Each idea was more impossible, more hopeless. And yet, I wasn’t ready to give up. As Grandfather had reminded me, humans were not sensible that way.
I thought of sand and storm and ocean, wind and wave and fire. Ways of reaching out, fighting, holding to what we wanted.
The suggestion taking shape in my mind didn’t solve our problems. It didn’t save Audrey or Sally, didn’t retrieve our books or lever Barlow’s people from the library or stop their deadly experiments. And yet, trembling with cold where I could once have stood naked in the gale, it was all I could think of.
CHAPTER 27
“Could you ease the storm?” I asked Ngalthr. “Just here, around us? Or is it too strong?”
“I can soften the tempest,” he said. His gills flared briefly against a gust of snow, closing tight when they found only open air. “You are too sensitive to the cold tonight. This isn’t safe for you.”
“The outsider’s making me cold,” I agreed. “That will pass soon enough one way or another. But that’s not the reason. I celebrated Winter Tide with Charlie this year, on the West Coast.” The archpriest nodded approval, and I went on. “But it isn’t the same. I don’t know that it will help, but looking at ourselves under the stars, seeing where we are … either it might make it easier to think of something or … or it could be a cleansing, if…” I looked at Audrey, who nodded as well. “If there’s no way to save Audrey. If we can’t do anything else, we can bear witness. Do something other than be scared.”
“I’d like that,” said Audrey, thin-voiced.
Ngalthr dipped his head. “The timing of the ritual isn’t the most important part; it’s good that you understand.” He wiped the sand clean of the summoning, and began sketching the more complex sigils for the Tide ritual.
Chulzh’th came up behind me as I watched. “You’ll make a good acolyte, when you come into the water.”
“You do me honor.” The compliment gave me little comfort. But it made me wonder abruptly how I might remember this night’s crisis in a hundred years. Would I be an acolyte, learning to face such things with equanimity? I might be more like my grandfather, preaching and ranting to foreigners on land, and given wary respect in the water for deeds done outside convenient titles. I knew little of deep city politics, but enough to be aware that Grandfather never sat easily within any bounds given him.
“What are we doing?” asked Spector.
I started guiltily. “An actual religious ritual. Is that going to be a problem for you?”
“As long as I don’t have to pray … is there anything I can do to help?”
I smiled, in spite of the cold. “Just watch. And think, and talk. The Tide is more a way of looking at the world than any specific action.”
He nodded. “At the Jewish New Year, there are a few days between when the old year ends and the new begins, when we’re supposed to meditate and make amends. Like that?” I nodded.
Ngalthr stepped back from his diagram and gestured for silence. When he got it, he tilted back his head and lifted his arms to the sky, silhouetted against the fire. He chanted, a thundering bass that merged with storm and ocean, vibrating in my chest and loosening the ice there. It wrapped around me, a voice out of memory to make me shiver with awe and huddle close in gratitude. I closed my eyes, their corners wet and not with snow.
The chant pulled me from myself, let me feel the wind and snow and clouds as another, stranger body. And I could feel, too, Ngalthr among the elements—not trying to control them as I had in my first attempt the previous month, nor surrendering to their patterns as I’d done more successfully. I could see now that what worked on a few clouds would have torn me apart on a night like this. He embraced the storm, coaxed it, negotiated as one might with a horse or some powerful but potentially cooperative predator. Or as if one could make a confluence with the uncaring Earth itself rather than mortal individuals.
Gradually, the wind died down. Snow fell, but slower and more gently. A single slender crack opened amid the clouds, letting through a hint of the starlight beyond.
Ngalthr sat, inhaling deeply. The other elders, too, settled around the outskirts of the fire, except for two who remained standing watch against the empty dunes. My awareness fell back to my own fragile body, half-burnt and half-frozen by a night grown marginally less inimical. My breathing eased, and some of the tension ebbed from my shoulders.
“Now what do we do?” asked Audrey.
“Look to the stars,” said Ngalthr. “Pray. Confess. Listen to the cosmos, and to each other.”
I did as he bade, leaning back in the sand to watch the sliver of infinity that we had opened. Cool light spilled through, magnified to visibility as it reflected through the falling snow. Above, hidden, the moon lay crested by sunlight and shadowed by the Earth. Most of the sun’s other worlds lay empty this aeon, but some had once borne life native or invasive, and others would bear it again. Distant suns, too, attended worlds that bore or would bear life, and stranger minds waited at the void’s edge. Darkness and cold would take them all, and the stories of most would not survive their own suns.
No meditation on cosmic humility could keep me from caring whether Audrey died tonight. I turned my gaze away from the stars, and moved to sit beside her.
“I’m sorry I got you into this,” I said.
She tilted her head to the sky. “Don’t. I got myself into it. I chose, and it’s not like you didn’t warn me what it would cost.”
“I said magic would make you aware of mortality. It’s not supposed to speed things up.”
“You also said the universe wasn’t under our control.” She laughed dryly. “My family will be so mad. They might sue the school, I guess. Winslows put on such horrible funerals—everyone goes to church, and then they stand around catching up on who got what job and who got married. How do your people handle it?”
I wanted to tell her that it wouldn’t happen, that she’d live, but we’d already had that argument tonight. At least for the moment she didn’t seem inclined to hurry it along. “We used to go to the temple and say the Litany, and offer prayers for the dead to each god. There’s a cemetery up at the far end of the gorge, and we’d go there for the burial, and tell stories about the person, and a scribe would write them down in the temple book. Or on something else to be transcribed later, if it was raining. We’re supposed to pass the funeral records on to the Yith, if we can find one and get them to pay attention for long enough. But contact is unpredictable—it never happened when I was a kid, so the only memories preserved from that time period will be anything she found at Miskatonic.”
“Well,” said Audrey. “I can’t complain that I won’t be remembered in the Archives. Rudely, I hope.”