“Deep rock is territory. Plain is hunting ground. All hunt.” He chewed thoughtfully on a blunt claw. “Explain holes?”
“I’m sorry, I beg your pardon.” The only holes I saw were the black cave mouths. “What do you mean?”
“Holes! Ch’blllrl.” He pronounced the Ghoulish word slowly and loudly, lingering on the trill, as if that would improve our comprehension. He crabbed suddenly sideways. We all jumped back, and he scrambled up the rock face, clinging with long fingers and toes. Hanging upside down, he loosed a hand and pointed at the bloom of mushrooms. He didn’t, I noted, come close to touching them. “Holes.”
“Oh. Do you know what Outer Ones are?” I asked. Chulzh’th translated.
That she knew the Ghoulish for “Outer One” answered my question, so it was no surprise when Glabri said, “Yes, they are marrow-less clutch-thieves. In shining city too long already. But why here? Two nights ago, solid earth here. What changes?”
“We don’t know,” I admitted. “We just noticed the spread ourselves.”
Chulzh’th cocked her head. She gestured in my direction, and the ribbon of my corporeal link wavered briefly into visibility. It shook with tension. “We need to go back soon. Glabri, is this a concern for all your warren, or just you?”
“All—warren creeps and digs and eats together. Marrow-less leave no bones.”
I didn’t fully understand, but Chulzh’th said, “We’re trying to find out what’s going on too, and stop it if we can. We’ll share everything we learn, if your warren will do the same.”
“Yes. Shared bones.” Glabri scrambled down to crouch again on the ground, and lifted the loop of his necklace over his head. With dexterous fingers he unhooked the complex scrimshaw clasp, and slid off three of the bones.
Chulzh’th sniffed the offering. “Yes, these will come back with us. Wait a moment. Aphra, let me do this quickly. Hair is easiest, and yours is long enough.” She combed her fingers through it, not careful of tangles, and came away with a few long dark strands that she braided swiftly into a rough ring. Glabri clasped the necklace back in place. My loosening braid tangled around sticks of yellowing ivory.
“We’ll know each other,” she said. “It’s time to go back now.”
The dive had been easy; ascension pressed the air from my lungs and dug thorns into my temples. I struggled for control of my body. I could sense, dimly, how it lay on the ground. I managed to twist onto my side, but pushing myself up set off a coughing fit. Spasms wracked my chest as I tried to drag in air by force of will. My eyes blurred.
Hands grasped my shoulders; cool water trickled against my throat. I managed a single wheezing breath, then another. My vision cleared slowly. Chulzh’th knelt in front of me, chanting quietly but urgently with her palm against my chest. The hands on my shoulders were Charlie’s. I could feel him and Audrey breathing, trying to remind my lungs of their work. Even with my attention lensed onto reclaimed breath, I could tell that my sense of their bodies had grown clearer. I could even feel Caleb and Deedee more easily, yearn for their presence without a smothering cushion muffling that sharp desire. Nothing was as strong as it should be, but a spark of triumph flared in my chest along with breath and blood. I’d taken back a sliver of what the Outer Ones had stolen.
“I’m all right,” I said, when I could speak. I wasn’t, yet, but easing their breathing would aid my own. And I did feel as if I’d cast aside a veil. The lungs that ached, burning with the scar of the desert, were my lungs. The smell of salt water and garbage rose from a real place where I sat gasping. I wiped my watering eyes. Chulzh’th, satisfied, rinsed my hands in the receding tide.
“I’m all right,” I repeated.
Charlie came around and sat beside me. “That ghoul. I hadn’t expected that. What he gave us—those things can’t be what they look like, right?”
“They can. Let’s see if we managed to bring them back.” Chulzh’th felt around the wet sand and retrieved three twig-slender bones, yellow and with holes drilled through the ends.
“What are those?” demanded Frances.
“Tokens of alliance,” said Chulzh’th. At Charlie’s expression of horror, she added: “If it assures you at all, ghouls are obligate scavengers. They don’t kill what they eat, ever.”
