Page 34 of Inkpot Gods

BOOK IIIIron

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud,

As when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflow’d.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley, “To a Skylark”

Underpass Mary’s not long been a god.

She was once only salt stains and rust,

But faith can work wonders and now that’s her job

Ever patient, she does what she must.

Daily they bring her their candles and prayers—

The skeptic, the hopeful, the proud, with

Strong faith or weak faith or no faith at all

And she does what she can for the crowd,

And she gives them what comfort’s allowed.

—Talis Kimberley, “Underpass Mary”

Growth

TIMELINE: AUGUST 22, 2018.

It’s not until the clock strikes midnight, a gentle chiming from her phone as the alarm goes off to notify her, that Lilianne rolls out of bed, smoothing her hair back with one hand, and reaches for her shoes. She didn’t entirely mean to nap for as long as she has, sinking in and out of a variable doze like a glass orb floating in the ocean, now on the surface, now four feet below, but still buoyant the entire time.

Most nights are like that for her. No matter how tired she is, her brain never slows down enough for her to truly sleep. Other people talk about long hours of unconsciousness, about deep dreams that seem to entirely replace the waking world, lives lived in the stillness of slumber. She’s never experienced that. Even as a child, she would be partially aware of herself as she spent her mandated hours with her eyes closed, letting them rest in a way her mind never did. Sleep is a companion, not a friend. Never once have they truly embraced each other.

The apartment is silent as she creeps to the door, hesitating long enough to listen. Raven is primarily nocturnal, but she’ll usually be out between the hours of ten and three; Snake sleeps nights so he can make his morning classes without endangering himself. The animals he works with aren’t malicious, but they can’t be handled safely unless the handlers are fully aware and alert. One slip on his part and someone’s getting bitten or stung—or worse, one of his precious specimens is getting stomped to death.

She doesn’t know where David is. Some nights, he’s in bed by nine, like the good little athlete he is. Others, he’s gone until the sun comes up, and him coming in is what wakes her. She’s sure she’ll spot the pattern in his schedule eventually, but until then, she needs to move quietly. He could be passed out on the couch again, or he could be somewhere else entirely. There’s just no way to know.

Letting herself out of the room, she creeps down the hall to the living room, where she’s relieved to see no David by the dim city glow coming through the windows. She really is alone for now, and she holds that solitude like a cloak as she creeps onward to the front door, unlocking it and slipping out onto the landing.

She doesn’t exhale until the door is shut and locked again behind her. Her roommates aren’t her keepers; they probably wouldn’t have said anything if they’d been there to see her go, just waved and dismissed her nocturnal activities as her own damn business. And yet, the fear of discovery has never needed to be rational. It’s enough that it exists, coiled at the bottom of her belly like a snake prepared to strike.

The food court is silent when she reaches the bottom of the stairs, the individual storefronts closed, the oil cooled for the night. They’ll wake up in the morning, some earlier than others, putting out breakfast offerings of hot donuts and fried-egg sandwiches. A few of the local homeless sleep on the tables and benches of the central eating area, and Lilianne looks at them with sympathy as she passes, careful not to disturb them. California is an expensive place to live. According to Raven, it gets more expensive every year. Add that to the remarkably forgiving weather and it isn’t such a surprise that when people lose their homes, they often choose to stay in the places they know, where they’re not dealing with readjustment to their environments on top of everything else.

Better to suffer where the rain tastes right, that’s what her mother always said, and she’s not one to argue with her mother. She clutches her satchel close as she steps out of the food court and onto the street beyond. Someday the rain here will taste right, she knows. Someday this place will be her home. But not yet. Not tonight.

The night is far from silent, despite the stillness of the street around her. No bars this close to campus, although they thrive only a few blocks away: they’re still open, music blasting and neon flashing as they offer their temporary escape to the people who come seeking it. The bouncers are large enough to make even David seem small, and the air around them always smells of a mix of stale beer, sweat, and soft desperation, running down the walls like sap running down the side of a maple tree. No, those are not her destination.

Instead, she turns away from the downtown nightlife, fixing her eyes on the secret, half-hidden part of Berkeley, where normal people live normal lives, and abnormal people hide themselves in plain sight.

Every city she’s ever seen has been like this, dividing itself into separate chambers, like they’re unknowingly seeking the seashell heart of their existence, pursuing the Golden Mean above all else. There’s always overlap—her own apartment is proof of that, a little oasis of residence in the middle of a sea of commerce. In the other direction, there’s the home daycare, the living-room salon, or the corner bodega. Nothing is ever entirely one thing or another. Alchemy pursues purification, but humanity thrives in the blended spaces. That’s how it’s always been, and how it will always be, and the reason not every human is an alchemist, which is for the best.