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“I am,” King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First) announced, “the greatest and most perfect being that there shall ever be.”
“You’re infertile,” said the doctor.

“Fuck you. Execute her.”
“Be that as it may,” the doctor said as the king’s royal goonsmen closed in, “it still won’t get you a heir.”

“What if we execute my wife too?”
“Also won’t fix you being infertile.”
King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First) grumped to himself a little. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to commission a heir myself then. Unhand the doctor or whatever, men! I need you to go get me a badger-person!”

***

Getting a badger-person was easier said than done. They didn’t spend much time on the surface, most of it was at night, and it was usually long enough to decapitate someone’s sheep and drag the corpse underground. But the king wanted it, so seven of the finest cattle in all the realm were seized and taken to an empty field and watched for three days until someone tried to decapitate one and drag it underground.

The badger-person was somewhat small and bedraggled.

“Men, I need you to go get me a better badger-person,” said the king.

“All sapient beings are of equal worth,” said the badger-person in her flat toneless gravelly badger-voice.

“Clearly not,” laughed the king. “I am King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First) and I am the greatest and most perfect being that there shall ever be! And my heir must be of similar magnitude IF NOT GREATER and that is why you are here and not being executed, badger-person. I require you to craft me a successor!”
The badger-person blinked her shiny little badger eyes. “Tricky,” she said. “but doable. Get me the wood from the royal dynast-trees. The bones of your successor must come from within your walls.”

***

The dynast-trees had stood in the royal garden for some long lifetimes, but they were not tall beings, and it took some clever cutting and shaping from the claws of the badger-person to assemble a proper frame for the king’s heir. It was graceful and wending and winding – firm but supple, graceful but robust, slim without being thin – and everyone who looked on it except the king loved it.

“Pretty but insubstantial,” pouted King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First). “I require a heir, not a hair-thin pup!”

“Of course,” said the badger-person. “Which is why next I will require ores. Split apart the skin of the oldest hill that your keep sits upon, and inside it you will find the body of your successor.”

***

The oldest hill had been chosen for its sturdiness: any other would have bent and buckled and split into ribbons under the weight of the fortifications and royal proclamations intended to grace its earthen brow. But the king was urgent in his demands, and so the royal goonsmen cracked out their shovels and their mattocks and their picks and delved until they hit stone, then delved further, and the ore they tore loose was brought up to the castle’s forges where the badger-person cast her strange badger-spells and grunted and swore over the steaming cauldrons and smelters deep into the night and beyond.

At the end of it all the beautiful wooden bones of the heir were hidden underneath a skin of shining metal, soft to the eye but unbreakable to a blow; lustrous without gaudiness; warm against the palm and cooling in heat.

“My heir isn’t moving,” complained King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First). “They lack enthusiasm and gumption and they are not more beautiful and powerful than all other beings except me.”

“Of course,” said the badger-person. “They have no heart, no mind, no soul. We will find them deeper down.”

***

The royal goonsmen were not meant to be miners: they were tall, they were cruel, they were stupid. But the king wanted it so they did what had to be done and crammed themselves far, far inside the oldest hill, burrowing past the earth and boring deep into rock. They hacked and scrabbled and pulled and tugged and nearly died a dozen times over, but they lacked the imagination to be frightened of their own demise and so it was that they began to yield up the hill’s treasures.

A blood-red ruby was pried loose from rock so hard it shattered sixteen pickaxes. The badger-person took it and set it within the heir’s chest. “Their heart,” she said.

A glittering presence in the torchlight at the corner of a goonsman’s eye was investigated and turned out to be a diamond the size of his fist. The badger-person polished it until it shone like the sun, even without a single cut, then installed it in the heir’s skull. “Their mind,” she said.

And farthest below of all, where the walls echoed with whispers from below, there was found an ephemeral strand of sparkling matter, which was chipped free and brought up to the badger-person who melted it down most carefully in a very small and very hot furnace.

“Their soul,” she breathed over the metal, and sprinkled the molten platinum softly and lovingly over the heir’s frame.

It shook.

“Is it happening?!” demanded King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First).

“Oh yes,” said the badger-person. The walls of the room echoed with force.

“I am to be succeeded?” asked King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First).

“Absolutely,” said the badger-person. The keep’s walls trembled.

“Hooray!” cheered King Lyonessus Magestus Supremus I (The First and Last), as the first of several hundred badger-people tore through the weakened surface of the oldest hill beneath his feet and right through the floorboards, decapitating him and dragging him underground.

***

Afterwards there wasn’t much castle left, or much hill. So it took a while, you understand, for anyone to go looking at what had happened.

But nobody ever found the shining heir.

“The badger-people must’ve taken it,” they said. “All that wealth in its hide.” And that was the end of that as far as they were concerned.

And they were half-right. The badger-people had taken them, but not for the wealth. They were, after all, the child of one of their greatest craftsbadgers, and deserved fair treatment, fair labour, and shelter from those who sought harm.

Because all sapient beings are of equal worth.

Black-capped Chickadee

A small songdinosaur with a distinctive black ‘cap’ and ‘bib’ and a wonderfully distinctive call of chick-a-dee-dee-dee. These bold and adorable little visitors will gladly visit your dinosaurfeeders all winter and are brave enough to even pluck sunflower seeds right from your hand, should you be a sufficiently everyday sight!

Blue jay

Raucous, intelligent, pushy, and curious, this bright blue and crested jay is a splendid specimen of the Corvid family with a bright call said to be similar to a rusty pump handle being worked. It will dominate the dinosaurfeeder when present with its voracious appetite and is quite unwilling to share with others of its kind.

Common starling (introduced)

A frequent sight in the summer months, easily spotted by its shiny and iridescent plumage. Introduced into New York’s Central Park from Europe by wildly misguided individuals under the so-called ‘American Acclimitization Society’ in 1890, they have thrived across the continent ever since, although our winters are a tad chilly for their liking. Their calls are quarrelsome and so are they – any flight of starlings is as much squabble as song.

Daspletosaurus torosus

This sturdy mid-sized tyrannosaurid can be easily distinguished from albertosaurines like Gorgosaurus and Albertosaurus by its more robust snout and muzzle, which makes a handy tool for delivering massive bone-crushing bites to dangerous prey. It is unlikely to molest any of your dinosaurfeeders or their residents, but may mistake your car for a potential food source – try to minimize the chances of this occurring by parking it inside a garage!

Edmontosaurus regalis

Among the largest of hadrosaurids in Canada or the world entire and named after our province’s capital, an Edmontosaurus visit to your yard is always a good occasion to break out the cameras!  They’re quite fond of conifers, so a healthy evergreen presence on your lawn is a good way of enticing these spectacular Albertans to your home any time of year. That said, they are highly gregarious, so be prepared for any number between one and twenty-five thousand to visit.  At four metric tons apiece, you may find yourself being fined for road damages by your county if things get a bit too busy.

Euoplocephalus tutus

The most heavily-armoured animal you can expect to host unless you’re visited by an Abrams tank crew mid-shift, Euoplocephalus’s lovely, low-pitched calls will likely be heard well in advance of its plodding arrival. Entice this beauteous creature with a bounty of ferns and other soft low-growing plants, but try to make sure you’ve got a bountiful enough crop to withstand its appetite, because there’s no driving them off once they arrive – it is neither effective nor advisable to shoo away an animal covered in bony plates down to its eyelids, particularly when its response to being threatened is to slam the threat with a bony tail-club. All currently-known cases of bear spray applied to Euoplocephalus in specific or ankylosaurs in general have been deeply regrettable for all involved.

Horned lark

Although sadly in steep decline in recent years, this lovely little dinosaur’s trilling song can still be heard outside your window, provided your home isn’t terribly forested and has enough ground cover for nesting and feeding growing chicks insects.  In the summer the male grows the pair of small black ‘horns’ that are the species’ namesake.

Northern cardinal

A sturdy songdinosaur of moderate proportions and (in the males) ostentatious red colouration, topped with a beautiful little crest in both sexes. The song is a lovely whistle, although your intrusion upon its feeding may instead have it retort with its less-dignified alarm call: twit. In addition to the ever-popular sunflower seeds, safflower represents another feeder staple that can entice them to visit.

Northern raven

Doubtlessly the cleverest animal you are likely to encounter outside your home is the raven, which can be distinguished from the common crow by its great size, more massive bill, wedge-shaped tail, and shaggy ‘beard’ of feathers. You’re more likely to encounter them the farther you are from dense urban centers; although ravens certainly enjoy some products of humanity (garbage dumps in particular are a bonanza), they’re not quite as happy in a city as a crow would be.

Pachyrhinosaurus canadensis

An infrequent visitor from the north, this large ceratopsian can easily be distinguished from other species by its lack of a nose horn and possession of a heavy ‘nasal boss’ atop the snout. Although harmless on foot (within sane limits), it is not recommended to drive non-electric cars near them, as they may mistake the sound of the car’s engine for a challenge call from a fellow Pachyrhinosaurus and charge the vehicle until the sound stops. Keeping dogs inside during their visit is recommended for similar reasons, as few dogs possess the reinforced neck, protective head-frill, and multi-ton body weight necessary to survive a shoving contest with an adult Pachyrhinosaurus.

