jamieproctor.ca

The Dolphin and the Shark
Once upon a time, a bottlenose dolphin and a sand tiger shark encountered one another in the shallow waters of the western Atlantic coast.
“Hello,” said the dolphin. “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”
“Yes indeed,” replied the shark. “Splendid.”
“Makes a man’s fancy turn to romance.”
“Indeed! Say, did you know that in order to mate I must severely bite the pectoral fins of my partner, in order to secure a grip?”
“I did not know that, and will inform my friends the next time we form a temporary coalition whose goal is to follow a female around and hem her in until she is ready to mate with us.”
“All very unpleasant, but of course it does lead to children, those little joyful bundles.”
“Of course. Except for those that belong to others of my kind. Those I will sometimes kill for fun.”
“Really? My own children devour one another in the mother’s womb until only two remain, one in each uterine horn.”
“Freak,” said the dolphin.
“Sicko,” said the shark.
They then swam their separate ways because neither had anything to gain from engaging in violence beyond severe injuries that very likely would have killed them both.
Moral: Nature tends to be grosser than you’d expect, but also less exciting.

The Tyrannosaurus’s Argument
Many, many years ago, during the Maastrichtian stage of the Cretaceous period, a Didelphodon was nosing about the forests of what would one day be Montana when it chanced upon a large clearing with a heap of rotting vegetation within it.
“Oh, a nest,” it said. “This will surely contain eggs, which I will consume as it matches my ecological role as a somewhat fox-like predator.”
“No, you won’t,” said the Tyrannosaurus that was returning to its nest, some twelve feet behind it. “Instead, I am going to consume you.”
“Wait, wait, wait, back up a bit,” squeaked the mammal. “That is clearly not what is supposed to happen here! You are a scavenging creature, and eating me would violate your natural place in the order of things.”
“You are talking nonsense,” said the Tyrannosaurus.
“Of course I’m not,” said the Didelphodon. “Your arms are tiny and incapable of gripping prey. You’re a scavenger if I’ve ever seen one!”
“My arms are not a highly-developed part of my predation strategy,” said the Tyrannosaurus, “but that is because they are extraneous. There are many entirely anachronistic predator ground-hunting birds I could use as examples who manage just fine hunting without the use of gripping arms. And this is granting you an unnecessary token in presuming their uselessness: they are quite powerful for their size, with strong gripping capability within their admittedly limited range.”
“Then what of your bulk?” pressed the mammal. “If you move above a trot you’ll fall over and turn into a pancake under your own mass! Catching prey is an impossibility!”
“Much of what I hunt moves not much faster, if that,” responded the Tyrannosaurus.
“Well, your jaws are clearly made to crack bones,” said the Didelphodon. “Marrow extraction is a prime goal for any carrion-eater.”
“Come off it,” said the Tyrannosaurus. “A bone-smashing bite matches my predation strategy perfectly: I charge full-bore into something, mash my teeth as deep as they’ll go, then drag them out and wait for them to bleed to death. Furthermore, my teeth would make shoddy molars: they can penetrate and smash, but they are poor crushers and chewers.”
“Surely your immensely powerful sense of smell makes you a dab hand at locating all those smelly carcasses, which you can easily secure with your powerful size?”
“You need more than a good nose to be an obligate or ‘pure’ scavenger; you also need a highly efficient means of locomotion. Almost all anachronistically-modern obligate vertebrate scavengers of the land are large birds which can drift on thermals at little to no energy cost, which also affords them easy and rapid access to corpses. I am forty feet long and must travel on foot, which makes waiting for corpses to make themselves known to me a much less economical action,” said the Tyrannosaurus, who was clearly losing patience. “Come now, be sensible. Almost no predator passes up carrion, but ones that settle for nothing-but are both extremely rare and physiologically distinct in a manner that I am not.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait a second,” said the Didelphodon, “even if you are an active predator – for the sake of the argument mind you not that I’m conceding anything – shouldn’t you not waste your stomach space on me? I am relatively nutrient-poor and bony.”
“This is true,” said the Tyrannosaurus. “However, you are endangering my young, and given that I’m spending much of my time guarding them, NOT eating you would be a senseless waste in and of itself.”
The Didelphodon was prepared to debate this point, but it was then that the Tyrannosaurus ate it.
Moral: Nobody likes pedants.

The Sickle-Cell Child.
Far, far away, there lived a child, and that child suffered from headaches and bloody urine. For these deficiencies it was mocked by its peers, and it sought solace in the advice of its parent.
“Parent,” said the child, “why am I different, and why do the other children taunt me for this?”
“My child,” said the parent, “your physiological discomforts are the result of the heterozygous sickle-cell trait, meaning that you carry a single gene for sickle-cell anemia, which causes many of your red blood cells to be deformed into a collapsed ‘sickle’ shape. Your peers mock you because human social groups often become tighter-knit when they have a designated ‘other’ to contrast themselves against.”
“None of this is comforting to me in the slightest, parent,” said the child.
“Don’t worry,” said the parent. “There is an advantage in this. Trust me.”
The child was dubious, but it did trust its parent. And so it came to be that one day a major outbreak of malaria swept through the child’s home, killing a substantial portion of its peers but sparing the child due to the inhospitable nature of its ‘sickled’ blood cells for the malarial virus. The child was filled with despair and depression, but persevered, grew up, and had four children. As its mate was also a heterozygous carrier of the sickle-cell trait, one of their children was born without it, two were born with it, and the last inherited two copies of the sickle-cell trait and thus died early in life from sickle-cell anemia, all as statistics would predict.
Moral: Life is profoundly and innately unfair.

The Man Who Knew About Wolves
One night, a man went to a nightclub with some other men, who were his social acquaintances.
“Look over there,” said one of them. “There are some women. Let us attempt to flirt with them as a prelude to obtaining mutual sexual gratification.”
“No, said the largest man present. “They would not be interested in you. Women prefer alpha males: aggressive, physically-impressive, and dynamic.”
“You are generalizing a canine social habit into a biologically-ordained behavioural process of the human species,” said the first man. “Furthermore, the alpha-beta social complex of wolves, from which you have derived your theory, is in fact an anthropogenically-induced behavior caused by fragmented wolf packs composed of strangers being raised and studied in captivity. Naturally-occurring packs consist of a breeding pair and their offspring, and in these the theorem of a dominant ‘alpha male’ whose aggressive assertiveness leads to rulership of the pack is provably false.”
The largest man present, who was inebriated, took this monologue as an insult and punched the first man, who suffered a minor concussion. He was subdued by the club’s security staff and charged for assault and battery, which caused him some difficulties in securing a financially-rewarded career.
Moral: No, really, NOBODY likes pedants. And if you understand social relationships so well, you should be able to avoid getting punched in the face.

Sometimes, I get folks that come to ask me a question. And it’s always the same question, and it’s always in the same way – timid, half-moused, delivered with a flinch and another dozen unsaid questions held behind it: “lady (hah!) Benthook, how do you fish so well?” Is it a secret? Is it a trick? Is it some rite you dance by moonlight, is it a chant that brings the fat ones up from below, is it a tallow you rub into your lines?
And each time I give them the long slow smile just far enough to make them start to twitch, and then I say, “why sir (or lady), I just remember the words my mother gave me to fish by,” as pretty and pious as a churchman. And it’s funny to see their faces light up like they do, or cloud over in disappointment (what’s she hiding behind that, huh?), because mama’s words were wise enough, but they weren’t any sort of magic.
“Listen, my oldest spawnlings,” old mama Benthook had whispered to me, hands busy with the lines and craggy head bent low to her knots. “The sea is for the failures. Every sorry thing with the wrong number of legs or eyes or heads sinks to the bottom of its big black heart and squirms there, hiding.” She pointed one long, scaly finger at us. “All you got to do to pull them out is be better than them. And no daughter of mine is a failure.”
Yes, mama’s words were wise enough.
Pity she weren’t always right.

