“Oh? What is, then?”
I looked at Charlie, at a loss. I’d been free for all of three years; I barely knew how to rebuild my own life.
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Magic is good enough for you. Why are you learning it, if not for power?”
There had been no mentor to ask me that, when I restarted my studies. I could no longer remember whatever foolish answer I had given my father, when he first asked. “It’s my birthright. I want it back from those who stole it.”
“And that isn’t power?”
Still I hesitated. “It would slow us down,” I said to Charlie. “We’d have to go back to some of our early practice.”
He didn’t look entirely pleased, but said: “It’s up to you, Miss Marsh. Not my place to say how much we share.”
I could tell, even from a few minutes in her presence, that Audrey had been granted a relatively easy life. Little had been denied her—and yet, in the thing she had been denied, I heard echoes of my own desperation, held tight through the years in the camp.
Turning to her, I said: “All right, we’ll try this. I’ll take you on as a student. But we don’t know how long we’re in Arkham for. It could be weeks or months. If things go very well, or very poorly, it could be days.”
Audrey lifted her chin. “A start is more than I have now.”
“Then we’ll begin. Tell me what you know—or what you think you know.”
*
May 1943: The guards are distracted again, as they were before the Nikkei came to the camp. Outside the warden’s office, I hear raised voices. The next day, they begin calling prisoners inside in pairs. There are over two thousand Nikkei now, and the rotation takes a long time. Rumors swamp true reports.
They call me and Caleb into the office together. Soldiers stand in the corners, guns trained. But that’s not what captures my attention. On the desk are two sheets of printed paper, two pens. My eyes feast on the words without even trying to interpret them. Letters, not traced secretly in sand, but gathered in an impossible abundance of sentences and paragraphs.
The warden’s voice draws me back. His hair has grown gray and grizzled during his time here, and he glares with well-worn dislike. “Fill out the forms. Don’t make any mark other than ‘yes’ or ‘no.’”
The first question: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?” The second: “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?” I can barely suppress laughter. But the unvoiced hysteria dies as I consider: whoever ordered these questions to the camp made no exception for us.
I glance at Caleb: “You could.” The rest goes unspoken: he could get himself drafted as a soldier. Get away from this place where he’s lived since he was six, to fight and perhaps die for a country that’s done nothing to earn his loyalty—far away from walls and wire and dry air, with a better illusion of freedom.
But he smiles at the warden, takes the pen, and scrawls “NO” twice in unpracticed, childish handwriting. Unwilling to risk separation—and in truth, unwilling to give over whatever remains of my self to such an oath—I do the same.
Still, I let the pen go with reluctance, and leave clutching a new and secret hope: they are starting to forget why they were afraid of us.
*
Audrey turned out to be familiar with a certain amount of theory, though intermixed with a great deal of nonsense. When she forgot herself—or rather, when she forgot her exaggerated ideas of my station—she was also prone to wild speculations about the “rational” foundations of the art.
What she truly lacked was any practical experience. After a few of her stories I decided that the essential problem with her “wild” college set was that they expected the cosmos to provide human-scale drama. They’d bought a sheep from a local slaughterhouse and sacrificed it on Hallowmas, hoping thereby to earn visions. There had been visions of a sort, but there had also been much drinking. Another time, they’d painted themselves with a paste of dead tarantulas—these stolen from a Miskatonic biology lab—in an attempt to summon a thankfully imaginary spider god.
“Sally got a rash all over her belly,” Audrey told us in disgust. “She claimed she was ‘spiritually pregnant.’”
“Miss Winslow,” I said hesitantly. I did not wish to become like Spector’s masters, automatically suspicious of anyone who dealt in magic. Nor did I wish to assume, as did some of our elders, that short-lived men of the air must invariably misunderstand and warp the ancient texts. The “wild” students with their risqué reputations were probably harmless. But I could not bear the thought of being further disappointed later on. “Has anyone been hurt in these rituals? Worse than a rash, I mean, or against their will.”
“Not that I know of. You hear stories about how intense things were in the old days, but I think it’s just people trying to sound daring. The sheep is the only time I’ve even seen blood.”
“Ah. Well, that will change.” And I told her about the Inner Sea.
*
Spector cornered me after dinner. He’d acquired a cigar from somewhere, and I had to breathe shallowly. “Miss Marsh, I don’t mean to pry. But what arrangement did you come to with that student?”
It had been close to noon by the time we returned to the reading room, so I could hardly deny that something had transpired. “And yet you are prying.”
He sighed. “I have to report, and justify, anyone who learns about the mission. I have to fill out ten duplicate copies of a five-page form for anyone who learns about the mission. What you do on your own time is your own business—I just need to know whether I ought to fill out that paperwork. Please say no.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “No. She is naturally curious about our interest in her friend’s papers, but I haven’t told her why we want them.”
“Ah.” His eyes narrowed. “She knew him?”
I hurried to forestall this line of thought. “I don’t think she knows any more about what he was working on than the interests he shared with all of her cohort. They don’t appear to have been at risk of accomplishing any legitimate magic, let alone anything you need to be concerned with.”
He looked at me a long moment and nodded. “I trust your judgment.”
“Good.”
But the conversation shook me, and I wished for a fleeting moment that I had what Audrey had supposed: a retinue of pliable followers whose judgment I need not fear.