He grimaced. “I don’t have a girl anywhere, Jewish or otherwise. She knows that.”
“She worries about you.”
He sighed. “I have two brothers and two sisters, all married but Sadie, and Ira and Rivka have kids. She should relax.”
“Oh, Sadie. She’s a mashugina. You should be grateful, you give everyone less worry than her. Well. You need, looks like one room for the boys, maybe two for the girls?”
We moved swiftly—and to Spector’s clear relief—from familial imprecation to the process of getting settled. Tante Leah bustled us upstairs, distributed stacks of fresh-pressed towels, and divided us among our rooms.
I could stretch my arms and touch both bunk and opposing wall; we couldn’t stand at all without stacking our two valises. A slit window admitted a warm, fetid breeze and the view of nearby bricks.
“It has a lock,” said Neko, and I allowed that this hadn’t been a virtue of all the rooms we’d shared. The sheets and mattresses seemed clean, and burying my nose in the pillows offered a respite from the city’s scent rather than a magnification.
When we came back downstairs we found Spector talking with a newcomer. Spector shifted, seeming dissatisfied with every attempt to fit in his chair, while the other man leaned forward intently. The newcomer shared his long broad nose, the slender frame that folded to encompass available space. Spector saw us and gave a little embarrassed shrug. He rose.
“Miss Aphra Marsh, Miss Neko Koto, this is my brother Mark. Mark, these are some of my friends from Massachusetts. And here are the rest.” This last as Caleb and Charlie, Professor Trumbull and Audrey, appeared on the stairs.
If Spector had truly wanted to keep us from his family, as he claimed, he wouldn’t have brought us here. I hung back, uncertain what was expected.
“Always good to meet Ron’s friends,” said Mark. “He doesn’t bring them home very often.”
“And have Mom fuss over everyone?” said Spector.
“She has been, anyway. Someone”—he waved a hand at the common room—“told her you’d been here to set up a room, and you hadn’t said you’d be bringing anyone by, so of course she sent me to invite whoever it was for dinner.”
Mark’s eyes lingered on each of us—no. On the women, with a little frown completing his assessment of each.
Spector let out a breath. “If their plans permit, I’m sure they’d be glad to … they didn’t come here to visit me. I’m just helping. A mitzvah.”
“Mm. It’s the first time you’ve been here for years, outside of holidays.”
Spector shrugged. “She’s always asking me to visit more often. And my friends needed a tour guide.”
Another glance. “You make interesting friends.”
Caleb put his arm around Deedee and frowned in return. Mark’s eyes darted between me, Neko, and Audrey.
Trumbull took Mark’s hand and smiled, all Arkham upper-crust confidence. “Thank you for your kind invitation. We’ll be glad to come by for dinner, of course—just as soon as our business allows.”
* * *
Caleb Marsh—May 1949:
Deedee takes another leather-bound volume from the pile. Mottled calfskin has worn thin, ink fading over embossed runes. She squints at the ornately lettered title. “The Meeting of … Words?” A few months’ study, and our languages already come more easily to her than to me. But I’m not envious. I enjoy watching her learn, the way concentration interrupts her usual performance and lets her thoughts show on her face.
She surrenders the book to Charlie, and he traces the line with his finger. “Zhng’ru Gka Lng’rylu … but ‘words’ is ‘lghryl,’ right?”
Aphra nods. “Lng’rylu is what you feel with, in your mind or on your skin. Especially pain or discomfort. I’ve seen an English version translated as The Parliament of Nerves. It’s about healing; we had a copy at home.” But not this copy, I think. Parliament’s not the kind of book where families used the inner cover as a record of births and metamorphoses, but there would have been a name plate. I remember going with Father to pick up a new stack from the printer—trying to follow the labyrinth coils of the sea serpent on the family seal without losing my place.
“Healing,” I say. “That sounds safe enough for the open collection.”
Audrey’s already shaking her head. “If it can be used for healing, it can be used as a weapon. Ask a surgeon how many uses he can think of for a scalpel.”
