Imaginary Numbers

by McGuire, Seanan

  “I love you, but not enough to threaten Alice Healy for hurting you,” she said. “Unlike the boys, I grew up in the cryptid community. I know what she can do to me.”

  “Smart,” I said. The pain in my hand wasn’t as bad as it would have been if she’d actually broken anything. I still pulled it back, resting it in my lap as I said, “We got confirmation that the crossroads sometimes took people and put them somewhere far away, someplace where they couldn’t get home. The anima mundi doesn’t know exactly where they are, so they can’t help us, but the crossroads aren’t actively working to keep us away from them anymore.”

  Grandma stared at me for a long moment, eyes wide and glassy, before she put her hands over her face and said, “Oh.”

  “Oh?” I echoed.

  “Oh.” She lowered her hands and smiled beatifically at me. “I told you so. I told you all. He’s alive out there.”

  “Um,” I said. “He was. I hope he still is, for my sake as much as yours—I’d really like to have someone who could teach me how to be better at sorcery. Trial and error is resulting in a lot of scorch marks.”

  “I’d love it if someone could teach her not to set things on fire while she was sleeping,” said Sam. “Burning fur smells terrible.”

  “It’s worse for the rest of us,” said Cylia. “Trust me.”

  Sam wrinkled his nose at her. The back door banged open, and we all tensed, Grandma reaching for the gun at her hip, Fern bouncing back up into the cobweb-choked rafters and disappearing.

  Cynthia, who had just stepped inside with a platter of barbequed chicken in her hands, blinked at us like we were doing something truly ridiculous. “Food’s ready,” she said, hoisting the platter to show us all before she walked over and dropped it onto the table, adding a handful of plastic forks. “Let me know when you’re done, and I’ll come pick up the leftovers. If there are any.”

  The chicken smelled delicious, like sweet hickory sauce and charred meat, and I grabbed a fork and speared a thigh before I could think better of it. “Thank you, Cynthia,” I said.

  “You kids all right back here?” Something about the way she asked the question made it clear that her question encompassed my grandmother, who was still staring at me, looking like I’d offered her everything she’d ever wanted, but put it on the other side of an impassable lake of molten lava.

  “We’re great, ma’am,” said Sam, his tail tightening around my ankle. “Thank you.”

  “You’re a fūri, right?” she asked, eyes on Sam.

  He nodded reluctantly.

  “We used to have a fūri living local, back in the early ’70s,” said Cynthia, either unaware of the tension in the room or ignoring it. “She was a nice lady. Kept getting in trouble with some of the folk from town, since no one who grows up in Buckley is completely at ease with big, unidentified animals in the trees. You know your troop?”

  “Troop?” asked Sam, blankly. “I was raised by my grandmother, ma’am. She’s human. So’s my mother. I never met my father.”

  “This modern world.” Cynthia shook her head. “My mother was huldrafolk, like I am. My father was a grove of white birch, as is only right and fitting.”

  “Your dad was a tree?” asked Cylia.

  “No,” said Cynthia. “My father was about three dozen trees. They each contributed pollen to the making of me, and had any of them been absent, I would have been someone altogether different. My mother was their wife, until they were cut to the ground by humans who wanted the land where they grew. She moved to America with a baby in her arms and a coat on her shoulders to hide the bowing in her back. It was easier in those days to cross international borders without being unmasked as something other than human. No one ever asked her to disrobe, or to unswaddle me. We settled in Michigan, and she built the Red Angel with her own two hands before passing it on to me. She grows behind the building, on a stretch of land the state allows me to pretend I own. As if anyone could own land, apart from the trees, and I still have a century or more before I decide to put down roots.”

  “You were part of what gave me the idea to keep snatching back my youth until I was done with it,” said Grandma, warmly. “I grew up and started growing old, and you never did.”

  “Yes, well, we huldra are made of sterner stuff than you humans—or most of the people who can pass for human. It’s like having a fast breeding and birthing cycle made you careless with the way you live your lives.” Cynthia made a small scoffing noise. “I love you anyway. Alice, are you and the kids staying in town tonight?”

  “We are,” I said. “Our vehicle won’t be ready until tomorrow at the very earliest. I figured I’d show the gang the old Parrish place, since we don’t have any tenants living there.” We never did. Renting out the old Parrish place would have upset my grandmother, the family of tailypo living on the property, and inevitably, anyone who thought it was a good idea to live there.

  The house had been originally chosen by the Covenant as a way to punish my grandfather for the sin of disagreeing with them. It wasn’t haunted; sort of the opposite, as I’d told Sam. No ghost with any common sense was willing to pass its threshold, and no people with any common sense had any business going there either.

  “I always stay at home when I’m in town,” said Grandma. “It’s why the power is still turned on.”

  Cynthia nodded slowly. “You know I have a room for you if you ever want it,” she said. “It’d be healthier than staying there all by yourself.”

  “I won’t be by myself tonight,” said Grandma cheerfully. “I’m going to have Annie and her friends with me.”

  Cynthia sighed, looking briefly disappointed. Then she nodded. “I suppose you will, at that,” she said. “Well, if you kids need anything else from me, I’ll be at the bar. Enjoy your chicken.”

