Fathomless

by Anne M. Pillsworth

  “No, except that it wasn’t the wreck that killed his mom.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Eddy scooted closer, her voice dropping. “I know! Helen didn’t tell us about her. But she died before the accident, when he was eight.”

  “Died how?” But when Eddy shrugged, Sean knew. “Cancer, right?”

  “Leukemia.”

  Was there a curse on moms who passed magic-capability on to their kids? “That sucks.”

  “Big-time.”

  Daniel had dropped neatly to the ground. He walked toward their bench, calling, “That’s an awesome tree. On top there’s a place you could string hammocks. Or you could build a flet, like the elves.”

  In Lothlórien, he meant. “Maybe Helen would let us,” Sean said. “With leftover construction lumber.”

  “I’m going to check it out,” Eddy said.

  “Um, how about lunch?”

  “Tree first, lunch second. We decided on the Mexican place at the harbor.”

  That was a we that hadn’t included Sean. It was hard to argue against Mexican, though, especially since Eddy had already swung up into the beech. He expected Daniel would follow her. Instead he took her place on the bench, right down to cradling the sacred Salinger books. “I think Eddy wants to give us a chance to talk shop,” he said. “I already told her how our schedules match. And about Mr. Geldman.”

  “What about Mr. Geldman?”

  “You know, how he’s going to be my mentor.”

  No, Sean had not known that. In fact, he was so blindsided, he almost slid off his end of the bench. “Your magician mentor?”

  Daniel’s grin lapsed into an uncertain frown. “Is there some other kind?”

  He had to stay cool so he didn’t scare Daniel out of talking. “Not that I know. Anyhow, Geldman’s yours? Solomon Geldman, from the pharmacy?”

  Daniel’s frown deepened. “Right.”

  Good thing they hadn’t eaten yet, the way Sean’s stomach clenched. “That’s great. How’d they pick him?”

  “I guess the Order thinks he’d be the best match for me.”

  “To start right now, this summer. Him teaching you practical magic.”

  Daniel shoved Frodo curls from his forehead, hard enough to have pushed a wig askew, if he’d been wearing one. “Are you—?” he began. He gave the curls another shove. Still no slippage. “Did you want to work with Mr. Geldman?”

  Eddy had summited the beech and was on her way down. If she caught them in the middle of a drama, she’d blame Sean, and in this case, she’d be right. Unfair as it was for Daniel to get a mentor (Geldman!) while Sean had to wait (a whole year!), the situation wasn’t Daniel’s fault. “Sure, who wouldn’t want to work with him? But I’m good with—”

  Right, with whom?

  Eddy shinnied along a branch that came close to overhanging their bench. As it dipped, she rolled off into a cat-soft three-point landing. “What’ve you guys been talking about?”

  Daniel cleared his throat. “I told Sean about Mr. Geldman.”

  “I’m still geeking out over that. Who’s your mentor, Sean?”

  With Daniel still looking worried, Sean made do with a kinda-sorta truth: “I don’t know yet. The Order’s still thinking about it.”

  “But Daniel’s starting with Geldman on Monday. Every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, three to six. You’ll get behind.”

  “No, he won’t,” Daniel said. “I’ve never done magic, and Sean has. I’m the one who’ll be playing catch-up.”

  Sean almost said it out loud: Dude, stop trying so hard to be nice. We’re going to be your friends—Helen made us promise. Then he remembered what Eddy had said about Daniel’s skin grafts and his mother dying of leukemia, and he was glad he’d swallowed the snark. It came from the Gospel of Joe-Jack: You think when you kick crap at somebody else, you’re making your own pile smaller, but karma just doubles your crap allowance, and everybody ends up buried. “You’re right about that,” he told Daniel. “The Order’s only trying to give you a fighting chance.”

  “Not that it’s a contest,” Eddy said.

  But Daniel was smiling again. “No, the contest’s who’s going to eat the most tacos. If you guys are ready.”

