by Jim C. Hines
Lena drove, giving me time to read. I had kept my word the night before, trying to lose myself in an old Terry Pratchett novel and finally falling asleep around two in the morning. But I hadn’t made any such promise about today. I leaned against the passenger door, books and papers around my feet, trying to track down any references to the Ghost Army from the past five hundred years.
Nidhi sat in the back, working on what I guessed to be case notes, though I couldn’t be certain since I didn’t read Gujarati. Smudge rode on the dashboard, contentedly watching the passing scenery.
I doubt any of us said more than a dozen words until we reached Marinette. Nidhi guided us to a large house less than two miles from the Michigan/Wisconsin border and even closer to the waters of Green Bay. Twin spruce trees stood in the middle of a circular driveway. The American flag flew from a pole in the front yard.
“Euphemia and Carl work out of their home,” Nidhi said.
There were no signs to distinguish it from the other extravagant houses along the road. Most people who worked a magical day job tended to do most of their business through word of mouth, since it wasn’t the kind of thing you could advertise.
They seemed to be doing quite well for themselves. A brick walk led past beautifully precise landscaping, full of purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans. To either side of the house, decorative spruce trees grew along the front of a brown privacy fence, blocking the backyard from view.
I could see Lena studying the flowers and taking mental notes. Her garden had been destroyed by the oak grove in our backyard, but she had hinted about plans to turn my front lawn into a floral jungle.
Tall, etched windows framed the storm door, which was a single rectangle of stained glass showing a sailing ship on the waves. A disproportionate amount of the glass was devoted to the water, showing plants and fish of every color imaginable. The ship appeared cramped in its relatively small rectangle of sky at the top.
Nidhi rang the doorbell. A silhouetted head peeked through the blue glass, and then the door swung open to reveal a middle-aged man in plastic flip-flops and a green Speedo. His wet hair was slicked back, and water dripped down his well-rounded stomach, creating random swirls in his graying chest hair. He grinned at Nidhi. “Doctor Shah! How long has it been?”
“A little over a year.” Nidhi stepped to the side. “Carl, this is Lena Greenwood and Isaac Vainio.”
I shook his hand, then dried my palm on my jeans.
He beckoned us to enter. “Euphemia’s been in the pool all morning. How was the drive? Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Cherry Coke?” Lena was staring unabashedly at our host. He was hardly swimsuit model material, but then, neither was I. Lena had much broader standards of beauty than most.
“You got it. Isaac, if you need privacy, you can change in the sauna.”
I blinked. “Change into what?”
“Your swimsuit.” He paused. “Didn’t Doctor Shah tell you?”
I folded my arms and turned toward Nidhi. “No, Doctor Shah forgot to mention anything about needing a suit.”
Nidhi looked like she couldn’t decide whether to apologize or laugh. “Euphemia didn’t say anything . . .”
“No sweat,” said Carl. “I used to be closer to Isaac’s size. I’m sure I can find him something that will fit.”
He ducked through an arched doorway. As soon as his back was turned, Nidhi mouthed the words, I’m sorry.
I debated making a run for it. “If he comes back with another Speedo—”
“I like him,” Lena announced, grinning merrily at my discomfort. “If he can’t find anything that meets your standards, I get the feeling he’d be okay with letting you go skinny dipping instead.”
Anything I said to that would only dig me in deeper. Instead, I studied the three long aquariums that lined the hallway, their filters and pumps humming quietly. The closest looked like someone had carved a chunk out of the Great Barrier Reef. Another brimmed with goldfish. The third held guppy-sized fish in neon colors.
“Go on out back,” Carl shouted. “Through the hall, then take a right. I’ll be right there.”
A door to the left opened into what appeared to be Carl’s office, judging by the license and diplomas framed on the far wall. To the right, a glass door led onto a small patio.
Lena took one step outside, pointed to the pool, and said, “I want one.”
