Winter Tide Page 6

  As Neko had said earlier, I walked because I could. The air smelled clean and crisp. It would have been too dry save that gusts periodically tossed snow aloft from the branches and drifts. I plucked an icicle from Trumbull’s fencepost and sucked on it as I walked.

  Arkham was not much larger than Innsmouth save for the college buildings, but it was more urbane and attracted more visitors. The streets seemed full of strangers, not only to me but to each other. As I put space between myself and the campus, I witnessed few casual encounters. People shuffled briskly, chins buried in thick coats.

  In San Francisco, I had neighbors who knew my name and did not despise me, friends and adoptive family who knew and loved me. But I had no one who understood what I was, where I came from. The gambrel roofs and sagging Victorians of Arkham, the streets hemmed in by snow, invoked memories of Innsmouth, where we required no effort to understand each other’s ways.

  I wandered for some while. I knew my self-pity for indulgence, and yet the walking was itself a comfort. The rhythm of my steps, the feel of breath and muscle, drew me slowly from my ruminations to a more meditative state. My awareness spread, or narrowed, so that I now saw the houses beside me, the people hurrying on purposeful errands, the snowbanks and trees and parks, and not the imagined houses and people and snow and trees of Innsmouth.

  I became aware of the rumble and hiss of flowing water. Following the welcome sound brought me to the Garrison Street Bridge over the Miskatonic River. Here, clapboard houses lined the precipitous bank. Porches jutted over the water, leaning downstream. Just past the bridge, the river widened and slowed, and a small island marked where the calmer flow had dropped detritus over the years. It was a spot of pure white land and charcoal-sketch trees amid the kaleidoscope of bobbing ice.

  The river smelled less welcoming than it sounded. Acids and lye from the upstream textile mills assaulted me, and some inner instinct warned me that they would burn gills and clog lungs. My neck muscles clenched in as-yet-useless protective reflex.

  At the cusp of the bridge, one old house had installed a waterwheel. It no longer turned, but it had been brightly painted in blue and orange, like the wheel of the steamboat in my childhood copy of Huckleberry Finn. (Which I had forgotten to put on the list.) A wide porch, sturdier than most, wrapped around the building, laid out with tables and chairs. These now stood empty and slick with icemelt, but the entrance marked the place as The Book Mill, and Open.

  A bell sounded as I entered: chimes, deeper and more somber than the usual jangle. I inhaled the familiar scent of old paper and leather and the vanilla-edged whiff of pipe smoke. The bones of whatever had been here before were brighter and more spacious than Charlie’s store. It still felt like home. I realized that what most distressed me about Miskatonic’s library, what had kept me away all morning despite my love for the collection entombed there, was the absence of that expected comfort.

  Voices rose on the far side of the shelves. I followed them to an alcove jutting over the river, where a portion of the store had been given over to a small café. Clusters of sleek young people sat amid coffee cups and half-eaten pastries and cigarette stubs and open books. They leaned close or tilted their chairs, avid in their discussions.

  One of the boys saw me and grinned. “Hi! What’s this?”

  I froze, and put a hand on the nearest shelf to steady myself.

  “She’s not from Hall,” said one girl. Turning to another, she added, “That’s a face you wouldn’t forget.”

  “You work in one of the factories?” asked the boy.

  I let go the shelf. “I’m Aphra Marsh. I’m visiting Miskatonic for research in the library.”

  “Woo! They let you in?” The second girl hooked a free chair from a nearby table and patted it. She waved her hand expansively, trailing acrid smoke. “I’m Audrey Winslow. I took the special Introductory Folklore course last summer, but they wouldn’t let me near anything interesting. What’re you studying?”

  I took the chair with some trepidation. “Mathematics. And folklore as well, perhaps.”

  “Ah,” said the boy. “You mean magic.” He shot a look at Audrey, who rolled her eyes.

  “If you want to call it that,” she said while I was still deciding how to respond.

