jamieproctor.ca

In the city of Hemm on the river of Em in the colder and hillier parts of the country lived many sorcerers, and of those sorcerers the most esteemed were the diviners, and among the very greatest of those diviners was Margimore the Knowing. She could see next year’s weather in a passing cloud; she could read your palm with a glance at your heel; once she had performed no less than seven acts of haruspicy using the guts of a single underfed sparrow.

All had been unerringly accurate. This was as it was to be, for Margimore the Knowing deserved her title. But among the many and much and myriad things she knew, there was one thing that tested her sorely, and this was thus: within the city of Hemm, she was the second-greatest diviner in matters of the sight.

This, she could perhaps bear in the abstract. But in the real her superior was – by all rumours heard – Gortrude Greetle.

Margimore the Knowing was tall, and cold, and severe, and had a chin that was strong and foreboding and eyes that looked through you and into your metaphysics. Her hair was long and braided in the most wizardly of ways.

Gortrude Greetle was short, and round in a lumpy sort of manner, and distracted, and had no chin to speak of, and when she looked at you she flitted her eyes aside as if afraid you would steal them if you got a good look at them. Her hair was frizzy and thinning.

Thus, Margimore the Knowing set forth her mandate: if she could not be the greatest diviner in all of Hemm, she could at least supplant Gortrude. Some people – according to some other people – are disgraces to their profession’s name by their existence alone.

***

A pigeon set forth from the tower of Margimore the Knowing. It flew to its home roost and delivered its message, whereupon the message was burned and it was eaten.

Volderros the Lurk was a professional. He did not believe in evidence.

He did, however, believe in Margimore. She had paid him several times to do several interesting and profitable things, and at all times had been very clear that she knew more about him than he’d like without ever once implying she’d anything about it. He appreciated her discretion as much as he resented its hold over him.

Though not as much as he appreciated her money.

So Volderros the Lurk set forth in the deepest night, which was his friend, and walked the crooked narrows of the city of Hemm, which were his siblings, and slipped into the abode of Gortrude Greetle like it was his own home – that is to say, through the window and being mindful of the potential presence of deadly and dangerous traps.

There were none. It was a little disappointing and just a sliver ominous: if a sorcerer’s home appears unguarded, it’s because the guard is either so small it’s invisible or so huge it’s unnoticeable. But this was not the first or second or even sixteenth wizardly manse invaded by Volderros, and so he put thoughts of what he could and could not see out of his mind and slunk through the foyer (littered with elderly and dying chairs) down the hallways (laden with little desks of plants and trays of metal tools) and into the building’s heart, where the outside chill was kept at farthest bay and the secrets of Gortrude’s genius were certain to nestle.

There were no locks.

There were no guards.

But at last Volderros heard the shiffle-shuffle of careless feet and knew that the sorcerer was nearby, and with practiced ease he stepped to the nearest doorway, slipped its frame wide without so much as a creak, and vanished into it.

Inside was a cramped chamber and on its walls were ten broad shelves and on each shelf were a hundred glass jars and in each jar were a pair of eyes of various sizes and shapes and shades and glassiness.

The ones closest were a shade of blue that reminded Volderros of his mother.

He fled, but without screaming. He was a professional.

***

The next day a pigeon arrived in the tower of Margimore the Knowing, informing her that her payment was unnecessary and also that Volderros the Cutter was leaving Hemm for a city less fruitful but less troubling by prying eyes. This told Margimore nothing that she did not already know by other means, but somehow made her mood even worse regardless.

“Apprentice!” she snapped, and from her cauldron in the corner peered the wary and unscrupulous pale gaze of Chox the Waiting, who had been tending this brew day and night for half a week in a trance because someone had to do it and Margimore considered her time better spent.

“Yes, ma’am?” said Chox.

“You will go to the home of Gortrude Greetle, and you will present yourself as an apprentice in need of tutelage, and you will thus discover her secrets and bring them to me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Chox.

“And finish that brew first.”
“Yes ma’am,” said Chox.

Margimore knew that Chox had already finished the brew six hours ago and was avoiding further tasks with it. Chox knew that Margimore knew this. Margimore knew that Chox knew that Margimore knew this, but did NOT know that Chox knew that Margimore knew that Chox knew that Margimore knew this. And Chox knew it.

Chox was a very cunning apprentice. She could see both sides of anything with a mere glance of one eye, and she had two eyes, both as pale as an underfed leech. Neither were very impressed with what she beheld at the door of Gortrude Greetle: the greatest diviner in Hemm was fussing at her doorstep, failing to shoo a raccoon from her trash and failing.

“Git!” she shouted. The raccoon didn’t even bother to sneer at her, distracted as it was the trash can it was elbow-deep inside. “Git!” repeated Gortrude, this time flapping her hands. “Git!”

“I have come to the abode of Gortrude Greetle, greatest diviner among all in the city, and I plead entry to seek apprenticeship so that I might learn from her unfathomable wisdom,” said Chox the Waiting with an admirably straight face.

“Oh? Oh yes, sure, certainly, why not, yes yes yes,” said Gortrude, wasting Chox’s time by looking at her ear instead of her expression. “Super, fantastic, just wonderful. Tell me, do you mind if I run a few tests first?”

“Of course not,” said Chox the Waiting, who had faced no fewer than six trials to gain entry to the tower of Margimore, and six more before she was worthy of meeting her and undergoing the last six.

“Marvelous, just marvelous. Come on in and let’s take a look at you.”

So Chox was led inside as a guest and brought to the very innermost sanctum of Gortrude’s abode without one jot of suspicion apparent or evident, and placed in a chair of surpassing comfort and admirable suppleness such that Chox was brought near to sleep even before Gortrude pressed a hidden switch on it that tipped it back at a most relaxing angle.

“Look up, please, and try not to blink too much,” said Gortrude, and as Chox followed these directions a most alarmingly stinging substance was deposited in her eyeball. She bore it without flinching.

“Great,” said Gortrude. “Now just wait a moment, and I’ll get the rest ready-” and as the sorcerer said this Chox blinked, and when her eyes opened again the world was out of focus and bright, so that the dim laboratory she sat in was filled with the glare of a sunless midsummer day on the water, and she couldn’t so much as count her own fingers without squinting.

She could, however, see simultaneously way too much and very little of the gigantic metal mask that Gortrude Greetle was bringing towards her face. Its many many many eyes glistened like a spider’s.

Chox the Waiting had taken eighteen trials to apprentice herself to Margimore the Knowing. Chox knew herself and her strengths. She was both patient and cunning.

“LOOK BEHIND YOU!” said Chox.

Gortrude did this, and when she looked up, the comfortable chair was empty and Chox was halfway to the city gates.

***

When Margimore the Knowing knew that Chox was never coming back – about four minutes before Chox decided to flee – she swore six oaths so powerful that the air at her desk darkened and splintered, and that gave her an idea, and that idea moved her hand, and before she had weighed her options and made her plans she had opened the deepest drawer of her desk and cracked the most devious lock that held it shut.

Inside was a tiny box that would kill anyone but her to open, and she opened it, and inside was a thing that was a little older than matter.
It had no name, but she called it by one anyway, and it came from the black opal she’d trapped it within and listened with impossible patience as she gave instruction, and then it left, and before the sun had sunk another fraction lower in the evening sky it was at the doorstep of Gortrude Greetle, or rather under it. It was a creature of promiscuous omnipresence: wherever there lay a shadow of any size, it could fit its entire self within, though it was a bit bigger than the planet. It pranced underneath a passing rat in the gutter; skipped to the side of a crossbar in a pane of glass, then trickled down into the underside of an ugly overstuffed armchair and thusly it invaded Gotrude’s demesne in the time before Margimore could blink once after giving it instructions.

Before her second blink, all the exterior of the house was known to it. It invaded the chambers and the cupboards and the kitchen and the cellar and the attic and the library; it slid between every page of every book, rolled over each stone and plank and bag and box; explored the cracks inside each cranny.

And just as Margimore’s eyes began to flicker for the third time, it made its way into the very heart of Gortrude Greetle’s lair, where she sat at a desk and slouched over something insignificantly solid, twiddling.

There. That was the last of the things that it did not know. It would know it, and it would return it, and it would be free, for Margimore the Knowing was unaware of what she did NOT know and did not realize that it was to be truly unbound after this task was accomplished, and even less aware of those consequences.

This was a very small planet it found itself immersed in. It would take but a little squeeze to get the juice out.

But as it flowed towards the desk and the heedless form of its target, Gortrude straightened from her hunch and made certain motions and from the tangled matter of her laboratory bench emitted a light so thin and bright and impossibly pure that the spirit discovered, experienced, and was overwhelmed by terror all at once in a moment of utter devastation. It fled wailing to the seven winds and came to Margimore on bended limb begging to be hidden away in its opal once more where the terrible light would not find it, and so once again she was left with nothing but a headful of hate and a mouth itching for a fouler curse than the several she had already spilled for it.

She stewed there, staring moodily at her bookcase, then pointed a finger at the form dusting it. “You.”
“Me, ma’am?” asked the servant.

“You will go to the dwelling of Gortrude Greetle and make yourself available to her as a servant, and bid her examine your sightlessness, and thus you will discover her secrets and return them to me,” said Margimore the Knowing. “And you’re going to do this because I’m taking the light out of your eyes and will not give them back until you’re done.”
“What, ma’am?” asked the servant, but Margimore had already whistled and pointed.

***

“And what’s your name? Sorry, I know I asked before, but I was writing and I’m an awful multitasker.”
“Morsly,” said Morsly.

Gortrude Greetle, the greatest diviner in all of the city of Hemm, nodded and cursed as her ink blotted on the page. “Shit. Sorry, sorry. I’ll be just a moment. There. Sorry. Morlsy the what?”
“Ma’am?”
“Everyone in Hemm is So-and-so the so-and-so, aren’t they?”
“The Duster, ma’am,” said Morsly, who hadn’t gotten to where she was by disagreeing with her employers. Then again, she hadn’t gotten to the state she was in by disagreeing with her employers.

“Fantastic, fantastic. I have to warn you though, you’ll be earning that title a little lot around here – why, the number of jars I have to keep clean alone is, well And your vision is…?”
“Gone entirely, ma’am. I can still work though. I’ll pay for the spellery.”
“Oh no no no, no goodness no. Examining something like this is its own reward. If you’ll follow me, please – here, this way, this way.”

So Morsly was led down creaking halls that smelled like tea and dust and a hint of formaldehyde and placed in the most comfortable chair she’d ever known –

“Look up, please”
– where something unpleasantly stinging was drizzled into her eyes like oil on bread. It tingled and fuzzed at them.

“Look left now. Right. Down. Up again. Hmm. Well, it’s definitely nothing material. We’ll need to check more comprehensively. Hold still, please – got to put the lenses against your face.”
Cold metal brushed against Morsly’s nose and cheekbones, and something began to click rhythmically. “Hmm. Hmm. How’s your precognition these days, Morsly?”
“I’ve never had any, ma’am.”
“Yes, that makes sense. Well, your second sight’s retina is well in place then. Can you please repeat after me-” and here she spoke some words that did not enter Morsly’s ears and turned her tongue to eels when she repeated them even as she was asked, unprompted. “Alright, your third eye is unobstructed – no signs of a membrane. Hmm. Let’s try the strong light.”

