Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand

Author:Elizabeth Hand [Hand, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 978-1-4532-7893-2
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-10-04T17:34:00+00:00

“ ‘Ewage station’?” Hobi pronounced, trying to recall why this was familiar; but ahead of him the rasa waited impatiently. He hurried after it.

The tunnel was straight and seemed endless, though they didn’t go very far into it. After a few yards water started pooling up, growing deeper every few steps until it came to Hobi’s knees. He was shivering so much it was hard to walk. The rasa’s sickly sweet odor had dissipated into another smell, no less choking to Hobi for all that it was more familiar. It was a scent that dredged up queer memories, the sort of dimly lit memories you have of things that happened when you were drunk or drugged or very young: and that was how he realized the smell had something to do with Æstival Tide. It filled his nose and throat and mouth like bad water. After a few minutes he realized that’s exactly what it was: water. They were in the ancient sewage tunnel Nasrani had told him about, the tunnel that led Outside. What Hobi smelled was the sea, unfiltered by the domes.

The realization brought him to a dead stop. Ahead of him the rasa splashed on, pausing now and then to peer off to the left, as though looking for something.

The sea. What if the thing was bringing him Outside? Hobi put out one hand to steady himself against the wall. It sank into the luminous muck. When he drew it back in disgust his fingers glowed slightly, a rotten corpselike blue. He would die down here. Or, worse, he would live, become like this creature a mad thing living in the cracks between Araboth and Outside, like the ones who did not return from Æstival Tide; like all the half-human things that hung about the tattered edges of Araboth.

“Once-born.”

The rasa’s voice rose urgently. Hobi turned to look behind him. In the near distance the tunnel’s mouth gaped, black and cold—he could hear the wind hooting down after him. He turned back to where the rasa waited beside an opening. Dread seeped into him like the black water oozing up through his clothes. There was nothing to do but follow it. Perhaps Nasrani would worry about him; perhaps after a few days they would mount a search down here:

But tomorrow was Æstival Tide. Nothing would be done then, or for several weeks thereafter while Araboth’s inhabitants recovered from the timoria. He could only follow the rasa and hope to escape, or hope somehow to make his way Outside by the time the Lahatiel Gate opened. He rubbed his arms against the chill and continued down the tunnel.

The rasa waited for him at the opening. It stared at Hobi with its sunken eyes, then splashed its face with some of the fetid water pooled at their feet. “Greet your Mother,” it said. Reluctantly Hobi bent and flicked a few drops onto his cheeks.

“Now,” the rasa announced, and faster than Hobi would have thought possible it slipped through the doorway and out of sight.

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