Cryptobiosis in Sugar and Lemon by Laura Blackwell

Jana stared at the half-pint jars taking their own sweet time to cool on her kitchen counter. “Come on, come onnnn,” she muttered. Sweat ran down into her eyes and stung, but she didn’t dare move to wipe it away. Every time she touched anything other than the fruit, the jars, or the canning equipment, she had to wash her red, chafed hands again. Jana was nothing if not conscientious.

The popping noises and flattening of the jar lids told her she’d done it right. Ten of the eleven jars sealed properly, pale dices of ripe pear immune to the ravages of mold and bacteria. She’d promised only ten jars to her daughter’s school, so the eleventh didn’t matter. She bent to examine her handiwork at eye level, appreciating the precision of her knifework and the play of the weak, early afternoon sunlight in the thick golden syrup. Even Polly, with her childish but consistent complaints about the texture of fresh fruit and the effort of chewing, would devour these soft and glistening pears.

Then Jana saw the dark fleck in one of the sealed jars.

Two compost pails full of peels and cores and bruised flesh, and still something contaminated the fruit. With the insulated tongs, Jana turned the jar to see what stem or seed had made its way in. But it didn’t look like a stem or a seed. It looked more like a chubby brown caterpillar the length of a fingertip. She glared at the little invader as if she could vaporize it with the heat of her irritation.

It flexed, sending lethargic waves through the oozy yellow syrup. Then it slid through the viscous goo to present its head, as if staring back unfazed. Once she saw it head-on, Jana realized it wasn’t a caterpillar. It had enough legs—a few extra, actually, and with claws on them—but no antennae, no mandibles, and no eyes. The creature facing her down through glass and sugar and lemon juice had a flattish face with a circular mouth.

“What the fuck,” Jana said, lingering on the cussword she avoided using in front of her child, “is a giant fucking tardigrade doing in the school auction’s pears?”

In response, the tardigrade sidled up to a tiny cube of pear, telescoped its straw-like mouth into the fruit, and began sucking on it like some kind of miniature vampire.

Jana made an angry scrunchy-face at the admittedly cute little monster. There was no time to turn the pears in the unsealed jar into jam. There was barely enough time for the jars to finish cooling. “I have to get these to Polly’s school before it lets out,” she told it. “I’ll deal with you later.”

The tardigrade released the pear and flexed the sharp stylets that surrounded its mouth. She wasn’t sure if it was a threat, a comment, or even conscious movement. She didn’t have time to think about it.

Half an hour later, Jana carried a flat of jarred pears into the multi-use room at Sunny Valley Elementary, the “good school” in the district. The auction organizer, a blonde mom named Stephanie, gestured toward a table without looking away from her iPhone. “Tuesday isn’t a problem,” she was saying in a no-I’m-sparing-you-embarrassment voice, “but understand that getting it to the client on time means comments have to come in by Wednesday noon.” Jana set the flat down and carefully ignored the moms who were hanging a banner with the legend “Fall Auction: Throwback Prom!” She didn’t want to get sucked into helping and have Polly wonder where she was when school let out. Trying to look busy, she searched “tardigrades” on her phone instead. They were pretty interesting—could live through extreme heat and cold, which explained why the little weirdo made it through the heat canner intact—but she didn’t see anything about a species that was visible without a microscope.

Finally, Stephanie hung up and made a matte-lipsticked moue of exasperation. “Those meetings always take longer than they say they will. You can leave that there.”

“I signed up for ten jars, but only nine of them are usable,” said Jana, determined to do the right thing. She wasn’t going to pass off either the tardigrade jar or the unsealed one to an unsuspecting bidder. “Will you accept an IOU for another?”

Stephanie’s eyes widened, but her eyebrows didn’t rise. “You volunteered to bring ten jars of home-grown canned pears. It’s in the auction catalog. We can’t change it now.”

“The jars didn’t all seal properly,” Jana explained. “A few of them aren’t safe.”

“I’m sure they’re fine.” Stephanie waved a hand dismissively.

Jana squared her shoulders. “If they were fine, I’d have brought them. I can’t give you a potentially contaminated jar.” She tried not to look at Stephanie’s immobile eyebrows as she added, “When ingested, botulism toxin can be deadly.”

Stephanie paused ominously before saying, “We can take an IOU for another jar. Is there anything we can say to make the item more appealing? ‘Organic pears from a master canner’?”

