Grandfather stepped toward him. I rose, mindful of my ancestor’s temper.
“Show respect, boy,” he rumbled. “Khur S’vlk is fifty thousand years your elder.”
Freddy glared at the sand. “Yes. But she’s wrong.”
“Be at peace, Yringl’phtagn,” said Chulzh’th. “He’s had no time to learn our ways, or our worth.”
“I don’t respect people who insult my friends,” said Freddy. He raised his head defiantly. “I bet you wouldn’t either.”
Audrey stepped between Freddy and Grandfather, and Trumbull tightened her grip on S’vlk. “Respectfully,” said Audrey. “I think everyone should sit down and cool off. You’re all meeting for the first time and everyone’s nervous. You don’t want to pick a fight with your family when you barely know them. The biggest danger I see from the Outer Ones is how just thinking about them has your backs up.”
S’vlk, thankfully, sat back. “Agreed. They are no greater threat than they ever were—nor any less. But I’ll not lose another kinsman to them.”
Freddy, at his mother’s urgent whisper, ducked his head and said, “I’m sorry, sir.”
Grandfather sighed. “Chulzh’th always says that I ought not rebuke my descendants for their likeness to me.” He made to sit as well, then stiffened. “Khur S’vlk, am I confused about where that scent is coming from?”
The other elder leaned back and closed her eyes. Nostrils flared. “No. I smell something more than a mark left on a favored pet.” She got to her feet, turned slowly. “If you intend peace, show yourself.”
I heard a leathery flapping, but saw nothing. It seemed to come from every direction. Then the air twisted sickeningly. It was difficult to describe—no, it was difficult to perceive. The closest my mind would come was the image of water oozing through a wall I’d thought well-sealed against storms. But instead of water, it was a roil of eye-searing shadows.
Then the world snapped back into focus—almost. An Outer One folded impossible wings inward from the full extension of its otherworldly flight. Its bone-piercing hum filled the air.
Frances grabbed Freddy, muffling a cry. Charlie, Neko, and Audrey closed on me in a miniature phalanx. The elders drew together, and turned as one toward our visitor.
Freddy pulled away from his mother and ran to its side. “Nnnnnn-gt-vvv! You shouldn’t have come.”
Cilia stroked his hair. The Outer One’s buzzing hum resolved into words. “Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt said as much. But we worried for you. I apologize for hiding—I didn’t expect to be caught.” Freddy snorted and prodded the creature’s side.
“What harm did you fear we’d do him, to make you skulk in the borders of our world?” demanded Grandfather. “He is among family.”
“He’s among family with us as well.” Nnnnnn-gt-vvv wrapped Freddy in an amorphous wing. “You hide too, when you doubt humanity’s judgment. You didn’t visit Coney Island among the daytime crowds, after all.”
S’vlk stalked forward, pulling from Trumbull’s grasp. “How dare you claim him as family?”
“Enough.” Chulzh’th stood. “You two old hunters will find blood if you look hard enough. Our kin built lives without us—what else should they have done? We can’t demand in an instant the loyalty of a child neither named nor raised under Dagon’s eye. Be at peace. Let us discuss this like the civilized people some of us strive to be.”
“Thank you,” said Nnnnnn-gt-vvv. “Our peoples have long disagreed about many things, but rarely been enemies. Freddy was nervous, and we feared you might hold his friendship with us against him—as you did. That’s all my reason for ‘skulking.’”
I found my voice. “Now that you’ve shown yourself, what do you want here? We want to get to know our cousin, and teach him something of our ways. The ocean flows in his blood—we want to show him what that means.” But Freddy deserved better than my arguing over his head. “You have the right to know what you risk, traveling with them. What we have to offer, while you still have a choice.”
He shook his head. “I know what I want.”
“What we want,” said Nnnnnn-gt-vvv, “is to save what can be saved of humanity. To help something survive and thrive beyond Earth. You remnants are satisfied to leave behind cold stories on stone; we want more.”
“Humanity might do better than you expect,” said Charlie. But he edged closer to me.
