Page 106 of Tidal Creatures

“You’re about to walk into the—” begins Chang’e, just as Dodger makes a hard right turn, and disappears.

“—wall,” finishes Chang’e, awkwardly.

A split second later, Dodger wraps her hand around what suddenly looks like the edge of an entryway and sticks her head back into view, asking, “Well? Are the rest of you assholes coming with me?”

“We’re coming,” says Roger, and gestures for the others to follow as he goes after his sister. Only Chang’e seems to notice how he closes his eyes as soon as he starts to walk, while Dodger fixes her attention on the ground, watching their feet. Oddly, he’s the only one of them not to stumble on his way to the turn. They all avoid the divot that caught Dodger, but at one point, Kelpie steps in a hole that goes halfway to her knee, while Chang’e catches her foot in what feels like a pothole, stumbling and falling behind the group.

The ground is mushier with every step, until it feels less like walking on ice about to break than it does like walking on cornstarch mixed with water, like it’s becoming something that’s only solid under direct pressure, and returns to a liquid state as quickly as it possibly can. It feels like it’s eroding around the edges of her foot, slipping away into nothingness. She walks as fast as she dares, unwilling to risk running when the ground is this unstable. Falling, she feels, would be a terrible mistake. Quite possibly the last one she’d ever have the opportunity to make.

Roger reaches the turn before any of the rest of them, and turns, eyes still closed, to offer them his help in clearing the floor. As Chang’e approaches, he leans out, shouting, “Jump!”

It’s a direct command. She can no more refuse to obey than she can suddenly figure out how to fly. She digs her feet as deep into the dissolving ground as she can, leaping for him, and feels the moment when it drops out from beneath her. For a moment, she feels like she’s flying after all. She always thought the everything was built on blackness. Now, hanging above true darkness, she understands how wrong she was.

In that split second, she’s genuinely afraid she’s about to die. Immortality doesn’t do much good for someone who breaks every bone in their body, and part of being twinned with mortals is dying. Chang’e knows that. She never meant to lead Judy into the abyss.

And then Roger is catching her, swinging her around to safety before settling her feet on solid ground. They’re standing in a new corridor, identical to the last, at least to her eyes, although this one still has rapid flashes dancing in its walls. Not as many as she expects there to be; compared to her own iteration of the everything, this is still a lightless, lifeless place. Roger lets her go and steps back, finally opening his own eyes.

“There you are,” he says, sounding quietly satisfied with himself.

“How—” she squeaks, voice breaking on that single syllable, denying it the chance to become the question she intended. She pauses, swallowing hard, and tries again: “How did you know?”

“Sometimes what I see isn’t as important as what my sister sees,” he says.

“And vice versa,” Dodger agrees. She leans to the side, looking around the pair of them, and winces. “I really hope no one dropped their keys back there.”

Chang’e looks over her shoulder. Aske’s body is gone, as are almost all signs of her demise. A few splashes of silver-red blood remain, back in the direction of the window, until the ground drops out from beneath them and they, too, fall into the void.

“No,” she says, faintly.

“I think the place was already collapsing, but putting all of us inside it put pressure on it that it wasn’t equipped to withstand,” says Dodger. “Okay, everyone. This is where you follow me, and you don’t argue anymore. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Kelpie.

“Come on,” says Roger, offering Chang’e his hand.

More shaken than she knew was possible, she takes it and holds on firmly, letting him guide her through the dark.

They stay clustered close as they walk, following Dodger’s lead. She walks a mostly straight line, but when she steps to the side or takes a larger step than usual, she pauses and looks back, watching them. It’s hard to mind that very much. The consequences of her not watching out for them are too dire.

“What if the tree’s still there?” asks Kelpie, sounding worried all out of proportion with the question. The reason follows immediately after: “What if Artemis gets back and sees it and climbs down, but doesn’t realize the ground’s mostly missing?”

“I thought you didn’t want to belong to her,” says Máni.

“I don’t want to belong to anybody,” says Kelpie, fiercely. “I’m a person, and that means I’m not property, no matter what the ones who made me were trying to do. But if I’m going to wind up with an Artemis no matter what, I’d rather be with the one I already know, and not have to spend all my time wondering whether some stranger is going to stroll in and try to … to claim me or something. So, what if the tree’s still there?”

“This space is part of the universe, but it’s outside the universe at the same time,” says Dodger. “We’re walking on the bottom side of the Möbius strip. Anywhere else, I wouldn’t have to run just because the floor was disappearing from underneath me. I’d tell it to cut that shit out, give it the mathematical proof that it already had, and keep on going. Here, I can’t do that. I’m limited by the nature of the reality around us.”

“And isn’t it amazing?” asks Roger.

Chang’e winces a bit at the delight in his voice. He sounds far too happy to be told that he’s been placed under some incomprehensible new limitation.

Erin nudges her with an elbow. “Ignore them when they get giddy about things no one reasonable would be happy about,” she advises. “They’re so used to the world being made of folded paper that they get excited when something refuses to rip just because they’re pulling on it.”

Dodger makes another turn.

This hallway has more flashes in the walls, more lights in all directions; it’s almost as vibrant as the active everythings Chang’e and Máni are accustomed to. There’s a distinct upward tilt to the floor. Dodger nods, looking satisfied.

“It’s doing that to make us comfortable,” she says. “There’s no actual ‘up’ or ‘down’ here—Artemis’s window being higher up was just the way the sky arranged itself, not anything to do with where your branches are. But the everything knows we expect certain things from linear space, and it’s trying to be linear for us. I don’t know what would happen if you brought an actual normal person in here. Whether the everything would collapse or fold in on itself, or just become a compressed plane and smash everyone inside.” Her tone turns speculative at the end.