Chaos Choreography
Page 98
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“Are we almost there?” I asked.
“Very nearly, Priestess,” said the Aeslin mouse on my shoulder. It was clinging to my earring with one paw, keeping itself stable as I descended. “The second search party did say, lo, we are going this way, and the rest of us did say, yea, though you walk through the hallway that was not on the map, you should fear no evil.”
“Gonna pretend you haven’t started parodying the Bible and just keep walking, if that’s all the same to you.”
“As you say, Priestess.”
It was sometimes difficult to tell when Aeslin mice were joking. They did have the capacity for humor, and could be amused by the damnedest things. I resisted the urge to turn and eye the mouse. If it was still holding my earring when I moved my head, I could wind up knocking it off my shoulder, and that would make the remainder of my descent a lot more interesting than it needed to be.
The stairs were in reasonably good shape, considering that I was now at least two levels below the street and still going down. The air was damp and tasted of mildew. “How did you find the hallway if it wasn’t on the map?”
“The wall appeared intact, Priestess, solid as stone and capable of withstanding any attempts to breach it. But the air flowed through it all the same, as from a crack the size of a valley.” The mouse’s whiskers tickled my ear. “We sent the juniormost priest to see what was on the other side, and she stepped through the stone, and was gone. When she returned, she reported a great, wide hall, lit with these same bulbs, filled with these same shadows.”
“Was the false wall still there for her after she came back through? I mean, could she still see it when she looked?”
“The false wall never rippled or changed, Priestess. It was like smoke—visible to the eye, but invisible to the nose or paw.”
The mouse was describing hidebehind work. It had to be. They were experts at hanging an illusion on the smallest available hook, spinning scenes like spiders spun their webs. It was part of what kept them so well hidden. In a world where even the most secretive cryptids were being dragged, one by one, out into the light, most cryptozoologists had never actually seen a hidebehind. So far as I was aware, there were no pictures of them, only paintings and sketches done from rare eyewitness accounts. I’d spoken to the hidebehinds of Portland at great length—had even served as an impromptu marriage counselor for a couple who used to live under the supermarket downtown—and I couldn’t say for sure whether I’d ever seen one. They were that good at what they did, and what they did was disappear.
That left me with one big concern. “Will you be able to find your way back to the false wall when we get there?”
The mouse’s whiskers tickled my ear again, this time in quick, staccato bursts: it was laughing. “It can be easy to forget, Priestess, that you are in some ways less attuned to the world around you than we are, for you do not need to be: in your divinity, you may face all challenges without flinching, without need to be prepared to scurry and hide. The air passes through the wall, and will ruffle my fur and carry the scent of such dangers as might await us beyond the veil that is no veil. I will lead you true, Priestess. You will be Proud of Me.”
“You’re riding my shoulder into the dark below a theater, where no one can hear us scream. Trust me, mouse, I’m already proud of you.”
I couldn’t see the mouse on my shoulder, but I could feel it puffing out its fur with satisfaction and delight. Sometimes it was easy to keep the Aeslin happy.
Sometimes it was incredibly hard.
My foot hit the bottom of the stairs as I passed outside the sphere of the last of the overhead lights. Darkness fell, surprisingly profound, especially considering how close I was to the stairway. Glancing upward, I could see the naked bulbs glittering like beckoning stars, offering an escape from the certain death that waited up ahead. That, too, was hidebehind work. They were good at all sorts of illusion, from visual to emotional, and they never missed a trick.
“Now where?”
“Walk forward, Priestess, and do not be afraid; the wall will not harm you.”
Being afraid of a wall was only common sense, considering I was walking blindly into the dark. The mice were good about not steering us wrong. I took a deep breath and kept going, taking three long steps into the black—
—and into the light. One second I was in the dark underground hall, and the next I was in another, much brighter hall. The overhead lights were equipped with small button shades that distributed their illumination smoothly over the entire area, putting the mold-speckled walls and linoleum floor on full display. It was clear no one had done any cleaning down here in quite some time.
