Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)(54)

“Oh, Tress,” he said, “most islands aren’t the size of the Rock, you know.”

“Really?” she said. She pulled the knife out of the drawer. “You mean there are some that are forty miles wide?”

“And bigger,” he said. “I think one over in the Zephyr Sea is sixty miles across.”

“Moons!” she said, trying to imagine that much land in one place. Why, in the center, you might not be able to see the sea at all! She shook her head at the crazy thought and pulled out a few waterskins.

After that she knelt by the bed, picked out three black spores, and set them on the mattress. Huck backed away, towing his crust of bread.

She took a deep breath and thought of Charlie. She could do this. For him, and for the people of the Crow’s Song. Solve the mysteries on this ship, protect the people here, and they would point her in Charlie’s direction.

She raised an eyedropper and released a drop onto the spores.





THE MIDNIGHT ESSENCE





I assume you have no idea what a Luhel bond is. Don’t feel bad. At this point in the story, I was concerned with trying to figure out how many different shades of orange I could wear at the same time. So we all have our priorities.

Most aether spores—like the verdant spores and the zephyr spores—don’t involve any kind of bond. Using them is a simple matter of cause and effect. Compressed aether drops to the planet in the form of spores, and a little water encourages it to grow in an explosive burst.

Midnight spores are different—in fact, they’re closer to how the aethers are supposed to work. Bringing midnight spores to life creates a temporary bond, a kind of symbiosis between host and aether. Unlike the Nahel bond, which trades in consciousness and anchoring to reality, the Luhel bond trades in physical matter. In this case, water.

Tress felt it as a sudden thirst, a drying of her mouth. She reached for the waterskin, then paused, transfixed by the motions of the spores.

They bubbled and undulated, melting and then enlarging like an inflating balloon. In seconds the puddle of goo—though it had begun as three tiny spores—was as large as a person’s fist. There it stopped growing, blessedly, though it continued to writhe and distort. For a moment a tiny face appeared— stretching out of the black pus. Then it melted back in.

Offer, a thought impressed on Tress’s mind. Trade. Water. Give water.

Without knowing what she was doing, Tress agreed.

Midnight Essence, in all its different forms, looks for a pattern, a model. It often takes a cue from its creator or host—and in this case Tress glanced at Huck, who had backed all the way across the bed to the far corner, clutching his crust of bread before him like a somewhat-snacked-upon shield.

The Midnight Essence pulsed with purpose, elongating. It formed a black tail. Four paws. A face and snout…a body like a deformed tuber. Soon Tress found herself regarding a small creature that looked almost like a rat dipped in black paint. Except the hair seemed more a texture to the skin than individual hairs, and there wasn’t enough detail on the toes and the face.

It was too smooth. Jet black and glossy, as if made of tar. Or carved from a tub of lard by a talented artist with no other way to express themself. It scurried back and forth across the bed, trying out its legs—and again, the motions were almost ratlike.

Though her thirst was increasing—and strangely, her eyes were beginning to feel dry—Tress couldn’t stop watching it. She took a drink—and found herself slurping down the entire waterskin. She hadn’t thought there would be enough room in her stomach, but once she was refreshed, the Luhel bond strengthened. She’d given it what it wanted, and in so doing gained some measure of control over it. She lost sight of the world around her, her vision fuzzing.

Then she was the not-rat. She could direct it, see through its eyes, smell what it smelled. She immediately made the thing jump toward Huck, who squeaked and ran under the bed. It was fun for reasons she couldn’t explain.

But no, she had work to do. Yes, important work that involved scampering across the bed and leaping onto the floor. When she hit, her feet squished into her body, and she had to pop them out again. After that, she scrambled to the door and squeezed under, coming out as goo that oozed back into shape.

Shadows. She liked shadows. Down here, in these corridors below-decks, she could move virtually unseen. Even on the steps, the shadows were deep. But up above, the sun was out from behind the moon. Hateful sun, though it was slinking toward the horizon, drowsy, unaware of her. Midnight Tress crouched on the steps, listening to the footfalls of the people, smelling the old leather of their shoes.

There. A shadow from the mast as the ship turned. She leaped into it, then ran along its length—jumping over the veins of silver in the deck. It would hurt her if she touched it, she knew, but she was stronger in this shape than common spores. Mere proximity wouldn’t harm her.

She reached the captain’s cabin, which occupied the space directly underneath the quarterdeck. She definitely shouldn’t have been able to squeeze under that tiny gap between door and deck, but she did. The reinflation took longer this time, but her eyes re-formed faster than the rest of her, and she was able to scan the room.

Crow sat at her desk by the porthole, writing something by the waning light of the setting sun. Her hat hung on a peg by the door, her canteen was open next to her, and she wore her jacket unbuttoned.