There were a thousand ways an infant could die. In those bones, I saw Ezekiel Gilman crying with desperate thirst at his mother’s teat. I saw Clarissa Thornwright’s stillborn girl lying in the dust while she scraped out a tiny, shallow grave.
“We don’t have to carry them, do we?” I asked.
“You do if you want this ally against the Outer Ones,” said Chulzh’th. “I don’t like those mushrooms.” And then, of course, she had to explain to the others how we’d come to exchange tokens with a ghoul.
“You’re telling me those … things … live right next to us,” said Frances. “Just watching, when they aren’t coming through to eat dead bodies. How is that okay?”
“It isn’t,” said Charlie. He frowned at his hands. “The world isn’t under any obligation to be ‘okay.’ That’s why we have to take care of each other, because there’s no greater justice waiting.” He gave me a wan smile. He’d found Aeonism’s insistence on an indifferent universe hard to accept, and it didn’t appear to satisfy Frances now.
“I don’t like the mushrooms either,” said S’vlk, bringing us back to practicalities. “Why would the Outer Ones be spreading their marks? Or is it some sort of spore from Nnnnnn-gt-vvv’s presence here yesterday?”
“Would we find the same if we looked elsewhere in the city?” I asked. Ragged leaves unfurled in a childhood memory. Left alone, I recalled, they stole the soil from whatever grew before. We pulled their early shoots, and they flavored springtime stews in tongue-puckering abundance. “Like garlic mustard. Could their wards eventually grow over the dreamland?”
“An excellent question,” said Grandfather. “I suspect that the spread is a new phenomenon—else the invasion would have been complete millennia ago.”
“But what does it mean?” Frances burst out. Her eyes were still on Chulzh’th’s hand where she clutched the ghoulish tokens.
I counted on my fingers, trying not to think about the bones beneath the skin. “We know the Outer Ones are worried about humanity, and came to this city to learn more about our present state. We know they have internal disagreements, political and personal, over how to handle their relations with us. We know they care only a little what we think of their methods. Barlow and Spector think they’re hiding something, that not all the missing people went missing willingly—that fits S’vlk’s dealings with them, and Glabri’s too. ‘Clutch-thieves,’ he called them. They’re not hiding as well as normal, maybe because they’re someplace new, or maybe because they’re doing something different from what they usually do.” I sat back, running low on fingers. “I don’t know what all that means, though.”
“Trying to predict how someone will jump, with six legs,” said Grandfather.
“Ten legs,” said S’vlk. “I think.”
“We need to learn more,” said Chulzh’th. “You’re in the best position to do so, Aphra—you and Audrey.”
“Oh no,” said Audrey. “I told you, I don’t want to talk with Shelean, and we couldn’t trust anything she told us in any case.”
“One could hardly hope to speak to a Mad One under safer circumstances,” said Chulzh’th. “And she sounds loquacious, if nothing else. She must observe a great deal—more than Mr. Laverne, who’s young and hero-stricken.”
The elders weren’t likely to show mercy on this. “I could talk with her,” I said. “If you want.”
“I’d rather we all stay away from her.” Audrey shuddered. Normally she welcomed risk; it was painful to see something cut her so closely. “But if someone must—thank you, Aphra.”
It felt easier to confront her awkward relative than mine. Perhaps Audrey would talk to Freddy in return. My breath eased as I considered the implications. “Acolyte—yo
u think I can visit the Outer Ones safely now?”
“‘Safely’ may be too strong a word—but I think you’ll be ready soon. Not tomorrow, however. Whatever the Outer Ones are up to, it will keep while you honor the solstice.”
“I can’t!” I was shocked she’d suggest it, under the circumstances. “Grandfather said we weren’t to risk being alone with the Outer Ones. The Summer Solstice is all about solitude, and we know they can appear anywhere. It’s bad enough that Neko’s among them now without giving them a chance at the rest of us.”
“I said you should not have been alone with them.” The rumble in his voice reminded me that I’d already disobeyed his edict. “Chulzh’th is right—you shouldn’t shirk this duty, especially now. Now that S’vlk and I are safe and clearheaded, we can ease the risk of private meditation.”