“You can say ‘made with organic sugar.’ The fruit is pesticide-free, but our back yard doesn’t have an organic certification.” Before Stephanie could say that was basically the same thing, Jana continued, “My masters degree is in nutritional science.”

“Oh!” A look of surprise crossed the lower two-thirds of Stephanie’s face. “How great that the auction is giving you a chance to use it!”

“I consult for home health care companies part-time.” Jana stood a little straighter, feeling the sweat trickle down the back of her husband’s holey old half-marathon T-shirt. “I just don’t dress up most days.” She hurried out as the bell shrilled.

Jana ran to the outdoor lunch tables as children rampaged out of the classrooms. The first kid she recognized was Stephanie’s daughter, Emma, who breezed past with every hair of her sleek ponytail in place and the loops of its grosgrain ribbon perfectly symmetrical. She laughed with another doll-perfect second-grader, but turned only slightly toward her friend. Like Stephanie, Emma was a person to be seen and seen with—and from the look she gave a running kindergartner who veered too close, she did not forgive easily once crossed. “Riff-raff,” the angelic-looking girl said scornfully. Her friend nodded, a bobblehead of unconsidered approval.

And there was Polly, her chin tucked, her hair a haystack, dark circles under her darting eyes. When she saw Jana, she ran straight into her arms. A kid bumped into Jana’s butt as she crouched, but she didn’t let go until Polly stopped shaking and loosened her grip.

“How was school?” Jana asked, holding Polly’s small, warm hand on the walk to the car.

Polly shrugged unconvincingly and stuck out her lower lip. “When is Daddy back?”

“Tomorrow during the day,” answered Jana, searching Polly’s eyes for a clue about what made for a bad day at the good school. “I miss him, too.” She’d asked Craig if there wasn’t some way he could come home after the trade show ended, but a VP had scheduled a client dinner that night and client brunch in the morning. Having the lead software engineer on hand made the company look like it knew what it was doing. Craig’s job let them buy a house in this neighborhood, so they both dealt with it. It wasn’t as easy for Polly.

“Can we Skype him tonight?” Polly’s protruding lip started to tremble.

“Not tonight. But Ashley’s coming over, so you’ll have pizza for dinner.” Jana unlocked the door and helped Polly up into the booster seat before adding the bribe: “Extra cheese if you’re good for her.” Polly didn’t love Ashley—a sweet teenager whose only fault was not being Mommy or Daddy—but the promise of gooey mozzarella might sway her.

Jana let Polly pick a game and then played Uno with her, unsuccessfully fishing for the real story about the school day, until the sitter got there. There was no point in hurrying to get ready; Jana wasn’t trying to impress anybody, and she was more than okay skipping the wine reception and prom-theme dances. It wasn’t until Jana was sticking the pizza money under a fridge magnet that she noticed there was only one jar of pears on the counter. The lid still had the subtle blister shape that told her it hadn’t sealed properly. With mounting dread, she turned it over and saw nothing but cubed fruit floating lazily in molten sugar. The jarred tardigrade was missing.

Despite her high-heeled sandals and the setting sun, Jana had never driven to Sunny Valley school so fast. She ignored the refreshments and strode to the auction tables. Among the orthodontist brochures and bottles of wine stood a pyramid of jars, the wholesomeness of the pears beaming out past the labels. It took ten jars to make a pyramid of that size. She hoped for a desperate, irresponsible moment that somehow the sneaky extra was the less visibly contaminated jar, but she hurried to the back of the table and saw the tardigrade right there in the center jar of the bottom row. It was bigger now, the size of her thumb. The damn thing should have been microscopic in the first place. Jana reached out to unstack the jars and apprehend the sinister nubbin, but a volunteer tucked a paper plate with a number and a handle on it into her hand and shooed her toward the round tables of the auction floor. Stephanie gave her an icily patient smile from the auctioneer’s podium. The auction was about to start.

Jana could still grab the tardigrade’s jar and say, “Whoops, this one’s no good, don’t know how it got into the flat.” Or maybe she could knock over the table and steal it in the ensuing chaos. But on Monday, Polly would be back in class with Stephanie’s daughter and the children of Stephanie’s minions. Children who called other children “riff-raff,” a word most second-graders hadn’t even heard. It was the very definition of a hostile environment.

