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“Like taking candy from a baby,” Maurice said with satisfaction, as the ranger’s jeep slid around a corner and out of sight. 

“What?” I asked.  “He pulled us over, checked our day passes, and waved us on.  We didn’t exactly have to lie here.”
“He asked if we were here for business or pleasure and we told him it was a vacation,” said Maurice, his beard bristling smugly. 

“Oh whatever,” I said.  There was no arguing with him when he was like this.  Determined to be happy about something. 

***

The site had been well-chosen: tucked around three quiet bends and at the farthest end of a no-canoeing lake.  No traffic.  No witnesses.

Thank god there were no witnesses.

“Do you HAVE to wear that thing?”

Maurice swept a hand over his… garment.  “I’m the host!  The narrator!  People expect a certain level of personality.”
“That’s not a personality, that’s the visual equivalent of a psychotic break from reality.  My god, my eyes hurt even when I’m not looking at it.”

“What’s wrong with it?”
“Even the BUTTONS clash, that’s what’s wrong with it.”  Puce and peppermint swirl should not mix. 

“Oh, fie.  Now are you ready?”
“Fine.”
“Steady?”

“Sure.”
“And… go!”
I flipped the switch on the camera and Maurice’s smile got even wider.  It almost made it out of his beard. 

“Welcome to the private lives of North American lake monsters.  Today we’ll be taking a look at that most reclusive of species: Dermapteracetacea ogopogo – or, as it’s more commonly known, the ‘pogo.  Originally and famously known from Okanagan Lake, the ‘pogos are the largest living animals known to live in the continent.  Assuming, of course, that you can find them.  Today, we’re here at Lake – edit in this thing’s name in post – to do just that.  Cut.”
I turned off the camera.  “Really?  Already making work for me?”
“Oh it’ll be fine, we can run that last line over panning footage of the lake.  Now let’s get the canoe cracking.”

“We’re going canoeing on a backwoods lake you don’t even know the name of?”
“It’s safe, it’s safe, it’s safe.  They wouldn’t let people go back here if it wasn’t safe.”

“We’re trying to get footage of a lake monster.”
“And that’s perfectly safe so long as you don’t agitate it!  Very peaceable creatures, ‘pogos.  We’re far too small and bony to be in their prey range.  Now, if we were mooses, that’d be another story.”

“Moose,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“The plural of moose is moose.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, who’s the documentary host here you or me?  Now put these oars away and help me get this stupid canoe off the car.”
“Paddles.”
“Whatever.”

“This,” I said, “is exactly why we stopped dating.”

***

It was a nice lake, I had to admit.  Still, deep, heavily-wooded.  You could almost hear the air breathe it was so quiet. 

“Lake – fix it in post – is typical of ‘pogo habitat: deep, stagnant waters.  The lack of oxygen at the bottom, which would choke any organism with gills, is of no account to the air-breathing ‘pogo, providing it with a quiet, empty place to spend its days in serene solitude.  When it isn’t eating, it’s dreaming.  Cut.  Tom, you’re not aiming the camera at my face properly.”

“I’m paddling,” I said.

“Can’t you do that one-handed?”
“No.”
“Just let us drift then.  Come on.  Time is money.”
“We’ve never sold a single copy of this stuff.”
“And the public thanks us for providing them with quality scientific information free of charge!  Now pick up that camera and get a nice long panning shot of Lake whatsitsname.”

I sighed, but I also did what I was told.  Character flaw.

“In modern times, lakes like these have acquired another valuable trait for ‘pogos: they are obscure, and as such protect them from illicit hands.  The organs of a ‘pogo are worth very nearly their weight in gold, which, considering the animal’s size, is quite something.  A single successful hunt can let a poacher team retire for life.  Here, in the backwaters of national parks, under legal protection and the blanket of obscurity, are one of the last refuges of these gentle giants.  Cut, let’s break out the hydrosonic thingy.”

The hydrosonic thingy was broken out.  It looked like a headset wrapped in six layers of waterproof plastic and it was exactly that.  Maurice tossed it overboard with a merry splosh. 

“How deep do we place it?” I asked. 

“Until you hit bottom, then a little back.”
“Right.  How deep is this lake?”
“How should I know?”
“Did you plan ANYTHING about this trip?  Jesus, are there even any lake monsters here?”

Maurice looked affronted.  “Certainly!  Probably.  It’s worth a shot.  Have a listen on the hydrosonic thingy.”

I switched it on.  Nothing but the low slow gurgle of water. 

“It could be dreaming,” said Maurice.  “They’re quiet when they dream.”
“Maurice,” I said, conveying as much hatred and menace as I could manage in that name, “this was my first weekend off in four months.”

“Yes, and-”

“And you said you’d planned everything.”
“From a certain-”

“And that it wouldn’t be like last time.”
“Well –”

“And that we’d be getting paid.”

“Public recognition and exposure are-”

“I quit,” I said. 

“I – you what?”

“I quit.  I quit, I quit.  I quit.  I quit.  I quit quit quit quit.”  I picked up the paddles and began to heave back to shore.  “I’m getting out and I’m putting this away and I’m driving back home and if you want to come that’s fine but if you’d rather stay here I’m not stopping you.  We’re six last straws deep and that’s more than enough for any human being to bear.”
“Wait-”

“Nope.  Not waiting.”
“Liste-”

“Not listening.  Not being reasonable, not going to sit and listen to you go on and on and ON god this is EXACTLY why we broke up, you never ever do anything but talk!  How’s it feel, huh?  How’s it feel to be talked over?”
“Look-”

“Not getting a word in edgewise?  Not getting a say in what’s said?  Oh, no wonder you wanted to be the narrator, it’s a chance to be the only voice making any noise!  Just talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk!”

The canoe touched land, and as I turned to face it the soft, buttery-shiny metal of a gun’s barrel gently kissed my nose. 

“Hey,” said the poacher, ten thousand miles away at the other end of the weapon.  “Please step out of the canoe, okay?  But maybe put your hands on your head first.”  Somewhere behind him four other men were heaving a heavy outboard off a trailer attached to an SUV, a nice homey vehicle that should’ve held a soccer mom and dad and two point five suburban spawn. 
“Alright,” I said.  Behind me, Maurice made an insufferably put-upon sigh.  “Are you going to shoot my friend?”
“Not if you shut up and do what you’re told.”

“No, I mean, please.  Please do that.”
“Excuse me?” asked Maurice.  “Nobody’s shooting anybody.  Or anything, for that matter.  Why do you think you can get away with this?  You can’t possibly smuggle a carcass that big past the rangers.”

“Well,” said the park ranger, stepping out of the SUV, “it all depends who’s asking.”

***

“You won’t get away with this,” said Maurice. 

The park ranger raised his eyebrows.  They’d given us the courtesy of not tying our hands, but that was a level of politeness you could afford when two separate guns were pointed at us from several large, plaid-clad men.  “You keep saying that.”
“It’s still true.”
“Haven’t explained how.”
“Well… you won’t get away with this.”
The park ranger sighed and looked at me.  “He always like this?”
“Yes.”

“Well, at least you won’t have to deal with it much longer,” he said, cheerily.  “Pat, kill the engine, we’re here.”
Middle of the lake.  Which, I realized, was pretty much where me and Maurice had been. 

“So there IS a ‘pogo here?” asked Maurice. 

“Yep,” said the ranger. 

“Well, that’s a surprise.  We couldn’t find anything.”
I blinked. 

“What?” asked the largest poacher, who was apparently Pat, from his position at the engine. 

“Not a single sound.  It was a promising site, but no dice.”
“There’s one here,” said the ranger. 

“Nope.  Not a sliver of a trace.”
“You’re full of shit,” said the ranger. 

“He’d better be,” said Pat.  “You said this was a confirmed sighting.”
“It is!”
“It is,” agreed Maurice.  “Sure thing for nothing.”
“Shut up.”
“Yeah, shut up,” said Pat.  “You have no idea how much money this kind of firepower costs. We’re not gonna be wasting our time here on anything less than a sure thing.”

“The hydrosonic thingy didn’t pick up so much as a sneeze,” said Maurice.  “If there was a ‘pogo here, it’s long gone.  That’s the trouble with relying on eyewitness accounts: they’re overeager.  Some folks’ll call any old log a lake monster sighting.”
“Shut up,” said Pat.  But there was doubt in it now. 
“They’re full of shit,” said the ranger. 

“Shut up,” repeated Pat.  “And you throw their hydrosonic thingy overboard.  Let’s make sure before we drop the depth charges.  I ain’t spending six grand of explosives on dead lakebottom.”

The ranger opened his mouth, saw something he didn’t like in Pat’s eyes, and did as he was told.  For the second time that day I watched the little plastic-wrapped, lead-weighted bundle sink with a splish. 

