“I envy them,” murmured Mork. He looked down. “They do not depend on faith to steer themselves. I have seen humans who believed in nothing but their own decisions. Humans who served the Covenant because it was convenient, not out of any sincere desire to better the world. It would be . . . pleasant . . . not to believe that the gods are aware, and judging, at all times. It would be good not to be found wanting.”
“You have not been found wanting.” I brushed my palm over the tips of his whiskers. “You have been found by me, who was carried to you by an envoy of the gods, who has found you perfect in all ways. You are gloriously good, and we will be so glad of having you.”
“Truly?”
“Truly.” I fanned my whiskers at him. “I would not have chosen you to sire my children, were it not so.”
He squeaked amusement, and bumped his head against my belly. “Then where are we to go?”
“There.” I pointed down the length of the airport. “We continue this way. And look: a good thing comes.”
A vehicle was rolling down the carpet toward us, long and gray and open-topped, carrying a scattering of humans and their bags. It moved slowly enough that we could catch it easily.
Mork nodded. We tensed. The vehicle rolled closer.
“Now,” I said.
We ran.
It was a short distance in the open; short enough that I anticipated no problems, and perhaps there would have been none, had not the vehicle slowed to a stop. I leapt, grabbing hold of the undercarriage and securing myself out of sight. Mork leapt in turn—
—only for the swinging foot of a dismounting human to catch him square in the gut and send him flying. He impacted with the wall; he did not move when he landed on the carpet. Someone screamed. Humans began to point. I clung, frozen with indecision, to the pipe where I had secured myself, and saw someone drop an empty cup over his half-curled form.
He was lost.
* * *
SAM
After his grandmother left—which was honestly something of a relief, since he hadn’t been sure how many more reassurances he didn’t entirely believe he could offer before he started shrieking—Sam’s motel room seemed to contract, becoming more like a cell than ever. She knew he wanted to go after Annie. She had even, in her stilted way, told him that she wouldn’t blame him when he did. All that was great.
It was just that he had no idea where Annie was, and until he knew that, “going after her” was pretty much another way of saying “running away from home.” That, his grandmother was not going to go for.
And the carnival needed him. He knew that. They needed him to be there to talk to the insurance investigators, to be visible as the owner’s grandson, rather than missing as the possible arsonist. As long as Mary said Annie was okay and didn’t need him rushing out there to find her, this was where he belonged.
“Fuck,” he muttered, tail lashing, and stalked toward the bathroom.
One nice thing about growing up in a trailer: basically anyplace with plumbing had a mind-blowingly awesome shower in comparison. He relaxed under the stinging spray, pushing it hotter every few seconds, letting it blast the tension out of his back and shoulders. Clouds of steam billowed through the room.
(Once, they’d stayed at a bogeyman-owned motel with a hot tub, and he and Ananta had snuck down at two o’clock in the morning, when all the good humans were asleep and the bad humans were too stoned to process what they were seeing. They’d luxuriated in the hot water for hours, him and the snake who walked like a woman and her two baby brothers who actually looked like snakes. It had been one of the best nights of his life.)
“Do you even get wrinkly, or do your magic monkey powers keep that from happening?”
This time Sam didn’t freeze, even though that might have been the safer response. He yelped, jumping, and yelped again as his feet tried to go out from under him. Flailing wildly, he grabbed the shower curtain, which promptly came off in his hands, leaving him soaking wet, stark naked, and holding a sheet of opaque plastic over his genitals.
Mary, sitting on the sink and filing her nails with a bright pink file, offered him a tight-lipped smile. “Don’t worry, buddy, I’m not here to check out your junk. Your modesty is safe with me.”
“Bathroom,” Sam squeaked.
“Yup. It is.” Mary went back to filing her nails. “I’m glad you have that down. I’d be really distressed if you didn’t know what a bathroom was. Carnie childhoods can be weird, but you should still know about showers.”
“If I throw the soap at you, do I somehow piss off the unspeakable eldritch entity that you serve?”
“Nope.” Mary studied her thumb. “But I do disappear, and then you have nobody to talk to.”
“I don’t like to have conversations while I’m naked.”
“I’ll be sure to let Annie know.”
Sam threw the soap.
Mary disappeared.
Sam waited for a count of five before letting go of the shower curtain and turning off the water. Even if he’d trusted her not to reappear, which he didn’t, the moment was gone; all the tension he’d been trying to wash away was back, and it had brought some friends along, to make sure it didn’t get lonely. At least now he was clean.
Rehanging the shower curtain was tricky and annoying, and much of the bathroom received a thorough dousing before he was done. Including his clothes, and the towels. Sam looked down at himself, groaned, and hopped back into the tub before tensing in that so-specific way and shifting back into his human form. The water that had been trapped in his fur—which wasn’t plentiful, but was dense—dropped to the floor with a loud splatting sound and ran down the drain.
“Everything about this day can die,” he muttered, getting out of the tub a second time and scanning for something dry enough to cover himself. The options were slim at best.
“Oh, I am going to regret this,” he said, and gripped the doorknob before saying, loudly, “Mary, if you’re out there, please leave for like, five minutes so I can cover my ass. Literally.”
