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The pickles were deliciously sour; her granddaughter knew her trade better than she’d ever had, at a quarter her age. She’d just popped the first of them in her mouth when the knocking came at her cottage’s door, and so she answered it with maybe a little more force than otherwise reasonable.

“Yes?” she said rudely to the anxious and trembling young man outside.

“O witch, I come on behalf of our town and all people in it, young and old, slight and strong, short and tall, to beg of your aid-”

“Whyfor witch?” she demanded.

“Because you are old and live in the woods and have a stern and cruel look to your mouth,” explained the young man.

“I’d like to see you have a different look if you’d eaten one of my granddaughter’s pickles,” she shot back. “And what aid could you want of me, witch or not?”

“We are suffering,” said he, “under three most terrible and inescapable maladies: a brave and valiant prince; a fair and languishing princess, and – may god save our souls – a wise and just and true king.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, then there’s nothing for it. I will do what I can.”

And so the witch took up her walking stick and her best hat and set out on the long, long road to the town.

With the rest of the pickles, of course.

***

The road through the woods was dark, but the witch was used to it.

The road through the woods was winding, but the witch was used to it.

The road through the woods was very, very, very long, and the witches legs were very, very, very old – and that, alas, she could only grow so used to. Instead she had long cultivated useful spots to stop and rest, such as soft mossy stones, stumps, and in this case a toppled log too lumpy and twisted to make good firewood, half-sunken on the rim of a lily-padded little pond.

The log was occupied when she found it, beseated by the slumping a shining man in shining armour with a shining blade at his side and a large and handsome (if not quite shining) horse at his other side. There was little doubt in her mind as to who this was.

“I apologize for my slothful idleness, good woman,” said the brave and valiant prince, “but you find me in a moment of weakness betwixt quests. Tell me, is there any deed that you need done? A villain vanquished? A beast felled?”

“None come to mind,” said the witch. “I live alone in the woods, and don’t hear tell of much.”
“A witch, maybe?” said the brave and valiant prince. “Or is there a howling beast that torments your goats?”
“I don’t have any goats.”
“Please, please, please, I beg of you,” said the prince, falling onto one knee with a clatter of fine plate and chain. “I’ve been questing dawn ‘til dusk for days uncounted. I delve into dens and caves to stir slumbering creatures to battle; I cross every bridge I encounter thrice until I am stopped by a passerby and may demand a duel; I have vexed every herb-knower and spell-writer for leagues around until they curse’d me and I could take means to lift the curse; I have hunted and harried giants ‘till there be not a living creature with two legs and two arms in these lands that stands taller than six foot two. A brave and valiant prince MUST quest, no matter the cost, no matter what. Please! There must be something I can do for you! Please!”

“Well,” said the witch, “you could find me a new walking stick. This one’s all worn out.” And so filled with desperate joy was the brave and valiant prince to do this that he leapt to his feet and drew his shining blade and hewed a limb from the fallen log he sat upon all at once and in less than a twinkling.

“Oh, no, no, no,” said the witch despairingly. “Not like that, hacking away all messily! You’ll split it. You’ll want a nice sound branch. Look, see mine?”

So saying, she handed the brave and valiant prince her walking stick – which though worn, was still very s turdy and of great size. And while he looked upon it, taking great care to document the precise nature of its craftsmanship, she took the shining sword and threw it into the pond behind them.

“Now,” she told the brave and valiant prince, “we’ll need to go find you an axe.”
“Whyfor, perchance?”
“Because you’ll need something to cut wood PROPERLY with. Come along, come along. Offer me a ride, will you?”

So the brave and valiant prince nobly offered a seat on his large and handsome (if not quite shining) horse as they went down the road, and as the woods became less dark the sun became quite strong and the heat bore down on his shining armour until he was prone to sweat.

“Best put that away for now,” said the witch. “Heatstroke doesn’t improve anyone.” And this was true, and so the brave and valiant prince heeded it and packed up his shining armour and walked in his plain linen until at last they came (at the witch’s direction) to the blacksmith at the edge of town, who she knew because he was her son-in-law’s cousin, and she bid the (still-warm, dog-tired) brave and valiant prince to rest a moment while she did business, which he did with his eyes shut.

“Here,” said the witch, proffering a wood-axe. “It’s yours.”

“A gift? But I have completed no quest.”

“Oh, it’s been paid for – and so has a little house on the edge of town,” said the witch, who knew what a suit of shining armour was worth. “And now you can take quests that don’t bother anyone and that never end. People will always need firewood, or water drawn for their wells, or crops tended. And,” she added, seeing his trepidation and hope at war, “they will never want their woods to become clear-cut, or their wells to run dry, or their fields to deplete and sour. So when you halt your questing, that too will be valuable.”

The brave and valiant prince would’ve had all sorts of fine and noble things to say to that, but he found – much to his excitement – that he wasn’t a brave and valiant prince at all and settled, in lieu of applied custom or experience – to give the witch a hug. Which he did, before he ran back into the woods, axe in hand.

The horse went with him. He’d never treated it poorly, and as it was not quite shining it felt like this new way of questing was not beneath it.

Also, it was sick of jousts and monsters.

***

The town was quieter than the witch remembered it; but then again, she was older and her ears were more stubborn. Perhaps it was as noisy as it had always been in her youth. Perhaps it was noisier.

Then again, the town of her youth hadn’t been buried in the long, long midday shadow of a briar-tangled tower that rose from what had once been a thriving town square, as this one was. Maybe things were just different and exact comparisons would do nothing but oversimplify the complexities of reality.

Those were the things that the witch stopped thinking about as she very, very, very slowly picked her way through a gnarled mass of rose-bedecked briars with needles long and sharp enough to knit a suit of chainmail for an elephant. Her attention was very very specifically focused on the movement of each limb, which thankfully was something she’d gotten used to. When falling down went from embarrassing to life-threatening, you either learned to think about what you were doing, or you learned to heal fast.

The downside of being so focused was that you missed out on other things. For instance, the moment when the witch finally extracted her foot from the last of the briars was when she finally looked up and found herself eye to eye with no fewer than sixteen (she counted twice, very fast) large, scaly, smouldering creatures with goat horns and lion claws and lashing tails. They were piled in a heap two-deep around the heavy door at the base of the tower and were watching her with genuine confusion and something else.

She thought she recognized that something else. It was the expression on her cat’s face whenever he realized she had milk.

Slowly and carefully, the witch put her hand in her bag and drew out the jar of pickles. Their eyes alit on it like flies to rotting meat.

Slowly and carefully, the witch opened the jar of pickles. Sixteen pairs of scaly ears fluttered like moths at lanterns.

Gently and gingerly, the witch tossed a single handful of pickles underarm. Sixteen long, lean, muscled bodies leapt into the air and tried to eat every pickle while yelling at every one of their comrades at once.

“Oh!” cried a voice from far above, floating down the long, long column of the tower’s spiral staircase and threading through the heavy bars of its door. “Oh no! You KNOW it’s not time for dinner! Are you all trying to eat Gustave again? Oh no! Bad! Bad children! Bad!”