“Get up, you.”
Grelly moaned at the bottom of her bed. I repeated myself, this time with my foot. Grelly arose. Simple story, same story every damned morning. Every one.
“Unnhh. Wurr. Whurr we goin’?”
“Fishing, Grelly. It’s a big moon, and that’s the ocean’s time. Get your mug and wipe the crud out of your eyes, it’s time.”
Grumbling and groaning followed, and before too long (it was always too long) we were pushing off the quay, hearing the same old waves smack against the same old wood and drinking the same old oily soup from the same old stone mugs. As the sun rose it would find us out in the shoals, first setting lines for the baitfish, then setting baitfish for the bigmouths, then (if we felt up to it) setting bigmouths for the razorjaws. And if we hooked one, I’d be the one to fight it, because when the stakes got high Grelly’s knees got weak and her palms got sweaty.
I heaved at my paddle and set to work, waiting a breath every four strokes to let my sister correct our course with her own lazy pulls. Simple story, same story every damned morning.
But not tomorrow.

On the nine hundredth stroke I stopped and sighed deep, tasted the air in all of my lungs. Yes, it was good here. The salt was flecked with that light oily scent that was the breath of fish, and lots of them. All packed together, side-to-side, with not an inch to spare. A mass of mouths all dying for a chance to stretch themselves and get some bites in.
I shook my head three times, stretched my arms, and started dumping my bait overboard.
“Cordill? What are you doing?”
I tipped the last of the four bait buckets overboard, humming a bit of an old song mama had taught me. It asked for fast jumps at the bobber and a strong pull in your arms.
“Cordill? We aren’t gonna have any left for later if you don-”
I reached out and grasped Grelly firmly by the nape, then heaved her overboard into the bait, face-first. She surfaced wasting her breath on swearing, and the more fool her because I had the paddle in my grip by then and a single whack drew blood and drove her back under.
Even with their brain banging against their skull, nothing outswims a Benthook, even Grelly. But mix that blood with the bait, and all those hungry mouths lurking all around you… well. I only needed the paddle three more times before she sank and didn’t come up again.
It was a quicker trip home that night, and with a bigger catch than usual in the canoe’s belly. A big old razorjaw, a matron, and with a belly ripe full of roe. Mama must’ve approved. I ate it raw, filled my mug and gullet with boiled oil from its liver, and threw my sister’s half-cracked cup into the midden with the first smile I’d owned proper in years.

I woke up early, heated up a morning soup with a rightful, uncompromising dose of salt, and paddled out farther offshore. Came back with a catch that nearly sank the canoe, spent the evening cooking, gutting, and carving, took the extra money left from the bigmouth cuts into town and bought a sack of red salt. Went to sleep early after filling in my sister’s bed with fresh dirt and a stone cap and drifted away as easily as if it were baiting a hook.
It was a good day. It was a new sort of day. It was the way all the days would be from now on, unless I decided to make them better yet. Maybe I’d even go hunting for a husband, now that the house had room…

Winter’s tail-end dripped away, along with the last of the morning mists. Now it was time for rain and sleet and fierce suns in dim skies, with waves that got angry and fast. Spring came with the big catches, but only if you had the teeth to bite into them and not let go.
Lightning struck the boat three times, an angry razorjaw nearly breached on me, and squalls broke out a half-minute from shining sunbeams every other day. Came back with the biggest hauls, week in, week out, and didn’t founder so much as once.
Maybe I’d get three husbands, and a cook. Maybe I’d get a warehouse. Maybe I’d hire out some hands to fish for me, like uncle did with mama, before the taste for the strong-sugar ate his teeth and wits right out of his skull. Not going to happen with me. Maybe uncle was a fool, but this daughter of Benthook wasn’t. The best vices were the safest vices, and those weren’t.
Then two months into spring I woke up, looked out the window, and saw a cherry-red sun rising into a sky already turning bluer than mama’s eyeballs. There was a hint of last night’s thunderheads slipping away over the far horizon on the back of a breeze that tugged heartstrings. A faint ghost of a big moon, a sea-moon, hung in the back of heaven.
It was a beautiful day. It was a perfect day. And it shouldn’t have been. We’d not even seen the face of summer yet, there should still be storms every week with daylong breaks for fog and dark. It got to me so bad I stopped by the churchstone before I left, to scrape a few prayers into the dirt at its base for the first time since mama died.
It would be fine. Just a gift for your hard work, that’s all. You’ve worked through the worst and come out shining bright as a fistful of diamonds, this is a chance to see what you can do with the best, that’s all. That’s all.

Went out farther than ever before. Didn’t even have to try to do it, the water was like a happy puppy under the bow, pulling me out and farther. Found myself taking breaks every fourth, like the bad old days – hah! There was no slacking here. Even the waves worked.
I stowed my paddle above a shoal so thick that the surface foamed. Tails and flukes broke water, now and then a little baitfish breached in the hurry of its attempt to avoid a happy bigmouth – usually failed.
The sky was empty. The wind was singing. My stomach was a nest of vipers.
I shook myself, stretched, and sighed in the air, felt the strong touch of the fish, then vomited into the bait bucket. I tried to breath, took in the smell again, and nearly choked as fresh heaves grabbed my gullet.
Fish, yes, there it was, there it was, but there was something else, something rancid and thicker than tar and familiar, something underneath…
Soft splinters reached my ears, and I looked downwards just in time to see the seams around the canoe’s keel double in width.
I stared. One hand groped for a bait-bucket as they doubled again. Then they tripled, then the water surged over my head.
All that water above me, but none around me – the fish were packed thick, like darting flies on a midden and three times as vicious. Baitfish tried to take shelter in my nostrils, bigmouths tasted at my fingers, and my claws did me as much good as spitting into a swell – blood flowed, but for no purpose.
I could feel a shriek brewing somewhere in my belly, and swallowed it. No failure. The canoe had split, but it would not have sunk. Up! Up! Swim, tear, pull up! No panic, feel the tug of the air in your lungs tell you the way! Up!
Light and dryness reached my fingertips even as more mouths worried at my heels, then my eyes slid above the glassiness and saw the shreds of the canoe’s starboard frame floating a reach away.
And stones-say, thank it all, the paddle was still there. I hauled out and clutched it with the love of a mother, gave myself a half-minute to curse and bless, then started the long, slow process of fighting back against that lovely breeze that had brought me here.

Night came in before I’d guessed, and it brought teeth under the big moon. Traces of bait, vomit and blood clung to the timbers of the canoe like fleas, and with them came an audience of hopeful scavengers, and with them came their predators, and with THEM came the razorjaws, slim and elegant little men and the heavyset bulk of the women, on the lookout for whatever strange beast had gone and torn itself to bits to float at the surface. Nosy animals, with nothing to satisfy curiosity with but teeth. I paddled, I swatted, and at morning who knew how much progress I’d made in miles but I’d lost yards of my raft to jagged, greedy teeth.
It was still beautiful out there, as I strained against half a paddle. A perfect sun in a perfect sky, beating down on me and cooking through my scales. Nothing to drink but salt water, with my mug at the bottom of the ocean. Nothing to eat but the gore that clung to the paddle’s handle, where a small razorjaw’s skull had proved softer than I expected. Nothing to see but flat blue, flat blue against a featureless sky without even the wind to guide me.
The wood creaked.