Red-breasted nuthatch

Sunflower seeds and suet are your best bet to catch the attention of this distinctive little songdinosaur, which is readily identified not only by its black-and-white striped head and sandy-red belly but also its peculiar habit of walking up and down trees headfirst and trotting quite happily along the undersides of branches.

Red-winged blackdinosaur

Males of this species are easily-spotted due to their dramatic coat of black contrasting with their red-and-yellow shoulders (to say nothing of their ostentatious posturing on the highest visible objects), while the females are plain brown. Suet and seeds will tempt them in the summer, when the males are busy loudly singing. Fields, swamps, and meadows on or near your property are an excellent indicator of red-wing blackdinosaur habitat, and their great abundance means you can gamble on seeing them more likely than not.

Saurornitholestes langstoni

A lively and high-energy dromaeosaur approximately five feet in length that is attracted by (and will readily scavenge) human garbage cans, cats, and dogs. In the event this is behaviour you find desirable, they can be enticed by suet, scraps of aged meat, or living next door to anyone inconsiderate and sloppy enough to leave unsecured food waste lying around, for which they can and should be fined. It’s harmless to humans older than around six or seven, but its curiosity can cause it to venture close enough to the clueless to trigger a defensive response.

Torosaurus latus

A reclusive and extremely large ceratopsian that may or may not be an unusual morph of full-grown Triceratops, depending on who you ask (speculation remains abundant due to its retiring nature). Its spectacularly elongated head-frill is among the most gorgeous displays of any animal, especially in the full flush of mating season when bulls will redirect blood to it to create colourful, intimidating patterns. Do not, under any circumstances, wear bright clothing near these animals if they’re on your property, and it’s advised to paint houses in Torosaurus territory with drab hues. Low-growing plants of any kind will hold their attention, and be sure to take pictures of any young you might see – they’re almost a total scientific unknown to this very day!

Tyrannosaurus rex

If sighted, move quietly and calmly into the nearest enclosed vehicle and leave town immediately.

There was once a wealthy professor of astronomy who possessed a very fine observatory all his own, with a grand and well-stocked laboratory and many powerful computers, all housed beneath a powerful and keen telescope. But he worked there all alone and the great telescope stood idle much of the night, for he was cursed with an unsightly blue eye that was so peculiar to look upon that few could stomach the idea of sharing a telescope with him. At length his frustrations reached a peak, and so he called up a great academic conference at his observatory, where he brought forth his finest booze and his most abundant snacks and all of his beautiful, high-resolution star-charts and most intricate calculations, and such was the camaraderie and recklessness of the evening that just before morning came he found himself a principal coauthor for his latest paper at last.

“Are you sure of this decision?” inquired the coauthor’s best friend. “Not only does he bear a hideous blue eye, I’ve heard that this isn’t his first attempt at a collaborative work… but he still hasn’t published a single paper with a credited coauthor.”
“It’s a really good party though,” pointed out the coauthor. “And it’s absolute MURDER to get any telescope time around here.”

“Fair enough,” replied her friend, and the matter was thought of no more.

Come the morning (well, late afternoon, but these WERE astronomers), Blue Eye met his new partner in the observatory’s kitchenette, wincing, over shared coffee.

“I’m going to go into town and restock the fridge after last night,” declared Blue Eye, and he presented his coauthor with a little torn scrap of paper covered in crude scribbles. “From top to bottom these are the access codes to the telescope, the principal lab, the data banks, my minibar, and the basement. Do what you please with ‘em, but don’t go into the basement.”

“Why?” asked his coauthor.

“I said so,” said Blue Eye, so.

And he left.

As you might expect, the coauthor had a wonderful time exploring Blue Eye’s observatory. The laboratory equipment was shining and new and whole, the data on the computers propelled several of her own theories forward by leaps and bounds, and there was still half a bottle of vodka in the back of the minifridge both she and Blue Eye had missed. And perhaps it was the vodka, and perhaps it was something else, but even as she stood at the eyepiece of the great, beautiful telescope, with all the free time in the world to use it, her thoughts kept sinking from the heavens to the earth and just a little under it, to that small unobtrusive basement door.

“What the hell,” she thought. “I’ll have all the time in the world to use this telescope, but how many chances will I have to look down there?”

And so straight away Blue Eye’s coauthor marched down to the basement and punched in the barely-legible code at the bottom of her paper, and found inside no less than six separate coauthors within about six cubic feet of space, having suffered some amount of cutting and trimming to fit inside.

“Sweet jesus fuckhell,” declared Blue Eye’s coauthor, and the notepaper fell from her fingers in shock and landed in some of the coauthor juices. She snatched it up in a hurry and slammed the door at exactly the same moment Blue Eye did.

“Honey, I’m home!” called Blue Eye. “Hey, can I have my passwords back? I need to dispose of them safely.”
“I already did it,” said Blue Eye’s coauthor.

“Isn’t that them there in your hand?”
“No,” she said, cunningly.

“Gimme.”
She did, after some prying of fingers and whining, and Blue Eye glared at her most fiercely.

“There is blood on here – you’ve been in the basement, haven’t you!” he shouted.

“And YOU’VE chopped up all your past coauthors,” she retorted.
“That is besides the point,” said Blue Eye stiffly. “You have broken your promise, and now I’ll have no choice but to cut you up and fit you in the basement, which believe you me is going to be an absolute NIGHTMARE to make work. God it’s a pain. Now hold still so I can snip your noggin off with my kitchen knife.”

“Oh please, please, please,” wept Blue Eye’s coauthor, “might I at least look through the telescope one last time before I die?”

“Sure why not,” said Blue Eye genially.

So she climbed the little steps upp to the eyepiece, and she squinted very carefully into it, and said “Wow!”
“Pardon?” asked Blue Eye.

“Check it out! A supernova, what are the odds?”
“Let me see!” said Blue Eye, and as he hastily ran up the steps to the telescope his coauthor stuck her foot out and tripped him and he impaled himself on the eyepiece, blue eye-first.

Nobody asked much after Blue Eye, for he’d been an infrequent contributor to the academic community, and those who did never found out what happened to him.

His coauthor, in the meanwhile, had a pretty nice observatory. And once she cleaned out the basement there was plenty of room to fit a second minifridge too.

***

Once upon a time there was a beautiful and kind and lovely student of geology, who had the misfortune of being the junior-most graduate under a tyrannical and selfish professor. Furthermore, the professor’s two other grads were as arrogant and cruel as she was, and they put the junior grad to work cleaning up after their lab work, sifting through their soil samples, and conducting experiments for their benefit long into the night. All her labours went to support the papers of others, and in mockery of the countless hours she spent elbow-deep in their volcanic soils her senior grads named her ‘Cinderella,’ a title which her wicked professor took up with such enthusiasm that soon she was known by none other.

At length, after some years of this slavery, there came a notice in the mail that the university was to hold a great fundraiser. Anyone who was anyone with money and everyone who wanted that money would be there, and the wicked professor and her two senior grads were beside themselves with glee.

“I will bring my most eloquent speeches,” declared the wicked professor. “Cinderella! Write me some good stuff. I want it highbrow, but nothing too fancy for a layman.”
“I shall bring my most beautiful stratigraphic charts,” simpered the seniormost grad. “Cinderella, print them out in colour – and make sure the ink cartridges are fresh!”
“I’m going to bring my geodes,” cheered the second-seniormost grad. “Cinderella, get them all in the van this second – and if you drop one, I expect you to cushion its fall with your body, got it?!”

So Cinderella was kept running back and forth and forth and back and all over again until the evening of the fundraiser arrived and she found herself at the doorstep in stained clothing, watching her wicked professor and her two wicked senior grads getting into their van in their best suits.

“But what about me?” she asked.
“Stay at home and keep an eye on the seismograph,” said the wicked professor offhandedly. “We need to know if there’s any earthquakes.”
“We’re in Florida,” protested Cinderella, but the van had already left and she sat down on the stoop and sobbed.

“Why do you cry so?” inquired a passer-by.

“I want to go to the fundraiser,” cried Cinderella, “but I have no suit, and no car, and I’ve had no time to write any of my thesis!”
“Anything is possible if you believe in the impossible,” soothed the strange woman. “I am your fairy grantwriter, and I shall gift you with what you require to attend the fundraiser. Here are some clothes for you.” And lo, she pulled a fine fitted tuxedo from her purse, which fit Cinderella perfectly. “Now, here is a car.” And lo, she plucked a stretch limo from her wallet and placed it on the road, complete with driver.  “And here is your paper!”
“This is just a bunch of dirty jokes and rambling anecdotes,” said Cinderella, skimming the sheets.

“Exactly,” said the fairy grantwriter. “I don’t want to encourage plagiarism. Now away with you, but be sure to be back before midnight or the magic will be broken.”

“Thank you,” said Cinderella, and set a little alarm on her phone before she departed in a roar of smouldering hydrocarbons.