At this the ruckus subsided, and soon the heavy and barred door of the tower was flung open, revealing a fair (if somewhat red-cheeked from hurry) and languishing princess, plus her perspiration.

“Naughty!” she scolded, and the dragons all laid their ears back and whined most piteously. “You KNOW you mustn’t eat Gustave, even if he’s smallest! Dinner is roast yams, and you will enjoy it!”

“Pardon me,” said the witch.

“Oh!” said the fair and languishing princess again. “A visitor! Pardon me, I’m so sorry. Are you a knight, or a prince, or a hero, or a youth, or a wayward long-lost royal?”
“None and neither of them all,” said the witch.

“Oh!” said the fair and languishing princess yet again. “You’re a witch. I see. What a relief that is; things are quite untidy right now and I’m not ready at all for any of my expected visitors. Would you like to come upstairs and have some tea?”

“Of course,” said the witch.

But her hip started to pain her halfway up the tower, so she took a rest on a little chair the fair and languishing princess kept there (‘in case one of the dragons gets sick and I need to be close for the night, poor thing’) and the princess brought the tea-tray down from above.

“It’s just so much work, to be properly imprisoned.” she groaned as she poured. “And not just imprisoned – to be really, truly languishing you’ve got to have all manner of curse’d fauna and flora imprisoning you, otherwise it’s not durance vile it’s just boring old jail. And durance vile takes WORK! I’d always thought the first few years were the worst – the briars were too thin and harmless, and by the time I’d gotten them so big and sharp they’d gotten vulnerable to aphids and that almost wiped them out until I managed to encourage our ladybug population to sprout up, and all of that made it so I had almost no time to tend to my vegetable patch which meant thin rations for the dragons – and they were just dragonets back then, and that means regular big meals to grow strong scales and horns! But now – now I think it’s even harder; there’s not as much to be done from scratch but the upkeep is a nightmare! There’s so much weeding to be done, and so much planting to be handled, and the briars keep trying to overgrow the vegetable patch and by now if I need to prune them it takes a gosh-darn halberd to do the job, and when the wretched little beasts aren’t digging up the briars and setting them on fire for fun they keep trying to eat Gustave! He isn’t even that much smaller than the rest of them anymore, it’s nothing but force of habit and sheer – sheer SPITE, that’s what it is! And every time I forget a packet of seeds or a hoe or some medicine it’s all the way up, up, up, UP there, in my bedroom. Which I have to keep neat at all times in case a prince should stop by to rescue me from my languishment, which means everything’s crammed into all the drawers and inside the closet higgledy-piggledy. I can’t help but feel there must be a better way to handle all of this.”

“Well,” said the witch, who’d had time to blow on her tea and listen politely and drink and listen some more and drink again and listen some more and think a little and finish her tea altogether. “What if you made some kennels, with a private space for the runt? And a fence, to keep them out of the briars. And a fence to keep the briars from overgrowing the vegetable patch.”

“Oh,” said the fair and languishing princess. “I’d thought of that before. But there’s nothing to make the fence with; all I’ve got are briar vines and dragon-scutes.”
“You have a whole tower of stone,” said the witch. “And strong arms from weeding and tilling. You can do this.”
“But I’ve never built a fence,” said the fair and languishing princess in a small voice to herself.

“I can show you how my old garden fence was built, when I was younger,” said the witch.

“Oh yes PLEASE.”

And so all day and all night for several days the witch harvested yams for dragons and weeded errant briars while the fair and languishing princess harvested her tower for stone. She began with the roof, then her chambers, then finally the long, long spire, and at last there was nothing left but a free-standing archway (with a barred door, oddly enough), some sturdy and weather-proof dragon kennels, and a set of ordered and divided gardens: vegetable and rose. And standing there amidst them was a sunburnt and vigorous young woman, pouring a bucket of water half over her head and half down her throat.

“Needed that,” she managed. “Not sure which I needed more, but I needed it.”
“All of it, I think,” said the witch.

“Yes,” she agreed, looking the witch dead in the eyes for the first time since they’d met. “I think I agree. You know, I don’t think I can be imprisoned without a tower anymore. Do you know anybody who might want to buy guard-dragons, or thorn-hedges, or roses, or highly nutritious yams?”

“I can give a few names as suggestions for where to start,” said the witch. “And I think you’ll do the rest yourself.”
“Your thinking’s pretty handy,” said the woman.

And she gave the witch a dragon-roasted yam for the road. It wasn’t as tasty as her granddaughter’s pickles, but it was warm from within.

***

The walk up from the town to the king’s castle was short. The drawbridge was down. The guards were well-outfitted and polite to all. The halls were clean and comfortably decorated. And on a well-worn and handsomely-crafted yet simple throne in the room, resplendent in fine (but not showy) robes and crowned in gold (but not extravagantly) sat the wise and just and true king, who was very nearly any ordinary person save for the sharp look in his eyes.

The witch waited while he finished attending court for the day, and his judgments were fair, and faultless, and even-handed, and she knew that this was by far the greatest challenge yet.

“You may now approach, witch” said the wise and just and true king, who had dismissed the rest of the chamber. “The court is now adjourned, and I have some time.”
“How much?” said the witch.

“Not enough,” said the wise and just and true king. “I must manage these lands. I must manage these people. They believe I have the right to do so by birth alone, and that my competence is proof of that belief’s truth. I strive every day to make them happy and safe and to prevent harm done to them and harm done by them, and to do so in a way that they understand and appreciate. I know that if I did not do this, another would, and that other would lack something of mine – being wise and true but not just, or just and wise but not true, or true and just but not wise, or (heaven forbid) lacking two qualities, or even all three! So I sit in court and I rule with a right I do not recognize that I do not dare give up and am loved and beloved and I wish that I could wish that I was dead, I really do, only I cannot because to wish that I were dead would be to wish harm and ruin to come to all who rely on me to do right by them. So instead I wish that I may one day wish for nothing at all.”

The witch acknowledged the truth of all this with a nod. “Your majesty,” she said, “please shut your eyes for one moment, and I promise that I will fix this.”

The wise and just and true king shut his eyes, and with a single sweep of her arm, the witch did so.

“Now you can open them,” she said, and when she did so there was no more king, just a sharp-eyed man in fine robes in an empty hall. Somewhere in a corner of the room, something gold rattled briefly (but not extravagantly) as it spun out of sight.

“Come on,” said the witch. “Change into something more sturdy and let’s go visit town. They elect a new mayor every fall harvest, and I think if you’re well-prepared you’ll stand a good chance, if you want it. If not, good advice is good advice whether it’s from the mayor or a friend, and people are always hungry for it.”

“What of the castle?” asked the sharp-eyed man.

“Let it lie. It’ll be there if someone needs it.”

He looked at her again. “Will they take me in? On the word of a witch alone?”

“Of course they will. What you do is what they love, not who they think you are. And my word walks those same paths. Close your eyes for one more moment.”
The sharp eyes closed.

The witch reached up to her head and for the second time in thirty seconds removed someone’s best hat.

