Page 77 of Inkpot Gods

BOOK VMercury

Get down, Mama. Sleep your dark eyes down.

The scarecrow’s a’comin’ and he ain’t no clown.

Cloak yourself in midnight; duck your head ’neath your wing.

Crazy things we’re hearing are not meant to be seen.

Dead trees’ bones on the hills

Wave at the tall rows of corn.

North wind howls and it chills,

Singing to the old things we mourn.

—Dr. Mary Crowell, “Get Down Mama”

Oh let me tell you cirromancy, cirromancy—

That cloud’s for you. Is this cloud for me?

How can I bear this? Darling, it’s just cirromancy.

Circe, can I look now? Can I look now?

And I will teach you cirromancy, cirromancy.

Sparklehorse knows where he has to go.

Your blood is my blood—telling it’s still cirromancy.

Truth and lies and prophecy, and some we guess, and some we know …

Circe, can I look now? Can I look now?

—Talis Kimberley, “Cirromancy”

Mystery

TIMELINE: AUGUST 23, 2018.

Eventually, Lilianne gets tired of staring at the guest-room ceiling. Her shoulder doesn’t even ache anymore, she’s not hungry, and she feels, impossibly, like she had a full night’s sleep, like she could challenge the universe to an arm-wrestling contest and stand a chance of actually winning. She sits up, giving the room around her a critical look.

This place can’t exist. The physical space doesn’t support it, and the light coming through the windows is oddly wrong, like it’s being folded at right angles before it’s allowed to flow into the room, compact and thick as honey. But whether it exists or not, it’s a pretty nice room, and definitely beats the gloomy confines of the apartment she shares—shared—with David and the others.

Did he really mean it when he said one of them would be moving out by the end of the month? She doesn’t want to leave. She’s barely gotten unpacked, and the thought of moving again is exhausting. It shouldn’t be, not when the alternative is incarnates and etiäinen and all the horrors she’s seen since last night. She’s not giving up on alchemy, but surely there’s a way she can practice under more-controlled conditions? The safety of her room has never tried to rip her arm off, and self-transmutation doesn’t require access to human flesh that belongs to someone else. She can find a way to do this. To study, to learn, and to know, all without taking the kind of risks she now understands she doesn’t want to take.

This is where many of the self-taught alchemists she’s known would choose to abandon their studies, retreating at the first sign of a trial, and if she’s being honest, she wouldn’t mind doing that herself. But that option has never been open to her, not really. Her parents being what they are means that she’s been tangled with the alchemical world since she was born, unable to walk away without leaving her home and her family and everything she’s ever cared about behind. Alchemy, for her, has only ever been a single part of the whole.

She just wants to fit properly within the world she was born into. She wants to be a part of something greater than herself. Is it really so unreasonable for her to wish for more than she’s been given, especially when everyone around her has been given that “more” without even looking for it?

Lilianne crosses to the dresser Smita indicated, opening the top drawer and beginning to dig gently through its contents. They’re a remarkable mixture of styles and sizes, everything from striped shirts intended for pre-teens to ruffled lace blouses that wouldn’t look out of place at a retirement home. There’s underwear as well, equally diverse in style and size. After some searching, she comes up with a butter-soft sweatshirt in a watered-wine shade of burgundy, and stretch jeans that manage to flatter her narrow hips while still extending the full length of her legs.

It’s not the most fashion-forward thing she’s ever managed to put together, but for cast-offs found in someone else’s spare bedroom, she thinks it’s pretty good. There’s a brush on the dresser, and she uses it to perform quick repairs on her hair.

“My kingdom for an eyeliner,” she mutters, studying her reflection in the mirror over the dresser. There are still dark smudges around her eyes, but they’re less decorative than they are signs that she needs to go home and take a proper shower. She scrubs idly at one of them with the heel of her hand, then puts the brush down and turns toward the door. She half-expects it to be locked, keeping her prisoner inside this room, and is pleasantly surprised when the knob turns under her hand and the door swings easily inward, revealing a long, sun-soaked hallway.