So there was a moment’s more clacking and crackling nearby, and then – shock of shock – Morsly could see something. Just a little something, a faint blur, but it was enough to bring her to near-tears with relief.

“Oh, that’s interesting,” said Gortrude. “You can see the laser?”
“Yes,” said Morsly. “Ma’am. Yes.”
Scribbling and fussing noises. “Interesting. It seems the light’s gone out of your eyes – never seen that before. Have you run afoul of any sort of sorcery recently?”
“My last employer was a sorcerer,” said Morsly carefully, “but I never touched their work.”
“Huh. Very bad luck then. Anyways, I think I have something here that might help. Let’s bring back the lenses.”
Cool metal again, but warmer now, still touched with the lingering traces of her body heat. Click. Click. Click. CliBRIGHT.

“Ah!”
“Oh, that did it! Dimmer?”

“Please.”
This time she was ready for it; but it still left red marks on the back of her eyes. Red marks. She could see them. She could see the light. She could even see the slightly horrible metal mask in front of her face she was looking through, and Gortrude Greetle behind it, watching carefully with her watery little eyes. They were wide with joy.

“Got it! The sunblack lenses should do you just fine. I’ll give you a frame and you can take the set – I’ve got loads to spare, made a good dozen during the last eclipse back when I worked in Klorsimore. Stake out a sheet of obsidian right before the umbra hits and BAM, bakes that sunlight right in, black-hot. They’ll be good for at least a century. Now, there is one thing I really must caution you: do NOT let anyone else wear these. You need the light to see, but someone whose eyes already have their own, it could – well. Just never let anyone else wear them, alright? Maybe don’t even let them hold them. Or touch them. Actually I tell you what, I’ll give you a case with a lock on it, is that okay?”

“Yes,” said Morsly. She could see every wrinkle and hair on Gortrude’s weak, flabby chin and she wanted to kiss all of them. “Thank you. Thank you very much.”
“Oh it’s nothing, really. This was wonderful to help with. Eyes are my life. Always loved them. If you want to repay me, I can show you around the storage on your way out – I’ve got hundreds in there, even got a couple from a WHALE, I kid you not. Fascinating organs.”
She did. They were. And some hours later, when Morsly had one foot out the door and one on the stoop, she hesitated.

“I would still very much like to work here,” she explained. “But there is one thing I have not been truthful with: I am currently employed elsewhere.”
“Oh, that’s a shame-”

“BUT,” said Morsly firmly, “I am certain she will permit me my leave when I explain things to her. I will see you again tomorrow morning, ma’am.”
“Just Gortrude is fine, it’s fine. And no rush, and no worries. Don’t take any risks on my account.”

This was the second piece of advice Morsly received from Gortrude Greetle that she did not follow.

***

Margimore the Knowing’s study door was open and unlocked, as it always was. She knew who was coming and what to do about it, as always. And if it was a bit of a surprise to have her servant return so quickly, not one day after she’d dismissed her on her mission, well, she could keep that pleasantness to herself.

“I have been to the workplace of Gortrude Greetle, ma’am,” said Morsly. “May I have the light of my eyes back?”

“I know,” said Margimore the Knowing, and “maybe later. Tell me everything.”

“She examined my eyes, and she showed me her secrets, ma’am,” said Morsly. “May I have the light of my eyes back?”

“Good,” said Margimore the Knowing. “Not yet. Describe them to me.”
“A serum for the eyes that tingles. A metal mask with little lenses. A bright light that even I could see. And these glasses.” And she held up a small and study case and popped its lock open. “May I have the light of my eyes back?”

“Not ever again if you continue with such impertinence,” said Margimore imperiously. “Now let me see.” And so Morsly gave them, and she took them, and she did.

Briefly.

After that instant Margimore the Knowing saw very little at all, which was odd for someone who now possessed an extra set of eyesockets in the back of her skull.

***

The dusting wasn’t so bad, really – Gortrude was just short enough that reaching the backs of the shelves had been troublesome for her. And when Morsly was done cleaning she would memorize them by name and type and sort them, then go and read the books in the library, and in the evenings she practiced with the devices under Gotrude’s supervision.

It was an interesting feeling, to wake up in the morning and realize that within the city of Hemm, she was the second-greatest diviner in matters of the sight.

And someday, maybe she’d be even more than that.

Someone was in the house.

Lucy woke up and she knew it in the same way she knew where her arms and legs were, even lying half asleep on her bed with a blanket wedged half over her head and half a glass of something she couldn’t remember halfway done working its way out of her skull. She knew it in the same way she knew the smell of stale pillowcase in her nose, in the same way she could count her toes without looking.

Someone was in the house. And she was the only person with a key.

***

“Listen, I know it’s on short notice-”

“And it’d be such a huge help if-”

“Just this one time, I swear-”

“I’ll write down everything, it’ll be so-”

“Thank you so, so, much, I’ll be back by next Monday morning, swear to-”

It was Saturday at one twenty seven AM.

***

Lucy laid on her back and tried to feel secure because she was buried under blankets, because that had worked the last time she’d felt this way a few decades ago.

It didn’t make her feel secure.

Lucy laid on her back and tried to feel reasonable and adult about everything because there was absolutely no reason for anyone to break into Ann’s overpriced mcmansion when it was sitting next to thirty other identical ones that didn’t clearly have people living in them right this second, unless they were crazy and wanted to kill someone for no reason or Ann owed money to someone scary or had a lunatic ex.

It didn’t make her feel reasonable.

Lucy laid on her back and tried to be paranoid and anxious and listened for the slightest hint of noise – the creak of a floorboard, the dulling of an electronic’s ambient hum as a body absorbed its sound, the snort or sigh or sniff of careless inhalation.

It didn’t make her feel paranoid and anxious, because she didn’t hear a damned thing but she knew more than ever, right down to the marrow, that someone was in the house with her. There was respiration happening; innocent oxygen turning into carbon dioxide in lungs that weren’t her own. There was mobile mass travelling through the rooms. There were active neurons outside her skull, and their intent was wary and cautious because she still hadn’t heard a single noise at all.

Oh.

Oh.

Lucy felt quite foolish suddenly, but in a good way, the god-watches-over-fools sort of way. It was night, she was filled with overwhelming dread and the certainty of a hostile presence, and obviously she couldn’t move a muscle because she hadn’t yet despite having plenty of apparently good reasons to do so.

She was experiencing sleep paralysis. Classic. The origin story of all manner of bedtime horrors and demonic threats. It was a wonder she hadn’t put the pieces together sooner, and she relaxed and laughed out loud.

And she tensed up again and slapped a hand over her mouth. Then sat bolt upright in bed and tried not to hyperventilate.

She didn’t have sleep paralysis. It was very, very, very quiet downstairs. And someone was in the house.

***

The door to the room was ten feet away. Ten long, creaky feet of fancy wooden floorboards that must have been installed by the terminally tone-deaf. It was right there.

Lucy knew she should really close the door. There was no lock, but it would help, right? People didn’t open doors that were shut, and flimsy easily fire-axe-permeable hinge-smashable frail lightweight paneling was clearly an invincible barricade that would let her feel secure and safe for the rest of the night. In comparison to moving herself out of the blankets without making a noise, which was impossible, and then crossing the floor without making a noise, which was more impossible, and then shutting the door without making a noise, which was completely totally impossible. There was no reason for her to not try and do that anyways. Only someone completely unreasonable would sit here in the guest bed of the guest bedroom of her stupid, stupid friend’s ugly house and refuse to move or do anything useful when they were terrified and hope the problem went away. That would be insane to do, because someone was in the house.

Or something. Because after all, if there were no good reasons for a human being to be in the house with her, why wouldn’t there be a bunch of equally bad reasons for something else? An escaped tiger from a zoo, or a bear from a circus (were circuses still a thing?), or a lion from the private menagerie of some rich psychopath three blocks over?

Obviously that meant she should shut the door right away. Obviously lions and tigers and bears didn’t have thumbs, and would clearly never imagine there might be food behind a closed door, or be able to get through it. Obviously the sensible thing to do would be to get up out of bed right this second, shut the door quickly, quietly, and calmly, and phone someone because she was sensible and left her phone charging overnight and didn’t fall asleep with it on eight percent an hour ago while watching a stream.

Obviously, she could always try and climb out the window.

Lucy remained sitting in bed, still bolt upright, still holding her hand over her mouth, and tried not to look too obvious.

Because something was in the house.

***

In the end, what made Lucy move wasn’t the lack of noise – which was screamingly loud by now, to the point that her heartbeat was an unignorable whole-body sensation as much as it was a loud chug. It wasn’t the reasonable part of her brain rallying from the whole sleep paralysis call and persuading her that really she was imagining things and this would all be laughable in five hours, let alone eight. It wasn’t even her hidden reserves of inner strength and courage that her mother and several different teachers had promised her definitely existed in spite of all extant proof.

It was because there was a sound.

Not a frightening sound, or an unusual sound, or a sound out of place. It was the sound of the dehumidifier in the living room turning off. A small gurgle and a thick mechanical clunk, like a frog with a bolt in its throat.

And in that sudden instant before the silence became yet more absolute, Lucy’s body went off like a sprinter at a starting pistol, crossed the bedroom floor while barely touching it, grabbed the door with both hands, and swung it shut so hard it vibrated through her teeth and made her taste fillings.

She stood there frozen for a good six years listening over her own breathing and her own pulse and the odd swishing sensation moving through her digestive system from gut to throat, and when after those six years had passed and she heard nothing, no change at all, she felt her grip unclench, and her jaw relax, and her eyes unwiden, and it was like being a sail that had finally been furled up and stowed away.

So she turned her back to the door, and saw that there was something in the house, and it was under the bed.

***

It was long and low and crouched in a roped coil of muscle, looking at her with the tightly-focused intensity of a predator and the reflective eyeshine of something that could see you long before you see it. Its fur blended seamlessly with the shadows.

And, even with the jolt of adrenaline straight into Lucy’s spine, it was faster than she was.

***

Saturday

6:33 AM

Hey! I’ll be back a little later than I planned, should still be Tuesday but late at night. Sorry about that!! Would you mind staying over for the one more day?

Thanks in advance TTYL!

7:45 AM

hey annie

you shithead

why did yuo never tell me about your CAT

It was a good sunny day with a light breeze to keep the bugs off, so it was no wonder when eager Ed said to one and all “Hey!  Let’s go fishing!” and less wonder when lazy Jed said “sure, why not,” and small shock when practical Fred said “I’ll bring the sandwiches,” and a surprise to nobody when it was reliable Ned that said “Let’s go down to Butterscotch Bay.  I found a new place down there the other day.”

So they went down to Butterscotch Bay, where the water is so thick and brown and glistening in the light that you could pour it on ice cream, armed with rod and line and reel and sandwiches, Ed and Fred and Ned and Jed and a single curious seagull – in that order – because sometimes life just doesn’t throw you a single curveball all inning long. 

***

Ned’s new spot was a little bay in the bay, hidden behind an armpit-deep thicket but blessed with a clear open patch of ground. 

“Doesn’t look like much,” said Ed.

“It gets deep fast,” said Ned.  “Wade in to your shins and in two more steps you’re up to your shoulders.”
“Well heck, that’s good enough for me then.  That good enough for you, Fred?”
“That’s good enough  for me,” said Fred, who was passing around some disposable gloves.  “No, not for you, Jed.”
“Whuffor?”