She gave the tardigrade an anxious glare. The tardigrade flattened the claws on one tubby leg, as if saying, “Wait. Just wait,” so Jana found the last empty folding chair in the room—at the “Livin’ La Vida Loca” table, which sported an inexplicable sombrero and potted cactus—and sat down between an already-drunk mom and a dad who looked like he’d been practicing his I-have-a-feeling-about-you smile since this song was the prom theme. If Jana’s husband were like that, she’d probably be drunk too. If Craig hadn’t had that stupid trade show, he would be here in a rented tux, resenting the pettiness on display as much as she did. At least they’d have been able to laugh about it later.

While her tablemates flapped their auction paddles for gift cards and hotel stays, Jana stewed. She was sure she’d counted nine jars into the flat. She was meticulous—to a fault, some would say—about many things, but honesty and food safety most of all. The tardigrade must have moved the jar itself, rolling across the counter at speed to hurl itself into the flat. The idea was ridiculous, but no more so than a giant tardigrade showing up in home canning.

Jana pulled out her phone and continued her tardigrade research. The articles that called them water bears or moss piglets mostly talked about how cute they were. The more scientific ones explained that these microscopic organisms could survive not only extreme heat and cold, but the vacuum of space. It wasn’t clear how they’d do in somebody’s stomach. She was pretty sure they wouldn’t do great if somebody smashed them with a kitchen utensil. Jana felt a sudden, unexpected surge of protectiveness.

“You’re not bidding on anything,” said the dad next to her with a conspiratorial chuckle.

“I’ve never understood why getting drunk and spending too much for stuff we don’t need is a good thing to model for our kids.” Jana didn’t look up when she said it, and realized a moment too late that she’d seen these parents in Polly’s classroom on Back to School Night. Shit. Relentless candor, backfiring on her and her family again. She looked up to the mom’s confused gape and the dad’s knowing smirk. Feeling queasy, she sociably lied, “Not that it isn’t fun.”

Then the auctioneer called out, “Ten half-pint jars of home-grown pears! Picked at peak ripeness! All organic ingredients, and made by a registered dietician, Sunny Valley mom Jana Lutz! Bids for this old-time treat start at a low, low thirty dollars!”

Jana went for her own auction paddle in a rush, knocking it to the floor. Her dress’s chiffon skirt caught under the chair and tore as she went after it. She didn’t care. She’d bought the foofy thing secondhand, and she’d donate it with an as-is notice as soon as it was clean again.

A hand shot down next to hers and picked up the paddle. “I felt a premonition,” a male voice half-sang. She emerged from under the table, flushed and disheveled, to stare down Smirky Chuckling Dad next to her. “Jana, right? You must love your own cooking!” He pushed her auction paddle under his plate.

“You can’t bid on your own,” slurred his wife, waggling an unsteady finger as she pulled Jana’s paddle even further away. “Issin the rules.” She waved her own paddle in the air. “My grandma used to make jam. Wasrilly good. Had ginger in it.”

“They’re just pears, not jam,” said Jana, eagerly chasing down the next possibility. “If you win it, though, I’ll take one of them back and trade you a jar of jam for it!”

Drunk Mom didn’t seem to hear her, or else didn’t care. She paid an absurd ninety dollars for the pears, though. Chuckling Dad said maybe somebody owed him for that. Jana smiled tightly and kept reading. Tardigrades required moisture to stay mobile; without it they shut down into a low-energy stage called cryptobiosis. None of the articles described a tardigrade the size of a roll of antacids, nor explained how such a beast could get into a piece of fruit.

Sometimes there isn’t any explanation for how somebody gets where they are and how they survive it. Jana didn’t believe in fate, but maybe she and the tardigrade were there to save each other.

Jana closed her eyes and imagined herself floating in sweet, golden liquid. Unaware of heat or cold, breathing through her skin cuticle, languid and peaceful. Little stubby legs were enough to take her where she needed to go. She latched onto her food with the stylets around her mouth and onto footholds with her sharp claws. She was tiny and infinite. She could endure vacuum. The school auction was nothing.

“Do’worry,” Drunk Mom assured her post-auction as she hefted the pears, now loaded less securely into the flat. The jars rolled around like barrels on the deck of a wave-tossed ship. “You do’hafta make me new ones. These look great.”

