The Order of Odd-Fish (22 page)

“At least you’re living. If you told the truth, I doubt you could get out of this city alive.”

“Then why did we come here? The one place where I’m hated?”

“We weren’t safe in California. We never were. At least we’re among friends in Eldritch City.” Aunt Lily paused. “Even though it is, in fact, Nils who caused us to come here.”

“What?”
said Jo, aghast. “The Belgian Prankster
wants
us to be here?”

Aunt Lily closed her eyes, as if she’d said too much. “A couple weeks ago we figured out that it was Nils who had stolen the Inconvenience. When he became the Belgian Prankster, he turned it against us. It’s the Inconvenience that brought us all back to Eldritch City. And it’s not done with us yet. That’s why I’m trying to repair it—maybe I can construct a mechanism that can reverse the workings of the Inconvenience, turn it back against the Belgian Prankster.”

Jo frowned. “But if the Inconvenience was programmed by the Belgian Prankster and the Inconvenience brought us to Eldritch City…doesn’t that mean we’re playing right into his plan?”

“Maybe you have a better idea,” snapped Aunt Lily. “Maybe you know better than the people who’ve been sticking their necks out for you since before you were born.”

“Maybe I do!” said Jo. “I’m living in a city where everyone would try to kill me if they knew who I was—and for what? I’m doing exactly what the Belgian Prankster wants! It’s a
stupid
plan. It’s the
worst possible
plan!”

Aunt Lily fixed her eyes on Jo, but Jo stared back angrily. For a moment she almost didn’t recognize Aunt Lily. She didn’t seem like a mother to her anymore, or even an aunt. She was a stranger.

“Why did the Silent Sisters choose my parents?” said Jo.

Aunt Lily’s gaze wavered. She went back to her work, prying at a mishmash of intertwined mechanisms.

Jo kept pushing. “Why don’t you ever talk about my parents?”

Aunt Lily wrenched a fragment of the machine away. “Don’t be too curious about them.”

“Why?”

Aunt Lily looked irritated. Usually Jo backed off when Aunt Lily didn’t want to talk, but she couldn’t help it anymore. Months of silence, of awkward pauses, of avoiding the topic broke down. Jo was starving for something, anything.

“Actually, Sir Oliver and I found out something that changes everything,” said Aunt Lily. “Your mother really
did
have suspicious dealings with the Silent Sisters. The Silent Sisters might truly have a claim on you.”

Jo felt as though she had been slapped. “You don’t really believe that!”

“I…I don’t know, Jo.”

“You
do too
know!” said Jo. “Either I belong with the Silent Sisters or I don’t! Why can’t you ever tell me the least thing about me? Or my parents? Maybe it would’ve been better if the Silent Sisters
had
taken me! At least I would’ve belonged with them!”

Aunt Lily murmured, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then
tell
me! What is it about my parents you can’t say? Or the Belgian Prankster—or no,
Nils,
” she spat. “You can’t keep yourself from calling him Nils—why? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re still soft on him—you still love him—and you hate me, you hate my parents, because they stuck you with
me
and ruined your life!”

Aunt Lily looked at Jo in a way she had never seen before. Her face had warped and sagged; Jo couldn’t tell whether Aunt Lily looked betrayed, heartbroken, or furious. Then she understood.

For the first time, Aunt Lily was looking at Jo with disappointment.

Someone knocked on the door, and the doorknob rattled. A second later the door opened, and Sir Alasdair and Dame Isabel came in. Jo stepped back and looked around for an escape—had the Coveneys heard them?

But apparently they hadn’t heard anything. They both looked awkward, almost sheepish. Sir Alasdair shuffled back and forth, unable to look Aunt Lily in the eye. Dame Isabel’s manner was stiff but grimly enduring, as if she were about to take a foul-tasting medicine.

Aunt Lily turned away from Jo with something like relief. “Yes, Isabel?” she said, her voice cracking. “Alasdair?”

Sir Alasdair harrumphed shyly. “We’re just coming by to…well, now that everything’s squared with the city…thought we’d…well…”

“We heard the mayor called off your exile,” said Dame Isabel. “So…we’re just glad to have you back at the Order, Lily.
Legally
back—you understand.”

“No hard feelings?” coughed Sir Alasdair, and stuck out his hand.

Aunt Lily shook it. “I’m happy we can be friends again.”

“Minor difference of interpretation of city ordinances,” mumbled Sir Alasdair.

Jo watched, revolted, as Aunt Lily made nice with Sir Alasdair and Dame Isabel. If her secret was revealed, she knew, no easy reconciliation like this would be possible with
her
friends.