  “If,” said another boy, “you want to remain mired in superstition instead of acknowledging that ancient wisdom might merely be another form of modern science.”

  And they were off, arguing lightly about the fundamental nature of the universe.

  During a collective pause for breath, Audrey asked me: “What do you think, Aphra?”

  I considered the wisdom of a serious answer, and shrugged. “If magic violates the fundamental laws of nature, they clearly weren’t all that fundamental.”

  “But do you think they connect?” asked the first boy, the one who had called magic by name. “Maybe there are things we can never learn through science. Things beyond understanding in any rational way.”

  “Like why Sally won’t go steady with you?” asked the other boy, and the first girl—Sally, I presumed—blushed.

  Audrey leaned in and whispered to me: “That’s Jesse Sadler, Leroy Price, and Sally Ward. Don’t mind Jesse—he wants everything to be fathomless mystery. That’s fine for him—he can get into the stacks.”

  “But it’s true,” I said, drawn in despite myself. “There are different ways of understanding the universe, and you learn nothing by running an experiment if a spell or a sculpture is what’s needed. And there are things we’ll never understand because we don’t have the time, or the right sorts of minds.”

  “Defeatist,” said Leroy. He preened a hand through slick hair.

  I blinked. “You have a narrow definition of victory.”

  Jesse smirked and took a sip of coffee. “Lady has a point. The universe is vaster and stranger than we can know. Maybe than we should know.” He intoned this with the confidence of someone to whom the universe had so far denied nothing. I stared out the window at the tainted river.

  “Say,” he continued. “Where are you from?”

  “San Francisco,” I said, still distracted.

  “Are you sure? You sound local.” I barely had time to catch my breath before he continued. “Marsh? Like the Innsmouth Marshes? My mother used to talk about them; I thought they all left.”

  “Yes,” I said faintly. “They left.”

  Sally was already leaning forward. “Innsmouth? The old ghost town? I heard it’s haunted.”

  “Going to be some upset ghosts, then,” said Leroy. “Someone bought up the land, and they’re building new houses.”

  She pouted. “You’re no fun.”

  “Don’t blame me, blame the developers. And all the soldiers who want nice places to settle with their sweethearts.”

  “You should drive us there before they knock everything down. See if we can find any ghosts.”

  Leroy preened again. “Sounds like a gasser.”

  I stood. “Pardon me. It was a pleasure to meet you all.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that,” said Leroy. “We were just—” but I fled to the shelter of the aisles with my eyes dry.

  I had known that Miskatonic’s scholars did not see the world as we did. In the pews and streets of Innsmouth we’d mocked them as dilettantes and power-seekers, godless, prurient, exploring Aeonist philosophy and practice as others might take a safari.

  It was harder now.

  I thought of seeking out the store’s occult section, which must have some worthwhile content to attract the university’s tourists. But more of their kin might be there, gossiping over clever interpretations of the Necronomicon and squealing over Innsmouth’s picturesque ruins. My courage failed me. Instead I hurried out onto Garrison Street.

  Arkham felt less of a refuge now. I sought my bearings. If I followed the river upstream, I must eventually return to campus.

  “Hey, hold up!” I whirled at Audrey’s voice. “I’m really sorry about those guys. They can be dri
ps sometimes.”

  I tried to slow my racing blood. “I will not disagree.” I walked, as briskly as I could without giving the appearance of fear, back toward the street that paralleled the river.

  Audrey, sleek in her A-line skirt and heels, scurried to keep up. “They didn’t mean—are you really from Innsmouth?”

  I turned, as I always found myself doing toward danger. With a jolt of fear I realized that I had left just such a risk behind in the Mill: Audrey’s friends might even now be polishing old rumors, salivating over blood libels that had grown dull in our absence. “What of it if I am?”

  “Makes no difference to me. It just seems creepy for them to be wandering around your old house looking for ghosts, that’s all.”

  “Creepy. Yes, that’s one word for it.”

