Page 26 of Tidal Creatures

Anna, as expected, follows. “What do you think this means?”

“I think I wish there was a way to test whether my everything is the same as the everything every other Chang’e gets,” says Judy. “I’m sure we have different windows, because why would a girl from Beijing or Montreal have a window from a suburban house in New Jersey? But do we get the same tunnel to take us there? If we do, then we could find another Aske and ask her to take us to the place where our Aske died. If we don’t, then as soon as we let the gate close with her on the other side, we lost her forever.”

“If she wasn’t stepping down after death, we already had,” says Anna. “There’s no way we could have told her family what happened without them seeing the divinity leaking out of her.”

“I guess that’s true,” says Judy, somewhat glumly. She doesn’t have a family. She’s never considered that being what she is could mean she doesn’t get a grave, either. “So when you were answering my questions back there, you never told me why you were pretending to be Losna.”

“Ah.” Anna shrugs. “I heard this region had a Diana running the place, pretty competently. Artemis got syncretized with Diana to such a degree that some people can’t even remember which one of us came first.”

“You’re … grumpy because other people might assume another moon goddess came first?”

“No. I don’t much care, and at this point, I’ve seen so many manifestations come and go that I realize it doesn’t matter that much. We all shine in the same sky, we all do the same job, we all come to versions of you when we need peaches or else we all get old and die like anybody else. I’m pretty sanguine about it all. But when I was looking over the records for the area, trying to decide how I wanted to approach things, I found something that was really interesting, at least to me.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re the big three.” The statement is made bluntly, and without any real hint of ego. In a deadpan tone, she continues, “Go team Greek exceptionalism and Roman expansionism, I guess. And Chinese population growth. Colonialism wiped out too many followers of the North American Lunars for them to get the numbers they’d need to rival us; we ate most of the other Europeans. Hell, your Japanese counterpart barely even gets a footnote most of the time. Chandra and Khonsu try, and they probably have better traction in the places where people still worship them, but it’s not belief that anchors us—it’s awareness. How many people are aware we exist.”

“Not explaining,” says Judy. “Talking a lot about how cool you are, but not explaining.”

“Ah. A region run by a Chang’e will usually have a Diana and an Artemis, and they’ll get along, because no one wants to piss off the peach purveyor. A region run by an Artemis may have a Diana—we try to play nicely with the other incarnations, even when it’s difficult, and we know we came first. The ego, she is soothed. But a region run by a Diana will very rarely have an Artemis. They tend to view us as unnecessarily repetitive, they don’t want to deal with comparisons, and we remind them that they’re not the oldest game in town. Technically I think Chang’e predates us both, but since there was never any real syncretization there, we can all get along with you.”

“Thank you? I think?”

Anna shrugs. “Anyway. I came here to spy on the alchemists, and I came as a minor goddess that I know hasn’t manifested in the region any time recently because the Losna in Denver said she was fine with it. Thought it was funny, even. And by telling people I was her, I could avoid attracting too much attention from your Diana, or making her all territorial before I knew what was going on.”

“Timing sucks,” says Judy. “Could have shown up being all undercover weirdo before people started getting murdered.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” says Anna dryly. “But your Aske isn’t the first death I’ve heard about recently.”

“Diana said something similar.” Their walking has carried them halfway across the quad, still largely empty at this hour of the morning. Members of the campus homeless population who crept back after the final security sweep sleep under the tables and draped across the benches, their bodies wrapped in tattered blankets and layer upon layer of torn sweater. Some of them are also students. They’ll rise when the campus starts to wake for the day, heading off to the gym for hot showers before they start their classes.

Judy hates that people have to choose between housing and tuition. She wishes she were an actual god, something powerful and cosmic enough to make this all go away. (Something like, perhaps, the Doctrine of Ethos, which is by all reports more powerful than a single manifestation of any given god. Maybe if she were Chang’e and not just one more incarnation of a goddess who’s scattered herself across the globe in shining fragments, but she’s not. She’s a timeshare manifestation, and she doesn’t have the power to make things better. One more reason to avoid Professor Middleton. It’s hard not to resent someone who has that kind of power and mostly chooses not to use it.)

She continues to guide Anna toward the picnic tables outside the drama department. They’re mostly shaded by evergreens, constantly a little damp and littered with fallen needles. No one much likes to hang out here except for the drama students, and even they tend not to linger, preferring to take their unrelenting chaos out into the streets where it can get them the attention they so desperately crave. She’s never found anyone sleeping in the little picnic area, which means no need to feel bad about waking people who actually need to rest.

(One of the perks of being a manifest Moon: she barely needs to sleep on the nights when she isn’t assigned to the sky above the City, and on the nights when she is, she doesn’t sleep at all. The toxins sleep would normally flush from her mind and body vanish during her trip across the sky, and being able to get by on an hour a night without long-term psychological harm has been a huge help in her studies. Easy to get an edge over the competition when your day is effectively six hours longer than theirs is.)

She brushes a layer of needles off the nearest damp picnic table and sits atop it, resting her feet on the bench as she produces another peach pit from her pocket and spins it between her fingers like a magician’s coin.

“How many of those do you just carry around with you?” asks Anna, looking with mild displeasure at the damp bench before echoing the brush-off-and-sit gesture. She lets Judy keep the table for herself.

Judy shrugs. “I don’t know. Half a dozen or so, most days. More, during the high summer. I like to have them on hand. They keep me calm.”

And they’re the key to her only real magic trick. Without them, it would be far too easy to convince herself that she’s just a very confused young linguist and not a god at all.

“There have been at least half a dozen,” says Anna. “Your Aske is the first one I’ve heard of actually dying inside the everything; all the others were out in the real world when they had their accidents.”

“Are we sure they were accidents?”

“The first couple, I was,” says Anna. “By number four, I was a little more skeptical.”

“Diana mentioned two, apart from Aske,” says Judy.

“Which brings us up near double digits, and that’s if it’s only been half a dozen,” says Anna, grimly. “I think it’s been more than that. I just can’t prove it. It’s not like there’s a directory of currently active moon gods.”

“How…?”

“They’ve all been minors,” says Anna. “Not a single Diana, or Chang’e, or Artemis. Only Askes, and Losnas, and other gods who don’t have a lot of punch in their pockets. They’d be easier to take than one of the big names. And they’ve all been the only representative of their Moon in an area. It’s not unknown for more than one manifestation of the same god to come together. Makes it easier for them to set the transit schedule.”