We Both Go Down Together
by
Seanan McGuire
Buckley Township, Michigan, 1938
“No,” said Jonathan. “Absolutely not. There is no way, and I truly wish that you would drop the matter.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said Fran, folding another shirt before stuffing it into her valise in a way that left it guaranteed to wrinkle. “What’s the weather like in Maine this time of year? Hot, muggy, and horrible, or just hot and muggy? Because I gotta say, if you leave off the ‘horrible,’ it’ll be a huge improvement on Michigan. I don’t know why you always talk about the temperatures where I come from like they’re out of line. At least back in Arizona, what we get’s basically a dry heat. This is a sauna full of mosquitoes.”
“Fran, you’re not coming with me.”
“I’m not?” Fran turned to face him, folding her arms across the swell of her bosom, which, while always a favorite sight of his, had grown to truly impressive proportions over the last few months. “You’re taking a trip to the coast, where the ocean lives and the hummingbird-sized skeeters aren’t, and you think I’m going to stay here because...?”
“Because you’re pregnant!” He waved his hands, trying to encompass the swell of her belly. “I don’t take women who are eight months pregnant to Maine to meet with potentially dangerous fish people!”
Fran beamed. “See, that’s where you’re in luck, city boy. I may be pregnant, but I’m not just a pregnant woman. I’m your pregnant wife. So if you enjoy sleeping without the fear that I’m going to murder you sometime in the night, you’re taking me to the beach with you. End of story.”
Jonathan stared at her, unsure of what he could possibly say to make her understand the magnitude of her error. A trip to Gentling wasn’t a seaside holiday: at best, it was a delicate incursion into another culture. At worst, it was incredibly dangerous, while still being a delicate incursion into another culture—not a combination Jonathan enjoyed navigating at the best of times, and certainly not when he had his incredibly stubborn, extremely pregnant wife along.
Fran had come a long way since he’d first met her in Arizona. Ten years of experience and training had transformed a woman who’d never seen a monster in her life into someone who was fully capable of negotiating treaties and sharing land with non-humans. But she hadn’t been born to it, and the people in Gentling...
Well, the people in Gentling were hard to handle even after a lifetime of preparing for situations just like this one.
“Johnny!” The snap of Fran’s fingers brought him crashing back into the present. He blinked at her. She was standing with her hands on her hips and her eyes narrowed in the way that meant someone was about to meet the wrong end of a throwing knife. “Remember when we had that little talk about how you don’t try to reason me out of things I want to do, and I don’t smother you with a pillow in your sleep?”
“Yes,” he said uncertainly.
“Good. That means we don’t need to have it again. Now go tell your father we’re going to need another train ticket, and I’ll finish packing before the mice completely infest the suitcase.”
Jonathan sighed and stood. “Yes, dear,” he said. Much as he hated to admit it, it was starting to look like taking her to Gentling would be the easier option. God help them all.
Naturally, there was no direct service from Ann Arbor, Michigan—the nearest city to Buckley to have a major train station—to Gentling, Maine. There wasn’t actually direct service from much of anywhere to Gentling. It was the sort of town that had fallen off the map almost as soon as it had appeared there, fading into rumor, hearsay, and the occasional urban legend. Jonathan and Fran boarded their first train in Ann Arbor, where Fran’s condition earned them a concerned look from the porter, and rode from there to New York, a journey that took almost twenty hours. They disembarked at Grand Central Station, where Jonathan found Fran a seat at one of the terminal’s many small eateries before heading to the ticketing booth to arrange the next stage of their journey.
She was drinking a celery soda when he returned, and morosely watching the families walking by. “None of them look half as miserable as I feel,” she announced, apparently sensing Jonathan’s return. “You think it’d be wrong of me to start throwing things?”
“It certainly wouldn’t be social,” he said carefully, taking the seat next to her. “It’s not too late to get you a ticket home. I can take care of this on my own.”
