Good Lord. When taxed with staving off the uncanny, how did he somehow resort to
Foley’s poem about a skeleton having sex?
A few of the Grays peeled off, but he needed something with some damn gravitas.
Horace.
“Winter will come on
And break the lower sea on the rocks
While we drink summer’s wine.”
Now they slowed, some covered their ears.
“See, in the white of the winter air,” he cried. “The day hangs like a rose. It droops down to the reaching hand. Take it before it goes!”
He lifted his hands before him as if he could somehow push them back. Why couldn’t he remember the first verse of the poem? Because it hadn’t interested him. Why try to know the future, which cannot be known?
“Winter will come on!” he repeated. But even as Darlington pushed the Grays back through the ruptured gate and reached for the chalk, he looked through the glass walls of
the library. A horde was assembling—a tide of Grays visible through the glass walls, surrounding the building. He was not going to be able to fix the markings in time.
Alex was still on the ground, shaking so hard he could see her trembling even from a
distance. When the magic got free, it might kill them both first.
“Take courage,” she said again and again. “Take courage.”
“That’s not enough!”
The Grays rushed toward the library.
“Mors vincit omnia!” Darlington cried, falling back on the words printed in every Lethe manual. The Emperor and the Aurelians had looked up from the table; only Zeb Yarrowman was still lost to the agonies of the ritual, deaf to the chaos that had entered the circle.
Then a voice pierced the air, high and wobbling, not speaking but singing … “Pariome
mi madre en una noche oscura.”
Alex was singing, the melody hitching on her sobs. “Ponime por nombre niña y sin fortuna.”
My mother gave birth to me on a dark night and called me the girl with no fortune.
Spanish, but slanted. Some kind of dialect.
“Ya crecen las yerbas y dan amarillo triste mi corazón vive con suspiro.”
He didn’t know the song, but the words seemed to slow the Grays’ steps.
The leaves are growing and turning gold.
My heavy heart beats and sighs.
“More!” said Darlington.
“I don’t know the rest of the song!” Alex yelled. The Grays moved forward.
“Say something, Stern! We need more words.”
“Quien no sabe de mar no sabe de mal!” She didn’t sing these words; she shouted them, again and again.
He who knows nothing of the sea knows nothing of suffering.
The line of Grays outside stumbled, looked over their shoulders: Something was
moving behind them.
“Keep going!” he told her.
“Quien no sabe de mar no sabe de mal!”
It was a wave, a massive wave, rising from nowhere over the plaza. But how? She wasn’t even speaking death words. He who knows nothing of the sea knows nothing of suffering. Darlington wasn’t even sure what the words meant.
The wave rose and new words came to Darlington from Virgil—the real Virgil. From
the Eclogues. “Let all become mid-ocean!” he declared. The wave climbed higher, blotting out the buildings and the sky beyond. “Farewell, ye woods! Headlong from some
towering mountain peak I will throw myself into the waves; take this as my last dying gift!”
The wave crashed and Grays were scattered over the stone tiles of the plaza. Darlington
could see them through the glass, bobbing like chunks of ice in the moonlight.
Hastily, Darlington redrew the marks of protection, strengthening them with heaps of graveyard dirt.
“What was that?” he said.
Alex was staring out at the fallen Grays, her cheeks still wet with tears. “I … It was just
something my grandmother used to say.”
Ladino. She’d been speaking Spanish and Hebrew and he wasn’t sure what else. It was
the language of diaspora. The language of death. She’d gotten lucky. They both had.
He offered her his hand. “You’re all right?” he asked. Her palm was cold, clammy in
his, as she rose.
“Yes,” she said, but she was still shaking. “Fine. I’m sorry, I—”