Page 25 of Tidal Creatures

“I need you to open the everything and go through,” she says. “Find the peach pit.”

“What?”

“Find the peach pit.” She keeps holding out the key until Anna finally takes it.

Muttering, “Immortality gods are so weird,” Anna drops down, and Artemis surges up. There’s no pretense of being Losna this time; she just comes in silver moonlight, with eyes like the forest at night, looking at Judy like the woman is something unspeakable and inferior.

“Why am I doing this?” she asks.

“Because Aske died last night,” says Judy, bluntly.

Artemis freezes. “What?”

“Or the night before last; it’s hard to say. Anyway. Aske died, and we left her body in the everything, because she was still bleeding silver, but when I opened the gate to go through, she wasn’t there. So either something took her body away, or every one of us opens our own channel through the everything.”

“That can’t be right,” says Artemis. “We walk the same path.”

“Then open the gate, and find the peach pit.”

Artemis turns to the wall, uncertain for the first time, and taps the stone with the key. Once again, the gate appears, growing fainter as the dawn approaches, and Judy watches Artemis step through. The goddess stops just inside, distorted by the carnival glass-effect of the portal between them, and looks at the ground.

And keeps looking. Judy glances at the sky. The edge is getting lighter; they’re running out of time.

“Artemis!” she calls. “Anna! Come back through!”

She won’t step through the gate without an invitation. Even though they were just in her iteration of the everything together without coming to any harm, she doesn’t trust it to support an uninvited visitor that easily.

Artemis glances up. “It’s not here,” she says. “It should be right…”

Her eyes widen as she notices how light the sky is getting, and she lunges through the gate, which is getting fainter all the time. For a moment, Judy thinks she’s not going to make it out. What would that do, spending a whole day stranded inside the everything, without even the City to serve as a distraction? Can someone survive in there for that long?

Artemis emerges just as the outline of the gate becomes completely invisible, barely escaping the solidifying stone, and it seems almost like a formality as she taps the key against it to tell it that it can close for another day. If she hadn’t, would it have closed on its own in the face of the unrelenting sun, or would the channel to the everything still have been “hers” when night fell again, set to whatever standards the everything has been using all along?

Judy suddenly feels very, very over her head, and only the fact that Chang’e is equally confused keeps her from going screaming for Diana.

“How did you know—?” asks Artemis.

Judy shakes her head as she turns to face the other Lunar, holding out the key for Artemis to take. “I didn’t. I guessed.”

“Explain.” Artemis slips the key into her pocket.

“Aske was on duty two nights ago. She’s new, so we were a little concerned when she didn’t come back and stand down, but Máni had the key, and everything seemed fine. I don’t think he killed her. He’s a sweet guy, for a football player, and that’s not the sort of thing I’d expect from him.”

“People can surprise you,” says Artemis grimly, the silver glow beginning to fade from the air around her as she steps back down toward Anna.

“Tell me about it, Losna,” says Judy. “But no, I don’t think he hurt her. It just doesn’t make sense. She was on duty, she opened the gate, she went through, she didn’t come back. The next night, Máni opened the gate and went through, and when he came back, he had her body. We had to leave it in the everything.”

“What? Why?”

“Because she was bleeding moonlight,” says Judy grimly. “She was still stepped up into the divine when she died. And she stayed that way. Even if David had been willing to carry a dead white girl across campus, we couldn’t have explained the way she was leaking divinity.”

“I see.”

“I expected to find her when I went through last night, or signs of what had happened to her, at least. Instead, there was no trace of anything. I think what happened is Aske did come back, and someone was waiting for her on this side of the gate. They attacked her as she was coming through, and she ran back inside without closing the gate. Her attacker followed, and they killed her in the everything, but it was her everything, not theirs. The gate never fully closed, just disappeared when the sun came up. That’s not the same thing. When Máni opened it the other night to go through, he wasn’t unlocking the door; he was … pushing open a door that had already been propped in that position.”

“That’s a pretty big jump to make from me not changing your window.”

“Maybe. It was still an accurate one, though.” Judy shrugs as she turns to start down the stairs.