Page 40 of Tidal Creatures

“You don’t understand: I don’t sleep. At all. If I try to go to bed, if I close my eyes for too long, I can get stepped on. Artemis will just take over and push Anna all the way out of the equation. Artemis doesn’t see anything wrong with busting into a room full of half-naked men; if they didn’t want to be seen like that, they should have kept their clothes on, and besides, it’s an honor to be beheld so by a goddess.” Anna looks briefly haggard. “She isn’t always a nice person, Judy. She doesn’t have a problem killing people, as long as she thinks they deserve it, and so when she’s this restless, when there’s a hunt on, I have to stay awake. I have to keep myself as close to the surface as I can.”

Judy stares at her, horrified. She hasn’t always agreed with Chang’e; the goddess is old and set in her ways, and sometimes she likes to do things in ways Judy thinks are slow or inefficient or just plain wrong. But she’s never been afraid her passenger was going to hijack her body and use her divine sense of justice to commit very real, very human crimes.

A Lunar imprisoned away from a Chang’e and her peaches will only have to suffer through a mortal lifespan, growing old and eventually dying of age, if nothing else comes to claim them. She has no idea what might happen to a Lunar with no way to reach the City.

“You need to stay close, because that was not okay, and that also wasn’t quite a crime,” says Judy. “It was inappropriate and rude, but it can be chalked up to enthusiasm, or to not knowing the social rules. You might get called in front of a disciplinary committee if someone makes an official complaint, but that’s about as far as this goes. Artemis uses your body to steal something or stab somebody, that’s a lot harder to get out from under.”

“I know that,” says Anna miserably. “I’ve known that since the first time she took over. She’s hunting something, and I don’t know what it is.”

Judy pauses. “You didn’t just come here because the alchemists are in a tizzy, did you?”

“Good word. ‘Tizzy.’ Gets the point across.”

“Good attempt at deflection, but I will not be deflected this time.”

Anna sighs. “The reason I know is the alchemists. The reason I don’t know is something deeper. Artemis is carrying it so far down that she won’t even share it with me, and I have no idea what it might be, only that it was vital we get here before any other Artemis could find the way.”

Judy stares at her. “Are you telling me we’re about to have an Artemis convention on our hands?”

“Not if we find what I’m hunting for fast enough,” says Anna.

David emerges from the building. He’s clothed now, sunlight lending a rich warmth to his dark brown skin, and catching silvered highlights off his still mostly black hair. He’ll go gray soon enough, like all the rest of them, and Judy doesn’t think it’ll age him before his time; he’s going to be one of those men who looks distinguished with silver hair. She has no idea if he’s gay or straight or neither, but assuming he eventually goes looking for a partner, he’s going to make somebody very happy.

Not Judy. She likes boys, but she doesn’t like them nearly a foot taller than her, or occupied by other moon gods. When she hooks up with somebody, she wants them to be wholly human, or else aligned with another pantheon entirely, one where she won’t have to compete with her partner for access to the City. Above all else, the City.

He scowls as he marches toward them, ire focused mostly on Anna, the stranger. Judy tries not to be pleased by that; some of the anger is for her too, she’s sure.

“What the hell was that?” he asks.

Anna looks at him coolly. “Hello, Máni,” she says, and stands straighter, eyes flashing green. She doesn’t step up fully, but she moves far enough toward the divine to remind Judy that she’s currently very mortal and thus very fragile.

She doesn’t like the feeling, and steps up almost reflexively in answer. The sunlight is diffuse enough that the faint sparkle in the air will seem like a trick of the light; she’s unable to cause herself any issues, uncomfortable as it is to be stepped up in full daylight.

David blinks, and then blinks again as Máni comes surging to the surface in answer to the obvious threat presented by the two goddesses in front of him. “Do I know you?” he asks.

Anna—Artemis—shakes her head. “Not this version of you. I’ve met many versions of you.”

“Don’t screw with his head,” snaps Chang’e. “Máni, this is Losna. She wanted to ask you some questions about what happened with Aske.”

Máni glances around, suddenly and clearly nervous in a way he wasn’t even when presented with the goddesses. His shoulders hunch as he leans forward and asks, in a small voice, “Did you find her body?”

“No. It wasn’t there when I went into the everything last night. Máni, I have a very important question for you. You’re not in trouble, no matter what you say. All right?”

Judy waits until he nods understanding before she continues:

“Every morning, the next person to travel through the City meets the person who came before them at the gate, to get the key and make sure nothing happened during the transit. You were supposed to meet Aske. Did you?”

Máni jerks like she’s stuck him with a pin. Chang’e sighs.

“You’re not in trouble, no matter what you answer. We just need to know what happened. Did you see her before you went through the gate?”

“No. She never came out.”

“So how did you get the key?” Because that’s one of the major reasons they needed to talk to him: without the key, unless the gate remained open for a full day, he shouldn’t have been able to get back into the everything. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to pass the key along to Judy. So much hinges on a little piece of moonsilver metal, which looks, on its own, no more remarkable than any other key. A little old-fashioned, maybe, but not unique.

The keys are the reason they form communities, the reason they can keep a schedule, rather than giving in to their addicted urges to spend every night sailing across the City. Any one of them would give up a human life in an instant for another breath of that intoxicating air. Chang’e knows it, even as she knows Judy’s human existence is important. Part of what keeps them anchored enough to the world that they can keep manifesting after so many others have faded and failed is their closeness to humanity.

Since the beginning of the world, humans have never stopped looking up at the midnight sky and dreaming of the moon. So long as there are keys, and gates, and reasons to linger in human form, not exhausting their incarnations in their eagerness to get back to the Impossible City, the moon is looking back on the world, and dreaming of it, too.