Fathom (13 page)

A tall, rough-edged creature assembled itself from the gritty mulch beneath the grass and disintegrating leaves. It cobbled itself into a manlike shape with sticks for bones and dew for blood; it gave itself eyes made of crumbling bark, and it fashioned a mouth from yellowed strips of dead palmetto. Everything it used smelled of some quick rot, accelerated and nourished by the wet, warm air.

It stood up straight and was taller than a man usually comes.

It paced toward the statue in the courtyard wall and when its
makeshift feet thudded against the earth, they made small, rhythmic crashes like sand and shells in a leather bag.

“Hello,” it said, but the voice wasn’t made by any clod-filled chest. The word sighed forth and it might have come from anywhere, or everywhere. The palmetto lips shifted, shaping themselves to project and pretend. It wasn’t a very good impression of speech, but it was a show for courtesy’s sake and not a strict necessity.

Hello,
Nia said back in her helpless way. The response echoed in her head and traveled no farther.

She was awake, inasmuch as she was ever awake anymore. It was easier to let her mind go numb, to switch off for days at a time. It was easier to insist that her eyes were closed and that her ears heard nothing. Sometimes, she even dreamed—or she thought she did.

But the two men in the courtyard had caught her attention with their chatter and she’d watched them, not closely but idly. What was the point in watching closely? What could she contribute, or warn, or assist?

“They’ve gotten it very, very wrong, haven’t they, dear? All of them. The ones who light the fires, the ones who found the fires—none of them has it even halfway right. Probably, for now, it’s just as well.”

Its brown, flaking eyes twitched and cast dust.

Nia was unsure but unafraid. Nothing frightened her anymore, even the things that ought to . . . even things like the creature that assessed her so callously and fed her questions and answers in a roundabout way. She didn’t know what it meant, but she didn’t know if it mattered.

“You’re coming along nicely, for what it’s worth. It won’t be much longer now.” It cocked its head to the left, and a bright red centipede scurried out of the place where his ear should have been.

“I ought to say, it won’t be much longer ‘in the grand scheme of things,’ to borrow one of Edward’s worn-out phrases. I don’t suppose that makes you feel any better.”

She wasn’t sure what the creature was talking about, but she couldn’t respond, so she let it slide.

“Also, I doubt you would be cheered to learn that all of this—” It swept a fingerless hand at the wall, the ground, and the sky. It left the appendage pointed at her. “—all of it was to save you. The water witch, she would’ve killed you. She would have drowned you and fed you to the creeping things with shells and claws. But I thought . . . I thought I might find another use for you.

“I watched the way you fought, and the way you ran. You were afraid, but you were thinking—and it might surprise you to know how rarely I’ve found men who can manage both states at once. I think the water witch was right to try a woman this time. And the woman she took, that woman was kin of yours.”

My cousin. So beautiful. I wanted to be like her.

“I know terribly well how complicated kinship can be. I’ve learned it over the lifetimes of continents, so it means much more to me than to a flesh-and-blood spark like yourself. You’re born, you live, and you’re gone, and it’s as if just one short cycle of the tides has passed. Before I’ve had time to notice you, I’ve absorbed you.

“But if you lived a longer stretch, and if you saw the arc of time as I do—like the curve of the planet’s surface, like something immense, taken for granted more than known—then you’d have time to know real betrayal and real conflict. In the end—” It paused as if to take a breath, but a thing so made does not need to breathe. Soon it recovered its intent. “—in the end, most of it comes down to kinship, of one kind or another.”

My cousin,
Nia thought again. A name flitted through her memory, but she couldn’t catch it and didn’t try very hard.
She isn’t dead, is she?

It had lost its train of thought. It picked it up again and continued. “The other girl, the one she took—that girl must have been wicked from the inside out. Did you know that, when you were with her? Did you see her for what she was all along, or did you only figure it out too late?

