Chapter Text
Rose is the first to admit that her predicament is, at best, unoriginal. To be an eccentric orphan in possession of a complicated past and a sizeable fortune is one thing. To spend one’s maternal wealth on an empty house, and resign oneself to a life of boredom, rain and shabby-chic upholstery is quite another. The cliche is as well-worn as the hinges of Rose’s antique drinks cabinet, and twice as tedious. Under different circumstances, she might consider it ironic. As things stand, whether sincere or not, the fact remains that here she is, in Cornwall, with boarded-up knick-knack shops on every side, and the grey Atlantic beating ceaselessly against the harbour wall.
It has been half a decade since her mother’s death. She has spent the intervening years with a number of distant Lalonde relatives, pleasant people who attributed her silence to grief and then to adolescence. Only one of these guardians, an uncle in Manhattan, ever saw Rose raised to any kind of passion. He had found a basket of sewing materials in a forgotten attic, and remembering that his niece had once entertained a fondness for needlework, he brought them down as a surprise gift. Rose thanked him and sat quietly unpacking the skeins and swatches. He stood in the doorway, almost touched by the domesticity of the scene. Then Rose looked up, with a look of crushing, chilling yearning, like a scarred veteran coming upon a childhood holiday snap, unable to comprehend the ocean of time which divided her from something long-since gone. Her skin flushed a deep steel-grey, the colour of asphalt washed with rain. All warmth seemed to have drained from the room, and he found himself unable or unwilling to move. Rose was a bubble of smoke in the shape of a girl, with darker tendrils moving behind her and under the surface of her skin. The worst part was that this happened silently, silently, and she turned to him as though nothing was wrong. Her face was fringed with feelers which bobbed like floating kelp. He felt suddenly very glad that her eyes and mouth were closed, but then she spoke sounds which were never meant for human tongues, and he bolted from the room. When he returned, with a Bible held in one unsteady hand and a broom in the other, Rose was both back to normal and perfectly composed. Still, he could not shake off the last image imprinted on his memory: ten slender slate-grey fingers, clasped in desperation around a ball of plain white yarn.
Now Rose is a free woman, with a house to herself in a faded British seaside resort, and nobody to see her when the throes become irresistible. That is, if she ever were to allow herself such lapses of self-indulgence, which she does not. Rose’s new house has the skin of an aged fisherman’s cottage, but the interior is all stripped pine, frosted glass, polished chrome, and paint shades which the catalogue calls “Clouded Magnolia” or “Pebble Mist”. There is a vast white refrigerator in the kitchen, whose pale angular bulk reminds Rose a little of the alchemiter every time she sees it. There is nothing inside but olives and white wine, on the grounds that if she is doomed to become her mother, she may as well accept the diagnosis with grace and dignity, barring the opportunity for euthanasia. Sometimes she considers climbing inside the fridge, curling up safely and closing the door, but the idea of being found weeks later as a crunchy icicle is mildly off-putting.
And so she spends her days in the salon, watching endless undistinguished panel-shows on TV. She doesn’t understand most of the jokes. This is what it must have been like for the various grief-counsellors and therapists she was compelled to visit.
“Rose, tell me about your mother,” they say.
“For an alcoholic, she was an adequate parent,” Rose says, “We had unfinished business. It’s difficult. Will that do?”
If they make the effort to pry any further, Rose tells them something resembling the truth (“My friends and I were the only survivors of the apocalypse. We brought you all back from the inky void of nothingness because we didn’t know how to live in any other world, and now we don’t know how to live in this one either”). Rose is quite aware of how melodramatically self-serving this sounds, and she hopes it will convince the counsellor that she is simply delusional. Most of the time, it works. She still hasn’t heard the real question, not from anyone.
“And who are you really waiting for, Miss Lalonde?”
If she could speak the answer, through the black sea-salt thorns that would sprout from her lips, it would be a four-letter word.
