Pale: 9.8 - Avery
Author: Wildbow

Shaking Hands – 9.8 | Pale

Avery made a face as she realized the library was air conditioned.  It wasn’t that it wasn’t great, but she wasn’t here to hang out or stay, and she knew she’d feel the heat more now that she’d had a bit of the refreshing cold air.  Snowdrop followed her in.

She took a detour, past a children’s area with about twenty kids sitting, reading, and spinning the rotating mini-bookshelf, while two old women looked on and knitted.  She gave the two elderly women a wide berth as well.  Because of perfume, as much as the unnerving giggling and the clacking of knitting needles.  A librarian tried to get the kids to stop, but as she took two by the arm, another kid circled around and started spinning the rack as well.

“Snow?” Avery murmured.

Snowdrop turned to face Avery.  Her t-shirt was black and read ‘Not a Morning Person, Not an Evening Person, I’m an Up-All-Night Person’ with a rather ghoulish opossum head sticking its nose up from the corner.  “Eh?”

“Help me deal with the kids?”

“I could be an older role model for them, I’m a good few years older.”

“Can you go opossum?  And get inside my bag and be cute?”

“I’m never cute.  Impossible.  Nah.”

The twenty-something librarian went to deal with the third kid, but while they did, the first two kids went back to the free-spinning bookshelf.

The grandmothers sat, knit, and giggled.  That put Avery off more than anything.  Some of the kids had to be theirs.

People who didn’t listen, people who did their own thing…

The way she’d grabbed at Melissa and stolen her phone, she’d been channeling a bit of Lucy, more than Lucy had probably been making up for Avery not being at the interrogation.  She was frustrated.  Frustrated at America and Bristow…

Snowdrop cooperated, as they walked around behind a bookshelf where nobody could see, taking hold of Avery’s wrist, then becoming an opossum, shirt billowing out as the rest of her disappeared, then the collar of the shirt dropped and the fabric that should have passed through the collar disappeared.  It became a loop, twisting into nothing.  Meanwhile, Snowdrop crawled down Avery’s hand and into the bag.

Avery ran fingernails through Snowdrop’s fur in passing.

“Thanks, Snowdrop,” she said, scratching behind the right ear.

The little opossum winked at her.

Avery carried her bag over to the children’s area, which was open instead of being separated by any walls, marked out only by the colorful carpet and some short bookshelves topped with books on display.

The librarian was about Avery’s height, but adult, and somewhat plain, with dense freckles and straight, dirty-blonde hair.  She wore an apron for some reason, with ‘Kennet Public Library’ on the chest, written over a few curved lines representing an open book.

“Ugh!  God!  Where are your parents?  This isn’t a daycare, I can’t-”

“You three,” Avery said.

Two of the kids froze.  The other continued to push on the rotating bookshelf, making it spin with enough force that a book fell to the colorful carpet.

“Want to see something cool?” she asked.  “Come on outside.”

The kids hesitated.  They were seven or eight.  Two of them exchanged glances.  The third gave the shelf another spin on its rotating stand.

Avery maintained eye contact, holding up her bag, and backed through the door.

The warm air hit cold, air-conditioned sweat on her arms and neck.  Awful.

She held up the bag, opening the front, and Snowdrop stuck her nose out.  The kids immediately paid more attention, approaching the door.  She beckoned.

They opened the door to keep watching her, and she put the bag down.  “You can say hi to Snowdrop if you agree to be gentle.”

“I remember the Love Bugs episode where we were warned not to be lured places with strangers with puppies or whatever.”

“Not a puppy, and I want you to leave the librarian alone while she helps me.”

“What is it?” the sole girl asked.

The kids ventured outside.  A few other curious kids also came out.  One of the librarian tormentors spoke up, “We’re supposed to stay in the library until our moms are done shopping.”

“Why don’t you give the librarian a break?” Avery asked.

“It’s funny though,” one of the two boys said.

“Is it?” Avery asked.

“Want to say hi?” she asked.  “Be nicer to Snowdrop than you were to the librarian, okay?”

“Guard my bag, Snowdrop.  You have my permission to bite the crap out of them if they get mean.”

“He doesn’t bite, does he?” the girl asked.

“Does he have rabies?”

“She, no rabies, and no bites if you’re nice!” Avery warned, pointing, leaving the kids with the bag and Snowdrop.  “Thanks Snowdrop!”

Avery stepped back into the library, which was a larger building tacked on at the end of a small strip mall featuring some basic services, like a glasses store, a cafe, and a thrift store, the upper floors brick, the lower floor all glass, with the receptionist’s desk featuring a view of a dismal and overlarge parking lot.

The interior was blissfully quiet, now.  There was only the eerie insect-like clack of knitting needles, smaller kids reading, slightly older kids browsing graphic novels and manga, and some guys who looked pretty hard-up, sitting in cubicles so they could use the computers there.

“Are those little shitbags gone?” the librarian asked, quiet, as Avery approached the desk.  Then, quieter, she said, “Don’t tell anyone I called them that.”

“It’s cool.  They’re a few steps outside.  I distracted them.”

“Was that an animal?”

“Opossum.  Sorry, she’s clean and pretty well behaved.”

“Against the rules to bring an animal into the library, but I really don’t care.  You could let ten wild animals run around, and so long as they didn’t mess with the books or anything, I could deal, so long as I didn’t have to handle the kids.”

