Cascadia Year: 127 TAO (Time After Oil)
United Middle Kingdom Cycle 80, Year 42 (Wood Snake Year)
Gregorian Year: 2145

Chapter 1: A Salty Visits

Kirilow Groundsel

Grist Village

Even if she is our last doubler, I don't want Auntie Radix to have the starfish Peristrophe Halliana's eyes. Auntie Radix already took Peristrophe Halliana's liver a week ago, and one of her kidneys the month before that. Auntie Radix says that it is the duty and nature of a starfish to give. I tell her it is the duty and nature of a doubler to know when to stop asking. Peristrophe Halliana and I have seen the season of rain and flood only nineteen times each. We are barely old enough to do what we do. Auntie Radix has been drenched by the new monsoons forty-eight times. It should be her job to sacrifice for us, and not the other way round. It's a good thing that memory is not a part of the body that can be cut out, or no doubt she would ask for Peristrophe Halliana's memory too.

I bite back my reluctance. Radix Bupleuri is our queen, not to mention the eldest of the eighty-three sisters who live at Grist Village, and a direct descendent of Grandma Sarah Woo. We Grist sisters would not survive without her, so we owe her our absolute respect and indulgence.

I sigh. I clean, then sharpen my knives on my precious whetstone. Don't you know that diamonds are a girl's best friend? We made the whetstone ourselves, crushed so many engagement rings from skeletons of the time before, six glass towers full of nice ladies, sweet so sweet. Purty, the scavenger Aunties tell me, purty as cover girl, wonderful wonder bra, guess? by georges marciano. Purty as korean BB cream, purty as chanel #5, purty as I'm worth it, are you?

Purty and thin as skin and bones. They had time to work off the weight. Time to rot, time to mummify. For every season there is a reason. Off their skinny dead fingers the scavenger Aunties took their diamonds. Crushed those doggies to a coarse salt and made me my whetstone. Now I smooth my blade, one, two, three. All that love from the time before rushes into my shiv.

That's the way the cookie crumbles, I tell my beloved Peristrophe Halliana, as I work my knives. Once they are good and sharp, I wipe them down with mother moonshine. We make it ourselves in clawfoot tubs from the time before. With potatoes cropped from our own fields, you know, Mistress Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? We pretty maids, we Sister Grist, some call us sock puppets, fuck puppets, matchstick monkeys. Who cares? We will outlive them all, in beds of our own making.

As I prepare my knives, I rant the chant the grannies gave me, the one that Grandma Sarah heard from the dirt, so long ago. My mother double Glorybind Groundsel, smoking medicinal marijuana in the old rosewood pipe she inherited from Grandma Sarah herself, chants with me, to make sure I get the words right. She teaches me my genealogy. You know, like, where we came from. What we are here for, all that. She teaches me how to be a good groom to my beloved Peristrophe Halliana, the last starfish among us, the last giver. It isn't easy you know-- to have and to hold, to kiss and to cut. Slit sluts, that's what they call us in Salt Water City. I'm not ignorant, I know what they say. It's why they expelled our grannies eighty years ago. For having and holding. For slicing and stitching. What did they expect from us anyhow? That they could keep making us again and again and again and again? Bust us from their greasy bottles like so many cheap gene genies? As if. Grandma Sarah invented the partho pop, you know, how we egg ourselves along, I mean, the long long love of the Grist Sisters. We split, we slit, we heal, we groom. Grandma Sarah invented the kiss cut, the repair job, what do you say, the fix, the patch. The first starfish gave her liver, her kidneys and at last her red hot heart to the first doubler. And so it was in the beginning.

I chant loud as I can to push down the dread that roils in my belly:

Our mother of milk and mildew

Our mother of dirt

Our mother of songs and sighing

Our mother of elk

Blessed are the sheep

And blessed are the roses

Blessed are the tigers

Wind, bones and onion flowers

We remember you and we remember rain

We remember mushrooms holding the globe in their mycorrhizal net

We remember dust

We remember meat

We remember fibre in its weave and fibre in its weft

The shifting and wobbling of the intentional earth

After the Sister exodus from Salt Water City, Grandma Sarah herself doctored it all. She-- not only the first doubler but also the first groom, inventor of the loving transplant, the sexy suture. It feels good, you know, don't doubt it. We mutated the first forget-me-do, not that Isabelle Chow, not those salt water bitches who claim it for their upload and their down. Forget-me-do makes you feel pain as pleasure, leaves nothing but a craving to have the experience again. We cultivated it for the the sisterly insertion, the parthenogenic return, so many ways for one to become two. You heard me, you know what I mean. Wink wink. I'll do it now. I'll show you.