“The water witch must have been watching her from the moment she landed on the island. She used you, too, though you couldn’t have known it. Convinced you to lure your cousin into the ocean. She won’t come far onshore, herself. The earth slows her. It weighs her down and costs her too much to cross. So yes, you were used that night. First you were used by the water witch, and then I used you myself.

“At least, I set you up to be used. But I think that once you understand, you will not hold it much against me. Once the cost becomes clear, you’ll come to agree that what I did, I did for the purpose of good.”

Nia watched the creature shift and settle in its improvised bones. It moved a shoulder in a guilty shrug and she wondered idly where it had ever learned to lie.

I can’t trust you, can I? Not even a little bit
.

The thing met Nia’s eyes with a perfect, dedicated stare. “No, you cannot. But there’s no one else to tell you anything, except for the water witch herself—and you already know what she’s made of.” It shuffled itself loosely, and its grassy lips simulated a scowl. “Eventually, the imbeciles who frequent the ground at your feet will succeed, and then the water witch will learn of you. If you’ve ever been given to prayer, I might suggest that you do so now—petition whatever gods might hear you. Ask them for time. Beg them for the incompetence of men. Because if those ridiculous people setting small and futile fires ever achieve their goals, they’ll summon up their water witch and then, my darling, she’ll destroy you before you have time to be born.

“So wait, girl. Pray, and watch. Even from incorrect procedures you might learn something. You sleep through their rituals now, but you’d be well served to observe them. Watch them confound themselves. It’ll tell you plenty.”

From the feet up, the creature began to dissolve itself, not so much collapsing as letting the ground absorb it. But before the last of the shoulders, neck, and head disappeared, it offered one final thought.

“You can help a thing who loves the world destroy it; or you can help a thing who hates it save it.”

And the creature was gone.

Nia was shocked, but what could she do? She couldn’t speak, couldn’t act. Couldn’t warn or advise. She could only wait and reflect.

Something had spoken to her, and something had heard her respond. The creature had even taken credit for her condition. Could it be believed, even if it could not be trusted? If nothing else, Nia came away from the encounter with a fresh feeling she’d all but forgotten.

This really happened. Something caused it. Something knows about it.

And it logically followed that there might be an end in sight after all.

Now, finally—after several years of immobility and a desperate kind of resignation—Nia had something to be afraid of.

It was hard, dragging her consciousness up from the basement where she’d stored it. It was hard, forcing herself to awaken all the way and watch, and listen.

It was terrible, when she was paying attention.

All the awful sensations came back; all the distracting, distressing touches of wind, water, and insects assaulting her stony skin.
The sun was blinding and hot, and the shadows were soft and tickling when they brushed back and forth, creeping here and there along her body as the treetops swayed.

She had to strike a balance if she wanted to keep what was left of her sanity. If she withdrew too far, then she slept too much. If she strained too hard to stay alert, then the frustration made her want to scream, all the time, every second.

She tried to train her mind. Sleep some, wake some. Find a cycle.

At first she couldn’t find a good pattern; she missed the things she meant to catch. As she dragged herself up from the comfortable depths of sleep, she’d detect a whiff of smoke, or smell a hint of charred fur or flesh. Down below on the yard before her, there would be fresh spots of burned grass; among the walkway’s paving stones there would be pieces of wax, broken matches, or half a bloody footprint.

When she wasn’t watching, people came and went; small animals were killed and chants were called.

Until finally, she caught them.

It might only have been that their routine changed, and not that she had become more vigilant.

Night had dropped itself onto the island, smothering the sand like a blanket putting out a fire.

A man in black clothes touched Nia’s shoulders. One of his lean hands pressed against her arm while the other hand arranged something light and scratchy on her head.

If she’d been able to jump, she would’ve lurched when she realized how close his eyes were to hers. They stunned her with their immediacy, six inches from her own and staring hard, staring like he believed there was someone inside. And although it had surprised and unnerved her when the crudely shaped beast had spoken, this was somehow worse. It was one thing for a monster to
know her nature; it was another thing for that thin-faced man to gaze at her as if he gathered the worst.