Aphra sighs, and Charlie puts the book on the “restricted” pile. “You’re probably more imaginative than most surgeons,” I tell her.
“That’s what I’m here for.”
I hate this work, and I know Aphra does too. We’re sorting sacred texts into scalpels and swords: the tools that might help people accept us, and the weapons that air-born men would misuse for their petty wars and political ambitions.
At least sorting books gives me a chance to practice my still-pitiful Enochian and R’lyehn. And it’s a distraction from my failure at what I should be doing to rebuild Innsmouth—reclaiming our land from the developers who want to crowd our beaches with G.I.s and their pretty wives and children. Strangers have already paid well for the new clapboard cottages on the outskirts—and for a few large houses boasting seaside views. They have that—and easy access to the beach where we ought to meet freely with our elders.
Even the homes we’ve successfully bought stand empty.
Audrey takes the next book from the library cart. “Tald’k—that’s ‘song,’ right? Tald’k Ka R’drik Gak-Shelah—” She stops and leans back, narrowing her eyes. “You blush on a dime, Aphra. What’s a R’drik Gak-Shelah to make you go all red in the face?”
“Who,” I say, grinning. It’s a thorough distraction, at least. “Who are R’drik and Gak-Shelah?”
“How the void do you know?” Aphra demands. “You were six.” I flinch. It feels like a strange moment, her amused indignation a flash of the snotty older sister I knew before the camp.
Deedee touches my arm. “Six is old enough to wonder what the fuss was about.”
“So is thirty-five,” says Charlie.
“I’ll bet I can figure it out,” says Audrey. She pages through the book. “There are pictures.”
Aphra sighs. “It’s an old romantic epic. It’s a common sort of story, but more … detailed than most. It has a reputation.”
“I’ll say. This is the kind of book you find locked in your mom’s bedside table.” Audrey peruses the illustrations with a thoughtful look. “What’s the story about? Aside from the obvious.”
Watching Audrey tease Aphra awakens my boyhood self as well, smirking at my sister’s discomfort. I don’t think Aphra even notices the flirtation behind the teasing, but she gives in first. “I know you think we’re more permissive than men of the air—and we are, in some ways. But our duties can be as rigid as any Christian marriage. On land, when we’re fertile, we must find good mates, produce children, raise them and support them, regardless of whether that’s the work—or the mate—that touches our hearts. And most people accept those strictures, because once we go into the water we have aeons to love whomever we please, or turn inward and write poetry without stopping to feed a family…”
I try not to flinch again. Our parents didn’t get those chances, nor our neighbors. And yet Aphra still believes in duty first, always.
She goes on: “But we’re human, and we enjoy stories about people who break through even the most vital boundaries. R’drik and Gak-Shelah are lovers who can’t breed together, and so their duty is to keep apart until their metamorphosis. Instead they take ship, traveling a trade route and trying to hide their relationship, and putting off the families who’d have them marry others. And then R’drik goes through metamorphosis young, which makes it even harder to hide.” She’s blushing now; it’s not a book she ought to have read at eleven.
“It would be hard for them to enjoy each other’s company, under those circumstances,” says Charlie. He makes it sound like a casual l
iterary observation, but I know he speaks from experience.
“It’s not that realistic,” Aphra says. “When it’s not, um, explicit, it’s full of long poetic passages about how their love engulfs them in the glories of the deep water, and their joy is only to drown in each other.”
“It’s not a book of magic, anyway,” I say, considering the slender “unrestricted” pile.
While we hesitate, our table is graced by the unwelcome arrival of Irving Pickman—against our objections, the head librarian for the Kezia and Silas Marsh Memorial Reading Room. He beckons Aphra to his desk; I follow close behind. Something’s pleased him, adding a smug edge to his usual placatory smile.
“Have you found something?” I ask reluctantly. I still don’t think Aphra should have asked for his help. Bad enough that Miskatonic forced the smirking bastard on us. Worse to admit to him that all our attempts to track down Innsmouth’s lost children—mistblooded who carry a hint of our strength from generations back—have failed. But he is an expert in genealogy. And Aphra is eldest-on-land; it’s her right to admit our shame.
