual isn’t the most important part; it’s good that you understand.” He wiped the sand clean of the summoning, and began sketching the more complex sigils for the Tide ritual.

  Chulzh’th came up behind me as I watched. “You’ll make a good acolyte, when you come into the water.”

  “You do me honor.” The compliment gave me little comfort. But it made me wonder abruptly how I might remember this night’s crisis in a hundred years. Would I be an acolyte, learning to face such things with equanimity? I might be more like my grandfather, preaching and ranting to foreigners on land, and given wary respect in the water for deeds done outside convenient titles. I knew little of deep city politics, but enough to be aware that Grandfather never sat easily within any bounds given him.

  “What are we doing?” asked Spector.

  I started guiltily. “An actual religious ritual. Is that going to be a problem for you?”

  “As long as I don’t have to pray … is there anything I can do to help?”

  I smiled, in spite of the cold. “Just watch. And think, and talk. The Tide is more a way of looking at the world than any specific action.”

  He nodded. “At the Jewish New Year, there are a few days between when the old year ends and the new begins, when we’re supposed to meditate and make amends. Like that?” I nodded.

  Ngalthr stepped back from his diagram and gestured for silence. When he got it, he tilted back his head and lifted his arms to the sky, silhouetted against the fire. He chanted, a thundering bass that merged with storm and ocean, vibrating in my chest and loosening the ice there. It wrapped around me, a voice out of memory to make me shiver with awe and huddle close in gratitude. I closed my eyes, their corners wet and not with snow.

  The chant pulled me from myself, let me feel the wind and snow and clouds as another, stranger body. And I could feel, too, Ngalthr among the elements—not trying to control them as I had in my first attempt the previous month, nor surrendering to their patterns as I’d done more successfully. I could see now that what worked on a few clouds would have torn me apart on a night like this. He embraced the storm, coaxed it, negotiated as one might with a horse or some powerful but potentially cooperative predator. Or as if one could make a confluence with the uncaring Earth itself rather than mortal individuals.

  Gradually, the wind died down. Snow fell, but slower and more gently. A single slender crack opened amid the clouds, letting through a hint of the starlight beyond.

  Ngalthr sat, inhaling deeply. The other elders, too, settled around the outskirts of the fire, except for two who remained standing watch against the empty dunes. My awareness fell back to my own fragile body, half-burnt and half-frozen by a night grown marginally less inimical. My breathing eased, and some of the tension ebbed from my shoulders.

  “Now what do we do?” asked Audrey.

  “Look to the stars,” said Ngalthr. “Pray. Confess. Listen to the cosmos, and to each other.”

  I did as he bade, leaning back in the sand to watch the sliver of infinity that we had opened. Cool light spilled through, magnified to visibility as it reflected through the falling snow. Above, hidden, the moon lay crested by sunlight and shadowed by the Earth. Most of the sun’s other worlds lay empty this aeon, but some had once borne life native or invasive, and others would bear it again. Distant suns, too, attended worlds that bore or would bear life, and stranger minds waited at the void’s edge. Darkness and cold would take them all, and the stories of most would not survive their own suns.

  No meditation on cosmic humility could keep me from caring whether Audrey died tonight. I turned my gaze away from the stars, and moved to sit beside her.

  “I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said.

  She tilted her head to the sky. “Don’t. I got myself into it. I chose, and it’s not like you didn’t warn me what it would cost.”

  “I said magic would make you aware of mortality. It’s not supposed to speed things up.”

  “You also said the universe wasn’t under our control.” She laughed dryly. “My family will be so mad. They might sue the school, I guess. Winslows put on such horrible funerals—everyone goes to church, and then they stand around catching up on who got what job and who got married. How do your people handle it?”

  I wanted to tell her that it wouldn’t happen, that she’d live, but we’d already had that argument tonight. At least for the moment she didn’t seem inclined to hurry it along. “We used to go to the temple and say the Litany, and offer prayers for the dead to each god. There’s a cemetery up at the far end of the gorge, and we’d go there for the burial, and tell stories about the person, and a scribe would write them down in the templ
e book. Or on something else to be transcribed later, if it was raining. We’re supposed to pass the funeral records on to the Yith, if we can find one and get them to pay attention for long enough. But contact is unpredictable—it never happened when I was a kid, so the only memories preserved from that time period will be anything she found at Miskatonic.”

