Calculated Risks

by Seanan McGuire

  In the memory, child-Artie grabbed child-me by the hands and hauled her to the table, pointing proudly to the cupcakes with the lemon-tomato frosting and telling her in a bright, fast voice that he’d been waiting all morning for her to get there, since now they could have a real party. Mom and Aunt Jane retreated back to the kitchen doorway, watching the children with an indulgent sort of amusement that neither of us had been able to fully recognize at the time. I’d been young enough that my control slipped sometimes, but old enough to have learned it was rude to read other people’s minds without their express permission. I certainly hadn’t been probing the minds of the adults I trusted to take care of me to see if they were in the early stages of matchmaking.

  Oh, Mom was going to be so mad at me when she realized her plan had finally come to fruition, only to be undone when I wiped the boy in question’s mind. Not exactly the kind of complication you expect in your daughter’s dating life, but here we were.

  I loosened my grip on the memory, allowing it to skip ahead to our child selves sitting on the couch, Artie with a plate of half-eaten chocolate cake, me with reddish frosting on the tip of my nose, the two leaning toward each other so their shoulders brushed, staring raptly at the television, where The Mummy was well underway. Brendan Fraser was threatening a rotting corpse with a cat.

  “Weird choice for a birthday movie,” said Artie. “I would have preferred The Matrix.”

  “You always did,” I said. “This was a compromise. It was either The Mummy or we fought for hours over whether we were watching a horror movie or a comedy, and then there was a chance that even though it was your birthday, Elsie might come in and want the TV, or Evie might show up and Annie would demand to watch a cartoon. I can only sit through Goblin Market so many times.”

  Artie shuddered. “Funny thing: that’s exactly what I remember happening.”

  “Yeah,” I said glumly. “Funny.”

  “So how is it your fault I locked myself in my room? Why are you making me watch something that isn’t true?”

  “Just hang on a second.” On the couch, Artie suddenly stiffened and turned to look at the girl next to him, before smiling a small, oddly wistful smile.

  “I like you, too,” he said.

  The child version of me sat bolt upright, eyes wide as she twisted to stare at him. “What?”

  “I said I like you, too,” he repeated.

  “But I didn’t say anything!” I—she—time travel, even when it isn’t real, makes pronouns so confusing—blinked, still staring at him as her eyes filled with tears. “I promise I didn’t say anything. I was just thinking how nice this was, and how glad I was you didn’t decide to have a big party like you wanted, and how much I liked you, and you heard me.” The child me scrambled to her feet, leaving Artie alone on the couch. “I shouldn’t have come, I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you said you had fun at this party,” muttered the adult Artie.

  “I did, until this happened.” The adults were emerging from the kitchen. Mom gathered the sobbing younger version of me in her arms, while Aunt Jane moved to comfort a confused Artie. The scene accelerated again as Mom bustled me toward the door, shooting an apologetic look over her shoulder at Aunt Jane and Artie, until they were alone.

  Artie was also crying by that point, wiping his eyes and trying to make sense of what had just happened. The scene lost some depth, reduced as it was to a construct of Artie’s own memory and his mother’s experience of the moment. I sighed and released it back into the greater sea of Artie’s modified memories, letting what he knew overwhelm what actually was.

  “Aunt Jane said that was when you decided it wasn’t safe for you to be out among humans because you could influence and hurt them,” I said, voice dull. “They’d been telling you to be careful before that, but you didn’t really understand, and you didn’t like to think about how your abilities were getting stronger, and you couldn’t stop that from happening. But I—I already knew I was a monster. Even the people who loved me had made that exquisitely clear. You and Mom were the only people who didn’t treat me like I was semi-feral and would start biting as soon as I was given the opportunity. Because I was a monster. And that day, when you realized how much I hated myself for what I was, was the day you started hating yourself, too.”

  “Bullshit,” said Artie, voice gone shaky.

  “Really? Don’t you wonder why your father is completely comfortable being a Lilu, and your sister found ways to walk in the world despite getting the same warnings from your parents that you did, and you’re still sitting in your basement, staring at life through a screen, not willing to risk accidentally making someone think you’re a decent person? Your parents may have been a little too careful with you, but they didn’t say anything to make you this afraid of yourself, not once you take me away.” I was almost proud of myself, in a terrible, inappropriate way. I had shielded their personalities but not their memories, and so when I’d ripped pieces of them away, the cores had remained the same. They had tried to patch the holes themselves, and sometimes it wasn’t possible; sometimes, as now, they had effects but no causes, creating a feeling of loss and disorientation.

  But if I hadn’t shielded their personalities so well, they would have suddenly become the people they would have been if I’d never been a part of their lives in the first place. And it was nice, in a messed-up way, to know that they were still at least partially the people I’d known. There was a chance they could learn to accept me again.

  And maybe that thought alone was proof I was the monster Artie was accusing me of being.

  “So my whole life I’ve been lonely and afraid and now you’re telling me it’s your fault?”

