Mare Nubium

TIMELINE: AUGUST 17, 2017. FOUR DAYS TO THE ECLIPSE.

It's almost time for the moon to rise.

Judy paces in front of where the gate will be, waiting for tomorrow night's Moon to come and see her through. They do it like this so someone on the mortal side of the gate will always know who's on the other side; they are each other's keepers. Plus, when two of them step up close together, it has a blurring effect for mortal eyes. They'll be able to achieve what needs to be done more easily and without fear of being watched if they do it in tandem.

A god alone is a curiosity and a marvel, something to be stared at. Two gods together is a sign of something coming, and is intended to be feared. It's why the gates can exist out in the open like this, while Judy would never dare step up in front of her advisor.

She just needs her partner for the night to get here. It won't be Máni. She tried to find him, so he could go and speak to Diana, but he wasn't in his dorm room; his roommate hadn't seen him all day. She left a note, and hopefully he has it by now, hopefully he's going to call, but either way, he won't be shining tomorrow. He's not coming to see her off. And it won't be Diana.

She's trying to remember who else is currently in the area, which manifestations might arrive to make sure things are done properly, when a dark-haired woman in athletic gear comes jogging across the open space between the clocktower and the brick wall where tonight's gate will open. She's not breathing hard, but her olive-toned cheeks are flushed; she's been rushing to get here on time.

"Sorry," she says, as she draws closer. "Sorry. I didn't mean to be late."

"You're not, quite," says Judy. "Have we met?"

"Last full moon," says the woman. "I'm Anna. Hi."

"Judy," says Judy. "Last full… You're here to see me off?"

"Someone has to keep the key," says the woman. "You know, it's bullshit that we can't just recognize each other on sight. It would be so much easier. Instead, it's all lurking and code words."

"Or introductions from the senior Lunars in the area," says Judy. "Diana should have made sure we knew each other. Are you new to town?" She must be, or Judy would have recognized her more quickly. All the established Lunars come to her, or to Chang'e, to get their peaches. No presence, no peaches. And everybody wants their peaches.

Anna's young enough that it may not have occurred to her yet that she needs them. She shrugs, easy and calm. "Not entirely new, but new enough," says Anna. "We gonna do this or what?"

"I guess we are." Judy pulls the key from her pocket, showing it to Anna in all its fresh-scrubbed glory, and reaches down into herself for the layer of divinity where Chang'e waits, and lets mortality fall away as the goddess catches hold and steps up into the evening air, which starts to sparkle around her.

Anna looks quietly amused.

"What?" asks Chang'e.

"You glow pink, is all," says Anna. "I didn't know that was an option."

"It's not," says Chang'e, with wounded dignity. "And I don't glow pink; I glow peach."

"Right! You're the immortality peddler." Anna bows her head, performing her own transition, and the air around her lights up with a sparkling, silvery glow. When she opens her eyes again, they've changed, deep brown becoming the impossible layered blue of the sea near Tuscany. "Losna," she says, by way of second introduction.

"Etruscan goddess of the moon and the sea, yes?" asks Chang'e. She's known Losnas before, although not in this incarnation; what information she has is distant and fuzzy, and not entirely accessible to Judy.

Losna nods. "Got it in one. I'm an English major. I started here this semester." Her nose wrinkles. "I didn't realize there were so many Lunars in the area when I transferred in. Just wanted to run track and field with people who might be able to keep up with me."

"We do accumulate," says Chang'e.

She wants to say it's not their fault, that the Lunars aren't doing anything, because they're not. Professor Middleton, on the other hand… he's like a lead weight in the middle of a sheet. He presses it down, and gravity does the rest. The Doctrine of Ethos was never meant to exist in a material form; he can't help distorting things for the other metaphysicals, as much as for the naturals. And if he's ever removed…

She imagines the shock of the sheet bouncing back into its original position will scatter them across the continent, if it doesn't launch them all into the stratosphere. Even the Moon might not survive that.

She was one of two Lunars in the area when she showed up. Diana took a lot more shifts then, and both of them spent a lot more time in transit, heading for the location of the next gate. Now they can do an all-but-complete rotation without changing their calendars, and it would be wonderful if it weren't so worrisome. New Moons seem to show up almost every other week.