“I would have murdered one of them if I thought I could get away with it.  Kccht, pen to the neck, maybe while one of them goes around back to the washroom by the break room.  Drag one of them out to the dumpster behind the movie theater.  The dumpster always smells, I think there’s a fifty-fifty chance nobody would smell the body, even in weather like this.”

“It’s been two or three times a week, all summer, they show up.  Sometimes there’s five of them.”

Avery picked up books and shelved them by the numbers on the stickers.  “I hope I bought you a bit of a break.”

“They’ll be back, or other kids like them will show up, and I’ll contemplate murder again.  This is my life now, until the school year starts.”

“Then it’s better?”

“Maybe worse.  The grade school brings thirty to sixty kids at a time, twice a day, most weeks.  Crying, puking, wetting their pants… don’t become a librarian.  My boyfriend was thinking about it but you need a crazy education, and you get… this.”

“Okay, that’s not really in the cards, I don’t think, but I have one friend who I might pass that on to.  I’m not sure I’m shelving these right.  Are they-”

“It’s fine.  They’re for kids and kids’ll mess up the order anyway.  I’m more concerned about stuff getting dropped between the shelves and the wall or whatever.”

“Okay.  Hey, I wanted to ask, can I raid the twenty-five cent bin by the printer?”

“The printer bin, uh, has a bunch of failed print-outs?  So people can use the side without stuff on it?”

“Do I need to pay the twenty-five cents per page, or-”

“Take ’em.  Just don’t make a mess or, you know, kccht,” the librarian said, pulling a pen out of the pocket of her apron.

Avery straightened, saluted while walking backwards out of the kids area.

“Thanks,” the librarian said.

Why did I wink?  That was lame, Avery thought, as she walked to the corner.  Where had that come from?  Was it because Snowdrop had winked?  Had the wink infected her?  The librarian was seven years older and had a boyfriend, what was she doing?  Why?

Her face and ears were warm as she dug through the bin.  Some stuff from Canada Day, a few weeks ago.  Some of that could count as invitations.  Come visit us at Bowdler.  She took a wad of those.

Some pages for a birthday party last year.  Hi ______!  You’re invited to Fanny’s 11th birthday party.  No gifts necessary, bring only your smile!  They’d printed off-center.

Fanny probably wasn’t smiling with a name like that.

Going page-by-page was rough on her thumb.  She flicked through.  Lots more off-center.  Darts competition.  She kept those.  Fantasy hockey league.  She kept those.

She had a stack of about thirty pages when she was done.

One of the old women stood at the door, fussing from a distance as the kids played with Snowdrop.  Avery hesitated.

Her Sight bloomed as she opened her second eyelid, or her third eye, or whatever it was.  Mist flooded the space, and she could see the handprints around the bookshelf, stark in the fog.  She could see the attention paid to certain shelves and racks, the countless connections that frayed, or that had been thin to begin with.

Probably, she guessed, she could see the books that were more interesting, just by looking at which ones had the most, strongest connections.

She had hesitated to step outside because of the woman stooped over at the doorway, which was stupid.  But the woman had something going on.  Avery saw a silhouette streaked with handprints, translucent and foggy where those handprints didn’t exist, connections spilling out from the cracks as film reels or belts with sections cut out to suggest scenes.  Footprints made her recent travels across the library obvious – from front door to table to bathroom to kids section to table.  Residual crimson touched some handprints and connections.

But there were a lot of small pawprints with way more traces of crimson on them near her hands, chest, stomach, and lap.

An Other?  No.  Avery didn’t get that vibe.

Aware?  It didn’t seem anywhere near as extreme as Kevin, Ted, Rae, or Clementine had been.  Kevin with the blood weeping from his eye, bloody connections groping out.  Ted caked in so many handprints and carrying so many connections he barely looked human, Rae with her wall of handprints around her, Clementine with handprints moving, groping in the dark around her.

This wasn’t as animated, but there was something, still.

“Get what you needed?” the librarian asked.

Avery blinked, releasing the Sight, and held up the pages.  “Thanks.”

“It eventually hits the recycling bin anyway.”

Avery wished the woman wouldn’t move without her having to address her, decided she was being stupid, and just as she got up the nerve to say ‘excuse me’, the librarian spoke up, “Ma’am?  Please don’t hold the door open.”

The woman stepped outside, but stood with her back to the door that opened outward, so Avery couldn’t even open the door without hitting her.

The librarian knocked on the window, hard, but the woman didn’t move or react.  Hard of hearing or intentionally ignoring the librarian.

“Don’t block the door either,” the librarian said.  Then to Avery, she said, “Sorry.”

Avery shrugged.  She glanced around, looked at the bulletin board, and saw a bin of badges and stickers scattered inside a box lid.  The rim had writing: ‘take 1, leave whatever you think it’s worth‘, with an arrow pointing to a can with a slot in it.  Money went to charities.

To kill time, she picked through it.

“Some other kids raided that a bit ago.  Didn’t pay, either,” the librarian remarked.

The stuff was random and clearly homemade, with iffy stitching on the badges where thread had maybe run out at the end.  The ones that hadn’t been taken were probably the ones with worse quality.  A Canadian flag with an iffy maple leaf, a lopsided popsicle, a beaver, a mountain.

A badge of a flag, with two bands of orange, a band of white, and two bands of pink, densely and imperfectly hand-stitched.  The lesbian pride flag.  There was a trans flag in the lid too.

“Random guy from high school.”

Someone out there had reached out, trying to put something good out into the world, like flares shot into darkness.  And it caught Avery off guard because she hadn’t realized how much she’d needed a flare.