  * * *

  Daniel borrowed Helen’s bike, and they pedaled to the harbor, a tree-shaded ride along the old residential streets to the east. They passed the Third Congregational Church, where Orne had preached, and Daniel said he’d like to check it out sometime. Sean made a mental note to skip that outing, but in Arkham it was hard to escape Orne. On the way back, they stopped at a cemetery on Lich Street, and next to the spiky iron fence was a lichen-coated mausoleum on which the Historical Society had stuck a shiny new plaque:

  THE REVEREND NICHOLAS BRATTLE, 1655–1731,

  FIRST PASTOR OF THE THIRD CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH

  Good old Brattle, who’d faked Constance Orne’s death so she could become Constance Cooke, no questions asked. Sean looked for her fake infant-sized grave, but unless it was beneath one of the many stones worn illegible, he didn’t find it.

  Back at the Arkwright House, Sean went to the library and Skyped Dad. He was in his workshop, shoulder deep in glass samples, with cartoons of the St. Anselm windows pinned to the corkboard behind him, and so he was in an excellent mood. Sean filled him in on the new guy, Daniel. Then he said, “Helen and Professor Marvell told me.”

  Dad pulled his laptop closer. “About Orne.”

  “About how he’s my grandfather. Times ten. Mom’s times nine.”

  “Were you thrown as hard as I was?”

  Sean skipped over his panic attack. “A little, but we already knew Mom had some magic. I wonder if she could have become a magician. You know, with training.”

  “Helen thinks her magic wasn’t as strong as yours, or else Orne would have contacted her first.”

  Sean had a scary new idea: “What if Orne did contact her?”

  “Something like that, she’d have told me.”

  “Even if it happened before she knew you, and she figured Orne was just a nutcase?”

  The breeze from an unseen window stirred Dad’s cartoons, making their stiff medieval saints shimmy. “You could be right, but does it make any difference?”

  “Guess not. Except maybe I’d feel better if he had gone after Mom.”

  “Why, Sean?”

  “Because if Orne went after her, and she turned him down, that means I can turn him down, too. Like, I don’t have evil overlord genes or bad blood or something.”

  Dad shook his head. “There’s two things I know for certain: Your mother wasn’t crazy or evil. You’re not crazy or evil. If the Professor or Helen suggested—”

  “No, Dad. No way they’d say anything like that.” Though since the meeting, Sean had been worrying about how down Marvell was on Orne—didn’t he have to at least wonder about Orne’s great-et cetera-grandson? “It’s only, what if they don’t trust me, now that they know I’m related to the Reverend? Before today, Professor Marvell said I’d have a magician mentor this summer. Now he says no mentor until next year. He says I started too fast. I have to backtrack.”

  “That sounds reasonable to me.”

  It would. “But the Order’s assigned Daniel a mentor. And you know who it is? Mr. Geldman!”

  “Well, you said Daniel’s eighteen. Doesn’t that put him a year ahead of you?”

  “Not in magic. He told me he hasn’t done any yet.”

  If Sean was being held back in any other subject, Dad would be ticked off. With magic, relief glowed off his face. “I can see why you’re frustrated,” he began.

  “It’s not that.”

  “No?”

  “Okay, it’s a little that. But what if I was going to get a mentor before they found out who my magic comes from? And then Marvell changed his mind because he’s afraid I’ll turn out like Redemption Orne? Or like Patience—she was even worse. She ordered her Servitor to kill people.”

  Head bowed, Dad seemed to chew
over his reply. “Your uncle Gus would know the exact quote, but the Bible talks about the sins of the fathers being visited on the children only to the fourth or fifth generation. Sixth, tops.”

  “You don’t believe that stuff.”

  “No. I’d say the fathers’ sins aren’t visited on anyone.”

  “I’m not talking sins. I’m talking genes.”

  “Okay, genes. Helen would’ve told me if yours had evil overlord cooties.”

  Without wanting to, Sean smiled. “You think she’d tell you about overlord cooties?”

  “I think she’d tell me the truth about anything concerning you. If she and Marvell were afraid of your ancestry, they didn’t have to let you come to Arkham. Take what they said at face value—you just need to start over right.”

  “But right for Daniel—”

  “Daniel’s a different person. Look. That last phone call, Helen wasn’t worried about you personally. She was worried about how Orne’s likely to keep chasing you.”

  “Because, us being blood relatives, he could use me to get stronger?”

  “That’s my worry. Him getting some kind of mental control over you.”

  Would a psychic bond with a human be as will-crushing as the bond the Servitor had forced on Sean? Maybe it would be worse. Much less impersonal, for one thing.

