Trish started to laugh.
Shelby looked up. She’d never heard her supervisor laugh before. It was high and clear, like a church bell. The sound of it filled the room.
“What is it?” Shelby asked, smiling uncertainly.
She wiped her eyes. “I was just remembering a conversation that I had with my supervisor, years ago. Dr. Fiona Tuttle. She’d published a definitive collection of eighteenth-century letters, and I was terrified of her.”
“I’ve seen her book in your office.”
“She gave me a signed copy. I’ve never quite known what to do with it.” Trish smiled distantly. “Fiona was small—nearly frail—and she barely spoke above a whisper. But when she swept into a conference, the crowds parted. She could reduce a graduate student to tears simply by clearing her throat. Once, I had to ask her for an extension. I was writing a terrible paper—it had something to do with clock imagery in the work of Samuel Richardson. I wanted to set fire to that bloody thing. Fiona asked me why I needed the extension. I suppose she thought I was going to offer some thin excuse. A death in the family, a collapsed relationship—one of those climactic events that barely cause a ripple in the academic world.”
Shelby felt as if she should be writing this down. Trish was about to give her something like the Key of Solomon. A way to face down your supervisor and survive.
She leaned forward. “What did you say?”
Dr. Marsden’s smile widened. “I had an excuse that was ready to go. I’d even practiced it in front of the mirror. But then I looked at her desk, and there it was. A copy of Richardson’s Pamela. All five hundred pages of it.” She shook her head. “I lost control. In a moment of temporary insanity, I picked up the book and threw it against the wall. I screamed: ‘Bloody Pamela! What is wrong with you? Mr. B holds you captive for two hundred pages, and you marry the sadistic bastard? I hate you! Richardson can go straight to hell!’”
“You actually threw it?”
“It sailed past her. And it was so heavy that it dented the wall.”
“Oh wow.”
“I thought she was going to call the police. For a moment, all she could do was stare at me. Then she snorted. It was the most delightful sound I’d ever heard in my life. Both of us laughed for five minutes. Afterward, she told me to write about something else. That was when I discovered Sarah Fielding, whose work has enchanted me ever since.”
“Are you saying that I have to change my thesis topic?”
“Of course not. I’m saying that you shouldn’t be frightened of your topic. Nor should you be frightened of me. I’m here to help you, Shelby. I’m no monster.”
Aren’t you?
Shelby pushed away the image of the silenus. “I guess I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’ve lost my question.”
“Go back to the texts. Try to remember what drew you to Margaret Cavendish in the first place. What do you share in common?”
“Unfortunately, quite a lot. We’re both neurotic, antisocial misfits who fall down in public and refuse to answer the doorbell.”
“You’ve just described a lot of academics.”
“She wore ribbons around her wrists. I’m developing a pretty fierce footnote about that. She called herself a princess, but when someone came over unexpectedly, she’d make inarticulate sounds and sort of just back out of the room, like she was playing herself offstage.”
“You’re looking at her through the eyes of the public. Try to see her in the literature. It’s a different kind of mirror.”
“Dr. Marsden—can I ask you something personal?”
“Shelby, look at my socks.”
“I’m kind of trying not to.”
“The point is that you don’t have to be so formal. This isn’t a meeting.”
“I’m just wondering . . . how you knew. That it was the right choice. That everything was going to work out in the end.”
“Have you been reading the Chronicle again?”
“I just—” She looked away. “All of this reading. All of the crippling self-doubt, and the coffee gut, and the days when I forget my own name. Sometimes it seems like the search is pointless. But it has to work out in the end, right? It has to mean something.”
“What works out in the end,” Trish said, “what nobody can take away, is the fact that books are magic. They’re necessary, and sacred, and they can change the world. They provide us with endless wonder, and they don’t ever run out of power, or require a software update. When you open a book, you walk in the skin of the lion. You see beyond your own margins. But there are people who haven’t figured that out, and it’s your job to teach them.”
“Does that mean I’m going to find a job?”
“Concentrate on the wonder.”
She nodded. “All right. Thank you.”
“Keep hammering away at the proposal. I want to see a revised copy in the next few weeks. And don’t think I didn’t notice that you kept using the word intend. Just figure out what your question is, and present it as plainly as possible.”
My question. Shelby almost laughed at the thought. My real question. What are you? What am I?
“I’ll work on it,” she said.
Trish looked up, her expression changing slightly. Shelby turned around. Dr. Victor Laclos was standing in the doorway, holding a coffee tray.
“Oh. Hello, Shelby.”
She blinked. “Hi, Dr. Laclos. I—was just leaving.”
“It’s nice to see you.” He walked over to the bed. “I’ve smuggled you in a mocha. There’s also a macaroon in my pocket.”
She smiled. “That’s the greatest thing I’ve heard all day.”
Shelby waved to them both, unsure of what else to do. Then she awkwardly played herself out, as she imagined Margaret Cavendish would have done. All she lacked were the ribbons.