Melissa, and the scary stuff, and the threats, the Others being against them, and the BHI stuff…

…The mundane stuff.  The fact she hadn’t really engaged with Grumble lately.  Her parents.  That she really wanted to hang with people just to talk with them and hang out with them, without so much being on the line.

Lucy had home, Avery knew.  And that overall situation still wasn’t great and the dynamic outside of that haven was different but Lucy’s home was bright and good and Avery felt like her home wasn’t like that.  She’d been accepted and that made the darkness less… dark.  But she was still hoping for those flares shot out into the gloom.  Like support from Sheridan, of all people.

If you told me that a year ago…

Avery had exchanged twenty bucks for quarters in the expectation she might have to pay for the papers.  She pulled the roll out of the pocket of her shorts and pried the lid off the can, before dropping the full amount in with a thunk.  It was all she had, and she might have given more.

On impulse, she flipped over the trans flag in the box, and took the pen from the counter, penning down a note on the firm material that backed the little blue and pink flag.  ‘♥ from Avery too’.

Maybe a non-sequitur, but maybe another little flare extended out into the darkness.

She kept the other badge, then headed for the door, pushing gently until it bumped into the old woman in the way.

“Stay cool,” the librarian called after her.

“Excuse me!” the woman said, at nearly the same time.  Avery heard the librarian snicker in the moment before the door closed.

She smelled like the Wolf, one step removed.  An old person smell, a sweat smell, bad breath, an animal smell.  Cat, not wolf.

It was doubly offensive with the heat being so different from the library interior.

“Is that thing safe?” the old woman asked.

“Depends on who’s asking,” Avery said.  Snowdrop was lying on the bag, sprawled out, and the kids were tentatively patting and scratching her.  They moved out of the way as Avery bent down.  “Good work, Snow.”

Snowdrop sneezed.  Avery lifted the opossum to her shoulder, then lifted her bag to the other shoulder.  The strap of her bag had a secondary, adjustable strap, and she was able to nestlet the flag badge between it and where it anchored to her bag with a snug fit.  She’d try her hand at getting it more firmly attached to something later.

She slipped the various invitations and papers for the Promenade Path ritual into her bag.

“Do me a favor, give me your best take on the woman?” Avery murmured to Snow.

She headed back the way they’d come, away from the library, and passed the woman, who leaned back with a grimace as Snowdrop sniffed in her direction.

The moment they were out of sight, Snowdrop’s unlaced shoes hit the ground.  She looked the same as before, with a threadbare denim skirt and the t-shirt that was so large that it could almost be a t-shirt dress.  The only difference was that her hair was messed up from being pet and scratched so much.

“Verdict?” Avery asked.

“She’s nothing like what Toadswallow told us about, with the Aware.  Attractive thing for goblins.”

“Got it, I think,” Avery said.  “One of those slightly Aware people that mess up goblins and things?  Like the kid who wakes up every time a goblin tries to pull something?”

“Not dangerous to something like Cherrypop or the new goblin,” Snowdrop said.  “It’s the big ones who have to watch out.”

“Cats?” Avery asked.  “Like some Aware cat lady?”

“Only a few cat smells.  Really docile ones too.”

“Yeah, okay.  I’m picturing Cherrypop breaking into her house and coming face to face with fifty especially evil murder cats.”

“She could handle it.”

“Want to let Cherry and the others know what to look out for?”

“Nah, it’ll be really funny if they bite it.  Did you get what you were after?”

“Got it,” Avery said, “yeah.”

“The kids were saying you were super boring, ugly, and uncool,” Snowdrop said.  “They never want to end up as lame as you are, carrying some mangy and uncute thing like me around.”

“Why is it only kids that react this way!?” Avery exclaimed.

“If you want an objective opinion to add to the mix, I think you’re the lamest, and I’m almost your age!  It’s not like I’m three months old.”

“Thanks, Snow, and thanks for guarding my bag,” Avery said.  She reached into her pocket for the little container of glamour, and gave Snowdrop a checkmark on the forehead.  Snowdrop grinned.  “Come on, I want to run.  Let’s go see the others.”

Snowdrop touched a paw to her nose, then pointed.

Avery glanced around to make sure the coast was clear, wrapped the black rope around her hand, and then punched out.

Skipping up through the wire fence and up thirty feet, to the upper corner of an industrial building, visible between two trees that grew close to the blocky, concrete structure.

She landed on one foot, lip of the building.  Snowdrop, turning human, ducked low to bring her center of balance closer to the building, or to grab the ledge, then stabbed out a finger.

The building was grey and forgettable, with a parking lot that was gravel, not pavement, much of the gravel moved by snow and rain, weeds growing up through it.  Graffiti decorated some hulks of machinery that had been brought outside, and one side of the building.

It was not a pretty building, even with the graffiti, but the sky had started becoming overcast as she left the library, which meant it was a little cooler than it had been, but it was also more gray out, on a gray building, with an awful lot of gray in the mountainside and Kennet as a whole.

With her Sight, it was just gray and misty.

What Snowdrop had smelled was a warren-hole, where water had settled and worn through concrete, dragging airborne trash with it.  The result was a sodden, stained hole in the concrete, the edges sloping down like the concrete was soggy cardboard, stabbing down into darkness.  They’d passed one of the sub-tunnels to this spot on their way to the Ruins, with Alpeana.

