“You keep saying that—,” Sam said, rising from the cot to follow.
“And I keep meaning it. We still have several hours before the sun rises, and I think we should take advantage of them. Darkness won’t hide us from the water witch any more than daylight will, but we should move while our flight is fresh. We should cover all the distance we can.”
“Where are we going? How far from the water can we go—do we need to go all the way to Georgia?”
“Not so far as that,” it said. “Inland, and north. There is a town there, near a larger city. The city is called Ybor, and the water witch has business there.”
They went down the creaking stairs and into the woods. Sam was carrying the lantern and bringing up the rear. “Wait, but. But you just said that we wanted to get away from her, away from the water.”
“For now, yes. But soon we’ll need to confront her. We must engage the minions she’s contrived, and destroy the device that she’s creating. It won’t be easy, and I can’t set you upon this mission cold, and newborn, and uninformed. So first, you will walk with me.”
“I’m hungry, too,” Sam added to his earlier complaint of thirst.
Mossfeaster said, “We’ll improve upon your condition, Samuel, provided that you continue to aid us. And I think that once you understand what’s at stake, you’ll realize that, really, you have no choice but to lend us your assistance.”
“What kind of assistance do you expect from me? I mean, you’ve got”—he cocked his head at Nia—“her—and you’re tougher than me by a mile. What on earth can I possibly do? What use do you expect me to be?”
“Someone must go into Ybor, and someone must help our little stone angel here to fit in with the rest of your kind so that they do not hunt or fear her. She is preserved well enough; water may tear down stone, but much more slowly and not without terrible effort. But she is different from them now, and not only because she is improperly covered.”
“This is crazy,” Sam mumbled. “All of it, it’s crazy. I’m just an insurance man. I’m not really in the business of helping . . . do . . . whatever it is I’m helping you do.”
“Insurance?” Mossfeaster repeated the word slowly, as if by digesting it the creature might determine its meaning. “What is that? Explain it to me.”
Sam fumbled for words. “It’s a preventive thing. It protects your property by promising that if it’s destroyed, you’ll be compensated.”
Mossfeaster considered this, walking in silence ahead of them. Its colossal, semi-humped back moved up and down with each step, and the light of Sam’s lantern cast jagged, sharp shadows in every direction. The trees split the light into bars and beams, chasing the night out of their path.
It stopped and turned around so that the flickering glow of the portable flame illuminated its face. It smiled.
“Yes,” it said. “I approve. I will take it as a sign that this is correct and right. I’ve inadvertently selected a guardian for my guardian.”
“Wait. No, I mean—”
“No, I understand. You protect property, and people. You guard them, even if it’s only with money. I know enough of how your society works to understand. I think it’s a sign.”
“You believe in signs?” Nia asked.
It turned around and resumed walking, and it was walking straighter, with more optimistic bounce. “I do,” it assured her. “There is more to the heavens and more to the stars than us small things that crawl and swim, and live and die, and bleed and watch and struggle against one another.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Sam fussed.
“Leave him alone,” Nia said.
“He doesn’t have to leave me alone if he doesn’t want to,” Moss-feaster said, and through the words he still was smiling; Nia could hear it as she followed along behind. “I don’t mind. But Nia, I approve of your disapproval. I am glad to see that you already wish to protect me. I protected you, and you will do likewise in return. You were the right choice, and while I had some reservations about that one”—it waved a big hand in Sam’s general direction—“I am now reassured. We will make this happen yet. We will stop the water witch from calling Leviathan, and we will undo the thing that she has set into motion.”
Sam stumbled and caught himself. The lantern shot crazy, wobbling beams in every direction, but steadied itself as Sam found his footing. “And what kind of thing might that be?”
Mossfeaster said without looking back, “She intends to destroy this world, and every one of you who crouches upon it.”
“Every one of you?”
“Every one”—it nodded—“of us.”
The forest east of the ocean was thick and dense and hard to walk, and it was rough for Mossfeaster to lead. Although the creature could twist and distort itself around the trees, Nia and Sam could only walk behind their towering leader and try to match the monster’s unrelenting pace.
The Whistle at the End
of the Earth
José loved Ybor City almost as much as he loved Bernice, who strolled half a step ahead of him. He let her take a slim lead because he liked to watch her walk; he loved the sway of her body, moving shiplike through the small industrial city, dodging the streetcars and tripping lightly even in the tall, thick shoes that she wore to prop herself up. It was easy to love Bernice. Beautiful and bold, wicked and wild, capable of being sublimely civilized and charming . . . she was a fantasy plucked from the water and given to him to hold and to keep.
It might have been less easy to understand why any man would love Ybor, but José had his reasons.
It did not remind him of Spain, though that was Bernice’s assumption. She heard the nattering, clipped Spanish conversations at every street corner and inside every bar, restaurant, and hotel, and she watched José smile to overhear it.
But she seemed not to know or care that many lands speak Spanish and the accents were different from place to place. Just as Bernice could easily have told the difference between voices from England and New England, so too José could tell without trying that the men who surrounded him were born on islands.
