Deep Roots

by Ruthanna Emrys

  CHAPTER 8

  Freddy waited in the dingy hallway masking the Outer One lair. He put a hand on my arm, but withdrew it almost instantly. Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt buzzed at him and withdrew down the stairs.

  “Your friend’s okay,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone react to the trapezohedron like that. But I want to know what you saw, what you thought.”

  R’lyeh glimmered in my memory, a stolen sliver of my rightful inheritance, joy and guilt and desire intermingled. I wanted to meditate and set the memory clearly where I could preserve it. I wanted to cry at its beauty where no one could see. I wanted to return and see it again. I didn’t feel ready to put it into words for anyone—and especially not for Freddy, so obviously avid to learn whether my epiphanies matched his own.

  “Among our people, visions are private things.” I tried to sound gentle. It occurred to me—if not for the first time, then for the first time in full consciousness—that I would probably have to breed with this boy. I couldn’t imagine it.

  “They’re more than visions. Please. I want—you want me to learn about your home, and I want you to learn about mine the same way.”

  “How can you say I’ve learned about your home, when you don’t even know what I saw?”

  “I’m learning to think like they do. Home doesn’t have to be one place, or even one planet. It can be everywhere you go, and the people who go there with you. The trapezohedron shows a glimpse of some of those journeys. Some of what you might see and feel, if you came with us.”

  My first instinct was anger. An absurdity: why shouldn’t he invite me into his life and community, as I’d invited him? Yet the idea not only repulsed, but frightened me. I sought a safer topic.

  “Your mother’s desperate to hear from you,” I told him. “She’s been waiting by her door for news.”

  His shoulders slumped. “You can tell her I’m okay. I shouldn’t have left Earth without letting her know something—but Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt was heading out to Yuggoth right away and I just wanted to see.”

  “What’s it like?” I asked reluctantly. “I’ve heard rumors of how the Outer Ones travel. I know Nnnnnn-gt-vvv thinks I’ve been fed nonsense.”

  The question made him relax a little. “It’s scary at first. Like with the trapezohedron, you can’t feel your body—you know it’s somewhere safe, but far away. And you know that no one will judge you by anything except what you say. It’s wonderful to be able to just talk, and never have to play those little schoolyard games of who’s bigger and stronger. And in the space between worlds you find the most beautiful patterns. There’s music like nothing on Earth.”

  “I’ve fought hard to keep my body my own,” I said. “Everything I know says that untethering your mind isn’t healthy for either part of you. Fatal, often.”

  “Well, the Outer Ones have ways around that, obviously. They’ve been doing it for millions of years. I trust them. You’ve met my mom, and you’ve met Dr. Sheldon. They aren’t people you can really talk to. Mom is always worried about how I’ll turn out, and he’s always excited because it’ll be interesting no matter what I do. Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt, all the people here, they’re the first real friends I’ve had.”

  “I’m sorry.” I couldn’t think what else to say; my own experience of loneliness was so different from what he’d faced. And yet there was still that taste of poisonous delusion in his conviction. I wanted to believe it was only my own paranoid imagining. “You’ve gone too long without any sort of community. If the currents are good, some of our elders will arrive in New York’s waters tonight. We’ll be there to meet them; you could come with us. I can invite your mother, too; it might ease the reunion.”

  “Oh!” He seemed startled, but not displeased. “I’d like to talk with them; I said I would. Where are they going to come ashore? Or do you have a boat?”

  “No boats required.” A stab of memory, almost as vivid as my earlier glimpse of R’lyeh, showed me Innsmouth’s marina on the first day of the season, sails rising hopefully to catch the wind. At some point we must rebuild that part of the town as well. Though first we’d need to find people who knew sailing—that skill had been lost on land with so many others. “We haven’t decided where to summon the elders yet. No one in this city seems to sleep. I don’t suppose—do you know a beach that would be deserted late at night?”

  He thought. “Coney Island gets pretty dead after the park shuts down. Unless someone else likes sleeping roller coasters, you’re guaranteed privacy. It’s fun during the day, but in the dark, with the rides shadowed against the moon, it’s like another planet.” He grinned. “I wonder if it’ll still seem as interesting now. Though I suppose your family will make it strange enough.”