Ed grinned in a particularly sparkly sort of way that had not one ounce of sunshine in it as the gloves snapped around his wrists.  “Well, Jed, thing is, we know about the business with Barb and the kids.”
Jed’s face did a funny thing where it tried to purple and pale at the same time until he looked like blueberries in clotted cream.  “What did you I don’t know what you let me explain it’s all lies what did they say it’s not what it looks like nothing happened let me tell-”

Ned grabbed his arms, Ed grabbed his legs, and Fred grabbed out some fishing line and – from the bottom of the cooler – a few likely bricks, and everything came together just like that, with only so much fuss.  Which was nice.  It was a good sunny day and it didn’t need to be spoiled with a lot of carrying on. 

“Aim past the stump,” said Ned.  “That’s where it’s deep enough.”

“One, two, three,” said Fred.  And yes, it WAS deep enough. 

***

Ed and Fred and Ned had a beer or two while they waited for the bubbles to stop.  It only took half a can, but nobody’d stop at half a can, that’d just be silly.

“Well,” said Fred, “that’s done and over with.”
“And none too soon if you ask me,” said Ed viciously.  “Better than he deserved.  By all rights we should’ve taken our time a little.  Made him squirm.  Let him squeal.”

“That so?” asked Ned. 

“Damn straight.  Nothing worse than turning on your family like that.  I know it was convenient to get it over and done quickly, but-”

“Nothing worse than turning on your family, that’s right,” said Fred. 

“Agreed,” said Ned.

“Yeah!” said Ed.

“Like what happened with grandma’s savings,” said Fred.

“What?” said Ed.

“And dad’s investments,” said Ned.

“Hey, that was-”

“That sure-fire gambling system wasn’t so sure after all, was it?” said Fred.

“It was nine-out-of-ten od-”

“Not the best advice you ever gave him, those stocks” said Ned.

Ed’s pupils had gotten real big for someone in the broad daylight of a beautiful summer day without an ounce of anything more alarming than a can of lite beer in their system.  “Listen, fellas, I said I’d pay it all back, and I meant it, I’m doing what I can, I am, I am, just-”
“You will,” said Ned, standing up in front of him and taking hold of his arms.  “If we have to make you.”

“You are,” said Fred, coming up behind him with a loop of fishing line.  “That life insurance’s been cooking long enough.”

It wasn’t quite as drawn-out as Jed, but it was a little bit messier.  But they hadn’t taken the gloves off yet, so that was okay, and they had an extra couple bricks for when it was over, so that was fine too. 

***

It all hadn’t taken that long.  A couple of beers, some light work.  The morning was still young.

But they sat down and had the sandwiches anyways, so there was some sort of line in the day drawn.  The business had been done, now it was break time.

“Thanks,” said Fred.
“No problem,” said Ned. 
“I mean it.  This would’ve been a lot harder on my own.”
“It needed doing.”
“That’s true.”
“And besides, you brought the sandwiches.”
“That’s also true,” said Fred.

“Even if they do taste a little funny.”
Fred sighed.  “Truest of all.”

“What’s in them?”
Fred looked at Ned.

“Fuck’ssake,” said Ned.  He sat up and lunged and fought and punched or at the very least tried to do some of those things. 

When he was done, Fred waited for an extra five minutes just to be sure, then went and got the last of the fishing line and the cinder block he’d hidden in the thicket last night.  It was tucked under a big root, out of the way.  He liked to keep  things tidy. 

***

Fred watched the last of the ripples until they faded, then watched the still surface for even longer.

It didn’t so much as bubble. 

He buried his gloves deep in the mud, smoothed it down, pat pat pat.  He picked up the cooler.  He ate the last sandwich.  He drank the last beer.  He considered the sunny morning and the scant breeze and the warm sluggish water and he thought on all that had been and done and figured what the hell, I earned this.

So Fred tipped his head back and laughed, long and loud and a little cracked from ear to ear, and as he did that due to a misfortune of timing that one curious seagull circling above happened to let fly its load at that precise moment and it hit Fred in the back of the throat by way of his mouth, leading for him to drop the cooler on his toe and hit his head on a branch.

Fred staggered, Fred shook, Fred pitched and twisted like a crooked tree in a headstrong wind, and the thick brown waters of Butterscotch Bay took him in as easily and smoothly as a spoon in caramel sauce.

***

The seagull landed and watched attentively.  Soon little crayfish would come out to scavenge.  They always did.  They would be delicious.  They always were. 

Sometimes life doesn’t throw you a single curveball all inning long.  And if you’re the lucky kind of bird, you get lunch out of it. 

He was still nearly blind and all but deaf when it first happened.

Four legs wobbling, snout snuffling, he felt the words more than heard them. A vast voice from above, a hand beckoning.

“C’mere!”

Obediently he toddled, though he did not know why.

“That’s it! Good boy!”

And oh.

Oh.

Oh. That was why he had done this.

“C’mon boy! Scoot!”
And he did, bolder and wobblier than ever, closer to the voice and the hand, straining, desperate, and-

“Good boy!”

It was like warm sunlight and his mother’s tongue against his fur all at once, pouring down from above and filling him from ears to tail. But it hadn’t even left him when he felt the need for more.

“Scoot, that’s it. That’s a good name.”

Scoot accepted this without much notice or thought. It didn’t involve the words.

***

“Go!” said the woman, and Scoot went. He went through the tube and weaved through the bars and onto the see-saw and over the beam and across the tightrope and through the eel tank and down the hall of whirling blades and he reached the end and he won, he’d beaten the times without a scratch, he was the fastest to have ever done the course but he didn’t care because-

“Good boy!”

His mouth smiled, his leg thumped, his tail wagged so furiously it nearly came off. Yes, that was it.

“Very good boy!”

Oh, that was it indeed.

“BEST boy!”
Scoot rolled over on his back and wriggled hopelessly in delirium. The crowd was roaring, the sun was shining, he’d never been so happy.

But the words weren’t being said, and so it was already draining away, through the edges of his senses, the brink of his brain, the rim of his body. The warmth still faded, as great as it was, as good as it could be, as boy as he’d been.

He needed more.

***

Scoot had watched hands and arms all his life. The gestures, the praise, the hold-on-nows, the go-ahead-nows, the high-fives, the down-lows. Even the too-slows.

He’d never watched a hand move quite like this before. But then again, he’d never been too slow either.

The ball left its grip, spinning and gyrating. Scoot clenched his teeth, braced himself, dug at the dirt, leapt, and swung.

CRACK

“HOME RUN!”

And oh how they cheered, and they cheered, and they cheered as Scoot ran, ran, ran, base to base, running at a speed unnecessary because there was no getting that ball back ever again, but he ran faster than he’d ever done before because at the plate his team had spilled out and they grabbed him and hurled him high into the air and they shouted all at once and all overlapping.

“Good boy, Scoot!”

And as Scoot was being told the words the whole stadium revolved around him and he saw banners with his face and banners with his name and one modestly-sized cardboard sign held aloft in the midst of thousands that read in clumsy marker GOOD BOY, SCOOT and he shuddered and sighed and wriggled with such joy that his team nearly dropped him, but as quickly as it had come it was already leaving and he relaxed into their hands once more.

It had been wonderful. But it wasn’t enough.

***

“Lift the cover,” croaked the agent from the floor. His arm was no longer straining; he’d given up the struggle to move. All the energy left in him was in his voice – still smoker’s-rough, but turning soft at the edges with fatigue.

Scoot lifted off the cover – that was the easy part. Holding the screwdriver in his teeth at the right angle had been child’s play; turning it with his tongue had been nearly tricky; this was something simpler than that.

“Now,” said the agent. “Cut the red wire. Not. The green one. NOT. GREEN.”
Scoot stared into the case of the bomb. Alright. This part might actually be difficult.

“Red wire,” said the agent. “Red.” He was fading fast. Scoot didn’t have the time to bring the bomb to him. He didn’t have the time to do anything but make a choice. Also he knew he couldn’t hesitate or ask for help or he might not hear the words.

So he bit the wire and tugged it loose with utmost confidence, and nothing exploded.

“Good,” said the agent, his pupils beginning to lose focus. “Good, Scoot. Good. Goodboy.”

And he was gone, and Scoot shivered all over in joy as he sat underneath the headquarters of the United Nations in a hidden sub-basement with a dead hero and forty dead henchmen and a dead mastermind who’d been killed by his own pet taipan and knew that by tomorrow every newspaper on the planet would have his name in them and maybe his picture and they could even have the words printed there millions of times and it was so very, very, very, very, very excellent.

And it was still leaving him, as soon as it had arrived.

The taipan hissed peevishly at him from the ductwork it had slithered into. He ignored it. It couldn’t speak the words.

***

Getting the airlock working was the hardest part – it had never been designed to interface with this kind of material before. But Scoot had already entered the override codes and disabled the safeties and gotten the rest of the crew into their suits.

They could afford to shed a little atmosphere and the alternative was not acceptable. He would not have his first trip into high orbit end in failure.

With a slow hiss, the valve at the far end of the corridor – a strange iris, crafted from a strange metal, shaped by strange minds – relaxed open, and the crew from the other structure floated into the airlock, two at a time. The last one in (the sixth – such a small consignment for such a vast vessel!) thumped at a control panel furiously until it shut behind them.

Scoot let them in. Of course he did. Even as they milled in confusion inside an alien spaceship; even as they watched the wreck of their own stricken vessel recede into the distance; even as they communicated with probe and clumsy mime that terran atmosphere seemed to be breathable; even when the first of them shed their suit’s helmet and revealed them to be very very large cats.

Scoot did not bark. Scoot’s fur did not stand on end.  Scoot didn’t even growl.

“D*A&SL: *(Yure3qjlk,” said the alien, extended a cautious paw. And oh, oh, oh, how carefully Scoot shook it, for it was the first words spoken to a creature of Earth that were not of earth, and they were the words indeed, he knew intimately.

It lasted all the way down back the gravity well. It lasted all the way through the disembarkment. It lasted through the press conference.

It lasted until Scoot was home and in bed, and as he drifted off to sleep he felt it begin to drain and he knew by morning it would be gone again, and it was a mercy he was too deeply exhausted to feel strongly about that.

***

Scoot sat at his desk with his head on his paws and his brows twitching and he thought of the six years of his life, of the past year of his presidency.

He had heard the words nearly every day. Ever since he’d been nominated by all official political parties. Every day since he secured one hundred percent of the vote and an extra ten percent just because of the words. Every day since he’d stopped every genocide, ended every war, brought an end to economic injustice, turned the global carbon-negative, cloned the thylacine back to life, colonized space, decolonized earth, visited the planet of the &*ZXF?k;l, and learned the secret name of several gods.

Sometimes it lasted. Sometimes it didn’t. But it never stayed.

And sometimes after it left, Scoot sat at his desk like he was doing and he rested his head on his paws like he did and he thought of the small and very sturdy red button inside the locked drawer under a bulletproof glass case guarded by a passcode only he knew.

He would never push it. That would be bad. That would make him the opposite of the words, the dreaded thing, the thing he had never heard of.

It was just that sometimes on nights like this he liked to sit and think and wonder and what he wondered was things like this:

What if, in order for the words to truly matter, to truly STICK, to truly STAY, he had to know their opposite? If he’d never been a

B a d  d o g

… then how was he supposed to know how good the words really were?

