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Chapters (48)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Epigraph
  4. 1. The Dream of the Blue Fox
  5. 1. THE DREAM OF THE BLUE FOX
  6. 2. THE THREE
  7. i.
  8. ii.
  9. iii.
  10. iv.
  11. v.
  12. vi.
  13. vii.
  14. viii.
  15. ix.
  16. x.
  17. xi.
  18. xii.
  19. xiii.
  20. xiv.
  21. xv.
  22. xvi.
  23. xvii.
  24. xviii.
  25. xix.
  26. xx.
  27. 3. Botch Behemoth
  28. 3. BOTCH BEHEMOTH
  29. 4. CAN’T REMEMBER
  30. 5. Leviathan
  31. 5. LEVIATHAN
  32. 6. THE BODY
  33. – 7 –
  34. 7. Corpse
  35. 7. CORPSE
  36. 8. The Dark Bird
  37. 8. THE DARK BIRD
  38. 9. CAN’T FORGET
  39. i.
  40. ii.
  41. iii.
  42. 10. The Dead Astronaut
  43. 10. THE DEAD ASTRONAUT
  44. 0. A Scrap of Paper Found in Chen’s Suit
  45. 0. A SCRAP OF PAPER FOUND IN CHEN’S SUIT
  46. Also by Jeff Vandermeer
  47. A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  48. Newsletter Sign-up

I was out there with you, Grayson. Though you didn’t know. That I was there. That I came back with you. That I was a burning star. The blistering rage of centuries of looting and death. I’m as old as you, Grayson. I am.

No, she didn’t want to die.

Not yet.

With the straining credulity of her damaged eye: Watching the rejects pour out of the Company door, way down beyond the plain. Out into the sudden shadow and grit of sand and holding ponds and the leviathan there to gobble them up. Bewildered by their own killing. Bewildered by so many things. To be dead without ever having lived.

She watched for a while, until she was satisfied the monster bore no trace of her beloved. Not in a form she could care for. Then turned away. Saw inside, deep, how the version of Moss that remained here was not for her.

Something that would never know her, never recognize her, and she could spend a thousand thousand days shadowing the leviathan and nothing in that milky gaze would connect to her. There would be no recognition. There could be no recognition.

v.2.0

In the end, I loved the world, so I remained in the world.

Had the fox said it or thought it to this Grayson? Or had she said it to the fox? The dead astronaut didn’t know.

v.3.0

Headed the other way, through the City, toward the desert. Of her own volition? Herded by the blue fox? Either way, the blue fox would not leave her alone, kept shadowing her even when she threw rocks at him. Futile. The first and now the last. Was he the last, too?

“You could have trusted us. In your plans,” Grayson said. Didn’t care now. Be still that human need. To fill the silence with words.

“You would never have followed us,” the blue fox said. “You wouldn’t have listened.”

“Do you have a plan that includes the human?”

“It includes people. Are you a person?”

“Once, I was several.”

“Do you trust me?” the blue fox asked.

“No,” Grayson said. “But I don’t need to anymore.”

Then she was silent. For before her lay an abandoned courtyard and in the middle of the courtyard were three dead people in the hazard suits so familiar because all three had worn them. Skeletons within. But still something of the familiar peeking through. The green resided across the indistinct features of one, whose bones were looser, whose features had dissolved into a mask of a face made of dead lichen.

The rage at seeing them there, but also the love.

“Why didn’t you tell us.”

“Maybe this time you would have succeeded,” the fox said.

“But you know that is not true. You helped make it not true.”

The fox said nothing.

“We had already failed,” Grayson said.

“Not you. Not exactly you.”