Somewhere Beneath Those Waves

by Sarah Monette

  After a time, I saw a light. It had turned a corner, I thought, to come into view, and as it grew nearer, accompanied by a strange snuffling, shuffling, tapping noise, and great lambent green-gold eyes, I saw that it was a little tin lantern with what looked like the sort of cheap candle used on children’s birthday cakes. It was at the height of my thigh, the eyes being slightly higher.

  All at once, the lantern stopped, and the shuffling and tapping stopped, and the eyes became very wide and still with alarm, and a growly little voice whispered penetratingly, “There’s a bloke on the stairs!”

  A babble of whispers and little outcries, and another voice said, “ ’S it a domino?”

  A third, palpably frightened: “ ’S it a vamp?”

  “Nah,” said the first voice. “Dun’ got no wings, does ’e? Can’t be a thing what got wings if you don’t got wings. Stands to reason.”

  “Awright then,” said the third voice. “Should we go closer, d’you think?”

  This question occasioned a great deal more muttering and shuffling, and the snuffling of their breathing became more pronounced. At last, as it seemed they were not going to reach a decision on their own, and as with the best and most timorous will in the world, I could not construe them as a danger, I said, “I beg your pardon, but are you goblins?”

  “Oooh!” they all said and went back a step en masse.

  After a moment, one of them whispered, “ ’E ast if we was goblins.”

  “Whaddo we tell ’em?”

  I was becoming accustomed to their Greek chorus method of conversation; I said, “I shan’t hurt you. I promise.”

  “Easy to say,” one said, and for a moment the green-gold eyes were full of menace. Then another said, “Nah, ’e’s a nice bloke. Look at ’im!”

  They all did, shuffling closer; I retreated half a step involuntarily, forgetting that I was still standing on the stairs, and nearly fell, saving myself only by sitting down hard.

  My small interlocutors earned my instant and eternal goodwill: they did not laugh.

  They had come close enough now that I could see them in the light of their little tin lantern. They were stocky-bodied, short-limbed. They were as goggle-eyed as the shadows; their faces were broad, wide-mouthed, pug-nosed. Their ears were pointed, wide-spread; their hair, black and coarse, they wore in long braided scalp locks like Red Indians. Their hands were small in proportion to their bodies and oddly delicate. I looked at their feet and understood the tapping sound I had heard; they were cloven-hooved, like sheep, and I realized—as, daring, they approached closer still—that the strange shape of their heads was not due to the poor light. They had horns lying along the curve of their skulls, like the mountain sheep displayed in the Parrington’s Hall of Natural History.

  They were all clothed quite tidily, if shabbily, shirts and trousers cut down for their small size, and vivid red suspenders that, by the way they tended to stand with their thumbs tucked behind them, were clearly their pride and joy.

  “ ’E looks all right,” one said.

  “An ’e ain’t a vamp,” said another, “so if he ain’t all right, we can handle ’im.”

  I guessed there were twenty or so of them, clustered around me now like homely children around a performing dog, so I was inclined to agree with that assessment.

  “Okay, then,” said the one holding the lantern, whom I surmised to be their leader. “We’re goblins. What of it?”

  “I’ve come to, er, ask you to return St. Christopher’s Glass.”

  Frowns of what looked like genuine incomprehension. “Wot’s that, guv?”

  “The, er, relic of St. Christopher’s. A little glass ball with—”

  “The shiny!” one of the goblins said, in tones of the greatest enlightenment, and was echoed in a jumbled mutter by the others.

  “But we don’ have the shiny,” said their leader.

  “I was told you’d, er, taken it.”

  “Thass not right, guv!” the leader said indignantly, and the chorus picked up the theme: “ ’S not true! . . . ’S a lie, innit? . . . We din’ do that!”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling foolish and distinctly at a loss. “Do . . . er, do you know who did?”

  Wide-eyed, solemn, they shook their heads. “Shouldn’t go round stealing the shiny,” somebody muttered from the back. “Ain’t right,” somebody else agreed.