A shiver raised the hair on my arms. “You’ll track me.”
“We’ll know if you’re in danger, or not where you seem to be.”
“The solstice ritual is about knowing yourself, and knowing your community,” said Chulzh’th. “You’ll need the strength of that knowledge when you go back to the Outer Ones’ lair—to learn, and to protect your sister-in-adversity. This is no time to sacrifice a sacred rite to fear.”
And that, I dared not argue with.
CHAPTER 17
Spector had waited late for us at Tante Leah’s, hoping to check in without his colleagues around. Having promised to rise at dawn, I wanted to go to bed—but I owed him an explanation of where we’d be the next day.
“So you just wander around by yourself until sunset?” Spector sounded dubious. “I suppose not all your holidays can involve controlling the weather, can they?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “It’s as different from the Winter Tide as you can get. The strongest magic for the longest night, and the deepest contemplation for the longest day.” I sighed. “Finding solitude in New York seems hard, though. It’s supposed to make you appreciate having people around more, when you return to them, but here there are people around all the time.”
He shrugged. “You learn how to make a place for yourself in a crowd. The funny thing is, everyone cooperates. Go to D.C., or worse, out to the country in Virginia, and everyone on the street wants to stop and yak. But New Yorkers can’t get away from each other, so we try to give what privacy we can. I guess … there are a lot of parks where you can get some solitude, but the places with no one around are more dangerous than crowds—not that you can’t defend yourself. What about a museum?”
“Maybe.” I imagined pacing an unfamiliar museum, avoiding Audrey and Charlie while helpful docents tried to explain the art. At least New York’s institutions wouldn’t, so far as I knew, hold stolen artifacts from Y’ha-nthlei.
He took a deep breath. “I’ll tell you what. I was there for your last holiday, I can do something for this one. I know you’ve got too many people to worry about right now—but when all this is over I’ll talk with my family, and set up that dinner I promised Mark. It’ll be a little late, but we’ll have a local feast to celebrate. If that’s appropriate. If you want to come.”
It was another offer of trust, even if the meal would be awkward. And the promise of an “over,” of an oasis from Outer Ones and agents, was comfort in its own right. “I’d be honored.”
As we parted, I recalled a more urgent message. “Mr. Spector?”
His hand was on the door. “Yes, Miss Marsh?”
“Warn your colleagues: none of you should be alone with”—I was not fully confident in our lack of eavesdroppers—“them. They’re better at disguises than you might suppose from the masks.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. And if you’re not allowed in yet, I’ll try to find out whether Miss Koto needs any help.”
“Thank you.”
I pounded up the stairs, relief warring with my awareness that I was about to face a solitary bunk. But when I entered the room, it wasn’t solitary. Before I could summon shock, Deedee pulled me into a fierce hug. “There you are!”
“There I am? Where have you been? Where’s Caleb?”
“Here.” He swung down from the top bunk, hair disheveled from envy-inducing rest. “We’ve been fine. Your pulse has been all over the map. What the hell have you been doing?”
“Meeting Outer Ones in Hunts Point, and arguing with our new cousin, and losing track of Neko, and…” I sat on the lower bunk and buried my head in my hands, overwhelmed all over again with the thought of explaining everything to him, suffering his reactions to each new turn. “You tell me yours, first.”
“Not that much to tell, I’m afraid,” said Deedee. “We figured you had the weird fungus people covered. So we went back to Dr. Sheldon to find out if he could help with any other leads.”
“He’s exasperating,” said Caleb, “but he really did want to help. And I suppose—I wanted to give him a chance to be less terrible than Peters. Which he was.”
“He was very polite,” Deedee assured him. “Mostly. He gave us the measurements he’d worked out, and had some suggestions for where we might look. G.I. records were his big idea—if we can find a way in.”
“Mr. Spector might have access.” I sat up. “It’s a good suggestion, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. And now I want to hear about Neko—if you lost her, please tell me you found her again?”
