Page 113 of As You Wake, Break the Shell

“They’re so cute!” Cora exclaimed, holding one of the fat, lumpy guys up. There were so many shapes and sizes of them, all proudly on display in one of the produce booths. Round, long, wonky, flat, yellow, green, orange, creamy, striped, solid, and speckled. Cora had no experience with squash, and she had no idea what they tasted like, but from appearance alone, they were the most drop-dead charming fruit she’d ever seen.

“They’re cute as heck,” agreed Noelle, one of the farmers who had brought this template back to life. She stood beside the booth, looking pleased as punch. “I can’t get over them.”

“Why did they start producing so fast?” Signy asked as she perused a pile of orange orbs. “What did you do to them?” To a stranger, she might’ve sounded critical, but Cora knew Signy was the most excited person here. Diagnostic grilling was just how Signy went about loving stuff, sometimes.

Noelle chuckled. She was used to Signy; all the farmers were. Signy may not have worked on the squash, but a ton of other things growing on the community farm had her fingerprints in their DNA. Whenever the farmers got stuck on something, Signy was the one they called.

And that made Cora very, very proud.

“Signy, you know, I would love to tell you,” Noelle said, “but we have no idea. We didn’t do anything except take the seed brakes off. They’re supposed to be a late summer and fall crop. Winter, too, with some of them. We printed in early spring, like the instructions said, and they just . . . exploded. Way faster than the Primer suggested.”

Signy glanced up. “Are we trusting Primer crop descriptions now?”

Noelle gave a congenial scoff. What the Primer said and how crops behaved didn’t always match, and the inconsistency of what was supposed to be an infallible resource was a constant complaint among the Ring’s botanical crowd. “Not me,” Noelle said. “But still, they matured awful fast. Something about the growing conditions is my first guess, but we haven’t gone combing through the template yet. We were too busy with harvest. You’re more than welcome to give it a look-over. I’d love your eyes on it, actually. It could be something about the way we took the brakes off.”

“I appreciate that,” Signy said graciously. “But I’ve got too many projects on my plate right now. I’ll leave this one to you.”

Cora swallowed a skeptical smile, certain she’d find Signy poring over squash templates within an hour of returning home. She picked up another squash, admiring its dappled stripes. “So what do we do with these?” she asked. “Do you eat ’em like an apple, or—”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Noelle laughed, stopping Cora as she moved to try a bite. “No, they’ve got a hard rind and they take some prep. You need to roast them first.”

“Oh, like a potato? Or beets?”

Noelle waved them over to the other side of the booth, where a small workstation had been set up for people with exactly this question. A chopping board, a few knives, a large spoon, and a kitchen bowl waited at the ready. “It’s easy,” Noelle said. “It just takes a little time, and . . . well, some getting used to.”

As Cora and Signy paid rapt attention, Noelle took a round green squash, hefted a knife, cut the squash in half, and—

“What the fuck,” Cora blurted out. In one chop, the formerly adorable orb had transformed into a horror show. It wasn’t like a potato at all. There was a hollow inside, crisscrossed with a dense web of moist, fleshy strings, more appropriate for a surgery than a farmers market.

Signy’s eyes went as wide as Cora’s, but where Cora was revolted, Signy was entranced. “Oh my god,” she said with an open-mouthed smile. Noelle tilted the cleaved half so Signy could look inside. “Is that—I mean, that must be the endocarp, but this arrangement—oh, wow. May I?” She took the squash and peered inside. “Cora, we need to take some of these home.”

“Do we?” Cora asked wearily.

Signy gave her a look that said there was no point in arguing. “You said they were cute.”

“That was before I knew their guts are cursed,” Cora said. She set her squash down on the table, wiped her hands off on her pants for show, then eyed Noelle with suspicion. “They cannot taste good,” she said. Looks aside, there was a weird smell coming off of the cut-open squash. It wasn’t bad, but neither was it good.

“They taste delicious,” Noelle assured her. “They’re packed with nutrients, and you can do so much with them. Soup, casseroles, side dishes, pie—”

“Pie?!” Cora repeated, almost offended. She pointed at the nasty strings that her wife was now touching barehanded for some heinous reason. “You’re gonna fill a perfectly nice pie with those?”

Noelle raised a finger as though she’d been anticipating this question. “The seeds are worth saving for your pantry, because they make a great snack if you roast them with salt and spices. But as for the rest of it—” She took the half of the squash that Signy was not cooing over, picked up the spoon, and—

“Oh, no.” Cora covered her mouth with her hand as Noelle began to scrape out the hollow. “Oh. Oh, that’s so fucked. Honey, are you seeing this? Ugh. No. Why?”

Signy sighed beatifically, closing her eyes. “Please ignore my wife,” she said. “She hates remembering that plants have organs.”

“That is not true,” Cora protested. “I just think they should stop being freaks about it.”

“Here,” Noelle said. She set down the edible autopsy, reached under the table, pulled out a box, and opened the lid. “Let me convince you.”

The box contained several slices of bread—or maybe cake. Dark and golden, flocked with spice. Eyes still narrowed, Cora took a piece. The bread-or-cake was dense and moist, and would’ve broken in half from its own weight if she hadn’t caught it in time. She continued to frown right up until the moment that the fresh-baked good was close enough for her to smell. The scent was nothing like what was wafting up from the botanical gunk on the table. It smelled . . . homey, somehow. Inviting. Like a type of hug she’d never had.

Cautiously, Cora took a bite.

She closed her eyes, chewed, savored, and swallowed. “Okay, fine,” she relented. “Fine, we’ll bring some home.”

Chapter 36 Cora, Fortune