If something's hunting them, that just means a lot more targets to get out of the way. She doesn't like to think of it like that. She can't help it.

"What's your story?" asks Losna.

"Chang'e, Chinese goddess of the moon, keeper of the peaches of immortality," says Chang'e. "You'll come to me when you decide it's time to pick up the ‘eternal youth' benefit package that comes with divinity. It's not intrinsic, you know."

"I do, but I haven't needed it yet," says Losna. "Next time I wrench my knee, I'll probably change my story. Ever been to China?"

"I was born there, millennia ago," says Chang'e.

"No, I meant the real you," says Losna.

Chang'e manages, barely, not to sigh. The new gods who think their mortal lives matter more than their divine ones are always frustrating. The goal is balance, which doesn't mean shutting off one side in favor of the other; it means finding a way to exist in two realities at the same time, even when those realities contradict. "Judy was born in Newark, New Jersey," she says. "Her father was from China. She's never been there. Maybe someday."

"You'd think we'd all manifest where we come from."

"There are Chang'es in China," says Chang'e. "At least four of me, at last count."

"And that doesn't bother you?"

"Would it matter if it did?" She shrugs, producing a peach pit from her pocket. It doesn't matter if Judy put it there. Any article of clothing Chang'e wears will have a peach pit in the pocket sooner or later. She just bent things so sooner would be "now," and later wouldn't matter. Holding it up for Losna to see, she continues, "If I put this in earth—any earth, however barren or shallow—I'll get a peach tree. One pit, one tree. And that tree will put out dozens of branches, and those branches will bear dozens of fruits. No single peach is the true peach that matters more than all the others. They all come from the same tree."

"You calling us peaches?"

"Maybe." Chang'e tucks the pit away again. "Chang'e, the original, was the peach pit. Now, every one of us who carries a fragment of her, we're peaches. Maybe Losna was a wave, and you're a tide pool. Doesn't make you any less a part of that first wave to break upon the beach."

"This is getting a little metaphysical for me," says Losna.

"Says one moon goddess to the other," says Chang'e. "I have the key. Will you witness my departure?"

"Sure," says Losna. "Then I stay for a while, and come back just before dawn, yeah?"

"Yes," says Chang'e. She turns to the wall, tapping the key against the brick.

The gate blossoms into existence, lines of bright moonlight spiraling out from the place the key touched, racing to reach each other and twine together, then rise up into the high arch of the frame. It's a beautiful, impossible display, and it takes Chang'e's breath away every time she sees it.

When it's finished, she tucks the key into her pocket and turns to Losna, offering the other goddess a small bow.

"The light is in the tower, and all's well," she says, formally. "I'll see you in the morning."

She straightens and, without waiting for a reaction or reply, steps into the everything.

The corridor of rainbow light forms around her, seconds flashing and dying in the abyss between all things. She looks, automatically, to her left, but Aske isn't there; this is where they left her body, but it seems something else has already taken it away. The thought of something scavenging in the everything is horrifying, and she'd rather not dwell on it. Not when she has to walk here alone, tonight and every other night she's called upon for the rest of her tenure in this world. Which will be quite long, if she has anything to say about it.

She looks back. Losna is on the other side of the gate, watching her go. Anyone not connected to the Moon will see her sparkling faintly, staring at a glitter-smeared wall. Step down, thinks Chang'e, fiercely. Losna has done her duty for the night; now she needs to focus on not attracting unnecessary attention.

Losna steps down, glitter fading, and the view through the gate turns opaque, as if a glass door in need of washing has been closed between the everything and the supposedly "real" world. Chang'e nods, satisfied, and begins to walk.

There's no rhyme or reason to how long it takes a Moon to travel between the gate and the window. The corridor is as long as it needs to be, night after night, and that need is determined by something greater than any single manifestation can know or understand. Chang'e walks, watching the rainbows flash by around her, and there's no sign of Aske, and there's no blood on the ground. The corridor is pristine.

She tries to breathe as she walks, forcing her anxiety away. All the times she's traveled this path, and she's never been this nervous, not even the first time, when she was still more Judy than Chang'e. She didn't know, then, how to let go, how to allow the mortal half of herself to slide completely down into the safe, sane stability of the depths. Now she knows, and still, she is afraid.