When he opened the door, there were no visible ghosts in the room. He supposed she could be there and invisible, as could any number of her friends. There could be a whole ghost convention going on, all of them snickering behind their phantom hands and pointing at—well, pointing at stuff. Stuff he didn’t want ghosts to be pointing at. He hurried to the dresser, digging out a pair of sweat pants and yanking them up over his waist before letting out a relieved breath.
“Okay,” he said. “I can do this. I can deal with this.” He looked down at himself. If he was already walking around looking human, he might as well take advantage of it and visit the vending machines.
Ananta was there when he came strolling up, a half-filled cooler in her hands, kicking the ice machine to keep it spitting out ice. Sam stopped, raising an eyebrow.
“Are you gonna build a snowman?” he asked.
“I’m cold-blooded, Sam,” she said, and kicked the machine again. “If I built a snowman, I would slip into a state of hibernation, and no one would get me out of it until next spring. No, I am not going to build a snowman.”
“There are these things called ‘gloves,’” he said. “You wear them and your hands stay warm, and then you can build all the snowmen you want.”
“Asshole,” she said fondly. “My room doesn’t have a fridge, so I have to keep the dead rats on ice. And we go through a lot of rats in my room.” Her room, and the trailer she kept parked right outside of it. CAUTION: LIVE REPTILES was stenciled on both sides and the rear doors, and Sam was pretty sure it was the safest vehicle any of them had. No sensible car thief would go straight for the one thing on wheels that was guaranteed to be full of snakes.
“Doesn’t that get, you know, old?” Sam asked uncomfortably, thinking of the mice and the way they had bowed to him, their clever little paws that were really hands c
ast in a very different scale. There were so many things in the world that could hurt them, or devour them, and he had put them down and walked away.
“If you have a suggestion on how to convince my brothers to eat pizza, you have my attention.” Ananta kicked the ice machine again. Another spray of cubes flew out. “As it is, I’m lucky when I can get them to eat their rats. They want hamsters all the time, spoiled little brats that they are.”
“Okay, well, I know that this is both your culture and your biology, but I’m a mammal, so this is taking a sharp left into Creepytown for me,” said Sam, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Ananta. “I can eat pizza.”
“Yeah, but you put raw chicken gizzards on top.”
“It’s still pizza. That is, in fact, the beauty of pizza.” Ananta lifted the cooler onto her hip, giving Sam an assessing look. “What brings you out here? Your grandmother was ready to murder you earlier. I figured you’d be on house arrest.”
“We talked it out.”
“You mean you yelled it out.”
“Same difference.” He moved toward the soda machine, digging in his pocket for the quarters he’d snatched off the dresser. “We’re cool. We just had to have the Annie talk. You know, the whole ‘I am not abandoning my . . . Annie because you don’t like her family, and it’s not reasonable for you to expect me to’ thing.”
“Uh-huh,” said Ananta. “This makes what, round twelve?”
“I think fourteen.” He jabbed the button for a Pepsi. The machine made a clunking sound. Sam scowled at it. “I think maybe we’re cool now, though. She really seemed to be listening.”
“Uh-huh. Didn’t she seem to be listening last time? And the time before that? And the time before that?”
Sam hit the machine. His soda still did not appear. “She’s going to have to admit that I’m an adult eventually. It’s sort of scaring her. After Mom, she’s way worried about me disappearing.”
“That’s good, because you’re going to.” When Sam shot her a wounded look, Ananta shrugged. “It’s true. No shame in it. Young things grow up and run away to find a place where they can be adult things without being treated like they’re never going to understand the world. When I finish escorting my brothers around the country and settle them somewhere, I’m going to go home to my parents, and they’ll treat me like an adult, because they had that break between me leaving as a child and me returning as a woman.”
“Oh,” Sam said. He hit the machine again, hesitated, and asked, “Why are you going back to them?”
“Lots of reasons, chief among them that I’m too old to marry.” Ananta’s smile was brief and wry. “Biology is not on our side when we’re forced to live the way we are now. For me, my window to meet a boy and decide he was the one for me closed with puberty. I needed time to acquaint myself with his venom. Not to become immune to it—I’m immune to all venom, wadjet or no—but to teach my own to sing in harmony with his. Otherwise, no eggs.”
Sam paused. “Uh.”
“It’s weird. If you’re a mammal, it’s weird. For us, the idea of unplanned pregnancy and cross-breeding with related species like it’s no big thing is weird. We are separated by a gulf of ‘biology shouldn’t work that way,’ and it’s all very sad. Let me.” Ananta put down her cooler and walked over to crouch next to the soda machine, sticking her arm in the slot. “Anyway, I had two older sisters, and there are never that many potential husbands to go around. And it’s not like I tried all that hard. I like being a big sister. I’m excited to be an aunt. I never particularly wanted to be a mother. Part of our social structure involves unmarried, unimprinted females who can move freely through the territory of mated adult males without causing problems, so my parents don’t care.”
Ananta bounced back to her feet, holding a can out to Sam with a small smile on her face. “Think it’s going to be as easy for you?” she asked.