“Juicy.” Chuckling Dad winked at Jana as he took the flat from his teetering wife. Jana included both of them in a stony-eyed smile that didn’t expose her teeth. She just had to get home with the tardigrade and Polly’s family reputation intact. Hang on, she thought. Together, we’ll all get out of this mess: You, me, and Polly. A dark shape bobbed in one jar of pears. Jana took it for agreement.

Jana could barely wait to get away from these people—didn’t want to even be seen with them—and hated herself the entire time it took to follow them out the door and onto the sidewalk. It was dark out, and she couldn’t see the tardigrade, but she envisioned it in her mind’s eye, a clawed roly-poly the size of her thumb. Be ready to move fast and be brave. As if in response, one of the lazily rolling jars changed direction. When they passed under a light pole, she whispered aloud, “Now.”

The off-kilter jar jumped, rolled, and fell to shatter on the sidewalk.

“What the hell?” yelled Drunk Mom, and Jana dove to the concrete, scrabbling for the tardigrade in the shadows. Sharp pain erupted across her knuckles and the heel of her hand.

“I’ll make you a new one,” Jana promised as she scraped her undamaged hand through a pool of syrup. The wavering shadows of Drunk Mom and Chuckling Dad cut into the light, making her fingers more useful than her eyes. A sliver of glass stabbed under her fingernail before her hand brushed against a sticky mass just big enough and textured enough to be the tardigrade. It didn’t move. Please, please, tardigrade. Sometimes I don’t know how Polly’s going to survive this place, but she has to, and you have to. You know how to bide your time. You endure. “I’ll put ginger in it this time. For you.”

“Did you drop your keys?” Chuckling Dad leaned down, addressing her backside. “I could give you a ride.”

“I want to get all this glass off the sidewalk,” said Jana, knowing the not-lie sounded stupid even by this evening’s standards. “People walk their dogs here. The dogs will go for the food and hurt themselves on the glass.”

“Aw, I love dogs!” cried Drunk Mom. “Waitasec.” She rifled through her own purse for a long moment, and then the bright beam of a keyring’s LED flashlight made the glass sparkle and the syrup gleam. The light picked up the tardigrade as well, and she shrieked, “Holy shit, whuzzat?”

“Just a lawn grub,” said Chuckling Dad in a knowledgeable tone. “But it’s dead, see? Nothing to be scared of.” He shifted his hold on the flat and snaked a protective arm around his wife, who leaned onto him heavily.

“Not dead,” said Jana, picking it up with her less bloody hand. “It molted. This is a shed skin.” Her heart leaped. Maybe the tardigrade was still alive.

The sprinklers hissed on, and Chuckling Dad hooted, “Go dancin’ in the raiiin!” at the same time Drunk Mom slurred, “No more jelly f’r the dogs!” After giving Jana their address so she could drop off a replacement jar of jam, the damp-ankled couple made their wavering way toward their own car.

Wincing, Jana set one palm on the wet concrete and waited. After a few moments, she felt a tickle, the stylets less painful than the glass, as the tardigrade delicately sucked blood from a wound on her hand. She picked up the tardigrade carefully, cradling it in fingers just barely wider than the animal, feeling its slow movements. Its cuticle was softer than she’d expected, though not as soft as Polly’s hand, and not as warm. “You were brave tonight,” she whispered. “I know it’s hard for you to take action. Usually you just outlive your problems. But you were brave, and you helped Polly and me. Thank you.”

The tardigrade stopped suckling, as if listening attentively. “I’m going to make pear jam for you, and I’m going to put ginger in it this time,” she told it quietly. “I’ll use pint jars so you’ll have more room. I’ll teach Polly to measure the ingredients and label the jars. Family helps each other. And if you outgrow pint jars, I’ll make pickles in a quart jar. In the winter, I’ll make you limoncello. Does that sound good?”

The tardigrade snuggled against her—contentedly, perhaps; or perhaps it just knew how to endure. In time, Jana could learn those things, too. She cupped the tardigrade close to her sequined bodice. It was so light, so gentle, it didn’t disturb the shard of glass throbbing in her nailbed. She drove them home to Polly, slowly, gripping the steering wheel with the fingers of the other hand, lemon juice stinging the cuts in her sticky palm.


Laura Blackwell is a Pushcart-nominated writer of speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Nightmare, PseudoPod, and CatsCast. She is copy editor for The Deadlands, and she and Daniel Marcus cohost the online reading series Story Hour. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, Bluesky, and Mastodon’s Wandering Shop.