  “We wouldn’t steal the shiny,” the first goblin said, clearly still miffed. “Not ours. Don’ want the dominoes mad at us.”

  “Or the vamps,” another goblin said, and they all nodded fervently; I noted with interest that the goblins understood the true balance of power in the city above them.

  “Musta been a shadder,” said a goblin standing on the other side of the banister, and made me startle, for I had not realized any of them had crept that close.

  “Musta been . . . sorta thing they’d do, innit? . . . Sneaky, they are . . . ” Their Greek chorus was in consensus, and I wondered if they were right. I had no doubt that they were telling the truth to the best of their knowledge and ability. They struck me as creatures who would have to practice in order to tell a lie.

  But assuming that the goblins were telling the truth left me in a difficult position. I knew, without any need to test the hypothesis, that Clement would not believe the goblins so readily, and the resulting impasse would not get me any closer to finding St. Christopher’s Glass and being able to return home.

  There was a tug at my sleeve. The goblin holding the lantern, green-gold eyes grave, said, “The shiny’s gone?”

  “Er, yes. Someone stole it from the church.”

  “Dominoes must be unhappy.”

  “Dominie Clement is very, er, distressed.”

  They shuffled from foot to foot, little hooves tapping and scraping at the stone. “So, said the first goblin, “if we found the shiny, it’d make the dominoes happy?”

  And the Chorus chimed in: “Would it make ’em like us? . . . Would they like us like they like the shadders?”

  I felt a pang of empathy; I knew all too well how it felt to want love and have no idea how to earn it. I said carefully, not wanting to mislead them, “I’m sure Dominie Clement would be very grateful. And perhaps he would, er, reconsider his opinions.”

  They nodded, and I hoped they understood how little I was promising. “We’ll find the shiny,” their leader said. “An’ bring it to the church.” And they pattered away.

  “ . . . Thank you!” I called after them, rather disconcerted by the speed at which they moved once they had made up their minds about something, and turned to labor back up the stairs through the great breathing darkness beneath the night city.

  As Mirach had promised, there was a vampire waiting for me when I reemerged from the Goblin Door. In fact, there were two, glaring at each other like rival tomcats. I wondered if the vampires’ division of the city into parishes was simply an imitation of the demi-angels as Mirach had implied, or if perhaps vampires were as territorial as the cats these two resembled.

  They both started forward when I came through the door, and I had to curb my instinct to retreat. I found myself with my back pressed against the door’s cold glass, so I was not entirely successful.

  Both vampires checked their stride, looking uncertainly from me to each other. “Greetings, traveller,” said the one to my right in a stentorian bass. “I am—”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” the other cut in, tenor, strident, almost shrewish although the vampire was clearly male. “Mirach sent me, and I’m not going to—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said the first and (I thought) elder vampire. “Mirach and I are kindlings—” at least, I thought that was the word he used— “and she would never—”

  “But she did!” the second cried in vindictive triumph. “She told me to come meet him, so you can just go away!”

  They were facing each other now, almost audibly snarling. “Er,” I said, and broke off when they both turned to stare at me accusingly, re
d eyes round and shining. “Er. Who are you?”

  The elder began, “I am Alhaior—”

  “And I am Dafira,” the other cut in defiantly. “Mirach sent me—”

  “A mistake,” said Alhaior. “I would be delighted to escort you to St. Christopher’s. Do you have the relic?”

  There was a certain unworthy satisfaction in saying, “No,” and watching the two vampires do double-takes like cinema comedians. “The, er, goblins do not have it.”

  Alhaior merely stared at me, but Dafira, quick-minded, said, “Then who does?”

  “I, er, I don’t know.”

  “Well, we don’t have it.”