Chang'e is forever. Chang'e will endure after this mortal shell has been shuffled off and cast aside, and on some small level, Judy is forever too, because of Chang'e. The goddess will always have a fragment of her buried deep inside her psyche, a little reminder of the time when she was an orphaned half-Chinese linguistics major from New Jersey, small and fragile and human and afraid. But Judy, the essential core of who she is now, will be gone.

Judy isn't forever. Judy is as mortal as they come. She just shares her body with a goddess in a strange sort of timeshare rental agreement. Like the Disney Vacation Club embodied as a human being, trying desperately to keep it all together when the world is perpetually trying to crumble down around her. Judy isn't forever. Judy likes the things she likes, likes bad medical dramas and good horror movies and pop music and cheap sex and peach schnapps. She doesn't want to be a crumb on the plate of a goddess, and so she walks the spotless corridor with precise steps, unable to fully recede, present as she almost never is when the time comes to walk into the eternal like this.

Chang'e murmurs sweet, encouraging sounds without singular meanings, not words but the ideas that came before words, the concepts that eventually evolved into repeatable things. The prototypes of language. She's not used to Judy being this far forward on the divine side of the gate either, and while neither of them is exactly comfortable right now, they're both glad not to be alone. Being a hybrid entity means loneliness isn't a common occurrence anymore.

The rainbows of possibility flash and die around them, things that could have been but won't be, things that probably couldn't have been but definitely never will now that their moment has passed. They blacken when they die, unlike the possibilities that find themselves fulfilled. Those flash into eternity as definite things, flaring white before they fade away. There's no value judgment to the difference, not here; it's just that white is the color of is, while black is the color of isn't, fusion and the void bound in an endless balancing and unbalancing dance. Judy supposes they're a hybrid entity too, destruction and creation unable to exist apart from one another.

The length of the corridor varies depending on the phase of the actual, literal moon, metaphysical distance stretching out to match its real distance. They're not quite at perigee yet, won't reach it for almost another month, but they're well on their way, and so the route to the window is long. Chang'e keeps walking, even as the path below her feet begins sloping gently upward. She tries to focus on how fortunate she is to be here, how lucky she is to be manifest in this place and this time, how pleasant it is to share an incarnation with Judy, who has her flaws but is clever and tries her best to keep things working smoothly, even when she'd rather be living a more ordinary life. This stage of the journey is always better if she can focus on the things she likes about living in a mortal body, in a mortal age. The City is calling.

She can feel it, a hum under her skin, a thrilling frisson that calls her to walk faster, to hurry toward the moment when she can look out upon the glory of forever. It always seems to want her in this moment, to need her to answer it—her and only her. No other divinity will do. Even her mortal passenger is barely a distraction from the singing of the City.

But Judy is a distraction and the reason that, out of all the gods still standing, the Lunars are the ones who get this glorious duty as their own. There are Solar gods as well, she knows; she's encountered them across the centuries, big, bold, brave heroes, ready to fight the sky itself for the opportunity to shine above the City. The sun crosses the sky even as the moon does, and so the incarnate Sun is allowed a certain measure of access, even as the incarnate Moon must be. But they've never seemed the most pleasant or harmonious of people, these bright, shining scions of the sun, and she doesn't know what sort of systems they have in place, beyond the same cycle of manifestation and incarnation as the Lunars, every god combined with a mortal, someone who keeps them from surrendering entirely to the City's song.

Gods who can't anchor themselves to the material world can't come this close to the City, or they'd be lost to it. They wouldn't be able to resist. So she clings to Judy, her little distraction, her beloved other half, and walks farther and farther from the gate, closer and closer to the City, not rushing the moment, not hurrying toward her duty. She watches for signs of blood as she walks. She finds nothing of the sort.

Then, ahead of her in the everything, the window appears. It is a simple thing, a double window in a plain white frame, with a little latch meant to be opened by a single swipe of the thumb and a strong lip to make it easier to open. The first time this iteration of Chang'e walked along the corridor to the window, she lost her manifestation and fell back down as Judy came surging forth and started to cry, hands over her face, tears on her cheeks and snot running from her nose.