Peristrophe Halliana sips six slugs, infused with forget-me-do. I wipe down the last blade with a seventh. Then the flame, hot so hot. My precious bunsen burner salvaged from the very lab where Grandma Sarah was made, in old Salt Water town, the ruin that somehow keeps on being a city. All railway tracks, moldy stucco and tarnished glass skyscrapers. All rain, mud, bed bugs and rodentia. Rock-a-bye baby, in the cradle of civilization.

Thinking about it makes me will my knives super clean. Pour more vodka in to burn baby burn. I'm being followed by a moonshine shadow. Peristrophe Halliana is prone to infection. The cutting might be no big deal, but healing's a bummer. So knives must shimmer clean, a lean mean clean. I mean sparkle, twinkle like the lemon muscle man from the time before. Clean as Mister. Even though the mistresses are master here.

The first cut is the deepest. At the corner of the eye, at the zygomatic process. where the top of the skull attaches to the side of the head. I know my bones, my mother double Glorybind Groundsel taught me well. The foot bone's connected to the knee bone, the knee bone's connected to the thigh bone. Peristrophe Halliana sighs a sleepy sigh of pleasure-pain. I move my fingers beneath her eyeball, the tiniest blade concealed between middle and index. Nudge it out when the fingers are in place and softly slice the root. She groans. I tug at the globe and it releases with a gentle squelch and click.

Those are pearls that were her eyes, I sing. From her remaining right eye, she gazes at me with love.

I give her another couple of slugs of mother moonshine. Then, careful, so careful, I work my blade on the right. Again, the root. Another squelch, another click. I let her eyelids fall.

I lay the precious harvest out on ice brought down from the mountains by our first year initiates, all thirteen-year-old girls from Grist Village. At the door to my cave, Auntie Radix's groom is waiting. Soon the eyes that are darkening in that old doubler's head will shine bright as halogen headlights. Not that I've ever seen halogen headlights but I know the songs. Baby you can drive my car, yes, I'm gonna be a star... I know what stars are. They twinkle a little. They light up my life. I know what cars are too. They are what the people from the time before used to get around, instead of walking. They doubled as wheelbarrows, for transporting food and herbs and stuff. My mother double Glorybind Groundsel teaches me all the songs and all the history she remembers. "You must hold these things, Kirilow," she tells me. "We hold all that remains of the old world's knowledge in our bald brains. That means we need to be extra smart."

When Auntie Radix asks for Peristrophe Halliana's heart, I tell her no. No go, Joe. I'm at her bedside, summoned here after her new groom cut her wrong. Her old groom died last year of the flu and her new groom is young and green -- too green for the job she does. She should still be running ice down from the mountains with the other initiates. Her small hands are dexterous but unpracticed. Her eyes glow the emerald green of excess forget-me use.

Green grow the rushes grow, I sing. The new groom doesn't sing with me. She doesn't know this song. The initiates have no one to teach them the rhymes of the time before.

I feel dirty, cutting Auntie Radix for her, slipping my digits into Auntie Radix's floppy sockets. This isn't the ritual. This isn't the way it's done. The chivalry of the shiv says each groom takes care of her own -- doubler or starfish, depending on fate. But you don't take care of another groom's sexy suture. It's not right, it's not light, it'll make the world go the other way round. These are desperate times. Can a bank change? Can a grist?

I stay with Old Radix and her new groom until the satellite Eng rises on the southern horizon, blue and full. The elites of Salt Water City control her insides but we can still enjoy her glow. Eng is strong tonight. Her gravity pulls at my heart and makes it ache, so lonely without you. I should get back to Peristrophe Halliana.

That's when Auntie Radix blinks her peepers open, gazes at me through the true brown eyes of my own best beloved. Jeepers creepers.

"My heart is failing, Kirilow," she says, misty mournful as sad, fat Eng.

