Deep Roots

by Ruthanna Emrys

  Farther we went, following Mary’s hounds, and slowly we wound closer to the streets. I tried to track my heartbeat, to focus on my distant breathing body, but the city’s rhythm began to seep through the soles of my imagined boots and confuse my senses. Our walk so far could not have taken less than a quarter hour. I felt the vital connection to my body, taut with the distance we’d traveled. If we didn’t give up now and retrace our perilous route through the dream city, we’d have to risk returning to our bodies from wherever we found ourselves, releasing all that quivering tension at once.

  I said nothing. Wherever they were, the Outer Ones controlled the fate of dozens, including my still-unmet cousin.

  The last bridge devolved into a staircase, its steps so narrow that I had to descend sideways like a crab. The hounds swarmed down and hovered at the bottom, panting with amorphous tongues. By the time we reached them, I knew we’d found the place.

  After the squeeze of the stairs, the open plaza beyond made my ears buzz with vertigo. The scent of green decay rose into my nostrils, incongruously swamp-like. As I caught my balance and looked up, there could be no question. Amid the needles and domes, a squat concrete building sat in isolation. Fungus spread across its surface in a thousand unlikely colors. It wreathed the walls in vining stalks and broad caps, magenta growing into sea-green and royal purple, blood red fading to venomous yellow.

  Mary darted forward, hounds at her heels. She tugged her sleeve over her hand and plucked one scarlet cap. She ran back panting. At the same time I doubled over, retching. My vision wavered, and I swallowed hard against the surge of nausea. Charlie put out an arm to steady me, but instead he sagged against my side.

  “Too long,” I cried as Mary arrived beside us.

  She nodded urgently. “We have to go back now.” The hounds swirled around the clutched fold of her skirt. She unwrapped the fungus with shaking hands. One of the talismanic creatures sniffed the cap, then surged over it. Her hand shook harder and the air around it seemed to warp. I turned away, nauseous beyond the strain of my desperate need for physicality. When I looked again her prize was gone.

  I gave in to my body’s pull, cast my mind toward it with all my will. Leaving from the balcony where we’d entered, I could have controlled my passage. From here, I could do little more than pray that the force of my return would leave my mind intact. I curled myself against burning wind. The world stretched and tore around me, and the torrent of emotion spilled into my lungs and mind. Out of the undifferentiated swirl, mourning and fury and lust lurched like twigs in a flood.

  I came to on the hotel floor, and it took me a moment to remember how to breathe. I was drowning in fear. I gasped and coughed, and nearly blacked out again as the coughing became a fit, ragged hacks through which I couldn’t draw breath. I felt Caleb’s long arms around me, his hand stroking the paroxysms from my chest and throat, and then the precious touch of water against my lips. Fear subsided into relief and a well-earned headache.

  Charlie sat beside me, breathing ragged. He rubbed his temples and winced. He opened his eyes, and froze. I followed his gaze—my own vision still wavering—and scrambled to my feet, clinging to Caleb to stay upright.

  Mary convulsed on the floor, eyes wide and unseeing, hands clenched and muscles locked. The smell of decaying foliage permeated the room. Peters grabbed cushions from the sofa to pad her movements; Barlow knelt and turned her on her side, hands gentle on her shoulders. He murmured reassurance, but glared when I approached.

  “It’s the mushrooms,” I managed, voice still hoarse. “She took a sample; that’s what’s doing it.”

  He shook his head. His glare turned, unprovoked, on Spector. “This doesn’t go in your report. I’ll put up with your irregulars just as long as you can keep them reined in, but don’t you dare get Mary pulled off duty.”

  Spector took in Barlow’s anger, and his tender and practiced movements. “This isn’t the first time.”

  “If she’s got any chance, it’s with our research.” Mary’s convulsions stilled, and Barlow eased her head into his lap. “Whatever happened in Arkham, she won’t get better locked up in some hospital. We’ve already had a doctor look at her privately—this is going to have to be our way. Promise me, Ron.”

  Spector’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “I won’t mention it.”