“Suggest that again and I’ll punch you in the kidney,” she said. She took a sip of her soda, and added, “Besides, the mice’d be sad.”
Jonathan froze. “The mice?”
“The ones who stowed away in my suitcase.” Fran turned a sunny smile on him. “I couldn’t sleep on the train. All that rocking made me need to pee something awful. So I asked the bags if there was anybody inside. It’s sort of neat how they don’t lie when you ask them a direct question, isn’t it? Not very stealthy, but neat.”
“You...oh, God.” He gave her suitcase a sidelong look, like he expected it to break into song at any moment. “Did you get a rough count, by any chance? How many mice are we hosting on this little outing?”
“No more’n ten,” she said. From her tone, it was intended to be reassuring. Jonathan stared at her. Fran laughed. “Oh, come on, city boy. It’s not like they haven’t hitched along before. Remember? We met because of a mouse.”
“I remember,” said Jonathan grimly. He’d been following a trail of murders that had led him straight to the traveling circus where Fran worked as a trick rider. She’d been preparing to put a throwing knife in his throat when one of the family’s colony of talking pantheistic mice made itself known, hailing Fran as the Priestess of Unexpected Violence in the process. Really, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when he eventually married her: the mice virtually had a sixth sense about who was and was not going to wind up a member of the family.
“Besides, this way if I decide to stay in the hotel instead of going out on business with you, I’ll have something to keep me occupied, instead of wandering off and somehow offending the locals.” Fran took a demure sip of her soda. “You’ve got to admit that the idea of me having a chaperone appeals to you. Don’t lie to me now, I know you better’n that.”
“It goes both ways,” he said. “You know that I only want to keep you out of dangerous situations until the baby’s here. I worry.”
“I know, honey, and I love you for it.” Fran sobered briefly. The loss of their first child, Daniel, had scarred them both. But it wasn’t a raw wound for her the way it still seemed to be for Jonathan, and she worried sometimes about how that wound didn’t seem to be healing. “Ain’t nothing going to happen to me or to this baby. That’s a promise. You’re going to be a daddy soon, and I intend to enjoy watching you cope with that. I’m just not willing to give up on having adventures until he’s here, all right? Give me this month. It won’t be long before it’s my turn to worry about every little thing in the world, and I want to enjoy myself.”
“Just promise me that you’ll be careful.” Jonathan leaned across the table to touch her arm. “I know it goes against your nature, but right now, you’re not just taking risks for yourself. You’re taking them for all three of us.”
Fran managed a smile, although the concern didn’t leave her eyes. “I’ll be careful, as much as I know how to. Now where do we go from here?”
“The train to Boston leaves in an hour,” said Jonathan, and the mice in Fran’s suitcase—the ones that weren’t supposed to be there—cheered.
The ride from New York to Boston was only eight hours long—a relief after the grind of the first leg of their trip. Their car was a private sleeper, and Fran even dozed off after Jonatha
n let the mice out of her suitcase and encouraged them to hold their evening devotionals on her pillow. Nothing put her to sleep like Aeslin hymns, the occasional impassioned cheer notwithstanding.
When the singing was done and Fran was sleeping soundly, Jonathan sat down on the bed and leaned forward to address the novice in charge of the small colony grouping. “Have you the permission of the high priest to be here?” he asked. “Don’t lie to me. I’ll ask as soon as we get home, so it’s in your best interests to be truthful.”
The novice ducked her head and lowered her ears, sure signs of shame, and said, “We have permission, but were asked not to tell you unless you brought forth the question. I am sorry we have defied you.”
Jonathan frowned. Aeslin mice worshipped the men of his family as gods, while being far more inclined to actually listen to the women, who the mice viewed as priestesses and hence far more sensible than their divine counterparts. They still usually followed direct instructions from their gods, such as “do not follow us to Maine.” Disobedience on this scale implied some nuance that he was missing. “Why did you defy me?” he asked, gently.