(But more tidily this time; hers was a gift from her son).

“You can look now, mister,” said the old woman. “Now let’s get moving. Time’s wasting.”

***

They did not live happily ever after, of course. Time moves, wasted or not, and there were other kings, and other princes, and other princesses. Here and there and elsewhere.

But then and there they had what they needed, they understood what they wanted, and nobody was hurt. And that was happily enough for anyone.

The TROGG WARS!!!! BY, CORII

Once upon a time my great-grandpa and his friends had cool boats and they rode the cool boats here and they made houses and then they built a really big house but it turned out it was ontop of a trogg mine and it fell into the mine and this started….THE TROGG WARS!!!!

The trogg wars were really hard because troggs live underground and we don’t, so, we had to find them which was hard and they could find us, which was easy. Lots of people died and my great-grandpa said lots of his friends died too and it sucked. But then we found out you can plug up the holes and my great-grandpa’s friend made friends with the birds and my great-grandpa’s other friend made friends with the tree giants and the troggs all lost and we started to win and they tried to trick us by saying timeout but it didn’t work and we won and that is why we’re here and the troggs aren’t. That was the end of the trogg wars.

My great-grandpa said it’s important to never forget what happened to his leg so I don’t because it’s really, really, gross.

***

Improper formatting.

Inadequate wordcount.

Insufficient detail.

Terrible grasp of punctuation.

Extensive reliance on source outside of the textbook.

At least it isn’t plagiarized this time. 20/100.

***

Summary of A History of the First Trogg War

Harvest 17, 1238

Nennifer Grisbit

Since the dawn of time, the Fine Folk have yearned for sights beyond the horizon, and whether by foot, by cart, or by ship they have chased its ever-distant glow. Such wanderlust was eminently rewarded in the year QD (Queen’s Domain) 732, when an unseasonably late summer storm drove a sea-serpent-hunting expedition far off course and onto the shores of a hitherto undiscovered coast. Captain Melepron found refuge in a sheltered bay with plentiful fish and fresh water streams, and upon returning to the Homeland and spreading word of its existence, it was soon populated by a wave of explorers, adventurers, and settlers, who named it Safeharbour. This first foothold grew rapidly, and soon the sheer number of would-be-manses, burgeoning shipyards, and half-tamed parkgrounds necessitated (as it so often does!) the investigation and shaping of further territory. Luckily, the rest of the large isle – now named ‘Melepronnia’ – was equally sumptuously suited to the life of which the Fine Folk have long accustomed themselves to, with the local meadows being suited to unicorn pasturage; the native pines proving eminently susceptible to subordination and obedience under the transplanted boughs of gild-trees; and the beasts of the field being of the common sort and thus easily dissuaded or directed by both Word and deed. Indeed, things were going both marvellously and typically of any new (if exceptionally productive) colony, until the fateful moment when Lord Holbrom ordered the construction of a new hunting manse for himself and his immediate family and companions. Lord Holbrom was a roamer by the standards of nobility, and he desired wilderness in his surroundings – thus, the manse was laid out many leagues from Safeharbour and its constellation of expanding villages, about, atop, and within an appealingly striking rocky crag. It was to his great and unsuspecting misfortune that this peak was already occupied.

Troggs were unknown to the Fine Folk before this encounter, but it likely that the inverse is not the case: the work laid beneath the foundations of Holbrom’s Folly (a name meant in irony, soon proven in tragedy) was patient, slow, and devastatingly premeditated. Only when the final keystone of the manse’s grand hall was placed did the troggish undermining trigger its collapse, murdering in a single fell swoop Lord Holbrom, his entire family, and much of the assembled entourage and partygoers. The only survivor was a young and quick adventurer named Elmar, who had attended only by chance in his explorations of the hinterlands. This alone was the salvation of the colony: Elmar ran day and night without rest, sleeping in trees and eating nothing, and by his warning and counsel the outlying villages were recalled to Safeharbour before Holbrom’s Folly could be replicated in a hundred halls and more. Once scouts confirmed his words, Elmar would prove central to the war-councils of what would be later called the First Trogg War.

The war itself can be divided into three broad phases: a prolonged period of initial skirmishing, in which the troggs would seek to encroach into the colonized wester coastlands and be driven back; an intense period of open warfare conducted in the rugged interior; and the final siege at the Depths of Troggak.

The first phase of the war lasted several years and was broadly inconclusive; the troggs were functionally both undetectable and impervious to assault as long as they remained in their hidden tunnels, but this rendered their offensive capabilities practically nil except for very gradual and careful use of undermining to topple homes, redirect rivers, dry wells, and other such cruelty and general mischief. It was Elmar who tipped the scales of this delicate and terrifying balance; drawing on what little he’d seen as he fought free of Holbrom’s Folly, he discovered the means and ways by which the troggs hid the doors through which they crept about the surface realm at night. Once this was known, the trogg’s tunnels afield were useless: every bird in the sky was already allies of the Fine Folk, and once they were given warning of what a trogg-door looked like they patrolled day and night, dove and owl, until at last the troggs were driven far from the fields of Safeharbour and retreated unto their rocky homes in the far hills.

The second phase of the war was a painful necessity: Elmar knew that the troggs would never stay at bay for long, and pressed most passionately to defeat them today rather than let them attack tomorrow. Despite jealousy and cowardice from his detractors, his wisdom was too great to be ignored, and so the great punitive army was forged and sent into the highlands, where the trogg homes were and they made greater use of the surface to grow their vile crops and vent their reeking forges. Initial battles were in Elmar’s favour, but as days turned to weeks the tide began to turn: the troggs were thick as leaves in the forest and had riddled the ground with such holes as to let them flank from any place they wished any time they chose. The great punitive army, though undaunted, was in danger. It was in this darkest moment before the dawn that the wilderness itself arose to volunteer aid: so tragic was the plight of Elmar that the greatest and tallest of the trees rose from their needled beds and strode down the hillsides to bow before him and volunteer aid and service. The pinelords had also suffered as the Fine Folk did under troggish cruelty, and they proposed a joining of forces: if the great punitive army could protect them, they could provide both knowledge of where to direct its wrath and the means with which to ensure victory.

The series of audacious triumphs that followed led immediately into the third and final phase of the war: an entire grove of pinelords rooted themselves atop the valley that held the troggish capitol of Troggok, and for three days and three nights their roots sang to those of all that grew for leagues, and for three days and three nights the great punitive army saved them from poisonous vapours, from flaming arrows; from fierce axes. And at the dawn of the third day, with the rise of the sun and the sap alike, the pinelords threw up their hands and the roots of all that grew within leagues pulled with them and into the pits of the earths itself sank the Depths of Troggok, where it will never return from. No living thing will grow there now.

Our land is now Elmaroreen, in the name of the one who fought so dearly for its survival. Had he not perished in that final battle, I believe he would have been pleased. So, too, would he have been pleased with our continued vigilance: the Second Trogg War would have been much worse without memory of his warnings, and without the continued assistance of the allies he made so far from home. As long as that vigilance does not falter, and that friendship does not wane, his name and the people that live under it will never end.