At the fundraiser the wicked professor was in the midst of her speech when the door opened and an astonishingly smartly-dressed young geologist entered, chomping a cigar in her mouth the size of a baseball bat.  All in attendance were awed and staggered and bemused as the donors flocked to her like flies to a carcass, attracted by her spectacular tux and kept in rapture by her seemingly endless stream of filthy  knock-knock jokes and tales of how to capture scorpions in buckets.  

“Who is this mysterious lady?” whispered the seniormost grad to her comrade.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like her!” fumed the second-seniormost grad. “Look at the junior chair of Exxon-Mobil, and how he hangs onto her every word! My geodes deserve that attention!”

Suddenly the university’s clocktower began to ring midnight and Cinderella jumped a mile, having been so surrounded with chortles and back-slaps that she was unable to hear her phone’s alarm. In haste and alarm she fled the door, leaving behind only her cigar, which the bereft junior chair clutched to his chest in mourning.

“Did anyone get her number?” he implored. “Anyone? A business card?”

When Cinderella woke the next morning her wicked professor and senior grads were in one big shared foul mood. “A fat lot of good your work did for us,” snorted her professor. “Some mysterious geologist kept the donors busy all night, and we didn’t get funding for so much as a dowsing-rod. What a waste of time! But there’s still hope: I hear the junior chair of Exxon-Mobil is going door to door, seeking the lady in question.”

There was a knock at their door and a man opened it.  “Excuse me,” he said, “but I happen to be the junior chair of Exxon-Mobil and I’m going door to door, seeking a lady in question. Whosoever’s breath matches the scent of this cigar” – and here he produced a still-smouldering log of tobacco – “shall be hired by me.”
“GIMME!” squealed the wicked professor.

“HEEEERE!” wailed the wicked senior grads.

But the junior chair stuck a little breathalyzer in their faces and shook his head. “Cigarettes, marijuana, and a lot of cheap gin,” he said.  “Close, but no cigar.”
“May I be tested?” inquired Cinderella.

“I don’t see why not,” said the junior chair, and the moment he placed the breathalyzer in front of her face the fumes almost made him black out before he could check the readings. “It’s you!” he gasped.

“It’s me!” replied Cinderella.
“I would like to employ you as an expert consultant to provide evidence on demand for my corporation to drill in protected wilderness areas, national parks, and animal sanctuaries!” cried the junior chair.

“Oh yes please!” wept Cinderella. “Also, can you hire my two fellow grad students over there? They can make good gophers and land surveyors.”

The wicked professor gnashed her teeth in despair at the loss of so much free labour, but there was nothing to be done, and the wicked senior grads were overjoyed to be forgiven so. And they all lived profitably ever after.

***

New year’s eve came bright and early to the halls of the university, and not a single body remained that wasn’t yet ready to get as drunk as a goddamned skunk. But as the crowd headed to the bar, they were there met by a strange figure: a tenured professor of gigantic stature, garbed all in green and bearing a green pen in one hand and a green sheaf of green paper in the other.

“Hello, feeble lesser beings!” shouted the green professor. “I am here for a  bit of fun before the new year ends: who here wants some free peer review? I offer this thus: you may tear into my proof here as ferociously as you like, in front of all your peers, and in exchange I shall review you in return in one year and a day.

All were silent, but then the youngest adjunct professor – some guy called Dwayne who had yet to publish a single paper of his own, and saw a chance to prove himself the bravest of his fellows – leapt to his feet and took the giant’s pen.

“Strike well then,” said the green professor, proffering his paper, and with great vigor Dwayne did so, hacking through a dozen obsolete sources in a single sharp slice of the instrument. But before his eyes the green professor merely laughed and plucked the stricken manuscript from his chest, showing that despite his critique, the paper remained whole and sound.

“I implore you to meet me in the green room in a year and a day’s time,” chuckled the green professor.  “And please: bring your very best work.  I’d hate to not give you equal effort.” And he left, slamming the door behind him noisily.

There was a solemn moment of silence and then all present descended upon the bar like alcoholic locusts, none moreso than Dwayne.

Just after the following Christmas, Dwayne set on his way to the green room of the university, clutching a scant handful of a first-draft like it were his own child. He opened the door, but found no green professor: merely an avuncular librarian hard at work upon his desk and a shifty-looking TA.

“Ah, waiting for the green professor, eh?” smiled the librarian through a moustache ripped from a healthy walrus. “Well, not here yet, should be here soon. Need anything?”
Dwayne examined his thesis. “Maybe a little,” he admitted.

“Well, make free use of my services!” cried the librarian. “I’ll go find you some sources, on the condition that you tell me if anything happens when I’m out.”

“Fair,” said Dwayne.

“Fair!” said the librarian. And so he left and the shifty TA immediately sidled up to Dwayne and stuck out her hand.

“Name’s Bethany,” she muttered out of the corner of her mouth. Dwayne shook her hand carefully, as if it might bite. “You want some notes?  I got some notes. You can write ‘em on your leg, they never check the legs.”
“Err… no thanks,” said Dwayne.

The librarian returned with a heaping helping of sources, which Dwayne frantically began incorporating into his central thesis. “Anything happen?” he asked.

Dwayne shook his hand.  “Well then!” he said, pleased as punch, and headed back into the books.

“Psst,” said Bethany. “Ol’ buddy, ol’ pal, ol’ chum.” She slapped Dwayne on the back quickly.  “Ol’ sock ol’ shoe ol’ chip-off-the-ol’-ol’-block.  Y’want next year’s test scores? It’s some good stuff, and you can resell them for a LOT a lot.”

“No thanks,” said Dwayne.

“Your loss.”
The librarian came back with yet more books, all as helpful as the last. “Have I missed something?” he asked Dwayne.

“Nope!” replied Dwayne, slapping him heartily on the back. “All good!”
“Fantastic! Once more, unto the breach!”
“Psst. Dwayne.  Dude.”
Dwayne looked once more at the shifty TA.

“Care to buy –”

“No,” he told her.

“Fiiiiine. Then, wanna at least take a plastic binder? That’s a nice paper there, be a shame if something happened to it. A nice plastic binder ‘ll prevent anyone from proofreading it too nasty, you get what I mean? The old fat-faced fuck has like forty thousand of them, he’ll never miss one.”

Dwayne thought upon his honor, then thought upon the green professor and his pen.

“Okay. Thanks.”
“Great. Mum’s the word to the walrus.”

“Hello!” said the walrus. “Anything happen?”
“Nope,” said Dwayne and Bethany.

“Great I trust you implicitly and completely.” And a bell rang from afar, and the door at the far end of the green room cracked open. “Go on in!”
Inside was a smaller room, damp and cramped and cramped further by a giant wooden writing desk. And behind it, looming over desk, room, and Dwayne, was the green professor, pen in hand.

“Well, let’s have at it!” he said happily, and even with the protective force of the nice plastic binder Dwayne felt his hands shake as he laid down his paper upon that dreadful ink-stained desk.

The green professor flipped through his work with one thumb, eyes racing, then stopped.

“AHA!” he yelled, and as that dreadful pen flashed down Dwayne twitched and jumped so badly that he fell out of his chair.

“Wuss!” hollered the green professor.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, my bad,” muttered Dwayne, hauling himself upright.

“As it was. Now here we go again. Dum de dum de dum de dum de. Dum. De. Dum. De…. DUM,” and down came the pen again like a striking falcon, only to pause an inch from the paragraph.

“Just wanted to see if you’d fall over again,” said the green professor cheerfully.  

“Fuck off,” said Dwayne.

“There’s a good academic! Well said.  Now, now, now…hmmm.  Hmm. Hm. Ah. AHA!” shouted the green professor, and down came the pen, striking a gentle, single underline where an errant hand had incorrectly turned ‘because’ into ‘becauses.’

“Boop,” said the green professor. “That was for chickening out and getting the binder.”
Dwayne stared at him. “This was a test, wasn’t it,” he said.

“Yep! I was the librarian, too.”

“And what,” asked Dwayne, “was the point of all this?”
“Wanted to see if anyone on the current faculty had any balls or not. Turns out it’s just you, even if you’re only mostly honest! Good job!”
“But I’m only an adjunct,” said Dwayne.

“Well, that’s life,” said the green professor. “See you later.” And he showed Dwayne the door.

Dwayne returned to be hailed as a hero, was absolved of his binder, and had it nailed above his cubicle as a warning to anyone who shied from peer review until he was let go due to budget cuts two years later.

To: All

From: pgwooster@cgzoo.com

Subject: Hi!!!!

Hello all you happy campers and happier staff members of Clive’s Gussberg Zoo!  My name is Penelope Gertrude Winslet and I’ll be your CEO and marketing director for this summer – sort of like a two-for-one deal, you get it?!  This is the sort of thing that’ll save us money!  But don’t you worry, because I’ve got plenty of ways to MAKE money rattling around in my noggin to!  I know a lot of you are pretty ready to get your paycheques rolling, and rest assured I’m as keen to see that happen as you are! 

Let’s have an incredible summer!!!

