“Trumbull said they might have put in anything, during their experiments. It slept until something triggered it, but now it’s making me like them. I feel so angry at everyone, and I keep pushing it away, and it keeps coming back stronger and stronger. When you asked for a story I wanted to hit you—I wanted to, I don’t even know, break you. Like in my dream. I don’t think I could, and I’m glad, but suppose that changes too? I learn so quickly.” She pulled back from my hand. “You should cut me out of the confluence.”
“Audrey, no!”
“You’d all be okay without me bleeding into you—you’d be able to help Sally get better. She may be an idiot, but if you can get the cold thing out of her, she’ll still be a good person.”
“You’re family.”
“You’ve barely known me for a week.”
“Yes,” I said. “But I know you. We won’t leave you to face this on your own.”
She crossed her arms. “You’re being an idiot. You’re so much more important than me; you’re literally the last woman of your people who can still have babies. Your elders will tell you the same thing. They’ll kill me out of hand if they think I’m a threat to you.”
I stared at her. “You think that? Is that why you ran off?”
She lurched as if on the verge of some violence, but pulled herself back. “No. It’s why I came.”
“Audrey…” I didn’t dare touch her; she seemed as if she might bolt at any moment. “They won’t. They wouldn’t. They know what we have.”
“I didn’t expect comforting lies from you of all people.”
I squatted, making myself small. I dipped cupped hands into an inrushing wave, dashed cold salt water against my eyes. It hurt, but it cleared my head. “Audrey, please believe me. The universe is a dangerous place, with little comfort to be found. I’ll do all I can to prevent it, but you could die of the cold, or of the dark, or of the void-touched storm. My family aren’t always nice, and they do what they must to protect their own. But they know that when the universe doesn’t care, someone has to. If we don’t care, we lose ourselves, even without Mad Ones changing our blood.”
She laughed bitterly. “If everyone thought like that, Christians would still be getting gobbled up by lions.”
I’d read of such things in a history class, but didn’t want to argue the difference between self-sacrifice and holding on to something worth defending. It didn’t seem like it would help. I licked my lips. “There are animals that feed solely on Christians? Why didn’t anyone tell us?”
That got the desired laugh, less bitter. “You need to learn more about the last two millennia.” She squatted beside me, and with an abrupt sweep of her arm splashed water on her own face. “Ow. That does kind of help.”
“Let’s go back to the fire. No sense arguing over what the elders will do when they’ll be here soon enough—and no sense trying to talk me into something I’m never going to do.”
“Fine. Throwing a fit just made me colder, anyway.”
By the flames, Caleb was explaining to Trumbull more of what she’d missed. Dawson sat near him but, eyeing Spector, did not quite touch. Charlie nodded at us with a worried expression, but no one was forward enough to ask for a report.
The first time we’d called the elders, the day had been calm and bright, and roiling waves heralded their arrival. This time—with the waves already high and the wind howling—they appeared silently in the flickering half-lit shadows around us.
Trumbull gasped and pushed herself back from the fire, and a dozen scaled heads swiveled to stare at her.
“You’ve found trouble quickly, Aphra Yukhl,” said my grandfather. I leapt to my feet and threw myself against him. Salt-damp arms enfolded me.
At last I pulled myself away. “I’m glad you came. I don’t know what to do. We’ve gone from trying to retrieve our books to trying to keep someone else from misusing them dreadfully, and … and we’ve been hurt.”
Grandfather held my chin and looked at me carefully, examined my companions over my shoulder, then lifted his head to sniff the storm. “The Yith fled home, I gather.”
“Yes.” Trumbull rose to join us and extended her hand. I caught only a slight trembling. “Hello. I’m Dr. Catherine Trumbull. A pleasure to meet you.”
I moved aside and Grandfather took her hand in his larger one. “Obed Marsh. A great honor.”
“We have rituals, don’t we?” I asked. “To help people returning from the Archives? Some sort of guidance?”
“We do,” said Archpriest Ngalthr. He bowed and introduced himself to Trumbull. “There is also a book, On the Rise and Fall of Stones, which you might find useful. But first it seems we have a more urgent situation. Tell us, child.”
He gestured to the campfire, and the rest of us made room for the archpriest, Acolyte Chulzh’th, and my grandfather. The remaining elders stood guard against whatever might come out of the storm. Spector twisted half around to see Jhathl standing post behind him; she nodded and bared a sharp-toothed smile. Spector nodded back and after a moment’s hesitation turned firmly to face us. Snow hissed to steam against the leaping flames.
I introduced Spector and Dawson as trustworthy representatives of the government, and then once more explained how we’d come to this point. With Trumbull, I’d had to cover everything, but could give only the barest outlines. For the elders, there were parts I could easily gloss over, others where I shared all the detail I could recall, hoping they might pick up on some clue of which I’d been unaware. Archpriest Ngalthr quickly proved himself attuned to my story’s subtleties, though not in the way I’d desired.
“Hold,” he said. “Do I understand that you’ve decided to rebuild the spawning grounds?”
I’d intended to bring that up in private. “Yes.”
Grandfather—now sitting between myself and Caleb—put his hands flat against the wet sand and closed his eyes. “Thank the gods. I am glad you thought better on it.”
I bristled internally, but kept it to myself. He had a right to be relieved, to have opinions on the spread of his own blood. “We had many reasons to do so,” I said. “But we must deal with this other trouble before it’s possible.”
The description of Mary’s summoning ritual, if nothing else, diverted the conversation.
“Are they mad?” demanded Chulzh’th.
“So Professor Trumbull—so the Yith suggested,” I said. “We were fortunate to have her there, and more so that she stayed long enough to end it rather than fleeing immediately. But she took their memories, and did something to the brain of their best magical theorist that made her illiterate. Their confusion is making matters worse, but telling them about the Yith wouldn’t improve matters at all.”
“She did—illiteracy?” Chulzh’th sounded exasperated. “I never heard the Yith were idiots.”
“I’ve seen this before,” said Ngalthr. “She’ll have lost not only letters, but even the ability to draw a lion or a skull as a sign to warn of danger. To the Yith, those who cannot create and understand permanent symbols are scarcely beyond brute animals. The most terrible possible fate, and an absolute barrier to further work.”