  “Not entirely. Your parents did more than their share of damage, and so did Elsie, when she started spending more time around humans and telling you how awful it was. They primed you to have these issues, but if they set the charges, I think I lit the match. Not everything we cause is our fault,” I said, as carefully as I could. “We change the situation by observing it, and by being present. I never wanted you to hate yourself. I’ve spent years trying to lure you out.” But had I really tried all that hard? Or had I enjoyed being the one girl who wasn’t affected by his pheromones too much to make as big a fuss as I should have once I realized what was happening?

  Or had I ever even realized what was happening? Artie’s withdrawal from most of the world had happened at the same time as my own, two children feeding off of one another’s fears, and neither of us had influenced the other any more than friends will always influence each other. My mother had been encouraging me to accept myself, while his had been warning him constantly that none of his friends were really going to be his friends; they were going to be attracted to his chemical signature. In the scope of things, she’d done more damage than I had. I still felt bad about the part I’d played in the situation. I turned away from him, watching as a flickering memory of a family trip to watch the jackalope migration played out in front of me.

  “It’s like you said,” I said quietly. “Things just happen around me, and I didn’t mean to do any of it. I did this to you, and neither of us ever noticed, because you loved me enough not to care if I was responsible. But you don’t love me anymore, and so now you care, and I guess you get to hate me forever, if that’s what you want to do.”

  “Sarah—”

  “I can’t change your mind. I mean, I can, and that’s the problem. You can’t trust that I’m not doing that, and so I have to stop doing this.” I released my grip on his mind and memories, letting us return to the reality of the empty classroom and the setting suns. It had gotten even darker outside while we were deep inside the caverns of his mind; I could barely see him at all anymore.

  That was probably for the best. My eyes burned as the fizz of actively exercising my abilities faded; the cost of all the crying I’d done without the awareness to wipe them clear. “I�
��m going back to the others,” I said. “You should probably come back as soon as you’re up to it. It isn’t safe to be out here by yourself.”

  Then I turned and walked away from him, leaving both of us alone.

  Ten

  “Sometimes you gotta stop whining and start shooting, even if you don’t feel like you’re ready. Even if you don’t feel like it’s your job.”

  —Frances Brown

  Stepping back into a room full of people who used to be allies but probably aren’t anymore, emotionally exhausted

  The air in the classroom was actually a pleasant temperature when I slipped back inside, and the light was better than I’d expected, almost entirely because Annie and James, working together, had constructed a plinth of ice, topped with a burning ball of fire. The ice wasn’t melting, and the fireball wasn’t putting off nearly as much heat as it should have been. I stopped in the doorway and blinked.

  Mark turned to look at me. “Sorcery does work better here,” he said, a vaguely harried note in his voice. “You were right, and it’s awful.”

  “Sarah, you’re back!” said Annie, not sounding like she resented my existence, which was a nice change. She waved. “No Artie?”

  “He’s pretty pissed at me,” I said, walking over to drop into one of the open desks and prop myself up on my elbows. “I spent more time with him than I did with you, when we were kids, so more of his life doesn’t make sense now. You’ve been busy.”

  “The laws of physics in this universe are fucked,” she said, with far more glee than I felt appropriate under the circumstances.

  “The laws of thermodynamics, fortunately seem to be holding steady,” said James, in a much more appropriately solemn tone. “Most of the laws that impact people who can’t excite particles on a subatomic level have remained functionally the same, and we have neither the time nor the resources to perform more thorough testing, so if the gravity isn’t exactly what it should be for an orbital body of this size—”

  “Not that we know the size, as both of you have been careful to explicate repeatedly,” interjected Mark.

  “—we’re assuming roughly the same as Earth, since it seems to possess Earth-normal gravity and the curvature of the horizon matches up with standard expectations,” said James, not seeming to mind the interruption. “As I was saying, if the gravity isn’t exactly what it should be, we can’t tell. Things fall as fast as they should fall, and when we jump, we don’t wind up leaping for miles like some sort of cartoon superhero.”

  “Says the man who makes bricks of ice with his hands,” said Annie, nudging him with her elbow. “I can pull more fire out of the air than I’ve ever been able to before, and it’s completely obedient! Isn’t that awesome?”

  “Yeah,” I said, not sure what else to do. “Awesome.”

  She frowned, radiating a spike of sudden discontent. “What’s wrong with you?”

  I threw my hands up. “So you and James get to be superpowered here in this new dimension full of giant flying insects that I accidentally transported us all into! That’s fantastic! Bully for you! In the meantime, everyone I think of as an ally hates me, my own abilities are too big for me to use safely, hollowed-out cuckoos are stalking the campus, we haven’t found all the survivors yet, at least one of them is hostile, and I have no idea how we’re going to explain this to the rest of them!” I put my head in my hands and groaned in frustration. “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”

  “Sarah, I’m sorry.” Annie’s voice came from closer than I expected. I lowered my hands and my shields at the same time. I needed to keep myself reined in enough that I didn’t accidentally mind-control the people around me. That didn’t mean I needed to let them go sneaking up on me.

  I eyed her warily. “For what?”