“I’m not hearing anything,” said one of the other poachers, fiddling with our receiver.  “Just gurgles.”

“You’ve got it set on broadcast, not receive,” said Maurice helpfully. 

“Shut up,” said the poacher.  But he flipped the lever anyways. 

Dead silence filled the air in a progressively ugly way. 

“So,” said Pat in the very casual way of someone so angry their teeth were eating each other.  “Sure thing, wasn’t it?”
The ranger’s hand twitched towards his belt.  The gun there looked a lot smaller than Pat’s rifle, although that could’ve been because the long gun was in the poacher’s hands already.  Amazing how much bigger weapons get when they’re aimed at you.  “It was,” he said.  “It is!”
“I’m not hearing anything.”
“Of course you’re not hearing anything!  They’re quiet!”
“Uh-huh.  This a sting?”
“No!  I’m in it as much as you are!

“For a promotion, more like.”
“I’m not!”
“Prove it.”
“I’ll shove them overboard myself,” said the ranger.  “We need the bait anyways.”
“Excuse me?” asked Maurice. 

“Shut up.  And that’s proving nothing if there’s nothing there to eat them.  Nah, you want to prove you’re in?”  Shoot ‘em first.”
“Excuse me?” asked Maurice. 

“Shut up!” shouted the ranger.  “Where the hell do you get off, listening to a couple of idiots over me!  I’ve put my goddamned career on the line for you morons, I planned this, and-”

“Excuse me,” said Maurice to me, “but please be very quiet.”

“Shut up!” yelled Pat.

“Shut up!” shouted the ranger.

“What?” I asked.

Then something the size of a freight train hit the boat and everything was very complicated for a while. 

***

It was easy to be quiet.  Everyone else was making so much noise for a while that all I had to do was tread water until the lake was smooth and placid again.  That, and try not to scream. 

“I thought,” I managed to get out as I pulled a lifejacket off what had once been a torso, “that you said they were peaceable creatures?”
“Oh they are,” said Maurice in all earnestness.  He’d already taken his own lifejacket off the ranger.  “Very harmless, wouldn’t hurt a fly.  Unless it woke them up, of course, which isn’t surprising when it got an earful of all that name-calling getting put on broadcast.  Quite ill-tempered when their dreams get interrupted, let me tell you.  Why do you think we used a canoe instead of something with a motor?”
“I thought you were just being cheap.”
“Well, it would also save on funeral costs, so in a manner of speaking, you were correct.  That outboard was my big hint that we were dealing with some profoundly ignorant characters – quite shameful in a park employee, too.  That’s the trouble with hunting prey that lets you retire after one harvest: nobody successful stays in the business long enough to teach the up-and-comers anything useful.  I certainly think they’ve learned their lesson.”

“Not going to do them much good like this,” I said.  More pieces were starting to bob their way to the surface. 

“Educational moments: created by the individual, enjoyed by the masses.  That’s exactly what a documentary is all about, Tom.  Do you think you could get some footage of this?”
“I dropped the camera.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” said Maurice. 

And there was another argument after that, but it was all in good spirits no matter how hot the language got.  It was amazing how determined to be happy a little sudden death could make you. 

Once upon a time there were three brothers: eldest, middle, and youngest.  Eldest was the best and youngest was the worst and middle was in-between.

“Eldest brother, can you go out and milk the cows for us?” their mother would ask him.  And he would do so immediately and did a good job, even if it cramped his hands and hunched his back. 

“Middle brother, can you go out and chop wood for us?” their father would ask him.  And he would say yes, and maybe he wouldn’t remember, but then his father would cough twice and say something about a dying fire and middle brother would rush out to the woodshed in such a hurry he’d forget his jacket before cutting enough firewood to set the house ablaze.

“Youngest brother, can you weed the crops?” their mother would ask him.  And he would say yes, but then never do it. 

One day, their parents called them all together to announce something very important.  “We are very, very old and will soon die,” they said to them.  “When we do, it’s of crucial importance that you follow these instructions exactly: go to our graves, thank your grandmothers and grandfathers, thank their grandmothers and grandfathers, and then promise to be good children.  Can you do that for us?”
Of course all three brothers vowed that they would do this.  And so their father and their mother both passed away peacefully. 

On that day eldest brother was the first to arrive at the tombstone, and he stood there and remembered their words.  “I thank my grandmothers and my grandfathers.  I thank their grandmothers and their grandfathers.  I promise to be a good child.”

Then he went home and slept peacefully.

Middle brother arrived a little late and out of breath from running – he’d nearly forgotten.  He almost fell over on his parents’ grave as he wheezed and gasped, but eventually he stood back upright, finished panting, and spoke. 

“I thank my grandmothers and my grandfathers.  I thank their grandmothers and their grandfathers.  I promise to be a good child.”

Then he went home, and it took him some time to drift off, but in the end he slept until past dawn. 

Youngest brother didn’t go at all because he had lied to his parents.  He stayed at home and ate a big supper and drank fine wine and toasted himself over and over and made no promises to anyone but himself and all of those promises were “I’ll have another glass, thank you!”

But as youngest brother drank long into the night his eyes hung heavy.  And try as he might, he couldn’t resist the pull of one more bite, one more sip, one more brag.  By the time he realized what was happening it was far too late: the night would never end.  Youngest brother was held fast in the iron hands of his own guilt, turning every second to a thousand hours, and he would never break free. His own oldest brothers found him the next morning, stone dead, and his body was that of a man twice the age of either of their parents. 

***

“Now,” asked the storyteller, “what have you children learned?”
“Mmmmm,” muttered the first child.  “Errr.  Uhm.  Lying is bad?”
“Close!  Anyone else?”
“Always keep your promises, especially to your family,” said the second child, sitting bolt upright and clear-eyed. 

“Well done!”
“I don’t think youngest brother deserved that,” said the third child.  “What kind of parent asks their children to make a promise that will kill them if they mess it up?”
“It’s a metaphor, third child,” said the storyteller.  “You can learn about those when you’re older.  Now, all three of you, this is your turn: try and make your own stories.  You’ve heard hundreds of mine, all teaching you very important things, and it’s time you showed what you learned!  Come back to this spot tomorrow with a story of your very own, and you can be storytellers too someday.”
“Do we HAVE to?” asked the third child.

“Shoo!” said the storyteller. 

So they left.

***

The next day was bright and beautiful.  Storyteller sat on a stump and smoked the storyteller’s pipe and thought on how fine and wonderful a thing it was, to tell stories and give guidance to the young.  And as the last ashes faded away from the pipe, on came the children: first, second, and third. 

“Ah, my storytellers-to-be have returned!  Now, sit down, sit down.  Tell me your tales.  You first!”
So the first child stood up and mumbled and coughed and began to speak. 

***

Once upon a day there was a dog.  And this dog was very good.  It was a great dog.  It liked to… to eat and to sleep.  But it wasn’t lazy!  It helped out a lot.  Around the house.  But in a dog way?  Because dogs don’t have hands.  He barked when people came to the door and things and anyways this dog was asleep once when a stranger came to the door, and he said hello to the people in the house, but they were asleep too because the dog was asleep so it didn’t bark and they didn’t hear him come in.  And he stole all their food and ate it in one bite.  So it was the dog’s fault.  But the dog knew she had to fix it and she chased after the man.  And bit him.  The dog bit him a whole lot.  And then uh. 

Uh. 

Uhh….

The man… gave back the food.

And the dog was happy so he went home and gave it to the people and it wasn’t the dog’s fault THE END.

***

“Well,” said the storyteller.  “That was pretty good.  Maybe a tiny bit… all-at-once, but very good.  Strong moral impulses.”

“Wait, how did the man give back the food if he ate it?” asked the third child. 

“Shush,” said the storyteller.  “Now, which of you will go next?”
“I will,” said the second child, upper lip stiffening visibly.

“Very good!  Go ahead, go ahead.”

So the second child stood up, ramrod-straight, coughed once very particularly, and spoke in clear, enunciated tones,

***

Once upon a time there were three brothers: oldest, in-between, and youngest.  Oldest was the best and littlest was the worst and in-between was neither.  Oldest brother would do as he was told, in-between would forget but do it anyways, and littlest would lie.

One day, their parents made them promise never to be rude or mean or nasty.  All three of them promised to do that, and littlest brother lied because he was evil.  But the other two brothers knew he lied, and so they took him and threw him off a cliff for being evil, and their parents were very happy with them. 

The moral of the story is that evil must be stopped at all costs.

***

“Oh.” said the storyteller.  “Well, that was very… clear.”

“Thank you,” said the second child.  “I wanted the moral to be very strong.”
“It’s moral to throw your brother off a cliff?” asked the third child. 

“Talk less about other people’s stories and more about your own,” said the storyteller.  “It’s your turn now.”

“Okaay,” said the third child.  And then the story began, without so much as standing up first. 