“Why?” I asked the Outer One. I hardly needed ask what Nnnnnn-gt-vvv thought we needed saving from. Even if it harbored no dark knowledge beyond the risks that kept me up at night, I could think of too many answers.
I’d spent my life knowing that humanity would eventually pass from the earth’s surface. But I wasn’t ready. Perhaps S’vlk, with all her years and perspective, would more easily accept humanity’s extinction on land—or perhaps none of us were truly willing to face that inevitable burden of mourning.
Nnnnnn-gt-vvv’s limbs writhed cryptically. “We’ve seen thousands of species learn how to grow and connect with others. We’ve seen millions collapse in the singularity of their own social incapacities. If you survive your weapons and wars, you’re still beginning to change your atmosphere and soil and sea beyond the bounds most humans can survive. You remnants, with your wasted adaptive abilities, must sense those changes.”
Chulzh’th rumbled deep in her throat, not yet a growl. “All species must pass, eventually. Even yours.” I was glad that she left out the uncertain case of the Yith; that conflict seemed unwise to invoke. “What do you want of us, here and now? Because if you want to steal our kinfolk from the water, we will have blood.”
“You talk about your relatives like property. They aren’t yours, or the water’s, or Earth’s. There’s a whole cosmopolitan universe out there, full of glory and wonder. If you don’t want Freddy to experience that, it’s him you need to convince. And you probably won’t do it by yelling at him.”
We were doing it again—not even yelling at Freddy, but yelling about him. And even worse, ignoring Frances because she wasn’t under contention.
I turned to the elders. “This isn’t what we want. Could you please back off for a few minutes? I promise I’ll tell you soon what happened last night and this morning. You need to know. I just need a moment with my cousins.” Through my connection with the confluence, as well as I could, I projected my gratitude for their nearness, the feeling of warmth and protection.
“Very well,” said S’vlk.
Then it was me, and the Lavernes, and Nnnnnn-gt-vvv. The Outer One didn’t seem inclined to give space as the elders had, and I hadn’t the standing to ask. I chafed at the impossibility of getting him alone, of finding a place where he could listen to my offers without his patrons’ whispering temptation. But with little other choice, I did my best to ignore it.
“Freddy. Too much has been happening at once since I met you, and there’s so much I want to tell you. I told your mother a little, but—we keep circling into these arguments. You are your own person, and you do have a right to choose. But you must know why we’re so passionate to claim you.
“Your travels frighten me, but I’m glad they give you joy. I don’t want to deny you that, because my brother Caleb and I were held prisoner for seventeen years, for being what we are. All our people on land were taken to camps in the desert, and all except for us died in those camps. Under the water, our people are legion. But up here, where we can still breed and grow and have some sway over the rest of humanity’s survival, it’s only the two of us.
“We want to change that. But we need more people. And we need, eventually, another generation. That’s why we sought you out. And that’s why I’m frightened every time I try to show you what we are. Because in 1928, knowing what I’m telling you and being what I am meant imprisonment and death. Today it means hard work and continuing to fight people who hate us. For all the joy of our stories and magic and history, it’s a hard thing we’re offering you. And perhaps it seems unimportant, or even desirable, that the Outer One arts could break your
mind from your body and make you less that thing.”
Freddy didn’t immediately respond. In his silence, the ocean’s endless growling choir broke against the rumble of distant traffic. The sickle moon brushed the edge of the Ferris wheel. A gull squealed, sleepless and asynchronous.
“You want to have kids with me?” he finally asked. His scrutiny evoked an unfamiliar self-consciousness. Even had he not learned to judge beauty from men of the air, I was closer to his mother’s age than his. Nor did I have Audrey’s art of making men feel handsome with a glance. In truth, I found him no more appealing than he did me—save that I wanted children whose blood flowed in whitewater torrents.
“I hadn’t meant to bring it up so soon,” I said. “But it’s something I hope to ask, one day.”
“You hadn’t mentioned that,” said Frances. She frowned protectively, and I didn’t mention that she might as easily bear children by Caleb. The combination seemed all too much like the accusations once raised against us.