***

More-than-adequattely studious, advanced formatting, correct (if smug) conclusions.

Composition is adequate if overwrought.

Heavily penalize for using ‘since the dawn of time.’ If we catch it early enough, she might not insist on using it in university. 70/100

***

Review of A History of the First Trogg War

By Fonrud Furlament, QD 1238

This book is very easy to read, but it doesn’t seem very accurate. I’m going to try and explain.

For one thing, it explains why we moved to Melepronnia, but it doesn’t mention that one of the reasons Safeharbour grew so fast is the Queen was exiling debtors. Lots of people came here because it was new and exciting, but the reason they wanted to go somewhere at all was because they were being sent away.

It also messes up when the troggs found us: they sent messages pretty soon after we started building houses outside of Safeharbour. I think Elmar met them too, but I’m not really sure. This matters a lot because this is one of the BIGGEST mistakes in the book: Lord Holbrom knew that hill was dangerous to build on because the troggs told him there was a ritual cyst-cavern beneath it. He built on it anyways, even when they told him he was putting too much weight on it and hollowing the stone out for cellars. The keystone was the heaviest part and that’s why it sank, and Elmar lived because the troggs pulled him out of the rocks and healed him. It was pretty lousy of him to go home and tell everyone to fight them after that, and it was even lousier when he told them to stuff up their ventilation shafts so they couldn’t breathe in their tunnels (why does the book say he blocked their doors? It says they were undermining us, they wouldn’t need doors for that!), and it was lousiest of all that we kept the birds so busy looking for new trogg airshafts day and night that they all died. My grandma says her favourite bird was the jay. I wish I could see a jay. I wish I had a favourite bird. I wish anyone in my class could have a favourite bird.

Finally, it gets the reasons behind the end of the war all wrong. The pinelords didn’t go to Elmar; he went to them. And nobody knows what he said to them, just that he made them a promise and only told a few friends what it was before he died. The pinelords don’t like the troggs, and they don’t like us, and they don’t like anything that isn’t made of plants, and I don’t know what Elmar promised them but I bet it wasn’t great because none of Elmar’s friends ever told anyone else what he promised either (I wonder if it was about the gild-trees? They all died before the Second Trogg War). I hope nobody else ever promises them anything because if they did that to Troggok I don’t know why they couldn’t do it to Safeharbour.

In the end I don’t think A History of the First Trogg War is a very good book. It doesn’t tell the truth in some very important places and it doesn’t say why it’s doing that. I don’t like it very much.

***

Adequate formatting.

Serviceable composition.

Absolutely intolerable levels of critical thought.

Find out what he’s been reading, where he got it, and who gave it to him, then purge immediately. Inform the local broadsheets that a trogg infiltrator did it. 0/100.

The bus was late. Engine trouble. That was okay, because I wasn’t due at work for a whole half hour after I’d planned to arrive – I like to be early. That wasn’t okay, because it meant I was spending longer in the bus stop with my nextdoor neighbour, making small talk.

“I like really little dogs,” he was telling me, making motions with his hands to show the really littleness of the dogs. “They’re convenient. You can keep ‘em in a bag or a satchel or a lunchbox and let ‘em out when you need ‘em. We need to make more dogs really little. I know what you’re thinking – if the dogs are little, what happens to the cats? Won’t they eat the dogs? And that’s where the brilliant solution comes in: we make the cats really little too. Like, kitten-sized. So then we have to make sure the mice get really little so they don’t eat the cats – you ever heard of the grasshopper mouse? – and I’ve got this plan for that, see, it’s oh there’s my ride see you later nice talking to you.”

I waited. His bus was not my bus, and had no trouble with its engine. And along with me waited my fellows in suffering; neighbours of our shared street if not the same building.

“It’s too cold out here,” one told me in a voice like chipped windchimes through her two mismatched gloves and two mismatched hats and two surprisingly well-coordinated coats and her fogged-over glasses and her tragically underinsulated boots. “You notice how it’s too cold out here this time of year? Something should be done about that. I keep telling them something should be done about that, and nothing’s ever done about that. Mark Twain said nobody ever does anything about the weather and that was well over a hundred years ago and STILL nobody’s done anything about it. Why hasn’t anyone done anything about it? I’m tired of being cold. Maybe I should set this bus stop on fire. Oh, there’s my ride. Goodbye.”

“I’m not in love with you,” begged the man sitting next to me into his cellphone. “No, wait – that’s a lie. I’m in love with someone else. Wait, no, that’s a lie too – I’m in love with nobody else, just myself. I love myself and that makes me jealous of being in love with you. I’m really upset about that and now I’m trying to cut myself off with you so I don’t cheat on myself with you, because I want me all to myself. Listen, you’ve got to listen to me: I don’t want this, it’s just that I want this. I can’t not stop myself from not stopping myself. I think you should write me off, forget me – maybe move in with yourself instead and feel better. Eat more fruit. Fruit is good. God I love fruit, not as much as you though, and not nearly as much as me. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to say that, I just said it because I wanted to drive you away from me. Baby, please, please, please, please never call back and call me again after work. Hello? Hello? Hello? Are you still there? I’ve got to go now, love you bunches but the size of the bunches is simultaneously very small and very large.”

There was a soft sound of worn rubber and metal and a cyclist pulled over next to our bus stop and made direct eye contact with me.

“You’re going in a bus soon,” he told me. I nodded.

“That’s a good decision. Buses are good for transit. Efficient, and the more they’re used the more efficient they become as total traffic on the road decreases. It’s an excellent form of transportation if you lack wings, which of course we all do, as we are all humans. Look at my human arms with opposable thumbs on their hands. Look at my human feet with their functional big toes and less functional other toes. Do you understand these relatable concepts I am expressing to you in this manner, through language, through a shared cultural context of communication?”

This was the first time since I’d woken up where I’d had to express myself to another human being, and I resented it. My nod was curt and joyless – not sharp, but robotic, like a dippy bird on the edge of a water glass.

“Joyous contact has been made,” said the cyclist. “I’ll be in touch shortly.” Then he folded up his bike, put it in his pocket, and flew away with a sound like a helicopter made of leather.

“I hate those guys,” said a seething mass of hair that looked like the guy who delivered the flyers to my mailbox. “They ride on bikes and act so cool just because they can transform matter into energy and use it to sustain their lives. They have epidermises and dermises! They contract muscles! I hate them! I hate them all! You know what I mean, right?”
I hated nodding again, but I knew not doing so would be a bigger risk.

“Right! Right! RIGHT! Right. I’m left now.”

He was left then.

“I don’t think that was right,” said the old guy who stood at the corner with a placard telling you where you could get a deal on pizza. “I think that was left. We used to have two lefts and two rights, back in my day, and in my grandpa’s day we have six each and five ups and two downs. I miss being young and have conflated that with my perception of reality, choosing to think of the universe as a story with my perspective featured as a starring role rather than one of trillions of products of it. I’m much better at this than the other two, aren’t I? You think I’m like you and I’m blending in flawlessly, aren’t I? It’s okay, you don’t want to nod three times before work. I’ll leave you to it.”