Penelope G.  Winslet, CEO & Marketing Director, Clive’s Gussberg Zoo

***

To: pgwooster@cgzoo.com

From: pfitz@cgzoo.com

Subject: re: Security Services       

I want it on record that I thought this was a stupid idea from the start, okay?  Yes, putting a ‘guarded by the inhabitants of Clive’s Gussberg Zoo’ sign on a building’s front door is a tremendous PSYCHOLOGICAL deterrent against simple break-and-enters, but against professionals?  They’re just going to case the joint a bit harder, and what we had wasn’t more than a speed bump for them. 

Vinnie?  I know your first instinct was ‘oh he’s a grey wolf, that’s like a guard dog but better!’ News flash: he doesn’t think of humans as prey items, he doesn’t think of strange new places as his territory, and he’s shy.  I don’t think any of the safecrackers of June 4^th even knew he was there.  Which is good, because he’ll do anything for a belly rub and I think they might’ve walked off with him. 

Clarice did a better job.  Clarice did a lot better of a job.  Clarice did her job entirely too well, because not only did she scare away any potential burglars, she also scared away the neighbours and the client himself, who thought she was a demon from hell.  A barn owl security alarm is a little bit too effective for the human psyche, even if it is impossible to sleep through it. 

Jumbo, of course, is a two-toed sloth.  I don’t think I need to go into further detail as to why renting him out to the airport as a bomb-sniffer was a bad idea.

You can find another bozo to sign onto your projects, because I, for one, won’t play. 

Patricia Fitzgerald, Chief Americas Zookeeper

***

To: pgwooster@cgzoo.com

From: dwrob@cgzoo.com

Subject: re: the call center            

After three glorious days in operation, I must report to you that, alas, our call center has been disbanded.  Our rate of customer interaction was through the roof, but they were uninterested in our sales pitches and more concerned with finding methods to cause us fiscal and /or bodily harm.  It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools and a foolish leader that passes the buck, but I find myself speculating that the disappointing outcome of our little misadventure owes something to our staff.  The ravens kept to the company script very neatly, but I’ve been told (at length) that their voices were ‘uncanny’ and ‘disturbing’ and ‘sounded like the breath of Satan himself in my ear, may god protect me.’ The macaws, meanwhile, were far more pleasant to the ear, but reacted to being interrupted by throwing screaming fits, so that’s four of our five lawsuits right there – pierced eardrums are a nasty business.  Meanwhile, the bulk of our remaining staff were the budgies, and while I’m aware I was the one who promised you that they would learn on the job, I am saddened to report that this never took place, and their vocabulary remained permanently at ‘pretty bird.’ Few complaints there, but few sales. 

Much of the equipment was still covered by warranty, at least.  Caveat emptor et al. 

Douglas William Roberts, Birdhouse Supervisor

***

To: pgwooster@cgzoo.com

From: dheath@cgzoo.com

Subject: NO MORE UBERS also I’m resigning       

We’ve been BANNED from all thoroughfares, highways, biways, streets, roads, and avenues, commercial and residential (across the country too, which I think is a bit much?).  As bad as that news is, it beat the alternative of facing six dozen individuated lawsuits.  We got off pretty lightly considering the elephants crushed twenty vehicles, the moose engaged in duels with nineteen stop signs, and the zebras bucked off every rider they got before trying to bite and kick them to death. 

I admire your willingness to move fast and break things, but I think you’d better count me out for the next adventure.  The legal consequences are a bit rich for my blood. 

Hope to work with you again in better circumstances,

Delilah Heathers, former Head Large Mammal Coordinator

***

To: pgwooster@cgzoo.com

From: jhay@cgzoo.com

Subject: i told you so goddamnit

I told you, I told you, I goddamned told you.

I told you that baboons take staring deeply into each other’s eyes as an insult. 

I told you that manatees look less like mermaids than advertised, no matter how near-sighted, hopeful, and scurvy-ridden the viewer may very well fucking be.

I told you that hyenas would get possessive and needy and bite anyone intruding on their partners.

And I told you to your goddamned face that Ginger would be more interested in the food than her date.  I’m not sure that panda would understand romance with a chart and a six-person romance team.  As a matter of fact, I AM sure she wouldn’t, because we tried to put her through that reproduction crash course last year and she flunked, as you would know if you bothered to read any of the files I sent you.  Ever.

Most-importantly, I told you that hiring out nonhumans for escort services would attract the worst creeps ever to crawl the earth.  I haven’t gotten this much of a workout from my cattle prod, taser, and tranq gun since I worked the nuisance bear program.  If it weren’t for that job satisfaction I’d quit this second. 

Jude Hayes, Lead Wrangler

***

To: pgwooster@cgzoo.com

From: krqueen@cgzoo.com

Subject: Abject Failure

I don’t know a way to put a better spin on it.  Complete disaster from top to bottom, start to finish.  Execution chamber?  The coastal taipan was the only animal angry enough for the snake pit, and after being exposed to three days of strangers it got used to them and didn’t bother anyone that kept their hands to themselves.  Death arena?  The lions won’t eat until it’s dark out.  Shark tank?  They’re lemon sharks, they prefer fish and only bite if you start biting them first.  Torture services?  Tarantulas are so mildly venomous they’d have been better off rubbing their hairy abdomens on the victims.  Rent-a-legion?  Doesn’t matter if you give them laser carbines and cyber-suits, a gorilla is still a gorilla and would rather eat shoots and leaves than shoot. 

If the former client hadn’t tried to whip the chimpanzee mining-squad into obedience I’m sure he’d have filed a complaint with you already.  As it is, I salvaged what I could of this rental opportunity by rifling through his safe and taking everything marked ‘top secret.’ If nothing else, the FBI might be interested. 

Kelly R.  Queen, Sales Associate

***

To: All

From: pgwooster@cgzoo.com

Subject: A Wonderful Summer!!!!!

Hello all you happy campers and happier staff members of Clive’s Gussberg Zoo!  We’ve sure had a busy, bustling, activity-bursting heap of a summer, and I’m happy to report that profits have never been higher!  I would like to personally thank every member of staff that agreed to wear a tiny little camera hidden in their nametag (it would’ve been so easy to opt out, too – page 167q had very clear font!), because we’re the number 1 most popular streaming channel for the fourth month running, and the advertising dollars are pouring in (except for that little suspension we got when Kelly walked in on her client after he’d had a tiny argument with the chimps – oops!  Turns out it’s illegal to show dismemberment, even if it’s hard to tell any of the bits belonged to a human!).  You wouldn’t believe the number of shirts we’ve sold!   

Let’s have a magical winter!!!

Penelope G.  Winslet, CEO & Marketing Director, Clive’s Gussberg Zoo

There was a wanderer.   There are and were and will be wanderers, wherever, whenever.   But this one was.   

In particular, this one was Somewhat-Clever Cirlew, who was walking down the long dirt roads of the long spring valleys when she found an unexpected thing: the road became cobbled.   

“Well, that’s nice,” she said.   

“Not as much as you think,” said a nearby peasant, bent-triple under a load of stones for roadwork.   “It’s not for the benefit of you and me, but for the land-lord.”
“And who might that be, and who might you be?” asked Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.
“I am Bow-Legged Nleet, and these are the lands of Wide-Armed Wallis,” said Bow-Legged Nleet.   “He’s the strongest within these lands and so they are his and he may do what he pleases with them, and what pleases him is to extract ruinous tolls from all passers-by on pain of death, which he gathers up in his grand keep.   We toil at his will to keep the roads busy with traffic to extort, and it will never end.”

“I think I can fix that for you,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   

“Well, good luck with that,” said Bow-Legged Nleet, “because here he comes now.” And indeed the cobbled road hummed with the furious force of thunderous footfalls, and up the road stomped Wide-Armed Wallis, thirty stone if he was an ounce and all of it burly and hairy and most of it knuckles.   

“HEY YOU,” he introduced himself.   “YOU OWE THE TOLL FOR USE OF THIS ROAD, WHICH IS EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT ON YOU.”
“Oh dear,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   “To whom is this toll owed?”
“ME,” explained Wide-Armed Wallis.   “I AM THE LAND-LORD OF THESE LANDS, FOR I AM THE STRONGEST OF ANY WITHIN THEM.   THAT’S HOW IT WORKS.”
“Oh, you are?” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   

“YES, I AM,” said Wide-Armed Wallis.

“Oh.   Alright.   I thought – nevermind.   Well, what’s the toll?”
“YOU THOUGHT WHAT?’ demanded Wide-armed Wallis.   

“I thought I heard you were the strongest within these lands,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   “And well, I suppose that’s sort of true.   Strongest man, yes, certainly.”
Wide-Armed Wallis’s shoulders flexed in outrage, destroying his shirt.   Hot steam spurted from every opening of his body in rage.   “I ATE A BEAR ONCE,” he proclaimed.   “I CAN LIFT AND THROW COWS.   I AM THE STRONGEST OF ALL IN THESE LANDS, NO EXCEPTIONS.   WHAT LIES HAVE YOU HEARD?”
“I heard the winter weather here is pretty fierce up on yonder mountainside,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew, with a meek and submissive gesture of her pointiest finger.   “Quite tough.   Real nasty.”
“I FEAR IT NOT,” said Wide-Armed Wallis.

