Gee DiMercy laughed, this time a more human-sounding chortle. “Modern man is so vastly entertaining. But they still come to the gods to ask questions, to petition for miracles. What do you wish, little goddess.” It was more a demand than a question, and I propped my elbows on the tabletop, chin in hand. Looking defenseless, which I was, if he planned to hurt me. I was betting on the immortal’s desire for entertainment to keep me safe.

“I know the Sumerians and the Babylonians and the Chaldeans worshiped versions of the Anzû storm gods, which makes you, maybe, the oldest thing alive on this planet. I want to know about The People of the Straight Ways. I want to know about the flood. I want to know about the arcenciel. And I want to know about the thing in the basement.” Up until the last statement, Gee had looked blandly polite, the way people look when you act according to expectations, which meant that Gee had been waiting for me to put things together and come to him for info. When I mentioned the basement, however, he blinked. Either Gee was the best actor in the universe—not an impossibility—or he had no idea about the basement. “Start talking,” I said.

“And would I share my knowledge and wisdom for nothing, little goddess? Share with a brazen and insolent woman with nothing to offer me? In times past, those who petitioned us did so with gifts of gold and silver, offering their bodies for the delight of the heavenly beings, and the blood of their first born.”

“I gave you birdseed. Eat up.”

“I propose a hunt. The two of us, on the wing. Perhaps we shall hunt elk in the cold north.”

My mouth fell open.

Gee laughed again at what he saw on my face. “You did not think to get away for nothing?” It was half question, half amused statement. His eyebrows went up when I didn’t reply and surprise flashed across his face. “You did think I would share my knowledge exempt of sacrifice. You are much the child. Or the fool.”

“I pick fool,” I said. “I can’t hunt elk. The biggest bird I can shift into—” I stopped. I had been about to say was the Bubo bubo, the Asian eagle owl. But I remembered the feathers I had taken from the death site of an Anzû. I still had one somewhere. It likely had Anzû DNA on it. Could I shift into an Anzû? And what would I be if I did? Something like excitement but darker, colder, shivered through me.

“Okay,” I said before I could think it through or change my mind. “One hunt in return for answers to every question I can think of.”

Gee looked to the ceiling as if he searched for heavenly protection from my foolishness. “One hunt for four questions.” He grinned evilly. “Questions already asked.”

“Five questions. The four questions I already asked, answered fully, in English, now, and one question of my choosing, answered fully, in English, at any time I ask it. In return I’ll give you one hunt, to last no longer than twenty-four hours, to take place at a mutually agreed-upon time, no sooner than tomorrow, and no later than two weeks before the Europeans arrive.”

Gee chortled, delighted. “I am not Loki to demand such strictures upon an agreement. Done,” he finished, before I could comment. “Your questions were: knowledge about The People of the Straight Ways, knowledge about the great flood, knowledge about the arcenciel, and knowledge of what hides in the deepest scion room. Yes?”

“Yes.” And maybe knowledge about Peregrinus, though I didn’t say it aloud for fear it would become my unasked question by accident. We’d see.

“My answer to the last question, first. I am uninterested in the scion rooms. They all stink and are filled with ravening beasts in human form. You will have to ask the Master of the City, as the residents there are his, as are we all.”

Speak for yourself, I thought. But instead of saying it, I inclined my head in a “go on” gesture.

“The People of the Straight Ways were also called the Builders. They built with stone and unfired mud bricks, which were effective at the time due to the lack of rainfall in a glacial period. Their civilization flourished over twenty thousand years ago, at the start of the last glacial period, and they were destroyed at the end of that period, some seven to ten thousand years ago, when the earth warmed almost overnight and the glaciers melted.”

“Overnight,” I stated, careful to make the word a not-question.

He waved a hand at me as if waving away the word. “It took over a century or so for the glacial sheet to melt, and the resultant movement of the earth, as the weight of the glaciers vanished and the northern hemispheres rose, and the floods created as ice dams burst and millions of gallons of water rushed toward the nearest seas, and the permafrost melted from stone-like ground. A hundred and twenty years of flooded hell. The floods were everywhere as cold, dry weather became hot, wet weather in only two generations. There were many series of floods. The final one, the largest and most destructive, wiped the last of the Builders’ civilization off the face of the earth. Earthquakes rocked the entire world. Whole mud brick cities sank beneath the waves, cities buried in the alluvial mud and many feet of ocean, all evidence wiped away forever. It is the survivors’ memories of that last flood that are memorialized in carvings and friezes and paint—the rolling waveforms, the stylized-squared forms, the doubled-over waveforms—on the archaeological sites, the world over.”

My childhood in the Christian children’s home flashed before my eyes. “Noah and the flood?” I asked.

Gee made a little fluffing motion with his hand. “I was not alive at the time, but I have been told by the oldest among us that Noah was obedient, but a boring and untalented preacher, a drunkard, and an egotist. His redemption came in the fact that he listened when the Anzû messengers spoke of the final destruction and built his ark. He was among the best of the Builders. He survived. Many more perished.”

“The Anzû,” I said, again carefully making it a statement and not a question, though the question was inherent. “Not God.”

Gee pondered the dilemma of the question/statement for a moment but decided to let it go. With a bored shrug, he said, “According to the ancients, the creator spoke through the living long before there was writing to record the prehistoric stories.”

I wasn’t sure that he had answered my statement and also didn’t know what his nonanswer said about my beliefs, so I didn’t push it. “That’s answers to questions one and two. I’m ready for number three.”