The bus should’ve been there. It wasn’t. Instead there was a woman in a big truck and a manic expression making totally inappropriate amounts of eye contact with me.

“I’m losing money,” she told me. Then she revved until her tires smoked and left.

I’m normal.

“Hey, get on,” said the bus driver.

I blinked for the first time in sixteen minutes. My face was numb. My hands were cold. I clawed loose my card, slapped it against the reader, and moved on.

My farewell to sweet Alees had gone well, I thought. Her tears had died down to a faint weeping as I bade my mother good-bye at the entrance to my family’s home.

“I will return hence safely, mother – and no more tears, please, for I have chosen this course with utmost deliberation,” I told her nobly. “After all, it is but a trifle of a journey, all told, and one that shall secure my fortune. As for my safety, why, it’s all but guaranteed, and I fear not for it.”
“I know.”
“Why, such ships barely founder one time in twelve these days!”
“I know.”
“Truly, were I in your shoes, I should not be surprised to find me back on your doorstop before the conclusion of our orb’s next circling of the su-”

“I know. Be a good fry and don’t do anything stupid.” And with such wise warm words to counsel me and keep the warmth in my bosom, I departed for the docks amid a great school of fellow-passengers that grew thicker, ever thicker the closer I drew, until at last the shoreline was in sight and with it my vessel, titanic in scale before me, infinitesimally tiny before the distance it was yet to traverse. I signed aboard with trembling voice, stowed my meager belongings, and there – the calls, the cries, the bell – we were outward bound! The gangway was stowed, the ship (her name was Willifret) lurched forth on its gigantic legs, and so away we went, up, up, up, up away from the surf of home and through the long sands of the beach and into the vast uncharted vastness of the deep land.

***

It is a strange and fearsome thing, to be out of sight of water and know that whichever direction you sighted, it would be weeks travel hence before you reached it. It makes one feel very small.

Luckily, this matter was not immediately on our minds: for the first three days ashore many of the more unsalted of the crew were laid low by the lurching of the ship. I’m ashamed to admit that I was one of them, and more ashamed to admit that I would’ve remained so if one of the older and more seasoned landsmen hadn’t taken me aside and given me sound (if unsolicited) advice.

“Look up, not down,” he said, scarred fin brushed firm to my side. “You ken? Up – no, higher, yes – at the tops of the trees. See how they blow in the wind, as waves might roil on the surface above you? Watch them, and feel your stomachs settle.”

His name was Kiminol, and he was utterly correct. He became my best friend, and from him I learned to ask my questions rather than avoid them through pride. From him I learned of the many curious habits of the creatures of the land – not just the delicious ones we caught in our nets to supplement our evening rations, which were familiar as the wares of the birdmarket, but the low-voiced and mighty mastodons that drifted through the depths of the woods; the fierce-mouthed wolves (the so-called ‘sharks of the land’) that slunk behind our wake and scavenged the scraps of our passing; the high-soaring vultures that sat so effortlessly above us; the many strange chitinous creatures that coated our ship’s hull and had to be painstakingly scrubbed clear with hours of hard finwork.

And it was he that taught me of the harsh vagaries of landbound weather – how to tell a sunshower from a thunderstorm, a gust from a gale; a calm summer day from a fierce fall storm – and all the little things that might be changed or altered by it.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” he said on a beautifully still afternoon as we waded through a crunching carpet of sticks, near ankle-deep on the ship’s stilts. The two of us were sitting in the lower rigging of the vessel’s belly, checking for ants and woodlice. “See those branches? That underbrush has been building up for some time, and this is the driest I’ve seen these woods in decades. One stray lightning bolt in the wrong place and we could be trapped in a forest fire.”
“What’s a fire?”

“’The combustion of matter in the presence of air’ is what the doctor told me when I was your age,” said Kiminol. “Me, I say it’s hard to describe until you’ve seen it.”

It was a great tragedy that this was the last thing he ever taught me, and that it was as true and precise as anything else he’d ever said.

***

The smoke confused me, but not as greatly as the reaction of the unsalted hands to it. Such scream and fuss for a vague particulate in the currents of the air? The first sparks puzzled me nearly as much, hazy as they were – but then they were bright, and red, and oh so colourful even by the standards of the many sights of the land, and then they were vivacious and leaping as keenly as my little pet childhood prawn, and then they alit to the ship’s stilts and legs and clambered into the rigging and oh, but oh, then I began to understand our peril, just as we began to list hard-a-starboard, and at last we collapsed and I was foundering, drowning in the air, gasping and shaking as water spilled aimlessly and the screams of my fellow travellers became distant and small. What of them escaped the flames met more gruesome ends; I saw Kiminol founder in the crotch of a burning tree and suffocate; and our captain – Cod rest his soul – was taken in the opportunistic teeth of a wolf and dragged away to a demise I shudder to think at.

It was to fortune and little more that I credit my own escape from those fates and others still fouler, because shortly after witnessing them I fell at last from my tenuous perch in the failing innards of the stricken Willifret and landed hard against some obstruction and knew no more.

***

When I awoke my gills were immersed within cool water and my head in hellishly hot pain. Above me floated a land-creature of such startling and powerful ugliness that I broke into a scream the very moment I became conscious – its body was as thick and ugly as a grouper; its tail a monstrous parody of a fin; its gigantic protruding teeth square and chiseled. I wailed and begged for salvation and after some time of this the creature gently reached down into the water and turned me about so that I could breathe out of both sides of my gills, relieving me of some small discomfort.

I attempted to apologize after that. It went poorly; ask though I did in common Finglish, gesticulate though I may with my tail and dorsal sail, I may as well have been speaking the tongue of the moon and stars to such a benighted beast of the dry places of our world. It did utter some guttural croaks and whines, but none of them intelligible, until at last our mutual dissatisfaction caused us both to lapse into the same sulky silence. My gratitude did not wane, but I did, perchance, attempt to test my own ability of locomotion. Alas, though I could swim, there was little to swim to – a small and tepid creek, surrounded on all side by timbered and insurmountable dry land, miles and miles from any known shore! I gave up in despair, and it was at that moment that my host, with a sigh of deepest irritation, grasped me up and carried me away in a tree-bark satchel slung across its back, immersed in a scanty sum of precious, life-giving water. I would have objected had I the strength or – as previously proven – the linguistic capability, but alas and alack, and so I spent the following hours of our travel immersed in miserable imaginings of my potential fate – to be eaten whole, or perhaps fileted, or imprisoned, or executed, or fed to the wolves, or all manner of such wretched ends. I was in the midst of imagining if it would be painful to be diced alive or if all sensation would fade quickly enough to render it merciful when I was tilted, shaken, and tipped out into – oh, holy of holies – water, good, clean, deep water, and there I found myself thrust from stultifying fibrous confinement into the bustle and confusion of a large downtown.

But not that of any town I had ever seen.