***

Once upon a time there were three children in a small village.  All three of them had parents that were very busy and needed to get lots of things done, so they sent them to work for the local blacksmith, pumping the forge.

Having all of those children working for him made the blacksmith feel mighty important.  He stood there at the forge smelting iron and forging tools and told himself over and over that the children were there because they wanted to be, because their parents wanted them to be, because he was the most important person in the village. 

“Truly,” he said, “nothing would get done around here without me!  On my shoulders this community lies!  I am here to teach all the value of hard work: with it, anything may be done!”  And he told himself this and things like it a dozen times a day, and the more he did, the more he ran the forge and the more tired the children got from working the big leathery bellows all day. 

One day, the first child didn’t come in, because they were sick from being exhausted pumping at the blacksmith’s forge. 

“Well, that just goes to show that some people don’t appreciate hard work!” said the blacksmith.  “You two are good children, and will pump harder!”

So they pumped harder.

The next day, the second child didn’t come in, because they were too tired to wake up after pumping at the blacksmith’s forge.

“Excuses, excuses!” said the blacksmith.  “You are the only one around here who’s paid PROPER attention to me.  Now you and I will get some things done!”
But the next day, the third child didn’t come in, because their hands were a blistered mess and their arms were strained from heaving the heavy bellows at the forge all day on their own, and the blacksmith had nobody to help him. 

“Well, that’s fine!” said the blacksmith.  “It’s normal for the industrious and earnest to suffer the slings and arrows of a lazy and needy community!  I shall shoulder my burden alone, as I am the only person who can get it done properly!”  So he took up his bellows himself, and heaved, and pumped. 

But the blacksmith had pulled the bellows so very little over the past few days that his arms were as thin as sticks, and it only wheezed onto the fires no matter how hard he tugged.  The only hot air that day was inside him, and by the time he went to bed it had all leaked out as he struggled and failed, leaving him a tiny little man as small outside as he was inside.

***

They sat there. 

“Did I do a good job?” asked the third child. 

“Buzz off, you little pissant,” said the storyteller. 

And so the children did, with confusion and frowns and big bright smiles. 

The storyteller refilled the storyteller’s pipe and smoked it down to the dregs four times over, looked at the big bright sky, and sighed. 

“I hate children.” 

Thez sat, surrounded by crinkled food wrappings, and watched a star die.

For the seven hundredth day in a row.

Proper days of course, not the star’s local system’s days.  All three of its planets had been tidally locked; fried crisp on one side and frozen solid on the other.  But those world’s days were long gone; the star’s bloating senescence had swallowed them up one after another and now it was the only thing left in its system, a terribly empty ball of gnawing, churning, dying fire. 

Very poetic AND very informative to the thousands of instruments that filled Thez’s ship.  But after seven hundred days of anything, the awe and the thunder of it always started to fade just a little, no matter how sincere your appreciation.

Thez, for instance, was only watching with two of her eyes.  Her third (installed on the back of her head on a dare in her student days) was preoccupied with some Sol system dramas playing on her personal journal, the real shitty kind with one thousand years of convoluted backstory and eight hundred characters, all of whom had sixty secrets each.

Lois Lane had just suspected that Clark Kent was Superman.  Thez’s toes curled in anticipation. 

“Proximity alert,” interjected the calm, neutral voice of her ship. 

Well, shit.  Had one of the others drifted a few tens of thousands of miles off course?  There were dozens and dozens of other vessels here to watch the fireworks; reality prospectors looking to make a quick buck from the torn seams of space and time the star’s corpse would leave; fellow scientists out to harvest some juicy thesis data or tweak a paper; tease-riders who were here to experience the sweet sweet agony of waiting for literal years for a proper BANG.  But most of them preferred to stay still and wait after their initial explorations for a proper observation post.

Maybe this was someone new. 

“Unauthorized docking,” commented her ship.  “Boarders arriving.”

Oh.  This was piracy. 

***

“I can’t believe she never noticed,” said the pirate for the sixteenth time. 

“He looks completely different when he’s Clark,” said Thez.
“Please.  It’s just posture and expression.  Same build.  Same face.  Same hair.”
“He styles it differently.”
“Oh like that matters.  Anyone can see it’s the same hair.”
“Lois can’t.”
“Because she’s an IDIOT.”
“She’s a reporter.”
“This is exactly why we have drones do news research.  This woman here.  Precisely her.”
“Well, I still like her.”
“You just think she’s hot.”
Thez drew herself up with all the dignity she could vaguely recall possessing at some point, possibly during graduation.  “Do NOT,” she said.

“Do so,” said the pirate.  She took a swig from one of Thez’s beverages, but she didn’t make any complaints.  There was still a gun pointed at her, however casually. 
“And anyways, you’re all over Clark.”
“Damn straight.  Boy’s a ten.”
“He’s gormless as a gutless fish!”
“All an act.”
“What, you want a liar?”
“Lying’s a good skill in my trade.”
“Piracy.”
“No,” said the pirate, somewhat peevishly.  “Academia.  This is just a side-gig.”

“Really?  What’s your field?  And why the piracy?”
“’Branes,” said the pirate.

“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“My sympathies.”
“It’s fine.”
“I mean, you know.  It’s just funny that, how it all makes perfect sens-”

“It’s FINE.  Stop talking about it.”
“Sorry.”

“It’s fine, fine, fine, fine, fuckity fine-fine-fine-fine-finerino, fine fine Finnegan’s finewake,” chanted the pirate.  Then she shotgunned Thez’s beverage, crushed the can on her forehead, buried her head in her arms and burst into tears.

Thez wanted to hug her, but the gun was still pointed at her.

“Proximity alert,” interjected the still very calm voice of the ship.

The pirate continued to cry. 

“It’s… probably nothing,” said Thez.  The gun wasn’t particularly big, but they didn’t need to be unless you had some sort of fetish for inefficiency. 

“Unauthorized docking.  Boarders incoming.”
“Let me do the talking?”
The pirate’s aim didn’t waver, but she made no protests.

***

“This beer is shit,” said the professor.

“It’s not beer,” said Thez.  “It’s tea.”
“No wonder it’s shitty beer then,” said the professor.  She took a swig anyways, belched, and threw the beverage can into the waste disposal.  “Ten points!”
“I’m still ahead.”
“You’re a grad, your points are worth half as much,” said the professor, the smugness that infested her very soul intensifying.  God, Thez hated her.  She hated her so much.  Hate hate hate.  And of all the godawful times to schedule her academic checkup.  The far side of a dying star was too close by half already, and now they were in the same ship. 
“That’s not fair.”
“And that’s just realistic.”
“Realism is overrated.”
“Reality,” mumbled the pirate, head still buried in her arms, “doesn’t matter a flicking fistworth of fly-spit on a fucking tarmac.”

The professor looked at Thez. 

“She studies ‘branes,” explained Thez.

“Oh dear,” said the professor.  And she very gently gave the pirate a hug.
“’M fine,” she mumbled.

“Of course you are, dear,” shushed the professor.  “Of course you are.  There there.  There there.”
Thez picked up another beverage.  She was getting a lot better about not noticing the gun pointed at her by now.  She wondered if the pirate’s arm was starting to hurt. 

“Proximity alert,” chimed in the ship. 

“Oh, fuck off.”
“Proximity alert.”

***

After the next two dockings they all sort of blurred together.  Some arrived out of curiosity; some arrived looking to be rescuers; some arrived just because everyone else was doing it.

At some point everyone moved out of Thez’s ship to the pirate’s, which was larger and more comfortable and most importantly had muted the ship’s proximity alert for professional reasons long ago, which was much more relaxing.  No matter how calm and neutral the alarm sounded, sooner or later you hated its guts. 

“Good party,” said the professor, who was wearing one of the pirate’s sweaters backwards and upside down.
“This isn’t a party,” said Thez.

“Tell the news drone in the corner.  It’s switched over from science reporting to sapient-interest piece in the last ten minutes.”
“Fuck!” said Thez.

“Oh, hush up.  Live a little.  You’re only young once.”

“Easy for you to say.”
“Damn straight.”
The pirate mumbled something and the professor handed her another beverage.

“Are you trying to get her drunk?” asked Thez suspiciously. 

“No.  It’s tea.”
“Are you trying to lower her inhibitions?”
“I have nothing but honorable intentions towards a fellow academic.”
“She’s pointing a gun at me, so you’d better.”
“I know!”

The ship’s speakers made a small but precise ‘ting’ sound, and another vessel docked into the tethered fleet. 

***

Thez woke up upside down and hung over and surrounded by food wrappings and crushed beverage cans and awful, half-shadowed memories.

There had been an argument.  Yes, there had been an argument.  An argument about whether or not the professor could crush more cans on her forehead in a minute than she could.  And at some point she’d realized that she’d save time if she crushed the cans when they were still full. 

