Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

“No,” he said, firmly. “For did not the Precise Priestess say, lo, You Can Eat Once We Get Past Security? We have passed the checkpoint of the humans. Now is the time of eating.”

“All praise her wisdom,” I murmured. Absent our usual tools and clever carrying devices, we were as mice, unable to lay in stores against the journey. I had never taken a plane from Minnesota to Oregon before. It could be hours before we landed, and there was no way of knowing whether there would be provisions upon the plane.

“I will go,” said Mork. He bristled his whiskers against mine, and then he was gone, darting along the length of the pipe and disappearing into whatever waited beyond.

My belly rumbled again. I pressed my paws against it, feeling the pups move inside me, and waited for his return, straining my ears for any sound and my nose for any scent more powerful than that of frying potatoes. None came to me.

Once, according to the oldest rites, the litanies of faiths long marked as heretical and abandoned, Aeslin colonies were plentiful. We found the objects of our worship in field and forest, building our homes around them, and when we grew great enough in number, we would experience a religious schism. Half the colony would go, off to find and follow a new god, and they would be forgotten to the rest, marked anathema and untouchable. It was necessary in those days, to forget. Many who went out into the world to find a new faith would not survive the journey.

Still, we flourished. Still, we walked in a world filled with wonders, and we worshipped as we saw fit, making of creation our cathedral. Yes, we were preyed upon, sometimes by larger beasts, sometimes by our own gods, but we were Aeslin. We were quick and we were clever, and we endured.

Until the coming of the Covenant, may they never know peace nor the company of their own corrupted gods. They beheld us at our devotions and marked us as devil-born, creations of purest evil, and they set themselves against us. We, who were but mice in comparison to them, who were small and soft and defenseless. We would have worshipped them, had they but asked us to. We would have built shrines in their honor and become keepers of their history, preserving it against the ravages of time. But no. Such was not suitable for their ideals. They slew us where they found us, and as they knew us, they found us with ease.

I was raised knowing that my colony, our shared faith, might be the last vestige of the Aeslin in this world, with all others gone to their scattered afterlives, nevermore to be united. Might: we knew there was the possibility of another, if they had been clever. If they had been quick.

When the Precise Priestess had come to her clergy and requested one of us accompany her across the great sea, reversing the voyage of the Patient Priestess and the God of Uncommon Sense, we had seen our opportunity. She thought well of me, for I had volunteered, and it will forever be my own small shame that she may not know the reasons for my eagerness. She knows we suspected the presence of the Lost Colony, and does not resent us for keeping that knowledge from her.

She does not know that I was chosen because I was young, and likely to be fertile, and unmated. Mork knew before he bedded me. Mork understood. When there are so few Aeslin left in the world, we cannot allow anything to prevent the making of more.

Had he proven unsuitable, I would have left him in England when my Priestess carried me away, and I would have taken our pups with me, and my colony would have grown greater for my labors. But he was not unsuitable. His colony has labored in secret and in shame all this time, and finally, finally, they are ready to come home.

All praise to the Precise Priestess, who carried me across an ocean and returned me home with my mate by my side. All praise to her, who understood that while she would miss us, carrying word of the Lost Colony home mattered as much as her own journeys. We had, in that moment, two sacred duties, to our gods and to our species, and she saw the conflict with clear and open eyes. She chose its resolution.

May all those who came before her guide her and keep her safe, for we can do so no longer.

I stood in the dark, paws pressed against my belly to feel the movement of both hunger and young, and waited. If Mork wished to betray me—if he was loyal to the Covenant’s gods—this would be the time. He could run for the familiar. He could lead them to me, and unveil all of my family’s secrets. It is the Aeslin way to have faith in the divinities which guide our lives. In this time, in this moment, I was choosing the hardest path of all. I was choosing to have faith in him.

The sound of paws running through the pipe ahead of me pulled me from my contemplations. I tensed, ready to run or fight, if either proved necessary. Even without a weapon, I have training and awareness, things lacked by common predators. I could not defeat a cat, however hard I fought. A mouse, on the other hand, would find me a troublesome foe.

Mork scurried into view, body low to the ground, a French fry clutched in his jaws. I relaxed. He ran faster, stopping in front of me and sitting up on his hind legs, dropping the fry into his paws and holding it out to me as if in offering.

“The pipe empties into a space of flame and grease,” he said. “It is a restaurant. None saw me, for I was quick and clever. If we are quick and clever together, we may transverse their floors and make our exit.”

“Where would we go?” I asked, before taking the fry and beginning to delicately nibble.

“There were two ways. One to a place of carpets, where many people walked, and another to a place of stone floors and few people.”

The front and back of the airport, public area and staff halls, then. That was useful to know, even if it required entering a kitchen. Humans can be odd about mice in their cooking spaces. Years of raiding hotel kitchens during the Precise Priestess’s conventions and field missions had trained me to face the most aggressive of chefs, but we did not wish to attract attention if we could help it.

Thoughtfully, I chewed my fry. Finally, I swallowed and said, “We must find the holy Departures Board. It will tell us where the planes are going, and more, which will take us closer to our goal.” Portland was our final destination. Seattle would work almost as well. Planes flew between the two all day, on what were known as “commuter hops.” If we could reach one, we could reach the other.

“Where is this holy Board?” asked Mork.

“I know they are located in the passenger areas, but we are more likely to cause a Hue and Cry there,” I said. “Let us first search the staff area. Will you lead me?”

Mork pressed a paw over his heart. “It would be my honor,” he said gravely.

We ran through the pipe, our flanks brushing, and I had never felt more free, nor more in tune with what it means to be of the Aeslin. We were serving our gods and our colony, and we were doing it together. Oh, what bliss. Oh, what joy, to be born into the never-ending spiral of true faith. How small the worlds of those who did not believe seemed to me in that moment, as we ran on.



* * *





SAM


Sam lay sprawled on his shitty motel bed, staring at the shitty, water-stained ceiling, and wondered how anyone could handle living in a place that never moved. The view out the window—also shitty, although he guessed his standards for windows were lower than his standards for, y’know, mattresses—was always the same, parking lot and narrow slice of street and shitty little stores on the other side. No mysteries. No surprises.