His tail was wagging. His tongue was hanging out.

And then he got an itch, had to chew on his haunch for a good forty seconds, and when he was done, the moment was passed and he was tired, so very tired.

Time for bed. There would be another night tomorrow.

So President Scoot curled himself up on the carpet of the Oval Office with his tail in his nose and dreamed, and whether his dreams were good or bad was his concern and nobody else’s, and if he found that liberating or terrifying, well, that was his business too.

The button did not dream. But it DID wait. 

The Old Times were simple times. The world was big and its inhabitants were small; you found things to eat or something bigger ate you; and the biggest thing was Gronnkkt.

Gronnkkt knew this intimately, and took care to ensure it by battering to death anything It found that was nearly as big as Itself. And the small creatures down below witnessed this every day, and every evening, and sometimes heard it every night, and they worshipped Gronnkkt The Pummeler with great regularity – even more diligently than they did Spoolp, The One Who Collects Berries or Breeeez Who Finds Interesting Mushrooms, albeit for very different reasons.

They were not complicated forms of worship. A silent moment with brows lowered (a hard trick to pull off in the Old Times, when brows were at their lowest) and a soothing pat-pat gesture with the left hand gingerly extended; the forceful crushing of a small, harmless creature with a nearby hand axe; and of course – most common of all – the deep, satisfied grunt of exhaled air mixed with something rough in the back of the throat, done just after beating something to death.

Those were the manner and the custom with Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts was treated with in the Old Times before the Times After That, also called the New Times.

Their precise beginning is hard to pin down, but scholarly consensus is that it probably started with the sneeze.

***

It was a good big one. It tore the leaves off the trees and the trees off the ground; it deafened birds and killed small animals. It was a sneeze nearly worthy of emitting from the maw of Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, but instead it came from the maw of some big bear It was wrestling and it went right into Gronnkkt’s mouth and back out again through Its four nostrils.

Gronnkkt responded to this by beating the bear to death with greater force than was necessary or usual. And the small creatures saw this and they worshipped, and the day was normal again.

So was the day after that.

So was the day after that.

The day after THAT was when Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, let out a small sneeze of Its own that morning, and then by mid-afternoon Its four nostrils were a flood of mucus, and come sunset It couldn’t spare a limb to pummel because all of them were clutching at Its aching skull, and all night long all the small creatures couldn’t sleep a wink for the thunderous force of Its coughing: a deep harsh bark that made the pebbles dance and sent moles scurrying from their burrows.

“Will It be okay?” asked some of the younger and stupider of the small creatures.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” said their older and wiser forebears. “Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, is an inescapable and inevitable fulcrum of the natural state of the world. You might as well ask if the seasons will be okay.”

The next morning Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, was found lying dead next to the big lake near the two hillsides by the morning water-carriers of the small creatures. This was a surprise to them, because they could still hear Its coughing. And it was an even greater surprise to them when the Cough of Gronnkkt came out of the trees and ran at them and began to violently pummel them until their lungs popped out. Some of the quicker ones got away and ran all the way uphill back home, crying out nonsense that their older and wiser forebears laughed at until the morning hunters of the small creatures returned and told a terrible tale of their own: they had been ready to capture a deer, when the crippling, inescapable Headache of Gronnkkt had come down at them all from above and laid half their number low so totally that their skulls had blown up. And while this tragic news had just been delivered, in came the fiber-pickers, who had only woven one and a half lengths of rope that day because the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt had sloshed through the forest and dissolved every scrap of low-hanging vegetative matter, along with half of the fiber-pickers.

“Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, is dead, but Its afflictions are not,” said some of the small creatures. “Should we do something about this?”
“We couldn’t do anything about Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, so we can’t do anything about this either,” said the old and wise small creatures. “That’s just how it is.” And it was indeed how it was, because the Cough and the Headache and the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt all did indeed remain, meaning ‘how it is’ now included many more small creatures having their lungs pop out, heads blow up, or bodies dissolved in mucus. Some of them were resentful of this, and some of them were consoled by this being the way it was, and some of the ones that weren’t consoled were resigned, and some of the ones that were neither consoled or resigned didn’t want to make a fuss.

This left a total of about three small creatures who were both young and stupid enough to think anything could be changed, which also made them young and stupid enough to think they should bother Grandma about it.

***

Grandma was not to be prayed to as Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, or Spoolp, The One Who Collects Berries, or Breeeez Who Finds Interesting Mushrooms, or even Brbit, The Really Big Hoppy One. Grandma was brought things that were left at the mouth of the cave she lurked inside – soft foods, water, the occasional interesting rock – and not prayed to or looked at or talked about or talked to. Otherwise there was a grave danger that she might speak to you.

“Grandma,” said the three smallest youngest stupidest creatures, “how do we make the afflictions of Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, go away?”
Grandma looked at them, probably. Her eyes were so deep in her skull’s sockets that they were almost invisible: just a hint of moisture at the bottom of a pit.

“You must say the words first,” she said in a voice as coarse and harsh as the Cough of Gronnkkt itself.

“What are the words?” asked the most exceptionally young and stupid of all three small creatures.

“’Please, Grandma,’” said Grandma.

“Please, Grandma,” chanted the three young and stupid small creatures in unison.

“Good. I will help you defeat all of these afflictions,” said Grandma. “But only if you do exactly as I say and don’t talk. Now go down to your family and friends and tell them to collect soft fresh leaves until the entire camp is knee-deep in them.”
“Whose knees?” asked the youngest and stupidest.

Grandma looked at them.

“Sorry,” said the youngest and stupidest.

Grandma didn’t stop looking at them.

The youngest and stupidest opened their mouth again, only to find it immediately covered by both hands of both their companions.

“Better,” said Grandma.

***

It was surprisingly simple for the three youngest and stupidest of all the small creatures to convince their older and wiser friends and family to spend all day picking soft, useless leaves in vast numbers. This was because nobody could go down to the lake or into the woods or do anything that wasn’t scampering up into the safety of the rocky hillside without being killed unexpectedly by the afflictions of Gronnkkt, and so they were almost all bored enough to do anything even if there wasn’t a good reason for it.

“Why should we do this?” demanded the few oldest and wisest.

“Grandma said we had to,” said the youngest and stupidest. And so everyone helped, and the day sped by until the leaves were at knee height of most of – if not quite all – the small creatures and the terrible, sniffling slurp of the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt echoed damply against the setting sun.

The small creatures ran to the rocks and watched with baited breath as the sludge dribbled through their home, sniffing up small pretty rocks, slurping down dried food, and slowly, inevitably, totally blotting itself into oblivion on the soft and absorbent surfaces of hundreds and hundreds of a day’s-worth of leaves until not even a smear was left on the ground.

The leaves, however, remained. It took until nearly the sunrise to change that, and the filling of two filth-pits.

“We may now sleep in peace without being washed away by the fearsome Runny Nose of Gronnkkt,” said the wiser and older small creatures. “However, the rest of them are definitely undefeatable and inalterable and we shouldn’t bother trying.”

“Grandma said we were going to get rid of them all,” said the small and stupid creatures. And so they were sent back to her, and they showed her one of the leaves as proof.

“Disgusting,” she said. “Good. Now go into the woods and chop down all the willow saplings you can find. Leave their bark on and take them down to the lakeshore, then go for a swim.”

***

This took longer, because even a sapling willow tree is a fierce opponent to a stone hand axe, but ‘Grandma said to” remained a great motivator, and so it was done and the lakeshore where the water was drawn and the fish were caught was so choked with fallen timber that even the very youngest and stupidest of the small creatures – who were also the smallest – could barely pick their way down to the water to splash and wade and swim. But they managed, and they did, and as time passed and nothing happened their boredom made them loud and careless and so onward came the Headache of Gronnkkt from the woods, armoured and spined and thorned and barbed and inexorable, taller than the trees of the forest and more implacable than the stones of the hills, dead-eyed and invincible.

It slipped on the logs and hurtled helplessly into the lake along with the majority of the willow saplings, which drummed it on the head every time it rose for breath until it rose no more.

The three youngest and stupidest of the small creatures were retrieved from the far side of the lake after some searching, coated in algae and small, dead fish, and were thus presented to Grandma without further persuading required – from a safe distance.

“Take these leaves,” said Grandma, holding out a handful of very dry and very small and very broken fragments of things that may have once been attached to trees. “Then take as much water as you can and fill the big pit in the rock in front of my cave with it. Put the leaves in that. Warm round solid stones in your fires until they’re hot, then put them in the pit too. Then wait.”

It was a long way to bring water. The stones took all day to warm, and carrying them was even trickier than the water and burned several fingers. The leaves made the steaming water stink and fume.

But just before sunset the harsh bark came from the woods, and as the sky turned red the Cough of Gronnkkt crawled its long, scale-coated belly up the scree to the mouth of Grandma’s home and dipped its narrow, wheezing mouth into the vapors of the vat of tea to inhale and wheeze and sip. Slowly. Very slowly. And as it sipped, it coughed less, and moved less, and relaxed, and at last it lay down to sleep right where it stood without so much as a cleared throat. It didn’t make a sound when Grandma walked up to it and shoved its whole head under the surface until the  bubbles stopped, not once.

“This is how you deal with the afflictions of Gronnkkt,” said Grandma, “although I expect they will be smaller and less bold if they ever come back. Remember how it was done. And now you must speak the other words.”

“What are the other words?” asked the oldest and wisest remaining small creature.

“’Thank you, Grandma,’” said Grandma.

They chanted the words together and went to bed. And maybe it was the fumes from the tea, and maybe it was knowing the worst was behind them, but none of those small creatures had ever felt so happy to have a single, normal, restful night’s sleep ever before, and they vowed never to take it for granted again.

They were lying, of course. But wasn’t that just human of them?

“The Cape, the Cape! They saw her at the Cape, at the Cape!”
The call started in the mouth of a ragged man on the docks, and it sped from there to the streets and from there to the pubs and from there to everywhere, quicker than a blink. “The Cape! They saw her at the Cape! Red-eyed, saw-backed, coiled high on the rocks! Dame Brute – in solitude – hunts at the Cape of Sharp Stones!”

“My leg!” bellowed up from the depths of a half-flotsam pub, screamed by a whaler with the body of jerky and the lungs of an opera singer and – indeed – the leg of a pogo stick. “At last, the price for my leg will be paid to me! Up now with you all, down with your cups! Today we take back my leg! Today we take back our pride! Today we avenge our lost shipmates! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

“My bounty!” hooted a pirate as he held an erstwhile news-spreader up in one hand and her wallet in the other. “Hear that, kids? Ol’ Lum is going to pay off his debts to the state and Mend His Ways! You all are going to be Legitimate Persons Of Fortune once more, like in the days before the Unfortunate Moment which we will not be talking about at this time. We’ll be able to get drunk in public again! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
“My place!” whispered a trembling aristocrat to her aide. “Perchance, Pestersnipe, this shalt forsooth salve the wounds of mine unjust exile from paternal and maternal care and render unto me the fiscal and notional acclaim necessary to achieve the heights of society denied my most unjustly due to my unfortunate placement as the third-born heir in a second-rank family among the third-most-esteemed cadet branch of the fourth-grandest-and-most-fashionable-province of the Lesser Buulyeans.”