The days grow shorter and the sea grows rougher. The beaches of the peninsula, pebbly and exposed on a good day, now look positively desolate. Rose puts on her best brooding attire, fastening her coat with one of Mom’s pearl pins, and goes down to the promenade. On a summer day, when the sun burns upon the water like Cleopatra in her party dress, the place might bear some resemblance to the Land of Light and Rain. As it is, the Land of Gloom and Barnacles seems more appropriate. Back when they were still speaking on more than a monthly basis, John had taken to devising silly names for the places where she lived. Land of Attics and Cousins. Land of Flatscreens and Wax Fruit. Congratulations Rose! You have attained the God Tier as the Master of Moping!
John is at college now, majoring in architecture. Just in case, he says. In what case, Rose doesn’t ask. It keeps him busy, at least. If they are all destined to become their parents, she can imagine worse things for John than a peaceable suburban life, children, hats and baking. Jade considered going to college (in order to become a marine biologist, of all things) but she vanished a year ago, and Rose has no idea what became of her. It is a surprise, then, to see her standing at the end of the pier.
Rose considers it one of life’s more peculiar facts that Jade Harley never changes. On the surface, this is a ridiculous claim: of course she is taller than she was in 2009, and her hair is longer and wilder, and she has taken to wearing large home-made earrings. All this seems merely to accentuate what was always already there, which is that she still speaks with the exuberant volume of a girl most accustomed to communicating with her dog, and that she is the nearest thing to a living creature that Rose has seen in a long while.
“Good morning,” says Rose, aiming for quiet dignity but ending up somewhere around stilted inadequacy.
“Hi Rose!” says Jade, and throws her arms round her. Jade is absurdly tall and strong from working in the sun, and dresses like a blind, middle-aged zookeeper, but she still smells of something brightly-coloured and floral, as though she wears the scent from teen magazine samples. “What are you doing in England?”
Rose shrugs. “The Cornish coastline has its sandy, limpet-encrusted claws thoroughly embedded in my side. I am powerless to escape. The fact that any one of my erstwhile relatives would have to brave a long-haul flight and the tender ministrations of the TSA in order to reach me is merely an additional lure.”
Back up at the house, Jade is unable to stay still, shifting from side to side before getting up and wandering around, poking at the cabinets.
“I suppose you’ve been wondering where I’ve been,” she says, peering upside-down into Rose’s fish-tank, “I’m sorry if you were all worried! There aren’t any fish in here.”
“It’s for the ambience,” says Rose, “And I’m sure you can take care of yourself.”
“Thank you!” says Jade, “That’s exactly what I said to John.”
“Ah, you’ve been doing the rounds? May I ask what you’re up to?”
“The thing is, I’m still not sure if I should tell you,” says Jade, with a delightful attempt at an enigmatic eyebrow-wiggle.
“Well, you know my appreciation for shadowy mystic bullshit has only increased over the years,” she says, “But I don’t think you’re going to be able to top disappearing for a year. Perhaps if you pulled John Egbert out of a hat.”
“It’s not like that, silly,” says Jade, “I just don’t want to involve you in more worry! I know you have a hard time.”
“I am truly a sad, deprived creature,” says Rose, pouring herself another glass of wine, “However, while much of my time is spent navigating the complex and glittering social world of St-Crispin-on-the-Rocks, I am sure I can spare some of my precious time to listen to your problem.”
“Well, I didn’t understand most of that, but okay. It’s about dreams.”
“My goodness. I could never have predicted this. My amazement simply does not stop from getting larger.”
“And I could never have guessed you were going to be sarcastic about it! It’s nothing like that, you know I haven’t had dreams like that since, you know, ages ago.”
“That was a very charming euphemism you did there,” says Rose, “But please, tell me all about your dreams. That is, after all, what I’m here for.”
“I’m having the same dream as John,” she says, “Almost every night now, and it’s not a normal dream, it feels vivid, like you’re really there.”
Rose sits very still.
“Rose? Do you know what I’m talking about?” says Jade. Her eyes are wide behind her glasses, green and innocent as empty wine-bottles.
“Yes,” she says, “I know. You’ve been dreaming about Feferi.”