  “The mice are very clear that everything you’ve been saying is true, and that we came to Iowa not because we were trying to stop the cuckoos, but because we were trying to save you.” She paused. “I guess stopping the cuckoos was part of saving you, so I can’t actually say whether we succeeded or not, but you’re here, and that means we got part of what we wanted. I’m happy for that. I’m sorry we don’t know you anymore, but once we get home, the colony can make sure we learn your catechism, and isn’t that why we have the mice? So nothing ever gets lost, or left behind, or forgotten?”

  “Getting a little Lilo and Stitch there,” I said, and wiped my eyes with the side of my hand. They were still burning. Too much crying does that to me.

  Annie shrugged, radiating amusement. “Got you to stop crying, didn’t I? Look, this all sucks, for everybody, but it’s nothing we can’t handle. We’ve dealt with worse. James lost his best friend and his mother to the crossroads, and his father’s a giant dick.”

  “Leave me out of this,” said James mildly, without rancor.

  “Just a giant fucking cock stomping around New Gravesend, Maine, on a pair of dusty, flat old balls,” continued Annie, unflapped. “Mark here had a massive psychotic break when the entire history of his horrible species got dumped into his head at once, and the only reason he didn’t kill his parents and become a mass murderer like every other normal cuckoo we know is because his little sister is basically the second coming of Ramona the Brat, and kept him awake playing Keep-Away until he had time to come back to normal.”

  “That is the most succinct, crassest way you could possibly have chosen to explain my life story,” snapped Mark.

  “I have a gift,” said Annie. “As for me, I threw myself backward through time, sort of metaphorically, sort of literally, and may actually have been the reason the crossroads had such a hate-on for our family that they went and targeted Grandpa Thomas. Hell, for all I know, trying to stop him from spawning me may have been what inspired them to ask Mary to be a crossroads ghost. Shit gets confusing once time travel gets involved.”

  I blinked slowly. “I was never a big fan of Doctor Who for precisely that reason.”

  “But you get my point. Shit sucks for all of us. My boyfriend is probably climbing the walls right now—literally, since Sam can do that—because I’ve disappeared without a trace, along with an entire university campus, so you know that’s made the news, and he’s going to be worried sick.” She paused, a ribbon of fondness tinting her thoughts. “It’s sort of nice to know I have someone who’s going to be worried about me. I’ve never had that before. It’s really nice to know that I almost certainly just got a bigger slice of the news cycle than Verity did.”

  Unasked question officially answered: I had done just as good a job of shielding her personality from accidental changes as I had Artie’s. It was harder to tell with Mark and James, since I didn’t know them as well, but since Annie was behaving as if they were behaving normally, I had to assume they were also intact.

  One small concern removed from a pile that seemed to grow every time I paused to take a breath. Which I did now, keeping my eyes on Annie.

  “So why are you sorry?” I asked.

  “Because we’ve all been acting like this was somehow something you wanted to have happen, even when you were telling us it absolutely wasn’t, even when you were freaking out.” She sighed. “I am choosing to believe the mice, which means I am choosing to believe you, which means I have been being a very bad cousin, and should apologize, and try to do better.”

  I cautiously lowered my shields even further, and detected nothing but honest apology from her. She was really willing to try. She was really ready to make the effort. I slumped, a weight I hadn’t even realized I was carrying dropping from my shoulders. “Th-thank you,” I said. “That means a lot.”

  “We should probably go get Artie, though, before something decides he’s vulnerable and tries to eat him.”

  “I guess that’s possible, but I think he wants to be alone right now. He’s doing some self-examination, because pulling me out of his past left bigger gaps for him than
it did for the rest of you.”

  “I can’t imagine you left a very large gap in me. Even if we were instant BFFs, there’s no way I met you before I met Annie,” said James.

  “No, I met you after she decided you were her brother,” I said. “She brought you back with her from her trip to Maine.”

  “He was in the discount bin at a gas station,” said Annie, and laughed. James threw a snowball at her.

  I rolled my eyes. “Please don’t let the fact that sorcery is easier for you here turn you into a five-year-old,” I said.

  “I never really got to be a five-year-old,” said James. “It would be a nice way to pass the time.”

  “I know I didn’t know you long,” interjected Mark, before we could get too far off the topic. I looked at him blankly, not shielding my emotional response. He shrugged. “I don’t like cuckoos. They pretty much suck, and they’re a danger to Cici. She’s only twelve. I don’t want her spending time around terrible people. There’s still a chance she might turn out decent, if I can just get her some good role models. Cuckoos need not apply.”

  “I still don’t understand how a cuckoo has a twelve-year-old sister,” I said blankly. “I get why you didn’t kill her, but does somebody want to fill me in on how she can exist at some point?”

  “As if you couldn’t take the answers you want right out of my head,” said Mark. His tone and attitude, which filled the air around him like the smell of burnt popcorn, were snide and dismissive. He really didn’t want me here. He didn’t trust any cuckoo to have good intentions, especially not one who had already, however accidentally, become attuned to his specific mental frequency. Radio Cuckoo was broadcasting in his area, and he didn’t like it.