Deep breath time. “And it’s not like I can explain any of it to Mom.”
“Probably not. Not one of them went to college.” Thali’s hands tighten on the steering wheel. “Or needed to.”
This stark truth silences them both for the next couple of miles, to the first outlying houses. Then Zill feels a sigh rising.
“I still have to try. And you know how she gets this time of year.” Another nasty thought strikes her. “She’s going to expect me to attend services tomorrow, isn’t she?”
In the deepening dusk outside, Shrike Harbor is tidy and well-preserved, not rundown like most fishing villages on this part of the coast. People still bring in good catches, and there’s a little light industry. Doesn’t look like the refinery’s operating right now, but later this fall—
“Have you still got my number in your phone?” Thali asks.
Relieved to have her train of thought derailed, Zill digs in one jacket pocket and checks. Nods.
“Call me later, OK? After you’ve gotten unpacked and talked to your mother—“
“You think I’ll need to?”
Thali looks conspiratorial. “I think you’ll need a drink.”
The house is nearly dark as she walks in. It smells as though it’s been closed up a long time, or… No, that’s all it is. Stale air. Flickering light and indistinct voices guide her back to the living room, where her mother sits wrapped in afghans on the couch. The big television her father bought last year is on as usual; some fake courtroom show.
And not another light on in the whole house.
“Well, finally!”
Unfiltered by long distance, her mother’s voice grates. Zill steps closer anyhow. “You were just lucky Thali could pick me up. If I’d had to find my own way out here—”
“Athaliah Bishop is certainly not her mother.” A slow head-shake reveals thinning white hair. “The girl tries, I suppose, but she’s just not.”
Thank God. Zill reaches for the table lamp. Bad enough to start arguing with her mother the minute she gets in, without arguing in the dark—not that she hasn’t been doing that her whole life.
But when she twists the knob, she wishes she hadn’t.
It’s not just the hair. It’s the eyes—well, mostly the eyes—and the lipsticked line of a once-generous mouth, grown both too narrow and too wide. And the changes may not stop there: even these afghans conceal ankle-length skirts rather than pants.
Why didn’t you tell me?
She stifles the question. When you don’t come home for over two years, you should expect a few changes. The kind nobody bothers to warn you about, because you really should have been around.
Zill exhales slowly and starts over.
“At least I’m here now.” She clutches the handle of her rolling suitcase. “Do you know when Dad’s lawyer wants to meet?”
Her mother just blinks. Zill feels a cold sickness: she has misunderstood, or been helped to misunderstand. There is nothing in that will for her. She has been dragged cross-country and forced to buy a return ticket she can’t afford, just to satisfy her mother’s urge to see her. Or something
“I’m only here until November second, Mom.” She takes another breath. “If we don’t have an appointment yet, maybe you ought to call and—”
“Oh, your father left you something, right enough.” Her mother’s mouth quirks. “You’re a Mason clear through, direct line back. Been proving it half your life. Why else do you think I married the man?”
Her… smile…? widens at Zill’s confusion. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she says. “After services.”
Driving in with Thali, Zill had glanced away as they passed the old meeting hall, its front porch crowded with corn shocks and pumpkins. Festive it might be, but no decorations could cover so many shadows.
Zill’s earliest memories are of this hall crowded to overflowing, lit only by memorial candles set into niches in every wall. One for each community member departed; lost to the sea or industrial accident, to sickness or war. Yet the promise of eternity remains, so long as the people are strong. So long as the chant is raised in its seasons, and the communion Between is maintained—
Not by me, it’s not!
Two years, she realizes, has not been long enough. “Sorry,” she finally says. “I won’t be going.”
Tipping her suitcase forward, she starts towing it towards the staircase. Her mother unsnarls herself from the afghans and struggles to her feet.
“Zillah…!”
Zill bumps her luggage up the stairs, drowning out the rest of her mother’s protests. The moment she reaches her bedroom door, she’s pulling out her phone.
Thali’s always been able to read her.
As they pull away from the house, Zill feels a rush of relief. It’s a little high school, but that doesn’t stop her from checking Thali’s glove compartment for the bottle. Pre-party, they used to call it. Jack and Coke in Dixie cups on their way to wherever, just enough to take the edge off.
Looks like Thali’s ahead of her tonight. The pint’s already unsealed. Zill sneaks a sip before looking around for the soda and cups.
“Sorry,” her friend says. “Pretty much nothing in this town stays open late, grocery stores included.”
“But not liquor stores. Or bars.” Zill rolls her eyes. “Gee, I wonder why.”
It takes her another few sips to start talking, but after that she can’t stop. The whole weird confrontation with her mother was both more and less than she’d been expecting, and nothing she’d been prepared for.
Though she should have been, after Thali’s mom last year.
Staring into the night, Zill hears her own voice at a distance as the shock and disappointment sink in. Maybe it was stupid of her, but she really had believed her father left her something. That she’d have one more semester if her grant didn’t get renewed—
“But why wouldn’t it?”
Zill blinks back into focus. She’s answered this question before, but Thali sounds a lot more interested in the details now. Physics plus math plus magic.
It’s the last term that’s widening the rift with her advisor. The man’s blackboard mind cannot stretch into those dimensions. Cannot see that the answers he wants are such a miniscule part of what is—and not even the most interesting part. Not the part she’s known about all her life, taken all the math she could trying to get close to.
And what, she wonders after another sip, would he do if he did see?
“He couldn’t take it,” Thali murmurs. Her windshield reflection looks pleased, though Zill can’t think why.
The night outside is total now: no house lights or streetlights or anything to indicate they’re heading for a bar in town. Shrike Harbor hasn’t got that much town. Maybe Thali’s found a roadhouse to do her drinking in since she moved back home?
When she tries to ask, though, something’s wrong with her mouth. It’s not moving right. There’s a slick bitterness at the back of her throat that wasn’t there a minute ago.
And the taste is getting worse and the night is getting deeper and no words are coming out—
Thali catches the pint as it slips from her fingers. “I’m so damn sorry, Zill.”
Blackout.
It isn’t the voices upstairs that rouse her. It’s the rhythm beneath them, tidal ebb and flow of the Samhain-rite. As it has been conducted every year since Shrike Harbor’s founding, and before that in another town laid waste by intolerance and ignorance.
As it must be conducted to maintain communion with those beneath the eternal waters sheltering Y’ha-nthlei, which the government believes destroyed—