Oh no, I think, but I don't say it. She's our last doubler. The teachings of Our Mother say

Behold, the last

Doubler is gold

I sat that class carefully.

It means, Glorybind Groundsel told me, if the Grist is dying down to the last doubler, her word is flesh, her word is god. You can't say no.

All my fibres scream it. No more I love yous. My own heart howls like a child's. But my mouth says, "I don't quite get your meaning, Auntie."

She takes a deep breath, then narrows her eyes. "Arrhythmia, Kirilow. Don't pretend you don't understand."

I rack my brain for teachings about the last starfish, but I can't think of any. To give again so soon will kill Peristrophe Halliana. Not that Auntie Radix cares. Somehow, I make my excuses. I escape Auntie Radix's dark cave.

Eng rides high in the sky as I set off for home. Her metallic light illuminates the trees and the forest floor making everything glimmer ghostly. A slight breeze kicks up and the branches of the trees begin to sway and undulate like human arms.

Below the bluff that shapes the path between my cave and Auntie Radix's, I see something shift and jerk against the wind. The bluff rides high and steep over the valley below, and a mist obscures my vision. At first I think the movement is just a wind eddy, but then there is a red flash of hair. A biped, like us. One of those sneaky creeps from Salt Water City in all likelihood. But unlike us, tall, pale and gangly. Our genes don't express like that. We manifest crow-black hair, olive skin and short legs. I shudder, remembering last year's militia attack. We were lucky. It was a small advance guard, and we got them all. In my humble opinion, we should have moved the village afterwards, but Auntie Radix was against it.

I track the Salty along the edge of the bluff, meek and sweet as hello kitty. I catch a whiff of its shit and sweat stink on an updraft, and gag softly.

It stumbles into a clearing. I throw a knife at it, neatly severing its left hand. It screams and dashes in to the brush.

The severed hand lies there in clearing, reflecting Eng's metallic light. Blood pools from the cut veins. I step off the path onto the loose gravel and spindly sage that gives to the valley below. My first step lands solid, but the second sets a cascade of gravel flowing down the escarpment. I ride it, thankful for the sturdy elk skin boots that Peristrophe Halliana sewed for me while recovering from her last surgery.

I walk cautiously forward, brace through thighs to keep it slow and steady though the slope wants me to run. When I think it can't get any steeper, the path becomes a straight drop. I turn around and climb backwards as though down a ladder. When I reach the narrow ledge at the bottom of the drop, I turn again. A pair of eyes watches me from the forest just beyond the clearing. The Salty I saw? What if there is a full Salt Water City militia in the forest, watching, and waiting to ambush me?

My gaze darts between the eyes in the forest and the severed hand, that gleaming horde of genetic treasure, right there in the middle of the clearing. If I were smart, I'd leave it, bide for a better chance, when I have Glorybind Groundsel or a posse of initiates with me. I'm not smart. I scramble the rest of the way down, half running, half rolling, and dash through rough bush and brambles into the clearing. The Salty rushes out then. Dives in to the clearing, blood still dripping from its hastily bound wound. It snatches up the severed hand just seconds before I get there, then lurches back into the woods. I tear after it, muttering Our Mother who art artful, Our Mother of moss... I follow the shuddering of the trees and the intermittent blood spatter staining needles, earth, leaves and stone. I run so fast I don't realize I've arrived at Mourning Rock until I'm there. The forest lies dead still. The Salty is nowhere to be seen.

"What do you suppose it was looking for?" I ask Peristrophe Halliana when I get back to our cozy cave. Her eyelids flicker open but her new eyes are mere buds. It's just as well she can't see me in my torn tunic, covered in bruises and burrs.

"Us," I suspect, she says. "You better catch it." She closes her eyes again and flops back on to her mushroom fibre pillow.

I see the Salty again, two days later, running below Seven Sisters Bluff. My mother double Glorybind Groundsel and I are out harvesting forget-me-do-- our most precious crop, seeded through salal, fringe cup and trillium. The trees rustle and shiver below as the creature moves through them. It steps into an open patch of light, and stops. I draw my opera glasses out of their pouch and whip them up to my eyes. It's the same Salty I saw two days ago, grey-eyed and weak now. I rush along the bluff above it, follow as it stumbles, delirious and panicked at the same time. A clearing opens ahead of it. I take my chances and hurry ahead to a waiting spot just above the clearing. Watch like a young coyote, eyes intent, tail twitching. Quick as a brown fox, I drop a womb bomb over it -- Glorybind Groundsel's latest invention, designed precisely for such purposes. With a quick sharp tug I draw the womb bomb tight, bundling the thing neatly. It shrieks like a wounded rabbit as I rush down the bluff to where it flails. Whistle for my mother double.