“Where would we put it?” Larger trees and the privacy fence surrounded what was more a lagoon than a pool. Enormous orange carp swam lazily along the algae-green bottom, and a turtle sunned itself on a log near the edge. Flowers and plants, mostly tropical in appearance, bordered the pool. I spotted hibiscus and some kind of stunted palm, along with large red and yellow blooms I couldn’t identify.
“Isaac Vainio?” The question came from a woman on the far end of the pool, her face partially shaded by an overhanging palm. I wondered briefly how they maintained these plants in the distinctly nontropical climate of the Midwest.
“Doctor Euphemia Smith?” I guessed.
The way she glided through the water reminded me of a swimming serpent. She swam not with her arms or legs, but with her body. One look, and I understood the speech impediment Nidhi had mentioned. An inch-wide strip of scar tissue slashed the left side of her neck, vivid pink against the deep tan of her skin. The scar thinned in the middle, and the raggedness made me suspect some kind of bite. Given the angle, I was amazed the wound hadn’t killed her.
The gray in her hair and the lines on her face made her look a good ten years older than her husband, though for all I knew she could have been Gutenberg’s age. Her hair was thick and matted, like seaweed. Or feathers. Sirens were sometimes said to have had birdlike characteristics.
“I’m not a doctor.” Her words rasped, reminding me of my grandmother in her last days after a lifetime of smoking. “I dropped out midway through my first semester.”
“Here you go, son.” Carl emerged from the house, and I was relieved to see him holding a thigh-length pair of red-and-white Hawaiian-print trunks. He pointed me toward the wood-walled sauna a short distance away.
“Let me know if you need help,” Lena offered.
The sauna was spacious, clean, and utterly lacking in personality. It looked like a kit built from a box. The slats of the walls and benches were too perfect, too identical. The electric heater with its uniform gray stones caged atop the heating elements could have come out of a Sears catalog. There was even a small flat-screen TV built into the wall behind a layer of glass or plastic to protect it from the steam. My father, proud Finn that he was, would have refused to dignify it with the name “sauna.”
I turned the heater on low and set Smudge’s cage atop the grate, then stripped down and folded my clothes on the wooden bench. I should have been excited. Anxious. I was about to experience a form of magic I’d never seen or heard before. Instead, there was only impatience.
I yanked on the old swimsuit. It hung a bit loosely, even after I tightened the drawstring, but that shouldn’t matter. When I emerged, Carl had joined his wife in the water, dragging an inflated yellow raft behind him.
Lena grinned when she saw me. “I like the look, but we have got to get you outside more often. You’re so pale there’s a very real danger you’ll get yourself staked as a vampire.”
Carp shot away as I eased into the warm water. Algae turned the bottom slick. I grabbed the edge to keep my footing. Carl took my other arm and helped me climb onto the raft.
“You just lay back and relax,” he said. “Euphemia’s going to sing you a little lullaby, that’s all. You should be thankful. Few people get to hear her sing in person these days.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“My voice isn’t what it once was.” The water barely rippled as Euphemia ducked and swam beneath the raft, emerging to my left. “But the unfiltered song of a siren, even a crippled one, can be disturbing.”
“What do you mean, ‘disturbing’?” Lena
asked sharply.
“She’s talking about the yearning,” Carl said. “Her song cuts deep into your heart and dreams, digging up the things you most desire. It’s how her kind lured men and women back in the old days. Euphemia sings promises. The first time I heard her, I wept for a week.”
“Is it dangerous?” I asked.
“Eighteen years, and we’ve never lost a patient.”
Nidhi frowned. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the best I can give you,” Carl replied, uncharacteristically serious. “I’m not gonna lie. There will be aftereffects, and they won’t be pleasant. But if you really want to find those answers buried in his thoughts, Euphemia can guide him there.”
“Do it.” I rested my head on the gently bobbing raft and closed my eyes.
“Nidhi told me about the rumble in Copper River. What’s the last thing you remember about your fight with that other dryad?” Carl’s words were calm but strong. It was much easier to take him as a professional with my eyes shut.
“Lena tried to . . . to connect with her.” Seduce would have been a more accurate word, but I didn’t want to get into that. “Deifilia resisted.”
