By Any Other Name

## Continuity

**By Any Other Name** is an InCryptid short story. It is eleventh in the Alice and Thomas Shorts.

## Plot

A month after the slime incident, Alice is stir-crazy enough to sneak out on her bike despite being dizzy and having to convince her mice they were recreating a childhood trick-or-treating ritual. She tires mid-ride and catches a ride with her old teacher, Mrs. Johnson, and passenger Rose Marshall. Mrs. Johnson drops them both off in town and Alice follows Rose into Bronson's Diner, where Alice buys Rose a meal and they talk about Alice's love life and parental issues.

Meanwhile, Thomas and Mary are both at wit's end for being blocked from checking on Alice's well-being. The adults have warded the house against Mary, and Thomas's visits to the library yield no information. Mary and Thomas drive around town until they spot her bike at the diner. Thomas gives her a ride home. When they get there, Mary demands that Enid take down the wards on the house and Enid agrees, saying it was Jonathan's wishes.

Thomas realizes how deeply his feelings for Alice have grown.

## Characters

* Alice Healy
* Mary Dunlavy
* Thomas Price
* Eleanor Johnson
* Rose Marshall

**Mentioned**

* Naga
* Frances Healy
* Enid Healy
* Alexander Healy
* Jonathan Healy
* Gwendolyn Brandt
* Cynthia
* Gary Daniels
* Emma, Rose's friend
* Mr. Aniston, freshman English teacher
* Bobby Cross

## Field Guide

* Aeslin Mice
* Hitchhiking Ghost, Psychopomp
* Crossroads Ghost

**Mentioned**

* Alkabyiftiris slime
* Screaming Yams

## Locations

* Buckley Township, Michigan
	+ Healy Home
	+ The forest (mentioned)
	+ Old Parrish Place
	+ Library (mentioned)
	+ The Red Angel (mentioned)
	+ Bronson's diner

**Mentioned**

* Penton Hall, England

## Continuity

* Aeslin lore references Alice's childhood kidnapping by a snake cult.
* Alice's clergy is struggling with the death of their novice.
* Rose mentions her friend Emma, but according to Sparrow Hill Road she didn't meet Emma until 1965.

## Trivia

* Alexander is known for his endless supply of knives and close combat, Enid for her shotgun and from-a-distance sniping.
* Thomas is confident of his ability to take Jonathan in a fight, but Alex is formidable - largely because Enid will always be there as his backup.
* When she was younger, Alice would come home from the carnival with a different crush every year. That stopped "a while ago," and Mary wondered for a time if Alice wasn't into boys.
* Mary believes Jonathan would have fired her long ago as Alice's babysitter if Alexander and Enid had let him.
* Rose notes that Alice smells of recent near-death: ashes and lilacs, a "weird" combo Rose doesn't recognize.
	+ Ashes and lilies: death on the road
	+ Ashes and cherry cough syrup: carnival or carnie death

## Quotes

* "As long as [Alice] was out of high school and still devoted to the woods before anything else, Thomas wasn't sure anyone got to object to anything Alice wanted to do [regarding her love life]."
* "The woods know who I am. They've known me my entire life, and they don't think I'm strange, and they don't think I'm made wrong, and they don't want me to be anything but who I am. The woods love me well enough to let me breathe....the woods owe me, too, because they took my mama away from me, and they won't let me get hurt too bad to come back from. Nothing that lives in Buckley would ever do that to me." -Alice
* **Rose:** So you still need a babysitter because you think you can talk to trees. Okay.
**Alice:** Says the dead girl who wants me to give her a cheeseburger.
* "You realize he's going to marry her." -Mary
	+ "I've been coming to that conclusion." -Enid

### Aeslin Lore

* "It is One Thing to Settle Divinity upon Children, but Quite Another to say that they No Longer Need to Obey their Parents" -The Kindly Priestess (Elizabeth Evans)
* The Holy Ritual of Stay In the Bag and Don't Make a Sound