“Mostly,” she says. “It’s good for you. Good bacteria for your gut. Only way to make it here.” She pushes ahead.
But it is the light that is most extraordinary. The light and the heat. The moths line the bridges, the byways, the tables. They flutter onto the intricately styled hair of the women here, all of it braided and stacked so it looks like they’re wearing great hats. Above us float great balloons. They are attached to long ropes, and they ferry passengers across the upper levels of the city in baskets. Yet most of the light and heat come from great round bulbs, large as heads, mounted along the walkways and in front of every dwelling. They are filled with clear liquid, and inside swim tiny orange beasts with delicate tentacles. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, inside each sphere, and they emit both heat and a brilliant orange light.
I stare long at one as we pass, leaning in for a better look, and Das Muni tugs at my sleeve.
“Don’t look too close,” she whispers. “The light will steal your soul.”
We get a few curious looks. Das Muni raises her cowl again, and I don’t blame her. I wish I had one. The crowd babbles as we pass, speaking a language I don’t recognize. I glance ahead at Casamir. She is a solid woman but nimble on her feet, and she clearly knows this place well. The crowds don’t part for her so much as they resign themselves to her momentum.
Casamir takes us up a series of bone steps, then across one of the swaying bridges. Das Muni refuses to cross it unless I hold her hand, and being hungry and yearning for a bath, I sigh and take her greasy palm in mine. She is trembling. I glance over at her but cannot see her expression inside the deep hood.
“See what I’ve got!” Casamir says, calling into the doorway of one of the houses. I call it a doorway, but there’s no actual door, just the opening. I wonder how anyone has privacy here, but as we enter, I realize the first room is just a sitting area. There’s another opening on the opposite side of the room that leads deeper into the dwelling.
“Wait here,” Casamir says, and she takes this door while Das Muni and I wait in the outer room.
“This is a bad idea,” Das Muni whispers. “Too many people.”
“Better than Meatmoth,” I say.
“No,” she says. “I understand Meatmoth. How she breathes. How she walks. Her hungers. Here . . . people are complicated. People don’t act in normal ways.”
I look for a place to sit. My leg is bothering me again. There are benches carved into the wall, made of the same spongy stuff as the rest of the world. I sit and stretch my leg out. “We’ll see how it goes,” I say. “We can always leave.”
“Not always,” Das Muni says.
I hear raised voices in the rooms behind us. Casamir’s optimism about our reception may have been premature.
“All I want is a bath,” I mutter.
“I can lick you clean,” Das Muni says.
I stare hard at her, trying to figure out if she’s serious. Talking to her is like listening to broken pieces of my own memory tangling together. If Casamir weren’t here to confirm that Das Muni is real, I might think I’d made her up entirely.
Casamir hustles out of the back room, arms wide. “We can’t stay here,” she says quickly. “I’ll take you to the holding rooms until the conclave can see you.”
“If they don’t want us here,” I say, “I’m happy to go. Das Muni and I can find our own way up.”
“No, no,” Casamir says. “This is very important. I promise, just have some patience. You’re hungry, aren’t you? How about we get you cleaned up? We can get you some new clothes.”
We walk back down to the main floor, past trading shops and clusters of women boiling and steaming and weaving and sewing various bits of the world and its castoffs. Most people share Casamir’s squat build, but there are some taller, thinner people with different clothing and hairstyles, and it occurs to me this must be some kind of trading hub.
“You sell what you find below?” I say. “You’re scavengers?”
“Explorers,” Casamir says. “I’m among the best.”
Two women stand outside what I finally recognize as a door. It’s not a fleshy door, though, but metal. I peer at it, as it’s the first metal I’ve seen here. It surprises me that I know the word for something I have yet to see, but there it is in my memory. Cold, hard stuff, inert, nonsentient.
Casamir grins at the women and rattles something off in another language, the same one I’ve been hearing bits and pieces of as we walk. The women argue with her. Their expressions are grim. But Casamir continues, spreading her hands wide, grinning all the while, shifting from foot to foot. Something she says convinces them, and they grudgingly grip the large handles on the door and pull it open. There is a terrible shriek, and then it slides into the wall.
I can’t decide if behind every door is a new wonder or a new horror in this place. Perhaps both. The skin of the walls inside here is scorched and peeled back to reveal more metal walls and tables and compartments. There are dozens of women in here wearing long aprons who tend tables chock-full of artifacts. The material here is more clearly nonorganic. Not all of it is metal, though. It’s hard, slick material, like bone, only less porous. They are constructing strange things with all of these things, stringing bits together with tendons and grafts of human skin. Whatever they are making in here, it makes my own skin crawl.
“What is this?” I ask Casamir.
She waves to some of the women, calling greetings in that other language. “We’re engineers,” she says. “I told you I was an engineer. Well, training to be one, anyway.”
“What language is everyone speaking?”
“Oh, it’s the human language.”
“But . . . we’re speaking human right now. All languages are human.”
Casamir laughs. “Some languages are more human than others,” she says. “We trade a lot with other people, so I know, I don’t know, a couple dozen languages.”
“A couple . . . dozen? How many people are here?”
“Lots,” Casamir says.
As we move to the back of the room, I see great bone cages full of people. I recoil. They are heavily disfigured, naked. One is completely blind, both her eyes gouged out.
Das Muni shrieks when she sees them.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” Casamir says. “Those are enemies of the conclave. It’s all right.”
One of the women in the cage snatches my sleeve. I try to jerk away, but her grip is strong. Her face is a map of wrinkles. Her thinning hair has been shorn short. She has only one arm, and one of her feet is missing.
“I remember you,” she says. “You destroyed everything I love.”
I get my sleeve free. “Who are you?” I say.
Casamir pulls me away. “Oh, that’s nothing. They’re nothing. They just speak nonsense. They’re mad. Don’t worry about them.”
“Where did they come from?” I ask.
“Here and there,” Casamir says. “Here’s your holding room.”