“Her ladyship commands the crew to put to sea to murder a waterborne snake – hurry, hurry, and hurry, and so on” said Pestersnipe to the marines, and they said ‘sir’ and nodded and it was so.

Thusly did three ships leave the harbour in such furious speed that they were barely able to raise sails and figure out north from west. Horns were sounded, signals were misinterpreted, six small local fishing craft were sent to the bottom, six large and irate local fisherman were press-ganged into service, and by the time the rest of the city caught wise to what was up and began to send feet to decks, the chase had already begun and there were only three real contestants, strung out along the horizon from each other like beads on a very cheap necklace.

The last sea monster was being hunted.

***

Pertinence was afore the first week, her crew driven by a dangerous combination of monomania and experience. Every hand on that boat thirsted for the flesh of the foe, every eye was keen with the knowing of wind and current – that many of the bodies aboard were shy a hand eye or elsewise meant little to such fierce determination. They slept what little they must, they ate in between heaves and pulls, they sang no shanties but hissed angry breaths between hard-bitten teeth, they squinted at the horizon like it was Dame Brute’s ally, a hostile wall between them and their goal.

Fancy Lee sauntered after her, lean and quick in trim and sail, if somewhat flabbier in crew. A dark cloud of lingering hangovers weighed them where their vessel did not, and though they were keen to be unwanted men and women once more they weren’t so sharp as to cut themselves.

Prince Gigantic brought up the rear at a respectable pace, one enforced by the stoutness of her hull and the request of her captain, who was sea-sick.

“I can’t sleep, I won’t blink, I won’t stop to smile or spit or sup until the Cape is before us and the beast is beneath us and the past is behind us,” vowed Jordan Hopp, who was nailing a blasphemous pact to Pertinence’s mainmast with such force that the deck creaked beneath their feet. “Open a vein and draw your mark if you can say the same!” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

“Rough times afloat have the same cure as rough times ashore have the same cure as a hangover,” said Ol’ Lum in an unnecessarily loud voice. “The Good Shit is on the middeck today and it is first come first served, but no double dipping before everyone else has had their shot or else there will be Consequences.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

“Plorgh,” addressed Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle through the window of her cabin to the sea. “Fffbbbltppphurk.”

“Her ladyship commands that you speed up,” said Pestersnipe. “Also, bring up the cask of medicinal brandy.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

All hands being able did not mean all plans went as made, and as such by the week’s end matters lay as thus, this:

Pertinence had spent two days dead in the water with her sails aimless due to an inexplicable outbreak of anemia and exhaustion among the crew. “The devil!” seethed Captain Hopp. “The devil and god themselves conspire against me! Well, to hell and deeper with them both!” And then they burned the blasphemous pact along with Pertinence’s mainmast, which cost the Pertinence a little more trouble.

The Fancy Lee made good if slightly wobbly time. Consequences had left her holster several times, but she did not need to be fired. Which was good, because Consequences never missed but what she hit wasn’t necessarily what she was aimed at.

While all the while Prince Gigantic churned gamely onwards, though her wake was oddly odoured and coloured and more expensive than most seawater. And so, in some difficulty, the pursuit for the most fierce – if now solitary – creature of the seas continued.

***

A whale was a free-swimming fountain of resources with a wily will to survive. A sea monster was a step above in that those resources would come looking for you and a step down in that they would then try to eat you.

That was an old puzzle, one that had in recent centuries found increasingly accurate answers. And now, it was almost completed.

***

In the second week the weather turned mellow – too mellow. All sails turned slack; the sun burned hot, and the string of three stagnated in their current order. Fancy Lee held the leading place, and by a healthy distance.

“I told you kids we would all see this through and I told you that what Ol’ Lum tells you is true Is That Not Fact?” asked Old Lum. “It’s okay, that was Rhetorical it means you don’t need to answer and Do Not Think About It. We’ve got this one In The Bag, and the harder you worry the harder it’ll get. Don’t sweat anything. Don’t think about how we’ve completely run out of places it’s legal to for any of us to Take A Load Off or get a drink or maybe breathe. Don’t think about what happens if we Screw This Pooch. Don’t think about how many times we have all Screwed That Pooch. Don’t think about it. And if you do, just imagine Consequences. But don’t. So do that. And don’t do that.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand except for what they didn’t do as such to an able hand except for when they did. Or didn’t.

Prince Gigantic wallowed the space between, her many decks turned to ovens. Pestersnipe stood valiant guard in his ladyship’s cabin, bent low with a mirror to check for breath.

“Bless thee, good Pestersnipe,” whispered Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle in the faintest of voices, “for thy service in my darkest hour. From sea-sickness to heat-sickness – alas! Alack! I fear mine hour has nigh-come, forsooth forthwith forthright. I know the rabble and roustabouts of the crew shalt seek to shirk their duty in this time of my decrepitude, it falls to thee, wise and kind and true Pestersnipe, to take up the sword in my darkest hour. Flog them, flay them, skin them if you must, but make those wretches break us free of this damnable heat if you need to use half the crew’s bones as oars!”

“Her ladyship says you should take the day off and enjoy a double grog ration while we wait for improved weather,” said Pestersnipe. “Also bring up the reserve medicinal brandy cask.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

Pertinence had limped along on two masts, fore and aft. Now she lay with the stillness of a corpse. But one germ remained active on that body; one finger yet twitched at the end of its last nerve, and it was Captain Hopp, who climbed to the tallest remaining perch of the ship – missing leg and all – to describe to every supernatural being in all their extensive knowledge of time and tide and its creators exactly what they thought of them and their obstruction of their noble quest.

“Fuck you!” they screamed. “Eat shit!”

That night the calm broke and a hard wind blew.

Fancy Lee tacked into the wind, then headed off the wind, then downed sails on one side and tacked up to full on the other, then tried a secret fourth thing whose purpose and point was inscrutable. Consequences flowed freely, though lessons learned were elusive.

Prince Gigantic rose to the occasion and sped ahead on great wings raised with nimble speed; all its lumbering weight turned into a nimble dart in the hands of such a gigantic force. The complexity of its wake only increased in scope and scale, as did its smell.

And Pertinence was struck by lightning three times but each time found the fires extinguished by the force of the blowing gale, which put such spectacular fear into the crew’s souls as to lend them their own kind of wings, which thereby sped them onwards in due time. Thus, in grim determination, did the search for the murderous – if now solitary – reptile continue onwards.

***

Dame Brute had been given her name for her daintiness. Other sea monsters made sloppy messes out of ships; tore them open stem to stern and left them to founder slowly; carrying away screaming morsels from the deck as they left.

By contrast, although she was a scar-seared knuckle-nosed battering-ram of a creature that had once bisected a whaler in a single breach, she was a proper lady. She didn’t depart until her plate was picked clean, and she seldom left any garbage floating to mark her messes.

***

By third week’s time the Prince Gigantic held the horizon, a moving mountain – but one rendered almost invisible. The wind and rain had returned, then redoubled, then resounded. A full storm grasped all the flotilla in common, each an island unto itself more than ever, shrouded and set apart by the rage of the heavens.

“It is not all sorrows and tears in this tragedy, my dearest Pestersnipe,” pondered Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle, who was feeling well enough to limp up above decks and goggle at the struggle for survival, like a child with a magnifying glass peeping a likely anthill. “For instance, dost thou know’st that I have had the liberty of observing many a sea-dog in our wake these passing weeks? They lap most fearfully at my vomitus that drags behind our keel. Not past this tenth bell, I did behold a wretched scavenger whose size was nigh half our vessel’s length! What a thing that would be, to give such a monstrous beast a taste for the rich and fine things in life beyond that of its station, eh?”

Above even the roar of the wind rose a dreadful thunking, chewing sound at the keel.

“Her ladyship asks you all to grab boarding pikes and head to the vessel’s stern to kill a giant drunk shark,” said Pestersnipe. And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

Pertinence travelled with one mast now and half a sail, hellbent forwards on momentum more than the wind.

“Jettison it all,” howled Captain Hopp into the wind, eyes bugged, teeth bared. “Food, water, bedding – all dead weight now. We want but for irons for our task! All else goes to the deep!” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

The Fancy Lee was running a little light on crew in the wake of manifest Consequences, and though the notion of what to do with her sails was strong the ability to manifest it was less trivial.

“Pull, my kids, pull!” said Old Lum, who was himself heaving on the steering wheel like it owed him money and was lying facedown on its wallet. “There have been rough times and hard times but right now we are owed a good size of Good Times and we are almost there you Bet Your Ass. Every sail goes on! Every hand pulls! Almost there, and then We’ve Made It!” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

With so many hands at such furious work in such thorough ignorance as to all outside their business, perhaps the outcome, although invisible to all concerned, was dully obvious to any uninvolved. Thus, the ramming of the Pertinence at full-force into the stern of the Prince Gigantic – where it skewered a very large, drunk, and angry shark that had chewed off half the latter vessel’s keel – was in an absolute sense very unsurprising despite coming as a great shock to a large number of people. Likewise, the slow, showy swirl of a corkscrew that took the Fancy Lee to drift broadside into the two of them, where it stuck firm.

Some screams, some shouts, some smoke and splinters. And above it all, a storm turned to a sputter, and light shining on a sea filled with sharp, splintered stones

And thus, at the fourth week and all at once, altogether, they reached the Cape, and ruined the solemn solitude of that place.

***

The Cape of Sharp Stones had been a seasonal haunt for sea monsters for who knew how long. Then it had been a refuge, since nobody that wasn’t extremely desperate enjoyed navigating waters filled with constantly splintering, constantly changing mazes of giant jagged rocks.

And now, it was a ghost house you could lose several provinces in.

***

The waves had calmed enough for a civil discussion above decks involving all. As befitted such an occasion, every jack involved was armed to the teeth. The marines fixed bayonets to long-guns; the pirates put cutlasses on every remaining limb and a few that weren’t; and the whalers simply clutched the most unpleasant and visceral devices every conceived of by man like they were their own dear children.

“How doing there my Good Fellow Travellers,” said Old Lum through his megaphone and a big smile. “If you wouldn’t mind Making Right Of Way for some Gentlefolk Of Free Will And Fancy we can all go home safe and sound and Settled Of Mind.”

“Dame Brute is ours, by right of pain and hatred,” said Captain Hopp, who was braced on an entire handful of hideously barbed and gigantically elongated pieces of metal – and more thoroughly, on a well of unyielding spite. “Ours is the expertise required and the justice demanded.”

“Such lowly bequests must bide their good time in turn when the right of birth and expedience is called to its proper place in the nature and order of the world as demanded, by decree of kingdom, country, and common law – in our favour, no less, for a matter of most esteemed and most imperative honour is at stake, in which I bear the most pertinent interest – ah, my fortune!  Such Providence is granted to me in matters of the material, if not, alas, the heart,” explained Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle.

“We’ve got the most guns,” said Pestersnipe.

“And we’ve got the most folks that know how to use them to make The Big Money. But ah now my fellow Gentlefolks Of The Sea, there is no reason for this to come to Unpleasantness,” said Old Lum, hands raised to display both conciliatoriness and Consequences. “If we all stay Cool Headed, I’m sure we-”

Captain Hopp flung a fierce harpoon full-force, whereupon it lodged in Old Lum’s brisket. He sagged and loosed Consequences, which struck Pestersnipe athwart the bows of his noggin, beheading him.

