“The ritual was hard for me, and I was doing a lot better than she was. I’m not excusing your grandfather, but I’m a lot more upset with Miss Harris for not bringing her to us earlier.”
I went ahead and described the ritual for Leroy’s benefit. When I explained why we’d been able to make it work, he looked at Audrey with mingled horror and fascination.
“Yes, yes, I know,” she said. “I’m descended from a bunch of murderous crazy people. I bet you are too, Mr. I’m-Related-to-Charlemagne.”
“Probably, but they never did anything like that.”
“My relatives could tell you stories about British magicians,” I said.
Distracted, Leroy turned his attention back on me. “Your family aren’t healthy to be around.”
While I was considering my response, Audrey said, “Healthier than Barlow’s people. Especially if you don’t try to poke them in the eye.”
“He attacked me!”
“She’s a girl, you moron. And you threatened her!”
“Enough,” I said. “Chulzh’th lost her temper, and she knows it. If you’re going to admit I saved your life, then you should know that she did too—I panicked and did the healing ritual wrong, and she helped me get it back under control.”
“Ah.” Leroy sat back, quelled. He looked at Jesse a long moment. “I don’t know what to do about this. You’re right, that we need … something. But if your spooks can’t be trusted, I don’t know where we can learn.”
“You could study with us,” I said. “I should have offered earlier. I’m sorry.”
The looks the boys turned on me then made it clear that, however much they might be pressed into keeping our secrets, they weren’t ready to treat me as a fellow human. My own reactions were a tangle: anger at their judgment, relief at the excuse to avoid further intimacy, shame at my relief.
“I hope you find your own way,” I said. Then, apprehension twisting into the tangle: “Just, by all the gods, please don’t try to summon anything you haven’t already spoken to. It’s not an effective route to power.”
Audrey nodded. “In general, if you think what you’re about to do might destroy Arkham, tell me first so I can grab anything I’ve left here.”
“Are you still talking to us?” Jesse asked her.
“Sure. Just not studying with you. Call me if you change your minds.”
*
I returned to the Innsmouth beach a few days later, with Neko and Spector and the confluence, to wait while elders brought up treasure from Y’ha-nthlei: mined nuggets, jewels and coins salvaged from centuries of shipwreck, and a few pieces of the worked gold jewelry so loved by R’lyehn artisans. These were not for trade; I bent my head as Grandfather placed one around my neck. It was heavy and cool, a thick bas-relief of elders and exotic cephalopods prostrate before gods.
“From your grandmother,” Grandfather said. “She could not come yet from the central ranges, but sends this and her love.”
I’d met Grandmother only a few times during my childhood. On land, before I was born, she’d kept house and raised her children well, but while she loved Grandfather she never loved such domesticity. After her metamorphosis she’d joined one of the exploratory companies that mapped the ever-changing floor of the Atlantic. That she’d heard already of my survival, quickly enough to send such a message and such a gift, was a small miracle.
Grandfather offered another necklet to Caleb and then—acknowledgment a miracle of another sort—smaller pieces to Audrey and Charlie and Dawson and Neko. Dawson handed hers back to Caleb, and smiled brilliantly as he clasped it around her neck.
I knelt to examine the more ordinary treasure. There’s something diverting about boxes full of gold, in spite of the small number of problems against which they’re useful. Judging from the others’ reactions, it was one of humanity’s shared peculiarities. Perhaps it’s that their use is easier and more pleasant than so many other methods of solving problems.
“So,” I told Dawson. “Turning Innsmouth back into a town is going to take a lot of work. And we’ll need to hire people to do much of it.”
“Or,” said Spector, “as I mentioned a few days ago, I could use a secretary.”
Dawson looked between us, then out over the ocean. The day was calm, with the sun showing through thin clouds. A few patches of snow tipped the dunes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m kind of fond of Massachusetts.”
“Outreach to Aeonist communities is one of my responsibilities,” Spector said. “It would help to have someone here who knew the place.”
“Let me think about it.”
I suspected she would take her time; it was a pleasure to have options, when such luxury could be found.
“Charlie had an idea,” I told Ngalthr. Charlie looked at me, startled; his insight probably wasn’t the part of that conversation he remembered best. “Over the centuries, some of our people have taken lovers from out of town who left, and whose mist-blooded children never returned to the water. Some of their descendants must be out there, now; if we could find them they might help us strengthen Innsmouth.”
“And sire or bear children more likely to come into the water? Yes, I see that.”
“Anything you might know about who left, or where to find their descendants, would make it a lot easier to invite them home.”
“Yes.” Ngalthr hummed to himself, deep in his chest. “Our historians will have information that may be of use. More might be found in the journals now at Miskatonic. We must decide what to do about those.”
“About that. Trumbull—the Yith, I mean, who called itself that—suggested before it left that it was growing less pleased with Miskatonic’s archival services.”
“Is that what they’re doing there? I always did wonder. So it offered to remove our collections—to where?”
“To Innsmouth. If we build a library to their specifications, of course.”
He gave a bubbling laugh. “Of course. An ideal outcome … assuming it held to that judgment when it returned home, and the rest of its people agreed.”
“Assuming.” I looked out over the ocean, back at the dunes hiding ruins we hoped to rebuild. “I’m reluctant to depend on the Great Race’s benevolence, just now. But I can’t think of any other options.”
He knelt and sifted coins between webbed fingers. “Miskatonic will not sell, not to us nor any agent of ours. But it’s possible they could be bribed. You might offer to endow a reading room, for example. With conditions.”
“My family knows lawyers who do that sort of thing,” said Audrey. “I could help find someone.”
I thought about it. I disliked Miskatonic: their arrogance, their treatment of Trumbull, the highhanded way that most of the students interacted with everyone around them. If the people of air must hold our books, my preference would be to share them with the Hall School. To remain dependent on Miskatonic’s approval, no matter if it came more easily, would gall. But even were Mary to chivvy her team out of the library tomorrow, I saw no practical way to free our collection.