“I’m going,” said Jo.

“Oh no—please stay,” said Dame Isabel. “Now that this nonsense with the Ichthala is behind us, Sir Alasdair and I thought we’d celebrate with a little drink. We wanted you to join us.”

“No, you three have fun,” said Jo.

“Jo—” began Aunt Lily.

Jo left the room as quickly as possible and didn’t look back.

After dinner Nora whispered to Jo, “We need to talk.” Jo was in no mood for it, but Nora insisted, and she made Jo promise to meet her later in the squires’ secret room.

At midnight Jo slipped under her floorboards and crept through the crawl spaces to the secret room. As she emerged from the chimney, she saw that Ian and Nora were already there, quietly conferring over candlelight. Jo joined them. She was exhausted, her nerves frayed.

“Okay, what’s this all about, Nora?” said Jo.

“The underground cathedral you visited with Audrey Durdle,” said Nora. “I didn’t want to mention it this afternoon in the café, in public…just in case.”

“Well?” yawned Jo.

“It’s a cathedral of the Silent Sisters.”

Jo’s eyes widened. She froze in mid-yawn.

Ian snorted. “I didn’t see any Silent Sisters there.”

“They must’ve been hiding,” said Nora.

“Oh, come on. The place was flooded, falling apart, full of groglings—”

Fear dripped slowly into Jo’s heart. “Why…why do you think that cathedral belongs to the Silent Sisters?”

“The idol,” said Nora. “According to Audrey’s scripts, only a cathedral of the Silent Sisters would have an idol of the All-Devouring Mother.”

“We didn’t see any idol,” said Ian.

“Yes, you did,” said Nora. “You told me.
The mouth.
”

Jo kept quiet. The golden mouth shining in the darkness, rushing at them as if to gobble them—Jo had glimpsed it for only a moment, but she remembered it vividly. Nevertheless, she, Ian, and Audrey rarely talked about it. It was as if it was too strange, too disturbing to mention.

“Legend says the All-Devouring Mother nests in the throat of that mouth,” whispered Nora. “In the darkness she broods, lurking deep beneath the city, waiting for her time to STRIKE!” Nora leaped up and waved her hands around.

Ian groaned. “Can you, for once, not be overdramatic?”

“I can’t be dramatic enough!” said Nora. “You’ve stumbled upon the lost cathedral of the most mysterious cult of all time, and you act like it’s, what, a trip to the grocery store?”

“The Ichthala isn’t something to joke about,” said Ian quietly. “It killed a lot of people. It killed my mother. It’s not just a character on your stupid show.”

“But Ian,
I’m not joking,
” insisted Nora. “Sometimes I think I’m the only one who takes it seriously! And if you would only listen…don’t you know
anything
about the Silent Sisters?”

Ian said, “Nobody does, Nora. Oh, I suppose
you
do?”

“I know what
Teenage Ichthala
says,” said Nora.

Jo could tell Ian was biting his tongue. “Okay, Nora. What’s it say on your show?”

“It says,” said Nora darkly, “that the Silent Sisters are midwives to the rebirth of the All-Devouring Mother.”

Ian humored her. “Oh? And why does the All-Devouring Mother need help being reborn?”

“Well, since you asked,” said Nora, excited to be talking about her favorite topic, “the story goes that at the beginning of time, the All-Devouring Mother was a wild goddess who nearly destroyed the world. The other gods had to stop her if the world was going to survive. They couldn’t kill the All-Devouring Mother, since she was a goddess—but they were able to destroy her body. Without a body, the All-Devouring Mother’s soul burned with rage, but she couldn’t
do
anything. Until the Silent Sisters came along.”

Jo fought down the quiver in her voice. “Who
are
the Silent Sisters?”

“They want the All-Devouring Mother to wreak havoc again,” said Nora. “So they searched all over the world, looking for the shreds of the Ichthala’s body—her bones, her blood, her brains, everything—in order to rebuild the goddess, to stitch her back together. And now, according to
Teenage Ichthala
, the Silent Sisters are almost finished. The All-Devouring Mother is complete, it is alive—but it doesn’t yet have its soul. The Silent Sisters now have to perform the final and most difficult ritual and reunite the Ichthala’s soul with its body.”

“This is ridiculous,” said Ian. “How could they—”

Nora bristled. “Do you want to hear this or not?”