“Of course, of course.”
“I AM STRONGER THAN IT.”
“No doubt, no doubt.”
“I WILL GO SHOW YOU RIGHT NOW.”
“Oh?” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew innocently.   “Oh, well, I mean, if you insist-”

Wide-Armed Wallis picked up Somewhat-Clever Cirlew in one hand and his snarl in the other and clambered uphill and through dale and nigh to the very summit of the nearest peak, where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face for the wails of the winter in the wind and the rush of snow through your eyesockets.   
“NOW I WILL FIGHT THIS BLIZZARD AND SHOW IT WHO IS STRONGEST,” said Wide-Armed Wallis.   

“Oh, how brave!” admired Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   “Only it’s not this spot that’s the nastiest.   It’s a bit over there.”
Wide-Armed Wallis went a bit over there.   “HERE?”
“No, there.”
Wide-Armed Wallis went a bit over there again.   “HERE?”
“No, there.”
Wide-Armed Wallis went a bit over there again, again.   “HERE?” he began to ask as he fell into a crevasse, plummeted two hundred feet, and lost a very rapid arm wrestling match against the mountain.   

***

Bow-Legged Nleet was taking a breather with a cup of tea and some gossip with Natter-Mouth Moilra when Pretty-Cunning Cirlew came back down from the mountainside, covered in snow and a bit smug grin.   

“I believe your land-lord problems are now over,” she proclaimed with satisfaction.   

“Oh, not quite, not quite, not nearly so,” said Bow-Legged Nleet.   “You see, Wide-Armed Wallis had a son: Quick-Grasp Grimley.   He’s not as burly as his dad was, but he’s lightning-fast and even more avaricious.   As a matter of fact, since his father’s dead, he should be coming up the way to raise the tolls right now.”
“When?” asked Pretty-Cunning Cirlew.

“Now,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley, his boots still-dusty as he tidied them off by kicking Bow-Legged Nleet’s shin.   He was as tall as his father, but six times narrower and three times nastier.   “And now, I will take the toll for the use of this road.   Everything you’ve got on you twice over, please.”
“That’s quite a lot,” marvelled Pretty-Cunning Cirlew.

“I deserve it for my diligence,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley.   “Every day of my father’s reign I woke up bright and early to squeeze our rightful gains from insolent and greedy trespassers.   I billed the roads; I priced the bridges; I took three birds from every flock and three fish from every stream.   Nothing moves through these lands without paying a price, for I am their land-lord.”
“Oh of course, of course, of course,” soothed Pretty-Cunning Cirlew.   “Except the clouds, naturally.”
“Naturally what,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley, his eyes narrowing.   

“Naturally you can’t extract payment from the clouds.   But I mean, who would? The clouds are beyond anyone’s grasp.”
“Not mine,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley.   “Of course they’re not beyond me! They just have nothing of value to give up.”
“There’s a rain-cloud!” pointed Pretty-Cunning Cirlew with a precise and accurate gesture of her pointiest finger.  .  “It’s not stopping, either!”
“OH, NO IT WON’T!” shouted Quick-Grasp Grimley, and he was gone, and gone, and gone, matching pace with the cloud as it soared down and away through the valleys and over the hills and down the riverways and over the sea and over the sea and over the sea and into the middle of the sea, where it evaporated.   

“Tax-dodger!” snarled Quick-Grasp Grimley.   

Then he remembered he couldn’t swim.   

***

It took Very-Crafty Cirlew four days to walk to the coast and back, and by the time she made the trip, word had got around.   The village was in an uproar of riotous festivity, and not a single back was bent under a load of stone and brick.   

“I’m back!” proclaimed Very-Crafty Cirlew, holding aloft her noxious prize.   “With proof of your land-lord’s passing: the discarded boots and clothing of Quick-Grasp Grimley!”
“Hooray!” shouted Bow-Legged Nleet.

“Hooray!” called Natter-Mouth Moilra.

“HOORAY!” hollered Damned-Short Sillas.
“HOORAY!” yelled everyone else.   

“I also got his keys!” said Very-Crafty Cirlew.   

“Hooray!” shouted Bow-Legged Nleet.

“Hooray!” called Natter-Mouth Moilra.

“HOORAY!” hollered Damned-Short Sillas.
“HOORAY!” yelled everyone else.   

“Now I’m going to live in the land-lord’s keep as the land-lord, since I am the cleverest in all the land,” said Very-Crafty Cirlew.   “I suggest you pay up on time, since I’m incredibly devious and will get you no matter what in the end.   Now get back to work on the roads.”

“Hooray!” shouted Bow-Legged Nleet.   “Wait.”

“Fuck,” said Natter-Mouth Moilra.

“Shit,” said Damned-Short Sillas.   

“Piss,” agreed everyone else.   “NOW what?”
Bow-Legged Nleet thought about it, then smiled.   “I think I know who can save us.”

***

The land-lord’s keep’s great and terrible door laid open a crack, permitting the faintest egress of light into its depths.   A hand was placed upon it, gnarled and wrinkled, and with a slow and ominous creak the crack opened wide.   

“Pay your dues and begone,” said Very-Crafty Cirlew’s voice from far within.   “But don’t come inside, or the many terrible curses I’ve laid upon the door will fell you.”
“Feh,” said the intruder, and stumped inside, slamming the door for good measure.   

The land-lord’s keep’s towering, ominous hall soared and swooped from gloomy rafters to flat dead-grey flagstones, wide and rough.   Old leathery boots tramped on them, and mud spattered across them.   

“Ah, you are too brave to be thwarted with curses,” said Very-Crafty Cirlew’s voice from the end of the hall.   “But your fellow villagers fear you for your boldness! They plan to turn upon you when you return to them after dealing with me, serving you poisoned beer with false smiles.   I can save you from this fate if you’ll stop and listen and promise to leave.”

“Meh,” grunted the intruder, her hobnailed waddle unceasing.   

The land-lord’s keep’s throne was a great and towering thing carved from raw oak, and in its enormous seat was sat Very-Crafty Cirlew and a very comfortable pillow.   

“Okay, you’re too smart to be tricked,” she admitted.   “How about this: you can have all the gold in this place if you go home and say you killed me.”

“Hngh,” said the intruder, as she patted at her pockets.   Then she pulled out a large, sharp kitchen knife and planted it in Very-Crafty Cirlew’s chest.   

“But….I’m the cleverest…” she bubbled.   
Face pinched in annoyance, one-good-eye squinting, her killer leaned in closer.   
“EH?” shouted Stone-Deaf Dreen.   

***

They still kept the road in decent shape, when all was said and done.   Toll or no toll, they all had to walk on it.   

It was a beautiful October, a fine October.  The pumpkins had flourished, the corn had crowned, the squash were fine and full-fleshed.  The apples and nuts fell from the trees and the hogs grew fat upon them until they looked ripe themselves.  The whole world was round and flushed with life and ready to pluck before winter slipped in the window and shushed everything to sleep. 

So they had plenty of warning, same as always, but it still made folks’ backs prickle and feet hurry on their way home; made them check the storm doors on the basement and give the children sleeping pills; made them stare out the windows and look away quickly to pretend they hadn’t been looking, hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t let it cross their mind at all. 

That harvest moon. 

***

It had sat on the edge of the afternoon all day, smiling down at them from its pale little perch in the sky.  Every now and then a white cloud slid over it and hushed it away, but it was always waiting, always watching, always there again when it passed by.  Near-invisible in the deep blue sky. 

Now that deep blue had purpled up, turned itself into something thicker and darker that brought it out of its shell and into its glory, gave it light, gave it legs, gave it strength.  Gave it a path to walk down from the stars and come closer to the darkened earth and moistened soil, to probe among the fields with ruddy orange light.  To come, to see, to touch. 

That harvest moon. 

***

It came to ground outside of the township, on the bald hilltop by the old gravel pits, where even the wild grasses didn’t want to grow.  All around it shone soft orange sodium-light, and all the night turned from dark to shadows.  Every hole, cranny, and crevice in rock and wood and brush tripled in depth; every small thing snuggled deeper in its nest and watched and waited for its passing. 

Unlike the trees and the brush, the neat and tidy fields billowed and blossomed under its light, and it walked towards them.  It had no legs but it walked towards them, and among them.  Its face had no eyes and from its gaze poured a more full light, one that went from white to yellow to orange to something that was indiscernible but tangible. 

The soil groaned and breathed under the weight of its attention.  The shoots rustled and stiffened.  Fruit gurgled and rounded.  Grain grew.  Roots swelled.  Piglets trembled in their pens, too frightened to squeal.  An owl screamed. 

That harvest moon. 

***

That was midnight.  That was normal. That was safe. 

Then it was the morning, and it was time.  A morning that was still dark and orange and shadowed, and it walked the new-ripened rows and rows and rows and rows and pens and barns and it had no hands but it reached out and touched, and touched. 

And it touched and it took its harvest.  One-tenth of every leaf, every stem, every root, every fruit, every grain, every stalk.  It did not dig, it did not pluck, it did not uproot or tear or grasp or grab.  It just touched, and its touch took.  The sheep’s-wool, the piglets, the milk and the calves, even the newborn rats and mice hidden at the bases of the silos and deep in the barn-rafters, even the kittens that hunted them. 

