“This is ridiculous,” said Charlie. “Aphra, give me a hand.” I took his cane, and he leaned on me while he unbuttoned his shirt. “Ron, you have time to cover up before you save the world.”
Spector laughed, and his eyes cleared a little. “Thank you.” Their hands brushed as he took the shirt. It was too small, but he tied the arms around his waist. The impromptu loincloth seemed to help.
“Shelean.” I took a steadying breath. “You said before that you could hold yourself together for a few minutes. Are you still in control?”
She stared at me wildly. “He left! He was supposed to stay with me, and argue philosophy, and he left! Where did he go? I should never have let him run away!”
“Shelean,” I said again. I took a step toward her. I kept my voice soothing, singsong as I would with a child. “Freddy’s not angry with you, and he isn’t gone forever, but right now I need you to focus. Can you help us get you back in your canister? I know you like it there, you’ve said so. You can lie down, and tell me what to do, and then you’ll be able to talk to Clara again.”
Anger gave way to confusion. “Oh, but it won’t work. When you call someone home, the whole system cycles to clear itself out. I won’t be able to go back for, oh, minutes. Lots of them.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t like this body.” She drew a finger down her arm, and blood bubbled through the skin like some strange ichor.
“Shelean, please don’t.” The Outer Ones probably had an emergency procedure for this. Likely it involved snaring her with the trapezohedron, or binding her in the apathetic trance that Nnnnnn-gt-vvv had forced on Grandfather and S’vlk. They would be here any minute to do just that, saving us from her shifting whims—and making it impossible to reclaim the mine.
“Neko, Mr. Spector, I need you to guard the doors. Shelean, I’ve got a—a gift for you. It’ll help you feel better. But I need you to work with me and do exactly what I say.”
Shelean stared at me hungrily, childishly. “Okay. What should I do?”
“You’re of the rock, right? I’m of the water. More than any other kind of human, we’re at home in our bodies. I can share a little of that stability, for the few minutes you need to wait.”
“Oh no,” said Audrey, looking up.
“I’ve kept you stable,” I said.
“Yes, but when my blood-guards came out that first time, keeping me safe almost destroyed you. And she’s—” She bit her lip and shuddered. “I’m only going along with this because it might save the entire human race.”
Spector took his post by the door, frowning. Charlie watched him, eyes shadowed with worry, before turning the same expression on me. “All right, let’s try this.”
“I’m going to start with Grandfather’s way,” I said. “It’s faster.” And protected the rest of the confluence, a little, from the risk I was taking. “But I’m still … wounded. Charlie, Audrey, I need you both to concentrate on our connection, hold me together while I try to help Shelean.”
“We’re here,” said Charlie.
Candle-faint at first, I felt their warmth. Pulses swift, breaths heavy, but sure of me and of each other. By their light, I could more clearly see my own weakness, the rivulet cracks in what should have been whole as the ocean. But I could also see, through our bond that didn’t distinguish mind from body, the parts that were still strong.
My anger flared: this connection, this family rooted as deeply in my own flesh as I was in the stuff of my world, was what Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt would have me cast aside. I forced down my temper. Whatever Shelean needed to borrow of my nature, surely it wasn’t that.
Grandfather had shared the ocean in a taste of his blood. Even then, I could see that it was a deceptively simple spell. Still, I knew the principles, and thought I recalled the sigil and words he’d used. Last time you rushed an unfamiliar spell, you nearly drowned in it. There was no Yith this time to rescue me, so I’d have to do it right.
I sat Shelean on the floor in front of me. She watched intently, but didn’t try to hurt herself again. Nor did she summon my blood to the surface in a fit of helpfulness. Lacking talons, I pricked my finger with my knife, and slowly and carefully drew on my palm the symbol I’d seen Grandfather make every time he’d tested my selfhood. Enochian flowed from my mouth, words for deep water and deeper understanding. I’d paid them only casual mind when Grandfather said them, but now I could see their logic. And their danger.
I put my bloodied finger to Shelean’s lips. Her tongue, neat as a cat’s, darted out to claim it.