“I found something,” Pickman confirms. “Though not what I originally expected. The names you gave me—I haven’t tracked down anything on those yet, other than the false leads you mentioned yourself. Old trails and poor record-keeping.” Amusement creeps into his voice. I grit my teeth at the implication that the record-keeping is our fault, with some of those records still likely buried in his storerooms. “But I had a thought.” His eyes slide to me. “I’ve a friend who moved to New York a few years ago, a doctor with an interest in anthropometry. You’ll excuse my saying so, but what they say about … that is, Innsmouth families do have a distinctive skull shape. I thought that if someone had passed his way, he’d be likely to recall it—to recall them. And any family that moves frequently enough almost has to end up in New York eventually. Sheldon loves it—a wonderful place to study mankind’s full range. Everything from the most advanced academic minds to the coarsest specimens, all crowded in a few square miles.”
He pauses, gives a deferential chuckle. “My apologies. Sheldon does go on in his letters, and I suppose I’m passing on the favor. In any case, I described the type as well as I could, and he told me that a few years back a woman came to him, one of the coarser types, worried that her son might be sickening. He’d been born perfectly normal. But by five he showed deviant growth patterns, especially around the eyes. Sheldon wasn’t familiar with the type, but he’s continued to track the family in the hopes of learning more and improving his records. The family—Laverne was the name, and I’ve no idea which of your list they’re descended from—lives in an apartment in Red Hook. The boy’s about seventeen.”
I swallow, aware that I should be grateful. But for the most part I’m annoyed that we didn’t think of this first, that we had to depend on someone who thinks we’re “deviant” to think of asking around for others with the so-called Innsmouth Look. And I imagine what it must have been like for this boy, raised to think our looks a disease. At least I knew, growing up, that it was something to be proud of.
“Thank you,” says Aphra. Sounding perfectly calm.
“Sheldon says he’ll happily direct you, but he hopes he might be able to take casts of the original type, perhaps run some tests…”
“The hell—” I start. But Aphra catches my eyes, the faintest shake of her head cutting off my suggestion of what Sheldon can do with his casts.
“No experiments,” she says. “But we’ll talk with him.”
I ask, voice neutral as I can make it: “What recommendations did he make? About the boy?”
The pale angles of Pickman’s face redden. “As I said, he didn’t have many similar cases to draw from. I told him that Miss Marsh and you both seemed somewhat intellectually minded. And certainly the town seems to have produced an extensive body of scholarship.”
“Thank you for your estimate of our mental capacity,” says Aphra. “I do appreciate your looking into this. It’s not an avenue we would have thought of.”
We make our excuses, and leave before either of us can say something more pointed.
* * *
That night, Neko drooped her head from the top bunk. “He thinks Mister Spector is dating one of us. He’s trying to decide which one he’d hate least.”
“I saw. I don’t know whether to be offended. Spector needs to have kids to preserve his people, the same as I do. I’ve seen it in the papers: the Germans killed a full half of them during the war. But his brother should have just asked. I don’t like anyone looking at me that way—at any of us.” The idea had been echoing in my mind since before we arrived. Rebuilding Innsmouth must, ultimately, mean children. Children who might show a hint of my long fingers and protuberant eyes, who with luck would carry out that promise in aeons to come. Children, perhaps some of them with the man we’d come here seeking.
She grunted. “I suppose. You know what Mama said to me before I came out east?”
“A lot of things, I assume. She was full of advice for me, most of it good.” I found reassurance in Mama Rei’s fussing, and heard the lullaby in its rhythm. But I’d come to her as a lonely adult, exhausted by endless waves of mourning.
“She said, ‘It’s all very well for Caleb, he hasn’t any choice in the matter. But you come back here when you’re ready and marry a Nikkei boy.’”
“Parents want to see their blood carried on. It’s only natural. It just isn’t right to hold it against people of different bloodlines. We used to do that, and look where it got us.” I’d made the same mistake: I’d dismissed Sally’s air-born ambition as less than my own, and she’d died because of my shortsightedness.
