“I expect my ship to sail in under an hour,” Crow said loudly, “laden with more riches than she should rightly carry.” Her eyes lingered on the other ship’s captain, who still stood near Salay. “If it is not done, I shall visit your fine vessel and teach each and every one of you what it means to cross Captain Crow. If you doubt my sincerity, ask the crew of the Oot’s Dream how much they’re enjoying life at the bottom of the Verdant Sea.”
The captain disappeared into her cabin. Tress slumped on the steps again, trembling, burdened by the terrible sight of those vines bursting from Crow’s body.
What was she?
THE EXTRA GOOD LISTENER
“The captain is a gestator for the verdant aether,” Dr. Ulaam said, holding up a narrow bottle containing something uncomfortably reminiscent of a kidney floating in solution.
“She just ate what?” Tress asked, sitting in his exam room.
“Not just ate. Gestate. It means to incubate. Crow is host to an aggressive strain of the verdant parasite. Your lore calls people like her spore eaters, though I find that an imprecise term. Tell me. Where do spores come from?”
“The moons,” Tress said.
“Ah, yes,” Ulaam said. “The moons. As food comes from the kitchen, or pottery comes from the Zephyr Islands. There couldn’t possibly be another step involved, hmmm? These things just magically appear?”
“So…you mean how do the spores get to the moons?”
“Rather,” Ulaam said, “what on the moons produces them? Hmmmmm?”
“I…have no idea,” Tress said. It was a realization she probably should have made before.
Ulaam knelt beside her, holding the kidney up to her side. He shook it, then raised his eyebrow. “Trade?” he asked. “This one will make your urine smell of lilacs.”
“Um…no thank you.”
“Would you sell one?” Ulaam said.
“Again, no.”
“Selfish,” Ulaam said. “You don’t need two.”
“And how many do you have?”
Ulaam grinned. “Touché.”
“To say what?”
“No, it means you have successfully rebutted me.” He stood up, shaking his head. “Regardless, your moons are home to a group of voracious entities known as aethers. Though the true aethers on other worlds have a symbiosis with people, the ones on your moons have become insatiable, aggressive, and fecund.”
“I’m not allowed to say that word,” Tress said.
“No, it means…actually, that word means something very close to what you think it means, but it’s a more polite way of saying it. Anyway, the aethers up above are rampantly self-propagating, and each is connected to a primal element. Vegetation, atmosphere, silicate…
“This alone is dangerous, but your varieties are also highly unstable. The tiniest hint of a catalyst—water, in this case—and they pull Investiture directly from the Spiritual Realm to explosively germinate. It’s a remarkable process.”
Tress considered this, and found herself with a dozen more questions. Once, she might have been too polite to ask them, as he didn’t owe her explanations. But there was something about Ulaam that invited such conversation. Surely that was it, and not that she was changing.
“So…” Tress said, “how did the captain get that thing inside of her?”
“I’ve been unable to find a satisfying answer,” Ulaam said, pulling out a rack full of bottled kidneys, then putting away the one he’d been holding. “Some say it randomly happens to people who fall into the sea, while others claim you have to ingest a very special kind of spore.”
“So she did eat it,” Tress said. “Maybe.”
“Maybe,” Ulaam said, pulling back the sleeve of his suit to reveal a grey-skinned forearm.
With an ear growing out of it.
“You have an ear on your arm!” Tress said.
“Hmmmm? Oh, yes.”
“But…why?”
“Because when I put it on my inner thigh,” Ulaam said, “I kept hearing my clothing brush across it in a most distracting way.”
“Isn’t your head a better location?”
“I already have two there,” Ulaam said. “Did you not notice them? Earregardless, your captain’s affliction is a dire one. She is connected directly to the prime verdant aether growing on the moon. It needs water to survive, and the moon has none. So it somehow infects people on the planet.
“The vines inside Captain Crow are exceptionally thirsty, and they constantly drain her of liquid. Somehow, they use that liquid—along with that from other spore eater hosts around the world—to feed the enormous overgrown aether on the moon. I’ve been unable to discover the mechanism.”
“The vines keep her alive though,” Tress said. “They saved her from that bullet.”
“Yes,” Ulaam said. “The aether protects itself by protecting her, but it’s rabid. Insatiable. Incapable of rational thought, it is sucking her dry. The affliction is progressive, taking more and more from its host. I’m told it is exceptionally painful, and it is always fatal.”
“Merciful moons,” Tress whispered. “That almost makes me feel sorry for her.”
“Yes, well, most terrible mass murderers like Crow do tend to be well acquainted with tragedy. It makes you wonder who the true monster is: the killer, or the society that created them?”
Tress nodded.
“That was a trick question,” Ulaam said. “The true monster is the one in that drawer next to you. I gave it seven different faces.”
Tress glanced at the drawer in the small end table beside her seat. It rattled. She pretended not to notice.
“At least now I know why the crew is afraid of her,” Tress said. “They don’t dare mutiny because that thing inside her would protect her from them.”
“Indeed,” Ulaam said. “I have little doubt the captain could kill each and every person on this ship without suffering any ill effects. Other than, you know, no longer having a crew. Temporary immortality does not make one able to trim the sails all by one’s self, as the old adage goes.”
“That’s an old adage?”
“Odd,” Ulaam said. “I meant odd. I think the tongue I’ve been using is wearing out. It used to be able to roll marvelously. Did you know that ability is genetic? One in four tongues can’t manage it.” He looked closely at her mouth.
Tress pointedly did not attempt to roll her tongue. Instead she tried to figure out Captain Crow’s goals. The woman wanted to push the crew, make them desperate. To sail dangerous waters, because she was dying? And wanted to get in as much living as she could before she went?
“How long,” Tress said, “do you suppose Crow has left?”
“Hard to say,” Ulaam said. “I hear the malady usually plays out in under a year, but I gather she’s had it longer than that. She is lasting remarkably long, but at this point I doubt she has months left. Weeks, maybe days. I’ve noticed she needs to drink nearly constantly to prevent herself from dehydrating and withering away.”
It was another piece of the puzzle. Unfortunately, Tress had no idea how many pieces she needed—or what that puzzle would look like when assembled.