Page 65 of Tidal Creatures

“Judy? Yes. I’m not stepped so far forward that she can’t see what’s going on, and have her opinions about it. She’s just … letting me drive right now, when it’s better for us. Every Lunar has their own relationship with their hosts. Some choose to integrate, until there’s only one person in the body; some choose to separate more than we have, making rules and drawing lines. And some go to war against themselves, as I mentioned before. The mortal hosts almost never win when that happens. They’re not strong enough.”

“That’s awful,” says Kelpie. “So you’re all three the god of the same thing?”

“Sort of,” says Chang’e. “I’m the only one of us who handles immortality. Máni is…”

“Máni is mostly vague, these days,” says Máni. “No one’s ever quite been able to tell me what I’m supposed to be the god of, but then, I haven’t been doing this job for long. Maybe we’ll eventually figure out what I’m supposed to be good for.” He laughs then, large and without any real humor.

“Máni used to have companions,” says Kelpie. “They would manifest and help him do his job. They were minor gods of the phases of the moon, and of harvest and healing. Bil and Hjúki. They were on the list the alchemists had for possible aspects to pursue, but rejected because Máni wasn’t considered powerful enough to be worth catching.”

“Catching?” he asks, with a dangerous note in his voice.

“That’s what I was trying to explain, before everyone kept pulling things in different directions and asking questions,” says Kelpie, a little desperately. “The alchemists who made me, they were trying really, really hard to incarnate the aspects of individual Lunar gods that have dropped away over the centuries, as belief waned. The Man in the Moon’s dog, or Chang’e’s rabbit. Not, um, Tu’er Ye, the rabbit god on the moon, but the rabbit that accompanied her in some earlier versions of her story. We have records that say she was seen on Earth with a celestial rabbit, a very long time ago, when people believed more in this sort of thing. But beliefs shifted, and the Moon stopped incarnating the supplementary aspects. Which means—”

“Which means the universe already has grooves worn into it where those aspects could go, but it stopped having enough belief to smooth the process and since they weren’t strictly necessary, they got downsized,” says Roger. “They still have the potential to manifest; they just need a little push.”

“The alchemists have been trying to give that push by crafting perfect vessels for them, so there won’t be any resistance when they try to manifest,” says Kelpie. “That’s what the project I was working with did.”

“Mmm-hmm. And which one are you?”

Kelpie laughs a little, uncertainly. “I always thought I was working with the team that was trying to incarnate Artemis’s Hind. A hind is another word for a female red deer, and Artemis used to appear with one. I always thought it was a little weird that a huntress appeared with a deer, and not with some of her dogs or something, but I didn’t write the myths.”

Artemis steps slightly forward, around Máni, who gives her a half-amused look. “In the myths, she would transform people into deer when she wanted to punish or protect them, and I guess the symbolism stuck.”

Kelpie nods. “Yeah, that. So they thought if they could get the Hind to manifest, a manifestation of Artemis would be drawn to the lab, and they’d be able to catch and contain it, and force it to grant us access to the City.”

“Why did they want a powerful Lunar?” asks Roger, gesturing Artemis to silence with a wave of one hand. “Wouldn’t someone like Máni be easier for them to control? And wouldn’t Chang’e have been a better choice than Artemis, by the same measure? I know if I were going to try to capture and control a powerful aspect of the incarnate moon, I’d go for the farmer before I tried to catch the huntress. Seems safer.”

“These aren’t people who focus on the safety of their work,” says Erin. “Apprentices are expendable, and you can always get another one if you accidentally break the one you have. ‘Slow down and come in second’ might as well be the alchemist’s creed.”

“Right. So you go for the big gold ring right out the gate, on the theory that if you try for copper, you might catch it, but someone else will have managed to get there first. It makes sense, even if I don’t like it.”

“They tried for Artemis and Chang’e at the same time,” says Kelpie, clearly choosing her words with care. “Chang’e is just as powerful, and she comes with the added bonus of her peaches—immortality is always an attractive offering to an alchemist. Even with access to a philosopher’s stone and the ability to brew the elixir of life, the process is time-consuming and materially expensive. Growing a peach tree and living forever is a temptation no alchemist could ignore.”