If Avery was willing to run through mud that might have razor blades in it, dark tunnels with unstable ceilings and trash sunken into the walls, and possible hazards, then diving into that hole would let her emerge at any of the other good warren holes around Kennet.  Major shortcut.  There was one downtown, where a grate had rusted to pieces and the water had stopped flowing along a ditch to the storm drains, and another near St. Augustine’s church.

“What a party,” Snowdrop said, looking around the rooftop.

“We’re rendezvousing here.”

She opened her bag, handed Snowdrop a small carton of chocolate milk that had warmed up a bit, then found the baseballs she’d taken from the supply of sports stuff in the basement.

She’d gone through four hockey sticks, which included hers from last season and the spare ones her brothers had once used and then abandoned.  Now she was plundering another supply.

She’d been into the baseball when she was a little younger, but when she’d been less than great at connecting to the ball with the bat, she’d settled on bunting and trusting her legs.  If she could get on first, she could almost always steal her way to third, even with the full-sized baseball diamond and the rule about the ball having to cross home before she could start.  Then the person running their local league had outright ruled against stealing bases.

In retrospect, she kind of understood the idea behind the rule, but it had felt so stupid at the time, she’d been one of only two players good enough to steal when the catcher basically had to have the ball already before she could start running, and it had felt targeted.  It had taken all the joy out of the game for her.  There had been other asinine rule changes like calling it a balk when a pitcher waved to his family in the stands, and that becoming a rule about pitchers not being allowed to raise their hands above their shoulders unless they were throwing.  That had changed pretty fast after parents had complained.  There had also been a rule about batters not being allowed to take the base they’d successfully run to if the bat flipped too many times after being dropped post- hit, because kids were ‘being unsportsmanlike’ by doing exaggerated bat flips after a good hit.  Or after any hit, for some, because they’d been kids.  That rule had changed too.

Her parents had never been into sports, though they’d come to her games.  Grumble had been into it, but his health had taken the big downturn not long after the season started.  Nobody had argued on her behalf about the stealing being overruled.  Then she’d sprained her ankle, had to miss a game, and had stopped going entirely.

She set out the balls and then found the twine at the bottom of her bag.  Bought with her own money so it would be hers.  Snowdrop began to toy with a ball.

Then she pulled the friendship bracelet off her wrist.  It was orange, lime green, and white bands, shaped like chevrons, ‘v’s, greater-than, or less-than symbols depending on the angle by which it was viewed.  Made by Olivia.

The run had partially been to work up a sweat.  She’d been sweating already, but she wanted this to be earned sweat.

She was pretty grossed out by the amount of sweat she was able to wipe off herself with her hand.  She collected it on her palm and then squeezed her fist to extrude a drop, daubing it onto the friendship bracelet, on the middle.  She ran the twine through her hand to absorb the rest.

She’d used to travel all the way to Tripoli, an even smaller town, just to hang with Olivia.  then Olivia would come over and they’d make forts incorporating the grody couch in the basement and eat too much junk food while making up and playing games, or they’d ride their bikes around Kennet, go for swims, and skate at the Arena.

The trifecta of visceral Self meant blood, sweat, and tears.  Hair was too fragile, and something like this hit harder.  She cleaned a pin, pricked her fingertip, and used pressure from her thumb to squeeze out a drop, onto an orange band on the woven bracelet.  Blood was ugh.  She put trace amounts along the twine.

She had blood under her fingernail, near where she’d pricked it.  When she’d talked to Ms. Hardy the first time, that teary-eyed release of everything, all together, she’d clenched her hands so firmly it had hurt, nails biting into the base of her palms.  She’d had no flares then, no Olivia, no Lucy or Verona, no Snowdrop.  Just one really cool, sweet, pretty teacher who had reached out and then listened.

Snowdrop circled around and then hugged her from behind, looking over her shoulder.  Avery could feel the heat radiating off of the kid.

“Might be too hot for hugs, Snow,” Avery said.  “As much as I appreciate it.  Besides, I need to cry for the last ingredient, and that’s harder when you’re being sweet.”

“I can’t tell you I’m only doing this for more snacks then, can I?”

“I don’t think I have any.  But later, if you don’t go to hang out with your goblin friends later.”

“I’m doing this for the snacks, not because you look down, you know.”

Snowdrop moved, sitting with her back to the lip at the edge of the building, tossing a ball up and catching it.  The carton of milk balanced precariously on her knee.

She thought again of Olivia, and that smarted.  It was her childhood, kind of.  The happiest moments of being a kid had mostly come from just hanging out with this really cool, hyper-competitive girl.  There had been times that Olivia had been the only other person who cared about the team, for hockey, for baseball, for soccer.

She reminded herself of Ms. Hardy, and that calm, steady voice talking about future plans, about meeting people, about friends… Avery had been sinking into loneliness, and the thing about sinking was that it meant that the view to the horizon got more and more obstructed.  Ms. Hardy had lifted her up and reminded her about the horizons.  That there was a future.  She’d talked about backpacking in foreign countries and bike trips and parties with artists in Montreal.

Grumble was all of those things, and he was related to her.  He’d traveled a lot as a kid and had come to Canada and set the family up here, but his true roots were overseas.  He loved sports and she had early memories of sitting on his knee and watching a baseball game, understanding almost none of what her Grumble told her about the contest between pitcher and catcher and loving it all anyway.  She’d liked hockey more because it was easier to understand.

The others had drifted away.  Olivia because she wanted to win more games.  Ms. Hardy because her future depended on keeping a certain distance from her students.

Grumble had been a source of light and love and now he was the biggest source of the gloom, so to speak, at Avery’s house.  And that sucked.