  She didn’t seem inclined to leave me be. I looked her over: narrow nose and small eyes, limp blonde hair, not a drop of Innsmouth blood in her. But she watched me eagerly, with the familiar curiosity one might offer a newly met relative.

  “What do you want of me?” But even as I asked, I realized. “You think I can get you into the library. I barely gained permission myself.”

  “It’s not that.” Although from the slump of her shoulders, that must have been part of it. “They still talk about Innsmouth at Hall, you know.”

  I sighed inwardly. “And what do they say of us?”

  “That the Innsmouth girls were always snobs—but that they knew what they wanted, and went after it, and didn’t let anything stand in their way. That they could get things out of the school that no one else could. A real education, not just enough to nod in the right places when Miskatonic boys want to feel smart.” She swallowed visibly.

  I blinked. “They say different things about us at Hall than they do at Miskatonic.” And Hall, I recalled, had always been more willing to let us through its gates.

  “We say different things about Miskatonic, too.”

  Startled, I laughed. “Yes, so did we. I don’t suppose you know whether this street leads back to the college?”

  “It does, but there’s a safer neighborhood about two blocks farther from the water.”

  More sanguine about her company in spite of myself, I went where she directed. She chattered about her “Bohemian” friends, their comings and goings and forays into new areas of study, glancing at me from time to time with that same watchful curiosity. Fortunately little response on my part seemed required.

  My wanderings had been as circuitous as I suspected, and in less than a quarter hour I began to recognize the area around the school.

  I attended to her stories as best I could, knowing that the school’s politics might prove vital, but I could capture only part of the fluent stream of names and events that washed over me.

  As we neared the school’s main gate, she continued a complicated explanation of how the group pooled their resources when texts proved difficult to acquire. “And when Barinov went back to Leningrad, there was a whole argument over his books, too. He was so mad, he ended up gifting them to the Hall library out of spite.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You’ve got a Russian in your group?”

  “Had—like I said, he went back home my first year. Kirill Barinov. Lost his permission to study abroad or something. Why?”

  It had been easy to ignore Spector’s formal mission, in the previous day’s bittersweet frustration. But I must not neglect it: both because it might represent a genuine danger, and because it was all that allowed us any intimacy with our books. “I was just surprised. It makes sense that he would have gone home, I suppose, given the news out of Russia. What did he study?”

  She grinned wryly. “Math and folklore, same as you. You could probably see his materials, if you came over to Hall. Our collection isn’t so impressive, but our library makes it a lot easier to check out books.”

  “I might do that. Thank you.”

  * * *

  I found the others in the Special Collections reading room, and settled myself among today’s pittance of books. Trumbull wore a faint smile as she perused a rare volume of Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta—I remembered it as a pride of our uncle Sidrach’s collection, one that I had felt very grown-up for being permitted to handle. A dog-eared copy of Song of R’drik and Ghak-Shelah still lay on the table. I was grateful to see that it was in R’lyehn; I wasn’t sure what Spector would have made of the old and rather explicit epic. Caleb motioned me over.

  “Here,” he said quietly.

  It was a copy of Mens Pelagium, bound in red leather and printed on alternating pages in Latin and R’lyehn—not a rare edition, and there had been many like it in Innsmouth’s libraries. But when I looked over his shoulder, I inhaled sharply. I recognized our mother’s handwriting.

  “I read it correctly, then?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes. This one is ours.”

  Mens Pelagium has much to say on the pedestrian life of the land, how someone keeping house or catching fish should best prepare themselves for a life of glory beneath the water. Kezia Marsh, like many, had added her own notes in the margins: meditations and frustrations and responses to the book’s suggestions.

  “The land does not ache so much,” she had written beside a passage comparing a pregnant woman to the land that gives us over to the water. And in messier handwriting, below: “But birth may be much like the metamorphosis. Such a tiny creature, it is wondrous and terrible what she will become.” I could scarce read the words to Caleb. He balled his fists and closed his eyes, and I wished for seawater to offer him.