“I don’t like it,” I said instead. “It’s as indecent by our standards as anyone else’s, and I wanted to know you both better first. But every time we talk it feels more awkward and more forced—and now you’re arguing with the elders. Honesty, however indecent, seems the only way.” I looked at the sand. “And then you can reject us in full knowledge.”
Frances pulled the cigarette box from her purse, glared, lit one defiantly. “I’m not running away. I want family again. I even think it would be good for Freddy—as long as you don’t force it on him.”
“I would never force anything.” Did she see, as I did, the hint of force in the Outer Ones’ generosity? Or did she only focus on imagined danger from her own kin, we villains of her childhood stories? “I’m not even asking right now.”
“But I’ve got a girlfriend!” Freddy burst out. His eyes shifted. “Sort of.”
Frances’s cigarette dangled. “Since when? Is this one of your new friends? Who is she?”
I felt pressed between embarrassments. Somehow, though I’d caught the edge of Deedee’s jealous arguments with Caleb, I hadn’t considered that our newfound relatives might also have preexisting entanglements. Then there was that “sort of.” Sort of a girlfriend? Sort of a girl? Sort of human? I tried not to imagine how an Outer One would romance a lover, or to see this as yet one more bond they’d wrapped around him. I caught a moue of disappointment on Neko’s face, and wasn’t sure how to feel about that, either.
“Shelean would not object to your siring children with other lovers,” said Nnnnnn-gt-vvv. “She might even be pleased.”
“She doesn’t take her body back, even when she’s on Earth,” explained Freddy. “She doesn’t like it—she’d rather stay encircled. So we mostly just talk.”
I’d heard of elders who, though they’d sired children on land, called themselves women after their metamorphoses. Like Charlie and Spector, men of the air would have no such recourse in patience—they had only one short lifetime, in the form they were born with. I could understand why such people, or others whose bodies chafed the contours of their minds, might prefer the Outer Ones’ way.
“I’d be glad to meet her,” I said. “I’m not trying to get in the way.”
“We could go tonight, if you wish,” said Nnnnnn-gt-vvv. “By tomorrow your investigators will be crawling all over the place, trying to interview all our travel-mates to find out if they really want to be there. It will be quieter now.”
Freddy jumped up. “Yes, let’s!” He reached down to help his mother to her feet. “I want to introduce you!”
He was far more enthusiastic about this than about introducing himself to the elders. I’d wanted to bring Freddy and Frances into the community I knew: the histories the elders could share firsthand, the campfire stories I’d known from childhood, the rituals and beliefs that made Innsmouth more than a small town of strangely shaped humans. But the more I pressed, the further he retreated.
Frances frowned. “Where is this?”
“Hunts Point,” said Freddy. “We can take the train, and Nnnnnn-gt-vvv can fly.”
I went to retrieve the others, unsure how many of us should go. We knew the situation better than we had this morning, but what little knowledge we’d gained masked greater uncertainties. For all the Outer Ones’ protestations of friendliness, they were not our friends, and knew it.
“I’ll go along,” said S’vlk.
“What?” said Chulzh’th, and “How?” dropped from my lips before I could forestall it.
“I’ve not seen a city of the air in full flower since Rome. And I want to understand this lair of danger for myself. It’s the dark of night, and there will be shadows a-plenty. All I need is a cloak.”
“We don’t have a cloak,” I said, gently as I could. “And modern cities have artificial lights—people would see you, and be more inclined to call police than a priest.”
“Perhaps a talisman to draw the darkness around me.”
“Have you gold and silver to work?” asked Grandfather. “I’d rather go with them too. But this city guards itself with barricades of light. See how the horizon glows?”
Nnnnnn-gt-vvv’s teeth-jarring buzz came close. The elders drew themselves up to their full heights, and I wished again that I could read Nnnnnn-gt-vvv’s body language. Even Earth’s strangest native creatures lifted themselves against gravity to show strength, or bent to it for respect. But the Outer Ones treated gravity as a foreign custom, one they might follow or ignore as it suited them.
