The city’s caul, he hears. Her nose moves when she says it, as if there’s a w in the word. The accent layers extra consonants into words and extra meaning onto thoughts. “I’ll give it my all,” he replies, deliberately adding a w to the last word and testing out its new flavor. It’s not quite right. Brooklyn instead of Manhattan. But still better than the Midwestern accent that currently infests his language, and which he now consciously decides to shed. It does not belong here.
“Let me call my family,” she says at last, with a sigh. “Tell them I’ll be late home. Then let’s go find a coffee shop or—”
And then they both feel it. In the other world, Brooklyn and Manhattan step back, to the degree that entities with foundations instead of feet can do so, to make room for the explosive, brilliant skylineburst of another of their number.
In the people world, they look at each other and murmur in unison, both slipping into a perfect South Indian English accent: “Oh, come on. The shape of the Earth is non-Euclidean. All that means is that you use different math! Don’t get it twisted.”
Bel stares at them. “That is the creepiest thing I’ve seen today, barring the alien-mind-control spaghetti.”
“Okay,” Brooklyn says. “Crosstown bus, then. There’s a stop a few blocks from here.”
Manny nods. He knows instinctively that they have to go, though he does not yet have enough of a sense of the city to fully understand what he’s feeling. “Where…?”
“Queens,” Brooklyn says. “Shit. That was Queens.”
Of course. Manny takes a deep breath, then turns to Bel. “I think you’d better head back home. Sorry, but… This is going to get weird. Weirder.”
Bel rocks back on his heels and lets out a whistled breath. “And as things have been entirely too weird for me already, yes, I agree. Go with God, and so on.” He steps back and waves. “Do try not to get eaten by the spaghetti people, though. Even now, you’re not the worst roommate I’ve ever had.”
Manny half smiles and nods farewell, then turns to pace Brooklyn as she heads in the direction of the crosstown bus stop. He waits until they’re a block or so away from Bel, and well away from the tendril-infested dog, before saying, “So, is there a reason we aren’t taking a cab?”
“Not sure what to tell the cabbie,” Brooklyn says. “Queens is huge; we’re not gonna just ‘feel the Force’ at random there. We’ll take the crosstown bus to where we can pick up the 7. Mass transit led me to you, so I’m hoping that’ll happen again there. Since I’m apparently doing this now. So much for going home.” She sighs.
“Okay.” It’s frustratingly nebulous. But Manny understands precisely why she’s walking fast, and why they aren’t waiting for these peculiar new instincts of theirs to provide some more specific, concrete direction. The jittering, rapidly rising sense of urgency within him is undeniable. Queens is out there becoming its person, and that person is in danger. If they’re going to do her any good at all, they need to hurry.
Except. Well. Manny’s pretty sure they’re already too late.
CHAPTER THREE
Our Lady of (Staten) Aislyn
It’s time.
Aislyn Houlihan is at the St. George Terminal of the Staten Island Ferry, trembling. She’s been here for twenty minutes, trembling. There are open seats because it’s early enough in the day, just before the start of rush hour, that the ferry won’t be anywhere near full—but she’s opted to pace in front of the glass window-wall instead of sitting. The better to tremble while she paces.
The terminal is mostly just a big, brightly lit room where a few hundred people can assemble. There’s nothing that should be scary about it. Its walls are lined with ads for movies Aislyn isn’t planning to see and makeup she probably won’t ever wear. The people standing or sitting around her are hers, her people; she feels this instinctively even though her mind resists when her gaze skates over Asian faces, or her ears pick up a language that probably isn’t Spanish but also definitely isn’t English. (Quechua, her strange newer senses whisper, but she doesn’t want to hear it.) They aren’t bothering her, though, and there are plenty of normal people around, so there’s no good reason for her to be as terrified as she is. Terror doesn’t always happen for a good reason.
There’s a garbled announcement over the PA system, and abruptly the big doors along one side of the room open up. Beyond them is an outdoor pier where the 2:30 p.m. ferry is preparing to leave. The hundred or so people cattling around the terminal begin moving toward it, and Aislyn belatedly tries to stumble after them.
From the first step it’s wrong. Everything feels wrong. Staten Islanders normally take the ferry away in the mornings, leaving the island quieter, emptier. It’s afternoon now, though. All over the city—Manhattan is always the city—thousands of SI denizens are growing antsy with the end of the workday, shifting in their trendy seats, thinking wistfully of a place where there are still forests and ranches and mostly-unspoiled beaches, and where most families live in discrete houses and own cars like normal people. What Aislyn is doing is leaving the island at a time when most want to return to it. She is swimming upriver, reversing the polarity. The wrongness of it presses against her skin. Her hair follicles tingle. She tries to keep her feet moving anyway, use the flow of the crowd to counter the wrongness. Through the doors. Outside onto the pier, moving toward the boat. She’s choosing her own direction in life! The wrongness is just her imagination.
Or… maybe something else is happening. Maybe it’s not the hard gust of wind off the harbor that’s making her steps drag; maybe it’s her own leaden feet and bedrock legs. Maybe the scalp tingling isn’t her hair streaming in the wind. Maybe it’s the island—her island—pulling at her in warning, in fear, in love.
Or maybe it’s an incipient panic attack.
She tries to fight it off, and gets as far as the ramp that leads onto the ferry. John F. Kennedy reads the ferry’s name, placarded on the wheelhouse; this is the name of her tormentor. Did JFK fear anything before somebody—the mob according to her father, a crazyman according to her mother—shot out his brains? If she gets on this boat, she’ll be going to a city where things like that happen on a regular basis. People kill each other on SI, too, all the time, but it’s different in the city. Everything is different there.
If she gets on this boat, she will come back different.
Someone nudges her, hard. “Hey, blocking traffic.”
If she gets on this boat, will she come back wrong?
Someone else puts a hand on her upper arm. It’s closely packed enough on the ramp that the person actually jostles her, grunting out a curse as the crowd shoves them forward and causes them to squish Aislyn’s right breast. It doesn’t hurt, and it’s obviously an accident, but when she glances around to see who’s touching her, her gaze skates over skin so Black that it’s like looking into a Magic 8 Ball before the little plastic thing inside bobs up to say: NOW PANIC.
Her thoughts ignite—GET AWAY GET OFF ME DON’T TOUCH ME GET ME OUT OF HERE—and her body contracts without any conscious input. Now she is moving against the flow (with the island’s wishes, though, at last), lurching from one stranger’s horrifying touch to another and wondering the whole time who’s screaming with such an ear-piercing pitch. Only belatedly does she recognize her own voice. People around her freeze or jerk away from the crazy lady, but they’re still too close. Crushing her. She writhes around them, already turned toward the glass doors. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” someone says, and it sounds like they’re going to try and stop her. Who is it? She can’t let that Black guy touch her again.