Free Fathomless by Anne M. Pillsworth Page B

stood eye to eye with the crow. The putty that held it in the lead came was intact, so its halo wasn’t a light leak. In fact, it was an aura a lot like the ones in Mom’s paintings, where the closer he got to the canvas, the less he saw it and the more he felt it, a faint warmth and vibration. He rested his fingertips on the crow’s breast. No mistake, there was a Mom-like hum.
    He could only come up with one explanation for how Mom’s energy had gotten into the crow. Dad had restored the Founding windows in his carriage house studio, right next to the one where Mom’s unfinished paintings lived. Sean had half-persuaded himself that the hum in the paintings was magical residue without consciousness, but maybe his younger self had been right, after all. Maybe Mom was a less abstract ghost, more willful, capable of breathing her unfading magic into a glass bird. Did she often “help” Dad with his work, or was this the first time, because Sean was going away and she wanted a bit of herself to follow him, a surrogate guardian spirit?
    It was shocking how unshocked he felt. Or was it just reasonable? If the universe could hold Servitors and immortal wizards and state-shifting pharmacies, why get his shorts in a wad about ghosts, especially one he ached to believe in?
    By climbing one more rung, Sean was able to lean over the top of the ladder and press his forehead to the crow. The humming against his skin didn’t strengthen into words or anything, into Mom’s voice, but that was okay. He communed with it until Helen came home, and Eddy and Daniel thundered downstairs to greet her. Then he hustled the ladder back into its wall niche. Helen couldn’t have noticed anything special about the crow, or she’d have mentioned it to Dad. Come to think about it, Sean had never seen its halo when anyone else was looking at the windows. He’d have to watch, and if he truly was the only one the glass glowed for, that was more evidence the glow and hum came from Mom, were there for Sean, and were meant to be their secret, why not, who could it harm?
    He joined the others in the hall.

 
    6
    That night Eddy and Daniel huddled over Franny and Zooey . If they had to get all book-clubby, they could have picked The Catcher in the Rye at least, which had that awesome part about the ducks and the sore cabdriver. Sean lurked behind his laptop, one eye on Twitter, the other on the couch—he’d have to catch Eddy alone to tell her about his connection to Orne. If he even wanted to tell her right now. Dad had already depressed him by endorsing Marvell’s no-magic, no-mentor plan, and Eddy was such a Marvell fan girl, she’d probably endorse it, too.
    So when Eddy cruised, he stayed in the common room and talked to Daniel. He’d tell her in a day or two.
    Or three or four.
    Or more, as it turned out, because they fell into a routine too comfortable for Sean to risk upsetting it. Mornings Eddy went to the Archives, Sean and Daniel to class. Marvell had kicked off with a reminder that Infinity Unimaginable had presented the Outer Gods as myth, a benign lie to protect interested “civilians.” As potential magicians, however, Sean and Daniel had to learn the truth. The first truth, because he was the first entity, was Azathoth: the Demon Sultan who roiled at the center of the cosmos, chaotic and amorphous, blind and mindless. Some magic scholars equated Azathoth with the Big Bang. Others believed he existed in steady state, involuntarily spawning the singularities that inflated into bubble universes around him.
    That was cool beyond Sean’s previous standards of coolness, and beyond Daniel’s, too, from the excited questions he asked. Next among the Outer Gods was Yog-Sothoth, Keeper of the Gates and their Keys. Marvell called him a sort of universal memory, perhaps time itself. Next, Shub-Niggurath, referred to as “she” because, well, she was the Mother through