“I could carry you,” it said. “I’ll promise safe passage, if you’ll keep your claws to yourself. And no humans will mark our passing.”
“You’re not scraping my mind into one of your jars.”
“Neither necessary nor possible, here. I’m strong enough to carry your body.”
Grandfather stepped forward, glared. “This should be my task.”
S’vlk snorted. “We both dislike them, but you have no patience. And you don’t know what to look for.”
“My grandchildren are going into their lair.”
“And so you’ll take everything you see too personally. I know them better than you do.”
Nnnnnn-gt-vvv chittered—laughter? “Listen to you people squabble, even when you agree. It’s a miracle the people of the water so long outlive the air and rock.” It darted forward, and my vision grew fuzzy where its limbs seemed to flow toward the elders. Chitinous legs fogged around scaled shoulders—and the Outer One was gone. And S’vlk. And my grandfather. I whirled, scanning land and ocean, as if I might catch some glimpse of where they’d gone.
Chulzh’th howled, low-pitched anger echoing from the boardwalk.
“Chulzh’th!” I said, now as alert for ordinary intruders as for our missing companions.
She looked around, recalled to herself but still furious. “I’ll be back before dawn. Find them.” She ran down the beach and through the waves. She eeled into the water, and it closed around her.
CHAPTER 10
“Where did it take them?” I demanded. I peered anxiously down the empty subway platform.
“Back to the mine,” said Freddy. “I told you, they’ll be fine. It’s carried me a dozen times.”
“Yes,” I said. “But through where?”
“The outskirts. It’s sort of the space next door to Earth. It’s a little strange, but it’s perfectly safe with one of them there.”
“Yes,” I said. I breathed in, seeking a scrap of patience. “But what happens if one of the elders lashes out, and it drops them?”
“It wouldn’t…” said Freddy.
“S’vlk knows better,” said Trumbull. But it wasn’t S’vlk, reflexes tempered by millennia mapping the ocean’s ridges, who I worried for most.
“I wish we had some way to let Caleb and Deedee know what was happening,” I said. If I felt frightened enough, would they be able to track my terror? Through the confluence I could tell only that they were alive and near enough to avoid nightmares. I was depend
ent on them coming back to find us, at Tante Leah’s or perhaps at Frances Laverne’s apartment, when they felt ready to do so. The helplessness rankled, and relieved: whatever I met chasing after the elders, they’d be safe.
At last the train roared in. During the day, surrounded by chattering crowds, it had been an ordinary vehicle. Now it seemed gargantuan, on another scale entirely from our little cluster of life. The car echoed with our entrance.
I gripped one of the overhead bars and swayed clumsily, unable to pace and unwilling to sit down. The train shook and whined. “What in the void are ‘outskirts’? Are they on the edge of the dreamlands? Or is this a different direction? People who enter the dreamlands physically almost never come out—but they can; I’ve heard about it.” Rumors and fictions, which I pushed to the back of my mind. Few places were safe for humans to travel without some tie to home.
Freddy slouched on the bench, shoulders hunched. “How would I know?”
Frances: “You let them take you somewhere without telling you where it is?”
“I’ve only known the outskirts existed for a couple of weeks, okay? I’ll bet you don’t know exactly where this train is right now, either. How many feet underground, or what kind of rocks are around the tunnel? But you trust the conductor to get you where you’re going, and you’ve never even met him.”
“Do you…?” I asked Trumbull.
She shook her head. “I don’t know anything about Outer One terminology, let alone how it translates to what your family or the theoretical physics people at Miskatonic would call any given fold of reality.” She forced a laugh. “For what it’s worth, S’vlk says the bedrock in this area is mostly schist.”
“We’ve got another problem,” said Audrey. She tapped her watch. “Chulzh’th said she’d come back by dawn. It’s 2 a.m. now, and it’s two hours by train to Hunts Point even if the transfer goes quickly. I love the elders, but I think their idea of distances on land is ‘close enough to smell salt’ and ‘everywhere else.’ What’s she going to do when we don’t show up?”
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