The factory workers came and went along the walks, reeking of sweat, tobacco, and the glue that holds cigar bands together. They discussed food and women and rum, and they argued over games of bolita that were rigged: no, they were not—well, you know Charlie Wall is a cheater, and everyone says so.
And every block sounded for all the world like the deck of a boat a hundred years before. So they gambled with lottery balls instead of cards; and so they smelled like cigarros and cane alcohol instead of sunburn and salt water . . . they were the same kind of men.
Mostly the speech he overheard was made by working-class Cubans, but he heard Puerto Ricans, too, and Dominicans. The patterns of their banter were familiar and friendly, and they echoed in José’s ears as the smoke and stink of the cigar factories wafted through his sinuses.
“What are they saying?” Bernice asked.
José had not been listening, either to her or to the couple she indicated. “What? I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t hear it.”
“I think they were talking about us.”
“And what if they were?”
She made a cranky little pout. “If they were, then I want to know what they were saying.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t important. Or else, it was about you—I’m sure they were only admiring you,” he told her, and he watched from the corner of his eye as the couple in question disappeared into a market. “You’re beautiful and strange, here. Most of the women in this city are dark, and they work alongside the men making the cigars. They don’t often see women like you.”
“So they were talking about me?”
Sometimes it was easier to lie and put it to rest. “Yes, I caught the last of it before they went inside. They wondered what a woman of your class and stature was doing in the workers’ district. That’s all. They thought you were too pretty to belong here, and they wondered if I was your father or lover—that i
s why they whispered.”
“Oh.” Her mind wandered again, and she tumbled into silence.
She’d been doing this more and more lately, and José was beginning to wonder what was going on behind those brutal blue eyes. It used to be that she told him everything, asked him everything, wanted his company for everything. But in the last week she’d taken to abandoning him and Mother both for her own agenda.
If she told them anything at all, she would make mention of seeking out resources or hunting down old grudges. But usually, she said nothing. She simply left and returned at her leisure, feeling no compunction to explain or account for herself.
He tried to engage her again. “We’re nearly there.”
“At the jewelry place?”
“It’s not a jewelry place, exactly.”
“It’s got a funny name,” she recalled.
“Poppo Efodiazo,” he repeated. “And I’m sure it’s not funny if you speak Greek. It’s a shop for all kinds of things, not merely jewelry.”
“But he makes jewelry, right? I thought you said that’s what he did.”
“Sometimes. More often, I think, he alters and melts jewelry to be sold again. He’s been known to buy stolen goods and transform them. Then he sells them or ships them elsewhere.”
“So why are we using him? I don’t like it here,” she said, blanketing her discomfort with a general expression of unhappiness.
“Why not? It’s a beautiful day, the factories are churning, and we have all afternoon to run a simple errand. After we’re done, we can go find a shady spot to have a drink.”
“Because I don’t like it when I don’t know what people are talking about. And I don’t want to sit around and have a drink after this. After this, I want to go back to the water. It’s hot and smelly here, and I don’t like it.”
José opened his mouth to argue, and then changed his mind. He didn’t know what was going on, and he didn’t want to fight with her until he knew exactly what the fight would be about. “Are you upset about something?” he asked instead.
“Like what?” she said with a snap.
“I don’t know; I was hoping you could tell me.”
A wash of crafty interest spread itself across her face, and it startled José. He was pleased to have garnered a reaction from her, but it unsettled him all the same.
She seemed on the verge of saying or asking something, but when she spoke up she didn’t say or ask anything important. All she said was, “I told you, I don’t like it here. That’s all. It’s hot and it stinks. We’re almost there, aren’t we?”
“Yes, yes. I imagine you also want to go back to Mother.”
“I didn’t say that.” And something about the way she made her denial made him worry again about the things that moved her.
Most of the time when he looked at her, he was, in a quiet and deliberate sense, looking down on her. After all, she was beautiful—but not the most brilliant woman he’d ever known. She was spoiled and easily vexed, prone to fits of childish rage and irrational flights of fancy. Bernice was smaller than José, and younger than him, and in her own way, weaker. She didn’t know what to do with her powers. She didn’t know how to read very well and she didn’t speak anything other than her Yankee English with its jagged edges and tortured vowels.
But she had her gifts. People gave her things, and told her things. People offered themselves to her, heart in hand.
With a sharper mind, she could have taken over the world by now, he thought. Thank heaven or hell that the gods thought to hobble her, or we would all be lost in her wake.
At the next corner they turned right and took a sharp twist into a street so narrow it might as well have been an alley. But the buildings had signs, hanging from squeaking chains and painted to advertise services that could be obtained through the recessed doorways that were shuttered against the afternoon heat. One sign had a picture of a bell painted upon it in a golden shade of brown, and the letters beneath spelled out, POPPO EFODIAZO.
“That’s it?” Bernice asked.
“That’s it. This is the place.”
He took her hand and led her to the low stone steps. He opened the door for her and held it aside while she clomped up the uneven stairs in her expensive heeled shoes.