It really, really sucked.

She scraped at the corner of her eye with a thumbnail and collected the moisture there.  She pressed her thumb into the friendship bracelet, hard, and then closed her fist around it, tight as she could, until she might have drawn more blood if the fabric hadn’t been in the way.

She used the Sight to look at her hand, trembling with the exertion.  “I’m not so good at the poetry of this stuff, but I’m a tiny bit Lost and I’m a Finder, I’m an arriver and I’m a departer, and I need you to be my barometer.  Change as I do, in a way that makes those changes clearer.  How’s that?”

She opened her hand and it was misty under the Sight, colors different; emerald, amber, alabaster.  The colors were richer, almost crystalline in how the light brought out the shades as it passed through, how it was darker where the light didn’t quite pass.

She closed her eyes, turned off the Sight, and opened her eyes again.

The colors remained, different, the mist clinging, settling.

She collected more moisture from her eyes before her happiness over that fact dried them up too much.  She treated the twine.  It, too, took on a bit of depth.

It’s like wrapping a ball in a big chunk of ‘Avery’ and smacking people with it.

The idea was satisfying.  She wished it worked on some real people too.

This was all preparation for the Path she was supposed to help run.  The finder’s knot on the ball, to bring Lost things down to Earth, this barometer bracelet, and she still had to do the runes or arrangements of antler that would let her change and share how she saw the Path.

She fished in her bag for the piece of antler that had broken off her mask.  Snowdrop held out a hand, and Avery gave it over.

Snowdrop reached up, over Avery’s head, and then brought her hand down, pointing.

“I can’t see the top of my head.”

“Nope,” Snowdrop said, deadpan.  “No such thing as phones or mirrors.”

“I don’t have a mirror, and we’ll see about the phone.”  Avery said.  She turned her phone on and set it to camera, holding it at arm’s length.

The piece of antler was suspended in the air, as if connected to her head.

“Looks dumb,” Snowdrop said.

“I wouldn’t have had to put holes in my hat to stick the antlers through if I’d known it worked like this.”

Snowdrop lunged.  Avery jolted, because it sure seemed like Snow was about to push her off of her seat on the rooftop’s edge.  Instead, Snowdrop caught the bit of antler.

“What was that?  It stopped working?”

Some people were on the street, glancing Avery’s way.

“Doesn’t work if normal civilians see.  That’s… not the most useless feature.  Means I won’t get tripped up with the black rope.”

“It’ll be hard to find if you drop it,” Snowdrop said.

“Because it’s tied to me?  Yeah.  Let’s see about tying up these baseballs.”

She experimented with wrapping it.  She’d done some test knots before, and it hadn’t worked great.

The others were taking a while, so she set about working out the process.  What worked, what didn’t.  Half an hour passed and she was really glad it wasn’t passing in direct sunlight.

Finally, she got the first ball done.  One long length of twine, arranged into the necessary knots, a plus sign inside of a circle on both sides of the ball.  The excess twine trailed behind it.  And that was kind of cool, if she thought about swinging the ball around like a flail, holding the twine, but she was pretty sure it’d pull the knots out of shape.  This wasn’t perfect but she could tug on the twine here and there to adjust and get the right shapes.  She tossed it into the air and caught it, and it felt… more.

“Smack me with it,” Snowdrop said, eyeing the ball.

“I’ll try not to.  Let me trim this excess bit.  I need the knife from my bag,” she told Snowdrop, her hand full of the baseball and the twine she was holding into position.

The knife was one of the items from the camp of invading Others, almost lost, found by her and Snowdrop.  Snowdrop held it in both hands, however unnecessary, and carefully cut where Avery indicated.

The knife passed through with only enough resistance to tug at the twine.

“Now… how do you work?” Avery murmured.

“Works really well from what I can see,” Snowdrop said.

“It’s… probably elemental, right?  The Transient Others come and go, they have little choice except to raid, they show up in specific weather.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” Snowdrop said, shaking her head.

“Okay, well, can you hold the ball and twine?”

Avery got to her feet, a phantom pain at her shoulder reminding her of the gouge America had given her, her stomach still a bit raw from the fall against the edge of the bridge, and the rest of her a bit sore from the fight at the station.

She walked over to the collected damp around the Warren-hole, and laid the knife against the shallow water.

She could hear the others through the hole.  Making their approach.

A part of her wanted to figure it out before they arrived.  She hurried back to Snowdrop, who held the twine out for her to cut.

Better.  Not any better than an ordinary knife, but better.  Nothing else seemed new or different.  Was it just… a worse knife?

“Is it because the water’s murky?”

She dried the knife off on her shirt, fished in her bag for a bottle of water, and then hesitated before drenching the knife.

They’d come in the rain.

Instead of drenching it, she poured water into her cupped hand and sprinkled it.

That did it.  The twine cut.

She cut off another bit of twine, and did the preliminary work on the second of the seven balls she’d brought with.

“Aaaaa!” Snowdrop exclaimed, thrusting her arms into the air.  Cherrypop’s cry was a second later, hampered by her climb up through the hole.  She pumped her hands into the air as well.

“And you’re here, great,” Verona said.  “Sorry, that took a while.”

“Getting stuff done.”

Verona had the little goblin sitting on her shoulder.  She sat beside Avery and picked up twine and a baseball.

“Got your text.  Sorry the Melissa thing went south,” Lucy said.  “Not surprised.”

“Yeah.  We need to handle that.  Somehow,” Avery said.