That harvest moon. 

***

When the dreadful moment came, it came quickly.  The light was in the window, then it was inside, then it was inside you, and then it was gone. 

And in one in every ten farmhouses, so was a child. 

No trace, no mess, no fuss, no tears, no trouble.

That harvest moon. 

***

Afterwards, it walked to the top of the bald hilltop, laden with its bounty. 

Nobody ever saw it, nobody ever saw them.  That helped.  That helped.  Nobody could be sure what it did with what it took, nobody could be sure what it was for, nobody could be sure how they needed to feel about it. 

So nobody did.  And then it was gone. 

That harvest moon.

***

In daylight it was still gone, and there was plenty of work to be done.  Plenty of distraction to be had.  Plenty of crops and thoughts and emotions to harvest and heap and crush down into storage, not to be looked at or dwelt on. 

It was a fair deal.  It was a fair trade.  It was completely fine. 

And how could you ever hope for a better bargain to be made when you’d never needed to agree to this one in the first place?

The inner working of the Woodytrudy Society have long been off-limits to the common folk by the strictest social barriers of decorum and profound legal violence, left only to faint rumour and wildest hearsay.  But now, on the thirtieth anniversary of the society’s disbandment, its histories have finally been decoded for the edification of the masses.  No longer are the doings of our betters hidden from us, much as we may feel otherwise. 

Origination

The Woodytrudy Society began as a simple wartime bet between two young men of humble goals and ample means: one bright evening in August 1917, John Barton-Clarke declared to Duncan Smith that if they both survived the morrow’s assault through c that they should purchase a little plot of land somewhere with some nice water and plenty of sun and a big blue sky.  Alas, both would perish before noon come morning, but among the effects transported home to their families was the idly scribbled-and-signed affidavit they had hashed out before their departure from this mortal coil, and Montgomery Barton-Clarke (John’s elder brother, who was exempt from service due to a complex and debilitating case of dicky knee) thought it was ‘simply smashing.’ The next week he bought land around the isolated, pristine uplands of Homely Bay, deep in the Canadian Shield, which he frequently boasted was chosen by throwing darts at a map and pulling them out again until he found somewhere that ‘tickled his fancy.’

Of course, a Society cannot be founded with a membership of one, but Montgomery was an easily-bored human being and possessed good acquaintance with many of his fellows that suffered from a similar condition.  In the name of his dead brother and his equally dead comrade some thirty thousand acres were purchased before the coming of September, and construction plans for the first ‘estates’ (latter to be called ‘cottages’) were scrawled on napkins at a cocktail party at Montgomery’s birthday, September 16^th. 

It was called the Woodytrudy Society after Montgomery Burton-Clarke’s favourite teddy bear. 

Foundation

Early plans for the Woodytrudy Society envisioned it as a little slice of Britain-away-from-Britain, a place of palatial estates and impeccable gardens groomed by a full staff of year-round servants.  Unfortunately, the reality of there being no ground soil other than pine needles and moss atop miles-thick Shield granite dashed those initial dreams, but Montgomery was an easily-buoyed-up soul and soon espoused a new vision: a secluded hunting lodge of the finest caliber; charmingly rustic, expensively furnished, and outfitted with as much alcohol as any ten distilleries the planet could boast.  These became the three guiding pillars of the Society’s elaborate and byzantine set of building codes, and the first six cottages were completed before the summer of 1918.  The isolated islands and bays soon fairly rang with as much gunfire as No-Man’s-Land itself, and the local populations of beaver, deer, moose, and bear took a somewhat precipitous plunge.  The Society’s documents never included any talk of game conservation, as Montgomery aptly observed that the less time spent shooting while on hunt, the more time spent tippling, and therefore so much the better if there was as little to shoot at as possible. 

Codification

By the time of death of Montgomery Barton-Clarke at the age of seventy-six from a severely untreated case of Bungy Bottom, the Society was in grievous danger of becoming dull.  Its initial membership – and their livers – had become old and faulty, and their offspring sneered at their idle and antiquated notions of amusement (blowing apart wild animals while inebriated).  The next step in the society’s history came entirely by chance: young Terence Twatherly–Fordring (the Twatherlys and the Fordrings being distinguished owners two of the original six founding cottages) had a fine bull moose in his sights when an errant cough from his batman spoiled his shot.  Enraged, Terence beat his poor servant about the head with a juniper branch until the man fled in terror and became entangled in the bog, where he sank over a heartrending twenty-six minutes and forty-nine second.  Terence declared it the best sport of his life and eagerly told all his peers and chums about this fabulous plot of backwoods where you could flog your servants even better than the good old days, for there was nowhere for them to run but empty bush, forest, and lake – an unappealing and mosquito-cursed sanctuary, to be sure.  Soon the average age of the Society’s membership had risen from a sunken and cadaverous seventy-three to a spry and vigorous thirty-six, and once again the hills and isles of Homely Lake rang with laughter, gunshots, and screams of agony.  The modern entertainment of the Society had arrived. 

Domestication

Of course, servants will talk, and soon it became somewhat difficult to find good help to accompany Society members on their summers.  This was alleviated by a cunning practice pioneered by Joshua Barton-Clarke-Foxworth II, which was secretively paying for free rounds in the village pub and pressganging anyone who became insensate.  The quality of manservants thus procured was very low, but this was seen as all the better, seeing as this produced an ample sum of reasons to punish them as extensively and creatively as anyone could wish.  Nonetheless, it had its downsides, as was exhaustively proven by the tragic demise of Joshua in his sleep at the age of twenty-three from one-hundred-and-forty-nine separate stab wounds.  Investigation of the murderer by pleading and threat seemed fruitless until Joshua’s best mate, Graham Axway-Sneedlebury, hit upon the notion of letting his prize hound Worble IV Chesterton smell Joshua’s body and then the servants.  The trusty hound barked at every single one of them, and a s reward for his service in the name of justice, was given free reign upon them along with every single one of his kin – a sizable pack, given the popularity of kennel breeding among the Society’s members.  It took no great mind at all to see the potential in the loyalty of animals as warden against the duplicity of man, and thus was the second of the two essential components of the modern entertainments of the Woodytrudy Society realized: the guard animal. 

Elaboration

Of course, even the most amusing pastime must contain innovation, lest it become tedium.  Fashion at first lent itself to the largest, most threatening and aggressive dogs being brought to Homely Lake, but such creatures proved at least as dangerous to their masters as their servants, and soon the painstaking care inherent in producing a beast that would react with utter love to its owner and rabid death to any member of the lower classes was applauded.  When that balancing act was mastered to the point of boredom, exoticisms became the point of the day – keeping exclusively water-dogs that would drown their prey, or game dogs that would fetch the mortally wounded but never mutilate them, or a herd of feral lapdogs that would swarm the fallen all had their day as amusements, each mastered, then discarded.  But even novelty must pall, and so it was that on May 14^th, 1978, Charles Jalopy-Cordwith announced in the Woodytrudy Society’s quarterly newsletter that he would be bringing no dogs with him at all that summer.  Astonishment bloomed – surely if Charles had become so bored of the Society’s sport, why come at all? – then in its wake a subtle and omnipresent anticipation, and when Charles stepped off the docks to his family cottage fashionably late there was a veritable horde of his peers watching, and therefore ample witnesses to his accompaniment by a chimpanzee named Piers. 

Piers, it became rapidly-apparent, was a revelation.  He understood more of what was said to him than even the best-trained dogs, could wear a tie and smoke a cigarette with aplomb, and in addition to still possessing a relatively fearsome bite could – with his bare hands – tear a recalcitrant butler limb-from-limb and face-from-skull.  Furthermore, upon his initial demonstration of such a feat (at the wedding anniversary of Mary-Anne and Thomas York-Feedle), he could then pick up the tray of drinks said butler had carelessly dropped, refill the glasses, and act as a perfect gentleman’s gentleman for the remainder of the evening.  Such feats could not go unnoticed, and in fact, did not. 

Imitation

By the mid-eighties, it was difficult to find a single human member of staff on the properties of the Woodytrudy Society.  With the growing difficulty of acquiring sufficiently discreet servants in sufficiently discreet manner for sufficiently proper wages (and making proper compensation to an increasingly INDISCREET constabulary), a switch to employing a handful of animal trainers and handlers was a relief for both the mind and the pocketbook.  Besides, a capuchin or colobus carrying a drinks tray or lighting a cigar was at least twice as charming as a human, at least twice as liable to fail, and therefore at least twice as likely to be entertainingly punished afterwards.  Apes and monkeys of every size and species populated the grounds for the summer, trimming back the encroaching foliage, operating the oar, sails, and engine-workings of boats, carrying putters at miniature-golf-courses, waiting on hand and foot, and ruthlessly dispatching their fellows who failed in their duties.  In this they were boundlessly creative in the manner of children, and while watching a fellow anthropoid be eaten alive by dogs was a sight that could grow stale, witnessing the multitude of ways a chimpanzee or baboon could find to execute their simian comrades never grew tiresome.  Never had so much tedious time been so excitingly passed. 