“This isn’t going to be fun, but I need you to relive that day,” said Carl. “Play it back in your thoughts and tell me what happens next.”
Metal creatures swarm down the trunk of the oak—magically created rats and insects with clicking legs and gleaming teeth. Some jump onto Lena, biting her skin. Wooden weapons slam together as Lena and Deifilia duel. The impacts crack like gunshots.
The students of Bi Sheng look on helplessly, bound in the tangled roots of the new-grown grove. All save two who have been corrupted by Deifilia’s ghosts, the spirits Jeneta had named devourers. Their magic stretches toward Lena, ripping her apart from within.
Lena collapses, dying as I watch. The possessed students remind me of vampires, draining Lena of the magic that defines her. Soon there will be nothing left but a desiccated corpse.
“I took control of the oak. Lena’s oak, I mean.” Deifilia had seized it for her own, but she was distracted by the battle, allowing me to act.
“No shit? How’d you manage—” I heard a splash and a sputter from Carl, and a murmured chastisement from Euphemia. His voice turned smooth once more. “Right. Nidhi said you were injured.”
“My knee. I dislocated it.”
My leg throbs, pumping agony through my body with every heartbeat. I shift my body, trying to ease the pressure. Roots pin my leg in place, holding me trapped.
“Focus on the sensations of that battle. The pain. The noise. The sweat dripping down your face and back. The way your perception of time stretches out when you’re frightened.”
As I recalled the details, Euphemia began to sing.
I recognized the language as Greek, though I couldn’t understand the words. Haunting was the first word that came to mind. It was what whale song might have sounded like, if the whale was suicidal and her song was being performed by Stevie Nicks.
Tension drained from my muscles. My body grew warm, as if the shade had been burned aside and the sunlight was baking my muscles from within. The raft cradled my body. Small movements in the water made me feel like I was flying.
“You grabbed hold of Lena’s oak,” Carl prompted.
Lena is dying. So is Bi Wei, the first of the students of Bi Sheng to be restored to the world. The Ghost Army is fighting to claim her. They’re too strong. I don’t know how to fight them.
But Deifilia’s power, like Lena’s, comes from books. I know the book that gave birth to them. I look beyond the tree to the magic flowing through it, layer upon layer of familiar text. I reach for that story.
My hand sinks into the roots. I use Lena’s roots to trap Deifilia in place, just as she had done to me.
“I pushed too far.” My throat was dry. Pain throbbed through my leg as I remembered my senses stretching through the roots, the branches, even the individual leaves. I had manipulated the magic of Nymphs of Neptune, and when I did, that magic sank its roots into my thoughts. “The air was cold.”
“You heard voices?”
“Characters from the book, yah.”
“I am yours now, John Rule of Earth.” A nymph kneels on the ice, blonde hair flowing like a golden river over the voluptuous curves of her body. Arousal pounds through my veins, and I forget about the pain.
“I was hallucinating. It happens sometimes, when libriomancy goes wrong.” I shivered, remembering the chill of the Neptunian caves, the ice beneath my body. “They told me there was no returning from this place.”
“They were wrong.” Carl sounded like a father soothing a child after a nightmare. “You’re safe here, Isaac. But this is where the ride gets a little bumpy. So far, Euphemia’s just been helping you relax, settling you into a nice trance. You’re in control, and everything that happens next is up to you. The answers are in your mind, but you have to want them.”
“I do.” Euphemia’s song couldn’t completely suppress my annoyance.
“What happened next, Isaac? You saw someone else. Not a character from a book. Someone real.”
My muscles tightened. My breath caught. It was as if I had fallen from the raft and plunged not into the warmth of the pool, but a frozen lake. Swirling currents seized my body, tugging me down.
Euphemia’s song grew louder. The rhythm was uncomfortably sexual, an erotic melody sinking its hooks into my bones. My months with Lena had taught me a great deal about desire, but this was different, more primal. I had felt sensations like this only once before, when Lena demonstrated what her unfiltered power could do. It was like a shot of adrenaline directly to the libido.