  “You’ve got to be a lot more careful now,” Dad went on.

  “I know. They told me.”

  “Did you listen?”

  “Totally, Dad.”

  “You’re going to keep listening?”

  “A hundred percent. Far as I’m concerned, Orne is so not an option.”

  Dad rubbed his lower lip. “And you’re not going to do any spells?”

  “Who’s going to teach me spells if I don’t have a mentor?”

  Someone knocked on Dad’s door. “I’ll be over shortly,” he called, then turned back to Sean: “Okay. Anything else?”

  An overhead flare jerked Sean’s eyes to the Founding. The sun had dipped behind the huge old oaks that lined Pickman Street, leaving the windows dim, except for Nyarlathotep’s crow. Its halo had returned, brighter than ever in contrast to the darkened glass around it. He blinked. It stayed bright.

  “Sean?”

  He looked down at the screen. “No biggie, Dad, but your crow?”

  “What crow?”

  “The one in the Founding. That Nyarlathotep’s throwing. Did you do something special to it?”

  “No, just some repainting.”

  “You didn’t paint it to glow, like you painted Mom’s brush, in her window?”

  “That would have meant changing the original design. Is there a glow?”

  “You know, halo-ish.”

  Dad sighed. “That could be a light leak. Do me a favor. Check the putty around the crow. See if it’s shrunk.”

  How could you have a light leak if there wasn’t any light hitting the glass? But Sean said, “Sure, Dad. Should I fix it?”

  “No. As long as the glass isn’t about to fall out, I’ll deal with it when I come back. Anyhow, tell Eddy and Helen and the Professor hi for me. And don’t forget I’m here whenever you want to call.”

  “Middle of the night, your time?”

  Dad groaned but nodded. Then he was gone.

  Sean hauled one of the library stepladders onto the dais, under the left window, and climbed. Nyarlathotep remained inert glass, didn’t try to grab him, didn’t even wink in recognition, and four rungs up, Sean stood eye to eye with the crow. The putty that held it in the lead came was intact, so its halo wasn’t a light leak. In fact, it was an aura a lot like the ones in Mom’s paintings, where the closer he got to the canvas, the less he saw it and the more he felt it, a faint warmth and vibration. He rested his fingertips on the crow’s breast. No mistake, there was a Mom-like hum.

  He could only come up with one explanation for how Mom’s energy had gotten into the crow. Dad had restored the Founding windows in his carriage house studio, right next to the one where Mom’s unfinished paintings lived. Sean had half-persuaded himself that the hum in the paintings was magical residue without consciousness, but maybe his younger self had been right, after all. Maybe Mom was a less abstract ghost, more willful, capable of breathing her unfading magic into a glass bird. Did she often “help” Dad with his work, or was this the first time, because Sean was going away and she wanted a bit of herself to follow him, a surrogate guardian spirit?

  It was shocking how unshocked he felt. Or was it just reasonable? If the universe could hold Servitors and immortal wizards and state-shifting pharmacies, why get his shorts in a wad about ghosts, especially one he ached to believe in?

  By climbing one more rung, Sean was able to lean over the top of the ladder and press his forehead to the crow. The humming against his skin didn’t strengthen into words or anything, into Mom’s voice, but that was okay. He communed with it until Helen came home, and Eddy and Daniel thundered downstairs to greet her. Then he hustled the ladder back into its wall niche. Helen couldn’t have noticed anything special about the crow, or she’d have mentioned it to Dad. Come to think about it, Sean had never seen its halo when anyone else was looking at the windows. He’d have to watch, and if he truly was the only one the glass glowed for, that was more evidence the glow and hum came from Mom, were there for Sean, and were meant to be their secret, why not, who could it harm?

  He joined the others in the hall.

  6

  That night Eddy and Daniel huddled over Franny and Zooey. If they had to get all book-clubby, they could have picked The Catcher in the Rye at least, which had that awesome part about the ducks and the sore cabdriver. Sean lurked behind his laptop, one eye on Twitter, the other on the couch—he’d have to catch Eddy alone to tell her about his connection to Orne. If he even wanted to tell her right now. Dad had already depressed him by endorsing Marvell’s no-magic, no-mentor plan, and Eddy was such a Marvell fan girl, she’d probably endorse it, too.