Glorybind Groundsel emerges from the trees seconds after I reach the sobbing Salty. These creatures are so pathetic, I don't understand how they could ever have disdained us, much less expelled us from Salt Water City.

"Whenever I want you, all I have to do is dream," I tell it. "So shut up, Little Suzie."

The thing whimpers.

My mother double says, "There's no need to be so cruel, Kirilow."

I glare at her. I say nothing but lead her gaze with my own to its stump. A new hand is growing there, small and poorly formed, but clearly distinguishable.

"It can starfish," she mouths.

I nod.

"Let me go," blubbers the thing.

I yank the womb bomb tighter. "I've got you under my skin," I croon. And then, "By the foulest breath of Our Mother, would you please shut up?"

It falls to weeping again.

"I can't stand these things, Mother Glorybind," I say. I pull out my needles.

"When will you grow out of this murderous phase?" sighs Old Glorybind Groundsel.

One of the needles is a little tarnished. I pull out a cloth and begin to polish it. "I don't know why you're all so squeamish," I say. "You eat everything I kill."

"We need this one for its starfish wisdom."

"At least let me bleed it a little."

"Kirilow."

"Alright," I say. "I wasn't going to hurt it anyway. But you can't stop me from hating. You yourself told me the stories, of how they rounded our grandmothers up by the thousands, lined them up along a barbed wire fence and shot them. And didn't they attack just last year? Why should you care if I hurt it or not?"

"The war is over now, Kirilow. Just stun it."

"The war is not over. It's just quieter than it was in Grandma Sarah's day."

"Stun. That's all."

"Pardon, master. I shall be correspondent to command."

"That's enough cheek for one day," says my mother double. "The time before knowledge I feed you from my own mouth is solid jade. You have no right to abuse it."

Tenderly, as though this putrid Salty were my own best beloved Peristrophe Halliana, I tap a needle into its skull and then all down the meridian of sleep. The Salty stops weeping. Its eyes dim and its eyelids flicker down. It dozes softly.

I pick up one end of the womb bomb then and my mother double picks up the other. Swinging the Salty between us, we take it back to our lab and lay it out on the examination table.

I'm in the kitchen warming a bit of rabbit stew for Peristrophe Halliana when I hear rustling in the lab. I pull aside the curtain to see what's going on. The Salty is awake. "I found you," it hacks. "You have to come to Salt Water City. The people are dying. You have to cure them."

"Why would I do that?" I ask, eyes incredulous wide. "Far as I'm concerned the sooner you murderers go extinct, the better for me and my sisters. It's about time you brewed a flu strong enough to kill yourselves off." I move towards the medicine pot to get it a cup of forget-me-do. I open a small hole in the womb bomb where its mouth is and press the cup to it, urging it to drink.

"Please, no," it begs. "Not yet." And then, "We didn't all want rid of you, you know. It was the McPherson-Chan government. It was the militias. Some of us hate them as much as you do."

I put on a mushroom membrane globe. I press my hand to its stomach. Even through the glove and the thick fibres of the womb bomb, I can feel the excess bile in its belly. Sickly and sickening. "I don't believe you," I tell it. "So drink."

"Please," it wails, "when you see them, your heart will fill with pity." Tears dribble down its pimply cheeks. A river of snot runs from its nose. How could they have been so repulsed by us when they themselves were so disgusting?

I press the cup harder against it lips. "Drink, Salty."

"I have a mother and a father," it says, smiling ever so slightly through the mass of snot and tears. "And two brothers. We could help you."

Vomit pools in my throat. I grip its jaw, and force it to stay open. Pour the tea into its already gurgling, foaming mouth. As soon as I let go it coughs and sputters, then spits the whole cup of tea over its front. I want to be sick, and stumble away towards the water closet. I hear old Glorybind's voice then, and am astonished to realize she's been sitting in her rocking chair, smoking sage and pot in her pipe this whole time. "Steady, Kirilow. A good groom doesn't get excited over nothing. What will you do when you have a real emergency on your hands?"