  “Well,” said Audrey. “I can’t complain that I won’t be remembered in the Archives. Rudely, I hope.”

  I laughed. “The record of how much we annoyed her will outlast the Earth.” It was weirdly reassuring. “And the saltcakes.”

  She sighed. “This is helping. I’m still cold, but I’m not as angry. I feel like I should … do something. Should I talk to Archpriest Ngalthr? You’re supposed to talk to priests when you might be dying. I never liked talking to the Christian ones, though. Is he going to try to baptize me or anything?”

  “There are rituals that involve immersing yourself in sea water, but this isn’t one of them. Yes, you should talk with Ngalthr.”

  She went to kneel before him. I wanted to hover, to hear what wisdom he might have to impart, but I recognized an odd sort of territoriality. I had, after a fashion, been priest to the confluence. Whether or not I had any predilection for such a role, I had no training, a contrast more apparent in the presence of real clergy. Seeking a distraction from my mind’s petty grumbling, I went to check on the others.

  Spector and Charlie spoke quietly with Grandfather and Trumbull, though Spector looked up long enough to say, “Yom Kippur involves less weather magic.”

  “I’m certain you have your own miracles,” said Grandfather, and they returned to their discussion.

  Caleb was talking with Neko and Dawson, who waved me over to join them.

  “How’s she doing?” asked Neko.

  “Better,” I said. “In mind, if nothing else.”

  “That’s something. This would be nice—ridiculously cold, but nice—if I wasn’t so worried about her. I wish she’d stayed out of it.”

  “She doesn’t,” I said.

  “I’ve been trying to think of a solution,” said Caleb. “It feels like we ought to be able to find a way around this, if we could only come at it from the right direction.”

  Dawson touched his arm. “You can’t, always.”

  We’d worn that circle bare already. “I never asked you,” I said to her, “why you wanted to study magic. It’s a traditional question.”

  “Caleb said. It seems a bit nosy.”

  “I know. That’s why I didn’t ask you earlier.”

  She looked down. Caleb reached for her, but dropped his hand when she didn’t welcome the proffered touch. She said: “I want something that can’t be taken away, if someone gets displeased with me.”

  I thought of several things to say, but instead simply bowed my head.

  “It’s a good reason,” said Caleb. He hesitated. “Not that it’s up to me to say so. I want to give you things, but I don’t want you to have to worry about me taking them back.”

  Her eyes crinkled, corners folding out into lines etched by past amusement and bitterness. “You’re a sweet boy.”

  The cold, which had ebbed with the ritual and the fire’s heat, stabbed through me then. A line of ice from brain to heart, stiffening spine and lungs. I saw a book grasped between aching hands, a flash of silent, worried faces—and then all sensation from Sally cut off save for that line of cold, and threads of desperation reaching in search of heat and air and light.

  I must have gasped, for Grandfather jumped up, grabbed me, and swung me so close to the fire that it nearly singed my skirt. I faltered against him but managed to regain my feet, and found that he’d startled me out of my paralysis. He pushed up my sleeve, touched the fading scar of the sigil, and scowled.

  “Enough of this,” he said. I realized what he was doing and for a moment I gave in to my fear—of the cold, of the desert heat that seemed its kin, of dying alone in their grip—and I simply leaned into my grandfather’s touch. He dragged his claw across my forearm, and the threads started to snap.

  “No!” I forced back the fear and shoved him away, almost stumbling into the fire. But I managed to push him off balance; he fell and rolled as Caleb scrambled out of the way. Both stared at me in shock.

  I wanted to prostrate myself, beg forgiveness, but that would imply surrendering to his judgment. It was unthinkable, by my childhood standards, to do otherwise for an elder. The guards, who’d turned at my shout, lowered their spears cautiously.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “She’ll die without me holding her up. She’ll die now.” I could feel her, something still human clinging to the remaining threads, drinking the heat that trickled through. “I can give them a few more hours.”

  Ngalthr rose swiftly and grasped my arm, though I tried to pull away. He was faster than Grandfather, and I had no chance to surprise him. Once he had me I wasn’t foolish enough to struggle. “Child, we need you,” he said. “Have you never learned to tell when a drowning man is beyond saving?”

  “You said you could save a man of the water,” I said. “I can take the risk, and the pain, to give her a chance.”