“Very nearly, Priestess,” said the Aeslin mouse on my shoulder. It was clinging to my earring with one paw, keeping itself stable as I descended. “The second search party did say, lo, we are going this way, and the rest of us did say, yea, though you walk through the hallway that was not on the map, you should fear no evil.”
“Gonna pretend you haven’t started parodying the Bible and just keep walking, if that’s all the same to you.”
“As you say, Priestess.”
It was sometimes difficult to tell when Aeslin mice were joking. They did have the capacity for humor, and could be amused by the damnedest things. I resisted the urge to turn and eye the mouse. If it was still holding my earring when I moved my head, I could wind up knocking it off my shoulder, and that would make the remainder of my descent a lot more interesting than it needed to be.
The stairs were in reasonably good shape, considering that I was now at least two levels below the street and still going down. The air was damp and tasted of mildew. “How did you find the hallway if it wasn’t on the map?”
“The wall appeared intact, Priestess, solid as stone and capable of withstanding any attempts to breach it. But the air flowed through it all the same, as from a crack the size of a valley.” The mouse’s whiskers tickled my ear. “We sent the juniormost priest to see what was on the other side, and she stepped through the stone, and was gone. When she returned, she reported a great, wide hall, lit with these same bulbs, filled with these same shadows.”
“Was the false wall still there for her after she came back through? I mean, could she still see it when she looked?”
“The false wall never rippled or changed, Priestess. It was like smoke—visible to the eye, but invisible to the nose or paw.”
The mouse was describing hidebehind work. It had to be. They were experts at hanging an illusion on the smallest available hook, spinning scenes like spiders spun their webs. It was part of what kept them so well hidden. In a world where even the most secretive cryptids were being dragged, one by one, out into the light, most cryptozoologists had never actually seen a hidebehind. So far as I was aware, there were no pictures of them, only paintings and sketches done from rare eyewitness accounts. I’d spoken to the hidebehinds of Portland at great length—had even served as an impromptu marriage counselor for a couple who used to live under the supermarket downtown—and I couldn’t say for sure whether I’d ever seen one. They were that good at what they did, and what they did was disappear.
That left me with one big concern. “Will you be able to find your way back to the false wall when we get there?”
The mouse’s whiskers tickled my ear again, this time in quick, staccato bursts: it was laughing. “It can be easy to forget, Priestess, that you are in some ways less attuned to the world around you than we are, for you do not need to be: in your divinity, you may face all challenges without flinching, without need to be prepared to scurry and hide. The air passes through the wall, and will ruffle my fur and carry the scent of such dangers as might await us beyond the veil that is no veil. I will lead you true, Priestess. You will be Proud of Me.”
“You’re riding my shoulder into the dark below a theater, where no one can hear us scream. Trust me, mouse, I’m already proud of you.”
I couldn’t see the mouse on my shoulder, but I could feel it puffing out its fur with satisfaction and delight. Sometimes it was easy to keep the Aeslin happy.
Sometimes it was incredibly hard.
My foot hit the bottom of the stairs as I passed outside the sphere of the last of the overhead lights. Darkness fell, surprisingly profound, especially considering how close I was to the stairway. Glancing upward, I could see the naked bulbs glittering like beckoning stars, offering an escape from the certain death that waited up ahead. That, too, was hidebehind work. They were good at all sorts of illusion, from visual to emotional, and they never missed a trick.
“Now where?”
“Walk forward, Priestess, and do not be afraid; the wall will not harm you.”
Being afraid of a wall was only common sense, considering I was walking blindly into the dark. The mice were good about not steering us wrong. I took a deep breath and kept going, taking three long steps into the black—
—and into the light. One second I was in the dark underground hall, and the next I was in another, much brighter hall. The overhead lights were equipped with small button shades that distributed their illumination smoothly over the entire area, putting the mold-speckled walls and linoleum floor on full display. It was clear no one had done any cleaning down here in quite some time.