“Unleash the full-fouled bowels of Hades upon every one of them, child and grown, without discrimination nor kindness nor hesitation!” screamed Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle, pale palms grasping her fallen manservant in mortified sorrow.

The marines looked at her, hands flexed and waiting.

She closed her eyes, breathed in and out once, a great shaking sob, then peeked them open again with utmost care.

“Kill everybody?” she said.

And lo, all the crews did as such to the last able hand, then the least able, and to the end.

***

As the timber creaked and the water gurgled the great spired sentinels of the Cape of Sharp Stones grew ever higher and higher to the few remaining witnesses until they lost sight and slipped below, still entangled – bow to stern, blade to ribcage – and began that last, lonely dive down, down, down down, where they landed with crushing force atop silt and stone amid many other older wrecks and one more thing.

It was the skeleton of a great old sea monster, newly laid to bone by busy scavengers, not more than a month picked clean, gnarled by age and killed by nothing more than time.

And now, no longer solitary.

The grand old redwood had not been ten minutes felled when Janice almost stepped on its seedling. Nearly ended the whole thing right there without even noticing, a shift on the left leg, a glance directed a few centimeters to the side, a mind wandering a little farther.

But Janice saw it by her bootheel, quivering a little with each thunderous HOCK of the chain-cleaver on its foremother’s flesh, and it was so small, so small even for a bare sprig, and she thought a few things with the speed and ease of an old hand in the redwoods.

First, that to harvest, harbour, or hand-raise any form of redwood unsupervised was prohibited under the long list of company regulations.

Second, that almost every company regulation existed because the alternative was losing a preposterous amount of money, and occasionally also because someone had died.

Third, that most of the people violating those regulations either did it because they were too young and stupid to know they existed or too old and complacent to think they applied to them.

Fourth, she’d turned forty-eight two weeks ago and could still taste the hangover in the back of her spine.

So what the hell.

***

For the first three months, she kept it in plain sight: a pot among the pre-potted thyme, the chives, and the garlic on her windowsill. Nobody caught on except for Marco when he stopped by for Friday poker, who just barely had the discipline to yell “what the shit” in a politely restrained indoor voice when he went to blow smoke outdoors.

“God bless you?” asked Albrecht, and Marco, bless him, made eye contact with Janice across seven feet of murky, sweaty inebriation and read her loud and clear.

“Stubbed my toe in the dark. Jan, how do you live like this?”
“I’m not paying for a new bulb to fix the problem of your old glasses,” said Janice, and everything was fine and everyone moved on until Marco was the last one out the door and she could snake a friendly arm around his neck and mutter “stay quiet” in his ear. And it was still pretty fine and friendly after that, because he didn’t scream for help and he turned and spoke real quiet when he said “fuck you playing at?”

“Nothing.”
“That’s not NOTHING, that’s-”

“Even less than that. Shush.”
“You-”

If she were younger and stupider, she’d have threatened him. But instead she said “spot you a smoke?”

“Fuck the smokes, I just HAD a smoke, a smoke is what started this.”
“Homerolled.”
His eyebrows pinched and she knew she’d already won. “Bullshit.”
“Truth. Ash passed on the last of her crop before she got busted. Take one.”
“It’ll be dried up by now.”
“It won’t.”
“It will. And fuck the smokes, what are you DOING? That thing’s already big enough to eat a finger!”

“I’m not doing anything and I’ll put it back next week. And the smokes are good.”
“You’re so full of it your hair’s turning brown again.”

“Marco. Look me in the eye and tell me I would lie to you about this shit.”

He looked and saw the truth: she absolutely would and he would never ever in a million years be able to call her on it. Thus shackled by common courtesy and history, the night came to an end.

And so did the seedling’s days in the little pot. Runt or not, it had just about bulged over the sides – its stem stood too proud; its leaves bloomed too ruddy to be permitted in even the periphery of the public eye. And Janice didn’t ever let her friends into her bedroom these days anyhow, and she couldn’t remember the last time she actually used that old wastebasket, so in the end the only sacrifice she had to make for the relocation was the necessity of keeping her windows open in the daytime to let the slow-thick-stench of a growing redwood leak away and drown in the muggy vapours of Westplank afternoons.

***

The food became an issue.

It was turning into a proper sapling now, that runty seed. It slowly filled up Janice’s old wastebasket and grew straight and strong. And to grow strong, it needed fuel.

Cannibalism was of no concern to redwoods – the thousand thousand seeds spread out by an adult had just enough packaged energy to get them to sprout, and following that the bulk of their first meals would be an unfortunate just-a-little-smaller-or-slower sibling, strangled inexpertly with their fresh roots, ripped open, and drained down.

So it was perfectly natural and usual and normal that Janice was bringing home pieces of work with her, raw and dripping in her deepest pockets. Shaved bark, meat chips, even small limb segments made their way into her hands and vanished when nobody was looking – plucked from the very jaws of the mill. Once when she was on driver duty she uprooted a whole sapling, walked it off to the woodchipper, and stashed it in the cabin. She had no idea how nobody caught on to that, but it lasted her and the sapling combined a good few weeks.

It just wasn’t enough. Your shift got paid by weight of harvest, and you got paid just enough to keep the company store stock flowing, and anything taking chunks out of that meant not enough to live on, which meant worse work performance, which meant lower weight of harvest, which meant a long, slow, spiralling slide down into the metaphorical toilet bowl that was Westplank. Plenty of time to know what was happening to you, plenty of opportunity to try everything you could to escape, plenty of time to claw your nails bloody to no use at all.

So when the first week came that Janice had to stock low on toilet paper, she knew the writing was on the wall, and she looked into alternative sources.

Buying more groceries would be a different path to the same destination – the meat the company fed them was rehabilitated offworld slush, but it wasn’t cheap.

Pirate-logging redwoods would be a good way to get herself noticed – the company might not have cared if they lived or died, but they cared if they costed them money, and that meant consequences that could make starving to death seem kind and fast.

There weren’t many restaurants in town, and there were fewer that didn’t keep their dumpsters under lock and key, and fewer still that she’d be able to scrape more than tendon and bone out of. Westplank didn’t cater to the non-desperate.

But there was an aid site. A big, busy company aid site. And it was full to the brim every week with some new disaster. Someone young that tried to do a stupid trick with a chaincleaver. Someone old that didn’t look when they heard TIMBER because they knew what was happening and so didn’t feel the need to look. Someone who got drunk and dropped their phone in a chipper and tried to catch it and missed.

There were a lot of ways to get hurt out in the redwood forests. A lot of them were permanent, and a lot of those permanent consequences left debris. A severed arm; a crushed leg; a mangled hand… it was amazing what the company would throw away while fitting you with your almost-shiny new prosthetic (pay in installments).

And unlike the restaurants, nobody kept a close eye on the bio waste bins. Janice didn’t even need to pick the lock: someone had left it open the first time she looked.

She did it anyways, just to be sure she could if it mattered. She could.

It never came up.

***

Autumn came, and the storms locked everyone inside away from the power tools and the redwoods for a solid month.

That was when Janice learned the morgue’s lock was only a little harder.

Even if people weren’t losing as many limbs they were still drinking too much, or saying things they shouldn’t to people they shouldn’t have, or just walking outside to watch the lightning from not quite far enough away.

It was learning to crack the bones – first for the marrow, then further, down into tiny pebbles it could gnaw away at inside its trunk. The grinding soothed her at night, like childhood memories of listening to a dishwasher in the restaurant downstairs. The teeth were harder – it worked on them for whole days at a time even, like chewtoys.

Then the winter parch settled in, and everyone was back in the fields, but well, it was so much more effective this way, wasn’t it? Why scrounge for fingers when you could heft a bodybag? And it wasn’t as if it was more noticeable. Bodies were waste product. Expensive to get rid of. If anyone noticed what was going on, it was because it was making their life easier. You didn’t question that.

***

The sapling was growing faster than ever. It had practically filled Janice’s room by then; it clawed at the windows in slow soft ripples; it spilled from the wastebasket to sink tendrils into the ragged carpet; it brushed its buds against the ceiling to leave sticky red marks and reached out to cradle her bed in its still-spindly limbs. It was cramping, creeping, crawling for space, and she had no more left to give it.

So, late on a moonless Friday night Janice cancelled poker for the fourth week running, put on her heavy logging gear and mask, gloved every part of her exposed body, and slowly and carefully began to uproot a redwood without killing it for the first time in her life.

It was sticky, it was slow, and it was surreal. The vesicles gripped and gummed at her gloves like nursing kittens as she tucked them into loose sacking filled with ripened offal; the roots tried to crawl into her boots while she heaved it into her arms; the trunk leaned into her warmth and made the soft pulsation it did that was neither hunger or fear or anything else Janice could identify.

She made it down the hall. She made it out of the building. She was just getting into the cab of her truck when she heard a very, very familiar “what the shit” and looked up and oh, Marco. So considerate to check in on her after she cancelled poker four weeks in a row. Or so worried he might have permanently lost the chance to take Albrecht and Beatrice’s spare change. Or both.

“Shush,” she said, setting down her burden. It clutched at her heel, recoiling up and away from the cracked pavement.

“This is – fuck, this is, this is bigger than a windowsill, this is life sentence territory-”

If she was younger and stupider, she’d have thought of threatening him. “It’s okay, listen. I got a plan.”
“A PLAN? A plan for what, to-”

Janice was faster than she looked, and she was less drunk than a Friday demanded, and Marco had a soft skull. And there was space in the cab enough, if she wedged him half over her lap.

The sapling wriggled in its casing, trying to get at him.

“No,” she told the thing without auditory organs. And also herself.

A witness was dangerous, a missing acquaintance was a little suspicious, but a disgruntled and unwilling accomplice? That was just a friend with more words.

***

The uncleared tracts were temporary and doomed. The cleared tracts had been chopped down to the epidermal layer. The fallow tracts were a hypothetical investment in some sort of future, and therefore nobody thought of them or looked at them, and it was there that Janice crept, and dug, and chopped, and planted, and finally ensconced her sapling in a little dell that would hide the vascular plume of its canopy from casual observation, in the riot of churning rot and fast-burn fungals and eczemal undergrowths that still dominated the landscape. Poor but ample fare, and plenty of room to grow, and a long head start. She’d done everything she could to set it up for success.

Janice hadn’t thought about it in years, but she did vaguely recall wanting kids at least once. She guessed that was what this was like. You were meant to give them everything, right? You were meant to do anything for them, right?

What were you meant to say when you were done?

‘Bye’? ‘Love you bunches’? ‘Good luck’? ‘Don’t forget to write’?

So instead she hugged it awkwardly, and it found where her mask had slipped a bit and took a little piece of it with her.

And that was also what it was like.

The machine people noticed it first; the satellite people, the radar people. They saw it coming from miles of miles away with their pings and ms and humidity percentages and fractional chances of precipitations. And from them word spread on down to the personnel – flight staff, ground crew; maintenance; cleaners; that guy in a kiosk selling you discount toblerones at ruinous rates – and then at last the word came down into the terminal from on high in soothing tones over crackly speaker.

“All flights will be delayed presently; please see the boards for estimated times of departure. The sky isn’t right.”

And that was all.

***

The sky not being right was a clear issue. Its cause was somewhat less discernable. Processes of elimination had to be followed; hypotheses had to be tested.