This window no longer exists outside the everything. It was the window of Judy's childhood room, the one that opened so easily when the fire started and she had to find a way outside. She'd woken up to the smell of smoke and fled before she could ask herself whether anyone else was awake, and even the firemen telling her later that it had been too late for them by the time she woke up had never been enough to ease her guilt over being the only one to make it out, the only one to have the time to run.

She wouldn't have had that if she'd been any younger. But she'd been sixteen, and the moon had been whispering to her for the better part of six months, transforming her into a light sleeper. A year before, Judy had slept like the dead, and she would have joined them, suffocating alongside the rest of her family. Instead, she'd woken up and made herself an orphan, and would never fully forgive herself for grabbing her notebooks and her laptop before she slipped outside, rather than screaming for her parents.

(It really wouldn't have done any good. Chang'e has spoken to other Lunars, has asked those who were nearby what they'd seen by moonlight; Judy's parents were dead before she woke up, suffocated in their beds by the absence of the air. Judy couldn't have saved them. She could only have lost herself. But such cruel logic is the province of the divine.)

The window was destroyed in the fire, and the window is here, and its appearance is part of why every Lunar makes this journey alone, aside from their eternal passenger. If one of the others were here with her, the window would try to conform to both of them at the same time, becoming the best-beloved window either of them had known during their current mortal incarnation. Some of those hybrid windows can't be opened. Some of them have no latches, or too many latches, or warped frames. It's better to come alone, even though none of them are ever truly alone, and to walk in their inherent contradiction to the point of connection.

Chang'e stops, catches her breath, and tries to sink deeper into the moment, to absorb it all the way to her core. There is nothing to show that Aske died here, no stain on the ground or blood spray on the window frame; the air smells as sweet and purified as ever, the atmospheric equivalent of those untouched mountain springs that have existed for millennia in secret, only to be found and pumped dry by some corporation eager to monetize the basic building blocks of life. No one's ever going to bottle this air. No one gets to breathe it unless they make it this far.

And even this is nothing compared to what waits on the other side of the window. Chang'e approaches, reverent, even as Judy finally releases her anxious hold and sinks down to where she belongs. It's dangerous for the human side of a god to be too ascendant when the window opens. The air in the everything is sweet and pure, but it's not addictive. The City air, on the other hand…

The City air is everything. Persephone's pomegranate seeds and the sweet allure of the fruit from the Goblin Market are pale imitations of the smallest whiff of City air. Chang'e can't imagine what it would be like to descend to the level of the streets, to eat the food or drink the water. Some nights it's so hard to stop shining that she thinks it would become impossible after a sip of City water. The heart only mourns what it knows to be true.

"Are you ready?" she asks aloud, and deep within her heart, she feels Judy give her answer, feels her assent. Aske is gone, and her dying left no trace; now is the time for them to shine. Chang'e steps forward, opening the window. Cool night air rushes through, clean and clear and intoxicating and

And

And

And everything is silver-bright and mercury burn, the color of moonlight on the water, the color of the City lights, the color of everything. The color of nothing.

Chang'e blinks and she's in the everything once again, her fingers resting on the window latch, ready to flip it closed. There are silver smudges on the heels of her hands, moondust etched upon her skin, and the inside of her mouth tastes like peaches. She reaches into herself until she brushes against Judy, who stirs and stretches, rising from a deep and dreamless sleep. She doesn't have a watch, and Judy's phone doesn't get reception in the everything, not even to keep the time, but she can tell it's been hours, and not only by the aching in her legs, which burn pleasantly with the aftermath of a long walk. She's been traveling that whole missing time, pushing back against the treacle-thick air of the high lunar roads, making her way across the sky above the City.

Now the moon is setting, and the Moon is allowed to rest. She shakes, reminding herself what it is to wear a skin, to have a body, to be a single concrete form and not an abstract idea projected onto something that will never truly know or care what people think of it. Judy rises up, not all the way but enough that she becomes they once again, plural and peaceful.

She begins to walk down the corridor, idly sucking the moondust from her fingers as she goes. It tastes, as it always does, of peaches. She's wondered, on occasion, what the other Lunars taste, the ones whose personal versions of the Moon surge with seas or grow green with grass, not a peach orchard in sight. She's never asked. Some things are too personal to speak aloud.