Rose can’t imagine years to come in which she isn’t reminded, like this, like a swift kick to the stomach, of the things they didn’t manage to save. The outrageous cruelty of the game has its way of rippling into the future, and to her mind it is compounded by the sheer gasping unfairness of it all. If she has to have dreams like this, the ones which leave her shaking and weeping into her bedclothes, her skin flashing dark and pale like a time-lapse record of the sky, if she has to see one of their lost friends clearer and brighter than anything in the real world, then it would have been a kindness on the part of the universe if it could have been Dave. It would have hurt more. She wouldn’t have minded.
She makes an excuse and busies herself with the glasses, rinsing and flipping them and leaving them in the sink, spattered with soap-bubbles. Under the water, her hands are dark, haloed by tentacles which writhe and squirm happily in the water. In the other room, she can hear Jade fiddling with her designer houseplants (all succulents, not much in need of care). She waits, breathes deeply, and lets the purple-bruise hue ebb back up her arms and into nothingness.
When she returns, Jade is reading a coffee-table book about zen-gardening.
“A classic of world literature,” says Rose.
“I think the words in this thing were made in a factory,” says Jade, “Like that time I tried to alchemise a book.”
“Ah, yes, Harry Potter and the Conksuck Boots. As I recall it was little more than 300 pages of poorly-punctuated wizard shoes.”
“I wish I still had that,” says Jade, “I think it was kind of cool!”
“Distressingly, my efforts to produce a new Lovecraft opus were rather more successful.”
“Rose, are we going to talk about Feferi or not?”
“Can I ask you what part of this whole set-up gives you the impression that I am a person who much enjoys discussing their private inner life?” says Rose, with an unemotional little snap. She wonders when she got so irritable. Poor Jade.
“You don’t enjoy anything!” says Jade, “You don’t even bother pretending any more! But I’m worried about you and John. I’m really worried about these dreams. I think it might be Horrorterror business.”
“We live in the real world now, Jade. Dreams don’t mean anything, magic isn’t real, childish things are firmly put away, the shoggoths are back in their boxes, et cetera.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” says Jade, with her hands on her hips and her teeth bared, “Something bad might really be happening, and you’re just going to give up? You’ve got this huge grudge against the world for no reason! You never talk to me or John! Do you think that’s what Dave would have-“
“You can go ahead and finish that sentence,” says Rose, “I’m sure it’s nothing I’ve thought about on a frequent basis, or anything.”
“He died for us!” she says, “He died for you.”
“If that were the case I could be angry with him,” says Rose, “Nobody wants to be left behind. But you know that isn’t what happened.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Rose,” says Jade, “One day you’ll realise that. But I can’t talk to you like this. I’m going out.”
Rose says nothing, and Jade leaves, in a swirl of canvas coat, indignation and cheap perfume. As the door shuts behind her, Rose gets to her feet, feeling the cold creep of the shadow across her face and limbs. For the first time in years, she lets it engulf her entirely, relishing the obliterating rush of power through her bones and veins. The Thorns of Oglogoth are still in a box in her wardrobe, little more than dead wood, but the electric crackle of magic that burns in Rose’s nose and mouth is absolutely real. She floats a few inches above the coffee table, her lower tentacles flickering across the polished wood, tasting the chemical surface and shifting restlessly on. Strange tides run through her, drawing her out of the house, and letting her drift up the road, her toes dangling above the withered sea-grass verge. In this state she can feel everything, every blade of grass and every bramble in the hedgerow, glowing with vivid, tangible brilliance. As she passes she holds out her hands, letting the thorns graze her palms, then crushes the life from them with a simple gesture. The blackberry bush in winter looks much the same alive as dead. It’s petty, and stupid, and Rose wonders whether her oath to break and beat the game wasn’t fulfilled long ago, but the plant is already dead, and will never swell with fruit again.
Jade finds her two hours later on the headland, lying face-down in a patch of heather, soaked with rain.
“Oh, here we go,” is all she says.
“Ir avn’ghachtls.”
“I should have known it was something like this!” says Jade, apparently not at all concerned that her best friend has sprouted a thousand slim cnidarian feelers, which wander in the wind like stems of heather.
“Nh'fsh ia rl'yneth, psyriech. Bluh.”
“I know. Come on! Let’s get you home.”