Culmination

The exact circumstances that led to the closure of the Woodytrudy Society are unknown, although their date can be pinpointed with absolute precision: on June 4^th, 1993 – the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society – a grand soiree was to be held at the original Barton-Clarke cottage, with all members attending in full pomp and gaiety.  Letters were being posted at the nearest postal office until the very evening of that event, and afterwards? Nothing.  Several phone calls were made using exceedingly expensive satellite calls, but alas, poor reception was available due to the vagaries of the local weather (an overcast evening quite spoilt the view of the full moon in neighbouring counties), and few messages were passed on.  What garbled audio remained was often deleted by appalled family members, and what wasn’t erased was most certainly hidden.  The few samples preserved that have fallen into public hands are scarcely educational – screaming, indistinct begging, and howling of ambiguous origin. 

Since every standing member of the Society was present at the celebration, none returned from it, and personal investigations were both belated and unfruitful, the events remain a source of speculation, but the available evidence – the disturbing phone calls, the abandoned cottages, the ransacked grounds, and the paltry few remains retrieved (principally those that had been cast into the lake, which had suffered some decay and aquatic scavenging but were otherwise intact) suggests a peculiar sort of servant’s revolt against those who possessed no servants.

As to the staff themselves, no trace has been located – or at least, located and reported.  Several search parties have vanished after venturing too deep into the woods, the most recent in 2014.  The winters of Homely Lake are cold and brutal, but there are rustic and sturdy lodgings available, of course – well-furnished for a winter’s comfort, and with ample alcohol to keep out the chill from the most tropical of bones.

And in the summer, there’s plenty of sun in a big blue sky. 

The old woman grew hungry. 

It was so hard to bear, poor thing, with her stomach so withered and aching, so she raced aching-bellied across the lands and leapt at the largest thing she saw, which was a moose, and rolled over and over and over with her hands around its giant furry neck.  When she was done it was gone and she was hungrier. 

So she ate.  And ate.  And ate.  Blood and sinew and muscle and bone and organ flowed down her throat and oh she was no longer hungry and she was happy, so happy that she belched and picked her teeth with the animal’s antlers and threw them into the dirt and went off to sleep. 

Rains came, and the antlers were broad and wide and held the water like cupped hands.  It drained into their spongey insides and filled them to the brim and moss grew on them, and ferns, and they filled with muck and pond scum and life and frogs came and newts and turtles and a thousand thousand things that crawled and sang and flew.

It was a bog, and it was just about the perfect place for more moose to live.  And so they did, in their hundreds, in their thousands, and the old woman was never hungry again. 

***

The old woman grew thirsty. 

It was so painful, poor thing, with her mouth so dry and crackling, so she leapt into the air and clawed and grasped and came down with a bird in her two wrinkled hands.  She bit its head off and drank all the blood from it in one long gulp so strong and so smooth that the bird’s flesh and feathers withered up and turned to dry dust, and when she was done she breathed a sigh of relief and threw the bird’s bones to the ground.

They shattered, poor dry bones, shattered and splintered and shuddered into long, delicate fragments.  But it was a fine day with a warm sun, and soft rain came overnight, and shy growth came to peek from the ends of the broken bones, and soon they grew in new ways, then more, then more, then more and more and more until they were bigger than almost any other living thing – and certainly taller.

They were trees, and the birds loved them, couldn’t get enough of them.  They roosted there in thousands and millions and billions and the old woman was never thirsty again. 

***

The old woman grew tired.

It was so hard to feel the hard dirt on her aching bones, poor thing, so she roamed and shivered and clutched at herself looking for a softer place to sleep as she grew wearier and wearier.  She was so tired that she walked into a buffalo without noticing, and he didn’t appreciate this, and she didn’t appreciate THAT, so she head-butted him (once) very hard and he died.  The buffalo, she noticed, had a very fine thick coat of hair, and he wasn’t using it anymore, so she tore it all off him and licked it clean and rolled herself up in it and slept like the blessed dead, after eating the rest of the buffalo for an evening snack. 

All around the sleeping old woman the fluffy hair that had been torn free in the ruckus wavered in the midnight wind, billowing softly.  A lot of it was plucked up and taken away, but some of it dug deeper, put down roots, and stayed – as stubborn as the buffalo had been.  And the dawn dew fortified it, and the morning sun straightened its back, and the old woman awoke in a long meadow of tall sprouting plants. 

They were prairie grasses, buffalo grasses, the sort of plants that will eat up a whole horizon like only the sea can, and the buffalo came and loved them dearly, so the old woman was never cold and tired again. 

***

The old woman woke up and her bones did not ache, her stomach did not complain, and her throat was smooth and unparched. 

But her back felt sort of funny and lumpy, so she scratched and scraped at it with whatever was close to hand until a lump fell off, which she took a good look at.  It was some sort of ape that she’d rolled over and squished in the night, and it was pretty funny-looking. 

“You’re pretty funny-looking,” she said (her first words), “and not good for much,” (her second) and so she threw it away across the grasses, over the trees, past the bogs, and so on and so forth until it landed somewhere. 

It lay there, stripped of its hair from its long flight, and it was still pretty funny-looking.  And sooner or later more funny-looking apes came to be, all of them, standing there around looking at each other in confusion and wondering where the heck they were.  It wasn’t a bog.  It wasn’t a forest.  It wasn’t the plains.  It was just a bunch of funny-looking apes staring at each other until the sun went down, when they couldn’t see anything and wandered off and got lost. 

That was us.  And we still haven’t quite found anywhere we really properly fit in, have we?

It was a last-ditch effort the first time.  No other options, no other thoughts in the head, no plan, no hope.  Just a blind grasp for the first thing that might help.

And as the two world leaders sat across the table from each other, hands twisted into claws and mouths into snarls, a then-nameless member of staff ran in with a big plateful of grandma’s cookies. 

Turns out it’s hard to hurl threats with cookies in your mouth, and harder still to stay in a bad mood.  Threats turned into remonstrations turned into grumbles turned into mumbled apologies and once again, for the first time, the world was saved by grandma’s cookies. 

***

The peak towered above, a fortress in slate-grey masked by a shellstorm of hail and snow that turned the whole sky into a no-man’s-land. 

The guide swore, hands frozen and fumbling as they grasped and scrabbled at pitons that turned ice-slick even in the palm.  Two people left on the mountain, tiny fluttering lives clinging to the last stretch, arms gone numb and red-hot all at once, brains fluttering, hearts guttering, left with nothing but hope for energy and even that dropping away. 

And then the guide remembered the little pocket their husband had sewn into their jacket, and its emergency supply, and they reached inside and found – still not quite frozen as it rested in their palm – a single, perfect cookie from grandma. 

They made the peak.  They made it home.  They made it known. 

***

The house groaned and grumbled and fell over and in the distance down went her childhood home under protest and duress and the treads of a tank that looked almost as unhappy with the whole situation as she did, half a mile away and on a nicely-demolished bluff that looked entirely empty and entirely wasn’t because it was her and her gun that didn’t have the ammo. 

But the tank didn’t see her.

But her gun didn’t have the ammo. 

But the tank was in the open.

But her gun didn’t have the ammo.

But she had SOMETHING. 

She put the last of grandma’s cookies in her mouth, bit down, pulled the trigger, and sent a swirling shrapnel cloud of shattered cookie jar ricocheting right off the tank’s hatch and into the cupola at the exact instant it flipped open so the commander could have a smoke. 

It didn’t win the war by itself, but nobody could argue it wasn’t a necessary step. 

***

“Forceps!”
“Staples!”
“Stint!”
“Scissors!”

“Mallet!”
“Pliers!”
“Glue!”
Every word and every action saw the patient slip still further away, heart crawling sluggishly against their ribs.  The new blood was coming out as fast as it came in; spurting free of sullen and open arteries, soaking through cotton and bursting stitching and dying everything red.

“Clotting!”
Damn the supply shortages.

“CLOTTING!”
Damn them.

“CLOTTING!”
But he had the container of raw dough in his pocket, and he brought it out and shoved it into the surgeon’s hand, and by the luck of jesus and little fishes she didn’t pause to ask just shoved it into place and the extra tablespoon of chocolate chips grandma insisted on clogged the ragged edge of the shattered artery like a plug in a drain. 

The blood stopped like someone had slammed a door in its face, the life stayed inside the body, and the patient’s existence continued. 
If somewhat sweeter than before. 

***

Too many leaks, too few patches.  Oxygen, nitrogen, and nastier things that had no place inside a human lung.  They were already wearing masks but at this rate they’d have to put on the suits just to keep the station habitable for another few hours, trying to plug a sieve with fingers wrapped in a suit of armour that made plate mail look like a body glove. 

No more putty.  No more sealant.  No more hope.  No more time.  

One more thing, wrapped inside the snack compartment.

Each cookie was just firm enough to stand up to vacuum, each cookie had just enough of a soft center to deform to perfectly fill the damage. 

It took sixty-eight of grandma’s cookies to plug every one of the holes the space junk had blasted through the ISS.  Luckily, every astronaut had brought fifty, and had been saving them carefully.  For special occasions.  