Grandfather had probed my awakened blood gently. Shelean grabbed hold of it and pulled tight. I felt how that connection could become a leash, in either direction, with a moment’s concentration. I stood in perfect and terrible balance between the confluence’s bracing stability and Shelean’s wild strangeness.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s nice. You’re all solid. I mean, liquid. But you don’t scatter.”
“No, I don’t. Can you follow my lead?”
She nodded slowly.
“We need to reset the wards. I don’t think Clara can do it on her own.”
“No. I know how. I think.” Her voice sounded steady, but murk hovered around her thoughts. The defenses she’d designed into Audrey’s blood had once gone to bay faced with older, cleaner power. But I’d dived into the ocean itself to force the confrontation. My blood knew what I’d someday become, but it wasn’t there yet. So with that weaker strength I held Shelean above an abyss of anger and chaos.
I tasted her madness. “Insanity” was a poor description. She wasn’t confused about the world around her; she understood it too well. I couldn’t allow that understanding to infect me, or worse Audrey. But I caught unwanted glimpses. In her eyes, every molecule hung on the brink of change. She saw, every moment, how she could transmute skin to gas or gold, all the potential waiting for release. That matter should not answer to her whims felt blasphemous.
I focused on my own faith in a deep, ever-changing world, immune to anything beyond the most tenuous control. I let it spill into my blood. She clutched that faith hard, and left bruises.
Slowly I led her toward the door. She gripped my hand, as her mind gripped my mind. My skin crawled. I could only hope the sensation was fear, and not Shelean considering all the things my hand might become. Audrey followed close. Neko came behind. I hadn’t asked her to come with us, and I wanted her safe—but I didn’t stop her.
Charlie cracked the door to the ward room, and I discovered why we’d been left alone. Clara might not have been able to complete her task, but Glabri had carried his out admirably: ghouls flooded the control room. They flicked in and out of the level of existence I could see, and Outer Ones followed. The distraction was thorough and alarming.
“Ooh,” said Shelean, bouncing on her toes.
“Stay focused. They aren’t going to hurt us.”
“But they need bones to crack. I can help!”
“We’ll worry about that later,” I said firmly. How Shelean might produce a cracked bone didn’t bear thinking about. “Focus on the wards. Where do we need to go?”
Trumbull’s guest had treated magic as a practical system of well-understood components, where I saw memorized patterns. But the Chyrlid Ajha had learned our patterns from the Yith—perhaps some from S’vlk’s guest when they’d deigned to join our hunts and campfires—and Yithian magic followed comprehensible rules. The Outer Ones’ ward controls were as different from my diagrams and chants as their bodies were from earthly lifeforms.
Shelean smiled as she rested her hand on a random spot of color. It shifted out from under her hand, and I felt her reaching for it with her mind. Then she pulled away as if burned and flung herself against my body’s oceanic regularity. “No no no no no no!”
“Shh,” I soothed. Her grasp on my blood was starting to hurt. I didn’t think the spell, which Grandfather had always used for brief diagnostics, was intended to last this long. My fragility made this even more dangerous, and I didn�
�t dare let her see lest it feed her own. Audrey’s support was fickle; I had to shield her from Shelean’s perceptions as much as she shielded me from breaking. My blood’s strength, and my own concentration, were crumbling barriers. We needed to finish this swiftly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“I don’t have enough hands. And I can’t use magic to hold everything at once—I mean, I can, it’s easy, but then it will all get very bad.”
The crawling on my skin intensified. When I glanced down, the back of my hand was thick with inky vines. Her tattoos, creeping across the gossamer barrier between us. I wanted to scream, to drop the spell, to pull away as hard as I could. Very calmly, I said, “You don’t need magic. We have plenty of hands. All we need is your memory of what to do.”
“I remember. I know how everything works. But the memory is in my mind, not in you.”
