Page 23 of Tidal Creatures

BOOK IIWaxing Crescent

The sun’s a thief, and with his great attraction

Robs the vast sea; the moon’s an arrant thief,

And her pale fire she snatches from the sun.

—William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

Kneel at the water to witness the change

Know that the final result may be strange

Far stranger to dwell your whole life in one room

Than make your requests of the pale tarot moon.

—Talis Kimberley, “Tarot Moon”

“Avery!” She moved closer, until he had to bend his arm to keep from losing hold of her, and then she dropped abruptly away as she sat. He felt her hand grasp his ankle. “Where are we?”

“Still inside the mosasaur, I guess,” he said glumly, and sat down beside her. She leaned, wrapping her arms around his shoulders in a brief but tight embrace before letting go and settling with her shoulder pressed to his, and the warmth of her skin just made him think about how cold he wasn’t. The Saltwise Sea had been plenty cold, and when the improbable road had disappeared from underneath them, he’d been half-afraid he’d drown before he could swim, but here, it was warm and pleasant, even if they were still soaking wet. “It swallowed us, and it’ll probably digest us down soon.”

“I will do no such thing,” said a deeply affronted voice, rich and warm and seeming to echo from absolutely everything around them. “Are you children entirely uncivilized? I am only here because my Lady of Salt and Sorrow asked that I should be, and while Seiche does not command the great beasts of the deep, we all love her well enough to listen when she calls for us, but I can go on my way easy as anything, and leave you to your previous destination.”

There was a warning note in the voice that made Zib think she wouldn’t have enjoyed whatever destination the mosasaur—because it simply had to be the mosasaur, they were inside the mosasaur, and the voice sounded like the one she heard in her head when she tried to talk without letting her teeth unclamp or moving her jaw—was talking about.

“No,” she said hurriedly, before Avery could say anything. She adored him so, but sometimes his dedication to the logical way of doing things could result in his saying things that caused more problems than they solved. “We’re very civilized. Why, we go to school and can do our sums and read books and everything!”

“Is that what you think it means to be civilized?” The mosasaur sounded genuinely curious. “That you could eat thinking people like sardines, but it would be all right, because you can do your sums?”

“Avery didn’t mean it,” said Zib. “It’s just he’s never seen a mosasaur before, and we didn’t precisely have time for introductions before you were swallowing us, and it’s only natural he should be a little bit confused.…”

—From Into the Windwracked Wilds, by A. Deborah Baker

Lacus Mortis

TIMELINE: AUGUST 18, 2017. THREE DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

The everything flashes and dazzles exactly as it has always done, an unending rainbowed corridor into eternity. Chang’e and Artemis walk in companionable silence, new-met and old allies at the same time. It’s strange sometimes, being a new incarnation of something so very old. The gods bring their own baggage to each manifestation, pieces of who they are layered over the humans they become, but they’re forever starting over from the beginning. Chang’e has never met this Artemis before. Maybe they’ve been dear companions at some point in the past; that isn’t enough to make them anything other than relative strangers now.

Which explains the disquiet with which Artemis looks at her and says, “I’ve seen the everything before, you know. You don’t need to show me this.”

“I know.” Chang’e keeps walking, and finally, ahead of them, the window appears. It looks the way it always does, stolen from Judy’s childhood bedroom, white frame with the single missing strip of paint on the lefthand side. She gestures toward it. “What do you see?”

“A window. Your window, I presume.”

“Yours doesn’t look like this?”

Artemis shakes her head. “My window is more Grecian. It changed about fifty years into this incarnation. Yours will change too, if you stick it out long enough. Does this conclude the show-and-tell?”

“Has another Lunar ever shown you their window?”

“No, you can’t go near another Lunar’s window, or it tries to change to suit you, and it can get confused.”

“I don’t know whether that’s the truth,” says Chang’e. She stops walking and gestures again, this time urging Artemis to continue forward without her. “I’m starting to think we don’t share the everything like that. Why would the universe need to conserve space? It has all the space that’s ever been. This is the everything. It can keep space open for both of us at once.”

Artemis looks at her dubiously but keeps walking toward the window.