The Stars Are Legion(45)

“Apples?”

She pulls a spongy tuber from her pocket. It’s covered in green cilia. “Delicious,” she says. “Try it.”

I shake my head, but Das Muni grabs it with both hands. Sniffs. She takes a big bite and chews thoughtfully.

“You know what that is?” I ask.

“No,” Das Muni says as she takes a second bite. “But it tastes all right.”

Casamir leads us farther down the corridor until it opens up into a vast chamber. I gasp as I look up, not caring what Casamir thinks of that, because the ceiling is webbed in what looks like porous bone carved into intricate triangles. Moisture drips from the ceiling, and the ground below us is covered in a shimmering green carpet. It takes me a moment to realize the carpet is moving. They are shiny insects. Their bodies make a soft shushing sound as they skitter around our feet.

Das Muni hisses and draws away, but Casamir waves her forward. “They’re harmless,” she says. “Beetles are a good sign. It means the floor is still stable here. That can change. Come on.”

We hurry after her. Moths alight on my body. I try to brush them away, but after a while, I give up. There are too many of them.

“What do they eat?” I ask.

“Each other, sometimes,” Casamir says. “But mostly the parasites in the walls. And the beetles eat the moths. It’s all connected, just like us and the world.”

As we continue, I see signs of human habitation. Bony protrusions stick up from the floor, and a long braided hair rope connects them. Little wooden clackers are attached to the ropes. When a warm, subtle wind rises in the room, the clackers plunk together, sounding an alarm or music or signal, I don’t know which.

There are discarded bits of cloth and rotten, ragged mops of woven items, toys or baskets, collecting in long fissures in the walls as we pass.

“What are these?” I ask.

“Memorials,” Casamir says.

“Shouldn’t it all be recycled?” I say.

“It is,” she says. “The walls eat it eventually. You only throw something down the pit that you never want to see again. This way, we have some time, you know?” She glances back at me. “Maybe you don’t know. Huh.”

“It’s just different where I’m from,” I say.

“Sure,” Casamir says. “We have a ways to go. Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

“No,” I say.

“No?”

“No.”

Das Muni says, “I will tell you where I’m from. I’m not from this world.”

“You’re just a mutant,” Casamir says matter-of-factly. “I think saying you’re from another world is a stretch. There are plenty of mutants, you know, people not born right, people the world messed up.”

“I am from another world.”

Casamir shakes her head. “You two are so very interesting. The conclave will love you.”

I’m liking the idea of the conclave less and less. “Why don’t you just point us in the right direction?” I say. I gaze up again, but the ceiling is higher now, still lined in the same bony pattern. Getting up there on our own is going to be difficult. And then what? Hack our way through? Burn our way up?

Casamir chuckles and shakes her head. “I am offering a hand in friendship,” she says. “You should take it.”

“No one offers a hand without wanting it filled with something,” I say.

Casamir does not reply. We arrive at a wall of debris blocking our way. It looks like the ceiling above collapsed; I’m staring at long planes of the bony ceiling, twisted and broken and gooey. The pieces have fused together like a healing wound, leaving behind great puckered scars along the surfaces where the pieces meet.

Casamir pulls a bone knife from her hip and pricks her finger. She draws three curved lines on the surface of the scar.

I wonder if it’s an offering or a ritual as the face of the debris begins to bubble and slough away. A thick wedge of the skin pops open, and there’s a woman with a tangle of dark, braided hair who holds it open for us. She squints at Casamir, then sizes up me and Das Muni.

“More filth,” she says, and ducks away, leaving the door open.

“Lovely to see you again too, Andamis!” Casamir says, and waves us inside.

A wave of heat and sound rolls over me as I cross the threshold. I come up short, so quickly Das Muni bumps into me. I hear her sharp intake of breath.

Sweeping up and out for as far and high as I can see is a vast, bustling city. It’s a riotous mass of humanity; women clustered together over trading tables and walking across a complicated network of bone and sinew bridges that crisscross the space above us. Lining the walls are living spaces and workshops, their residents clustered on the walkways outside their domiciles, hanging laundry and whistling after little clusters of creatures. There are at least a dozen types of animals here, some knee-high and hairy with one big eye at the center of their heads. Another is hairless, mostly mouth and teeth, and a school of them waddles awkwardly ahead of a woman herding them with a long reed. The ground should be smeared in filth from all these creatures inhabiting one space, but when I look down, the floor isn’t slick; it’s lined in little fleshy nubs, like a tongue, and its absorbing everything the city feeds it.

“Welcome to Amaris, City of Light,” Casamir says.