“Mmm-hmm.” Annie put the phone back in her pocket. I realized how tired she looked. “I also called home while you were out. Everyone’s all right. Mom had a nasty reaction to the theobromine powder—she inhaled more than she should have before your dad and Elsie got her out of the cloud—but she’s going to be fine. Your mom fell off the ceiling as soon as the rift closed. She has a broken wrist. She’ll recover.”
“How is this possible?”
“Well, the cuckoos did say they wanted Sarah to rip a hole in the fabric of the world. I guess this was just a test run. We have a bigger problem, though.”
There was something about her tone that put my teeth on edge. I eyed her warily as I pushed myself to my feet and brushed the gravel off my knees. “What’s that?”
“We fell into the rift a week ago.”
Oh. “Um,” I said. “Yeah, that does . . . that does sound like a bigger problem.”
Annie looked at me solemnly. “You think? Our family thought we were dead, so that’s fun. Apparently, they summoned Aunt Rose—Mary’s busy keeping an eye on Shelby, since the baby’s due soon—and had her searching the twilight for us. I think the fact that she couldn’t find us may be the only reason nothing’s currently on fire.”
“Where’s James?” I hesitated before asking the question I really wanted to have answered. “Where’s Sarah?”
“James is taking a quick turn around the block while I try to wake you up,” said Annie. “Sarah is . . . Sarah’s with the rest of the hive.”
My heart sank.
Sarah had attacked us; Sarah had ripped the rift in the air that had led to us losing a week and winding up stranded nearly two thousand miles away from the rest of the family, with no backup and only the weapons we happened to be carrying when we fell through. And yet, somehow, I’d still been hoping that we’d be able to talk her down.
“The Calculating Priestess conducts the Rites and Rituals of her Kind,” squeaked a voice next to my ear. I glanced to the side. The Aeslin mouse standing on my shoulder was wearing a scrap of one of my old flannel shirts as a cloak, and a necklace made from a small USB drive. One of my clergy, then. It was nice to know that if I died out here, I’d have at least one of my own mice with me.
“What did you call her?” asked Annie.
“She has been Named and Acknowledged as a Priestess,” said the mouse, wiping its forepaws across its whiskers to emphasize the statement. “We are sorry to have taken so long.”
“Okay, that’s . . . new.” Annie looked down at the pocket of her coat, a thoughtful frown on her lips. “You could have said something.”
“You didn’t ask,” squeaked her pocket.
“Fair enough.” She turned her attention back to the mouse on my shoulder. “Do you know anything about cuckoo rites or rituals?”
“Only that they Must Be,” said the mouse gravely. “What fragments we know pre-date the Faith.”
Meaning that at some point before they came to our family, ancestors of the current colony had encountered a cuckoo. I exchanged a startled look with Antimony. It can be easy to forget that the mice had an existence before us. They’re some of the last Aeslin mice left in the world. We have to protect them. That can limit the way we look at them, like we think of them as accessories and not individuals.
“Fragments?” asked Annie carefully.
Aeslin mice have utterly flawless recall. If a mouse hears or sees something once, they’ll be able to repeat or describe it perfectly for the rest of their lives. Unlike the cuckoos, with their implanted histories, the history of the Aeslin mice is learned, handed down without alteration or editing, for as long as a faith endures.
The mouse scrubbed at its whiskers, looking embarrassed. “The faith came before the faith which pre-dated our discovery by the Kindly Priestess,” it said. “We have failed you by remembering any piece of it. It is Heresy, and should long have been Forgotten.”
“It may save our asses now, so whatever it is, I declare it part of my catechism,” said Annie bluntly. “It’s a Lost Mystery. Now tell me what you know.”
“When the Heartless Ones choose to do a great ritual, they will gather together, one unto the next, until their numbers are terrible to behold,” said the mouse. “When this happens, the wisest