First the airport phoned more machine people and sent them emails, in hopes that maybe theirs were fibbing or somehow silly. Maybe the sky was actually right after all and this was just a big misunderstanding that they could all look back on and laugh.

But they received nothing but polite confirmations and condolences. The sky was indeed not right. The easiest way out of the problem had been shot down.

Second came the obvious solution: they went down into the big metal shed next to the control tower and opened sixteen different locks of increasingly angry sizes until they found The Plug, which was twelve feet tall and weighed six tons. It was eased out of its socket on the strainer backs of dozens of baggage handlers, held awkwardly, then reinserted.

But despite being unplugged and replugged, the sky still wasn’t right.

The third solution was even simpler in its elegance. A little truck went a little ways out onto the tarmac, carrying a little lad of little people wearing little safety vests and holding little glowing paddles. They were unloaded and began making waving their tools in the air, staring upwards with contorted brows and half-bared teeth.

“There, there!” they shouted over their mouthpieces and into their headsets. “Move, move! There, there! Farther, farther! Keep going, keep going!”

But no matter how hard they shouted and waved and directed the problem did not correct itself, and so the idea that the sky wasn’t right because it was too far left was discarded.

For the fourth solution they went up the chain of command. A great complimentary gift of duty-free alcohol and twenty-dollar hamburgers was piled high in the center of the lobby and burned with the fuel from dozens of novelty souvenir lighters. Polite complaints to the sky were uttered in every tongue available at hand to every entity that might have dwelt within it or controlled it or fought it or slept with it.

But the sky neither affirmed nor denied nor made any comment in the slightest, and so there was nothing left to do but call for the janitors and custodians and mopfolk – who had, of course, expected this and were already standing on hand with extremely careful and sober expressions.

At the fifth, serious material resources were being tapped. The security checkpoints were packed up and wheeled outside; the sky’s shoes were removed and its pockets emptied; its backpack and purse were placed in little plastic tubs and the whole lot were examined with every kind of radiation and the other ones too; its documentation was ruthlessly scrutinized and it was taken aside for a polite, professional and detached conversation on the nature of its business (being above the seas and the earth) and its planned destination (the same).

But the sky refused to say anything without a lawyer and none qualified to practice in its field could be found. The entire process became entangled in red tape and so ensconced, proceeded to return to the warmth of the inner terminal, where it slipped into a dreamy hibernation.

By the sixth, unorthodox solutions were being entertained. Every ladder across all four terminals was found, wrangled, and fastened together to permit the ascension of a single staff member – chosen by lot – to the sky, who could adjust it manually until it was no longer right and instead was correct.

But the winning lottery ticket went to Jess, who had a bad leg; and the runner-up went to Paul, who didn’t want to; and the runner-up-runner-up went missing, and finally the runner-up-runner-up-runner-up was Doreen, who refused to climb any ladder she hadn’t given a good kick to, and it transpired that Doreen’s kick was more good than the ladder.

By the seventh ultradisunorthodox solutions were on the deck, which was why the combining of every available 787 on the airfield into a single ‘man-plane’ to destroy the sky and thereby render its nonrightfulness moot got as far as the blueprinting phase before the individual responsible was exposed, chased down, and fished out of the air vents with a long-armed squeegee pole before being imprisoned in the baggage carousel.

The eighth solution was to shout angrily at the sky. It did not help.

The ninth solution was under proposal and involved the key placement of four refreshment carts, three especially athletic and ruthless flight attendants, and a strategically overfilled water bottle, but it was interrupted immediately before its execution by the tenth solution, which occurred when an anonymous traveler tried to hit the lights in the washroom, flicked a likely-looking switch, and turned the sky back on, immediately rendering it right.

“Someone must’ve hit it with their shoulder by mistake,” was the verdict. And so, with admirable speed and precision, the schedules were adjusted one last time and service resumed with nothing but the greatest of caution, care, and professional courtesy.

***

Everyone involved was gifted a voucher.

Except the sky. It had been very unhelpful.

Jim picks the cans.

He walks the roads and the sidewalks with his plastic barrow, one wheel grinding a little, and he picks the cans from the ground, and he picks the cans from the bins, and he puts them in the barrow. He picks the cans rain or shine; the rain doesn’t bother him; he knocked a little hole in the bottom of the barrow to let the water out. He picks the cans every day of the year, on every holiday; no denomination or cause forestalls him. He picks the cans all over town.

He picks the cans from the downtown, from the bins by the restaurants and the clothing shops and the apartment blocks. Some of the places lock their bins; some don’t. Jim makes do.

He picks the cans from the baskets in the parks and by the beach. In the summer he gets a lot; on summer holidays he gets a LOT; in winter he’s lucky to get anything.

He picks the cans from the side of town where the windows are covered up and missing. He walks a little quicker down his old street, so he doesn’t have to make conversation. Jim’s busy, and awkwardness takes time.

He picks the cans from the side streets with the two-story homes built fifty years ago and last renovated twenty years ago. Some of those houses are going missing one by one, torn down and replaced with something worthy of the million-dollar-land they’re sitting on. Jim can get some good cans when that happens; housewarming parties have that manic enthusiasm around them.

He picks the cans from the side of town where the driveways are long and the waterfront is in everyone’s backyard, and that one’s tough because if Jim goes in daytime he gets the cops called on him for vagrancy and if he goes at night he gets the cops called on him for prowling. He goes anyways, but he walks faster here than he does in the rest of town, and once he had to hide the barrow in a hedge and his body in a culvert. It wasn’t a good time.

He even picks the cans from the godawful suburban sprawl out by the ridgeline on the verge of town, which means he has to walk down roads with no sidewalks for hours just to get there while traffic zips by him at sixty kilometers an hour. Jim accepts that, even if he doesn’t enjoy it. That’s how it is.

That’s how it all is, really.

Jim picks the cans all week, and then he picks through them one more time and separates them in half. Then he takes the barrow and he redeems the deposit on one half of it, the lesser half of it, a dime a can. It gives him food and a new shirt now and then and a little bit put towards whatever else he needs, according to priorities. And it gets him one new, full can.

The other half Jim picked he keeps with him in the barrow, and then Jim and the barrow and the new can take one more walk, all the way down to the park by the water, to a bench where the city lawnmowers don’t attend properly because it’s practically in the lake when the waves get too big and the waterweeds are trying to eat it alive from the legs up.

Jim sits on the bench. His barrow sits next to the bench. The full can sits in his pocket. And he waits.

Some weeks he waits a long time. Some weeks it’s fast. This is a long week, and it’s a long wait, and that’s a little mercy. He watches the sunset bloom and fade and the clouds blend into ink along with the sky before it starts, which is enough time for a rest and to take off his shoes and rub his feet and listen to the birds singing good-night, good-night, see-you-tomorrow. It’s the longest he’s been off his feet without sleeping all week.

It comes after the birds stop singing, and it goes for the throat. Right there, WHAM, a lump like your stomach’s sprinted up your esophagus and gone bungee-jumping on your uvula. By the time you’ve registered it your heart’s already pitter-patting like you’ve been on a run, your limbs feel like you’ve been doused in ice water, and your hair’s prickled from the tug and flinch of your skin as it tries to shrink back from the world in general.

It’s in the water. The same thing that makes people scared of sharks and crocodiles is awake, and it’s loud, and it’s telling anyone nearby to pay attention and freak out properly and productively because This Is How It Happens. There’s nothing visible, no fin, no eyeball-laden dead log, nothing at all, until there is, and it’s the worst kind of thing to see because it’s been there all along. It looks like a muddy spot on the bottom, dark with weeds.

Those aren’t weeds. They never were. And the thing they’re swirling in isn’t a current.

And then, something breaks. And it doesn’t stop.

It breaks free of the bottom, comes boiling up like the contents of a burst kettle. It breaks into the ultraviolet, turns into something just out of the reach of sunlight’s illumination for a poor trichromatic primate. It breaks the surface, and just as the whorl begins to pile up on itself and reach for something above the waterline is when Jim picks a can and hucks it.

The can nails it dead amidships – the aluminum fizzling out into vapor on impact – and the noise that comes out is indescribable because it isn’t noise, it’s that sort of sound elephants make to talk to each other from very far away that the human ear can’t register, except using a medium that isn’t vibrations. Jim ignores it, and picks another can. And hucks it.

He picks a can from the street he used to live on.

He picks a can from the park by the high school where the kids hang out and make trouble.

He picks a can from the recycling bin next to the longest driveway in town, next to a sign that said TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED ACCORDING TO THE FULLEST EXTENT OF THE LAW.

He picks a tire-flattened can he pulled out of a ditch by the highway, and nearly cuts his fingers on its jagged edge

He picks a can, and picks a can, and picks a can, and with every can Jim throws it’s beaten lower, lower, deeper into the water, and when all that’s left is that seething, anxious fear in the air and the water’s calm Jim pulls out the new, still-unopened can and hucks that too. It unwinds into nothing but a spray of sour booze and with that last blow the whole thing falls apart, dread by dread, until there’s nothing left in the air but mosquitos.

Jim sits there for a little while yet, despite the mosquitos, since he wants to make sure. Then he sighs, and he stretches, and he tucks himself under his jacket for a blanket and twists his arm for a pillow and goes to bed.

It’s been a busy week, and the next one starts tomorrow.

The sign was – used to be – bright yellow, with black print. It read DO NOT FEED THE DINOSAURS, beneath a slashed circle containing an abstract piece of candy and a triceratops skull.

Terry got in trouble again last week because of it. They brought her into my office, oven-hot with the dead air conditioner clotting my window, and they told me “she’s doing it again,” and she hunched her tiny head towards her all-ribs chest and glowered so fiercely that I understood why two big, strong summer workers didn’t want to be in the same room as her, let alone be the ones to do the job of reprimanding her. Leave it to the contract manager: she’s only going to be around long enough to fix things up; we might have to look Terry in the eye next summer.

“Terry,” I told her (again), “the sign refers to the animatronics.”
“That’s stupid,” she told me.

“They’re just pigeons, Terry. It’s okay if people feed the pigeons, as long as it’s nothing bad for them. It’s not like they’re seagulls.”

“The sign says ‘do not feed the dinosaurs.’ They’re feeding the dinosaurs.”
My back was sweating against the worn fabric of my chair, not from exertion, but its anticipation. “Most people don’t think of birds when they think of dinosaurs, Terry.”
“Well they should because they are.”
“Right, but they don’t quite look-”

“Whales don’t quite look like most mammals, does that make them something else?”
“Terry,” I said, trying to bring it out of natural facts and into practical execution, “can you just enforce the sign as it is meant rather than as it is written?”
“Why not change it to ‘do not feed the animatronics?’ Then I could do both.”
“It’s meant to be whimsical. Light-hearted.”
“Feeding robots is whimsical and light-hearted.”
“Yes, but it acknowledges that they aren’t real. People want to pretend, Terry.”
My shirt was stuck to everything, but I saw the sadness in her eyes that meant I was coming towards the closest I’d get to victory. “Fine. I get it. Can I go now?”

“You’ll stop telling people not to feed the pigeons?”

“As long as they don’t feed the pigeons.”
“Please stop telling people not to feed the pigeons.”

“I’ll try,” she said, and the words sounded as hollow as anything but that was the best I was going to get.

“Thank you, Terry. You can return to your duties.”