  Vulnerable to later lesions. That’s what Trumbull’s guest had said, dismissing the trivial sequelae of the mental surgery that had sliced away Mary’s ability to read. Necessary, in the Yith’s estimate, to prevent her from endangering the records at Miskatonic. We couldn’t trust her partners to treat the Yith with the caution they deserved, so we’d never told her what happened. Their tender choreography stung my conscience, but I still thought that choice right.

  Vision returned to Mary’s eyes, and on her lips a pleased smile overcame the rictus. She reached above her head, patted Barlow’s hand awkwardly. He supported her elbow as she levered herself to a sitting position. He started to get her a pillow. “What are you all doing? We need a sample talisman, now!”

  “Right here.” Peters squatted and dangled a pendant: a deep blue stone with black veins running dimly through. Gold wire wound it in ornate patterns. Mary tugged clumsily at the hound amulet, and Barlow lifted it from her neck, wincing.

  “You caught something there, all right.” Barlow laid the cloth bundle and the stone before her. Peters sketched a diagram, and helped her make the shallowest of cuts in her palms. She braced herself even for that. I tensed as she laid hands on the two talismans and spoke her “equation”—but I felt no chill, and no change in my own impulses. She spoke each syllable distinctly and slowly, as if she too feared the consequences of mispronunciation.

  The swamp smell grew overpowering, then began to fade. I felt a brief pressure, as if something contracted around me. Then the smell vanished, and Mary lifted the pendant in triumph. Barlow passed his hand close by, then laughed, squeezed her shoulder, and moved back to give her the professional distance absent for the past few minutes.

  Peters slapped Barlow’s back, and to Mary said, “Nice work!”

  “It’ll be useful,” she agreed, running the back of her arm where sweat shone on her forehead.

  This time, no one gainsaid me as I approached. The blue stone had grown a veil of dull gray lace, fungous. The green smell was still perceptible, merely constrained.

  Mary smiled at me, expression tight but pleased. “Since January we’ve been working on more efficient ways to separate earthly and esoteric energies. Our target’s dreaming effluvia isn’t the same as an outsider, and the hound talisman’s a poor proxy for a human, but it’s a good proof of concept.”

  “Oh.” I felt torn between horror that she would casually plan for another incursion—the last caused by her own team’s carelessness—and startled gratitude that, in the face of her other duties and wounds, she’d cared enough about Sally’s loss and my own pain to develop a better solution.

  “Enough admiring my necklace,” she told her team. “We need to track where this connects in our plane.”

  “You should rest,” said Barlow. “Your skin looks like chalk and you’re still shaking.”

  “I should,” she said. “But these prototypes aren’t stable, and the sample will leak back into the fringe within hours. Catherine, I’m afraid this will require less of your creative insight than the last time we collaborated, but we could still use your help.”

  Trumbull joined Barlow and Peters in sketching interlinked diagrams on their slate and looking up details in a dozen books, punctuated by frequent consultation of a city map. At the center of the controlled chaos, Mary consulted and directed and argued, propped against cushions and fortifying herself with an orange that Barlow had provided.

  The rest of us crowded around to watch. I wanted to flee, and I wanted to interrogate every line of chalk for potential danger. But this was the first time I could observe their work without my own life at risk, and I had to admit that their methods were fas
cinating. They thought of magic in terms of equations, clear descriptions that could force the universe itself to come clear. It wasn’t cold, but full of admirable curiosity—and a mad lack of fear—about how the universe would answer a perfectly delineated question.

  After a few minutes Barlow abruptly set down Flora of the Seventh Path. “I swear to you all, the tracking equation we’re working through now isn’t the least bit experimental. We’ve used it dozens of times—Ron, you saw an early version in Krakow, even if you insisted it was just luck. But it takes several hours to do right, even without distractions. Is there any way I can talk you all into clearing out until dawn? Or even some of you? I will get you an extra room, or pay for dinner and dancing, or you can go play pinochle back at your boardinghouse. We’re a lot more likely to burn the city down with a dozen people jostling our arms.”

  Spector scanned the crowded room and nodded. Then he said to Charlie, casually, “Buy you a drink before you head back?”