Rather than being shaped from good, solid pebbles, these strange land-creatures had built their houses of tree carcasses! Their foundations yet lay upon the deeps, but they stacked their dwellings so terribly high that their roofs soared free into the air itself like unto a dockyard, and it was here that they lived while down in the sensible and kindly heart of the water they worked and built yet more to greater heights.

Mind you, these observations took some time, and several only occurred to me that night, after reflection. At the moment I was principally concerned with startlement and panic, which emerged in the form of a most undignified and impious blubbering plea to Cod for understanding and grace and mercy before I passed – once again! – into a swoon.

***

When I was once more conscious I was placed into the continuing custody of my rescuer, who appeared to be willing to commit to my wellbeing in the long-term – perhaps endeared by my apparent frailty. It found a suitable home for me in the submerged portion of its own home, in an excavated cavity used otherwise to store bark-coated tree carcasses. These, I was astonished to realize at dinnertime, were my host’s food – I was being kept in a larder, albeit not in a manner as my fears had led me to believe. My own meals had to be scavenged by fin – there were many small and idle little fish that patrolled the settlement, and though I was at as first disgusted at the notion of eating them unseasoned as the populace were disgusted at seeing me at table, I soon found that extremity was the king of spices.

Thus fortified, I spent my days exploring. My rescuer’s people were, it transpired, trapped on a tiny body of water surrounded by the unending hills of land – its depths were shallow, its waters bordered by encroaching reeds and trees. I might never leave this place without a ship, and as such, I took my salvation into my own fins and began at once to labour mightily under the curious gaze of the locals, beginning with such parts as I could salvage from my host’s food supplies.

My first escape vessel was ambitious: the span of a ship’s-dinghy in scope. Alas, when it came to slicing planks to fit the capsule so that I might breathe safely, I found that the slim timbers my host’s people kept as food were unsplittable without a great deal of splintering, and so this came to nothing but a great deal of pain and prickles. As I wept disconsolately over the ruins of my dreams of ever returning home and grasping dear sweet Alees to me once more, my host happened upon my moribund form and, taking pity, treated my wounds with various poultices, fashioned and secured with gluey sap.

My second was a wild innovation – if I had not the means to create a proper boat, then why not create an improper one? Necessity was the matron of creativity! So rather than seeking the stoutest of trees portions, I endeavoured instead to weave the slenderest of twigs like kelp, producing a basket-like capsule that could form a watertight seal to safeguard me against the perils of the open land. This, unfortunately, suffered from frailties at every turn, and my most successful basket was barely bigger than my own body, which would have been maddeningly cramped to roll myself in back to the creek I had been rescued from, let alone the long sail back home to mother and Alees. Seized in despair I allowed myself to clutch its frame too tightly, whereupon a second defect was made apparent in that this crushed it as unto a shellfish within the jaws of a horn shark. Once again I was rescued from the pits of hopelessness by the attentive and sensitive actions of my host, who brought me to a sort of work-party organized by its peers – they were crawling into the air, felling trees with their teeth, and dragging them back safely home. Although I was of little assistance in the cutting, I gave what aid I was able in moving the timbers to their dwellings, and fancied that I saw myself becoming considered less of a burden than a blessing, for the day at least.

My third escape blossomed from my subconscious fully-formed as I saw the timbers stripped of their bark – the bark that had formed the container with which my rescuer had saved me from the ruins of the Willifret ‘s final voyage! I secured some of this stuff – which took some truly thorough pleas, valuable as it was to my hosts – and at once began to work on fashioning it over a branch framework, which nearly worked over and over again until I realized that even if I completed the capsule I had no notion of how to manufacture proper stilts or secure a crew of able-swimming landsmen to run it and went mad with grief and ate most of my work.

Once more, my rescuer made a visit to me, this time to bring me to lunch with its family for some sort of celebratory event. I was just on the verge of giving up, settling down, and marrying it for the sake of appearances (surely it was uncouth to spend this long in someone’s larder without wedding them?) when I realized the occasion being feted was the arrival of a ship – a real, honest, land-striding ship, which disembarked a crew of my own kind! Oh, I had given up all hope of ever witnessing another legless creature again, and so overcome was I  that my introduction, was, perhaps, perchance, perforce, a trifle unsophisticated.

“Hello!” I blurted out, sensibly.

“Augh!” snorted the captain at my words. “Finglishman! Do you not speak the beautiful language?” and thereby he jabbered at me in the most uncouth way in his foreign gobblydegook – only, to my great shock – to be interrupted by my host, who spoke at him in what I was loathe to realize was the very same tongue, which I’d ostensibly spent half the most torturous days of my schooling acquiring fluency in. Oh mother! You always said I was the worst student of Loach (and Merman, for that matter) you’d ever known, and for you to be proven right in such a thorough way in such a faraway place was enough to fill me with joyful tears and a tiny bit of utter shame.

“I must return home!” I begged. “My family believes me lost, and-”

“Yes, yes, you can pay your way in labour,” said the Loachman captain in the most barbarous callous way, “but it will be of no great hardship to accommodate you. It is but a trifle of a journey, all told, and its safety all guaranteed. Fear not for yourself. Why, but one ship in twenty is lost these days!”
“I know,” I said. “I know.”

After four days of feasting and trading and careful negotiations in Loach that I didn’t understand a word of, I departed, leaving my personal effects in the custody of the one who’d rescued me. Her name, I’d discovered through the (amused) captain, was Nancy, and although she was happy to hear of my gratitude she was also even more glad that I wouldn’t have to marry her.

***

I tell you as one who has lived this in truth: there are few blessings more sound, kindnesses felt more tenderly, joys more true, than to see the waters of home rise on the distant muddy horizon of the land. And with each step of the ship closer, the emotions stir more strongly, until by the conclusion of docking you are a mad thing, a howling waste of tears and shaking hands and trembling heart, ready to cast yourself against the city streets like discarded scraps if such would bring you to your home’s door a single moment faster.

I did not knock. I did not pause. I opened it without hesitation and spoke like the words burned my mouth to be held within it.

“I have returned safely, mother, in the face of all of the peril of the land and the tumult of fortune!”
“That’s nice,” said mother. “Alees married a crabs-herder down the way two months ago.”
And such was the glory and fullness of my relief that I didn’t even mind that until the next morning.

Councillor A: Thank you, one and all, for returning for this first meeting since-

Councillor B: Closer to one than to all, really. Where’s everybody else?

Councillor C: Councillors E, F, G, H, I, J, and K lived near the waterfront and are currently missing presumed dead. Councillors L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T and U are busy dealing with personal issues, bereavement, or grief. Councillors V, W, X, Y and Z are confirmed dead. And the mayor is on holiday.

B: Jesus, sorry I asked. Hey, does that mean the waterfront will be getting more or less money put into it?
C: Pardon?
B: Because on the one hand they’ve clearly suffered a lot of damage, but on the other hand their representatives are now absent, but on the OTHER other hand we’ll want to seem fair, but on the other other other hand we don’t want to be biased by sentiment, and do we get temporary representatives there, and how do we choose them… man, there’s so many layers to this.