“I know where she is. That’s not the problem.” In as much detail as I could bear, I sketched the two days since we’d last seen each other.
“We have to go get her,” he said, when I’d finished.
“Chulzh’th says that after the solstice, I’ll be ready to face them again.”
Caleb shook his head. “Not you. We clearly need to keep you away from them. Deedee and I can go after Neko while you’re off being spiritual. We know what to look out for, and to stay where we can see each other. Can you imagine telling Mama Rei that we couldn’t get her back because we spent an extra day wandering the city?”
My relief at his presence was gone. For all that I’d missed him and feared for him, as long as he was away from the situation he was safe. “She chose to go back to them and worried as I am, I don’t think they’ll hurt someone who wants to be there. But you—I can’t imagine telling Grandfather that I let you take this risk, when I’m already in danger. I’m sorry, but my vulnerability means we need you out of harm’s way. Mr. Spector is going to check on Neko tomorrow, and we’ll go after her as soon as we can.”
“She’s my sister too,” he said.
“And my friend,” said Deedee. “Our confluence needs to look out for each other.”
“I beg you,” I said. “Let me know that you two, at least, are safe while I’m doing what I promised tomorrow. After that I swear we’ll meet the elders at Coney Island and we’ll all go together to settle what’s happening with the Outer Ones and Neko. I feel like you’re all being peeled away a strip at a time. The idea of you going into danger without me—just please, don’t. A few hours longer, and we can all face it together.”
Still he hesitated. “Grandfather won’t like that, either.”
“If he wants to talk you out of going, he can do that himself tomorrow night.”
By the time they left for their own hotel, I thought I had them persuaded. But still I feared.
* * *
I slept under my own wards, dreaming ordinary and anxious dreams. I woke sweating from a metamorphosis gone awry, where my finger-webs grew metallic and nerveless as an Outer One canister. Gray light seeped through the window slit. I rubbed my fingertips against the blanket’s cotton weave, the wall’s rough plaster, the join of wood at the corner of the bunk. I prodded my upper arm where Grandfather had scratched his rune. An ordinary cut would be barely visible by now but the white skin still puckered, edged in swollen pink. Close by, faded by months of healing, was the spot where a similar mark had connected me to Sally Ward. Surely I imagined that the skin around my new link swelled cold, that the blood beneath it stilled. I
wished the weather could justify long sleeves.
In the hallway, Audrey yawned and grinned at me, and Charlie nodded. But outside, we separated as soon as we could. I walked alone—except, of course, for early-rising New Yorkers opening stalls and hawking papers, and those who staggered home bleary-eyed on the trailing edge of a late night. A small dog scampered across the street. It twitched, whirled on the sidewalk, and barked at me. I backed up, hands placating. It darted forward, stopped abruptly, and keened distress before racing again into an alley. I shuddered: dogs never liked us, and the encounter was not a good omen.
But the day brightened, and no one else intruded on my path. At home I would have carried saltcakes made the night before: hearty, contemplative food for the day’s meanderings. I’d gotten back to the hostel too late, and risen too early, to request anything from Tante Leah’s kitchen. She’d have wanted to talk in any case, breaking my ritual silence. Instead, I chose a bakery with its door ajar and the smell of fresh bread wafting through. I pointed at a small loaf, nodded when it was offered for my inspection, placed my hand on my heart in thanks, paid with cash from my skirt pocket. The proprietor, unfazed, must have assumed me unversed in both English and Yiddish, reluctant to mangle either for this simple interaction. She fell back on Yiddish, so I understood only the friendly amusement of her prosody. If I followed custom strictly, I shouldn’t have let anyone speak to me either—but our interaction seemed a better omen than the dog.
I found a small park, and a bench where I could break my fast. The morning was warm but humid, and the tang of ozone promised rain. I offered crumbs to birds. I prayed, feeling much less certain and much less grown-up than when I’d last done this. Ïa, Yog-Sothoth, Gate and Key. Open the way for me to see myself, to know what I am without others to support me. And keep the gate open, the key in sight, for me to return and be again enmeshed with my family, my community, my confluence.
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