She’d never seen the two of them together. Perhaps they were just friends. All she could think of was the fact that they taught in different fields, as if that must render them eternally separate. Plus, she’d never seen either of them outside the university. It was always jarring to encounter a professor in the wild. Laclos had been wearing a T-shirt. For some reason, she’d assumed that he wore blazers at home. Now she suddenly imagined him in pajamas, and the thought made her uneasy.
As she was leaving the hospital, Shelby glanced at her phone. Two messages: one from Carl, the other from Andrew. She didn’t want to read either of them. Carl was full of questions, and Andrew would only remind her of the work that she wasn’t doing. She got into the truck and squeezed her way out of the tight spot. It involved a lot of second-guessing while traffic streamed past her, a blur of metallic paint, half-heard radios, motions frosted under glass. Eventually she worked her way free, like a loose tooth. She turned on A Tribe Called Red and merged onto Dewdney. Before she knew it, she was driving home.
Her mother’s house always looked sun-touched and welcoming. It was the opposite of her own apartment, which resembled a postapocalyptic library. Shelby parked and rang the bell. When nobody answered, she let herself in with the spare key. As soon as she closed the door, Shelby could feel herself reverting back to early adolescence. She draped her jacket over the chair, then peeled off her shoes and socks. The kitchen was spotless and still smelled of fresh baking. She grabbed a piece of bannock from the plate on the counter. Her grandmother had also made Saskatoon berry jam. When she was done, she rewrapped the plate and washed the knife. It was still obvious that she’d struck like a natural disaster, but she could at least minimize the damage by cleaning up. She rummaged through the kitchen cupboards. The variety of their food astounded her. When she pulled out a box of cereal, there was another, identical one behind it, like a store shelf. For a moment, she wondered if the cupboard was infinite.
Shelby returned to the living room. Her own eyes looked back at her from various portraits. A
toddler with chubby Michelin Man arms; a teenager with tragic bangs, frozen in her Northern Reflections sweater; a university student, looking slightly dazed with her diploma. The wall proved her existence. It should have been comforting. There was also a picture of her mother sitting at a picnic table. Her hair was long, and she squinted at the camera, half smiling as the light haloed around her. In the background you could see Wascana Lake, so bright that it resembled a curtain of sparks. Her mother’s expression was difficult to translate. Was she the one who’d turned the lake molten? Anything seemed possible. She was young and wild with possibilities, her bare leg a paintbrush swirl in the corner. Beside her was a thin man wearing a striped shirt and cowboy boots. He stared at the curve of her ankle. Part of him had been cropped out of the photo.
She took down the photo and placed it on the coffee table. If she concentrated, she could almost hear what they were thinking. There was a woven blanket on the couch, and she wrapped it around her. The stillness grew, until everything was sharp and hazy at the same time. Her life seemed to move in the shadows along the wall. She heard the scrape of the blinds in the upstairs hallway, and some animal twittering on the other side of the window. Then sleep crept in on paws of smoke, and she was in the photo, watching all of her mother’s secrets unfold. The tall grass covered her. The sun turned green, and she went back to the beginning of it all.
When she opened her eyes, the shadows had changed. Her grandmother sat across from her, knitting. Shelby could almost feel the crosshatch patterns of the couch on her cheek. She rubbed her face and tried to sit up gracefully.
“How long was I out for, nohkô?”
“Not too long.” She didn’t look up from her needles. “You were dreaming deep, though. I could feel it. Something was watching you.”
Shelby felt herself grow cold. “What kind of something?”
“Not sure.” Click. Click. “Something big.”
“Big and friendly—like the BFG?”
She shrugged. “Just big. It had no boundaries—like smoke. Wasn’t good or evil. Just very interested in you.”
“The last thing I need is an immaterial stalker.”
“Ghosts don’t mean you any harm. You’ve got to share with them.”
“Share what?”
“Everything.”
“Did you take a cryptic pill this morning?”
“Don’t sass me, Shelby Mae.”
“Sorry, nohkô.” She reached for the picture on the table. Her grandmother saw her looking at it but didn’t say anything. “What was he like?”
“Who?”
“The man in the cowboy boots.”
She set down her needlework. “What has your mother told you about him?”
“You’re being evasive.”
Her grandmother stared to say something. Then her expression went oddly distant. She seemed to be considering some old equation, never properly balanced. She was silent for a moment. Shelby ran her thumb along the grooves in the picture frame.
“He had his moments,” her grandmother said finally.
“That’s it?”
“He also had a temper. But so did your mother.”
“How did they meet?”
“I forget.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Fine. They met at a bowling alley.”
“Seriously?”
“Your mother had a part-time job there. He was with some friends. Ball in the gutter, every time, but that didn’t seem to matter.”
“I can’t imagine her spraying rented shoes.”
“She had to pay for college. Sometimes she even worked with me at the cannery, but I didn’t want her there. I’d rather she deal with stinky feet than lose a hand.”
Shelby set the picture down. “Were they in love?”
“You’d have to ask her.”
“She won’t tell me anything.”
“Maybe you’re just asking the wrong questions.”
“Don’t I have the right to know?”
Her grandmother looked at her. The light played along her braid, iron-gray but still soft. She remembered touching it when she was little, trying to work the silvery hairs loose. They reminded her of a paintbrush.