  * * *

  As I emerged into sunlight, Audrey caught me. “About time you got out. We’ve just about persuaded Mr. Barlow not to storm the place with guns blazing.” Mary had clearly invoked her own infirmity, because I could now hear them arguing about whether she ought now to get the rest she’d missed in the night. That one, she seemed willing to lose.

  “Caleb and Miss Dawson will be frantic,” murmured Charlie. “Audrey, how much of that could you feel?”

  “How much of what? You both felt a little nervous the whole time, and there was one moment where it felt like something startled Aphra. But nothing that felt like real danger—that’s what I kept trying to tell Mr. Barlow.”

  “But I had a coughing fit,” I said. “And there was a ritual … This doesn’t make sense.” I closed my eyes and focused on even breath, slowing heart. I could feel Audrey, breath quickened with confusion. And elsewhere, a more general sense of Caleb and Deedee, with no sign of panic to focus my attention. Away from the distractions of the Outer One lair, my skin itched all over. I found myself squirming as if I’d put on a dress askew. “I want to do the Inner Sea later.”

  “Of course.” Charlie put a tentative hand on my forehead, priest-like, and I inhaled the city’s sweltering potpourri. The day had grown warm. My stockings, comfortably thick farther north, chafed my legs. Somewhere a man’s voice screamed about money wasted playing games; radios and horns and shouts blended into a background whine. Gratefully, I heard and smelled and felt all the physical world had to offer.

  I wanted time alone to think about my visions, to settle in my memory that flash of my true home. I should never have seen it until decades hence; I shouldn’t want to see it again now. But it was New York that I must think of. Frances, and how to explain what had happened to her son. Freddy himself, and what I needed from him, and what, if anything, he needed from us. The Outer Ones, and their purpose in the city, and what they were doing with my cousin, and what the state might wish with them. I felt the exhaustion of an overwhelming day, and most of it still to come. We had much to do before we could reconnect with Caleb and Deedee, or summon the elders. Dark and quiet, and time to think, were a long way off.

  * * *

  Catherine Trumbull—Date not noted:

  Time is hard, these days. Sometimes when I wake, I don’t know the era or the century. More often, I forget the importance of minutes and hours. I set alarms in every room to remind me of meals and meetings and classes. I wear a watch on my wrist and carry another in my skirt pocket, quiet weights like strings around my fingers. After the first irritated student complaints, I write a note in big letters and place it on the lectern when I teach: “Look at the clock. Stop at 10:50.”

  The people I love most are dead, or unborn.

  By the standards of their neighbors, Innsmouth’s people are mad and strange and scandalous. With them I can speak about things that matter. They remain strangers, but they keep me from feeling too lonely.

  Miss Marsh invites me to her house, half in fresh repair and half sagging beams. She greets me with a rare smile. An elder sits in her kitchen—new to me, I believe, though I have trouble distinguishing their froggish faces and varicolored scales. This one has an unusual crest, small and black and clinging close to the skull, which I think
I would recognize. But sometimes I forget to mark appearance as well.

  Before Miss Marsh can introduce us the elder rises, bows, grins with sharp teeth.

  “Khur Catherine.” Their voices are all deep, but this one is particularly resonant, with a strange accent that grabs my concentration. “I am Khur S’vlk. It is an honor to meet a fellow scholar.”

  It takes a moment to process the import of the words. I hear the title “khur” often from elders’ lips: it’s reserved for those who exchange minds with a Yith, adding their meager knowledge to the Great Race’s prehuman store while their own bodies host one of the race’s traveling researchers. Usually, though, I only hear it heralding my own name.

  “You’ve been to the Archives?” I ask. In my imagination, humanoid form and scale and skin give way to a corrugated, cone-shaped body half again as tall, tentacular limbs tipped with grasping claws and drinking trumpets and one globe ringed with eyes and fine manipulators.