And she did, and I watched her go and gazed past my air conditioner down at the ridiculous sauropod fountain in front of the office – long-necked, long-tailed, long-suffering – and thought that if there were one other person in the country who cleaned bird poop and gum from the surface of animatronic dinosaurs with one-half her dedication she would’ve been fired ten years ago. Niche protection wasn’t just for ecologists.

Oh no. I’d thought about ecology, which meant I’d thought about food webs, which meant I thought about plants, which meant I’d remembered that the gardener was late this week again, which meant I had to try and find their contact information, which was somewhere inside a hard drive, or a filing cabinet, or someone’s head.

The afternoon turned bleak and thick in my mind, like syrup from a fly. I sighed, and I swore, and I descended once more into the depths.

***

Morty was baking.

He sat in his lifeguard’s chair, limbs dangling, eyes shut, leathery hide hardening in the pitiless sun, and he simmered under the cloudless sky. I’d never seen him use suntan lotion. I’d never seen him put on glasses or use a hat.

“Or at least a visor?” I pled. “So you don’t need to shut your eyes.” The pool was a mirror of the afternoon sky: every patch of water that wasn’t currently being chopped, splashed, or slopped by milling bodies had been turned into a molten lens that left spots on your eyelids just glancing at it. Cartoon fish and ammonites and plesiosaurs speckled the bottom; figures worn thin and choppy by actual time and artificial tide.

“S’fine,” he grunted. “No worries.”
“You’re the lifeguard. How will you tell if someone’s in trouble?”
“Oh, I can always tell that,” he said, and he smiled at that – oh, his teeth, the one thing not suncooked on his body, big and beautiful. “I’ve got lots of practice, y’know.”
“Right,” I said. “Right. Listen, are you SURE that kid’s okay? Look, he’s waving and-”

“He’s faking it,” said Morty placidly. “His friend’s going to try to pull him out of the water and he’ll yank her in and dunk her.”
I watched. The kid’s friend tried to pull him out of the water and he yanked her in and dunked her.

“I told you,” said Morty. “Lots of practice.”
“Great, you’re paying attention, I get it. But if you don’t at least LOOK like you’re paying attention, the parents get nervous. And nobody’s twitchier and more dangerous than a nervous parent.”

He burst out laughing, or as close as he could come without moving – heh heh heh heh heh, bubbling up from the ribs outward. “True! But they’re just like the kids, you know? If you look upset, they think they should be upset. If you look relaxed, they don’t make a fuss. If I don’t worry about this, they don’t worry about this, and that means you don’t worry about this. Trust me. Lots. Of. Practice.”

Oh. That was something else. “You’re senior staff, yes. Can you help me with something? I’m looking for our gardener; they still haven’t shown up on time this week and the contact information is shot. Nothing in the computers, nothing in the filing cabinets. Gone. Any chance you remember them?”

“Huh,” said Morty. Not words, an expulsion of air; a breath turned thick. “Huh. Which one?”
“The name’s missing too. But they’ve been under contract here for ages. Practically since the park opened.”

“Huh. Hmm. Big one, weren’t they?”

“It wasn’t a firm, it was just one contractor.” Which was itself cause for surprise: this place wasn’t the biggest attraction on the planet, but it had a lot of plants.

“Yeah, one big contractor. Nice kid, I think. Yeah, I think I remember them. Huh. Not the name though, sorry. Nice, but distant. Always busy. And me, I stick to my pool. Nope, sorry, can’t remember anything more.”
“Are you-?”

Morty hoisted himself out of the chair and vanished into the pool like a bullet. “Bloody nose!” he called. “Out of the pool! C’mon, tilt your head up, that’s it-” and so my question went unanswered.

Fine. I still had half a water bottle. I still had a few hours left in the day. I still had one last stop to make. And I still had one avenue of inquiry.

***

It took almost till shutdown to find him. He had no cell phone. His walkie talkie was out of batteries. He was nearly stone deaf.

But in the end I caught up to his trail near the bathrooms, where he’d been cleaning up an overturned garbage can that had spread wrappers and paper bags and empty pop cans all over the base of one of the gingkoes. He was hunched even lower and more crablike than usual; nose only an inch above the trash as he slipped it back into the half-deflated bag it had slid loose from.

“Herman,” I said to him, “we need to talk for a minute.”
“The leaves aren’t ready yet,” he said. “They won’t come down ‘till it’s colder, and then they’ll come down all at once. Gingkoes are like that. Very convenient, you know. I saw some of the other trees, those…maples” – he said it may-pull, sourly – “…they just dribbled them out over weeks. Sloppy, sloppy. No end of a chore.”
“It’s not about the leaves, Herman-”

“I’m nearly done here. Just got to tip this up. I can do that, you know. I’m not an invalid. Watch. See how I hold the broom? See? See?”
“I see, I see.”
“And see how I put it under the can? See? See?”

“I see, I see, but-”

The thin arms bent, the bent back braced, the bin was in place.

“You didn’t see,” said Herman reproachfully.

“I was looking right at-”

“Oh, that’s not at all what I’m talking about! Now, what have you got to ask me?”

“Herman, don’t you think it’s about time you retired?”
“Bite your tongue!”
“It’s mandatory, not a suggestion. You’ve been here since day one, and you’re not a little tired? You’re not a little worried about labour laws?”
“I don’t not know about what you’re telling me,” said Herman with all the warmth and flexibility of a day-old pizza crust.

I threw up my arms. “Double negatives are not cunning misdirection! Come ON Herman, can’t you be reasonable? Can ANYONE here be reasonable? There’s no traffic and there’s no budget and there’s no plan and there’s no records and the employees are either ignoring the guests or picking fights with them and one of them is outright MISSING!”

“Nonsense, nobody’s missing,” said Herman, and maybe it was just me being paranoid but I felt like I’d said a lot more for him to argue with than just that.

“The gardener,” I said. “Don’t you remember them? They haven’t been in this week at all.”

“Oh, them. No, that’s normal. Nothing to be worried about. It’s very normal for that to happen. They’re good, but they’re a little slow. Hard-working young thing like that, bit prone to sleeping in on a nice summer day. But when they’re on the job, woof, things get moved. See? See?” The broom jabbed up at the gingko. “Look at that, see, see? They did that. Planted it and nurtured it from sapling on up, I saw. Not bad at all. Don’t worry about it, they’ll be by soon enough. Now go away. I have to visit the children’s center.” And no matter what I said then he treated me as if I weren’t there and set off, cart clattering with dustpans and brooms askew and ajar at every angle like distended limbs.

***

I went back to my office. I checked the filing cabinets. I checked the computer. I checked the inside of my head. Overstuffed, undercategorized, overcooked. Ugh, ugh, and ugh.

The air conditioner, sensing that the sun was about to go down, turned itself on for one second and died with a short, sharp grunt. I put my head in my hands and stared from the desk to the ceiling and then worked my way back down again, and on the sixth or seventh go-round of this my hindbrain grabbed my attention by the nose and slammed it into the wall.

Old, worn paint, and a small placard beneath a modest photograph. Paleo-Park, founding staff May 1984. And a list of names, helpfully left to right for back, middle, and front rows. All of  them, lined up in front of that  stupid sauropod fountain outside, stretching  from its long neck to  its long tail.

There was Herman, looking almost as old as he did a few hours ago. There was Morty, still leathery even at the start of a sunny season. There was someone who looked a lot like Terri, if taller and not quite as thin and with a ferociously toothy smile that I’d never once seen her show, to me or anyone or anything else.

And sitting in the center of them all, possibly the largest person I’d ever seen in my life. Height, width, breadth, the picture of grace at a scale unreasonable in all dimensions. She was smiling, a little, and she was named Louise. No last name given.

She had been pasted into the photo.

***

I locked the office behind me. It stuck. I kicked it.

“A little much,” said Herman. I nearly jumped, then remembered I wasn’t the one who had anything to be ashamed of.

“So what? It’s not like it’s going to matter in a week. This place is going under.”
“Going where, when?” demanded Terri. When had she shown up? I should’ve seen that, should’ve seen her sitting there on the bench. Had she been waiting for me, hoping to argue about the signage again? “Why?”
Honesty was one thing. Full disclosure was another. “Because it’s run-down and doesn’t make any money and some of the employees have never existed without anyone ever telling anyone differently.” And apparently my bad mood was quite another.

“Never existed?” said Morty, and oh I DID jump that time, a full on half-hop, half-start to a run. He was leaning on the edge of the half-drizzling little fountain, right in front of me in plain sight; how had I missed him that completely? Maybe it was because he was wearing a shirt. God, he could barely wear a shirt at all; the tank-top hung from him like a scrap of cloth dangling from a tree branch, stretched and thin. His teeth were brilliant. “What makes you say that?”
“I found Louise.”

Oh, they went. All of them, at the same time, wordlessly. A flinch, a squint, a twitch. Oh.

“And then I looked her up. She never worked here. Not in ’84, not after. She’s never been late. She’s never even existed – you stole the name from the damned STATUE! Right there! In the fountain! Apatosaurus louisae! And you know, when I started pulling on threads after that, a lot of other things didn’t add up either – Herman, Morty, did you know your birthdates have changed every year for the last three decades? I don’t know exactly what kind of scam was going on here, but now it’s out of my hands and in someone else’s.” So please don’t look at me like that, because there’s three of you and shutting me up wouldn’t do anything and why am I thinking like that right now?

“Louise was real,” said Morty. “She never worked here, but she was real. Call it a, oh I don’t know, a dedication in her name. Most of the place was, really.” His teeth were still showing: not a grimace, not a smile. He looked tired; maybe shutting his mouth would take too much effort. “Just a place for some old fossils to remember those who went before us. You already made the call?”
“Yes.”
“Huh. I guess that’s it then.” He looked at me – really looked at me, with his eyes wide open in the evening dim. They glowed a little, slit-pupiled in the dark. “You know, I’ll miss this dump. It wasn’t my idea, but it was nice while it lasted.” The grin again, bigger than ever, and far, far sharper. “Well, I’ll see you all later. I’m not going anywhere.”

And with that he slipped into the murk of the fountain, rugged-backed and rippleless, and became indistinguishable from the floating sticks.

I don’t know what I said. I must have said something, because Herman told me “be quiet!” very sternly, and at such force that I had no choice but to actually listen to him.

“There,” he said. “See, see, don’t make such a fuss. You went and pushed it over, you have no right to whine about the mess it made. She was a nice girl, Louise – so young, such a tragedy – and you know, she really did plant gingkoes back in the day. I’ll miss the ones here. But ah, it was only a little while anyways. See, see.” He scuffed at the drainage grate in the path, levered it up with his broom – stiffly, carefully – and slid inside with a short scrape of carapace-on-stone, long sharp dagger-tail the last to sink out of sight. Up from the long rough pipe I briefly heard the echo of his many legs, then it was drowned by the distant surf: sea, sea.

I looked at Terri.

Terri looked at me. She seemed very thin. She did not blink.

“She was a friend of my grandmother,” she told me. Her voice were flat, her eyes were flat, but her hackles were raised – her feathers all on end. “I never knew her. But she told me about her, and so did they. And now you’ve ruined it.” Her head jerked, one sharp bob. “But that’s nothing new. What else have you and yours ever done since we left you everything? Well, you can do it by yourself now.”

She flitted around the fountain three times in as many seconds, a quick, colourful little blur, then flew away into the darkening sky.

And it was just me.

Once again, it was just me.