Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

Sam looked at the mice standing proudly naked on his palm, and wondered what the hell Annie had been thinking, telling him to bring them here. They were so small. They could speak English and pick locks. They were distressingly adept at both stealing and figuring out the password on his phone, enough so that he’d had to disable in-app purchases in Candy Crush. But they were still mice, and they were still so small.

“You’re sure about this,” he said. “If you wanted to stay with me and Grandma, you could. We’re going to be wintering in Indiana, in one of the permanent boneyards. I could put out some calls, find someone we can trust who could get you to the Campbells—”

“Peace,” squeaked the smaller of the two mice. It was sleek and brown and getting fat a little faster than Sam thought mice were supposed to get fat, even with the way they kept sneaking into the cheese supply. He was pretty sure there were going to be more mice soon, and oh, God, was he sending a pregnant mouse off to get stepped on by some TSA asshole?

Annie was going to kill him.

“Peace,” repeated the mouse. “We have made Pilgrimages before. They are a rare honor. We will be Tested as so few of our generation have been, and when we are Triumphant, none among the colony will question the Sincerity of my mate, nor the provenance of the New Rituals we carry.”

Sam rubbed his forehead with his free hand and tried to figure out when his life had gone quite this far sideways. It was probably Annie’s fault. Everything seemed to be, anymore. “How do you decide which words to capitalize when you’re talking? It’s weird. I’m not sure there’s a grammar for that.”

The two mice exchanged a long-suffering look. Apparently, he wasn’t the first to ask. The smaller one—Mindy—pushed her whiskers forward, and said, “If you were of the colony, you would understand.”

“If I were of the colony, I’d be too small to carry you.”

“Balance is inevitable, even when it is Undesired,” said Mindy. She stepped forward, putting a paw on the pad of his thumb. It was probably meant to be a reassuring gesture. All it did was drive home the difference in their sizes.

They were going to die. Annie’s mice were going to die, and Annie was probably going to die, and with his luck, she wasn’t going to take after her dead aunt. She’d just be gone, forever, and he’d never get to tell her he was sorry.

“We will be Careful,” said Mindy solemnly. “We will be Cautious. We will be all the things one must be when undertaking a Holy Mission. We must. The colony needs to know what only we can say, and the Lost Ones must be brought home.”

“Does that include Annie?” The question escaped him before he could think better of it.

Mindy pushed her whiskers forward again: the Aeslin answer to a smile. “The Precise Priestess is not Lost. She is merely Missing. When she returns to us, in glory, we will be rewarded for our Faith. Now put us down. We have very far to go.”

Reluctantly, Sam bent and placed his hand against the cool concrete. The mice scampered from his palm, heading for the nearest drainpipe. In a few seconds, they would be gone.

“Wait!” he cried.

The mice stopped, looking back over their shoulders at him.

Feeling awkward, feeling confined by his artificially human skin and wishing he had a tail that he could twine around his ankles, Sam asked, “How can you be so sure that she’s okay?”

“We believe in her,” said Mindy. “You should do the same.”

Then they were gone, leaving Sam to search for any unnecessary capital letters in their parting statement. He couldn’t find them.

Shoulders slumped, he started for the car. Better not to hang out here any longer than he had to. Going to jail would probably interfere with his “track your missing girlfriend across the country whether she wants you to or not” plans for the weekend.

Five dollars to pay for parking and he was gone, heading back to the carnival, leaving the mice behind. Hopefully their gods would help them, because if they got killed, Annie was going to have his head.

Although at least then, he’d know where she was.

Head filled with dark thoughts of missing girlfriends and Covenant strike teams, Sam Taylor drove on.



* * *





MINDY


Humans do not often consider the scale of their works. They might take more care to block access to them, if they did. Or they might not. Who can know the thoughts of humankind? Not us, who merely scamper around the fringes, cleaving to our gods and hoping for enlightenment. Not even such as the Heartless Ones, who pluck thoughts from the air as we pluck berries from the vine, can fully understand the thinking of the humans. And so:

The drainpipe which had been left exposed in the parking garage was not blocked or barred in any way. It provided a clear highway for such ordinary mice and rats as might wish entrance to the good things inside the airport, and we kept our wits about us, my mate and I, as we raced along its length with our whiskers bristled and our teeth ready. We ran bereft of all adornment, that any who saw us might take us for those same ordinary mice, and I felt a small pang of regret for the many good things we had been forced to leave with Samuel Taylor, suitor to the Precise Priestess, whose godhood was not yet guaranteed, but which could safely now be assumed.

He would make a fine, strong god, and a fine, strong protector for the Precise Priestess. She would do well, so long as she was standing by his side. Our Priestesses are rarely in need of rescue, but neither are they frequently willing to accept help from outside the bounds of family. It is an understandable form of self-restriction—few who are not family have ever proven themselves to be worth trusting—but we would rather they had aid.

My mate, the one the Precise Priestess referred to as “Mork,” ran by my side. He moved carefully, staying close enough that I could feel his presence, not so close that he could hamper or hinder me. Of the two of us, he was the one more inclined to agree with Samuel Taylor, who thought we should have remained hidden and safe until they could find a way to reunite us with the kin of our gods.

Mork had been too long among the halls of the unbelievers, born and raised in exile, paying each day for the sins of his parents and forbearers. The ways of true faith were as yet unfamiliar to him. I could run in certainty, knowing the gods would claim and keep me, knowing that if I should fall, they would be waiting to raise me up into the heavens. He had yet to behold the divinity of any save for the Precise Priestess herself. In her absence, his faith was flagging.

It would be a problem, if our journey lasted too long. Aeslin have faith. It is what distinguishes us from all other creatures of the forest and field, what allows us to endure in the face of all adversity. We are rational creatures: we know our faith is not always, in and of itself, rational. But when we are threatened, when we are called upon to do things no ordinary mouse could do, we hold to that faith to bolster us up.

There is a litany, recited in secret, when the family who watches over us and is watched over in turn is sleeping and unaware. We remember the faiths we have forsaken, the beliefs we have left behind in our quest to survive. We remember the old gods, the fallen gods, the blasphemous and broken gods. We remember who we were, before we came to the good safety of the Kindly Priestess and her descendants. We must, for to forget would be to become less than Aeslin, and more—and worse—to lose the gratitude we must each bear, each and every day, for the gods who keep us now.