She hesitated. “What’s a Greek guy doing here, anyway? I thought this was the Spanish part of town. Why’s he so far from home?”
“This is a . . . commercial part of town,” he told her, resisting the impulse to correct her summing up of the blocks. “This is a business district, and the Greek is a businessman. He has come here because his services are useful in some fashion. And it’s not so strange, really.” José took her hand and joined her on the threshold, then urged her inside.
The store was cluttered with a rich and diverse array of products. Metal pots and glass vases were hung and displayed side by side with odd pieces of wood furniture and tiny fountains with figures of naked children. Under the main counter’s glass there were more valuable items, gold chains and pendants, earrings that glittered with gems that could have been real, or might have been paste. Along the walls, from floor to ceiling, there were frames upon frames—some holding pictures, some holding mirrors—in all shapes, all sizes, and all patinas. The room smelled like old paper and chemicals.
“Farther up the coast, there are many Greek families that live along the shore,” he mentioned.
“There are?” she asked.
A new voice joined the conversation. “There are,” it said. “They came to dive for sponges.”
Small and swarthy, a bent little man with a shock of black hair came shuffling forward, through a parted curtain that separated the front of the shop from the back. He was wearing a filthy, thick apron made of leather or treated wool—it was too dirty to tell which one at a glance. A pair of wire-rimmed spectacles hung from ear to ear, settling heavily on his nose. Where the metal reached the skin, a sunken groove had formed from holding the weight of the thick glass lenses in place.
“Mr. Poppo,” José said.
“His name is Poppo?” Bernice gaped.
“Agatone Pappanophilus,” the storekeeper clarified. “But it’s easier to shorten it, make it simpler for foreign tongues.” He waved down José’s polite apologies and said, “No, it’s all right. I’ve come to understand that it’s silly in English. Most of my customers are Latin, though.”
“Latin? Where’s Latin—”
José interrupted her. “Is the shell finished? You said to check back today, so here we are.”
“Oh, it is finished, yes. It has been finished for days, but it needed to set, or I would’ve tried to send for you.” When he talked, the English was muted and forced; he wrapped the words around his native pronunciations and compelled the letters to line up correctly.
Mr. Poppo took a cane from off the table and planted it down firmly on the cold slate floor. “I think the results will please you. It’s a small piece, but pretty. It’s a tiny conch, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” José nodded, following behind the man, who moved through the room with amazing slowness. “Smaller than you usually find them. But the casting went well, and the piece is sound?”
“Perfectly sound. It’s a gift, didn’t you say?”
“For our Mother,” Bernice piped up, bringing up the rear.
Mr. Poppo stopped and turned around. “The two of you, you’re brother and sister?”
“Oh no, we’re not. The gift is for her mother, my mother-in-law. But the woman has been quite kind to me, and I call her Mother also,” José lied without trying. “It’s an anniversary present.”
“Then I’m surprised you didn’t want it in gold.”
Bernice was going to say something else, but José squeezed her hand. “The gift is one that is meaningful, if not very valuable. She will understand the sentiment behind it, and appreciate it accordingly.”
“Ah,” Mr. Poppo said.
“It’s—,” Bernice was saying again, but José squeezed her ha
nd harder.
He couldn’t explain to her there, on the spot, that Mr. Poppo did not care and did not want to know. The storekeeper dealt with burglars and thieves for a living, and he neither wanted nor required any explanations.
They ducked around the navy blue curtain and it jingled on its rings.
“Back here.” Mr. Poppo gestured with one hand. “This is where I work. This is where I set it, and after it cooled, I trimmed it and polished it. The end result is quite nice, quite nice indeed.”
He limped forward into a work area that was littered with casts, molds, paints, chisels, and stray bits of leftover material.
The workshop could have worked anything, almost—or so José surmised from his sweeping inspection of the place. There were pigments set up in tightly closed pots with clumpy brushes, just the right colors for falsifying antiques. Here and there, he could see parchments and papers being soaked in a brown solution that smelled faintly of tea and tobacco. Some of the successfully aged documents had been lifted out of their baths and were hanging by the rafters, clipped to a string to dry and wrinkle.
“Back now. Farther. Not this room, but the next.” Mr. Poppo saw José examining the space as he passed through it, and the shopkeeper said, “I do not care if you know how this works. For the price you have paid, you can see all you like. Your ‘Mother’ may be any queen or crone, but if your requests were honorable . . . or legal . . . you would have gone into Tampa and had this done there, through a metalworks, or through a jeweler. So look all you like.”
He reached for the curtain that covered the next doorway and drew it back. A blast of scalding air puffed out.
Mr. Poppo nudged along, scooting with the cane and dragging a twisted foot.
“I know it’s warm,” he said. “But to work with metal, you must make it very hot. And to make it hot enough to melt, my friends, you must invite yourself into hell.”
José took the curtain and it felt brittle in his hand; it was purple with threads of gold snaking through it. He lifted it aside and fought against his instinct to retreat. The furnace within was shocking in its intensity, and the sheer force of the skin-withering heat was enough to push even the bravest back.