I didn’t turn, only breathed. And I didn’t inhale, because I knew what I’d smell; it was pooling all around me, as thick as the water that lapped at my kneeling legs as the raft settled deeper under the fresh weight. It was rotten brine and fish guts, mixed up and spread over a faint, familiar scent.
“Get off.” I’d said that. I didn’t want to, but I’d said it, and the voice was too cracked to even be mine. Someone was pretending to be me. “Go away.”
No noise at all, which made no sense. She could never shut up when it mattered. Was she going to make me say it? Could she speak, or was all the world down there as cold and quiet as a razorjaw’s smile? “Go away!”
A soft sigh at my side. Something dripped onto my shoulder.

Oh mama. You were right and you were wrong, all at once. The sea is for failures, but they do better there than we, hidden down there where we can’t see their secrets. And no daughter of yours stays a failure for long.
“Get off, Grelly!”

It’s coming down out there. You’d better wrap up tight and snug before you go, unless you want a chill. Take your coat, your heavy pants, and the biggest boots in the house – no, not those boots, these boots. Bring the heavy shovel for the long stretches, and the small shovel for the corners and the stoop. Mind your footing on the front stair.

It’s really coming down out there. You might want to check on the neighbours. Ring the doorbell on the south side, call out your name and household promptly, then raise your hands in the air and do not make any sudden movements. Bring them this casserole and the finest of our deer hides. Don’t catch a chill while you’re out.

It’s coming down out there like it hasn’t in years. Better wake up grandma – she knew all the best ways to take. Turn off all the downstairs lights and turn on all the upstairs lights. Fill the tubs and the sinks and empty the cupboards, throw it all into the freezer and don’t open it again. Lock the front door and the back door, pile up furniture in front of the windows, and jam the locks. Did you leave the car alarm on? Do that, we’ll need the advance warning system. Be quick and quiet.

It’s coming down fast out there. We’d better get ready for the long haul. Break out the first aid, count the canned goods, and everyone reload. Keep your buddy with you at all times and don’t turn your back on the shadows. Did you have a hot meal? If you didn’t, it’s too late now. Remember, they’re more scared of us than we are of them, and don’t you let them forget that either. If you’re jonesing for a cigarette, don’t bother. We can’t risk open flame ‘till this morning.

It’s coming down thick and furious out there. This could be it. Raise the floodgates, hoist the sandbags, and don’t cry, please don’t cry. We knew it would be here someday, and today is someday now. Just keep your calm and your cool and your head about you and we’ll all be laughing about this years from now. Did you remember your locker combination? Get there soon, and bring back the syringes. If the worst comes to the worst, it’ll be okay.

It’s still coming down out there. It might never end, you know. Did you scout out the caches yet? Check the traplines? I hope you at least visited the lookout – have we heard from him recently? Did you bring him the box? The red one? I hope you did that, because that’s very important. How’s your digestion lately? No aches or pains? If you feel them that’s okay, but if they spread to your legs go to the sickbay yesterday and don’t come back ‘till you can say your name forwards and backwards without stammering, shaking, or crying. It will be fine there, they have sugar for your tea.

It’s truly coming down out there. Throw more on the bonfire and don’t say any words out there in a language older than the internet. Wash your hands before you go, but not your palms. Tuck your chin in and keep it up. Keep fire close at hand and yours wits closer. And for the love of whatever’s left, don’t breathe through your mouth – the mist will give your position away.

It’s coming down out there like there’s no tomorrow. Could very well be. Take this book, ring this bell, eat this candle. Chew it six times seven times more, and be sure to say the right words from the right pages. Don’t lift a hand against them, and they won’t be able to lay a hand upon you. Do not touch what you cannot keep. Walk swiftly and silently, and come home safe.

It’s all coming down out there. You might as well accept it. Can’t make much of a difference at this point. Still, we always knew this would happen, didn’t we? We’re not surprised, at least. We aren’t. Are we? It was going to be like this. Definitely.
Oh well.

Grim-Faced Shieldwall of Gorbon
Gifter: Grirk of Gorbond
Rationale: Not my style, thank you very much. Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer something you can get two hands around and really swing with.
Re-giftee: Srakeen the Shredder.

Treacherous, Scheming, Untrustworthy Lieutenant
Gifter: Lib the Mad
Rationale: Already got one.
Re-giftee: Lib the Mad. It’s not like he’ll remember giving it to me anyways. This is what, the fourth time?

A Pair of Inept Bungling Oafs Whose Loyalty is Only Exceeded by Their Stupidity and Capacity for Self-Destruction, complete with comically mismatched suits of armor
Gifter: Srakeen the Shredder
Rationale: Is she TRYING to get me killed? One is permissible, two is practically a death warrant for Nirtrazon himself. Besides, I already have Trulb. At least until I can find someone from a good home who wants him.
Re-giftee: Feed the Peasantry’s seasonal gift-box.

Peasant Child of Unknown Family With Secret Fire Smouldering in Her Eyes
Gifter: Trulb
Rationale: What exactly am I supposed to do with a fourteen-year-old? The only thing I hate more than kids is teenagers.
Re-giftee: Mong the Slavemaster. Maybe we can at least grind some labour out of the brat before it gets old and slow.

How To Escape Your Crumbling Stronghold, by Nol Oldlord
Gifter: Nol Oldlord
Rationale: Okay, explain to me this: who the darkhells is going to receive a seasonal gift implying that the gifter expects them to fail and fall like a bleating two-year-old goblin and be THANKFUL for it? Stupid old bat.
Re-giftee: Srakeen the Shredder. I think this one’s going to be making the rounds for a few years.

***

Capacious Darkplate
Gifter: Tordamore
Rationale: Doesn’t fit. I’m not entirely sure why people just go around ASSUMING that I’m a tub of lard, but this seems to happen far too often. The perils of spending most of your time either brooding in the shadows or sealed inside a big metal can, I suppose.
Re-giftee: Nol Oldlord. Two can play the gift-an-insult game, you self-important old prick.

A Handful of Blackened Ichor and Spittle
Gifter: Iz-Na!-Chlun!
Rationale: Seriously?
Re-giftee: Lib the Mad. He’ll probably eat it or something.

Tumultuous Ruin-mace, engraved with loving hands
Gifter: Mom
Rationale: In the name of all that is buried and foul, I have an image to maintain and that image does not include tiny puppies carved into obsidian.
Re-giftee: Trulb.

Giant Flogging-Whip
Gifter: Jormund the Tallest
Rationale: Ugh, ethnic gifts. Look, I don’t have anything against giants, I just don’t really care for their instruments of torture. They’re loud and clumsy and make no sense. Leave the giant implements of pain to the giants, leave the evil overlord implements of pain to me. Everyone’s happiest that way.
Re-giftee: Mom. I know she gets a kick out of this stuff. Wish Dad was still around to tell me why.

Tracking Dragon-Dogs
Gifter: The city of Backlebroad
Rationale: Couldn’t find a stupid escaped teenager, what CAN they find? Half their body weight at that age is smelly hormones and acne! A waste to feed them.
Re-giftee: Feed the Peasantry’s seasonal gift-box.

***

Seven-Hundred-and-Forty-Seven Pages of Scribbled, Crumpled Rantings on Bloodstained Parchment, in No Particular Order
Gifter: Lib the Mad
Rationale: Maybe I shouldn’t have sent him that ichor.
Re-giftee: Trulb. He’s been whining about running out of toilet paper for weeks now.

Giant and Unstoppable Doomaconda with Hypnotizing Eyes and an Eighteen-Syllable Name I Cannot Pronounce
Gifter: Oll the Serpent
Rationale: I can’t say it, I can’t spell it, and I don’t need it. Cold-blooded or no, that thing eats too much. Besides, the castle’s already heavily guarded. What more could I want?
Re-giftee: Mom. She’s been wanting a new pet for a while now, since CHRGHTM descended back to the lowest darkhell.