  Charlie, caught by some explication of Trumbull’s, didn’t notice, and Neko had retreated to a corner chair with a less consequential volume. But Spector saw that we’d found something of interest, and came over.

  “May I?” he asked. Before I could say anything, Caleb whipped around and hissed. Spector flinched. My brother’s already bulging eyes went wider.

  “I would like you to know my mother as she was in life, too,” I said carefully. He’d been the one to track down and share the government’s all-too-detailed records of her death—something for which I still owed him, though he’d never say so. “But this is not the time.”

  “No. My apologies.”

  And of course I must needs tell him what I’d learned from Audrey, and Caleb would not be pleased at the reminder of why the government wanted us here. When we adjourned at last, I sought to pull Spector aside. But Caleb trailed behind me, and I ended up explaining Audrey’s tenuous lead while Spector eyed him nervously and rubbed his wrists.

  Trumbull drifted over. Charlie came along with her and stood next to me, his nearness reassuring and familiar.

  “You’ve found relevant material elsewhere, I take it?” asked Trumbull. “May I come along? I find this line of inquiry fascinating.”

  I cocked my head at Spector, who frowned. Of course, he didn’t know why her input would be so relevant to what we sought. I doubted it was my place to inform him. I looked at her, hoping she would give me some indication of what to say, but apparently she had not gained quite so much fluency in the human dialect of eyes.

  I settled for telling him, “Her expertise might be relevant.” It sounded weak, and he frowned again.

  As we left, I managed a moment with Trumbull far enough from the others to murmur, “If he knew where you were from, he’d want you along.”

  “Mm. He is a representative of the local governmental authority, is he not? I do not care for such attention.”

  “Neither do I,” I admitted. “But Spector is reasonable, for a … representative of the local governmental authority.”

  “Dominant humans are rarely trustworthy. And I have seen how he reads; he is no scholar. Your brother, your student: they may know my nature if you think them capable of discretion.” She tapped fingers against her side. I wondered if the tic was hers, or native to the host body. “Spector concerns me. What does he want with these books, if not to study them?”

  Spector, like Tru
mbull, would not be pleased if I shared his secrets without permission. So far as I could tell, even Skinner knew only that the government had an interest here, not what it was. But my interest wasn’t the government’s. I wanted only to prevent the body theft spell from being misused, and to keep my surviving family from at least that one danger. “You know that the United States—the local governmental authority—just came out of a war.”

  She shrugged. “Humans are always at war.”

  “Yes. It looks like we might be getting into another one soon, this time with Russia. There’s … apparently there’s some reason to believe that a Russian scholar might have learned the art of body switching. And brought it back to their government…” I trailed off. The dangers of sabotage between nations, the specter of city-destroying weapons, could not be compelling to someone who so easily dismissed the deaths of species.

  But she frowned. “Our arts are not meant for petty politics.”

  “We know. Our laws have always said as much.” That was another thing: if the Russians used such an art, it would be incumbent on me, and on Caleb, to enforce the ancient prohibitions. Oblivion take Spector, for always managing to find places where my own obligations and desires so neatly aligned with the needs of the state. I could easily wish that I shared Trumbull’s indifference.

  She tapped her fingers again. “Tell me what you find. It may be of interest to us.”

  I ducked my head. “Thank you.” I thought of something else. “Great One, do you know where I might find a chapel on campus?”

  “The campus church is ostensibly nondenominational; in fact it is extremely Christian. But there is a shrine in the back that is … discreet.” She said the last word with some distaste.

  After getting directions, I drifted forward and touched Caleb’s elbow. He turned from his conversation with Neko.

  “Professor Trumbull says there’s a shrine on campus. Come with me?”

  “Why would—” He swallowed, and then more gently. “Aphra, you know I don’t—”

  “Believe in the gods. I know. We’ve been”—I switched to R’lyehn—“surrounded by the flesh and minds of strangers, and I wish to speak with my sibling.” In English again: “Come anyway?”