  “No!” Grandfather was back on his feet, and with Ngalthr on my left arm I couldn’t keep him from grasping my right. I pulled my left a little closer to my body, protecting the sigil as best I could. He went on. “I won’t see you hurt that way. You’re being foolish, and there’s nothing to be gained by it. Her family has more children than all our people together—your life is not your own to gamble frivolously.”

  “I’m not being frivolous,” I said. I tried to articulate my stubbornness, things I hadn’t known until they were tested. I didn’t even like the girl. “I am a Marsh. I will do things worthy of that name, not huddle in safety for the sake of bearing offspring. And if someone falls under my power—however little that power might be—I’ll use it to protect them. Some things matter more than whether Caleb and I become the last children of Innsmouth. For the sake of all the generations under the water, not just you who know and care for me, I’ll preserve the family’s name over our numbers.”

  Obed Marsh stared at me a long moment, and I tried not to flinch under his unblinking glare. Then he dropped my arm and stepped back. “I think you’re making the wrong choice. But I’ll grant you three hours. If your enemies can work miracles in that time, they’d best show you the gratitude you’ll be due.”

  I felt cautiously along the link and decided that in three hours—if Sally were still there to hold on to—I could have the argument again. “Done.” Archpriest Ngalthr nodded approval and released me. I rubbed my arm. Now that the rush of emotion was past I could feel the ice once more, strong and spreading.

  The others swarmed me: Neko and Audrey and Charlie all anxious to see whether I was well. Caleb and Dawson hung back—Caleb glancing nervously at Grandfather. I closed my eyes and tried to recenter myself.

  “Aphra,” said Audrey, “let’s try something.”

  I opened my eyes. “What should we try?”

  “You’re really good at running into danger,” she said. She stretched, looked to the line of starlight still jagged across the clouds. The wind, though still gentled by the elders’ hold, had picked up again. “But you’re not much for the really crazy gambles that can make the danger interesting.”

  I thought that danger was too often dull, and crazy gambles rarely considered just how much there was to lose. But that wasn’t the world Audrey had managed to make for herself, during her nineteen years alive and free. Daring, I said, “I’m not mad enough, you mean.”

  She nodded. “The archpriest said running away doesn’t suit my nature. He’s right. If I’m going to die, I’d rather see what my ancestor gave me. The stuff in my blood—it’s the only thing we’ve seen that can fight the cold. Maybe there’s something we can do to make it stronger, or share it, or control it better.” Her audacity flagged a moment. “Just promise that if it does take me over, you won’t stop them from doing what
they have to. Or argue with them, or hold it against them.”

  I took her hand and bowed over it, touching her knuckles to my forehead as if she were the archpriest. “I promise.”

  We made a place for ourselves close to the fire, glaring away those who tried to hover. In the midst of the Tide, there was no need to nest ritual within ritual: concentration was all we needed to bring the confluence into focus.

  Audrey’s blood had become a coruscating miasma of cold light and consuming darkness. Even the little that my mind still interpreted as water, it saw roiled with mud.

  A shadow fell over me, and Chulzh’th settled alongside us. “That was brave. And right.”

  “Thank you,” I said. Then: “We’re working.”

  “I know. I thought you might want help from someone who’s studied this for longer than a year.”

  “Aphra’s been studying for a year and a half,” said Caleb. We made room.

  It didn’t work. Audrey’s defenses responded to none of the spells Chulzh’th knew for controlling the body: they were not wounds to be healed or illnesses to be fought back, nor the common guardians of human blood. They acted as part of her when treated as invaders, and as some strange other thing when treated as her own. We couldn’t draw them out to defend Sally, and we couldn’t limit their reach within the body they claimed.

  The cold spread, likewise unresponsive. My hands felt made of ice. I tried not to let it show.

  Two hours and fifty-two minutes later by Audrey’s watch, a shouted “Hallo!” echoed over the dunes. The guards came to attention, raising spears and tridents.

  “It’s Mary!” I cried. Irrational relief blotted out pain, and I ran toward her voice, calling to assure her that we were here.

  At the dune’s peak I slowed to see what awaited us. Mary stood beside a dark car, directing someone who leaned over the back seat. As he straightened, I could see that it was Jesse, bearing Sally’s limp weight in his arms. The rest of their team was nowhere in sight.