Towering Parapet
Gifter: Tordamore
Rationale: This fortress is tall enough already, I’m tall enough already, and if we improve on either of those things I’ll start to get dizzy. Besides, traditionally parapets are for brooding on, and I’m not that kind of tyrant.
Re-giftee: Jormund the Tallest. Maybe giants like this sort of thing.

Love Interest
Gifter: Mom
Rationale: Here’s a little bit about me: I am seventeen feet tall, completely sociopathic and happy that way, covered in spiky armour, shed hate and flame from every single inch of my steely hide, and am entirely lacking in genitalia. This tremulous little twerp is as useful to me as tits on a boar.
Re-giftee: ??? I already gave Srakeen a new dishwasher this year, and that’s about the heaviest labour I can see this waste of space doing. Might as well shut it in a tower until I figure out what to do about it.

Creaking and Ominous Graveyard, With Grandiose Mausoleum
Gifter: Nol Oldlord
Rationale: I prefer my victims burnt, and I will leave behind no physical corpse. Besides, I’m going to live forever.
Re-giftee: Nol Oldlord. Take a hint, wheezing dotard.

***

Giant Catapult
Gifter: Jormund the Tallest
Rationale: Worked for one hour, then destroyed by daring midnight raid.
Re-giftee: Dumpster.

Impenetrable Wall-Plating, Hand-Knitted
Gifter: Mom
Rationale: Penetrated.
Re-giftee: Dumpster.

Wailing Doom-Brigade of Chanting Maniacs
Gifter: Iz-Na!-Chlun!
Rationale: Read one augury, committed mass suicide without permission, formed convenient ramp across flarewater moat.
Re-giftee: Feed the Peasantry’s seasonal gift-box.

Trulb’s Heart
Gifter: Trulb
Rationale: It seemed really satisfying to tear it out at the time, but in retrospect he was the last lackey in the fortress.
Re-giftee: Whoever’s standing outside my window at this second.

How To Escape Your Crumbling Stronghold, by Nol Oldlord (used)
Gifter: Grirk of Gorbond
Rationale: Last chapter is missing.
Re-giftee: Fuck my fucking li

This is it, this is the night for it. The only night for it, too. Once a year, once every twelve months.
Listen closely, and follow closer still. This is safe, but only if you do exactly as I say.

Here is your bell. It’s heavier than it looks, but it looks like a wisp of nothing. But it is sweet and silvery to the eye, and its tone jingles well enough. It is what we need, it is what we must, it will do.
Raise it up, bring it down. And don’t stop, don’t stop. I will tell you when to stop, and do not expect it anytime soon.
Do not allow your fear to stutter your ringing or weaken your heart. I am here and will tell you of what is needed. All our tools are here. I have a platter with two vegetables wrenched from the earth this autumn, still dripping with dirt; a vessel of cattle-milk; and a charred scrap of ground meadow-weeds and half-cracked nuts, shaped as a circle. It reminds you of the moon overhead, doesn’t it?
Ring, ring. Don’t stop now, we’re just getting started. Swing it! Swing it as you ring!

And as you swing that bell as high as your arms can rise, start the call. Rising and falling, forever repeating, starting low and rushing upwards, a siren, an announcement. Each time with more energy than the last until you’re almost screaming it. It should start like laughter and end like a warcry. Yes, like that.
And then, you’ll hear it coming back to you.
And you will hear it, trust me. You’ll hear him long before you see him. The chime and clang of bells replying to bells, the hot breath of snorting beasts on the wind. Ten thousand miles in less than an instant’s passing, here from the top of the world where the sun never sets and never rises, drawn across the sky on capering hooves and sweat-runneled backs.
Listen – there it is. Just beyond the horizon and coming on like a comet in the sky, tearing the night on the frenzy of the eight runners.

There! There! Do you not see him? His great coal-blacked boots of leathered hide, the fitful mist-plumes of his heavy breath? And the face atop that suit of blood’s own colour, a face as purple as a rotten bruise, framed by a bone-white tangle that can’t be but cousin of a thornbush. Close now, so close – has he seen us, of course he has, he can see everything everywhere, and he watches all that creep the earth all year. Yessss, that is he. There can be no other. Many mimic the suit, but only one dares don it in this night, in the sky. The others are but his heralds, his messengers, his warning.
The beasts touch our roof first – hear the clutching and scrabbling of each misshapen claw. The sledge arrives soon after, frozen in the cold that lives at the end of the world, dripping with icicles – aaaah, the shingles scream under its runners!
And then the footfall. He is come.
He expects his tribute and he shall have it. Take the plate – there. Steady now, firm hands.
Hold the plate aloft. Do not look at his eyes. Do not shiver overly as the sounds of the devouring reach your ears, as crumbs rain down upon the roof-tiles. They are fearful but they are not harmful, and this is not what can be said of his ire.

There – there! He is satiated, he beckons, he drums atop one kneecap with an ancient glove whose gnarled skin conceals a hand of inhuman form. Approach with care, with love, with absolute trust, and seat yourself upon his crooked bones. You must love him as if he were your own mother, your own father – no, above them! Love him, damn you, or there will be such a sight you will never recover!
Remain calm and clear. It’s not so bad, is it? Do not inhale. Just relax. Do not inhale. Stare up at him now, it is permitted. Feel the fondness within you. Do not inhale. See how he nods? Begin.
Begin! Begin the list, slow-wit! Hurry, hurry with the list, damn you! The night he treads is nigh-endless, but the same cannot be guaranteed of his patience! Read – do not stammer, do not shudder, read for your life and mind! Read when thought bleeds and sanity shrieks! Read it aloud! NOW!

Good. Good work.
You can open your eyes now.

Look – the offerings are gone, devoured by his beasts as we tarried here, nothing left by stems and gnawed fragments. And his mark, the white stain of his paw-print, pale and lurid beneath the black sky. It is as snow, but it does not melt. Do not touch it.
It is done. Look, he is gone from us. But listen, and you will hear him. Can you hear him? He calls to you as he leaves us, as he flies away into his endless trek once more. A blessing and a warning both.
No, I don’t know what the ‘kris-mass’ is. What matters of what he said is this: this is the night before it, and this is the night that matters. Do not dwell on it.
Now flee to your home and family, and hug them with especial love, and remember this if you must remember something of the evening: this only happens only once every twelve months.
And for that, if nothing else, it is a good night.

On a white throne under a white roof under a sky greyer than a grandfather’s chin sat Rime IV, spawn of Rime III, spawn of Rime II, spawn of Rime, spawn of the First Frost. It gazed down from its frozen seat at the small thing of tepid water quailing in front of it on a patch of discoloured snow.
“Occupation,” it proclaimed.
The thing flinched, then flinched again at the precise prod of the coldguard at its back. “Your occupation,” it said. Its voice was a sad, high whistle that was all out of place against its craggy, ice-plated bulk. Were it outside you could’ve mistaken it for a random whimsy of the north wind, and in fact many people had, the most recent just under an hour ago.
“Tailor,” whispered the human. His lips were blue with cold, and the word slurred its way past them uneasily.
Rime IV waved a hand. The coldguard did its duty yet again. And all was ready for the last of the prisoners.
This one was peculiar. Its hide was more ornate and elaborate than the others.
“Occupation,” repeated Rime IV.
“Architect.”
Rime IV’s hand halted in mid-wave. “Elaborate.”
“Nel Mos, royal architect to Her Worship, the-“
One of Rime IV’s fingers twitched. The coldguard delivered a gentle admonishment to the human’s spinal column. “Explain your word,” it fluted.
Rime IV waited patiently while the little sloshing thing collected itself.
“Architect. Royal architect. I design, plan, and oversee the construction of structures. Large and small. Mostly large.”
One of Rime IV’s eyesockets swivelled. “Large?”
The human looked around. “Larger than this. By maybe-”
Rime IV’s finger tapped against its knee, and the coldguard’s talons halted themselves an inch from admonishment. “Continue,” it said.
“…by maybe three times. Oppli Cathedral certainly was, and maybe the Ducal Dome of Nolla too. I’ve had maybe seven or eight less commissions maybe twice the size. A baker’s dozen of a kind to it. And fourteen smaller.”
All six of Rime IV’s eyesockets spun once. “And?”
“And what? I mean, this is impressive, for ice, but-”
The coldguard made up for lost time, as gently as it knew how. “How would you improve upon this?” it whistled into her ear on bended knee.
The human took some time to respond, and seemed excessively fixated on the discoloured snow. Architectural speculation, perhaps? “Well. I wouldn’t.”
“Explain,” declared Rime IV.
“I’d start from scratch with a fresh foundation. I don’t fancy trying to renovate this place, not without knowing what went into the blueprints – which I’m not even sure exist.”
Rime IV nodded.
“No, I’d make something fresh. And if this is what you’ve got, then I’ve got a plan.”
“Large?” it inquired.
Nel Mos looked up at Rime IV for the first time since her sudden fall, and bared her teeth in that strange way humans did. “Large.”
Rime IV waved its other hand. The coldguard raised the architect up with as much delicacy as its carapace provided.
“Accepted.”