“Somehow,” Lucy agreed.  “But other things come first.”

A handful of others followed.  Biscuit, Tatty, and Nat.  Tatty held papers.

“Success!” Tatty proclaimed.

Avery frowned, “Is this the point where you show me the papers you took, and it’s the wrong thing?  Like a cherished childhood drawing?”

“I’m no failure!” Tatty exclaimed.  “I know what a magic circle looks like!”

Avery took the papers, smoothing them out where Tatty had crumpled them.

The rune was a complex one.  Light rune, it had the ‘goggles’ look of the one inside Lucy’s mask, triangles stabbing outward.

“She made this work?” Verona asked.

“Yeah.  Record time,” Avery replied.

“Because I drew this as something for my mask and I couldn’t get it stable.  It bleached the paper and then fizzled out.”

“What is it?” Lucy asked.

“I wanted to make my eyes flash every time I turned on my Sight.  So I was experimenting.  And I didn’t draw this as a complete diagram, so… did she make a mistake and stumble on a way to close the circles?”

“She figured out the invading Other, I think,” Avery remarked.  “That it might be Choir related.”

“That’s dangerous,” Lucy said.  “If she’s stumbling onto answers or figuring out Other stuff and Practice stuff then she’s going to come face to face with something ugly, sooner or later.”

“Ugly like his butt!” Cherrypop cried out, pointing at the one-eyed goblin.

“Cream is looken out for the girl, tracken her,” Nat growled.  “Has Ram with.”

“Thank you,” Avery said.  She’d asked the goblins to keep an eye on Melissa, just in case.  “I don’t like her much right now, but I don’t want anything bad to happen to her either.”

“Given our history with Aware, we should be careful about what they could stumble onto or tear down,” Lucy said.

“I saw another Aware at the library.  The smaller goblins should watch out.  Snowdrop thinks she’s a cat lady.”

“And what’s wrong with that?” Verona said.  “Aside from being Tashlit’s worst nightmare?”

Snowdrop turned human just in time for the little one-eyed goblin to take a running tackle at her.  Even with her as an opossum it probably wouldn’t have done much.  He bounced off her leg.  “I think the cats are real nice.”

“We think it’s some kind of protection against Other stuff, maybe,” Avery said.  “I don’t thinks she’s dangerous or that she’ll tear anything down, but if a smaller goblin happens to go near her house, it might be dangerous.  And I think… not just her, but other stuff at the library, it was worse than it should be, because of the Carmine Blood everywhere.  Kids making trouble, a librarian getting frustrated and entertaining some bloody fantasies.”

“I wonder if it affects us,” Verona mused.

“I raged out at Matthew and Edith,” Lucy said.  “For leaving us out of the loop, being hypocrites.”

“We have stuff to do,” Verona said.

“But you brought the goblins?” Avery asked.

“To handle some stuff.  They were bringing the diagram, and I want to make a way to triangulate the signal for this thing that came into town last night,” Verona said.

“It’s sitting in a depression.  Carmine energy is flowing to it,” Lucy said.

“Let me try this,” Verona said.  “We sent goblins out to get some stuff.  Who won the scavenger hunt?”

As goblins scrambled, getting bags and pulling out junk, Avery cinched a knot tight.  Verona did the same.  Avery had had a headstart and Verona had beat her to it.  Of course.

The goblins were stealing from one another as they amassed their individual piles of stuff, pushing, shoving, trying to knock others off the roof or into the hole that led to the Warrens.

“Fill this lid with water?” Verona asked.  “And give me that one.  I’ve got white out in my bag.”

“White out?” Avery asked.

“To draw.  And a bit of plastic…”

Verona did her work, taking a lid from a thing of jam or something and filling it with water.

“A compass?” Lucy asked.

Avery leaned forward and watched as Verona drew a sword on one end of a bit of plastic.  She sprinkled water onto the knife to sharpen it, then helped Verona cut it to size, so it was balanced.

They dropped it into the water and watched as the plastic rotated, sword pointing northwest.  It wavered, drifting, but seemed pretty firm on that loose direction.

“So the way triangulation works, if we get three goblins out there to specific locations with something like this, if each sword points the way to the monster we’re trying to track…”

“We need a good way to get the location exact,” Lucy said.  “And we should send more than three goblins.  Just in case.”

In case they’re idiots or break something?

“I have a bit of a lead too,” Avery said.

“You think it’s related to the disappearances from the Hungry Choir?” Lucy asked.

“I think we should send the goblins out, we can use our own devices if we make them for ourselves, compare, see where the lines point.”

“What’s in it for us?” Tatty asked.

Snowdrop turned opossum, tackled Tatty, then closed her mouth around Tatty’s face.

The goblin with its own drooping breasts woven into a bruised purple dress around her flailed, legs kicking, arms groping.  Snowdrop pinned the arms down.

“We can give you rewards,” Verona said.

“And Snowdrop won’t chew on your face,” Avery added.

Snowdrop gently chewed Tatty’s face.  Tatty struggled.

“And you’re obligated to, by the deal you signed.  You need to help protect Kennet.  This is a way,” Lucy added.

The goblin went limp, then gave a thumbs up, face still firmly in Snowdrop’s mouth.

Snowdrop released the goblin, then turned human.  “Woo, yay, love that, goblins taste great.”

“Intent’l,” Nat growled, nearly biting her still ragged tongue with the long word.