I choke back my puke. If I don't learn everything my mother double has to teach me before she... you know... kicks it, then Peristrophe Halliana doesn't have long to live either.

"These things disgust me, Mother." I know they have a second sex they call "men", and that men are useful in Salty doubling technology. When I was a sprout, Glorybind Groundsel showed me a pair of slugs on a log slipping and sliming over one another. She intended to demonstrate that it was natural. 'It's not so bad,' she said. 'Some Grist Sisters like the idea of re-introducing men to the Grist. Not you, I suspect.' I remember so clearly the great glob of mucus that dripped from the combined bodies of the two slugs, oozed over the log, shimmered wetly, and plopped to the ground. 'Not me,' I told her. My mother double laughed. 'When you get older, you might not find the idea so repulsive.' 'It will be repulsive no matter how old I get,' I told her. I took forbidden sips of forget-me-do for a whole week afterwards to try to erase the knowledge of how Salty doubling was done.

Now, Old Glorybind draws a great puff of smoke into her lungs and exhales. "Sometimes it is alright to feel pity."

"I loathe these things, Mother. Peristrophe Halliana is going to die because of them. Why should I feel pity?"

"They aren't all the same," says my mother double.

"They lack sisterly feeling."

"I'm just as human as you are," the Salty whines through the walrus goo that oozes from its facial orifices.

"We aren't human," my mother double informs it. But then she puts down her pipe, goes over to it, and strokes its head, still covered in the sticky, thready stuff of the womb bomb.

"You shouldn't sugar it," I say. "What would happen if it told the other Salties where we are? We'd be finished then, wouldn't we? Done and dusted like so many rusted out car shells." I go over to it, hold its face steady and take a swab from its nose. "Let's see what kind of disease it has. With any luck, it's a plague that'll kill them all good and dead, and then the Grist will be free at last. High day!"

"Kirilow, I've taught you, be careful what you wish for. The Grist may have evolved beyond its former masters, but we are not immune from their illnesses."

I grab the thing's wrist and feel its slippery pulse. An unbidden image rushes into my head, Peristrophe Halliana's mother double laid out on a white table under bright lights as Salty doctors poke and prod. I don't want to see. I let go of the thing's hand. Shuffle over to the plant bench and begin to prepare substrate for mushrooms.

"You'll help me then?" whispers the Salty.

"What are you?" I hiss.

"I dream about time," says the Salty. "Time past and time to come. I can show you your history."

"My mother double teaches me my history," I say.

"I can show you how the Grist sisters might survive. I can show you how they might die. I can help you make a path." Its eyes plead. I don't trust it.

"All your kind ever did was use us and lie to us. Your word is dross! I mean caca poo poo, nothing, nada."

"I know you saw your sister," says the Salty. "I can show you things. In Salt Water City, they hate the ones who dream about time. But we have our place. The city is changing. If you help me now, you pave the way for the Grist sisters to return as full and beloved citizens."

"What kind of mark do you take me for?" I snarl. I throw a fresh womb bomb over it and yank the bomb tight. Inside, the thing whimpers. That's better.

I don't want the Salty to know that it has unsettled me. I get to work on my ganoderma tea. The music of the spores will soothe. Perhaps the path to Our Mother's salvation lies not with animals but with plants. If I could make the perfect substrate, I could capture the perfect spores. If I were a perfect groom, I could push the longevity bestown by the ganoderma to become immortality and then there would be no need for doublers or starfishs. Auntie Radix could cut the greedy grasping. Peristrophe Halliana and Glorybind Groundsel would stay with me forever.

These are the things I think as I water my substrate, massage and knead the sweet, earthy smelling stew of rotted fibre and bone, fruit and flesh.

I'm so absorbed, I don't hear the snipping and cutting sounds until it is too late. Old Glorybind has cut the sick Salty from its casing. They whisper together. The Salty passes something dry and purple to Mother Glorybind. She tucks the strange gift into the folds of her robe, then passes a hand over the Salty's forehead.

I open my mouth to ask her what she is doing, but there's a thump at our old wooden door. I go to open it. Standing there in the piss pouring rain is Auntie Radix's new young groom.