The tower’s base was to be stone.
“Why?” inquired Rime IV.
“You want to build big, you start firm. The ground here may be frozen solid, but it’s still just dirt and sod at heart, and at the sizes we’re dealing with, it’ll sink. We start with stones, we can make ourselves a nice firm platform to work with. And you give me a place to build, I’ll give you a beacon that’ll shine from here to the other end of the world.”
Rime IV flicked at the scribbles on the sheet before it. “Ice?”
“Farther up, yes. We’ll start with stone, but it’ll all be ice once we’re off the ground. And we can cover up the stone with a façade, if you’d prefer.”
Rime IV waved its other hand. “Yes.”
“Right now… right now what I need is a quarry. I know these hills are good for what I want, I just don’t know exactly where. Do your people have a spot for that sort of thing?”
Coldguards filed into the throne-room, heavy feet clacking on the smooth floor. Six separate limbs seized Nel and raised her to a position of prominence atop their owner’s brow.
Rime IV pointed. “Go.”

By midday, Nel Mos had been dragged across what felt to be half the Wandering Hills, and stood on a ridge above a craggy granite vale of surpassing beauty.
By the hour’s end she’d set half her crew of coldguard to laying out quarry plots.
A half-hour more, and the first test-stone was being carved free of its cradle, a task that took many once-gleaming talons down to dulled nubbins.
Ten minutes past that and she was halfway down a gully and rolling into her shoulders, head hunched to protect it from the pebbles and the cold. Her internal odometer told her that she was nearly half a mile away already, and accelerating. Her eyes, unfortunately, told her that the largest boulder at the bottom of the hill was a coldguard, standing up, arms opening wider, and wider, and wider.

“Unfortunate,” said Rime IV.
Nel Mos managed, with great effort, to make no noise.
It raised itself from the throne, took two steps and was in front of her, a tower of billowing cold. “Explain.”
“I was just-”
“The nearest hearth-fire is twelve days fast-march,” said the coldguard.
“I-”
“Explain.”
“The nearest warm-dwelling is sixteen days fast-march.”
“The-”
“Explain.”
“The nearest warm-town is two dozen days fast-march, travelling through the night.”
“I wasn’t trying to-”
“Example.”
The coldguard hauled up the architect with five claws and reached out with the other. She couldn’t feel the pain, just a strange pressure. There wasn’t even a sound.
“The stone will be hauled. You will be called. You must wait.”
Nel gave up talking as she was hauled away, all her spare breath spent. Her eyes lingered on the little red nub of her right foot’s biggest toe on the cold white floor of the throne-room as it vanished around a corner.

Days later, the architect was dragged to a high ridge from a low pit of cold slush and colder air, lips blue and body almost past the point of shivering.
“Behold,” said a voice next to her, heavy and creaking with glacial weight; Rime IV, not a coldguard. Her eyes – far-sighted at the best of times – were hazed by exhaustion and hunger, but she did as ordered.
The base was complete, or nearly so: a giant disc that could have served as a god’s gaming token. Dozens of coldguard scrambled over it, hook-hands grasping at slabs, scratching out etchings, prodding and goading at the backs of groaning things of compressed snow and hail that lumbered four-legged, burdened under tons of stone.
“Instruct,” it ordered.
Nel Mos took a deep breath and a deeper thought and began to talk. And as she talked, she began to draw in the snow.
By the day’s end, her second escape attempt had begun – on the back of a slushbeast. That night she ran afoul of a cold snap that turned her mount rigid as an oak.
“Unfortunate,” said Rime IV. And it was her right foot’s next-biggest toe this time, snip-tunk, and back to the pit with whatever nourishment could be chewed and scraped from a squirrel frozen rock-hard and stiff as a board. She cooked it inch by inch with the little warmth that could be secured by her pocket-lens, focusing the drab rays of a sun that hid behind grey clouds.

And so it grew on, and on. Time seemed to fly – the tower’s workers never rested, the tower’s builder never ceased her struggles. A level was built – a grand hall, a soaring library, a royal apartment, a solar. An escape was attempted – a dash into the maze of the under-foundations, an attempted smuggling within a load of construction debris, even the futile effort at overpowering a coldguard for its armour with a broken stone carved jagged. And each and every time another toe, another rebuke. All the same end to every story.
“Replacable,” commented Rime IV after the sixth time. The architect knew it wasn’t speaking of the digit that lay upon its floor. The tower was nearing completion
“Not by half,” she shot back. “The base was the easy part, and the floors after that. If the peak isn’t done properly, the whole thing’ll fall over. You need me.”
Rime IV waved its other hand, and she was taken away for her reward. This time it was a litter of mice, and as she felt tiny bones disintegrate against numbed teeth she drew sketches on the wall of the pit. Plans for a funeral, plans for a building, plans for the same damned thing in the end.
Every day it lived in her head, it grew. Ever time it grew, it turned. Ideas shaped into ideas shaped into ideas.

“Large?” inquired Rime IV. Its eyesocket twisted. Nel had decided that was a raised eyebrow.
“Large,” she agreed.
“Elaborate.”
The architect hugged herself absently to hold in the warmth – something she did without thinking now – and stared up at her work, the quickest she’d ever done. Thrice the height of the Ducal Dome. Nearly twice again the highest spire of the Grand Cathedral. The Gidling Spire, plus a third of itself and a nip more.
“The largest,” she said. “Easily the largest I’ve done. Almost certainly the largest ever. And with ice. Would’ve been much simpler with standard materi-”
Her eyes had been on Rime IV’s hands, and so the blow from the coldguard at her back came as no surprise.
“Do not denigrate,” it whistled mournfully into her ear.
Rime IV turned away from its contemplation of the fixing of the tower’s tallest spire. Five hundred turns of its length would be required to fully run the course of its thread, to screw it down firmly enough to fasten in the bolts that would embed it for all time.
“Complete?” it asked.
Her eyes never left those carelessly dangling fingers. “No,” she said.
Eyesocket twist. All the eyesockets. “No?”
“I said I’d build you a beacon, and I meant it. We’ll need more ice, a lot more, and the best you can find. Ice so perfect I can see my heartbeat in it, clearer than air. Ice so polished I can see my twin in it, better than any mirror. Give me this, and you will have your beacon. And it’ll go much farther than the other end of the earth.”
“Acceptable,” said Rime IV, and that was the last she heard for another day.