It had been very sensible at the moment, and everyone else had agreed that it was such a good idea.

She was never, ever, ever, ever going to drink ethanol teas again. 

Hell on earth it was dark in here.  Where was she?

“Multiple unlicensed dockings,” said a calm neutral voice.

Oh.  She was back on her ship again. 

“Multiple unlicensed dockings.”
And it was still so dark, so dark because – oh. 

Thez checked the computers to make sure.

Yes, the star had finished collapsing before she woke up. 

That had been some…night?  She’d never had relativistic forces be a party game before.  Or done shots from a gun’s barrel.  Or a lot of other things she couldn’t quite remember and probably would very carefully avoid recalling. 

“Multiple unlicensed dockings.”
With any luck, her ship’s data harvest had collected things on her own.  As long as the party hadn’t damaged it, or they hadn’t turned them off on a dare, or one of a million hilariously fun disasters hadn’t targeted them, or, or, or, or.

“Multiple unlicensed dockings.”

“’urn it offfff…” mumbled the pirate beside her. 

Thez turned off the ship’s proximity alarm, gently threw the gun out of the bed, and snuggled down under the covers. 

So her grad work was done, one way or another.  However it was, that was nice.  It was nice to be done. 

Maybe this was something new. 

It was a beautiful day outside.  Fresh, golden, blue and cloudless.

“Tima, look after your sister.”
And just like that the whole thing was ruined. 

“But moooooooom,” she said in her most reasonable voice, “she’s BIG now, and-”

“No buts.  Go and pick out the flowers for the meal.”

And that was the Firm Voice, so she pouted but did it.  She took her flower-bag and her little sister’s hand and her pout and she stalked into the meadows with ill grace.

Bip wasn’t a bad sister, honestly.  But she was so small, and stupid in that way only very clever and very young children could be.  A cat was the only creature as troublesome.  So while in theory all she had to do was thrust her own (very small) flower-bag into Bip’s hands and say ‘fill this’ and ignore her, in practice she spent a busy who-knows-when picking over a very fine bush before she looked up and realized that Bip had gone missing exactly one who-knows-when ago. 

“Fuck,” she said, because mom wasn’t around and these things needed to be cherished even in the face of disaster.  “Double fuck with peppers,” she said, because innovation was to be embraced, and then “fuck,” because three was a good rhythmic number for anything. 

Then she started looking. 

“Bip?” she called in the meadow.

“Bippy?” she called under the flowerbushes. 
“Bippy mo mippy!?” she yelled in the shrublands. 
“Bip you little shithead!  WHERE ARE YOU?” she screamed in the forest.

Silence.  There would’ve been at least a giggle.

No, her little sister wasn’t there.  Which meant she was somewhere else, the one somewhere else she hadn’t checked yet because it was no fun and no good and just generally a bad time – not brutal, not painful, just wearisome and dreary.

Her little sister had gone off to see the dead.  Which meant she had to go too.

Ugh.

***

The gateway to the village of the dead was very pretty.  Smooth-polished stone, well-cut, and surrounded with carefully-groomed flowerbushes.  A bird’s-nest had been eked out atop the archway.  Probably a crow’s.  They liked crows. 

Tima had always thought it was all a bit insincere though.  You kept the gateway of the dead as pretty as a postcard for them, but you never visited unless it was a holiday. 

Or, apparently, if you were Bip and all you had to do was pick flowers with your big sister for more than five minutes.

She was absolutely going to give her shit over this. 

And with that thought to keep her warm and angry inside, Tima walked into the village of the dead and fell over, which was normal.

“Oh dear,” said a dry, dry, dry voice, and a brittle hand helped her up.  That was normal too.

“Are you alright?”

“Fine.  Thanks,” said Tima shortly.  The dead fussed over her a little anyways, brushing off dust and dirt and making annoyed noises.  She thought they might’ve been a relative once.  Maybe a great-great aunt?  Or a granduncle.  It was hard to keep track of your living relatives, once the dead got involved things got messy fast.  Best to let them care about it instead of you.  They had the time. 

“Have you seen Bip?” she asked. 
“Who?”
“My little sister.”
“Not sure, not sure.  Was just passing by, you know?  I had to go get some flowers and a crow-feather, so I was headed to the gateway.”
“You aren’t allowed out.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to go OUT, just put my arm out.  Sometimes the crows give you things if you ask nicely and have a few treats for them.  They like marbles.”

“You have marbles?”
“Why not?  Barrie makes them.”
Tima wondered how old Barrie was, and how long he’d been forgotten down here, and then she realized she was asking pointless questions in her head and dropped it like a hot brick.  “Thank you,” she said, because her mother had taught her long ago that rude thoughts in your head went away if you put polite words out of your mouth.

“Oh it’s nothing.  Best of luck.”
They must not have been a very old dead.  One of the things everyone knew was true: luck was for life.  The dead happened when it all ran out. 

***

Tima started with the obvious places first, the landmarks.  The places a curious not-quite-a-toddler-anymore would glimpse and scamper straightaway towards, wanting to get a closer eyeful. 

Bip wasn’t in the village square, where the dead merchants gave away bread and raisins for free to long patient lines of shoppers. 

Bip wasn’t in the cold forest, with its icicle trees and its snowflake bats that meeped and chuckled. 

Bip wasn’t playing in the sand at the edge of the wine-dark eversea, with its single towering wave that loomed up above the horizon and made the sun shimmer through it like a curtain. 

Bip wasn’t in the thickets at the edge of town, where the roads dissolved and the paths grew thin and the air was choked up with pollen and must and thick wetland air. 

Bip wasn’t even at her grandmother’s house, which was so new and shiny that it was barely even rotten yet.  Tima sat and had a cup while grandmother fussed over her and showed off all her new dead possessions, like her pet mice and her books and her clock with no hands that never needed to be wound. 

“It’s so nice,” she told Tima, “just to rest.”
“Yes,” she said.  “But I’ve got to find Bip first.”
“Oh, there’s no rush, no rush at all.  Things will happen.  That’s what being alive is all about, isn’t it?”

***

Tima was getting fed up with being alive.  It was very stressful when you were in the village of the dead; like being the only person wearing a hat on a sunny day.  People’s nods and cheery smiles seemed mocking, and it was a terrible battle not to scowl at them.  It was very rude to be angry with the dead, her mother had always said.  Mind you, her mother always told her to keep an eye on Bip, so she was already breaking some rules today. 

“Have you seen my little sister?” she asked the dead burglar, who was jimmying a window open. 

“No,” she said patiently.  “I’m very busy today.  There are lots of locks to snap.  It’s dangerous to leave things locked up here.”
“Have you seen Bip?” she asked the dead ferrywoman. 

“Nope,” she said.  “I’m fishing.  Can’t fish without paying attention, and I don’t think a little kid would be interested in that.”
“You’re really right,” said Tima. 

“No need to be grumpy about it.”

“Have you seen my stupid little sister?” she asked the dead fish. 

They flopped at her insolently on the dry bottom of the riverbed. 

“Stupid fish,” she told them, because there was no rule against insulting dead who were animals, and that made her feel better. 

“You’ll hurt their feelings,” admonished the dead ferrywoman.

“They don’t feel it.”
“No, but I do.  Why do you think my line has no hook?  Go get your sister and leave me be.”
“I would, but I can’t find her!” shouted Tima.  “None of you stupid dead know a thing about where she is!”
“Of course I know where she is,” said the dead ferrywoman.  “She’s on the isle of the ogre, being baked into a pie.”
“What!?  But you said-”

“I said I hadn’t seen her,” said the dead ferrywoman.  “And I haven’t.  But I hear a lot, sitting out here and keeping quiet.”
“How-”

“The fish, mostly.  Now go away.  You’re scaring them off.”

So Tima said “thank you” in her most begrudging and least sincere voice and left the ferrywoman and her fish behind as she trudged through the dusty riverbed all the way to the dry lake that held the isle of the ogre, which was mostly caked and crusted mud, thick with fibrous algae and sludgy with long-gone lakelife. 

“Hold still,” said a big grumbly voice as she approached the shanty-shack that took up most of the island’s peak. 

“I ammmmm,” said Bip – and it was definitely Bip, in high whine-form.  Nothing could cut through the air like a properly aggrieved Bip.  “But I’m bored, and it TICKLES.”
“It’s meant to tickle,” said the ogre, who was probably the ogre.  “It’s pepper.”
“It’s in my nooooooACHOO!”
“Careful!  Now I’ll need to add more pepper.”
“But it TICKLES!”
“But it’s meant to!”
Tima kicked open the door, and the first thing she saw was the ogre’s pepper-grinder, which was enough to capture her imagination for a long time.  Surely nothing needed that many teeth that wasn’t a shark?  Surely it didn’t need to be the precise size and shape of a cannon?  Surely, surely, surely. 