“I don’t understand how you can talk about this stuff in the open like it’s not going to get us all killed,” he muttered, cheeks red, as he took the soda.
“Easy: I know it’s not going to get us all killed.” Ananta retrieved the cooler. “There’s caution and then there’s paranoia. My baby brothers are cobras who like to watch Cartoon Network and write angry Tumblr posts about mistreatment of snakes. I chose to be a spinster when I was nine years old, and I never looked back. I’ll always be cautious. But I refuse to let a bunch of human assholes force me to live my life in fear. See you at breakfast.” She waved and walked back to her room, leaving Sam to watch her go.
“Huh,” he said, and cracked open his soda.
Maybe Mary was back by now.
* * *
MINDY
The cup was paper; the person who had dropped it was running away, perhaps in fright, but more likely, I feared, to find one of the humans who patrolled the airport. My time, such as it was, was short.
Leaping down from the vehicle, I ran to the cup, darting around the feet of startled travelers. A few of them stomped at me, but they were slow and I was quick, and I evaded them with ease.
Someone screamed. I ignored them, even as every instinct I possessed told me to run, to flee, to Not Be Seen. I wore no finery, no regalia that might identify me to the uninitiated as a priest of the Precise Priestess. They would see only an ordinary mouse.
Let them think this airport infested. Let them think whatever small, human things they liked. They would not approach the borders of the truth, and I had something left to save.
The cup was paper. Paper can be shifted. I reached it and threw all my weight against it, trying to topple it onto its side, away from Mork. Someone gasped.
“Look, it’s trying to get to its friend,” one of the humans said, in a puzzled tone, like they could not comprehend fellow-feeling from something as small as Mork or I. I flung myself against the cup again and again, until it began to shift, until it began to topple.
The cup was paper. Paper yields. I struck the cup again and it fell. Mork was there, curled into a ball, trembling with fear. I ran to him, butted my head against his flank, touched his ear with my paw.
“Come,” I squeaked, voice so low that I knew the humans would not hear, not with all the noise and bustle of the airport. “We must go.”
He uncurled, and when he beheld me, there was nothing but wonder in his eyes. I fanned my whiskers, bumping my head into him once more before I ran, and he, O thanks be to all the gods who have come and gone and who have yet to be, he ran beside me, keeping pace, uninjured enough to do so.
A few humans screamed. We did not slow or look back at them. Let them shriek. They might make our passage more difficult, but they would not prevent it. We were together. We were, in the moment, invincible.
Ahead was a small semicircle cut out of the airport passageway, filled with eating places. It was not where we had entered, but we recognized the design all the same, and darted into its dubious safety. The shrieks faded behind us. We ran under a counter, and from there into a kitchen, and from there to the door which led to the employee tunnels, out of public view.
It was much quieter there. We concealed ourselves behind a stack of boxes. Then, and only then, did I turn to Mork and begin running my paws over him, searching for signs of injury. He squeaked when I pressed on the side of his chest; I suspected a broken, or at least bruised, rib. His breathing was steady and even. His limbs moved with ease.
I put my paws over my eyes, sank down onto my haunches, and trembled.
“O my love, who is my love, who is my beloved,” he squeaked, nosing at my ears. “I am well, I am well. See, only look, and see me here revealed.”
Some words—some rituals—predate any of the religions we have known, go all the way down to the root of what it is to be Aeslin, the place where our faith cleaves close to our long-shadowed beginnings. He spoke to m
e as one half of a formally mated couple, wed under the auspices of the gods, blessed by our trials together. It was the wrong choice. It was the only choice. After what we had been through, any other wedding would be a sham and a show, intended only to confirm what the gods already knew.
I trembled harder, shaking as if I no longer understood the shape of my own skin. “I thought you were dead,” I squeaked.
“I know, and I am sorry.” He nosed my ears again, whiskers tickling. “Look at me.”
I lowered my paws. He touched his nose to mine, whiskers pressed so far forward that his lips lifted, exposing his teeth. I did the same, and as our whiskers intertwined, I knew that this was real. He had survived. I had saved him. We were still terribly far from home, but we were still together as well. Perhaps we could yet be victorious.
“There you are,” he said.
I slicked my whiskers back with a small, hiccupping laugh. “You frightened me.”
“I was afraid as well. The foot which struck me came with great speed. I thought I might be joining the gods this day.” Mork looked suddenly unsure. “Would they have me, who is so near to being a heretic?”
“If they refused you, I would scale the walls of Heaven to break the locks and welcome you inside,” I said gravely.
He brushed his whiskers against mine again, and I was not so pregnant, nor was our position so precarious, that I could not accept his invitation for what it was. We moved to the deepest shadow and performed the oldest ritual of them all, which worships the Aeslin and our continuation, and has no need for any outside gods.
When we were finished, he licked the fur atop my head back to acceptable smoothness and we ran, the two of us together, moving in matching, harmonious strides as we raced the length of the hall. We knew the direction of the gate we sought. We would need to return to the public halls soon enough, to find a way to board the airplane without being caught, but for now, it was safer to stay here, out of sight, running.
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