  She turned and disappeared then, back out into the slightly cleaner, less cobweb-choked main room of the Red Angel.

  As soon as the door closed, Grandma turned her attention back to me. “Where did the crossroads send him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The anima mundi didn’t know either. But they said that the people the crossroads sent away were alive when they went. That means he could still be alive out there. If he’s as resourceful as you’ve always said he was, he could still be hanging on.”

  Of course, he probably wouldn’t have Grandma’s little anti-aging trick, and he’d been older than her when he disappeared, all the way back in 1965. He had to be in his nineties by now, and that could make bringing him home difficult. Not that my grandmother gave one good goddamn about difficult. She’d been throwing herself through endless hells since his disappearance, with no goal in mind beyond bringing her lost love home.

  It was a little obsessive, sure, but I’d sold my magic and potentially my life to the crossroads to save Sam, and he and I hadn’t been together even half as long as my grandparents had. People do stupid things when they’re in love. That’s sort of what love is for.

  It would be nice if my family could manage love with a little less disaster, but I guess it’s true what they say: people learn from example. And all of our examples are catastrophic ones.

  I took another bite of barbequed chicken. Everyone else reached for their forks and speared pieces for themselves, and for a few minutes, there were no sounds but the sound of chewing, and of Fern bouncing about gently in the rafters. Then she drifted serenely down to floor level, stabbed a piece of chicken, and asked, “Are we staying with your grandmother tonight, Annie?”

  I looked at Grandma, who nodded. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess we are.”

  * * *

  Cynthia didn’t charge us for the chicken. “It’s nice to have proof that Alice has eaten something on this plane of reality more recently than the pie-eating contest we held back in 1992,” she said, waving us toward the door. “Now get out of here. This many humans makes the
rest of my clientele nervous.”

  Given that the rest of her clientele appeared to be two bogeymen, a swamp hag, and what might have been a minotaur, I had serious reason to doubt that, but not enough to make me argue with her until she gave us a bill. Instead, I waved and led the rest of our motley group to the exit, where Grandma was waiting.

  “We’ll have to walk to the house,” she said. “I’ll leave my motorcycle here for the night. Not the first time, probably not going to be the last, and it’s not like I could fit all of you on the seat.”

  “I know the way,” I protested. “We could meet you there.”

  “Your mother would literally never let me hear the end of it if I lost track of you right now,” she said. “Evie’s a pretty dab hand with her necromancy, so you know I mean that literally.”

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t argue. People leave ghosts when they die with unfinished business. It’s common if undiscussed knowledge among my family that if Grandma Alice dies hunting for her wayward husband, she’s going to keep coming to family dinners for the rest of time, because there’s no possible way she’s going to rest in peace. Again, love sucks, and again, there’s a reason I spent so much of my life purposefully not looking for it.

  “This way, kids,” called Grandma cheerfully, before she started stomping down the road, heading toward the dark, somehow menacing edge of the forest. “Look alive, and don’t step on anything you don’t recognize.”

  “She’s like a preschool teacher,” said James, stepping up next to me, a bemused look on his face. “A heavily-armed, questionably-stable preschool teacher.”

  “Yeah, but she’s not wrong around here,” I said. “Buckley is what we like to call a high-weirdness zone. Sort of like New Gravesend, only your weirdness was artificially imposed. You had the full attention of the crossroads. We don’t. We just have the result of generations of cryptozoologists going out of our way to protect some of the weirdest wildlife North America has to offer. The local population is almost entirely human, because only the humans are stupid enough to stay in an area where rock scorpions and dire boars both like to live.”

  “How does the Red Angel stay open if this is a mostly human town?” The question came from Sam, back in his human form as he stepped up on my other side.

  “Cynthia owns most of the lakeside property that isn’t actually inside city limits, and this is a popular vacation spot,” I said, linking my arm through Sam’s as we followed my grandmother toward the woods. “She makes enough in rent from the summer people to pay her power and liquor bills, and while she doesn’t gouge, this is the only cryptid bar left in Michigan. Her customers are happy to chip in when she’s feeling skint.”

  “Sounds real community-minded of them,” said James.

  “She averages a wedding a week during the busy season,” I said. “You and me, we’re sorcerers, but we’re still human. You just have to find a girl who’s understanding about frostbite when you get frisky, and you’ll be fine. Someone like Fern, on the other hand, has to do a lot more work if she wants to find Mr. Right. Cynthia didn’t set out to be a matchmaking service, but she provides a safe place in a township the Covenant actively avoids, and plenty of alcohol. That’s more than good enough for this modern world.”

  James flushed red and looked down at his feet, kicking a rock down the road without breaking his stride. Sam frowned.

  “Why does the Covenant avoid Buckley?” he asked.

  “Because they believe it’s haunted by the ghosts of three generations of Healys, all of whom are pretty pissed off about being murdered,” I said blithely. “It’s a long story.”

  “Is everything in this family a long story?” he asked reproachfully. “Do you think there’s a chance you could make me like, some index cards with the short version on them, so I don’t completely embarrass myself when I meet your parents?”