There weren’t enough lids, but there was dental floss, and something could dangle from the floss and point one way or another.  Verona also tried writing some stuff on one of the baseballs, but the roof wasn’t conducive to having something roll around.

“Hopefully we can track this Other by the depression around it,” Lucy said.  “We shouldn’t engage, but we should narrow down a location, then call in the troops.  We have John’s dog tag.  We can also call in more goblins if we need them.  Or Guilherme, or the ghouls if it’s dark.  But we don’t want to do this if it’s dark.  That other might prefer the darkness, if it’s as black as McKay described, and if it travels at night.”

“Do you need this stuff?” Verona asked, indicating the work Avery had been doing.

“Take a ball each?” Avery suggested.  “Give it back to me if you don’t use it?  The big ritual’s the day after tomorrow.”

“Does that mean the familiar ritual is tomorrow?” Verona asked.

“I was thinking we should show up early, do the familiar ritual there, then I can do the Path,” Avery said.  “And you guys can stay on the landing platform as observers and notetakers, maybe?  Is that okay?”

“That’s terrifying but sure,” Lucy said.

“Sure, and that reminds me, little dude,” Verona said.  “I’ve got a name idea, so we should do a little naming ceremony thing for you too.”

“Screw ceremony!” Tatty raised her voice.  “Ceremony’s for fairies and losers!”

“Um,” Avery said.  “I just said I’m doing a ceremony with Snowdrop, and Snowdrop’s not a fairy or a loser.”

“That’s a thing you gotta do,” Tatty waved her off.  “But this little man doesn’t care, does he?”

“Don’t bow to the peer pressure, little dude,” Verona said.  “If you want it, speak up for yourself.”

The little one-eyed goblin looked around, clearly bewildered.

“Do you want a ceremony?” Lucy asked.

“Shush,” Lucy cut her off.

“It’s not going to be better than my name, my name’s great,” Cherrypop said.

“You shush,” Lucy warned.  “The little guy’s got the floor.”

“Doesn’ speak,” Nat growled, dropping a consonant.

“Little man,” Verona said, squatting in front of him.  She grabbed her bag and dug inside for paper, which was rolled up with a ribbon around it.  “Do you want a ceremony to get your name, or do you want the name now, no pomp or circumstance?  I’ll give you your gift either way.”

He thought about it, then groped in the direction of the gift.

“Right now?” she asked.

He groped with more enthusiasm, even desperation.

“I think he lost the plot,” Avery noted.  “He wants the gift so bad he forgot about naming.”

The little goblin perked up at that last word, looked at Verona, then pointed at himself, before fixating on the gift again.

“I thought long and hard,” Verona said, “Kneel, little dude.  This isn’t a ceremony but I’m doing this because I want to.  I’ve been imagining it.”

“With that beak-shaped mouth and one eye, I think there’s no way you’re going to be anything but a little pecker,” Verona said, “But that’s not enough, a name needs more.”

She did a little ‘knighting’ gesture, using the roll of paper, touching each shoulder.

“I thought about Goobpecker, like woodpecker, but goob is too big a word, too deep, belongs to a bigger goblin.  So… similar idea, but smaller.  Peckersnot.”

“Why not Snotpecker?” Lucy asked.

Verona sighed.  “You’re interrupting the not-ceremony.  Because that’s not as rude, and he’s a little pecker who the snot comes from, not someone who pecks snot.”

The little goblin, still kneeling, nodded.

“You’ve put entirely too much thought into this.”

“I was thinking of something cuter,” Avery said.  “Like Snoogie.  Combination of snot and loogie, but…”

She trailed off.  The goblins were all looking at her with varying levels of upset and insult.  Like she’d done something to wrong all of them.  The little goblin with the beak sneered at her, singular eyebrow drawn low over its one eye.

“Peckersnot, Peck for short,” Verona said, rescuing Avery.  “Take your gift, and know if anyone takes it from you, they’ll have to answer to me, if they are of a reasonable size and combat ability.  If you go losing it to a goblin emperor of the deepest Warrens, I am not going after it.  It and the name are yours.  So bestowed.”

He took the roll of paper, which was about as long as he was tall.

“Go triangulate,” Lucy said.  She gave orders.  “Cinema, Arena, Western rest stop, high school.  Go figure out the direction, then bring us word or tell Matthew, whichever is convenient.  Don’t forget!”

The goblins scampered to the hole in the roof.

“I’m betting at least one forgets,” Verona said.

“Ugh,’ Lucy groaned.  “But we’ve got four?  We’d only need three.”

“It’s a gamble,” Verona said.

“My group owes you a gift, for that,” Tatty said, a bit surly.  “Naming the little loser.”

“Not going to complain,” Verona said.  “Go run your errand and we’ll talk about it.”

Tatty hurried to the hole just in time to push Peck in, while he was starting to climb down.  She hopped in after.

Snowdrop stretched, looked back toward the hole, then said, “I shouldn’t go with them.  They’re competent.”

“Good, thank you, load off my mind,” Lucy said.  “Go.  Be safe.”

Snowdrop nodded, hopping into the Warren hole.

“I think she wants to hang with friends,” Avery said.  “She’s being helpful, don’t get me wrong, but she has fun with them.”

“That’s good too.  We need that, we need friends.  Even friends of friends,” Lucy said.

Avery pressed her lips together and sighed.  “Yeah.”

“In the meantime, we should make our own Carmine compasses,” Lucy said.  “It’d be nice if it was a little more resilient, in case we need another later.”

“I can make those later,” Verona said.  “We’re getting a lot of new gifts and things.  The phantom knife.”