  “Sounds good,” said Charlie with equal aplomb. No heads turned and no eyebrows rose as they made their way out.

  “What about you?” Peters asked Deedee. “This isn’t exactly your specialty, is it?”

  She put her hand on Caleb’s arm. “And what exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  Peters frowned at the touch, but then a glint of amusement came into his eyes. “I suppose if you can’t seduce the location out of anyone, it’s a good thing you brought your current target. Why don’t you take him out dancing?”

  I stood, ready to get between Caleb and Peters, or between Deedee and Peters, and trying to resist the urge to let them do exactly as they pleased. But Caleb simply said, “Why don’t you rephrase that?”

  He shrugged. “Because I’ve seen her file. And yours. Looked you both up, after last time. I like to know what people are going to try behind my back.”

  “I don’t need your file to know that,” said Deedee. I could hear the fury in her voice, banked into false gentleness. “Caleb, honey, how badly do we need these jerks at our backs?”

  “Not badly enough.” He deliberately turned away from Peters. He looked at me, and at Neko and Audrey. “You all stay here. Someone has to watch them—but Miss Dawson and I will make our own way. We’ll catch up with you later.”

  Deedee stalked out, Caleb at her heels. I wanted to follow—but I didn’t believe that had been an unthinking insult. Peters had known exactly how to goad them past their breaking point. Barlow might want to keep us in sight; Peters would do his best to drive us away.

  CHAPTER 6

  Deedee Dawson—June 18, 1949:

  I try to shake off the anger. You can’t let people play you like that, and Peters’s offense was no accident. I should’ve stuck around. I’m glad I didn’t.

  Caleb trembles. Such strange intimacy—I can feel his pulse as if it races through my own chest, the pain as it pushes blood too fast beneath his skin. But when I touch his shoulder, I can still sense the masks between us. Friction, thrill, and the comfort of two people who respect each other’s stupidly overgrown shields.

  “So, bank?” I ask.

  “Bank. And a decent hotel. I want a place where they can’t find us. Let’s figure out how we’re going to keep up the search without them, and keep in touch with the others. Oh gods, I want to strangle that jackass.” His fingers flex, full of violence decades suppressed.

  “So do I. But it would upset Mary.”

  He snorted. “If she wants to work with that kind of man, she deserves what she gets. Spector offered her the chance to leave.”

  My shoulders lift. “I guess she likes knowing where she stands with them. Maybe it’s fun to be the only person in the room who knows what she’s doing.” I’m not being fair, but I don’t want to be fair right now. “Bank. Then get ourselves a big room with a big bed. Then—” I don’t know if it’s his twitchiness or mine, or if there’s a difference. My nerves jangle with unspent tension, fury with no outlet. “—Do you have a brilliant idea for what we should do tonight?”

  He slumps, sullen. “No.”

  “Good. Neither of us is going to come up with anything useful until we blow off some steam. You know how to dance?” I know damn well he doesn’t.

  “I can waltz, a little.” He ducks his head. I imagine decades-past lessons in deportment. Little Caleb, concentrating hard on stepping in time, one-two-three one-two-three, with a roomful of bug-eyed five-year-olds. It’s hard to picture him so young.

  “I’m not thinking about a waltz. Don’t worry, you’ll pick it up.” In R’lyehn I add, “I’ve seen how fast you learn.” I earn a fleeting smile.

  We find a bank, and an absurdly glitzy hotel, and a department store—three reassuring reminders that we’re still far enough north that money can buy obsequious politeness. I start to relax, and see Caleb tucking his tension deeper below his skin. Nothing’s going to make him pretty, but in New York we can find a proper suit for his lanky frame, and I know how to look at him right. A proper dress for me, too, picked to suit my own tastes rather than some assignment.

  Taking my pasty-skinned Deep One boyfriend to a Harlem nightclub may not be the subtlest thing I’ve done all year. But I want, for once, to be the one who fits in. The desire to see people I used to know churns in my belly with the terror that someone I knew will see me and ask where the hell I’ve been.