The backs of my hands stung. The sensation began to creep up my wrists. I didn’t look down. “Shelean, I want to help. But I need you to keep your magic out of my skin.” Nauseous terror thickened my words. As I spoke, I felt the abyssal force of her attention: my body was only molecules, their current arrangement a trivial coincidence. I had to deny that deadly awareness. I concentrated on the truth of my skin: how it sweated in the summer humidity, reddened under the hot sun, grew supple with the soothing touch of salt water. Ïa, Dagon, who gives flesh the gift of change. Ïa, Hydra, who gives flesh its limits.
“Oh.” Her eyes widened. I felt her attention ebb, from the maddening consciousness of molecular drift to the merely nightmarish consideration of my body’s malleability. “But it’s our skin. I can feel it.”
“No. I need you to remember whose skin is whose, or I’ll need to take the ocean back. And I need you to stop playing with anyone’s skin. I need you to focus. Can you tell us what to do? Like you were going to tell Clara?” The stinging sensation, like a fistful of nettles, didn’t go away. But it didn’t continue its journey up my arms, either.
“I can try. She knew what things were called. But it wouldn’t have worked—she didn’t have enough hands. I’m not sure we do. No tendrils.”
“For people who claim that all travelers are created equal,” said Audrey, “they sure design their dashboards for themselves.”
“You noticed!” Shelean grinned. Then she picked up my hand. My palm flared with a thousand pinpricks. “Hold it right here. Then move your fingers like that…” She manipulated my hands into the precise position she wanted. I tried to ignore the pain, to be flexible as a child’s doll. “Audrey, I need to touch you.”
Audrey’s eyes widened. She stared not at her cousin, but at me—at my fingers where Shelean had touched them. Her legs twitched, but she didn’t move. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, no. No, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Neko took a shuddering breath. “I’ll do it.”
Shelean blinked at her rapidly. “Yes, you, that’s good. Come here.”
When she gave direction, I heard a hint of old authority in her tone, a breath of connected thought. And yet, I was afraid to look at my hands.
Shelean pulled Neko to the other side of the console. She posed her fingers precisely, shifted them by fractions. “No, it’s not enough. You have hands, but I can’t explain it right. You aren’t tangled with us the right way. I need, I need, I need…” Her longing gaze fell again on Audrey.
Soon, the Outer Ones would contain Glabri’s invasion. Soon, someone would notice us. I forced myself to look down.
Monsters writhed on the backs of my hands, and ink-stain vines twisted. At the edge of every hoof and thorn and sharp-tipped tooth, blood welled to the surface. Beneath my skin, I felt improbable needles of bone thrusting upward.
“Shelean,” I said quietly. “Can you feel my blood?”
“Yes. It’s beautiful. So wet and deep and old. It’s holding me up—please don’t take it away!” Her voice rose in panic.
“Shhh. I’m not taking anything away. But you’re scaring your cousin. My blood holds me up, too. If you pay attention, you can see my true shape in it. I’m not malleable. I am my body, and my body knows what it’s supposed to be doing. So I need—” My throat dry with fear, I breathed in the stuffy air of the underhill. “I need you to look at what you’re doing to my hands, and make it stop. I need you to put them back the right way. If you do that, maybe Audrey will let you touch hers, too.”
Shelean stared hungrily at the blood. “But everything changes.”
“Yes, I know. I’m going to change in my own time. I promise.”
She drifted back around the console, licking her lips. Her eyes fixed on my hands. Her own tattoos were less animate than mine. Even so, the beasts seemed to kick in the corner of my vision, or grab hold of spiraling lines with their too-human hands. She drew my fingers from their careful placement, knelt, and pressed her face against them. Her mind’s grip on me tightened, and I braced myself against the pressure. I felt something wet and warm: her tears, or my blood, I couldn’t tell. I smelled salt, sharp and unlikely as if the whole ocean attended our work.
Then the stinging vanished, and when she released my hands they felt as cool as if I held them under the inflowing tide. The pain in my bones, too, had vanished. With exaggerated care—or perhaps not exaggerated at all—she placed them back where she wanted them on the console, just so.
“Audrey. Cousin. You’ve every reason to fear me. But the Outer Ones’ folly can warp far more than I can. Please. I can keep control a few more minutes, I promise.”