“It’s made from a cannon,” said the ogre defensively. 

“Oh,” said Tima.  She’d been thinking aloud again.  “Sorry.”

“That’s fine,” said the ogre, putting down the grinder one-handed.  “Is this your sister, Bip?”
“Uh-huh,” said Bip, who was picking at the edge of the pie crust.  The dish was bigger than their bathtub at home, and a lot deeper.

“And what did we agree on, Bip?”
“… I got to be in a pie?”

“No, Bip.”
“Please?”
“No, Bip.”
“Pleeeease?”
“You’re going home right now,” said Tima, who recognized this conversation and also how to mercifully nip it in the bud.  “And if you don’t tell her I wasn’t paying enough attention to you, I won’t tell her about how you tried to get yourself made into a pie.”

Bip pouted – and it was a good pout, all lower lip and burning sulkiness – but it was a white flag of an expression.  Tima had won, even if she hadn’t received the announcement of it.

“I take it we’re done here?” asked the ogre politely. 

“Yes please thank you,” said Tima.  “Sorry about your pie.”
“Oh, it’s no problem.  I wouldn’t have put her in the dish, but she insisted.  Wouldn’t stop talking about how I had to do it because it was in all the stories.”

“She’s pretty little,” said Tima.  “Sorry.”
“No, no, god no.  That’s where all the fun is.  Best have it while you can.”
“Here,” said Tima, and she threw her flower-bag to the ogre, who caught it in her big paws. 

“What’s this?”
“Some fun,” said Tima.  And she left, before she thought too much about why she did things.

Her mother would’ve said something about ‘building character.’

***

Bip was quiet all the way home – first from sulk, then from thought, then from exhaustion.  It was always an uphill walk out of the village of the dead. 

“Promise you won’t tell?” she blurted out as the gateway came into sight. 
“Won’t tell what?” asked Tima. 

“Won’t tell that –”

“Already forgot it,” Tima said hastily.  Maybe in a few years she’d understand figures of speech a bit better.  “It’s okay.”  And it was, which surprised her. 

“But I wasn’t supposed to see the dead.”
“Says who?”
“Says everyone.”
“Bippy, everyone says that, but nobody means it.”

Bip’s face did that thing where it turned inside out.  “Whaaaaatttt?”
“Mom says if we didn’t see the dead now and then nobody’d understand anything about everything.  It’s not allowed, but you’ve got to do not allowed things or else you’re not properly alive.”

“Oh,” said Bip. 

“And you’re not allowed to say any of that to anyone.”
“But you told-”

“What did I just say about doing not allowed things?” demanded Tima, and the puzzled silence while Bip worked that one out followed them both all the way home to mother.

She could see why people liked teaching things.  It was almost as fun as teasing.  And that satisfaction lasted her all the way through her scolding for losing her flower-bag. 

It had been a very good century for the people of Pallist.  At its dawn they hadn’t known anything about anything, and by its conclusion they knew everything about everything.

They didn’t know anything about the sky.  So they sent up balloons full of instruments and big metal tubes full of cameras and eventually small noxious capsules crammed full of bodies and then they felt satisfied enough to proclaim themselves experts.

They didn’t know anything about the sea.  So they dragged it with great nets and diligently recorded and named the strange things that died, gasping, on the decks of their ships; and plumbed it with radars and sensors; and sent down small but invincible robots with fiendish sample jars and mechanical arms, and by the end of THAT they were confident that they could be called its masters.

As above, so below.  Above and below were both known, so that put an end to that alright.  And throughout the classrooms and lecture-halls and churches of Pallist there was a great satisfaction and reassurance, bordering on smugness.  It was good to be in the know, and what was left to know?  Five years left until century’s end and they had mastered it all.

This was very dissatisfying to adjunct-professor Hilbert.  But nobody listened to him. 

His colleagues wouldn’t listen to him because he was just an adjunct-professor.  His students wouldn’t listen to him because he was still technically a professor.  His administrators wouldn’t listen to him because he wasn’t their boss. 

“How good it is, to know everything!” they would all say. 

“Well, not quite EVERYTHING,” he told them.

“Yes indeed!” they all said.  And then they went back to not even pretending to pay him any attention. 

In retrospect, this might have been the last point at which someone could have easily done something.  Five minutes of some generous stranger’s life and that would’ve been enough.

Well, maybe ten.

Fifteen?

***

Adjunct-professor Hilbert was going on sabbatical.

“You don’t get sabbaticals,” his administrators told him.  “You’re an adjunct-professor.”
“It’s very, very, very important,” he told them earnestly.  “I’m on the cusp of finding out everything we don’t know about everything.”
“We know everything about everything already,” they told him.

“No we don’t.”

“You’re fired.”
He left the building unusually determined and cheerful for a man who’d just gotten sacked without leave, but nobody was paying attention to ex-adjunct-professor Hilbert.  This had its advantages, because he got to bring home all his personal belongings and also some interesting odds and ends from a few of his former colleagues’ laboratories. 

Nobody suspected Hilbert.  How can you suspect someone that doesn’t exist?

***

Ex-adjunct-professor Hilbert’s husband was worried about him. 

“I’m worried about you,” he told Hilbert.

“That’s nice,” said Hilbert, who was up to his elbows in something on top of their roof under a downpour at midnight.  “Can you bring me some tea, please?  It’s a bit nippy.”
Ex-adjunct-professor Hilbert’s husband – whose name was Bernie – sighed and groused and called him out very thoroughly inside his head but still went ahead and got him some tea. 

“What does this thing do again?” asked Bernie as he handed Hilbert his tea (chacomale, with a squirt of lamenn). 

“Oh, it finds things,” said Hilbert.  “Things nobody’s paid attention to; things we don’t know anything about.”

“But we know everything about everything,” said Bernie.  “We know everything about everything above us, and we know everything about everything below us.  What else is there?”
“The horizon,” said Hilbert. 

“What about it?”
“What indeed,” said Hilbert smugly.  Then he chugged his tea and sent Bernie back with the mug and responded to further questioning by pretending he was deaf, something that he was very fond of despite being thirty-five and in possession of perfectly adequate health and genes.

Bernie felt bad about this later, but realized (correctly) that there hadn’t been any chance in hell he could’ve changed his husband’s mind.  Everyone needs someone to ignore, even the most ignorable of us – and once they’ve found them, they never let go. 

***

Of course, Bernie wasn’t the only person who had a chance to be let in on some of the details of what was afoot.  Careful retracing of Hilbert’s weekly routine allowed for some witnesses to be found after the fact.

“Distances should be clear,” he said.  “Precise.  Measurable.  None of this – this – this perspective helps with that.  Lies and nonsense, all of it!  Look at my finger – see?  Does it REALLY seem smaller now that it’s farther away?  Look at it again – see?  Does it REALLY seem bigger now that it’s closer.”
“Please get your finger out of my face, sir.”
“This is very important!  It’s about the TRUTH!”

“Sir, you need to let go of the cart.  It belongs to the store.”
“The TRUTH!  And that’s why I need this grocery cart.  To give us all the truth.  To damn the illusions that reality has swathed us in.  To eat away at the ignorance that has stultified our collective consciousness like a wet warmed blanket.  To show us all what we’ve been missing!”
“Let.  Go.  Of.  The.  Cart.”
“MURDER!” screamed Hilbert.  “HELP!”  And while the stockswoman was busy calming down the startled flocks of senior citizens and rubberneckers that heard THAT nonsense, ex-adjunct-professor Hilbert absconded with his grocery cart. 

It had been one of the only ones without a sticky wheel, she recalled.  That really sucked. 

***

The neighbours complained.  The hammering was going on too long and loudly, to say nothing of the chainsaw.  Very strongly-worded and stern letters were left on Hilbert and Bernie’s doorstep by the bushel, and Bernie read them thoroughly before forwarding on the most persuasive to Hilbert, who shredded them for use as insulation in the cryonic compartment of his mechanism, which now covered their entire roof and was beginning to ooze off its sides like melting ice cream. 

“What is that thing?” inquired their next door neighbour suspiciously.  Her name was Beetrace, and she was very old and very tolerant of weirdness.  But she preferred it to be happening somewhere else, to someone else. 

“A tool,” called down Hilbert. 

“What for?”
“To murder the horizon.”
“Oh,” said Beetrace.

Then she went back indoors and called the police.  They thanked her for her time and said they’d send someone over as soon as they got around to it, which was never.

***

Four months later the science reporters and chief editors of the Alembic, the Macroscope, the Files Quarterly, and every paper of Pallist received a letter.

Dear sirs and madams and all others.

