Page 111 of Tidal Creatures

“We’ll be there too,” says Chang’e. “Aske was our friend, not yours. She deserves to have people show up to avenge her.”

“Do you want me to just take out an ad in the newspaper?” asks Artemis.

“That would be an excellent idea,” says Erin. “We can include the address where the alchemists can come to collect your corpse, and save ourselves a lot of trouble. Are all moon gods as bound and determined to get killed as you lot?”

Máni shrugs. “We know we’re actually immortal. Why not be a little inclined to taking risks while we’re here on Earth?”

“Because the human halves of you aren’t immortal,” says Erin. “What do they have to say about this?”

“Judy’s fine with it,” says Chang’e. “She feels like we failed Aske.”

“David was planning to ask Eliza out after the end of the semester, when he was sure she had her feet under her and didn’t need a friend more than she needed a partner,” says Máni. “He’s furious with himself for not doing it sooner, and if this was Diana, he wants a chance to explain to her that Aske was never meant to be collateral damage.”

“Anna doesn’t get a vote,” says Artemis.

“Plan is to just go home, then? And those of us who live together get to deal with the traumatized widow and her son—and their dog—that we’ve suddenly acquired? Great,” says Dodger. “Erin, go wake my brother up, if you would be so kind. Kelpie, are you staying at our place tonight?”

“If you don’t mind,” says Kelpie.

“If you’re not careful, Smita’s going to decide that you live there, and then what I do and don’t mind is going to be entirely irrelevant,” says Dodger. “Artemis, this is your everything. Can you get us out of here?”

“I can,” says Artemis.

Erin wakes Roger, who rises groggily and with many small sounds of protest, then falls into line with the rest of them. Even half-awake, he’s learned to watch his words, not saying anything that could be viewed as either a request or a demand. It must be a hard way to live. Chang’e watches him, and understands both why her human half finds him so fascinating and why he cleaves so closely to his sister, who doesn’t seem to be as affected by his voice as the rest of them.

They fall into a line, Artemis at the front, Chang’e and Máni close behind, Kelpie after them. Roger and Dodger come after her, and Erin brings up the rear, a final defense that will hopefully go unneeded. They make their way back to the gate, Dodger watching the rainbow flashes in the walls with rapt fascination. As they’re nearing the wavering square of light that will lead them back to the alchemists’ lab, she clears her throat, then calls, “I want to try something. Can we hold up for a moment?”

Artemis stops, and the others stop in turn. Dodger, meanwhile, breaks away from the line and walks a few steps deeper into the blackness, then reaches out and begins to play her fingers over the air like she’s tracing patterns on a screen. The rainbow flashes follow her fingertips, increasing in brilliance and frequency, until they coalesce into a sheet of vivid brightness, scintillating through every color and no colors at the same time. It hurts to look at. She presses her palm against the center and it shatters back into a cascade of rainbow streaks, racing off to join their fellows in the walls.

Dodger turns, a satisfied expression on her face, back to Artemis. “I think that worked,” she says. “Let’s try the gate.”

Artemis gives her the sort of patient look normally reserved for very small children and for pets that have done a clever trick. “All right,” she says. “We’ll try it.”

She resumes her passage toward the gate, looking through its distorting transparent membrane, and blinks, recoiling slightly. “That’s not the lab,” she says.

“Nope,” agrees Dodger.

The gate is looking out onto the blackberry snarl behind the carnival house, briars and even boughs bending inward under the weight of their fruit visible through the distortion.

“How—?”

“I moved it,” says Dodger, with an easy shrug. “Now that I know where both ends are, it wasn’t hard.”

Roger looks at her fondly. “Please stop terrifying our new friends for fifteen minutes, if you would.”

“Fuck you,” says Dodger, in an amiable tone. She gestures to the gate. “After you, moon people. I promise I won’t stay in here and reprogram the universe while you’re not looking.”

Oddly, this doesn’t seem to be as reassuring as she wants it to be. Artemis frowns as she looks back to the gate, not moving until Kelpie pushes past her and steps out. Then she follows, and the others follow her, leaving Roger and Dodger alone in the everything.

She looks at the gate and doesn’t move, agony in her eyes.

“Dodge,” he says.

“I don’t want to go back,” she says. “I know we’ve always said we wanted some time to be normal before we went ahead with doing what we were made for, but I don’t want to go back. Everything here, on this side, feels … unlimited. In a way I can’t really describe yet, but want to spend more time figuring out.”

“We don’t know if they have farmer’s markets in the Impossible City. Or potatoes, even. Baker was an American author, so I’d assume potatoes, but she was writing in a very European tradition. Maybe we get there and we don’t have access to anything they didn’t have in pre-Colonial London. Are you ready to go without internet? Without your journals? Because I don’t think I am, and this is one of those things we do together or we don’t do it at all.”

“I know.” Dodger shrugs. “I’m still allowed to want to stay.”