It was quick. Almost too quick, in the end.
The tower took shape, a shape of slenderness glad in a thousand shards. Mirrors coated it, and translucent lenses filled its guts. Every surface that wasn’t an illusion was invisible, to the point that ever the coldguards trod carefully and with limbs extended. Only the architect knew her way, propelled by that same devious memory that kept her designs fresh in her skull. Under her hands the tower changed, fleshed itself, turned into something that pierced the sky and stared back at it.
And at its base, at its center, underneath a ceiling that opened up to the heavens hundreds and hundreds of feet above, sat a throne of crystalline ice larger than the grandest mansion. And on that throne, all its bulk nearly lost in the immensity, yet precisely tuned to be the center of the eye, was seated Rime IV, spawn of Rime III, spawn of Rime II, spawn of Rime, spawn of the First Frost.
“Complete?” it inquired of the small figure far beneath it, huddled on the floor. A hundred coldguards surrounded it, having liberated it of the last, smallest toe of its left foot just minutes earlier.
“No,” said the architect, speech slurred through a mouth ever-frozen. “There is one thing.”
Rime IV leaned far back in its throne, its tendrils clinking softly against a thousand perfect reflections of itself. “Expand.”
“The last mirror is being mounted as we speak. Above us.”
Rime IV nodded impatiently. “Done.” Its hand rose, the coldguard stirred.
“Wait. One thing.”
The hand halted.
“One more thing. Just one.”
“Speak.”
“The mirror. The mirror’s being placed. And… it has no name. It needs a name. Speak the name.”
Rime IV thought, and unlike its prisoner, its thoughts were slow and cold. It thought, and it thought, and it thought, and at last it stirred in its seat, both of its mouths opening for the first time since its spawning, since its own name had left its maws.
“It. Is.”
It coughed, deep in its chest cavity. Hollow rattling came from within, and it spoke stronger now.
“It is. It is The Tower of the Last Frost.”
“Yes it is,” said Nel Mos, looking up to the sky. “Yes it is.”

In the end all those escape attempts, all those stories, all that arguing, all that tower, all of it paid off. For the very moment that the last mirror slid into place in the highest spire of the highest peak of the Tower of the Last Frost was the same moment as the sun, wits long-dulled by the winter months, chose to herald the first morning of the first day of the spring.
It was not much of a thing, as far in the north as the Wandering Hills were. A fleeting gleam of brightness in the gloom.
But even one instant of light can go a long ways. Up and down and around the tower nearly a hundred times, by Nel Mos’s designs. Up and down and around and through and into itself, doubling on itself, tripling, quintupling, on and on beyond words and into numbers, turning itself from a beam to a blaze to something fiercely beyond any sensations at all, that took one last rise and plunge and dove down from the heights to refract itself in every direction from that crystal throne.
If there was a sense that could describe it, Nel Mos’s weren’t up to the task. All those weeks of cold had left her with a chill that she felt nothing could lift. Still, she found a word for it afterwards, that feeling that entered her as she saw, for a split instant, Rime IV’s expression change and the air turn bright.
Warm.

It was, in fact, twelve days fast-march to the nearest hearth-fire. Fifteen without toes.
But Nel made the trek smiling every last step of the way.

It began with the two most dangerous of things: a stomach that held too little and a head that held too much. And nowhere was there a more capricious vessel for these two traits than the body and soul of a common crow.
Well, the crow is an ingenious bird. There was no food available? Then he would find it! He flapped forth with purpose.
There was no food in the tall grey woods. They were quiet and dim with the late autumn air, berries plucked and rodents nested.
There was no food in the wide brown fields. They were emptied of harvest, emptied of care, lying cold and waiting for the white blanket.
There was no food by the rushing blue streams. They had sunk into a dull-colour fugue now, as dim as the skies. Fish no longer bothered to leap.
There was no food in the busy many-coloured city. There had been a glut of scraps and filth in the summer, steaming under the sun, but the cold kept people (and their garbage) indoors and out of the way.
And it was there, as he perched on the corner of a building, consumed by annoyance and the bite of an angry belly, that the crow’s eyes alighted upon a none-too-notable thing: two passing noble-men, heads bent, hands waving. Discussing serious matters as serious men did.
And for many animals that would have been that. But he was a crow, and an ingenious bird whose head held too much, and that set him straight-footed as to what was to be done.
The men separated at a street corner with a handshake. Business concluded, backs were turned.
A pebble. A perch. Bonk.
“What was that for?”
“What?”
“You hit me!”
“I did no such thing.”
“Liar!”
“Lout!”
And soon there were blades and shouts and rough things and there was a fine two-hundred-pound meal cooling in the crisp November air for the crow, and he got a good cropful out of it before other, paler, calmer men arrived to take it away. And the best bits too – the soft round things that had stared so emptily at the sky.
One of them threw a pebble at him, but the crow was a canny sort, and he dodged it.

A scant week later and winter had moved in, curdled the waters of the land into solid mass and bedecked the trees in frozen jewels. Food became scarcer still and the crow was not hungry alone. He and his murder grew thin and cold together, fat sleek-feathered bodies wearing ragged. Something had to be done.
Well, it was simple enough. Few things are smarter than a crow, but one of those things is several crows. And they have excellent memories.

Down the streets it trundles, the carriage of the great family, footmen clinging to it like monkeys, wheels dancing on ice patches. The memorial service for their lost boy had been delayed by shock. Nobody had expected to have to arrange such a thing, not now, so young; not here, so close to home and far from war.
They arrived at the cemetery, side by side with another procession, a very similar procession. The cut dealt to their own had been slower and crueler, but there had been no doubt of its result within hours. Their son had lived to help plan his own funeral.
The two groups devoted all their ears to their priests as best as they could, to stay civil. They ignored each other. They ignored the city. They ignored the tired, bare trees that stood around them.
They also ignored the crows.
Bonk.
“Did he-“
“Shh. Not now.”

Bonk.
“Why-!”
“Don’t-“
“I felt that, I saw him look at me!”
“Why would I look at you, murderer?”
“The same to your own!”
“Sto-“
“Shut up! I’ll say what we all should!”
Bonk
Bonk
and it all went along quite predictably from there. Alas, the gap between riot and cleanup was briefer this time, public as it was, but still there was time – and no shortage of targets – for the murder to fill itself to the point of bursting. They had been very hungry indeed, and in the weeks to come and the burials to arrange the glass-blowers found much work in artificial eyes. Ten pairs.

Winter reigned, cruel and clean, sharp enough to cut but soft enough to numb it away. The city shrank under it, and in such a tight space the fighting never quite ceased. In the streets, in the squares, under the rafters. It was beyond the close relatives now, of course. Both could afford to hire men to do this sort of thing for them.
A meeting was arranged. Cooler heads must prevail, this was all out of hand. Already lesser houses, smaller houses were beginning to rustle and rumble, to pick sides. Nobody really wanted this to get much larger. Surely they didn’t.
That’s what they told themselves as they all sat at the long, long table, face to face with those they could not look in the eye. None of them wanted this. It was the other ones. Their fault. Why did they force our hands?
The papers were already on the table, lying alone at its center, still half-unwrapped. Nobody wanted to touch them.
Tap-tap-tap on the glass. A welcome distraction for the man seated nearest to it, a private moment of relief noticed by no-one else. His son was dead, and now one of his cousins, and he had to keep quiet but it was so hard, so hard. Yes, this would take his mind off this room full of people he hated. Whatever was at the window. Just for an instant, he could be somewhere else, in mind if not body.

The crow met the man’s gaze cheerfully. Dangling from his beak was a single, hazy-brown eyeball.
He watched as the man rose from his seat and began to walk towards the far end of the table, and knew that his work was done. And he was thankful that he had remembered the colour of the soft, slippery meal he had enjoyed months and more ago.