This night I will pierce the final, unknown veil of ignorance that pervades our great land: the one that is so comfortable and known to us that we cannot perceive of its limitations.  I speak, of course, of the horizon.  Too long has it hidden our world from itself through this paltry medium of ‘distance.’  What the hell is distance anyways?  Garbage, that’s what.  A needless constraint forced upon our eyes and minds by curvature and deceit! 

I, ex-adjunct-professor Boran Hilbert, intend to discard that deceit.  Tonight.  History is in the making at eight o’clock.  Be there promptly, please.  And bring some cameras. 

All of the recipients immediately sorted it into their trash without reading past the first headline, with the exception of the Beddergle Bugle, which needed a local interest column and had about four hours left to get it filled. 

So they sent Stipley, who was the youngest and least likely to complain aloud about it. 

The traffic was bad and Stipley had to stop for gas, and thus was history preserved.  He arrived five minutes past in a terrible wheezing mess and had to stop and catch his nerves and get out his notepad and pen and go back for his pen and find it under his car’s seat and forget where his notepad was and find it in his left hand and swear for about thirty seconds and then he found the ladder leading up to the roof and had just put his hand on it when something went ‘bzop.’

It wasn’t a sound.  It was a feeling that ran through Stipley‘s hand and the ladder and the house and the ground and the air and everything, absolutely everything. 

He said it made his nose ache, or at least the space that comprised his nose, which he insisted to his grave was quite different. 

Then the ladder made sense. 

It made perfect sense.  Stipley could see every bit of it in direct relation to every other bit of it and its precise position in everything in every way, and it was the worst thing he’d ever seen. 

So he looked at the house.

He saw that too.  Perfect position.  Perfect location. 

Stipley, who at this point didn’t much care if he got fired, staggered away from the horrible, horrible, horrible place he’d been five minutes late to, towards his car, which might take him away.  He fumbled at the door-latch, confused by how he could see its exact proportions from every angle and that every angle was both everything and nothing, and in an effort to tear his eyes away from the angst of seeing something so boring and familiar turned into something so alien he made the grave mistake of looking up.

The Hilbert family home was atop a small hill that trailed down towards the lake.  It had a good, long view, and Stipley saw every inch of it. 

Every particle of it.

Every place in it. 

Every house, every tree, every leaf, every bit of asphalt, every speck of pavement, every (temporarily comatose) squirrel, every pebble, every wave.  And then his eyes crawled upwards, inexorably, and he saw that the horizon was gone. 

Or more precisely, dead. 

So Stipley saw all the way.  Mercifully for only a few seconds before he blacked out, but they were the longest seconds of his or indeed anyone else’s life.  Not that time or space meant much to him on that evening. 

***

At some point the machine went ‘bzip’ and everything went back to normal.  Bernie, who’d been napping, woke up with a start and went up to the roof to check on Hilbert.

He wasn’t there anymore.  He was the most not there anyone had ever been. 

***

It was a very, very sober dawn the next morning.  Some people sat in bed with their eyes shut; some made very strong tea (baronet bakely, with a splash of milt) and went outdoors to stare at the sky as hard as they could.  Some just fidgeted with their pens.  Everyone was thinking far too hard about not thinking about it.  And throughout the classrooms and lecture-halls and churches of Pallist there was a great terror and nervousness, bordering on hopelessness.

In the end, things didn’t go back to normal because normal is a negotiated subjectivity that doesn’t truly exist unchangingly but flows from the past into the present and towards the future only within human perceptions.  But Pallist’s perceptions of it never did go back to the way they’d been, and they never took as much pride in what they knew about the worlds above and below. 

The machinery that was taken from ex-adjunct-professor Hilbert’s roof was incomprehensible, besides the shopping cart.  It was returned, and it still didn’t have a sticky wheel, but it would only ever go in straight lines and was eventually donated to a museum because the lines were too straight to make sense and it drove four separate shoppers into nervous fits. 

Beetrace died in her sleep two days before the machine was turned on.  It probably had nothing to do with it. 

Bernie remarried six months later to a nice man who listened to him. 

The Beddergle Bugle had the most important exclusive ever known.  Six months later the paper folded, but Stipley had already quit and gone to live in a valley somewhere. 

Not one person ever claimed that they knew everything again.  Or spoke of the notion as if it would be good. 

Nobody blamed Hilbert.  How can you blame someone that doesn’t exist?

It was a quiet night.  No birds, no bugs, even the surf seemed to have shut its mouth.  Combined with the soft liquid afterglow of the sunset, and the whole world looked like it was ready for bedtime. 

Not that Eliza would be sleeping anytime soon.  It was rude to nap at a funeral, especially if you were half the guests and also responsible for taking a shift at the oars.

“Almost there?” she asked.

“Little bit,” said dad.  He was chewing his pipe again.  She’d still never seen him smoke.  Maybe that was what this was about; he wanted to make sure there were no witnesses before he lit up.  He was going to push her overboard to keep his secrets safe, just like the pirates of old. 

“How little?”
“You’ve got air enough to row,” he said.  His jaw flexed, and she wondered if he was just going to bite through the stem. 

Eliza sighed and wheezed and bent back to her task, and once again let her eyes brush over the bundle tied in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in sailcloth and the strongest mooring-line the docks could offer. 

If only her grandmother hadn’t been such a sturdy woman, this would be a lot easier. 

***

“That’ll do,” dad said.  “We’re in a good spot.  Has to be five fathoms.”

“Really?” asked Eliza, rubbing her arms.  “Why?”
“Don’t ask me, I don’t know.  This is a lot older than me, zizzy.  Older than granny too.”
“How do you know about it then?”
He nodded at the bundle.  “From when we sent off HER mama.  Now sit tight and keep an eye out, best as you can.  We don’t want to miss the start.”
“Start of what?  Shouldn’t we be putting her over?”  Not that she was in a rush or anything, but what was there to wait for?

“You’ll know it when you see it.  Trust me.”
So she sat, and she watched, and the rubbing of her arms turned from soreness to shivers as the dark cold air came rolling in with the night.  It was getting hard to see… whatever it was that she was looking for.  Not that there was anything to look for at all.  Smoky clouds, black sky, dark water, and a single little slice of something moving through the waves, rigid as a plank, intense and sure as a prowling mother.

Eliza pointed at the solitary shark-fin.  “Is that it?”
Dad nodded.  “Yep.  Good eyes.”
“Now what?”

“Now,” said dad, as he took off his cap and settled just a little more firmly into his seat, “we watch.”

***

It was hard to see until it came alongside the boat, slow and steady as it was.  Not much light left to work with, and the fish’s own countershading.  But it circled slow and steady closer still and at last it was close enough to touch as it patrolled, ramrod-stiff, soldier-sure, a hand’s-span from the  gunwhales. 

It was an awfully big shark, Eliza thought.  And they weren’t in a very large boat.  But dad was relaxed – no, not relaxed, but not nervous – and if he wasn’t worried she wasn’t about to show it either. 

And besides it wasn’t doing anything worrisome.  No bumps, no nudges, no mouthing.  Just a steady march, an endless spiral, each twist and turn of the ring coming with a barely-exaggerated roll of its sides to flash its milky underbelly into the night and show the strong curved line of its mouth, tight-shut. 

Then she saw the second fin. 

And the third.

And the fourth. 

She stopped counting at six and looked at dad, just to be sure.  He was still sitting, sucking his pipe, eyes wide but nostrils unflared. 

“Dad?” she prodded, just to be sure.

“More than I remembered,” he said.  “That’s all.  Keep watching.”
She turned back to the waves and the circling half-moons and tried to count them again.  This time she got up to sixteen before getting confused and second-guessing herself.  Were more of them coming in that quickly or were they already there, rising and fall beneath the surface?  Big and little and thick and slim, pointed-snouted and snub-nosed, there were so many of them, so many kinds.  A fat tiger, a needle-faced blue, a little slip of a thing with black-smeared fins, a slow and swaggering white-tip and a surly broad-sided bull, and so many more, from the length of Eliza’s arm to twice her height and more, dancing and revolving and turning just out of reach of the oars. 

However many there were, it doubled.  Then doubled again.  One more time.

And it was then, with the ocean more thick with sharks than water, that the singing began.

***

It was low and solemn and as weighty as a hammer-blow, and it pressed down with the force of a time that had nothing to do with clocks or calendars and everything to do with the grinding ache of geology, measured in accumulated drifts, in erosion, in speciation and extinction. 

There were no words and there was also no sound that came from no throat, no vocal chords, no lungs, not even a tell-tale splash.  Just waves and wind and darkness and the song, thick and heady and rich as blood in the water, swaying from side to side and vibrating up through the boat and into Eliza’s bones.

Dad’s pipe was quivering in his mouth.  So was his mouth.  So was his entire body. 

Eliza’s palms were itching like mad.  This wasn’t the first time, and she felt a moment’s deep regret for never asking granny about it before it was too late.  She might’ve told her a few things.