“We were present at your Birth,” squeaked the mouse, finally lifting her head to meet his eyes. “Not this piece of the congregation, but our mothers, our fathers, our keepers of record. We saw you enter the World, and we rejoiced, for the line of your divinity was unbroken.”
“I’ve heard the recitation,” said Jonathan. “It’s very, ah, detailed.”
“Also saw we the Birth of your mother, the Patient Priestess, and her father, the God of Hard Work and Sunshine, and the birth of his mother, all the way back to Caroline, who first raised us from the Dust and brought us to the shining Light of our Faith.” The mouse twitched her whiskers, begging him to understand what she was saying. “We do not like to disobey—it is a sin, and it burns us to our bones—but we cannot miss the birth. That would be a mortal sin, and the whole colony would be darker for bearing its stain.”
Jonathan blinked, sitting up a bit straighter. Out of all the complications he had considered for this trip, this one hadn’t even made the list. Of course the mice would feel the need to come along. If there was even the slightest chance that the baby would make its appearance before they got back to Michigan—and he had to admit that there was a chance, no matter how much Fran denied it; she was a stubborn woman, and he would bet on her over almost any monster he had ever met, but he wouldn’t bet on her against Mother Nature herself—then the mice would want to be there. They would want to witness the event, and preserve it in the colony’s collective memory. It was the way that they were made.
He would have felt odder about that notion, if it hadn’t been for Daniel. Daniel, who had died too soon, and had never been given a chance to become the man he could have been. Daniel, who was eternally preserved in the memory of the colony. Every laugh, every tear, every delighted encounter with the world, it was all there, waiting to be triggered by a simple request from a grieving parent. After Daniel, how could he deny the colony the right to be present at the birth of his second child?
“I wish you had told me this was why you wanted to come with us to Boston,” he said gently, making the novice lift her ears away from her head, looking awed by his tone. “I would have packed a proper habitat for you, instead of making you stow away in Fran’s linens.”
“Truly, you are the best of all possible Gods,” said the mouse solemnly. Then, an uncharacteristic choir of one, she squeaked, “Hail,” and turned to vanish into the crack in the cot that the other mice had already slipped away through.
Jonathan remained where he was, dropping his face into his hands and allowing his shoulders to slump. He barely noticed Fran stirring beside him until she placed her hand on the back of his neck, cool fingers threading through his hair.
“That was a good thing you just did,” she murmured, lips close to his ear. “They need this as much as we do.”
“Fran.” He lowered his hands and turned to face her, guilt writ large across his face. “I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “Baby did. Apparently, I’m not supposed to be still.” She left her hand on his neck, putting the other hand on the pronounced swell of her belly. “I’m being kicked like a rodeo clown, and I can’t get out of the ring until this little fellow’s done with me. It’s sort of a miracle the human race continues, when you think about it. Pregnancy’s not the most fun ever.”
“You’re the one who chose to be pregnant on a train,” Jonathan noted.
Fran smiled. “No, honey. I’m the one who chose to be pregnant on an adventure. There’s a pretty big difference. I think the baby’d agree, if we were in a position to ask him.”
“Why’s that?” asked Jonathan.
“Easy enough,” said Fran, and leaned in to kiss him before she pulled back, smiled, and said, “He’s ours.”
The ride from Boston to Portland was two hours, which seemed like nothing after everything else they’d been through. Jonathan led a half-asleep Fran out of the station and down the street to the hotel where they’d be spending the rest of the night. Her eyes were closed by the time he finished paying for their room and signing the guest book, and he tugged her up the stairs to the second floor one step at a time, coaxing and cajoling until they reached their room. Once inside, he let go of her and turned to free the mice from her suitcase. By the time he turned around, she was already flat on her back on the bed, limbs splayed, snoring gently.