A: If we could get back to the issue at HAND, here, I was just saying that this is our first formal post-emergency meeting since the Gigamouth Incident reached its conclusion, and as such we must now turn to the newer challenges at hand.

B: Like what? Reconstructing the Tower? Half of it is still wedged in the thing’s eyeball. Checking for survivors on the lakeshore? We’re already doing that, at least for a couple more days. Clearing the streets? Setting up temporary housing?

C: Presumably the imminent public health crisis.

A: The temporary facilities in the camps aren’t PERFECT, but they’re adequate and improving every day. We can handle things until the sewer systems are running at a hundred percent again.

C: No, I meant once the carcass starts to rot.

B: Oh shit, they’re right. I mean, I wouldn’t eat beef if it had sat on my kitchen counter for twenty-four hours, and Gigamouth wasn’t even in a fridge first. That thing’s going to be turning RANK.

C: The smell will be the smallest concern. Do you know how much tissue is on an organism that size? I can do the math, if-

B: Fuck. It’s going to be an open compost bucket the size of a city block.

A: Disposal should be a priority, then. Can we expect military assistance? High explosives might be necessary to dismember the organism.

B: High explosives didn’t exactly do much to dismember it when it was alive. Hell, they could barely bruise its skin. Maybe they could bring in that thing they used to kill it?
A: The Confluxy Device? It didn’t work, it supercharged its internal reactor. It died when the Tower ruptured its eyeball and caused a plasma explosion that destroyed its brain.

B: Oh. I thought the confluzy thingy did that.

A: It was in the report. And the paper. And the entire internet.

C: Whatever method is used will require precision and a good deal of preparatory infrastructure. We want to avoid uncontrolled fluid spillage.

A: Ah. Like field dressing a deer.

B: Pardon?
C: To move the carcass we need to break it down, and it’s crucial we do so without carelessly puncturing its arteries or gastrointestinal system. The volume of liquid contained inside the organism is enormous, and even with some coagulation, the flooding it could cause downtown would be horrific. If you’d like the math, it’s-

B: So we need to cut it up right away to get rid of it before it rots, we don’t know how to cut it up, and if we do manage to cut it up there’s a good chance we flood downtown in monster fecal slurry and blood. And maybe urine?

A: Precisely.

B: We’re fucked.

A: If you have something helpful to say at any point, feel free to add it to the record.

B: Okay, fine. We’re talking about corpse disposal, where are we going to do that? If we CAN pull it apart.
A: There’s still plenty of mining projects up north that need rehabilitation. This wastage isn’t any more or less toxic than anything else they need to rebury.

C: Presuming, of course, that the toxicology report on the organism is still accurate and it isn’t an ultra-contagious biohazard, even in death. It was written in under three days.

A: Every applicable scientific resource on the planet was used to create it. What happened here was a matter of global concern, and no expense, time, or expertise was spared.

C: Yes, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t rushed. It needs more peer review.

B: You were the one that brought up the words ‘imminent public health crisis.’

C: Well, just because we need to rush doesn’t mean I have to like it.

B: Besides, what about the skeleton?
A: What about it?
B: Look, even assuming we CAN start slicing this thing into itty bitty pieces, how the hell are we meant to break apart the hardest parts of its anatomy into pieces small enough to move them? Vertebrae, okay, whatever, but the skull? The pelvis? How about the leg bones, the fibuloids or whatever – we got a crane that can move a long limb the size of a bridge?

A: You’re talking about the tibia.

B: Thanks, but the point remains. What do we do about those guys? I say we turn them into tourist attractions; put some foundations down and settle them into them and maybe rig buildings over them. Heck, with the skull we can probably put the buildings inside them. That’s where the museum can go. Or the cafeteria for the museum – no, we put that in the eyesockets, and we charge a premium for the view! I’m telling you, we can rebuild the city with the profit margin from that ALONE, and I haven’t even gotten into my ideas for that pelvis.

C: This is all solutions looking for problems. If we can penetrate just enough to allow removal of the marrow, moving the skeleton piece by piece should be doable. And anyways if we think about this realistically the bones must be abnormally light for their size, or else the creature wouldn’t have been able to walk at all. The math is very straightforward, if-

B: Oh, enough about the fucking math. If the math was as straightforward as you say it is, the damned thing wouldn’t even exist! It was hundreds of feet tall and bipedal and its legs weren’t thicker than its entire body! It barely even cracked the ground under its own mass when it walked! How did it get blood all the way from its heart to its skull without exploding its head? Who knows! It’s impossible! Face it, the math isn’t straightforward because the math doesn’t make sense anymore! So shut up about it!

C: I call for the condemnation of Councillor B.

A: State the grounds.

C: Language.

B: You aren’t saying I’m wrong.

C: Fuck you.
B: I call for the condemnation of Councillor C on the grounds of language.

A: Councillors A and B, you will – stop that! – will return to your chairs THIS INSTANT or I will be forced to – PUT THAT DOWN!

[A brief recess]

A: The meeting will now adjourn. Thank you for your time, everyone. There will be no closing remarks. Goodbye. Come in again tomorrow at eight.

Councillor D: Sorry, I wasn’t listening. What’re we doing tomorrow?
A: Nothing you need to know about.

It was a beautiful day in early April, with the presence of all that was implied by that. The grass was growing. The first leaves were budding. Birds were singing that hadn’t been seen in months. And the President and CEO of CozyCocoa, Inc. was holding a pistol to his forehead with one foot out the window.

“Listen, you’re overreacting. This happens every year. It’s just a –”

“Little dip!” shrieked Earnest Von Hestle, in the tones of one who’s heard it all before and liked none of it. “Just a LITTLE DIP?! Just a LITTLE DROP IN SALES!? Every year it worsens! It widens! It cuts a FURROW into our profits! It makes a CRATER of my stewardship! It lays an IMPASSIBLE CREVASSE betwixt me and the board, and it grows wider year by year as the gap separating me from excellence yawns greater and greater and greater and GREATE-”

“Why not,” said Leslie Green, Secretary and Personal Assistant of the President and CEO of CozyCocoa, Inc., in the tones of one who’s said it all before and can feel the breath wasting itself even as it leaves his lungs, “just launch a new product?”
Earnest’s entire body convulsed for a split second (barring, luckily, his trigger finger). He swallowed, using a few more muscles than necessary. “New?” he gurgled.

“Something that can sell in the warm months.”
“New?”

