Though I did not seek mementos, sometimes a glimpse of half-rotted fence or vacant lot, or the screaming of the gulls, would call a trivial childhood moment into vivid awareness.
At last we came to the row of waterfront markets, stalls now collapsed into piles of salt-eaten clapboard. Trumbull parked, and we clambered over the dunes. Patches of snow clung to the sand. Wind rattled the stalks of dry beach grass, the sound so improbably loud that I could imagine not only the town, but the ocean beyond, become lifeless in our absence. Audrey, Charlie, and Neko pulled their coats tight and tugged their hats low around their ears.
I had forgotten how much San Francisco’s rocky beach, embraced into the larger landscape by mountains and the shining reach of the new bridge, differed from this. The dunes hid all the land beyond, making a world of ocean edged only with a ribbon of damp sand. I slipped off my shoes and stockings, let my feet recall the feel of the sand, how it shaped itself around my skin and slumped in after, leaving shallow outlines to await the tide. Near the horizon, the thin black line of Union Reef lay bare and uninhabited. Behind it and far below, I knew, the outpost town of Y’ha-nthlei marked the true boundary between the civilizations of land and sea.
“You don’t actually get cold, do you?” asked Charlie. He leaned heavily on his cane.
I spread my arms to the ocean. “What do you think?”
The waves slid onto the waterline and retreated, but I could see that the tide was rising. Beside me, Caleb shed shoes and jacket and ran down to the water.
Audrey rubbed gloved hands together and ducked her chin against the wind. “Is that necessary? For the ritual, I mean?”
“I imagine that for people of the air, it would largely result in frostbite. I don’t recommend it.”
Trumbull wore coat and hat, but acted less affected by the cold than the others. She gazed out over the water, holding herself very still. It occurred to me that for all she affected indifference, the ocean was one of the few things to survive all her tenure on this world. It must mean something to her, to see whole remembered continents shaped into unrecognizable new forms.
I, too, would see such change. I tried to imagine not only Innsmouth gone, but the dunes and beach eroded into a wider ocean, or crushed up into new mountains. I could not, and yet in the deep cities of the Atlantic architects already planned how they would adapt to aeons of seismic metamorphosis.
I found a fragment of driftwood, and with it began to draw the summoning signs. I made certain to include Trumbull’s alterations. The world still felt deserted save for the six of us, a response to our summons as unimaginable as the drift of continents. At last I called the others to join me. Trumbull checked my work, Audrey and Charlie asked after the details, and all added their own blood to the central sigil. Caleb and I were most careful; we did not know the variant signs that would focus the summons on our elders, and the spell must recognize us as callers rather than targets lest we waste our efforts entirely. I recalled rituals where the blood of dozens blackened the sand, but today the ground soaked up our scant sacrifice without darkening.
As we began our chant, the rhythm of the waves and the steady roar of wind forced us to raise our voices, and still drowned them out more often than not. Air and ocean sang another chorus, descant to our human tongues.
The last of the chant died away, leaving only that descant. “Now we wait,” I said.
Minutes passed, shading toward a full hour. My impatience grew, alongside a fear not yet fully acknowledged. Caleb and Neko wandered down to the water and began flicking tide-smoothed pebbles into the waves. Audrey fidgeted, closed her eyes and tried to breathe evenly, fidgeted more, took out a cigarette. I stood and checked the progress of the ocean’s advance, worried whether we had placed the spell high enough. At the tideline, tiny holes washed shut as the waves covered them, appeared again as they were exposed to the air. My father had said they were burrows for some manner of mollusk; I crouched to watch them, trying to reclaim my youthful fascination. Eventually I wandered back to the ritual site, trailed by Neko and Caleb.
“Maybe,” said Audrey hesitantly, “it’s not working?”
“You are remarkably impatient creatures,” said Trumbull. “Do you think they’ve been sitting out on the reef for twenty years, ears cocked to respond instantly to your first call?”
“No,” said Caleb. “But they might have given up on us by now. If they’ve all returned to R’lyeh to await the death of the sun, they’re well beyond our reach.”
“Impatient,” Trumbull repeated. “And with no sense of how time scales. Your elders may be young, but after even a few millennia, twenty years is nothing. Certainly not long enough to give up on their remaining spawn.” Her voice turned steely. “Wait.”
Caleb’s gaze hardened. “I apologize, Great One.” He hunched his shoulders to look up at her, mimicking a child’s fawning cadence. “Please, Great One, will you tell us a story to help pass the time?”
I winced, and braced myself for either scathing reply or equally scathing dismissal. Instead she leaned back and stretched, digging fingers into cold sand. “That is a tradition of proper age and sense. Although if you prefer mockery, I need not.”
Caleb affected nonchalance. “Go ahead, by all means.”
“Hold on a moment,” said Audrey. She glanced between Caleb and Trumbull. “I’m missing something—what’s she? If she’s not one of you?” Neko, who would never have asked, stilled to hear the answer.
Trumbull looked at me, amused. “Haven’t you told her?”
“You didn’t say I could.”
“I admire your discretion. You didn’t seem the sort to keep things from your students. After all, she is here.”
I sighed. “Audrey figured out my nature on her own. Or came close enough that it made more sense to tell her than to let her speculate.”
“In two days? Impressive.” Trumbull turned dark eyes on Audrey, who met her gaze defiantly. They locked stares, and then Trumbull’s eyes widened in shock. Only a moment before they returned to their usual bland amusement, but it was enough.
I pushed between them. “Professor, I’ll thank you to leave my student’s mind alone.”
“Calm yourself. I am perfectly content with this body; I was merely testing. Your student has a strong will. I would have had to work much harder to hold her.”
Audrey’s breath had quickened, but she managed to match Trumbull’s own sangfroid. “That tells me what you can do—and it’s impressive—but it doesn’t tell me what you are except for three inches taller than me and in need of better glasses.”
Trumbull smiled, an incongruous expression. “I am an archivist. I record and remember the history and knowledge that would otherwise be lost.”
“And not human. Not even like them.” She jerked her elbow at me and Caleb.