  Massachusetts has been safe, after a fashion. Morecambe County’s lily-white, and I’ve rarely dared socialize with the other negro servants from the university—or better yet, sneak off to Boston to relax with people who wouldn’t ask why the dean’s floozy can swear in Russian. This isn’t safe: the painful pressures and stupid choices of my childhood lurk far too close.

  The music’s loud, just on the edge of what I know Caleb can handle. The crowd flashes. We get drinks; he watches the dancers. I watch him—when he catches the rhythm, starts nodding and tapping his feet, I pull him out on the floor. He’s new to it, but he knows his body and mine.

  We’re outside for a breath of air, sharing a cigarette, when a girl with curls spilling past her shoulders and a grin a mile wide comes through the door trailing the soaring notes of a sax solo. She stares at me and her grin widens.

  “Thea—is that you?”

  Every bit of FBI training rises in the moment when I don’t flinch, when I look up with my arm easy around Caleb’s shoulder and ask, “You looking for someone?”

  Carrie Waters, who I swapped notes with all through grade school, loses the edges of her smile and says, “Sorry, I guess not.”

  “Need a light?”

  She doesn’t, thankfully, and goes off down the walk.

  “You okay?” Caleb asks when she’s out of sight.

  “Yeah. She was just confused.”

  He rubs my back, and I lean against him. He doesn’t pry, doesn’t reassure me that I can tell him anything. “Do you want to go back?”

  “Sure. I’m getting tired, and we’ve got a long day ahead.” My feet still itch to dance, but I’d just keep looking over my shoulder. “Whatever we do with it.”

  We walk slowly. He flirts in two languages; I flirt in six; he almost distracts me from worrying.

  I’ve never been as close to anyone as I am to Caleb, or for that matter to Aphra and Charlie and Audrey. Unlike the rest of them, I came to that closeness with my eyes open. I wanted magic that no one could take away, and intimacy was the price. I’ve been surprised by how easy it is. The confluence slips around the walls that have plagued family and lovers my whole life. Maybe it’s the certainty. With them, there’s no doubt and nothing to prove; our connection is tangible as a held hand.

  But secrecy’s a long habit, and lies told long enough become real. The confluence doesn’t care about the shameful secrets they think I hide, the wounds Peters imagines he can tear open with his insinuations. Now, too close to home and yearning for its taste as much as they yearn for their own, I wonder what they’d think of my true past, duller and realer than what they assume.
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  * * *

  I settled on the floor an acceptable distance from the slate, with Neko beside me. Audrey prowled the boundaries. My fascination and pent-up anger eventually mixed with reluctantly admitted boredom. It was slow, painstaking work. A little over two hours after they began, they gathered around the slate. Mary still leaned on Barlow’s arm. They lit candles much like the ones in the shop window. Mary spoke—no chant, just a string of equations and unfamiliar words—and if there was blood I didn’t see it. Only two of the three ingredients I’d always thought necessary for any spell, but the diagram glowed briefly and flowed into a new configuration, and the candles guttered out.

  Peters stood, stretched, flicked on the light, and described the configuration to Mary. Based on her answer and an apparent correction from Trumbull (neither of which I understood), he drew an arc on the map around one edge of the Bronx.

  The cycle began again. They drew, and read, and argued, and at midnight made another mark on a different part of the map. And again. My eyes were dry and drooping by the third round. Exhaustion made me almost willing to trust their judgment—or at least to trust that if I napped on the couch, someone would wake me for any deviation from the earlier working. Audrey tucked her legs up and dozed on a cushioned chair. Neko draped her arms across the couch’s spine, on watch and vigilant.

  I fell asleep thinking about new men of the water, and dreamed fields of mushrooms. When their light waxed, I half-woke to count candlelit map-marks, then dropped back to sleep.

  I woke fully when Spector and Charlie returned. The windows showed a sky bruising purple, and concrete rising bright out of sunless streets.

  “Where are Mr. Marsh and Miss Dawson?” asked Spector.

  “They decided not to work with us,” I said stiffly. If he followed the track of my glare, he could draw his own conclusions.

  Three arcs lined the map’s edges. Within their intersection, three smaller arcs converged on a space of a few blocks. Barlow promised we’d find our quarry there.