Low winter now. Still harsh, but full of rot. Wet, but dead. Slush and slurry in every footfall, muck and mud spattering every drift. Snow turns to ice turns to water turns to slurry turns to ice. And everywhere, everywhere, the men added to the thaw with their own steaming red.
There was food in the tall grey woods, whose trees had been cut to serve as timbers in forts that lay half-burning. A great deal of food.
There was food in the wide brown fields, where farms burned to deny the enemy’s stomachs and many boots turned soil to mud.
There was food bobbing in the rushing blue streams – roiling and furious with the flow of water, churning flesh against stone until the blood ran out down to the sea.
And there was more and more food even in that cold, cold many-coloured city, where many more each day rose and found themselves lacking meals of their own. The beggars had been the first to feel its pinch, but that had been weeks ago, and now an empty plate was a natural plate.
The crow was happy. Its eyes were bright, its beak shone, its feathers were fluffed and contented over a strong and well-nourished body that had just recently passed muscular and moved into plump. Everywhere it went there was food. Everywhere its kin moved there was food. Necessity had mothered this grand invention, and in doing so had obsoleted itself. Its life was content. And look! More food down there, lying on a corner, slumped down to stare up at the heavens that cared not! And its eyes too – what luck!

As the crow wheeled down from the sky, eager and ready, small, trembling hands settled their grip on a primitive little wooden thing, a tumbledown patchwork of old bits of wood and hope and string made from its owner’s hair. It was frail and it was ridiculous and it was a remarkable invention indeed.
But then, its owner had been motivated, driven by the same thing that led to the perfect care in her wrists as she took aim with her little short-bow. Once she would have turned up her nose at such things, but little is a greater call to action than a stomach that holds too little in conjunction with a head that holds too much.

It had been a long day, a hard day, a hot day, a day that grabbed you by the shoulders and shook you until your teeth rattled off your brain and fell onto the carpet. It had seized Pat, used him cruelly, and discarded him with the thoughtful care of a six-year-old with a handful of used tissue paper.
He was hungry. No food since the morning. But there were more important things to do. He had to relax before the morning came again. He had to sit down. He had to stop moving.
So Pat sat. Pulled up a chair (tugged at it, at least), shuffled into place, sat at his desk and stared at the wall.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. His inbox pinged cheerily at him. On the wall, the alarm clock coughed up objectionable noises – he needed to put dinner in the oven and he needed to have started preheating it ten minutes ago.
Pat knew all that. He knew, he knew, he knew. God he knew. But that didn’t mean he needed to hear all about it.
So he turned off the alarm. He turned off the phone. He closed the mailbox, then closed the private mailbox, then shut down the browser (containing his secondary mailbox).
Then he turned off the computer so that the clock wouldn’t stare at him from the corner of the screen, dates and deadlines predetermined and highlighted and ticking away like little time bombs. That was for tomorrow, another country. Today –
Well, tonight
– he was going to get some rest.
Pat leaned back in his chair again. Quiet. Peaceful. A dog barked. Traffic groused. His neighbours spat and shrieked and hissed. The raccoons in his garbage took their example to heart.
This would not do. It would not do and so Pat stood up and put on his coat and got ready to would not don’t.

The dog was simple. Pat had a spare bone left in his compost, barely a day old and still flush with scraps of half-chewed pork. He smacked the animal with it until it produced no noise above a whimper and let it be.
The traffic was harder. Pat settled for driving his truck into the center of the road, locking the keys inside, and setting it on fire with his lighter.
The neighbors had a brick thrown through their window with a couple’s councillor’s address scribbled on it.
And the racoons were shooed away with an old and angrily-dented pot and a firm ladle that had been passed down to Pat by his great-grandmother’s aunt, made of some mysterious blackened metal that was probably toxic but in a way that made you wrinkled and tiny rather than cancer-riddled, if his family history was any hint.

So Pat sat down in his chair again. It was very nice, except for all the things he could hear. Little things, like the hum of the refrigerator, the squeak and rustle of tiny furry things in the walls, the woosh of the wind, the crunching of broken glass next door as the neighbors had sex on their living room floor.
Pat sighed, got up, found a toothpick, and carefully punctured both his eardrums. There, noise fixed.
He sat down again. Then he changed his mind and walked around the house, turning off appliances, turning off electronics, removing the fusebox and chucking it out the back door to stop that constant ticking and humming in the walls, taking a sledgehammer to the furnace to shut off the noise and air that blasted at him from the flooring vents.
He sat down again, again. He got up. He took his old bb gun out from the box under every other item in his closet and destroyed the street lights that he could see from his window, which numbered seven, and he sat down.
There. All done, all quiet, all smooth, all fine. Except for that one light that shone on his ceiling, the light of the carbon monoxide detector. But that was fine, fine. Besides, he couldn’t turn that off or the alarm wouldn’t stop screaming.
It was fine.

Absolutely fine.

Completely, utterly fine.
But that little light wouldn’t go off.
He had to do something about that. How else would he get any rest?
Pat sighed again. As he got up to search for his hammer and chisel, he cursed his grumbling belly. But he didn’t have the time to fix that anyways. He had to relax.

It’s a tradition, they said.
Now, what they meant by that was something particular. Lots of traditions out there, after all. Some of them nice, some of them nasty. Some of them get as much attention as a handshake, some of them get whole months set aside. Some of them only a few people left in all the world that half-remember, some of them everyone knows almost before they’re born.
This was a pretty small tradition. One neck of the woods. One handful of men. One campfire. One night. And an awful lot of stories.
Spooky ones, of course. There’s just something about the way those flames crackle and jerk and turn the whole world into warm-against-the-darkness that makes you start wondering what’s out there looking back in. It was all in good fun, all the stories were, but there was always that little demon of competition inside each of them, every one, that was trying to keep count of who could get the most of his friends squinting to the point of eye-puckeredness to preserve his night vision from those warm flames, aching to keep in sight of what might be out there.
There are limits, of course. Stephen told a story late one night four years ago. Nobody can quite remember what it was because nobody wants to remember it at all, but they almost froze to death waiting it out ‘till sunrise. Better that than a walk in the woods.
One year everyone got too sick to come out. Bad flu season. They almost couldn’t find the firepit next year; the trees had sown their leaves so thickly. Trying to cover up the unsightly blemish on their forest floor, no doubt.
The trees never did seem to warm up to them, or their fire, or their tradition. And maybe that’s not WHY what happened, happened. But it certainly didn’t help.
It didn’t help when Stephen tried to top his old story and failed and the trees creaked soft and slow.
It didn’t help when Louis tried to top that story and succeeded and the trees swayed gently in a barely-there breeze.
It didn’t help when it was Martin’s turn for his story and he kept stopping and starting because he couldn’t tell if he heard something or not and it was the trees rustling their leaves at him.
And it didn’t help when Roy decided to lighten everyone up and rouse their spirits with the latest rendition of their oldest, oldest, oldest favorite, as the trees watched them in that eyeless way trees have. It was a good old story, and it came out every few years. It was as much a part of tradition as the tradition was. And it went like this:

(Once upon a time there was a man, a tall, thin, long-legged man)
(He was strange and silent and so he lived alone, far, far off in the forest, on a small dirt road that wound its way all about the trees every which way)
He liked to whittle, someone would say at this point. That was about all he did. Whittled.
(One day a man found his way there – a merchant on the road. He was tired and cold and hungry and he was so friendly and genial that the tall, thin, long-legged man allowed his hospitality to overpower his misanthropy)
(And so the merchant stayed the night in the house of his strange host, and he marvelled at the fineness of the carvings that had coated nearly every wall, floorboard, beam and hoist and join)
(You could sell these, he said.)
(But the tall, thin, long-legged man frowned at the very notion, and made haste to excuse himself from conversation. It is for me, and me alone, he said. Good-night and good-bye.)
Some people are just like that, you know.
(And the merchant was left alone as his host retired to the tiny pallet in the rafters that was his sleeping-spot. And he pouted, as thwarted profit-seekers do. And then he had an idea.)
(There are so many. He can’t notice if I just take one.)
And there it is, someone else would say.
(So the merchant crept about the house, feeling by fingers and with sharp eyes in the dark until he had found the most beautiful of the carvings, a strange portrait of a dead tree with a sad face and a pair of threadbare branches. And he cured himself at this time, because he knew his small knife would be nowhere near enough to cut the thing free.)
But he wasn’t the only one with a knife.
(But he wasn’t the only one with a knife. And so the merchant carefully crept up the ladder to the tall, thin, long-legged man’s bedside, where he slipped the soft-gleaming knife from his belt. It was artful in its lack of art: purest practicality without sentiment beyond wear-care)
(And just as the merchant raised the knife to cut)
Ohhh no.
(Just as the merchant raised the knife to cut, he felt a hand on his wrist – like that!)
(And because the grip was so sudden and fierce and the merchant was alone in the woods in a strange place and because he was also in the middle of a very unkind thievery, he panicked, screamed, and yanked. And because the tall, thin, long-legged man was so very thin, down he came, head over heels, and together they tumbled, tumbled, tumbled)
(And only one of them stood up again at the end of it. The merchant’s fine clothes were a good deal damper and more cruelly stained than they had been that evening, but his host’s shirt had gone all to pieces, right over his breastbone, sliced to ribbons and a good deal deeper.)

(Now, most men would have panicked. And this one did too. But he panicked in a careful sort of way.)
(First, he went to bed on the tall, thin, long-legged man’s pallet and spent the night shivering with a blanket over the corpse’s face.)
(Second, he buried the body. It was hard because he was soft and hurried and careless, but it was done.)
(Third, he took the knife)
(And fourth, he took each and every last carving on those walls, down to the engravings on the door-handle. It would’ve taken longer if the knife weren’t so sharp.)
All done.
(And once he was done, he went home, along the winding, wooded path in the growing dark. And he walked quickly, because he didn’t want to spend another night in that place. The trees were too thick there, and the sky too far away and cold, and the grave he had dug seemed altogether shallower in his head with each passing mile – and it almost seemed to grow nearer. It made his neck prickle and his feet quicken.)
(It’s never a good feeling, out there in the night. Listening to your breath and making sure it’s just yours. The merchant was moving so fast now, so very fast, and the trees seemed to lunge at him at each turn and twist of the road. Branches dragged across his sides, stroked his face, tore at his soft, flabby skin.)
(And it was then, just as the merchant was growing giddy with fear and felt that he could take not much more, that he saw the light.)
(A light! A light on the main road! He was safe! And he ran, ran, ran, laughing with the relief and joy of it all, until he rounded that last fatal curve in his path and saw the soft-shining candle glittering in the window of the tall, thin, long-legged man’s little cabin.)
Pulled a u-y.
(Now, many people would lie to themselves at this time.)
(Oh, how foolish I was to take the wrong turn on all those twisty corners in my haste!)
(Oh, how silly of me to leave a candle burning – I could have set the forest ablaze!)
(But the merchant was a liar only in his own service, and when he saw that calm little light dancing in the windowpane of the cabin, he stuffed his fat fist in his mouth to avoid a shriek and turned and ran faster than he’d ever imagined, so fast the shush-swish-shush of his clothes against his rolls blurred into one long whisper that was almost a shriek. The path roiled under his feet, dirt mounding and pinching into unevenness that seemed to steal his balance from him, and he blundered and stumbled and wasted more time than he would have if he’d merely walked as the trees reached for him at every turn.)
And
(And then…)
Then…
(The merchant stopped running.)
(And the merchant stopped running because the path was full.)

(It was a strange and silent sight, that thing in the night. It loomed without meaning to – in a gangly, mountainous sort of way. But it could not do any other, because it was the tall, thin, long-legged man, and as the merchant flailed his arms in his desperation to halt himself his palm brushed against cold sticky wetness on the shredded shirt that it wore.)
(The merchant spun like a top and accelerated. And though the thought of looking behind him filled him with sheerest horror, it was inevitable that he did so. And when he did, he saw nothing at all – just a dark shape among dark shapes, moving in the wind.)
(Just a tree! he squeaked as he nearly fell over in his muddle to halt. Just a…)
(And it was then that the tall, thin, long-legged man came around the path’s corner, a stride to a turn, leaning into the curves. And it was still accelerating.)

(No-one ever saw the merchant again. But alas, some of them did see the tall, thin, long-legged man. And he has grown much less fond of visitors.)

And that was that for this year. Sometimes they kept going, used it all as an inspiration, but today it was a signal that they were finally out of steam. And so was the fire, and they were out of fuel, and it was cold out there – they weren’t as young as they used to be, ha ha ha ha, especially Roy, ow, watch it, ha ha. And so on.
And so forth they went, in threes and twos and then finally in ones as they each went their own way through the woods to their own homes, their own lives, along their own paths. Hurrying a little.

One of them hurried a little too much. Stephen was walking the wrong way, and he knew it was so when almost ten minutes passed and there was no meadow under his feet, no stars in the sky. Just trees, trees, trees, endlessly staring trees. He didn’t like that. Things without eyes should mind their own business. And besides, they were strangers to him. After all these years, still strangers. These were wide woods, and he must have stumbled passing far off course – the maples and ash he expected were absent, and in their place he’d wandered into a gloomy stand of thin and needlessly-crook-branched pine. Their needles prickled at his coat, and their sap globbed at his fingers as he felt his way past trunk after trunk.
It was no problem, not really. The forest was only so big, and it was bounded by roads on all sides. He would get out eventually. He would find someone’s backyard or something. See – light. He’d found it.
But as Stephen pulled his way loose past that last wall of needles and spite, he saw that he was still far from the road. The backyard was a tiny clearing, the light a feeble flickering fire in a paneless window, and the home barely a shack – wood and heaped earth, like something a man might have made anywhere from a hundred to a hundred thousand years ago.
And as Stephen backed away from that sight, his throat squeezing, his hand touched something that was not bark. Smooth, hard, polished. Someone had taken a knife to this tree and carved it from base to branches, a full ten feet in extent.
Then the light went out.

Stephen did not hurry. Stephen RAN.
And Stephen, getting on in years though he might have been, was no fat merchant – he had once been a marathoner, and had jogged for pleasure for years. Now he was a sprinter, and a good one. He did not look behind for fear of the long, slender knife he knew he would see clutched in a long, slender hand. He did not look to the sides to see the carefully-carved faces that leered at him from every single pine from this angle of approach. He did not even look at the sky to check his direction, for he followed no crooked path but a line as straight as any crow might fly as he ran, ran, ran, ran, feet pounding, heart in his mouth, ears shut to all but the roar of his veins, eyes slits, running, running.
He passed through the pines and he ran.
He passed through the tiny clearings and he ran. And as he ran his stride deepened, broaded.
He passed through the oaks and chestnuts and he ran. And as he ran his pumping arms swung wider and wider.
He passed through the ash and maples and he ran. And as he ran his spine straightened, lengthened.
Onward, faster and faster, hard on the hunt. There was a thing in the woods and he must run, holding the gleaming terror in his long, slender hand. He must run home, home to stop it before it did more harm. He could smell it on the air, feel its sweat on his cold skin, taste its fear through the open old hole in his chest.

It was not so very far to home. Look! Already the pines were there, waiting.