There is no blood on the ground, no sign that someone died here. Chang'e stops. Maybe because no one did. The Lunars walk the everything alone to avoid confusing the window, which would try to conform to more than one of them at the same time. Who's to say the whole of the everything isn't so malleable, or that they walk the same everything at all? Perhaps it's like an anthill, hundreds of routes to the City, all slightly different. She's always assumed there was only one window, that it changes shapes each night. What if that's not the case?

What if they each have their own window, their own path?

The thought is simple but staggering. If there are multiple paths through the everything, this isn't where Aske died. This is another route entirely. It explains why there's no sign of what happened, and why her body is missing. But it doesn't explain how Máni was able to find her, or even how he was able to be on the same path through the everything.

She frowns and starts walking again, trying to work her way through the impossible logic of it all. If they each have their own path, then she'll never see any signs of the murder. But that could mean Diana's right and Máni knows more than he's letting on.

The journey back is always faster than the journey out, the City glad to see them gone once they no longer have a task to perform. It isn't long before Chang'e sees the gate ahead of her, an opening onto another, more concrete world, one where symbols and ideas need flesh if they're going to walk among the mortal men. One where a woman can also be the Moon but the Moon can't also be a woman. She slows, thoughtful.

The view through the gate is still indistinct and cloudy, like she's looking through a thick pane of distorting glass. Lights flicker on the other side as cars pass in the dark beyond the campus, and there's a blurred shape she assumes is Losna. She starts moving again, and the shape becomes a little easier to see, although still indistinct. Yes. Losna. The other goddess is stepped down, attention on something in her hands, ignoring the actively flickering gate.

Chang'e stops, clearing her throat. Losna looks up, and a moment later, becomes suddenly crystal clear and crisp, the air around her glittering silver-blue as she steps up into divinity, leaving whatever had her distracted behind. She stuffs the object she was holding—her phone—into her pocket, and steps toward the gate.

"Have a good night?" she asks.

"I did," says Chang'e, distracted by Judy murmuring at the back of her head. She frowns, trying to understand, then says, "I'm sorry, forgive me a moment," and does the unthinkable.

She steps down inside the everything.

Not all the way down. Even if she could do that—even if she could step down so completely that she pulled herself from her host, dug herself out by the roots and left Judy alone in the rainbow corridor to eternity—she wouldn't, because no one knows what would happen to a normal human left in the everything. It's never happened. Not in all Chang'e's long, long memory. But she can pull back to such a point that Judy is essentially alone, mortal and breakable, abandoned in the everything.

Judy catches her breath, looking at the dying rainbows around her with wide eyes. They seem brighter than they did just a moment ago, like living things. They were warm before, gentle and welcoming, and now they're aggressively vivid, lights that never meant to shine for her. Sharing her body with a goddess is something she's had plenty of time to get used to, and most of the time, she can fool herself into thinking it doesn't matter which one of them is at the front; they're the same person, after all. Looking around at the vivid entropy of the everything disabuses her of that notion so completely that she may never get it back.

She doesn't belong here. She's Chang'e's baggage, and unattended bags are subject to search and seizure. Still, she asked for this, and so she shoves her fear down the same way she would shove herself down if she were trying to return control, looking toward the horrified form of Losna on the other side of the gate.

The other goddess is staring at her, eyes wide and glossy-bright. She hasn't stepped down, hasn't matched states with Judy. If anything, she seems more baffled by what just happened than anything else.

"Hey, can you come over here for a second?" Judy's voice is thin and washed-out by the everything, lacking the resonance it needs to fill the space, and for a moment, it seems like Losna doesn't hear her. Then she shakes off her shock and steps through the open gate, the two of them occupying the same space, the same iteration of the everything.

"Okay, lady, I've heard a lot of things about your incarnations in general, and this one in specific," says Losna, voice bright and a bit excited as she looks at Judy. Her voice still has the resonance of the divine, filling the space from top to bottom. "But you know what I've never heard before? I've never heard about how you have big brass ones. This is the ballsiest, stupidest thing I've ever seen somebody do! What the hell do you think you're trying to pull, standing in the everything just this side of mortality? You want to see if the stories about human hosts getting busted down into stardust are accurate or something?"

"Diana should have introduced us, if you're new," says Judy. "You're not new, are you?"

"New to the area, absolutely," says Losna. She blinks, and although she hasn't stepped down in the slightest, her eyes are brown again. "New to this incarnation, not so much. Diana doesn't know I'm here."