  “Oh, yes. It’s a great joy to meet another captive.” Even through the accent I recognize amusement; the respect of the elders contrasts notably with how the Yith themselves refer to us. “Aphra Yukhl says you are also a mathematician.”

  Later I bring books from my office. These hold precious marginalia in my Yithian guest’s hand, half familiar and half alien. S’vlk translates what my scant Enochian cannot fathom. It’s for these notes that the elder, whose ordinary work involves predicting the ever-changing topography of the ocean floor, has come from R’lyeh to meet me.

  S’vlk’s company is a precious echo of the Archives, collegiality unencumbered by physical form or Miskatonic’s petty departmental cliques.

  As with Xiùyīng in the Archives, I wonder whether my growing attraction is at all appropriate. I don’t ask S’vlk, and when I hear Miss Marsh say “she” I resist the stab of absurd hope. It can hardly matter: even were my colleague interested, the people of the water hold relations between people of different lifespans taboo. Though circumstance forces the younger Marshes to ignore that restriction, S’vlk is under no such pressure.

  “One day,” I tell her, “we humans got to feeling homesick. We found a big balcony, a couple dozen of us away from the usual all-species mixer, and settled down to be melancholy with our own kind. Someone said they missed dancing—I couldn’t imagine it; I hate going around in circles with men I can barely stand, tripping over their feet—but we decided that even if we couldn’t dance in those bodies, we could make music. We borrowed a set of Yithian drums, or what passes for drums, and took turns trying to re-create rhythms from our own times.”

  S’vlk grins again. “I can imagine it. Those great wide cymbal things that their youth favor. Or did when I was there.” We still have no idea how far apart our respective archival tenures may be. But I nod recognition.

  “And the deep barrels with a sort of shark-like skin stretched over them, and the ones made of concentric metal rings. There was one of our fellows—someone who’d spent half his life migrating north with his tribe out of Africa into, I think, southern Europe. He could have had only the simplest instruments at home, but the rhythms he played were like nothing I’ve ever heard. They made me want to dance, and not care who I danced with.”

  S’vlk beats a tattoo on the kitchen table, slapping steadily with one thick hand while interweaving something faster and more intricate with the talons of the other. “Like that?”

  “Yes! Not the same tune, but the same feeling. How did you know?”

  Another sharp grin. “I’m older than I look. And we had better instruments than you’d think. I’ve always noticed how songs change as other kinds of thought shift. Mathematics and music are close kin.”

  “I never thought of it that way.” Painting is the art that meshes with my studies, a different way of understanding space and distance and the things that inhabit them.

  “You should explore their connection. I’m glad you enjoy our old songs—perhaps I’ll play something, and you’ll dance?” S’vlk leans forward and brushes a loose strand of hair back against my head. Her touch is light, claw barely shivering my scalp. I know that gesture doesn’t mean what it would for a human of the air. Other elders use similar gestures for benediction, or quiet familial affection. Still I feel my face warm, and hope she doesn’t notice.

  As we return to our studies I think of Xiùyīng, my only romance that I didn’t have to hide, the caressing slither of tentacle against tentacle. And I am lonely.

  * * *

  “I don’t know what to think of this,” said Frances. “People from another world—it’s like something out of one of Freddy’s stories. But you’re from one of mine, so I guess anything’s possible.”

  As it turned out, none of the city’s seemingly ubiquitous trains approached the Lavernes’ Red Hook apartment. Spector, after an uncharacteristically digression-filled discussion of our transit options, had determined that we should take the streetcar to a station whose stairs he thought wouldn’t be too hard on Charlie’s knee. At midnight, the 4th Avenue subway platform was sparsely populated, but New Yorkers’ habit of not listening, or of not caring who heard, held even when the crowds dispersed. And though we were a crowd of our own, Frances’s relief at learning that we’d found her son had averted any dismay at the additions to my entourage. We’d shed the FBI agents at their hotel, even Spector.

  “The Outer Ones are strange to us, too,” I said. “But Freddy calls them friends.”

  “If that’s true, I wish he’d introduced them before he ran off. I’m so worried. You’re sure he’ll be there?”