  So when Eddy cruised, he stayed in the common room and talked to Daniel. He’d tell her in a day or two.

  Or three or four.

  Or more, as it turned out, because they fell into a routine too comfortable for Sean to risk upsetting it. Mornings Eddy went to the Archives, Sean and Daniel to class. Marvell had kicked off with a reminder that Infinity Unimaginable had presented the Outer Gods as myth, a benign lie to protect interested “civilians.” As potential magicians, however, Sean and Daniel had to learn the truth. The first truth, because he was the first entity, was Azathoth: the Demon Sultan who roiled at the center of the cosmos, chaotic and amorphous, blind and mindless. Some magic scholars equated Azathoth with the Big Bang. Others believed he existed in steady state, involuntarily spawning the singularities that inflated into bubble universes around him.

  That was cool beyond Sean’s previous standards of coolness, and beyond Daniel’s, too, from the excited questions he asked. Next among the Outer Gods was Yog-Sothoth, Keeper of the Gates and their Keys. Marvell called him a sort of universal memory, perhaps time itself. Next, Shub-Niggurath, referred to as “she” because, well, she was the Mother through whom energy became matter, so calling her “he” would be pretty rude. Not that she’d care. The only Outer God who paid much attention to lesser beings was Nyarlathotep.

  Whenever Marvell mentioned Nyarlathotep, he bestowed a brief scowl on Sean. Among the god’s seemingly countless avatars were the Dark Pharaoh, the Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and the Howler in Darkness. But Soul and Messenger of the Outer Gods was Nyarlathotep’s proper title. Also, the Master of Magic.

  Daniel noted every word of Marvell’s wisdom on his laptop. Sean didn’t want to look like the only slacker in a class of two, but he couldn’t keep up with Daniel’s high-speed typing. Besides, he had to sneak glances at the Founding windows. Intonation of the god’s name didn’t summon Nyarlathotep out of the glass, good. Better, the crow kept its halo doused whenever Marvell was in the library, or Helen or Eddy or Daniel, for that matter, which co
uld be more proof the glow was of Mom’s making. Several times since his call to Dad, Sean had climbed the stepladder and touched the crow’s breast. Energy pulsed within it, a steady heartbeat that felt more and more like Mom’s magic. It had to be hers, a ghostly gift, sacred in its obscurity, hers and Sean’s alone.

  Marvell dismissed class at two. Eddy usually stormed in to change out of her library clothes by three. Some days they snagged a tennis court at the university sports complex; Daniel hadn’t played much since his accident, but Eddy was a good coach. She soon had him up to besting Sean one out of three matches and even to besting her on the occasional long volley.

  Other afternoons they bicycled in town or on the Miskatonic River Trail. Daniel had bought a Jamis road bike that must have cost a couple thousand dollars, but that was no big deal since (as Eddy had learned) his dad was a corporate lawyer. Sean couldn’t hate on him—Daniel let one of them ride it half the time, a favor Sean returned by being the go-to guy for drives to the beach.

  The biggest beach was in Kingsport, but Eddy and Sean liked the smaller one between the Arkham Harbor jetties. It was decent for swimming; the jetties hosted enough sea life to make snorkeling worthwhile; and kayak access was easy. Under normal circumstances, Sean would have opted for swimming every day, and Eddy the mermaid would probably have lived at the beach every second she wasn’t basking among the Archives’ tomes.

  The problem was that Daniel had a phobia of water, especially the ocean. Before their first beach trip, he’d told them about a rip current that had grabbed him when he was a toddler, how it had sucked him away from shore and almost drowned him. Since then he hadn’t set foot in surf or even the shallow end of a pool. It blew in hot weather, but he didn’t mind hanging out near water, or even out on one of the jetties, as long as there weren’t high waves that might pull or knock him in.

  Privately, Sean and Eddy agreed they’d do most of their water stuff on the afternoons when Daniel was with Geldman. Whatever he said, it had to be a drag to stand around while they had fun. It was also a drag for Eddy. The phobia was Daniel’s one flaw in her eyes. In a selfish way, it was good to know there was one thing Sean could do better than him. Even if it wasn’t practical magic.