"I have to deal with a faculty advisor who doesn't understand why I refuse to study under one of ‘the greatest minds of the generation'; I don't have time for some sort of Lunar power struggle," says Judy bluntly. "I've never encountered a Losna incarnate who'd managed to stay manifest long enough to accumulate any real power."

"Now you have," says Losna. "And you're standing in the everything with her, stepped down to the cusp of mortality. Your tide's out, little peach goddess, and I doubt you can call it back in faster than I can wash you away, if that's what I want. Fortunately, it's not. So what the hell is the point of this little stunt?"

Judy raises an eyebrow. It's a trick she spent a long time perfecting, and it normally makes people stop talking down to her and start listening to what she has to say. Thanks, Leonard Nimoy, for making people react to that expression like the person making it is the smartest in the room. Losna doesn't even blink.

"I needed to know if the everything would change when you were the only fully active divinity inside it," says Judy.

Losna frowns. "You risked getting vaporized for a theory question?"

"Yes, because it matters." She pauses. Diana doesn't know Losna is here, according to Losna, and they're alone in the everything. No one can find them here. Not with the key on this side of the gate. "How long have you been incarnate?"

"About thirty years. I'll give you the next one for free—I've been in Denver, and we have a Chang'e there. She's been feeding me grilled peaches since I was an undergrad."

"Have you been in college this whole time?"

"This isn't Twilight," says Losna. "Hell, no. I graduated and got a real job, where I could make real money and pay for a real apartment. And then the rumor mill started spinning up about the alchemists getting their knickers in a twist over something incomprehensible and probably real, real stupid, since that's normally the sort of thing that really excites our alchemical brethren, so I started trying to find the epicenter of the chaos. Everything I could get my hands on seemed to indicate that whatever it was, it was probably out this way, California-ward."

"There's a lot of California," says Judy. "Why here and not someplace warmer?"

"I like redwood trees," says Losna.

"So you re-enrolled and came to Berkeley to find out why the alchemists were pissed off."

"And why time's been resetting itself for the past half-million years."

Losna says it so calmly that for a moment, everything seems to stop. The rainbow walls of the everything continue their scintillating flashing, but there is no other motion, no other sound. Judy swallows, takes a step back, and stares at her.

"What?"

"You heard me. Every thirty-five years or so, the universe resets itself. Always back to the same point, or very close to it. I'd like to know why. I've talked to all the gods who have their hands on time, and none of them are responsible, so I figure it's time to blame the alchemists. I've been trying to put together what they're up to, but those assholes don't make it easy." She smiles then, a little feral, and says, "That's what makes it fun. An easy hunt is no real game."

"You're not Losna, are you?" Judy manages not to take another step back. She reminds herself that Chang'e is a powerful goddess in her own right, even if her own upbringing in a Eurocentric culture means she sometimes doesn't think of herself that way. "Losna's not a hunter."

"No, but Artemis is." Losna blinks again, and once again her eyes are different when she opens them, green as young olives ripening on the branch. "I asked one of her current incarnations before I took on her mantle, just to be sure I wouldn't offend her somehow. She thought it was a quaint deceit, and gave her full permission. I can give you her number, if you want to double-check."

"I like that wording, because it implies I'm leaving here alive," says Judy. "But no, I think I'm good."

Artemis frowns sharply. "I would never kill another Lunar. Why would you jump so quickly to that conclusion?"

"I think the two of us need to take a little trip," says Judy. "I need to show you something. May I step back up?"

When Artemis nods, Judy lets go, and feels Chang'e resume her place of primacy, the goddess filling her from top to bottom, more intended for the light of the everything than Judy has ever been. Releasing the body is a relief, intoxicating in its power, and she's grateful to let go, even as she remains just below the surface to observe. She's not leaving Chang'e alone in this, even if she could.

Chang'e bows respectfully to the stronger goddess. "It is a pleasure to see you again, huntress. I know you say one of me has been attending to your immortality, but this one has not, and so I am reunited with an old companion."

"It's good to see you, too," says Artemis. "What did you need to show me?"

"It's a showing and a telling at once," says Chang'e, and turns. "Follow me."

Together, they walk deeper into the everything, and the gate is left unguarded.