The Tiger Flu

Chapter 43 is set in New Grist Village and is told from Kora’s perspective on Day 1 of the node “Insects Awaken.” It is 156 years later, in the year 2301.

Kora has been transmutated into a “starfish tree,” which is a tree that bears organs as fruit. The Kora Tree shades and tells stories and Grist history to a group of young Grist girls. The Kora Tree explains how she escaped from the New Origins Archive during the fall of Chang. Kora was uploaded to a batterkite using LïFT technology and became its consciousness. With Kiri and Bombyx’s help, they discovered that batterkite tentacles, if groomed carefully and left atop fertile soil, can grow roots. With this knowledge, they created the Kora Tree and an entire orchard of starfish trees.

The book concludes with Kiri, who is now an elder groomsman, contemplating returning to the New Origins Archive ruins to find the blue door of the Dark Baths so she can see Peristrophe and Glorybind again. Eng lurches along its orbit overhead.