Jonathan smiled. It was impossible not to. Fran had always been prone to falling asleep fast—and waking up just as fast, something she’d learned to do during her time with the circus—but pregnancy seemed to make her descents into unconsciousness all the swifter, possibly because she was sleeping for two. He pressed a kiss against her temple, removed her shoes, and unbuttoned her jacket. Fran didn’t stir. That was for the best; she’d never been to Gentling before, and it could be a little unnerving for the uninitiated. Better that she get her rest now, while she could sleep easy.
The mice scurried from her suitcase and lined up on the edge of the dresser, all of them watching Jonathan. He turned back to them and said, very softly, “You may go looking for dinner, if you like; this hotel has no cat. Do not let yourselves be seen. We’re not here to endanger anyone’s livelihood. We’ll be leaving at sunrise. Do you understand?”
“Hail,” piped the mice in a reedy whisper. Even they had learned the wisdom of not being too loud around a sleeping Fran. Then they turned, vanishing behind the dresser with surprising speed.
Jonathan smiled again and began unbuttoning his shirt. It was time to get to bed.
Exhaustion being what it was, Jonathan had barely closed his eyes before he followed Fran down into slumber. It felt like he’d been asleep for less than five minutes when the mattress bounced, and he opened his eyes to find Fran, fully dressed, kneeling next to him and beaming. The room smelled of bacon, toast, and freshly fried egg. There were worse ways to wake up.
“Thought you were dead, city boy, so I brought you up some breakfast from the dining room. Also brought you some harsh words from the cook, who didn’t like seeing a pregnant lady carrying her own dishes up the stairs. Shame on you, and all that.”
“What time is it?” Jonathan pushed himself upright, blinking in an effort to clear the sleep from his eyes. The sky outside their room’s narrow window was still black and bruised.
“’bout four-thirty in the morning. I couldn’t sleep, and they cater to enough railmen here that they start serving breakfast at four. The mice told me you’d wanted to be on the road by sunrise, so I figured waking you up wouldn’t go over poorly.”
“Not a bit,” said Jonathan. He leaned over to kiss her, and then slid out of the bed, beginning to gather his clothes. “I need to run down the street to get our car for the ride to Gentling. As soon as that’s done, we can be on the road.”
“I figured you’d say something like that,” said Fran. She twist
ed awkwardly, picking up a plate from the nightstand, and thrust it at him. “That’s why your breakfast is in sandwich form. Don’t you worry about us here. I’ll get the mice to help me pack anything that still needs to get back into a suitcase, and we’ll be ready to go when you get back.”
Jonathan grabbed the sandwich and paused, looking at her with admiration. “You really are the best wife in the history of matrimony. You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”
“Sure am.” Fran waved a hand at the door. “Go on now, get the car. I need to pee every twenty minutes right now, so I’d love it if we could start the torture chamber that is travel by private car.”
Jonathan laughed and let himself out of the room.
The car rental that he had arranged in Portland was less of a formal service and more a matter of knowing someone who knew someone who had a grudge against the Covenant and hence subscribed to a basic “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” philosophy. Jonathan was able to secure a reasonably well-maintained 1935 Ford. The paint had been weathered by the sea air, but the engine and body were in excellent shape, and he didn’t feel the need to worry about using it to drive his pregnant wife along eighty miles of the Maine coast. He paid for the rental with fifty dollars cash, a vial of bloodworm extract, and three jars of his mother’s best strawberry jam. He never saw the face of the man who rented him the car. Judging by the squishing sounds that accompanied every movement his unknown benefactor made, that was probably for the best.
When he pulled up in front of the hotel, Fran was already standing on the curb with their suitcases. Jonathan stopped the car, opened his door, and stood, staring at her. She grinned, clearly understanding the source of his distress.
“I didn’t lift a finger, so don’t you look at me like that,” she said. “I just went back to the dining room and told all them nice railmen that we were in a hurry to get to my momma before the baby came, and they fell all over themselves getting our things down the stairs. Cook gave me a bag of biscuits for the ride, too. Says pregnant ladies get carsick sometimes, so I should have something to throw up.”
We Both Go Down Together Page 1