“Fine, whatever.” Ian shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Nora looked back and forth at Jo and Ian. “The Silent Sisters chose one of their own women to bear a baby girl,” she whispered. “But this baby has the soul of Ichthala, the All-Devouring Mother. When the girl comes of age, the Silent Sisters awaken the Ichthala within her and feed her to the monster they rebuilt. The monster eats the girl, the girl dies, and her soul is released into the monster. Then the devouring begins.”

“Hold on,” said Jo. “What do you mean, they ‘awaken the Ichthala’ in the girl?”

“Exactly, Jo.
That’s
my discovery,” said Nora. “The legends talk about how the Silent Sisters will ‘awaken the Ichthala,’ but none of them say how it’s to be done. Well, now I know. It’s described in the secret messages I’ve decoded from the show. That’s why I didn’t want to blab about it at the café. It’s too disturbing to tell just anyone.”

“Well? Out with it!” said Ian. “What is it?”

Nora said, “Do you really want to hear this?”

“Yes!” said Jo.

Nora paused. “Really?”

“C’mon, Nora,
tell us
!” said Ian.

Nora smiled. She had them now, and she knew it. “The Silent Sisters first have to give the girl some of the powers of the All-Devouring Mother. They do this by putting a little bit of the All-Devouring Mother’s blood in her. This awakens her evil Ichthala soul and makes her ready to fuse with the body they reconstructed.”

Jo was trying hard to understand. “
Put
the blood in her?”

“Yes. And here’s how,” whispered Nora. “Thirteen years ago, the Silent Sisters lured a man to their cathedral. They sucked out all his blood and filled him with the All-Devouring Mother’s blood. That blood turned him into a half monster. The man was…”

Jo gripped her knees tightly. “The Belgian Prankster?”

Nora nodded. “That’s right. Sir Nils is cursed to carry the Ichthala blood until the girl comes of age. But to have that demonic blood gives you unpredictable powers, powers a human shouldn’t have. The Ichthala’s blood chews away at your soul, drives you mad.”

“And that’s why the Belgian Prankster did all those weird pranks,” said Jo tensely.

Ian looked at Jo. “What do you mean?”

“The Belgian Prankster…he was always pulling some stunt or another,” said Jo. “One time he filled the Grand Canyon with pistachio pudding. Another time he rearranged all the stars over Mexico City to make a picture of his face. And you know how he stole the lodge. Strange things like that.”

“It was the Ichthala blood, boiling over inside him,” said Nora. “The power was too strong for him. It drove him crazy. He wants nothing more than to get rid of it. And the only way he can get rid of it…is…”

Jo and Ian looked at each other. “What?”

Nora closed her eyes, forcing the next words out of her mouth with difficulty. “His…
stinger,
” she said. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but the show says he grows a stinger, or beak, or some kind of second nose somewhere inside him. When the Belgian Prankster comes back to Eldritch City, the Ichthala will go to him, and he will somehow use that to give her the Ichthala blood. Then the Silent Sisters take her to their cathedral and feed her to the All-Devouring Mother. Then the All-Devouring Mother eats up all of Eldritch City. And then the world.”

For a second it seemed the world was about to end right then—Nora’s high, breathy voice describing the rituals of the Silent Sisters hypnotized Jo with its intense rhythm. She nearly expected the Silent Sisters to step out of the shadows and take her to the cathedral that very moment.

But only for a moment. Ian laughed, a bit too loudly, and said, “You almost had me, Nora. But come on. A stinger? A
beak
? That’s even stupider than your usual.”

Jo kept quiet, withdrawing into the darkness so Ian and Nora couldn’t see her panicking eyes.
Is that what the Silent Sisters have planned for me?
she thought, nauseous dread building up inside her. Her fear hardened into anger.
I can’t take this waiting anymore. I wish the Silent Sisters would just get it over with. Just come and get me, or leave me alone!

“Jo?” Ian was looking at her strangely. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Give me a second.” Jo dug her nails into her thighs as Ian and Nora continued to whisper.

“So where do the Silent Sisters come from?” said Ian.

“Nobody really knows,” said Nora. “On the show, the Silent Sisters are ordinary people who had horrible lives. They hate the world. Suicide isn’t enough for them—they want revenge. They want the whole universe to die.”

“So who are they?” said Ian.

“Some of them walk among us,” said Nora. “But they say when you reach a certain level in their cult, you must gouge out your eyes, cut off your tongue, slice off your ears, lock yourself in a coffin deep underground, and never move again. It’s their way of seceding from the universe. Some Silent Sisters have been lying still for centuries. That’s how they get their powers—if you stay still for long enough, the universe whispers its secrets to you.”