“It’s not that simple,” grumbles Chang’e. She wants to be flattered by the acknowledgment of her power, but she’s slightly wounded at the same time. People always want to act as if it’s the peaches themselves that have the divine gift, and not the one who grows them. Without her, all they’d get is fruit. Delicious fruit, to be sure, but fruit all the same. She’s essential to the process of immortality. “You know the first alchemists got the idea for the elixir of life from my orchards? Mine and Iðunn’s, although she grew apples. I haven’t seen her in centuries. I don’t even know if she’s still around…” Her voice trails off, annoyance replaced by grief as she considers that yet another of them might have been lost.

They were friends once. Iðunn was never a Lunar god, but there was a time when more divinities regularly walked the world than happens anymore, and she was a sweet concept who incarnated in sweet hosts, always ready with a smile or a joke or a slice of hot baked apple pastry. The things that woman could do with a twist of dough and a sprinkle of sugar were virtually illegal. The idea that she might just not be considered necessary by the universe anymore is a little heartbreaking, like finding out that Tuesday has been canceled, or the sunrise has been deemed extraneous to needs. Something so constant and predictable that you never even considered it might be taken away.

Kelpie grimaces, sympathetic, and continues. “They want those peach trees, but not as badly as they want the City. The City is everything. We don’t need peach trees if we can tell the Tower that humans live forever now.”

“The right humans, I’m sure,” says Erin. “We’re talking about alchemists here. There’s no way they take the City and bring about utopia.”

“Probably not,” admits Kelpie. “They always said it was good I couldn’t leave the lab after my accident, because the people who weren’t with us were the worst sort of people. They were dull and drab and not magical at all, and they didn’t even know what they were missing. But Margaret would put on pretty clothes and go clubbing three nights a week, and sometimes she’d come back smelling like smoke and other people’s perfume, with her lipstick all smudged, and she looked so happy when that happened, like nothing could ever go wrong again. And then I had to go out of the lab, and I met Isabella and her family, and Isabella’s plenty magical, but her husband’s not, and her son’s not, and they’re lovely people. They were nice to me, and I liked them lots when I met them. I don’t think anyone should get to say who the right or wrong sorts of people are, because everyone’s different.”

“And thus do brand-new lab-grown people figure shit out faster than some of the ones who’ve been doing this the normal way for a hell of a lot longer,” says Dodger, sounding disgusted. She moves to fill her coffee mug again.

“Should you really be having that much caffeine?” asks Artemis, somewhat delicately.

“It soothes my nerves,” says Dodger.

“That isn’t how—”

“I wouldn’t argue with her,” says Roger. “It’s rarely a good idea, and I want Kelpie to finish telling us why the alchemists wanted a powerful Lunar, and not just any Lunar they could grab. There are so many of you, it would be easy to pick off a few around the fringes.”

Chang’e relaxes slightly. These people aren’t responsible for the deaths. She was fairly sure of that already, but now she’s certain. That’s good. She really doesn’t want to deal with predators on all sides, especially not predators she can’t either destroy or outrun. The Doctrine knows her face now—this one, anyway, and she wouldn’t be surprised if that means the Doctrine can deduce all her other faces through some hand-wavy piece of mathematics. She can’t run. She can’t hide. She doesn’t have to, and that’s a relief almost too big to stand up against.

“They’ve already been doing that,” says Kelpie, sounding bemused. “Pretty much since the Congress fell.”

Everyone in the room looks at her with horrified dismay, even Isabella, who may be new to all this discussion of Lunar manifestations and alchemical plots, but can still tell that Kelpie just admitted to murder as casually as she might have mentioned making a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s chilling, in its own way. Sweet as she seems, she was made and raised by people who saw the world as nothing more than an endless assortment of resources for them to harvest and bend to their own ends, and it would be unwise to forget that about her.