  “No. I, er . . . ” I decided even as I spoke not to mention the goblins’ self-appointed quest. “I thought perhaps . . . that is, Dominie Clement may know—”

  “How do you know the goblins do not have it?” Alhaior demanded. I had already noticed how the depth and sonority of his voice made his every utterance majestic and authoritative. In this instance, he sounded very much like a cross-examining lawyer.

  “I . . . er . . . they, that is, they told me so.” I sounded feeble-minded to my own ears, but both vampires seemed to consider that quite adequate testimony and to take it most seriously.

  Alhaior’s tongue traced his upper lip nervously, a gesture which unnerved me so badly I could not look at either of them. “But if the goblins did not take the relic . . . ”

  “I imagine,” Dafira said, “that that is why this gentleman wishes to speak to Dominie Clement again.”

  I nodded, not looking up.

  “Then I shall take you,” Dafira said. “Alhaior, why don’t you tell Mirach and the Wisdom of this new development?”

  Still staring at the scuffed toes of my shoes, I felt the clash of wills between them. The balance of power had shifted; Dafira was sure of himself, and Alhaior gave way. I felt him leave more than I heard him, and the reek of vampire diminished noticeably.

  There was a silence between Dafira and me; then the vampire said, almost shyly, “Mirach said you might be willing to share your name with me. I swear I will nor hold nor use it.”

  I forced my head up. To my eyes, Dafira looked no different from Mirach, any more than either of them was distinguishable from Alhaior. Their individuality was all in their voices, Mirach’s elegance against Alhaior’s gravitas against this abrasive earnestness.

  “My name is Kyle Murchison Booth.”

  Dafira did not attempt to smile, but he bowed to me over his folded hands in a Japanese fashion. “I am honored. Shall we proceed to St. Christopher’s now?”

  I acquiesced and followed him on a route very different from the one Mirach had taken. Dafira went up, leading me via fire-escapes and jury-rigged bridges from roof to roof across the night city. After negotiating the third rope and plank bridge with the steadying help of Dafira’s hand—like an iron armature under the shirred velvet of his pelt and I almost did not notice his scent any longer—I asked, “Do you, er, fly?”

  His wings flexed and spread as if woken by the question. “We do,” he said slowly, choosing his words with care, “but rarely within the city. For the dominies cannot—not without our guidance, which they will not accept—and we are . . . fearsome in flight.” He furled his wings sharply, almost as if he were trying to hurt himself, and I remembered abruptly, as if from a conversation held years previously, Clement saying how terrible he had been told it was to see the vampires leaving the city to hunt. And since all the demi-angels were blind, and it was clear Clement did not talk to the goblins, he could only have been told by a shadow. The shadows told the demi-angels, and the demi-angels, cruel in their innocence, told the vampires. And the vampires did not fly within the city.

  Pursuant to the train of thought thus started, I said, “Have matters always been so, er, fraught between you and the . . . the dominies?”

  “There’s St. Christopher’s,” Dafira said, pointing at a nearby spire, and I thought he was avoiding my question. But after a moment, he said, “No. Our relationship has never been easy, for we cannot change our nature, any more than they can, and thus we hunt and they disapprove, and it will always be so, but it used to be that they would come to the doors of their churches to speak with us if we knocked. It used to be that they would walk with us in the city, even if they would not fly.”

  “When did the change occur?”

  “I don’t know.” He supported me carefully down a final fire escape, almost as steep as a ladder, and we emerged from an alley between two brownstones to stand on the sidewalk directly across from St. Christopher’s. “Clocks, whether elaborate or simple, do not keep time in this city, and time itself . . . ” He made a gesture, his hand closing into a fist and then spilling open again, as if unable to hold that which he sought to keep. “It cannot be measured. The only variation we have is the arrival of visitors like yourself, and even at that, I cannot tell you whether the last one appeared two days ago, or two hundred years.”

  “Have the shadows and the goblins been here as long as you have?”

  “The goblins, yes. The shadows came later . . . I think.”

  I asked the question I had not gotten to pose to D-7-16: “Do any of them every actually leave?”

