All around us, robed women carry bowls of water and tea and dishes made from the leavings of their dead.
“Eat, eat,” says the woman who met us on the stairs. I have since learned her name is Vashapaldi, and she is a religious headwoman of some sort. Not the leader, no; that is the woman at the head of the table, sitting up there with Arankadash in the place of highest honor. The leader is much older, her hair shorn short in mourning, they tell me, as two of her kin were killed in the mutant attack. Or, rather, the mutant hunting party gone wrong.
I’m not sure what I think of the fare.
Casamir leans into me. “Not hungry?” she says.
“I haven’t . . . eaten this before.”
“What do you think you’ve been eating?” Casamir says. “Us and the world, we’re all made of the same stuff.” She raises a bowl of bitter wine.
I ask Vashapaldi where the wine comes from.
“From the orchards, of course.”
“I’d like to see them. I haven’t seen any plants here. Only mushrooms and some strange creatures.”
Vashapaldi nibbles at a finger bone. “After supper, yes. I have something else for you as well.”
I pick at my food and finally settle for eating a broth-based soup. I try not to think what it’s flavored with. The broth is good. I have to admit that.
After we eat, we retire to the rooms they’ve given us, which are built into great bulbous mounds that remind me of the insect caves. Das Muni is so tired that she doesn’t even protest when Vashapaldi returns and escorts me away to visit the orchards. As we walk along the well-worn path, I realize this is the first time since I’ve descended into the belly of the world that I’ve been free of Das Muni.
We travel up a long spiraling stair that has been carved into the flesh of the world. The flesh has been seared but still oozes in places, viscous green mucus. The pustules of light far above illuminate our way.
At the top of the stair, I smell something sweet. I crest the peak of the stairs and gaze out over a lush plateau, high above the rest of the settlement. Tangled vines are lined up on poles, stretching as far as I can see. There are a dozen tangled trees, too, not like the fungal pillar forest, but trees made of wood. I walk up to one and press my hand to the trunk, just to be sure. I know these things, these words, though I have no memory of seeing them.
“We grow hemp as well,” she says, “and several kinds of tubers and green leafy vegetables.”
“How?” I say. I gaze up at the pustules of light.
“Yes,” she says, “the light is a factor. Only a few settlements have it. Many of them have gone out over the generations, leaving increasingly little. We bring our waste up here, and dead fungi and other detritus, to feed them. It took a long time, more generations than many remember, but eventually, we grew things here.”
“Where did the seeds come from?” I ask.
“The traders. Casamir’s people. They have a surprising trove of useful items, much of it salvaged from the muck at the center of the world. It’s amazing what people throw away.”
I breathe in the scent of the growing things. I crouch and take up a pinch of soil. It’s rich and black and pungent. “The world doesn’t absorb it?” I say. “And water—”
“We have everything we need,” Vashapaldi says. She laughs softly. “It surprises you now, too. That amuses me.”
“What do you mean?”
She pulls a fist-sized sphere from the pocket of her robe and holds it out to me.
I take it. It’s soft on the outside. It gives just a little when I squeeze it, like a ripening fruit. It’s green-gray and shiny. I have a flicker of familiarity, as if I should know what to do with it, but the feeling passes.
“What’s this?” I say.
“I am hoping you can tell me,” Vashapaldi says. “The last time you were here, you told me to hold it for you.”
A cold knife of fear strikes my gut. “You’ve met me before?”
“About a cycle ago.”
“How long is a cycle?”
“There are sixty heartbeats in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, six hours in a period, six periods in a day, six hundred days in a cycle.”
So, I finally know how long this has been going on, then. A cycle. “That’s a long time,” I say. “What else did I tell you?”
“You said your name was Zan. You were on a quest to save the Legion. I didn’t ask more than that, and you did not offer. There is a woman you loved, though. I know that much, because you would not succumb to the charms of any other. We did try.”
I squeeze the sphere.
“You said that if I ever saw you again,” Vashapaldi says, “I was to give you that. You told me you likely wouldn’t remember me, or even yourself, but that I would know you just the same, and that by giving you this, I could help you on your mission to save us all. And I have. So, I have kept my promise.”
“What did I do for you,” I ask, “that you held on to this so long?”
“You helped us with the children,” she says.
“I haven’t seen any children here,” I say.
“They come in waves,” she says. “We haven’t had a child-bearer in some time. But we have several women coming into adolescence.”
“There are pregnant women down there, though.”
She raises her brows. “Of course. We all become pregnant. But not everyone bears a child. Those blessed of the light to bear children are highly sought after. That’s how you helped us. You went out with our rangers and found a child-bearer. She perished after just a few births, but it was enough to ensure the survival of our people.”
“How did I do that?”
Vashapaldi puts a finger to her lips. “Some things I don’t ask.”
I shiver. Was I a murderer and a kidnapper, too? The more I learn about the woman I used to be, the less I like her. Is there a way to stop becoming her? Once the memories all come back the way Jayd says they will, will I become this other Zan again? Will I lose myself?
I pocket the sphere. “Thank you,” I say. “I’ll need your help one more time, though.”
“Anything.”
“We have to go up to the next level, and the next after that, however long it takes to get back to the surface. To my home. There is . . . there’s a woman I love who is in a lot of trouble. I have to get back to her.”
“Ah, yes. The eternal story,” Vashapaldi says. She lays a hand on my wrist. “It’s all right, I’m not going to try to make you stay.”
“How much longer is it to the surface?”
“I don’t know. You talked of it then as now, but I have never heard of such a place. There are other levels, certainly, but the world is a great circle. You’ll find that when you reach the top, you’ll be back at the bottom again, back in the pits.”
“I have to believe in something else.”