  “Since you’re adopting me, I’d like a set of those cards, too,” said James. “Just with the little things I need to know. Like you’d mentioned that your grandmother carries grenades the way most little old ladies carry those funky violent-scented candies, but you never said anything about her being younger than you. No wonder you jumped straight to time travel as a solution.”

  “When something is normal for you, it doesn’t necessarily occur to you to mention it without a good reason,” I said. “Isn’t there anything you haven’t gotten around to telling me?”

  “Nope,” said Sam. “My life is an open book where you’re concerned. Also, I think your grandmother is more dangerous than mine, which is sort of reassuring if you think about it, since my Grandma is pretty pissed off at me right now. If it comes down to Grandma-on-Grandma violence, I think yours will win.”

  “We are not starting a Grandma fight club!” I said firmly. She was far enough ahead of us that I wasn’t worried she’d overhear, although Cylia looked back and smirked at me, clear amusement in her eyes. I did the mature thing and stuck my tongue out at her.

  “I might have a few things,” said James, ears still red as he kicked his rock around the road.

  “It’s all right if you have a crush on my girlfriend, my dude, even if she is volunteering to be sort of your sister,” said Sam magnanimously. “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but she has an absolutely fantastic rack.”

  “I have honestly not devoted much of my time to contemplating Antimony’s breasts,” said James.

  I smacked Sam on the arm. “Don’t say things like that where people might hear you.”

  “Why not? Your boobs come into a room before you do. People notice them.”

  “It’s a good thing I already love you,” I said. “If I didn’t, I might shove you into the lake for the bloodworms to swim off with and find myself a boyfriend who doesn’t try to make my adopted brother uncomfortable for fun.”

  “You’d miss me.”

  “I would,” I allowed.

  We kept walking. The trees grew closer, dark and tangled and menacing. There was nothing forgiving in the shadow of those trees. I couldn’t imagine growing up here in Buckley, in the sight of that forest. The trees in Portland were dense and tangled, but they were forgiving. I had always known that they were on my side.

  These trees weren’t on anybody’s side but their own. These trees had no interest in showing people where the bodies were buried; those bodies belonged to the trees now, and they weren’t going to give up what was theirs. I shivered and shifted a little closer to Sam as we walked, creating a tripping hazard. James stole a glance at the tree line and moved closer to me in turn.

  “You feel it, too, huh?” I asked. I had never been comfortable in the Buckley woods, but they had never felt this oppressively hostile before.

  “The trees are watching me,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

  Grandma looked over her shoulder at us, and said, “Your grandfather was the same way about my woods. I think it’s a sorcerer thing. They don’t like you. I don’t know why. Maybe a sorcerer hurt them once. They like me just fine.”

  “Of course the terrifying murder wood likes you,” I called. “You’re a terrifying murder lady.”

  She smiled. “Now Annie, don’t be jealous. I’m sure there’s a nice deciduous forest out there somewhere, just waiting to fall head over heels in love with you.”

  I snorted, but to be fair, her description wasn’t far off. I’d read all the diaries documenting her teen years in Buckley, and her courtship with my grandfather. The trees here genuinely seemed to love her and had saved her life in their immovable way more times than was strictly realistic. She’d had two true loves in her lifetime: my grandfather, and the Buckley woods.

  “I’ll stick with my monkey, thanks,” I said.

  Sam preened.

  “She just said she’d pick you over a literal forest,” said James. “I wouldn’t look so smug if I were you.”

  “Why not? Fores
ts are great. Lots of trees to climb, lots of interesting toads and beetles and stuff to look at. I’m pretty sure that was the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.”

  The boys fell to squabbling gently over my head as we walked. I smiled to myself, tuning out their words in favor of listening to their tones. They sounded perfectly relaxed, trusting me and Grandma to keep them safe in this familiar-to-us place. It was comforting, knowing they could trust me that much.

  Up ahead of us, Cylia caught Fern’s arm as the latter started to fall, having tripped over a rock in the path while her density was dialed down too far to let her recover on her own. I grinned. This was my family now, as much and as concretely as my biological family. We’d been through too much together to be anything else. We might not be together forever—probably wouldn’t be, since Fern eventually wanted to meet a nice sylph boy and have babies of her own, and the sylph creche structure didn’t really allow for her hanging out with humans and other cryptids while she was trying to reproduce—but we would always be a family, and that was remarkably reassuring.

  Something had to be. We followed Grandma around a bend in the road, and a house appeared up ahead of us, tall and narrow and remarkably imposing, painted in an almost gangrenous shade of brownish-green. The shutters on half the windows were actively askew, creating the odd impression that the house was watching us approach. The architecture was somehow subtly wrong, like if we took a level and a protractor to the walls and angles, we’d find that they didn’t line up and the structure didn’t technically exist in this plane of reality.

  The tension went out of Grandma’s shoulders, and for the first time since I was a child, I actually believed the age she appeared to be. She looked like a teenage girl as she gazed at the house she’d shared with her husband, where my father had been born, where she’d either lost or given up everything she had. Her history wasn’t a love story; it was a tragedy still in process. She sped up, heading for the porch. Cylia and Fern hung back. We caught up to them quickly.