  “Oh, yes,” Dafira said, almost cheerfully. “They take passage on the trading ships to Heft Averengh, once they earn their names back.”

  “But, er, I beg your pardon, but if you have no method of keeping time, how do you know when they have done so?”

  His eyes widened; I saw his pupils expand and contract like those of a cat about to pounce, and noted to myself the stupidity of disconcerting a predator. He turned his head away sharply, refusing the instinct that told him a threat must be fought and killed and eaten. He said, his voice uncertain, a little muffled, in telling contrast to the lethal certainty of eyes and teeth and clenching hands, “I don’t know. I thought they left. The dominies have such elaborate plans . . . ”

  “Mirach told me the dominies taught the shadows how to dream. It, er, follows that they have learned to deal with . . . that is, a dream does not lose its strength for never being realized.”

  “Oh,” Dafira said, his fingers now pressed against the triangular slash of his mouth. “You think . . . time doesn’t pass here, does it? We just go round and round and nothing ever happens because nothing ever can.”

  “But something has happened,” I said. “Someone has stolen St. Christopher’s Glass.”

  Dafira could not enter the church. I stood beside him in the portico, and we took it in turns to knock, until Clement finally opened the door, saying with bewilderment and a touch of irritation, “The church is always open.” And then his nose wrinkled as he caught Dafira’s scent.

  “Except to those who cannot come in,” I said and was startled at my own waspishness.

  “Mr. Booth! I did not expect you so soon. But why . . . ?”

  “Matters have become, er, complicated.”

  “Complicated? Do you have the relic?”

  “No, because the goblins aren’t the ones who stole it.”

  “The goblins aren’t . . . Of course the goblins stole it!”

  “You sound awfully certain for one who did not witness the theft,” Dafira said. He had regained his composure, and his eyes were bright with interested malice.

  “I expected a remark like that from a vampire,” Clement said witheringly, and I had to intervene before they descended into an unbecoming exchange of personalities.

  “The goblins did not steal the relic,” I said as firmly as I could, “and I have discovered a number of other questions that need answering.”

  Clement tilted his head, his beautiful face perplexed but willing. “What do you want to know?”

  “Come out and, er, sit down, dominie. I feel that this may take some time, and you are likely to have other visitors before we are finished.”

  Clement hesitated, apprehension and uncertainty visible in every line of his body, in the awkward half extension o
f one wing.

  “There is nor trick nor treachery,” Dafira said abruptly, harshly.

  “Very well,” Clement said.

  The portico was flanked with backless benches. Clement settled awkwardly on one; Dafira, back stiff, wings twitching as if they wanted to mantle and he would not let them, perched on the edge of the bench opposite.

  I sat down next to Clement, for I did not want him to feel that Dafira and I were allied against him. And my gesture did seem to lessen his unease, for he said, “I do not understand, but I do not believe you would lie to me. Do you believe you can retrieve the relic?”

  “I, er, hope so,” I said, thinking of the goblins. “As I said, there are questions I must ask.”

  “Ask them,” Clement said.

  Invited so directly to speak, I stammered and fell silent. Dafira, having waited politely for a few moments, said, “You were asking me if any of the shadows have ever succeeded in buying back their names.”

  “Well, of course they have!” Clement said indignantly.

  “Have they?” Dafira asked, leaning forward. “Have any of your parishioners done it?”

  “Well . . . no. But I’m sure—”

  “Do you know, personally, of any shadow who has taken passage for Heft Averengh?”

  Clement opened his mouth to respond, but Dafira said, “Personally,” with great emphasis, and the demi-angel subsided again.

  “I don’t either,” the vampire said after a moment.

  “But what are you saying? That you’re exploiting your workers? We’ve been saying that all along!”

  “I have another question,” I said hastily, and then had to think of one. “Er. That is, what do your factories produce?”

  “I beg your pardon?” vampire and demi-angel said together.

  “The factories where the shadows work. What do they produce?”