Page 104 of Tidal Creatures

“The body?” asks Erin, less patient and less comfortable with the situation than some of her companions.

Chang’e nods. “This way,” she says, and turns to lead them deeper into Aske’s everything. The rainbow flashes are continuing to slow, and the ground is taking on a mushy quality, like ice on the verge of breaking. It makes her nervous. She’s fairly sure that’s the right response to walking on something that feels like it’s considering the virtues of ceasing to exist.

Dodger watches the walls as they walk, less rapt than fixated, intent. She still manages to avoid the blood, even without looking down. Chang’e isn’t sure how that’s possible when there’s so much of it. She doesn’t want to ask.

“Roger,” says Dodger, voice gone soft. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

“I am,” he replies. “You have any ideas about how we’re supposed to get out of here?”

“Can’t we just go back up the tree?” asks Kelpie. “It’s a good tree. It seemed really solid.”

“That’s assuming the tree is still there when we’re done,” says Dodger. “This place is breaking down.”

“The everything can’t break down,” protests Máni. “It’s always here, or we wouldn’t be able to access the City, and without the City, I don’t think anything else gets to exist.”

“How much do you know about mushrooms?” asks Dodger.

Máni blinks before turning to Chang’e. “Is that a weird question?” he asks. “Because that seems like a weird question, but I no longer feel like I really have a benchmark for where ‘normal’ stops and ‘weird’ begins.”

“Says the moon god to the moon goddess who just grew an adult peach tree in under a minute, while they walk through a channel of nothingness to look at a corpse,” says Erin, almost singsong.

Máni flushes a deep red but keeps his eyes on Chang’e, waiting for her response.

She nods, not quite smiling. “Yeah, that’s a weird question. What do mushrooms have to do with anything, Dodger?”

“I think that’s basically what we are, all of us, except for maybe Smita, since she’s still a human and not an anthropomorphic force of the universe. We pop up because the mycorrhizal network says the right conditions for our growth and survival have been met, and if those conditions persist, we survive. If they don’t, or if there are more predators present than expected—meaning the alchemists—then we die.”

“That’s grim and a little terrifying as an outlook on life,” says Chang’e. “What the hell’s a ‘mycorrhizal network’?”

“In forests, fungi tangle their mycelia with plant roots to form an organic internet. They communicate that way, full conversations via chemical signal. It’s basically math as instinctive language, and it’s gorgeous, and it lets the whole biome talk to itself. That combination of mycelium and root is the mycorrhizal network.”

“And we’re mushrooms?”

“Exactly,” says Dodger, sounding pleased to have been understood. “We’re mushrooms. Well, I think this—your everything—is the mycorrhizal network. We’re walking through the channels the universe uses to communicate with itself.”

“The universe being our version of the forest in this metaphor.”

“Yup.” Dodger shoots an oddly heated glance at Roger. “Stop gloating, asshole.”

“I told you I’d get you to start using metaphors one day,” he says. “My victory was inevitable.”

“So is my fist.”

He snickers and keeps snickering as Chang’e frowns, brows knotting together in dismay. “Okay, I mostly follow, I think, but why do you think my tree isn’t going to be there when we go back?”

They’re approaching the body, small, crumpled, and sad in its pool of red and silver. Roger speeds up, just a little, as does Erin; the two of them are the first to reach the fallen Aske, crouching down so that their bodies partially block hers from view. Kelpie looks relieved. She stops walking, and studies the peach in her hands, turning it over and over like it contains all the wonders of the universe. And maybe it does. Given the unsoil on which its parent fed its roots, this peach may contain the answer to all the questions ever asked.

“The mycorrhizal network tells the forest where mushrooms should grow, and when they sprout, they grow their own mycelia to add to the collective,” says Dodger. “They put down roots, essentially, even though they started from a single spore. And then, if those mushrooms get plucked, some of their mycelia get absorbed back into the forest, but some of them just die. This slice of the everything was Aske’s mycelium. And it’s dying, because she’s done. The everything as a whole will endure—that’s why it matters that each of you has your own—but this piece of it is going to atrophy and be absorbed back into the soil. The universe, I mean, in this case. There’s no more need for it.”

“But … Aske…”

“Roger tells me she bled silver. That stuff we saw by the window, that was her blood. Is that correct?”

Chang’e nods silently.

“Then you have to know we were never going to be able to take her out of here and back into the material world,” says Dodger. “She’d be the biggest prize we had ever dangled in front of the alchemists. A dead goddess, still leaking divinity? That’s like rubbing catnip in your hair before you walk into a lion’s den.”

“Lions don’t care about catnip,” says Roger.