“Gotta sprinkle water on it or hold it in the rain,” Avery said.

“Cool, great, good to know.  But we should do a sit-down, after.  Regroup,” Verona said.  “Go over the gifts, prep extra stuff, get spell cards, glamour, anything we can get from Montague giftwise…”

Lucy joined in, nodding as well, “Ave.”

“I’m worried about our families.  Verona and I passed by our houses before heading here.  We swung by your house too, as a just-in-case.  To check, soothe my anxieties.”

“I’m not anxious about that,” Verona said.  “A bit about Jas.”

“I’m anxious,” Lucy said.  “I don’t like how exposed they all are.”

“Okay,” Avery said.  “What do you need?  What do you want to do?”

“I’m thinking we should circle around, check on them, triangulate as much as we can, then let the council decide how to handle this while we do something more for protecting our homes and households.”

“Wards or something?” Avery asked.

“I can look stuff up online, for wards” Verona said.  “We can set up connection blockers against the Others, and rig alarms for ourselves for if those blockers break, so we know to go home if there’s something.”

“I feel like nine times out of ten, that’ll be us getting home in time to find the front door open and our family gone,” Lucy said.

“Some stuff to slow them down, and an alarm, sort of like how the barrier worked,” Verona said.

“Then go home,” Lucy said, though she looked skeptical.  “Check, make a note on your phones or on paper about the compass directions, maps if you have them, about direction, then retire by sundown.  If we can’t figure out the invader stuff by the time it’s dark, we should wait until tomorrow or leave it to the Others.”

Verona balanced a pen on her finger, then pinched it at the midpoint, before tying twine there.  She drew on the pen with white-out, then held it by the twine, letting the point drift this way and that.

The dangling pen settled on a general direction, pointing northwest, wobbly.  More north than west.  Verona tossed it to Avery.

They did another two, Avery helping Lucy while Verona made another on her own.

“Can I borrow glamour?  To cover more ground?” Verona asked.  “I’m out.”

“Are you becoming a glamour-aholic?” Lucy asked.

“I’m a creative-aholic, maybe, and glamour is high octane material for the inspired.”

Lucy parceled out a share to Verona, who pulled a feather from her pocket.

“Make sure we’re centered and we know where we’re going?” Avery asked.

They held out their makeshift compasses.

They were sluggish, but the ‘swords’ all settled, pointed the same direction, nearly in parallel.

“I’m now imagining us doing all this prep and this turning out to be like, John or something,” Verona said.

“Call or text when you’re settled and you’ve got the directions,” Lucy said.  “We should coordinate on protecting our homes, share if you get any ideas.”

“We’ll help protect Booker and your mom,” Avery said.

“Thanks,” Lucy said, frowning.

Avery bundled up her stuff, packed her bag, and then black-roped her way down the street.  Above her, Verona took to the air as a crow, Lucy as a cardinal.

They headed home.  Avery was first to get there, and the other two flew on.

Avery slowed, feeling the dull heat of the day radiating off the road, even as the overcast sky and the later hour let things cool off a bit.

She dangled her pen from the twine.

It found its direction in about four seconds flat, instead of… what?  What had it been before, ten?

She picked up speed, running, pulling her phone out.

Was it- it wasn’t pointing at her house, was it?

The black rope let her cover more ground.  She passed her house.  Each time she stopped, she checked.

It was faster, three sesconds.

But the direction barely moved.  Whatever the thing was, it was further north.  If it was close, then running around like this was would have made the thing stop pointing northeast and start pointing north, or east, or behind her.

She texted the others in the group chat that had been open for about four weeks straight.

It took them longer to get home, even flying.

The text came in from Lucy.  Confirmation.  The compass was more responsive.

“How long does it take to settle?  Mine takes three to four seconds,” Avery spoke the words out loud, as she typed them.

The responses came in.  Video from Verona.  She pointed the pen the opposite way.

It took two or three seconds.

Lucy’s was faster still.  It didn’t wobble at all once it settled on its position.

“But you’re further away, Lucy” Avery murmured to herself.  “It’s not about being closer, not exactly.”

She turned around, looking the way they’d come.

She texted the others her theory.  They were tracking the invading Other by the Carmine influence, the war, the combat, the bloodiness.  Something, situated toward the southeast end of town, was interfering with that signal.  Slowing down the compasses.  Possibly something Carmine related.

Which raised a question: were the furs to the northwest?  In the upper end of Kennet, and the invading creature was somewhere southeast, muddling the signal?

Or was the beast to the northwest, the signal indicating the way to it, and the furs somewhere southeast, interfering with the compasses?

She sent the message, the questions.

Avery had a gut feeling, but she waited for the others while she headed home, just in case.

The reply came in as she reached her street.  Avery glanced at the phone and then sped up, cutting through backyards for the cover provided by fences and trees.

We’ll assume the furs are partially hidden.  They’re too smart to let a trick like this point the way to the furs.  Let the goblins lead the others uptown.

While they’re distracted, we can check and see what’s this way.

Set up something quick to protect family at home, then let the goblins report in to Matthew.  We make a move as soon as the goblins tell the Others which direction the compass needles are pointing.  We can’t get distracted from this chance like we did the others.

They’d seen something weird at the Arena when out in the Ruins with Alpeana and Miss.

They’d seen something to do with the beast when Clementine, Sharon, and Daniel had come tearing through.

Both times they’d moved on, because of other pressures and concerns.

Avery set about finding a way to protect her house.