“When he drove you home from the hospital,” she said, “his hands were shaking. I remember that.”
Shelby thought of saying something else, but her grandmother’s look told her that it wasn’t the right time. Instead, she rose and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“I’m going to go. Love you.”
“Wait.” She rose stiffly. “I’ll pack you something for the road.”
The Tupperware container slid across the seat while she drove. She’d have to hide it from Carl. He could stress-eat like a garburator. She’d slipped the photo out of its frame while her grandmother was wrapping the bannock. Her mother probably wouldn’t notice. She never dusted that part of the mantel.
She met Carl at the Green Spot Café. He was demolishing a steamed bun. Ingrid and Sam were sitting on either side of him, watching the carnage with polite fascination. She hadn’t expected to see all of them. Carl must have sent out a hysterical mass text.
“Finally.” He looked up from his plate. “Dodge my calls much?”
“I fell asleep at my mother’s house. You know how comfortable her couch is.”
“I completely understand that,” Sam said. “My mom’s house always smells like vanilla. I’m out like a light as soon as I sit down.”
Shelby turned to Ingrid. “How’s your car?”
She sighed. “It was a write-off. I had to invent a pretty creative story, involving a coyote and some loose gravel. Paul chewed me out for an hour, but he was more than happy to lease a new red hatchback. I may have bribed him with extra trunk space for his hockey equipment.”
“He’s probably just glad that you’re okay.”
“He doubts my ability to drive around the corner and insists on picking up Neil from day care. He keeps referring to my ‘fugue state,’ like I had some kind of dissociative event. Other than that, things are more or less normal.”
“My truck is far from normal,” Sam added. “It needs a new paint job, and I had a hard time explaining to the mechanic why there was fur stuck to the headlights.”
“I thought you were going with the deer story,” Carl said.
“The fur is crazy long. It looks like I hit Snuffleupagus. All I could do was distract him by talking about Darian Durant’s completion percentage.”
“Well,” Carl said, “he does have a truck named after him, so that’s a connection.”
Shelby looked around the café. People were chatting over bowls of hot and sour soup or tapping away at laptops. Their screens glowed with promise. Nobody realized that Ingrid’s car had been totaled by something out of a Greco-Roman nightmare.
She grabbed Carl’s steamed bun and took a bite out of it.
He stared at her. “You know, they have them behind the counter.”
“I’m sorry. I’m having a really weird day.”
“You do have a bit of a caged-animal look.”
“I—” She stared at the wreckage on his plate. The smear of hot sauce reminded her of blood on asphalt. “May have found something out. But I don’t know what it means, or even if I’m completely right about it.”
“Oh God,” Sam said. “Did I really hit Snuffleupagus?”
“No. You hit my supervisor.”
She blanched. “What?”
“It was Trish Marsden. I just visited her in the hospital, and she looks like—well, like she was in a car accident. Dr. Laclos was there too, for some weird reason.”
“Wait a minute.” Ingrid looked at Shelby. “You’re saying that the silenus wasn’t just human—she was a prof?”
“So it would seem.”
“Holy shit,�
�� Carl murmured. “I really need to get my revisions in on time.”
“Maybe they’re all professors,” Sam said. “That would explain so much.”
“So—” Carl gave her a long look. “Exactly how long have you been sitting on this information? Or didn’t you think it was relevant.”
“I only figured it out yesterday. Our DA mentioned that she was in the hospital, and as soon as I saw her—I knew. She’s healing fast. Too fast for a—” Shelby looked around the café again, though it was clear that nobody was paying attention. “I mean, a human couldn’t possibly recover that quickly.”
“I hit an award-winning scholar with my car,” Ingrid murmured.
“You’re not the only one,” Sam said. “I’ve still got scholar fur on my bumper.”
Carl shook his head. “Don’t say scholar fur.”
Shelby didn’t want to think about what they’d done. Ingrid was the only one who’d hesitated. She’d suspected all along that the silenoi might be human, but after Carl was nearly harpooned in the backseat, their ethics had narrowed considerably. It was all screaming darkness, and glass in their hair, and the silent hunter closing the space between them. They’d had no choice. Like the silenus, they’d acted on instinct. It was her—
“—or us,” Shelby said, mostly to herself.
Carl looked at her. “What?”
“I don’t know. I shouldn’t even be forming words right now.”
“We can’t think about last night. We need to focus on that note. If it’s correct, then there’s going to be a homicidal fur pile at the Arx of Violets, and we need to be there.”
“Fur pile.” Shelby giggled.
“Hey.” Carl waved at her. “Keep your head in the game. We need you.”
“It’s not a game!” The people at the nearest table glanced at her. Shelby lowered her voice. “That was our mistake—thinking that it was just a game. Oh, look at me, I’m a magical hero, la la, I think I’ll hunt for some treasure. But then people started dying. The park took control. I mean—God—have we even asked ourselves how the magic works? How it’s possible? We don’t care. We just believe in it, like gravity, or finals. Because we’re so desperate to escape who we really are.”
Path of Smoke Page 20
