“You work in one of the factories?” asked the boy.
I let go the shelf. “I’m Aphra Marsh. I’m visiting Miskatonic for research in the library.”
“Woo! They let you in?” The second girl hooked a free chair from a nearby table and patted it. She waved her hand expansively, trailing acrid smoke. “I’m Audrey Winslow. I took the special Introductory Folklore course last summer, but they wouldn’t let me near anything interesting. What’re you studying?”
I took the chair with some trepidation. “Mathematics. And folklore as well, perhaps.”
“Ah,” said the boy. “You mean magic.” He shot a look at Audrey, who rolled her eyes.
“If you want to call it that,” she said while I was still deciding how to respond.
“If,” said another boy, “you want to remain mired in superstition instead of acknowledging that ancient wisdom might merely be another form of modern science.”
And they were off, arguing lightly about the fundamental nature of the universe.
During a collective pause for breath, Audrey asked me: “What do you think, Aphra?”
I considered the wisdom of a serious answer, and shrugged. “If magic violates the fundamental laws of nature, they clearly weren’t all that fundamental.”
“But do you think they connect?” asked the first boy, the one who had called magic by name. “Maybe there are things we can never learn through science. Things beyond understanding in any rational way.”
“Like why Sally won’t go steady with you?” asked the other boy, and the first girl—Sally, I presumed—blushed.
Audrey leaned in and whispered to me: “That’s Jesse Sadler, Leroy Price, and Sally Ward. Don’t mind Jesse—he wants everything to be fathomless mystery. That’s fine for him—he can get into the stacks.”
“But it’s true,” I said, drawn in despite myself. “There are different ways of understanding the universe, and you learn nothing by running an experiment if a spell or a sculpture is what’s needed. And there are things we’ll never understand because we don’t have the time, or the right sorts of minds.”
“Defeatist,” said Leroy. He preened a hand through slick hair.
I blinked. “You have a narrow definition of victory.”
Jesse smirked and took a sip of coffee. “Lady has a point. The universe is vaster and stranger than we can know. Maybe than we should know.” He intoned this with the confidence of someone to whom the universe had so far denied nothing. I stared out the window at the tainted river.
“Say,” he continued. “Where are you from?”
“San Francisco,” I said, still distracted.
“Are you sure? You sound local.” I barely had time to catch my breath before he continued. “Marsh? Like the Innsmouth Marshes? My mother used to talk about them; I thought they all left.”
“Yes,” I said faintly. “They left.”
Sally was already leaning forward. “Innsmouth? The old ghost town? I heard it’s haunted.”
“Going to be some upset ghosts, then,” said Leroy. “Someone bought up the land, and they’re building new houses.”
She pouted. “You’re no fun.”
“Don’t blame me, blame the developers. And all the soldiers who want nice places to settle with their sweethearts.”
“You should drive us there before they knock everything down. See if we can find any ghosts.”
Leroy preened again. “Sounds like a gasser.”
I stood. “Pardon me. It was a pleasure to meet you all.”
“Aw, don’t be like that,” said Leroy. “We were just—” but I fled to the shelter of the aisles with my eyes dry.
I had known that Miskatonic’s scholars did not see the world as we did. In the pews and streets of Innsmouth we’d mocked them as dilettantes and power-seekers, godless, prurient, exploring Aeonist philosophy and practice as others might take a safari.
It was harder now.
I thought of seeking out the store’s occult section, which must have some worthwhile content to attract the university’s tourists. But more of their kin might be there, gossiping over clever interpretations of the Necronomicon and squealing over Innsmouth’s picturesque ruins. My courage failed me. Instead I hurried out onto Garrison Street.
Arkham felt less of a refuge now. I sought my bearings. If I followed the river upstream, I must eventually return to campus.
“Hey, hold up!” I whirled at Audrey’s voice. “I’m really sorry about those guys. They can be drips sometimes.”
I tried to slow my racing blood. “I will not disagree.” I walked, as briskly as I could without giving the appearance of fear, back toward the street that paralleled the river.
Audrey, sleek in her A-line skirt and heels, scurried to keep up. “They didn’t mean—are you really from Innsmouth?”
I turned, as I always found myself doing toward danger. With a jolt of fear I realized that I had left just such a risk behind in the Mill: Audrey’s friends might even now be polishing old rumors, salivating over blood libels that had grown dull in our absence. “What of it if I am?”
“Makes no difference to me. It just seems creepy for them to be wandering around your old house looking for ghosts, that’s all.”
“Creepy. Yes, that’s one word for it.”
She didn’t seem inclined to leave me be. I looked her over: narrow nose and small eyes, limp blonde hair, not a drop of Innsmouth blood in her. But she watched me eagerly, with the familiar curiosity one might offer a newly met relative.
“What do you want of me?” But even as I asked, I realized. “You think I can get you into the library. I barely gained permission myself.”
“It’s not that.” Although from the slump of her shoulders, that must have been part of it. “They still talk about Innsmouth at Hall, you know.”
I sighed inwardly. “And what do they say of us?”
“That the Innsmouth girls were always snobs—but that they knew what they wanted, and went after it, and didn’t let anything stand in their way. That they could get things out of the school that no one else could. A real education, not just enough to nod in the right places when Miskatonic boys want to feel smart.” She swallowed visibly.
I blinked. “They say different things about us at Hall than they do at Miskatonic.” And Hall, I recalled, had always been more willing to let us through its gates.
“We say different things about Miskatonic, too.”
Startled, I laughed. “Yes, so did we. I don’t suppose you know whether this street leads back to the college?”
“It does, but there’s a safer neighborhood about two blocks farther from the water.”
More sanguine about her company in spite of myself, I went where she directed. She chattered about her “Bohemian” friends, their comings and goings and forays into new areas of study, glancing at me from time to time with that same watchful curiosity. Fortunately little response on my part seemed required.