  “He said he would be.” It was the third time she’d asked, but I couldn’t blame her. I remembered the hints he’d given about their strained relationship, and hoped his curiosity would outweigh his reluctance.

  The laughter of inebriated passengers and the hypnotic, painful roar of the tracks made the trip through Brooklyn surreal. Neko leaned back in her seat, watching the tunnel lights flash past, and Trumbull scribbled in a notebook. The city’s rhythm was constant when I paid it mind, but fickle in its effects. It could buoy me with excess energy, then wear me out a moment later with the pace of its million heartbeats.

  Charlie dozed on one of my shoulders, Audrey on the other. I felt very aware of their little movements, their exhaustion sharp from the morning’s adventure and dull from the long day of preparation and explanation. Caleb and Deedee were vague impressions on the edge of awareness. Sleeping? Waking? I couldn’t tell.

  Audrey stretched and rubbed her eyes, shadowed with fatigue, as we slowed at Coney Island. She gave me a lopsided grin. “Does this count as one of our late-night raids? I’ve missed those.”

  I could have done without the reminder, since the “raids” she joked about had both been ill-fated. I was saved from responding by Charlie: “Maybe we should try the next one at noon.”

  Audrey shook her head. “Wrong ambiance.”

  We were the only ones at the station. Our steps echoed from tiled walls. In the train’s wake, the shadowed tracks breathed up ammoniac heat. Crumpled wrappers and scuffed floors told of greater traffic during the day; our destination was home to no one.

  Outside, the breeze brought relief: still rich with sweat and trash, but topped with the remnant of sugared pastry and the homesick scent of hot dogs. Behind those, for the first time since we’d come to New York, I smelled the ocean.

  Shuttered stalls lined the boundary road. Garishly painted signs promised delicacies and prizes. I could scarcely imagine what lay behind the shutters, yet it reminded me eerily of the little row of shops that once lined the street behind Innsmouth’s dunes. The little buildings lay utterly lifeless. I caught myself shaking, and breathed deeply to bring my body under control. I was here to see my family, as I’d desired all day; it was foolish for a few closed stores to remind me of deserted Innsmouth. Perhaps it was Caleb’s absence. Part of me still feared for him whenever I couldn’t see that he was safe.

  Frances led us down the broad expanse of Stil
lwell Avenue. I saw the name and imagined a stone well, mirror-smooth and dark as the reservoir west of Arkham where the hills rise wild around the water. Instead, crumpled wrappers and more signs: a card parlor, a fortune teller, a wax museum. Two gargantuan roller coasters swooped and twisted on either side of the promenade. They looked like castles of tracks. A tower rose amid the tangle to our left, pennants flapping and stuttering. I’d never seen anything built to such a scale for such a purpose.

  Arched stalls lay in shadowed maws along the coaster’s base. A figure slipped from one: Freddy, looking small against the outsized backdrop. He paused when he saw his mother.

  “Hi,” he said quietly.

  “Hi?” She grabbed him into a fierce hug, then held him at arms’ length to look him over. “Don’t you ever do that to me again! I’ve always known how you slip out here at night, and I thought, let a boy have a little room to run around—but other worlds! I was scared stiff!”

  “I’m sorry.” He sounded at most half sorry. “I should’ve told you. But I thought you’d put me in the loony bin.”

  She snorted. “You think that’s the craziest story I’ve ever heard?” She shook her head. “Let’s go meet the rest of our new family. But you’re going to introduce me to these friends later, and do it right.”

  He squirmed from her touch, began leading us on past the roller coasters. “I don’t know if you’d like them.”

  “Are they bad people?”

  “Of course not! But they’re not exactly people.”

  “I don’t care what they look like. I care what they’re teaching you.”

  The road spilled out onto a boardwalk—so wide that it might as well be a street of its own—looking over the beach. It covered the dunes entirely. The sand stretched wide and flat between us and the ocean. It was a palimpsest of footprints, scattered with detritus. Still the sight of the water dragged ’round an internal compass that had been whirling for days, pointing me firmly at my proper place.