Page 46 of Inkpot Gods

The creature begins pacing back and forth at the top of the steps leading down into the pool. “I think you wouldn’t. I would have your entrails for my own enrichment if you saw that.”

“And yet you’re not doing it. Why not?”

“Smita,” hisses Lilianne, grabbing her wrist to emphasize her point. “Maybe we don’t taunt the horrifying alchemical creation?”

Because there’s nothing else this can be. There are wonders in the world, natural miracles, incarnations of ideas that were never meant to walk in flesh, but even those things follow their own forms of natural law. The universe makes only what it needs. It doesn’t need this creature, with its overly jointed arms and its mouth full of teeth stolen from some other species, some other phylum. Someone made this. A person, acting with clear, if misguided, intent.

“And maybe we do,” says Smita. She turns to face Lilianne, the real one. “Why are you on this desk? What was in the water with me? Why can’t we just swim away, looking for another way out of this fucked-up situation?”

“You were,” says Lilianne, voice dropping back down to a whisper as she shoots an uneasy glance at the surface of the water. “It was you. You … you found me in the hall. But you weren’t you anymore. You were something terrible. You pushed me into the water.”

“I didn’t,” says Smita, with calm certainty. “I would never. Pushing another woman into even clean water when she hasn’t requested it is offensive. Depending on the circumstances, it could even qualify as assault.”

Lilianne blinks, several times, before wiping her eyes with the back of one hand and shrinking further in on herself, trying to become as small as possible.

“Whatever chased you here, it wasn’t me,” says Smita. “Any more than what chased me here was you.”

The creature watching them from the other side of the water snarls again, frustration becoming audible. “Come back over here,” it demands. “I promise to make it quick if you come here of your own free will.”

“I’m not sure your promises have much weight anymore,” says Smita. “I’ve been gone for some time now. Erin’s going to come looking for me.”

The creature takes a step back, fear flashing across its face.

“Oh, good,” says Smita. “I thought you might know who I was talking about. She’ll find me, you know. She always finds me. I am her cross to bear, and she’s mine, and that means she always, always finds me. Will she find you at the same time?”

“Smita?” asks Lilianne. “What are you talking about?”

Smita glances over at her, grimacing apologetically. “I’m afraid I lied by staying silent while you explained the basic principles of alchemy to me. I know the basics, and more than the basics, and more than enough beyond that to have spoken up. I didn’t because … I was enjoying listening to you talk, and I wanted to know what you knew. How you would explain all the things we were walking into, what you would think was important enough to mention, what you wouldn’t.”

Lilianne gives her a horrified look. “You’re an alchemist?”

“No,” says Smita. “I’m not an alchemist, and I’m not a product of alchemy either. I’m a victim. I’ve died for your great art, hundreds of times, and now that I’m alive and aware of what’s happening around me, I never intend to be caught off guard by alchemy again. Which is why”—she raises her voice, looking pointedly back toward the creature—“I am not a fan of being cornered by manmade monsters who refuse to explain themselves to me. I find it quite rude, actually.”

The creature on the other side of the water shows its teeth again. Smita scoffs.

“You’re very frightening, when you’re chasing someone half your size through a place they don’t know,” she says, scornfully. “Terrifying. But you’re not so scary when you’re just standing there, and clearly afraid to get in the water. You can go now. The adults are talking.”

Lilianne gives her a bewildered, disbelieving look. Smita smiles at her, clearly trying to be reassuring, and just as clearly failing.

“I understand some of the allure of alchemy,” she says. “I’ve considered it, a time or two. I even joined one of those ineffective suburban covens for a little while, all about raising energy and giving it back to the earth. Making our intent into a tool and focusing it at the universe. It was fun. Healing, even, because it reminded me that not everyone who’s trying to change the world is doing it out of a desire to control everything around them. I learned plenty from my time with the coven.”

“Then what happened?”

Smita looks at the water, at the ripples without a visible source, made by whatever lurks below the surface. “Alchemists happened,” she says darkly. “The ones who built this lab. They were trying to find a friend of mine who they had decided was their property, and they found the place where we met instead. They killed one of our members. They widowed another. Using monstrous things they called ‘aufs,’ made out of dead people and bad designs. And they kept coming and coming and coming, until some more friends of mine convinced them that Berkeley wasn’t their kind of town after all.”

Lilianne stares at her, open-mouthed and even more confused than she was before Smita started her explanation. “But … this was a proper stronghold of the American Alchemical Congress. There’s no way some random friends of yours could have convinced its keepers to abandon it just like that. That isn’t how the Congress works.”

“Lily,” says Smita. “My friends aren’t random. They can convince just about anyone to do just about anything if they have good-enough reason to try.”

“They won’t come for you, you know,” says a voice, eerily like and yet unlike Smita’s own.

She closes her eyes and lets her head hang forward, half-dry hair forming a curtain around her face. “I suppose you’re the thing in the water?” she asks.

“I am,” says the voice. “I was. I could be again. I am an etiäinen, and I was made to mirror whoever trespassed here.”

“So you steal my face and expect me to be impressed by the audacity? You hurt my friend and expect me to welcome you despite the blood on your hands? Go back to the water, beast. If Erin doesn’t see you, she may not unmake you for what you’ve done.”

Smita manages to keep her voice level, but she’s worried, truly. Worried about the amount of blood Lilianne is losing, the amount she’s already lost; the damage to her shoulder is deep and looks like something out of a medical textbook, not the kind of injury she wants to see a friend, even a newly made one, carry.