Of course, she hadn’t ever told her about THIS, so. 

Maybe it was because she’d never asked?

It was crawling deeper now, past the skin and muscle and calcium, up into the parts of her that watched.  She’d never really felt her own nerves-as-nerves before, but now they were lighting up, reporting on a sensation she’d never really imagined before: something just for them.  Living lightning, sparking and hissing from where her body moved, breathed, beat. 

Her freckles felt like they were glowing. 

Smell it.  Touch it.  Feel it.  She’d never imagined a song that appealed to every sense but the ears, but it was shockingly good and she wondered how they all knew the words, even if there weren’t any.  A lot of these animals – the ones she recognized – weren’t exactly social butterflies.  But they were flank to flank, tail to snout, mouths swallowing the same water and in each other’s spaces and there were no arched backs, no gaping jaws, no exaggerated swings of the skulls, just a smooth dance.  No personal space.  No space at all. 

There was no song.  The emptiness in everything screamed wide so hard that Eliza almost yelled. 

“Now,” said dad, and he sounded as loud and intrusive as a barking seal at a Sunday service.  “Help me with her.”

So she did, clumsy though her body felt in the thinness of the empty world above the real one, and as the heavy mass of sailcloth and mooring-lines slipped free from her hands into the water she could’ve sworn it felt more supple and flexible than it had when she brought granny aboard back on land.  But it was out of her hands now before she could think on it, and then it was sinking and the choir was in hot pursuit, mouths open wide now, jaws lunging from their bodies in lightning snaps, teeth aglitter with the very same last reflected scraps of light that made their eyes into little torchlights. 

Down, down, down, as the scraps of cloth and shreds of rope came free, a spiral inside a spiral, and then at its conclusion a stillness that made Eliza’s brain jump and her body freeze. 

Dad held up his hand. 

***

It was too dark to see now, but the fin was unmistakable anyways.  It poked up through the water almost shyly at first, hesitant, but then it built and built as the body beneath grew in strength and surety until it was full-sail, proud as a mainmast in full flight, steady as a drumbeat, alive as sure as anything that could be. 

She circled the boat once, twice, three times – close, then far, then close again.

And then she was gone. 

***

Dad lowered his hand.  “NOW it’s done,” he said.  And he threw his pipe overboard. 

***

Eliza had the oars the whole way back, but she didn’t complain and didn’t groan under it.  She was thinking.

At least now she thought she might have an inkling as to how granny had always brought back the best catches. 

Or why dad had married someone who’d never so much as seen the sea before she came to town with him. 

Or why he never swam himself, and had been so put out when she’d learned how, alongside all the other children – and such slow learners they’d been too. 

And, maybe, just maybe, why granny had always told her not to speak of her wisdom teeth, all sharp sixteen of them.

She didn’t share any of her thoughts.  Dad looked cross – although that might have been because of his pipe.  His lips were still trying to chew on something that wasn’t there. 

So they went back in silence – dull silence, not the kind they’d just lived through – and dad went inside and Eliza stowed the boat and the oars and stood up and bent over and without actually thinking it through crawled underneath it, inside it, and breathed in.

It was very dark and damp and it smelled of seawater and life and death.

Oh, it was right. 

It was very right.

But she had a long ways to go before she could be there, so she sighed away the air in her lungs and stood up on her legs and walked indoors, to the light and the land and her warm family, and put away her thoughts for a while.

They would be there when she was ready. 

The bell had tolled. 

The swan had sung.

And the sign on the front door had been swung from OPEN in blue to CLOSED in red.

Archmage Gilbert, master of the arcane arts and proprietor of Gil’s Diner, Souvenir Stand, and Bait Shop was close to death. 

Atop his highest chamber, three floors above the customer’s entrance, he summoned his employees by intercom and made manifest his will. 

“Apprentices,” he told them all, through jaundiced eyes and haggard beard-breath, “I am at death’s door.”
“Told you to quit smoking,” said Terry.

“Shut the fuck up, Terry.  Now I am due to leave this world, but for a wizard of my potency, such things are not inevitable.  When I die, leave the left window of my room open and I will return.  But I will not leave you to do this out of the goodness of your hearts – or even for the wage I pay you.”
“Below minimum,” said Terry.

“Shut the fuck up, Terry – and besides, I let you keep the tips.  Mostly.”  Archmage Gilbert coughed phlegmily.  “Now, stand you there and let me bequeath your inheritances.  George!”
George straightened up.

“As the chief oilaturgist of my diner, you have sweated and steamed over many carcasses animal, vegetable, and mineral alike.  To aid you in your further endeavours, I give unto you mine All-Fryer, which can bread and grease up just about anything you can fit in it – and most things will fit in it, if you try.”

George bowed low.  “Thank you, archmage Gilbert.”

“Yeah, yeah.  Krystal!”
Krystal saluted. 

“You have hawked many wares to many morons for many moons as my scammagician, and I respect that level of scheming in an apprentice.  To you I give my tricky scanner, whose laser will read any barcode not once not twice but three times, and will never give away what it’s up to through tell-tale beeps.  Charge everyone and spare no wallets.”
Krystal grinned.  “Will do, archmage Gilbert.”
“Wonderful thanks.  Terry!”
“What?” asked Terry.

“You have sold the least out of all three of my apprentices, and indeed the least of any apprentice I’ve ever had.  In fact, more than once I’ve caught you actively encouraging customers not to shop here but to go to Pete’s Prawnhooks down the road, and twice that I’ve heard of you’ve insinuated that I chop up people’s stray pets for chum.  As thanks for your unstintingly lousy job, I decree that you shall be thrown into the fibbling octobeast’s tank.”
“Hey-”

“Immediately.”
“Bu-”

“Chop chop!”

It took six minutes for her fellow apprentices to get Terry down the stairs, mostly because she wouldn’t stop biting.  In the meantime, and with great annoyance, archmage Gilbert, master of the arcane arts and proprietor of Gil’s Diner, Souvenir Stand, and Bait Shop, expired.

***

“Got any more band-aids?” asked George.

“Nope, used the last one on my finger,” said Krystal.  “Fucking hell that hurt.  Now we just need to go upstairs and open that window.”

There was a loud crunching noise.

“Fuck,” they agreed, and then they ran up the staircase two at a time until it ended on a splintered set of steps in the middle of the air.

Above them two great flocks of gulls capered in the sky, a thousand strong all told, angrily fighting over the crumbling remains of the third story of Gil’s Diner, Souvenir Stand, and Bait Shop and more specifically archmage Gilbert’s extremely mortal remains.  An agreement was reached when the body unspooled down the middle, and away they sped, screaming and shitting as they went.

“I’ll take the north flock,” said Krystal.  “That’s his left half.  That’s his good half.”
“I’ll the south flock,” said George.  “Can’t do much without a right half, even if it’s the bad half.”

And so the two former apprentices and employees of the great archmage Gilbert girded their loins and cleaned their teeth and packed up their toolbelts and set off.

***

Three hours later Terry finally got the flibbering octobeast to let her out of the tank.  It had been exceptionally clingy today, and kept hoping she’d give it extra treats. 

“No, I didn’t sneak any fries today, fuck OFF,” she told it as she pried the last hopeful tentaclaw from her shirt. “That’s a good boy.  Good fuck off.  Now where the hell is everyone?”
The lights were off, the fans were silent, and there was a note on the counter explaining everything in a rough sort of way. 

“Figures,” said Terry.  “Well, serves them right.  I’ll just clear out the safe and leave.”

Five minutes later she remembered Krystal had the safe key, broke a window, and crawled out. 

***

In the meantime, long had George quested southward, over hill and through dale, up and down and all around, to the farthest tip of the edge of the rim of downtown, where the restaurants lurked all along the waterfront and took the wallets of many a tourist.  He hadn’t seen feather nor flitter of a gull the whole way, but he was confident that he was on the right track.  Archmage Gilbert had given them some serious indigestion. 

At length the tell-tale white spatter ended at the rim of a great steel wall that soared up to nigh the height of the restaurant itself, a bin fit to trash creation, a garbage skip that could hold a dump in itself and have room for more.  And from high high up on its rim came the distant aaike aiiike awk awk awk awk awk of seagulls.

“There we are,” he said with satisfied surety, and so spitting swiftly, started to scale the surface.  But though George pulled and heaved and clambered until his arms were sorer than a monkey’s buttocks, the peak of the dumpster came no closer. 

“Haw!” came from below him.  “Looking for something?”
George looked down and then back up and was eye to eye with a great ogre of a restaurateur.  His teeth were tombstones and his eyes were deadly burning coals and he never stopped smiling. 