"Kirilow, you have to come quick," she says. "There is something wrong with Radix Bupleuri's heart."

"Did you take her pulse?" I ask. "Did you take her temperature?"

"There is no time," says the groom. She sweats and jitters. "Bring your mother too."

"There's no need," I tell her. "Auntie Radix's every paper cut is an emergency."

"This time there's really really a problem," the young groom says. Her eyes brim with shameful tears.

"I better come with you," says Glorybind Groundsel.

"Someone has to stay with that. We can't let it run amuck through the lab."

Old Glorybind casts it a glance. "Just bundle it, Kirilow. This might be serious."

I sigh like a put-upon old lady.

I throw a third womb bomb over the thing as it lies in its bed. It doesn't struggle. It curls up and seems to sleep.

My mother double and I take our elk wool overcoats from their hooks, grab umbrellas and hustle out into the rain.

Auntie Radix chokes for breath. Her face burns red as a high summer strawberry. Peristrophe Halliana's beautiful brown eyes bulge from her fleshy face.

My mother double rushes to her side. "Calm now, Radix," she soothes. "Breathe, slow and easy. Kirilow is here. She will save you but you must calm down."

Behold the last

Doubler is gold

I snap out of my irritation.

"Willow bark!" I shout.

The young groom should already know this. She rushes off now to get it while Old Glorybind and I help Auntie Radix lie down.

Auntie Radix huffs desperately. I lay both palms firmly over her chest and begin to pump. "Stayin' alive, stayin' alive, woo hoo hoo!" I sing in my head only. I don't want to be accused of disrespect.

The groom returns with willow bark, which we give Auntie Radix to chew. She chomps and I pump, but the old engine number nine beats fainter and fainter. I pump faster, but the beat skips, then slips. I push deeper into her chest. Pump, thump. Pump, thump. Pump, thump. Crack. I feel the sharp snap of a rib going. Her heart gives what I think is its last feeble push. After a long delay, a surprise follow-up. Pump, bump. And then that's it. Auntie Radix is gone.

We all know, and we are all quiet for a long time.

At last, Glorybind Groundsel whispers, "Our Mother be praised. Though we may not understand her actions, her will is done." She bows her head reverently.

The young groom sits, twitching. Her whole being vibrates with a restlessness that is not exactly grief. We sit with her as she twitches like this, for an hour, then longer. We sit with Auntie Radix's body as it cools, palpably releasing its heat. I wonder if it is too late to retrieve Peristrophe Halliana's eyes, but I know the question is not appropriate. I push it down. "I could use a drink," I say to the young groom, hoping she'll offer something from Auntie Radix's stash, and have something herself, to stop the twitching. But she doesn't offer. She sits silent and cryptic.

At last, she says, "I hope you are pleased with yourself, Kirilow Groundsel."

My jaw drops.

"This is not the time, Bombyx," says Old Glorybind. "We must mourn Auntie Radix now. She was our queen, and the Grist has lost it's last doubler. Kirilow is our best and most gifted groom. She did everything she could for Auntie Radix."

"That she did not," the young groom says. "Auntie Radix needed a heart transplant. Kirilow Groundsel knew this, and it was within the power of the starfish Peristrophe Halliana to give."

"It was not," I hiss whisper, indignant and enraged. "It was not."

"I know you've already got plans to replace her. I know you have a Salty in your cave. You've robbed me. You've robbed the Grist itself, Kirilow Groundsel. You're a yellow, a Salty sympathizer, a traitor. When will you be happy? When the whole Grist sisterhood is dead and gone?"

"You're overwrought," I say, getting out of my chair. If she's not going to offer the least little sip of mother moonshine, I'll help myself. I step towards Auntie Radix's medicine cabinet. She comes for me then, but Old Glorybind is faster than I thought she could be. She takes the young groom by the shoulders. "You still have duties to Auntie Radix, my friend," she says. "Auntie Radix's daughter doubles will want to know, even if they weren't getting along. And the High Priestess and Groom Elder should be here to administer last rites."

The young groom knows Glorybind Groundsel is right. She casts me last fierce glance, but does what she's told, and soon returns with a contingent of Grist villagers. "The High Priestess has been sent for, and will be here tomorrow," she tells us.

As custom and solidarity demand, we all sit with the young groom and Old Radix's body until dawn.