Audrey looked at Neko, and then at my hands again. My skin was as clean as if Shelean had never touched it, marred by nothing more than flaking patches of sunburn. I felt Audrey’s heart pounding. She offered her hand to her grand-creator. “All right, let’s do this.”
Shelean placed Audrey’s fingers with the same deliberation. Finally she set her own on the other side of the console, beside Neko. “The easiest way is to set everything back to default, like a seed ward instead of a full mine, so it lets us all in. You have to do exactly what I say. Aphra, move your little finger left just its own width. It has to be on the green blotch…”
It was hard, slow work, in the midst of chaos. The ghouls were trying to create as much confusion as possible, frightening the mine’s defenders and dividing their efforts rather than aiming for any specific target. I worried that one of them would jostle my elbow, or that Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt’s allies would realize what we were doing or simply notice Shelean’s presence. And I worried most that Shelean would misremember a critical step, or we would misunderstand her instructions, and call down disaster. The connection between us helped; I could dimly sense what she imagined as she tried to direct minute physical movements, and feel her startled alarm if our attempts didn’t match her desires.
“Perfect—hold it just like that!” She bounded around, darted in to prod a knob, and swiped across an inscrutable display. “Now let go!” We stepped back. The world shuddered, and the scent of rotting greenery grew overpowering.
The ghouls froze in their paths, lifting their faces to sniff the fungous air. The change at last drew the attention of the two Outer Ones in the room.
“Shelean!” said one. It began to gesture. Shelean gasped, reached again for the console. As something in the unfathomable machinery twisted and changed color, I felt her drop our stabilizing connection.
Then the mad energy drained from Shelean’s eyes, and serenity pressed hard against my shields. Audrey, still protected only by her own native willpower, took my hand and dug nails into my palm: one more goad to help me hold fast to anger and fear.
“You don’t need to do that to us,” said Audrey. “We’ll come quietly without the poppies, thanks.”
The pressure eased. “What did you do?” demanded the Outer One.
“Sent out an open call,” said Shelean. Her voice was dull, but I heard the barest hint of triumph. “To tell your exiles that they’re free to come home.”
The room began to fill as wavering air coalesced into uncoun
table claws and membranous wings.
CHAPTER 26
We were Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt’s prisoners, or perhaps guests. The distinction was subtle, and we hadn’t yet tried to leave.
Nnnnnn-gt-vvv had brought a dozen or so passivist compatriots, along with Clara. They didn’t fight as humans would to reclaim the building. Simply by being there, they prevented the interventionists from taking dominion again—but until they came to some agreement, they couldn’t leave without surrendering.
The two factions’ mutual interest in returning Shelean to her canister eased their awkward reunion. Placid, she lay willingly back on her stasis table. Audrey and Charlie and Neko and Frances clustered close around me. Spector, with a glance at the still-empty platform where he’d been held, stayed within our protective orbit. He’d always kept himself a little apart from us before, a welcome intruder among our friendships. Now … I knew he must have been thinking about the imposter, about what was being done in his name outside the mine. Or perhaps simply about what had been done to him here.
I felt adrift. I kept checking my awareness of the confluence and my body. They remained intact. Whatever was causing this feeling was less tangible, an ordinary vagary of emotion. We’d achieved every goal we’d sought when we entered the mine—and I could see now how little that was. Kvv-vzht-mmmm-vvt still held the upper hand. Its agents, Abrams not least among them, still held positions of perilous influence. It still would not trust humans to save ourselves.
Humanity must pass from the earth someday—but we faced a dangerous pivot in our history now. Outer One interference would only make us less stable, and it didn’t seem avoidable.
Humanity had never truly lived in isolation, though. Besides the Yith, what I’d said to Spector was true: other species, from our own world and others, constantly passed among us. And our own variation—not only among rock, air, and water, but among the thousand languages and races and nationalities that daily brushed skin in New York alone—meant that we were always surrounded by alien beings. Even at its most provincial, Innsmouth had traded and negotiated and seduced. Strangers were a constant.
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