My wanderings had been as circuitous as I suspected, and in less than a quarter hour I began to recognize the area around the school.
I attended to her stories as best I could, knowing that the school’s politics might prove vital, but I could capture only part of the fluent stream of names and events that washed over me.
As we neared the school’s main gate, she continued a complicated explanation of how the group pooled their resources when texts proved difficult to acquire. “And when Barinov went back to Leningrad, there was a whole argument over his books, too. He was so mad, he ended up gifting them to the Hall library out of spite.”
“Wait,” I said. “You’ve got a Russian in your group?”
“Had—like I said, he went back home my first year. Kirill Barinov. Lost his permission to study abroad or something. Why?”
It had been easy to ignore Spector’s formal mission, in the previous day’s bittersweet frustration. But I must not neglect it: both because it might represent a genuine danger, and because it was all that allowed us any intimacy with our books. “I was just surprised. It makes sense that he would have gone home, I suppose, given the news out of Russia. What did he study?”
She grinned wryly. “Math and folklore, same as you. You could probably see his materials, if you came over to Hall. Our collection isn’t so impressive, but our library makes it a lot easier to check out books.”
“I might do that. Thank you.”
*
I found the others in the Special Collections reading room, and settled myself among today’s pittance of books. Trumbull wore a faint smile as she perused a rare volume of Falconer’s Cryptomenysis Patefacta—I remembered it as a pride of our uncle Sidrach’s collection, one that I had felt very grown-up for being permitted to handle. A dog-eared copy of Song of R’drik and Ghak-Shelah still lay on the table. I was grateful to see that it was in R’lyehn; I wasn’t sure what Spector would have made of the old and rather explicit epic. Caleb motioned me over.
“Here,” he said quietly.
It was a copy of Mens Pelagium, bound in red leather and printed on alternating pages in Latin and R’lyehn—not a rare edition, and there had been many like it in Innsmouth’s libraries. But when I looked over his shoulder, I inhaled sharply. I recognized our mother’s handwriting.
“I read it correctly, then?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. This one is ours.”
Mens Pelagium has much to say on the pedestrian life of the land, how someone keeping house or catching fish should best prepare themselves for a life of glory beneath the water. Kezia Marsh, like many, had added her own notes in the margins: meditations and frustrations and responses to the book’s suggestions.
“The land does not ache so much,” she had written beside a passage comparing a pregnant woman to the land that gives us over to the water. And in messier handwriting, below: “But birth may be much like the metamorphosis. Such a tiny creature, it is wondrous and terrible what she will become.” I could scarce read the words to Caleb. He balled his fists and closed his eyes, and I wished for seawater to offer him.
Charlie, caught by some explication of Trumbull’s, didn’t notice, and Neko had retreated to a corner chair with a less consequential volume. But Spector saw that we’d found something of interest, and came over.
“May I?” he asked. Before I could say anything, Caleb whipped around and hissed. Spector flinched. My brother’s already bulging eyes went wider.
“I would like you to know my mother as she was in life, too,” I said carefully. He’d been the one to track down and share the government’s all-too-detailed records of her death—something for which I still owed him, though he’d never say so. “But this is not the time.”
“No. My apologies.”
And of course I must needs tell him what I’d learned from Audrey, and Caleb would not be pleased at the reminder of why the government wanted us here. When we adjourned at last, I sought to pull Spector aside. But Caleb trailed behind me, and I ended up explaining Audrey’s tenuous lead while Spector eyed him nervously and rubbed his wrists.
Trumbull drifted over. Charlie came along with her and stood next to me, his nearness reassuring and familiar.
“You’ve found relevant material elsewhere, I take it?” asked Trumbull. “May I come along? I find this line of inquiry fascinating.”
I cocked my head at Spector, who frowned. Of course, he didn’t know why her input would be so relevant to what we sought. I doubted it was my place to inform him. I looked at her, hoping she would give me some indication of what to say, but apparently she had not gained quite so much fluency in the human dialect of eyes.
I settled for telling him, “Her expertise might be relevant.” It sounded weak, and he frowned again.
As we left, I managed a moment with Trumbull far enough from the others to murmur, “If he knew where you were from, he’d want you along.”
“Mm. He is a representative of the local governmental authority, is he not? I do not care for such attention.”
“Neither do I,” I admitted. “But Spector is reasonable, for a … representative of the local governmental authority.”
“Dominant humans are rarely trustworthy. And I have seen how he reads; he is no scholar. Your brother, your student: they may know my nature if you think them capable of discretion.” She tapped fingers against her side. I wondered if the tic was hers, or native to the host body. “Spector concerns me. What does he want with these books, if not to study them?”
Spector, like Trumbull, would not be pleased if I shared his secrets without permission. So far as I could tell, even Skinner knew only that the government had an interest here, not what it was. But my interest wasn’t the government’s. I wanted only to prevent the body theft spell from being misused, and to keep my surviving family from at least that one danger. “You know that the United States—the local governmental authority—just came out of a war.”
She shrugged. “Humans are always at war.”
“Yes. It looks like we might be getting into another one soon, this time with Russia. There’s … apparently there’s some reason to believe that a Russian scholar might have learned the art of body switching. And brought it back to their government…” I trailed off. The dangers of sabotage between nations, the specter of city-destroying weapons, could not be compelling to someone who so easily dismissed the deaths of species.
But she frowned. “Our arts are not meant for petty politics.”
“We know. Our laws have always said as much.” That was another thing: if the Russians used such an art, it would be incumbent on me, and on Caleb, to enforce the ancient prohibitions. Oblivion take Spector, for always managing to find places where my own obligations and desires so neatly aligned with the needs of the state. I could easily wish that I shared Trumbull’s indifference.