“Something that’s cold.”
“New?”
“Something that isn’t hot chocolate.”
“NEW?!” screamed Earnest. He hurled his gun at Leslie’s head and missed, utterly destroying his expensive and unused laptop and several acres of test mugs. “We do not do NEW here at CozyCocoa, Inc.! We use my father’s recipe! My father’s recipe that he made from my grandfather’s recipe! My grandfather’s recipe that he made from HIS father’s recipe! My great-grandfather’s recipe that he stole uncredited from my great-great-grandmother! And you would, would, would SULLY these OLD things with your NEW ideas?! No hell is dark and deep enough! No punishment cruel and long enough! An end! An END shall be fashioned and you will be PLACED WITHIN IT PERMANENTLY AND… it would solve it?”
“Solve what?”
“The thing. The seasonal thing.”
“The little dip.”
Earnest’s shoulders slowly began to lower themselves from ear height. “Yes. The little dip. It’s just a little dip, so we won’t need more than a little help. Yes, just a small product. A by-product, even. Something insignificant, it won’t be a big deal. No real fuss. No harm done. Yes. Yes. Good. A fine idea. Order my head of research to produce it.”
“It’ll be done in ten minutes,” said Leslie, who had done it four minutes ago before coming in to see what all the screaming was about this time.

“Make it seven!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re welcome! And get me a new laptop! And a new gun!”

***

Leslie Green sent the email to Michelle Folps, Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email to Gregory Brisket, Secretary and Personal Assistant of the Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email and a few thousand dollars to Peter Frisk, Senior Recruiter of CozyCocoa, Inc. and told him to figure something out.

So Peter Frisk took a cheque for a few thousand dollars down to the street corner and hung around for ten minutes.

“Anyone got an amazing new product idea for a warm-weather beverage?” he called out into the air.

“You’ll never get it from me!” shouted the hot dog vendor. “I told the courts I wasn’t talking, and I meant it!”
“I don’t know what counts as warm-weather,” mused a passing parent, child slung in a harness and child roving on a lead. “Is it sixteen degrees? Twenty-six? Just once it’s no longer cold? What’s cold? And what do any of those numbers mean in Fahrenheit?”

“Blolf,” said the harness-child.

“I don’t know what a beverage is,” said the lead-child.

“Sure I got an idea,” said a man with a cardboard sign. “Or I know how to get one. What’s the pay?”
“A cheque for a few thousand dollars,” said Peter.

“I only do million-dollar ideas,” said the man, putting away his cardboard sign. “But I think I can lower myself to this. Should be easy. Can you buy me a coffee and then wait here for a second humming something? No Beatles, though. I’m done with them.”

So Peter Frisk fetched the man without a cardboard sign his coffee and hummed five verses of Barrett’s Privateers while he voyaged through the six astral seas into the twelfth Realm Beyond The Soul and wrestled with the UnAntiNegaAbsense, which he slew using the shimmering poniard of his own endawnenment and the teeth of his mind-bunker. Then from his chest he drew forth a silver scroll and on that silver scroll were golden words and in the golden words were syllables of purest diamond and darkest oak that seared deep into his body and burned his tongue so that his eyes opened and his cheeks flushed and he spat out ‘Cold Chocolate.”

“Pardon?” said Peter Frisk, who had lost track of whether the privateers sailed again on the ninety-sixth or ninety-eighth day and was really concerned about whether or not this would compromise the integrity of the humming more or less than stopping to ask about it.

“There’s your idea. Cold chocolate.”
“Like, hot chocolate but cold, or…”
“No, it’s more like the fundamental exact opposite of hot chocolate. Sorry, it’s a million-dollar idea, but I’ll take the cheque anyways. Need to get this one off my hands before it burns them. Don’t look for me again.”

So the cheque changed hands, and the idea was brought back to Gregory Brisket, who brought it to Michelle Folps, who brought it to Leslie Green, who brought it to Earnest Von Hestle, who said “what the hell is cold chocolate?”

“It’s the fundamental exact opposite of hot chocolate,” said Leslie Green, who was capable of reading a message past the first sentence and the subject line.

“I don’t like it. I don’t like that.” Earnest chewed his lip and some of his moustache. “We still have that old ice cream factory in the Midwest, right? Could we use that?”
“Tectonically stable and has refrigeration facilities. Should be ideal.”
“Good. Go do that. This. Somewhere where I don’t have to watch it, thank you and please.”

***

So the money moved and the machinery followed, and an old missile bunker and an old ice cream factory were sort of mushed together until the combination yielded cold, cold fruit. Cacao beans, specifically. The things that happened after that were specifically unspecifiable, and very unspecifically unspeakable.

But their product was not. And soon it was on billboards and popups and unskippable trailers.

Cold Chocolate: The Fundamental Exact Opposite of Hot Chocolate.

You could buy a can for two dollars, a bottle for five, a big jug for ten. It froze the tongue and frosted the throat and delighted the soul, no stirring, no mixing, no heating, no shaking. It could be kept on a shelf for over six hours before beginning to thaw; twice as long if out of direct light. It could be used to numb the pain of a sunburn. It could be used to rehydrate the dehydrated. It could be used to keep a cooler full of sandwiches fresh. It could be used as a refreshing cocktail ingredient, or to elevate a milkshake to ultimate perfection.

It sold out, then it sold far out, then it sold totally far out, man. And when the summer’s quarterly review came, it came with news most unexpected.

“There was no dip,” said Earnest Von Hestle.

“It would’ve been hard to imagine,” said Leslie. “Hell, we made more in July than we do some entire winters.
“No dip,” said Earnest. “No itty-bitty dippy. No little-bittle gap. No slumpity-slump, no slouchity-slouch. Only a rise, a glorious, great, engorged, englorioused rise. Profits went up up up up up. You know what this means, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“Well, it means the board won’t-”
“It MEANS,” shouted Earnest, voice breaking into a squeak fit to kill a dog through its eardrums, “that now WINTER’S going to be a little dip for us! We need more! We need to sell more! We’ll sell cold chocolate all winter if we must – damnit, damnit damnit, that won’t do. Can you make hot cold chocolate?”
“No,” said Leslie, who not only could read a message past the first sentence and the subject line, but could remember its contents, too. “They’re fundamental opposi-.”

“You’re fired,” said Earnest, pulling his new gun out of his desk and wildly firing it into the ceiling. “NOW TELL THEM TO MAKE IT OR I’LL FIRE YOU AGAIN!”

So Leslie Green typed his last email – under gunpoint, cc’d it, and as he left the premises in a hurry and booked a flight for the opposite side of the planet it was received by Michelle Folps, Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email to Gregory Brisket, Secretary and Personal Assistant of the Head of Research and Innovativeness of CozyCocoa, Inc., who sent an email and a few thousand dollars to Peter Frisk, Senior Recruiter of CozyCocoa, Inc. and told him to figure something out.

Peter Frisk went down by the street corner for two whole hours and couldn’t find one idea, so he wrote an email to Gregory Brisket telling him that he’d considered every factor and there couldn’t possibly be anything dangerous about combining hot chocolate and cold chocolate.

This was good enough for Gregory, which was good enough for Michelle, which was good enough for the passing stranger Earnest coerced at gunpoint into reading his emails for him.

Which meant that at six thirty seven pm CST, on a nice day in autumn, two great percolating vats of liquid had five millilitres piped from each of them into a test flask, which immediately erupted into a thermal singularity, thus evenly distributing all heat and matter across the entire universe into an omnipresent lukewarmness.

***

It wasn’t all bad.

The flavour, for those who (briefly) had the presence of mind to grasp it, was quite lovely.

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.