Euphemia sang of mystery and promise and dreams fulfilled. I could no more turn away than I could stop my own heart from beating. I imagined her swimming through my memories. I followed, desperate to reach her, but she kept just out of reach.
“What do you hear, Isaac?” Carl pressed.
I swallowed. “Gutenberg was there.” He stands over me, his anger palpable even in my delusional state. He and Lena are arguing.
“He’s lost,” Gutenberg insists.
“None shall harm him while I live.” Lena’s words blur with those of the book.
“Even if I wanted to help the man who betrayed the Porters, he’s too far gone.”
I knew what came next. The tip of a golden fountain pen pressing against my brow like a scalpel, cutting away my magic. Tears slipped down my face, rolling past my ears to the sides of my neck. “Please don’t.”
My words sounded distant. I reached for happier memories. Using magic to transport myself to the surface of the moon. Making love to Lena for the first time. Watching Smudge play in the glowing coals of a barbeque grill, jumping about and flinging ash into the air with his forelegs.
Euphemia slowed her song, calling me back to that moment of loss. Her words promised me everything I dreamed of, all of the joy of those memories and more, if only I swam deeper.
“There was another voice,” said Carl. “The book wasn’t the only thing trying to get inside your head.”
The Ghost Army. In fighting Deifilia, I had opened myself to their assault. The ghosts rode the currents of magic, and I was channeling a hell of a lot of it. “I can’t see her.”
“Her?” he repeated. “It’s a woman?”
Memories rushed past, swirling too quickly and violently to grasp. If I tried, they would tear me apart. This was a place of death, a place where something had burned my thoughts to ash and salted the ground to make sure I would never remember her attempt to drown me.
“Listen to Euphemia. She can’t read your thoughts, but her song can lead you to what you most desire.”
Her voice whispered to me from beneath the ash, offering knowledge, magic, love. I could have it all. I could reverse the spell Gutenberg had carved into me and restore my magic. I could move beyond the limits of libriomancy, figure out exactly how magic made the universe work, manipulate the g
ears of creation.
Lena was there as well. Beyond her waited treasured memories and moments from my past. Christmas morning. My mother baking brownies. Seeing Star Wars for the first time. Helping take my eighth grade Knowledge Bowl team to nationals, where we placed third. Anything I had ever loved or desired.
“Focus, Isaac.” Carl sounded far away.
That wasn’t right. We had won second place at nationals. Silver medals, not bronze. Yet it was bronze that edged my vision, framing my thoughts. My focus narrowed with each word of Euphemia’s song. Stone walls shut me out of my own memories, but her music pulled me irresistibly through the cracks.
I heard myself whispering, “Who are you?”
“Would you like me to show you, Isaac?”
Pinpricks grip my chin, turn my head to one side then the other, as if I’m a prize poodle at a dog show.
“She wore a metal mask. Bronze, I think.”
The stones crushed together, sealing memories and cauterizing thought. Euphemia’s song grew stronger in response, dragging me downward. Euphemia hammered the shell of my prison, every word ringing through my thoughts. New fissures appeared, and through the gaps I saw a woman clad in bronze armor. She was short and inhumanly beautiful, though I wasn’t sure how I could know that, since the armor hid every inch of her skin. Even her eyes were shielded by thin shells of bronze.
The bronze woman stretches out a hand. Through her eyes I see an empire of the dead. I watch her slaughter half of humanity to build her army. Jeneta is the key to her victory. Libriomancy transforms every book into a potential weapon, and Jeneta’s e-reader holds all those weapons in a single device.
I couldn’t breathe. Cold fingers tightened around mine, pulling me closer. My heart felt like a balloon about to burst. Panic clawed within my chest like a trapped animal. I was no longer flying, but falling—
I landed hard on stone tile, coughing and gagging. Strong hands rolled me onto my side. I vomited water from my mouth and nose.
“Don’t struggle.” Lena held me in place while I fought to breathe. “You rolled off the raft. Carl said it was the final step in the process, that when you came back up, you’d have the memory you needed.” Her face was pale. “You didn’t come back up.”