“You think I should marry a Nikkei boy too.” Her inverted face disappeared; her mattress springs sagged with a chord of creaks.
“Neko.” I pulled myself up over the rim of her bunk, but she turned toward the wall. “I’m sorry. I’m worried about how I’m going to find a mate; I didn’t mean to say anything about yours.”
“Good—don’t.”
“You’ve got the excuse to travel with me—”
“And I need it. Because when it ends, I go back in my cage.”
“Neko—” I wanted to tell her she could have both, children and freedom, that she didn’t need my protection to choose her own life. “I love you. I’m sorry for fussing.”
“Love you too. Go to sleep.”
I patted her shoulder awkwardly, swung back down to the ragged choir of my own mattress.
I lay there for an hour or more, unable to set aside Neko’s resentment. When she followed me back to Massachusetts and my confluence, we’d both expected her to serve as an emissary to newly located mistblooded. Our findings had justified a few day trips—far less than I’d meant to offer her. Far less than she seemed to need, as assurance that she was forever beyond the barbed wire and equally barbed rules of the camp. I balmed my own scars with ocean air and long walks, proof that my body was whole and free, but Neko found Morecambe County as restrictive as San Francisco. Even so, she wouldn’t take the bus to Boston or Providence for her own sake. She needed a practical excuse. Whatever track my own fears followed, I shouldn’t have let them overwhelm her delight in this rare opportunity.
My worries blurred at sleep’s edge: from Neko’s anger to Spector’s family, Spector’s hazardous romance with Charlie, Deedee’s brooding on the train—and behind everything else, the question of the lost family we came here for, and what they’d do when we found them. If we found them.
Every time I began to drift, a car horn or a shout or a muffled snore pierced the cushion of fatigue. Less identifiable noises insinuated themselves from every direction. The city stretched above me and below, and far around, and I felt suspended in some alien dimension. It was tempting to ignore the disorienting sensation, and return to the familiar turmoils that had kept me awake to begin with. An ordinary tourist might lock a door and hold the city at bay. But the confluence had been studying dreamwalking.
I’d earned just enough skill to make myself vulnerable: I could stretch my mind into the worlds that lay sideways from our own, and explore for a few precious minutes, but I hadn’t the finesse to avoid wandering in accidentally.
I would have preferred to set aside my studies until we returned home—but I couldn’t count on staying tightly tethered to my own thoughts while I slept. I needed to deliberately inspect the shallows of the local dreamlands before I faced them unwitting. Charlie, whose skill was close to my own, would need to do the same.
Dreamwalking was a matter of tightrope-slender balance—much, Charlie had said wryly, like the physical world. The balance was written into the spells: symbols of rest set against those to ensure eventual wakefulness, and symbols of the mind untethered measured against those to strengthen life’s most necessary bonds. It was there in the mindset: drifting out into Earth’s neighboring dimensions, we had to imagine our bodies well enough to hold selfhood coherent, yet still take advantage of our minds’ newfound freedom. And it was there in the space itself, and the knowledge that if you forgot yourself in wonder at the vision before you, you could forget yourself forever.
I didn’t intend to reach that far tonight—only to know my surroundings well enough to ensure a modicum of safety. And so my symbols were simple, a bare reminder of the world-piercing lullabies that marked the full rite. I sketched them in my notebook by the city’s luminous glow, and whispered the words of an old song. Comfort and magic twined, and I remembered my mother singing the same evening blessing.
I breathed, cautiously letting myself drift. Neko’s familiar dreams lay open above me. Twists of color, scattered images: buildings, imagined cities, the people on the subway. She twitched among incomplete ideas. They spilled over the edges of everyday reality, coloring directions that she wasn’t able to travel. Other sleeping minds lay close, and beyond them I could vaguely sense the depth upon depth of near-earth dreamland, realms half-shaped by sapient imagination and half by physics increasingly distant to the laws that made life possible.
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