Page 108 of Tidal Creatures

Kelpie blinks.

“Ignore him,” advises Erin. “The rest of us do, and it works pretty well for the most part. That sounds accurate to me, Roger. Missing some nuance, but what summary isn’t?”

“Any nuance that matters?”

“They’re doing this all ahead of an eclipse, and it’s all but guaranteed that it’s an attempt at claiming the Impossible City.”

“They’re not going to give up on the City,” says Roger. “If we stop them this time, they’re just going to step back and take another run. Is this the rest of our lives? Lurching from alchemical attempt at the City to alchemical attempt at the City, until either we slip and they get in or we admit that there’s one way to stop this and move into the City ourselves.”

“That sounds about right,” says Erin. “But until we have to file change-of-address forms, we have pizza, and we have cable television, and we have time to figure out a better way to do this. For right now, we focus on the murdered girl, the local alchemists, and the Lunars.”

“It’s what works,” says Roger.

Chang’e sits down next to him, letting Judy slip a little closer to the surface than she normally does when they’re inside the everything. Judy reaches over to take his hand, tangling their fingers together, and holds on tight.

“I’m sorry you got dragged into all this,” she says.

“I’m not.” He shrugs. “This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks, and even if it wasn’t, without Dodger playing Minesweeper back there, you would all have plummeted into the abyss, assuming you could find Aske’s everything in the first place. I’d rather be a little inconvenienced than never know you because you’d died in the everything.”

“That’s … oddly sweet.”

He grins. “Oddly sweet is my superpower.”

The others sit in turn, and comfortable silence falls as they wait in the dark, surrounded by the rainbow light of unfulfilled potential, and hope that they haven’t already missed their chance to set things right.

Palus Persici

TIMELINE: AUGUST 19, 2017. TWO DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

Everyone has drifted off by the time Artemis comes through the window. They’re not all necessarily asleep, but they’re dozing, disassociating, nicely removed from the situation. She slides off the ledge, getting her feet firmly planted as she takes in the scene; the bodies either sitting or sprawling on the unseen ground, the litter of leaves and bruised peaches that remain, even in the absence of the tree. After a long pause to see if anyone will notice her arrival, she plants her hands on her hips, and demands, in a carrying voice: “What the actual fuck is going on here? I thought this was a murder investigation, not a slumber party!”

Chang’e jerks awake. She dozed off with her head on Roger’s shoulder, dreaming a complicated, confusing mixture of Judy’s dreams and her own, and it is surprising and pleasant to realize how many of those dreams were the same. She turns to the window, eyes wide and still bleary from sleep, then scrambles to her feet as she realizes who’s there.

“Artemis!” she exclaims.

Kelpie rubs her eyes as she wakes, and rises with startling grace, offering her hand to Máni as she does. Both of them face the goddess of the hunt and the moon, who looks refreshed and invigorated by her evening’s activities, full of light and vigor.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” says Kelpie.

Artemis’s expression softens, like she wasn’t expecting that and doesn’t quite know what to do with it, but is happy to accept it all the same. “Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks. “I’ve been doing this for a long time.” Her attention flicks to Chang’e. “I see you didn’t die.”

“No, I made it through Aske’s window,” she says. “I grew a peach tree from there to here, so everyone else could come down and join me.”

“Oh? And how did that work out?”

“I’d need to wake Dodger to explain, and the Doctrine may not be quite human, but it’s not Lunar; they still need to sleep. I’d rather not upset her. Basically, we each generate our own individual branches of the everything, but they’re all connected. Dodger understands them sort of instinctively, and when Aske’s started collapsing, she got us out before we could fall into the void.”

She’s leaving out so much. She doesn’t feel like this is the right time to explain.

“Was Aske still there?”

Chang’e sighs. “She was. Blunt-force trauma to the head. She died quickly, but she made it back to her window before she did. I think she was trying to reach the City. That, or whoever attacked her dragged her there, and was trying to open the window, but it wouldn’t open without Aske.”

“She was definitely attacked inside the everything?”

“It looked like it. And since her window is gone, we can’t go back for another look. But the way the blood was splattered made it pretty clear. Can I see the bottom of your shoe?”

Three sets of footprints. Aske’s, Máni’s, and a third set which left smaller tracks. Looking bewildered, Artemis lifts her foot and shows Chang’e the sole of her shoe.