***

A hint of stimulant, a drop of suppressant, the sweat and tears and genius and hard, driving work of thousands, all placed in a single IV bag, and then a single bite-sized addition ground into a gentle dust and sprinkled in. 

Vein by vein, it spreads through the tired old body.  Cell by cell, it gently meets the raging growth.  Strand by strand, it mends the mess of DNA turned to malice and meat. 

It’s faster than chemo.  It has no side effects except for cinnamon breath.  It has a one hundred percent success rate at all stages.  It is adopted globally and no company lays copyright to it. 

***

The plutonium is buried deep.  The uranium is laid to rest.  The rods and the water beds and the lead linings are stripped down and carefully stored and the reactor’s heart is filled with a gentle row of ovens at a stable, cautious temperature that will, when supplied produce a single batch every thirty-five minutes on the dot. 

The soft warmth that emanates is gentler and milder than the rage of fission, but it doesn’t diminish with distance or time.  Soon it fuels the world. 

***

Seventy-eight years the ascetic sat on the pole, eating air and rain and the odd hailstone for birthdays, grasping at the sublime, waiting for the thunderbolt, looking into the universe harder  and harder as their eyes shrank from disuse into deep pits in their wind-softened face.

One day, a particular young monk made the trip to their hillside and passed up a very small paper bag holding a single crumb.

It weighed on the ascetic’s tongue like a giant’s blow, it passed down their throat like gilded breath, it went in, in, in, in and in that moment the connection leapt from mind to body to soul to cacao bean to wheat field to sugar field to spice fields to farmhands to soil to sky to sea to horizon to BEYOND and

It worked on acolytes too.  And it was a lot faster than seventy-eight years of sitting on a pole. 

***

Grandma died peacefully in her sleep the very next year.  Age ninety-seven, almost thirty great-great grandchildren, much beloved, much missed, fondly-remembered.  

It turned out nobody wrote down her recipe

Things went a bit shit-sandwich-sideways after that. 

Once upon a time in a far-away kingdom there lived an executioner, and a busy and prosperous executioner she was thanks to one happy and undeniable fact: the king was absolutely batshit.  He would execute someone for having a shadow longer than his, or for whistling out of tune, or because they looked a little too much like someone he’d already had executed and he wanted to be sure the job had been done right.  All day long the executioner’s axe sang and warbled; all evening long the gallows grew heavy with human fruit; and all night she slept the sleep of the gainfully and exhaustively employed.  And lo, everyone was most happy, except for the peasants, until that fateful day when the executioner was putting away her cutting-block and she heard the most terrifying words that could be spoken in all the land: “I’m bored.”

“Pardon, my liege?” she inquired obsequiously.

“I’m bored,” whined the king, scratching his beard absently for leftovers from dinner. “Always the same old chop, chop, chop. Always the same old drop, drop, drop. Why can’t we have fun?”
“I could draw and quarter them, my liege,” offered the executioner.

“Boring.”
“I could break them upon the wheel?”
“Boooooring.”
“I could crucify the”

“BORING, BORING, BORING,” sang the king.  “And the bishop would get crabby and lecture me, and that’s TWICE as boring, and then you’d have to execute him too and it would be TRIPLE boring! I want a new execution tomorrow morning first thing or I’ll get one of the prisoners to execute you instead. Maybe the irony would be funny.”

The executioner was quite upset by this and didn’t appreciate the irony in the slightest, and the thought of her prized axe (she called it Daffodil) falling into the smelly hands of some upstart peasant appalled her, so she did what everyone in need of advice did: she went to her mother.

“Mom, the king’s going to execute me unless I come up with a new execution by tomorrow,” she said.

“I told you not to get into this job,” said the executioner’s mother.  “But did you listen to me? No, no, no, too big for your britches, too clever to listen, and off you went without so much as pretending to care.”
After three cups of tea the executioner escaped and did what everyone else in need of advice did: she went to her grandmother.

***

“Granma, the king’s going to execute me unless I come up with a new execution by tomorrow,” she said.

“Oh well,” said the executioner’s granma, offering her a tin of old, crumbly sugar cookies. “These things happen. Your grandfather was executed twice you know, bless his soul. After the second time the blade fell off the axe they just gave up.”

“I take much too careful care of Daffodil to let that happen,” mourned the executioner.

“Go to the beach then,” said granma.  “Take the evening off. No sense worrying about tomorrow before it comes, you’ll give yourself fits.  Here, bring a sandwich.”
The executioner accepted granma’s sandwich with care, reverence, and trepidation, walked to the beach, and dissected it with care. It seemed to be made of some sort of pickles mixed with some sort of thing that had once been bread, the two intertwined so deeply that they could not be discerned.  After her tenth attempt at finding cheese inside it only to discover that – once again – the cheese was merely curdled crust, the executioner threw the sandwich away and watched as sixteen separate seagulls descended upon it and pulled it in sixteen separate ways.

And as she watched, she felt an idea crawl its way up the back of her neck into her skull.

***

Just after dawn, the king was led down to the seashore where the wind blew and the gulls glared suspiciously from the cliffs.

“It’s damp,” he complained. “I don’t like damp. Are you going to drown them? That’s boring. My nose is itchy.”
“Sorry my liege; no my liege; sorry my liege,” rattled off the executioner, as she carefully finished placing a collar made of razor blades around the prisoner’s neck, holding a leash attached to it with utmost care. “Now watch this.”
She tied a sandwich to the far end of the leash.

The gulls watched.

She threw the sandwich to the sand.

The gulls moved and pulled the leash in sixteen separate ways, slicing the prisoner’s neck into sixteen separate pieces, which were immediately scooped up by some of the gulls that had missed out on sandwich.
“I call it the gullotine,” said the executioner.

“Wonderful!” applauded the king. “Magnificent! Hilarious! I hate it here, let’s never execute someone like this again.  Come up with a new trick by tomorrow or I’ll have them drown you boringly for boring me.”

***

“…And then he said he’d drown me,” said the executioner.

“It’s no more than you deserve for never learning to swim,” said the executioner’s mother sternly. “We paid good money for those lessons and for what? For what, I say? You didn’t care, you didn’t appreciate them, you whined and complained and acted like the water was poison and we had to apologize to the instructor. Why I just about died of shame from that, never mind asking for a refund, and because of it your sister never got a chance to learn either, poor thing.”

“Hey what’s that?” asked the executioner, pointing over her mother’s shoulder, and then she dove out the window and ran to her granma’s house.

“…And then he said he’d drown me,” she told her granma.

“Who?” asked granma. “That’s a sentence fragment, dear.”

“The king. He didn’t like the beach, and he’s bored again. He wants me to come up with a new kind of execution by tomorrow or he’ll drown me.”
“Well, no sense worrying, no sense worrying, you’ll give yourself fits over worrying. It won’t get better if you pick at it, you know.”
“I know, I know,” said the executioner. “Oh. I know. Thank you, granma.”
“It’s no problem dear.”

***

At dawn, the king watched in silence as the prisoner was tied to a stake and the executioner brought out a big bucket.

“Are you going to pour molten lead on her?” he asked. “I saw molten lead last month.”
“No, my liege,” said the executioner. “This is a ground-up rose hip hairs.”
Then she emptied the bucket over the prisoner.

Then she got another bucket and emptied it over the prisoner.  

And another.

Then she untied the prisoner’s hands, and the resultant itching frenzy lasted twenty minutes, becoming fatal at about fifteen.

“I’m itchy too now,” complained the king, scraping at his neckbeard.  “Ugh.  Jeez.  Don’t ever do this again. I want to see something new tomorrow morning or  I’ll execute you too.  Gross. Ewwww.”

***

The executioner went to see her mother.

“Serves you right,” said her mother.

The executioner went to see her granma, but she’d died of Old that morning and had already been buried by some hasty neighbours.  

***

That morning  the prisoner was brought out and the executioner stood next to him and her block holding Daffodil, mind racing sleeplessly.  

The king was watching.  Everyone was watching. She’d been up all night.  And not one thing was coming to mind.  

She could drop them off the tower? No, that was just a sloppy hanging.  She  could grate their skin off?  No, that was too close to the itching-powder trick.  She could skin them? She had no time to get tools and Daffodil would never work. Oh god, what would she do?  What would she do?  What would she do.

The executioner was trembling, she realized.  Her hands were shaking, her nerves were on fire, her eyeballs were sweating. And beside her, the prisoner was even worse.  

If she kept worrying, she’d give herself fits, just like granma used to oh was it that simple.

Slowly, carefully, the executioner picked up daffodil.

Slowly, carefully, the executioner stepped up to the prisoner.

Slowly, carefully, the executioner leaned in close, face to face.

And then she gently opened her mouth and screamed “BOO.”
The prisoner died on the spot of a heart attack.

“Hurray!” cheered the executioner. “It worked! Did you see, that my liege?”

The king didn’t answer.  

“My liege?” repeated the executioner.  

The king didn’t answer.

“My liege?” inquired the executioner.

The king didn’t answer and the executioner turned around and saw that perhaps she’d startled more than one person.

***

She had to flee the country, of course. But it wasn’t all bad. She became a lumberjack, so Daffodil still got plenty of work. And she got to not write her mother often enough.