Another flicker of awareness flashed across his face and was gone, and he was gone, too—retreated back into the yard to join six other people who were similarly dressed.

Maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe he didn’t know after all.

But she’d seen it, for a second. Not perfect knowledge, but an inkling of the truth. She couldn’t decide whether she should cling to it and hope for more, or recoil, because around the edges of the black-clad man’s concentration there was mania, too.

He lifted a hood off his back and draped it over his head. His companions did the same, and together they stood in a half circle, candles in their hands. The tiny orange lights painted their faces with wobbling warmth.

Nia looked closely. She stared as hard as she could, but she could scarcely tell them apart. The first man was quite tall; two others were fairly short and might have been women. The other three were of average and comparable builds. She was desperate to see their faces, but the hoods hung low and cast impenetrable shadows from their hair to their chins.

The air reeked with the pungent metal stink of blood. One of Nia’s feet felt damp; she was glad she couldn’t see it. But she could see what was left of something cat-sized and torn apart. In the center of the semicircle, a stripped rib cage reared up sharply out of the lawn. A long strand of vertebrae coiled at the edge of the fountain.

A tail,
she thought.
Skinned and cast aside
.
Who
are
these people?

The group fell into expectant silence.

One of the smaller figures broke it. “How much longer?” It was a woman’s voice, low with age and a bit of fatigue.

The man who had touched Nia responded. “Quiet. Not much longer. Every night we get closer.”

“So you
say,
” said a third person, a man with a voice a little
higher than the woman’s. “How are we supposed to know? How do we tell?”

“We’re summoning a goddess, not looking for a letter in the post. She’s all-powerful. She’ll let us know. Anyway, it’s obvious the stone woman was a sign that we were on the right path.”

The older woman wasn’t convinced. “The stone woman arrived four years ago, and nothing new has happened since she got here.”

“That’s
our
fault,” he insisted.

“
Your
fault,” she argued.

“Fine, then.
My
fault. All the signs indicated that a harbinger had come, but it took me time to find her. I kept my eyes trained on the water and the beach; how was I to know she’d be brought here? How were any of us to know?”

“Just one more mystery,” the woman grumbled. “One more secret, added to the stack.”

“This isn’t your mother’s faith. There’s none of that ‘many are called, and few are chosen’ nonsense. Few are called, and no one fails to answer. She picks us and we obey.”

“Then she could leave us better instructions.”

The leader’s hood hid his annoyed expression, but she could hear the glare in his voice. “This isn’t the sort of knowledge you let just
anyone
get their hands on. A little secrecy is a little security.”

One of the shorter characters spoke up and turned out to be a man after all. “But it’s been so
long.
”

“For who? For us? For her? How long do you think four years is to a goddess? It’s probably not even a blink. Not even a breath.”

“But we’re no gods,” the woman said.

“Not
yet
.”

“If she waits much longer, we’ll never survive to accept her promise—and yes, I know that her idea of a long time and ours don’t perfectly match. But how can we claim her reward when she won’t acknowledge us?”

“She
has
acknowledged us.” The leader thrust a waving hand toward Nia. “
This
was her promise, don’t you get it? This was her sign that she remembers us, and she wants us to be faithful.”

“According to
you,
” a younger male complained. “I don’t guess the stone lady came with a note attached?”

“No. She didn’t come with a . . . note attached.” He was forcing himself to stay composed.

For the moment, Nia was terrifically glad that she could not move and could not speak, because that meant she could not laugh. Laughing would probably make the situation worse. Everyone in the circle knew that much, too, so no one made a peep.

“But it’s as clear as the Scriptures. Look at her. Born from the ocean like Venus, twisted in awe and terror. Transformed by the other side, as some punishment, no doubt.” An idea came to him. He leveled his voice and added as much menace to the rest as he dared. “She probably doubted. It’s the only crime to their kind—disbelief is disrespect, and disrespect earns death.” He glanced again at Nia’s eyes and again she felt that awful tingle of understanding and connection. “Or
worse.
”