“Yes,” said George guarded, putting one hand to his belt.  “The remains of my late master, the archmage Gilbert.  They have been stolen by a flock of seagulls who reside atop your dumpster.”
“My dumpster, my property,” said the restaurateur unfeelingly.  “Code of the cooks.”
“Be that as it may,” said George stubbornly, “I am a cook myself.  And I know that if I challenge you to a fry-off, you’ll have no choice but to accept.  If I win, I claim my master’s body.”
“Sure!” said the restaurateur brightly.  “And if I win, I get to eat you!”
“Wait,” said George.

“Nah,” said the restaurateur.  “Starting now, time limit of five, we’ll use my kitchen.  GO!”
And they went, George unsheathing the all-fryer as he went.  With fury and vinegar and onion tears he roared through the degrees, pouring all his heart and soul and hope into the All-Fryer, which swallowed his every ingredient and begged for more.  Though the ogre’s cabinets were damp-sealed shut and his shelves seven feet and more off the ground, they finished at the same time. 

“Deep-fried hamburger salad with funnel cake rings,” said George, shaking clean the All-Fryer and sheathing it with a smug expression.
“Why, that’s just what I made,” said the restaurateur, with far too big a smile.  “I believe I win the tie, however.”
“What?  Why?”
“I also deep-fried my fryer.”
“Fuck!” swore George, but he was already shoulder-deep in the ogre’s mouth and vanishing fast and so he could do naught but flip the cheeky bastard the middle toe as he went down.

***

Krystal walked north and north until she found the place where the boardwalk ended, the long pier.  And at the tip of the long pier, on crumbling concrete and purest rust, huddled together for warmth and peevishness, stewed a full flock of gulls. 

“There you are,” said Krystal happily.  And she walked forwards to them, but the gulls saw her coming and noisily hopped into the water, swearing in bird words at her. 

“Hah!” cackled a creaking voice.  “You’ll never get close to them that way!”
Krystal looked up and saw that she was being watched by an ancient purveyor of beach glass knick-knacks of glittering eye and craggled sun-crisped ears.  “Mind your own business, you old fart,” she said politely.  “I’m just retrieving the body of my master, the archmage Gilbert.  Those flying rats have taken it.”
“Fat chance you’ll get it back,” sniggered the glass-seller, scratching at their chin until the flakes fell.  “But I can do it for you.”
“Hah!”
“BET I can do it for you.”
“Double hah!” said Krystal.  “Hah, then hah.  Now I’m going to go get it.”
So Krystal moved towards the end of the pier again, where the gulls had resettled, and she moved with all the silent and ingratiating grace of a true salesperson, nothing but a velvet touch and a warm smile and a comforting sunny aura that encouraged you to think that maybe the world wasn’t such a bad place after all and maybe you really were getting the long end of the stick this time, just because someone was such.  a.  nice.  guy.

The seagulls swore a blue streak at her and took off again.

“Shitlizards!” she screamed at them.

“Shitasaurs,” said the glass-seller.  “Those are dinosaurs, not lizards.  Bet you I can get to them before you can.”
“Not likely,” snorted Krystal. 

“Bet you a million dollars.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bet you five bucks.”
“Eat my shorts.”
“Bet you that shiny-looking hand scanner you got on your belt.”
“Sure, why not, see if I care.”
“Cool,” said the glass-seller.  Then she tucked her thumbs into her belt, hoisted up her singular pant, and strolled down to the end of the dock. 

“Nice day we’re having oh eh what’s going on here nice to see you nice to see you same shit different day eh nice weather oh but I heard it might rain later on can’t complain nobody’s listening hah hah hah you know me right don’t mind me just passing through-”

The gulls were dead asleep by the time the glass-seller stood among them. 

“How’s that then?” she called back, but Krystal too had been bored utterly unconscious, and so with a shrug the glass-seller took the tricky scanner from her belt and also her belt and also also her shoes. 

***

Terry moved slowly but surely, tracking footprints in fecal material, sniffing the air for bodyspray and fried foods and cheap plastic and strawberry shampoos.  She muttered as she walked, dark words from dark languages learned from prawn buckets and worm cases, invertebrate slurs that would make boneless bodies grow limp with horror. 

The anger kept her going all the way to the great gleaming surface of the dumpster, and atop it she heard the shrieks and roars of a seagull flock.  And beneath it she saw an ogre restaurateur taking a smoke break. 

“Hey there,” he said. 
“Fuck off,” she told him. 
“I like your attitude.  Hey, I ate someone that smelled sort of like you but less tentaclawy a while ago.”

“My co-worker,” said Terry.
“Yeah, they lost a bet.  Double or nothing?”
“What’d they bet you?”
“Oh, the body of some old guy up there.”
“Sure, I’ll take those prizes-”
“Great!”
“-and for the double I take them back too.”
“Aw shit.  Well, rules are rules.  I challenge you to a fry-off.”
“Your kitchen?”
“My kitchen.”
“Deal.”
The restaurateur’s mouth was only worse when grinned wide.  “Let’s go.”
Terry walked in and swore a blue streak.  “Fucking hell, seven-foot shelves?  Really?”
“Last guy didn’t complain.”
“Last guy wasn’t five foot three.  This isn’t fair!”
“Life isn’t fair,” said the ogre, with the warm glee of someone who had a lot to do with that. 

“Aw, c’mon.  Please?  Just give me a stepstool.  Please?”
“Nah.”
“Okay, fine.  But I need a fryer at least before we start.  That’s part of the setup.”
“Seems reasonable,” said the restaurateur, and he reached up and leaned over and pulled a fryer off the shelf and as he did so Terry kicked his feet out from underneath him and held him face-down in his own oil vat until he stopped squirming. 

“Something smells good out there,” said someone from around the ogre’s mid-gut.”
“Get out of there, George,” said Terry.  “Krystal in there with you?”
“No?  She went north.”
“Great.  Great.  Just great.  Listen, cut your own way out or whatever.  Bye.  It’s been shit working with you.”
“You too!” said George.  And as Terry walked out the door she heard the tell-tale hum of the All-Fryer’s blender attachment starting up.

***

Finding Krystal was easier.  Terry just walked north up to the pier and found her sitting on a park bench. 

“Hey.”
“Hey.  Didn’t we feed you to the fibbling octobeast?”
“Yeah.  You got the key to the safe?”
Krystal frowned.  “No?”
“Wow, great job.  Better take keyholder off your resume.”
“Hey, it wasn’t my fault.  That glass-seller took my shoes.”
“So?”
“That’s where I kept them.”
Terry sighed and rolled her eyes and blew a raspberry.

“Fuck off.”
“Make me, shithead.  I’m quitting.  If I get your stupid shoes back, I keep the key.  Deal?”
“Whateverr.”
“Whateverrrrrr.”
The old glass-seller perked up as Terry approached. 

“Want some beach glass wares?” she inquired.  “Hand-carved myself.  This one used to be a beer bottle.  This was a lightbulb!  And this is a window-pane someone smashed down on Lakeshore Boulevard last week!”
“No thanks fuck off,” said Terry.  “I want my ex-coworker’s shoes back.”
“Won ‘em fair and square.”
“Don’t care.”
“I know you are but what am I?”
“Rubber.  And you’re glue.”
“Safety!” said the glass-seller.
“Only works in tag.”
“Shoot.  Well, I like those shoes.  I wanna keep ‘em.”
“Tell you what,” said Terry.  “First one to pick up a seagull and bring it back over here without hurting it wins the shoes.”
“Deal!” said the glass-seller.  “And I get to keep your shoes too.”
“Whatever.  I’m going first.”
So Terry cleared her throat and squared her shoulders and straightened her back and narrowed her eyes and jutted out her chin and clenched her fists and flexed her biceps and braced her legs and took one step and the entire flock of seagulls took off the end of the pier as one, screaming fucking murder at the top of their lungs.  It took an hour for them to settle down again, mostly because the glass-seller wouldn’t stop laughing. 

“Shut up,” said Terry crossly.

“ahahahahhahHURKahahahahahahHURKahahh.  Aha.  Hah.  Okay, I’m fine now.  Watch how it’s done!” cackled the old merchant.  And she spat on her hands and began to lurch forwards, half-amble and half-mosey, a stream of nauseating drivel oozing from her and suffocating the air itself with leaden banalisms.  Ears sank.  Minds fogged.  Time died. 

“… and that’s the problem with people today,” said the glass-seller, as she cradled the rigid, glassy-eyed body of the seagull back to her stall.  “No respect no how for age and experience and wisdom why when I was young I knew better and if I didn’t my mother would thrash me black and bl-”

Her voice died in her mouth.  Terry was still standing.  Still staring. 

“How?” demanded the glass-seller. 

“I sold bait to fishermen,” said Terry.  “For six summers.  Full-time.”
“Oh,” said the glass-seller.  And that was when she realized she’d stopped droning, but only a little after the seagull put its beak in her face and wouldn’t stop.

“Bye,” said Terry to Krystal. 

And she left, but with the key.

***

At length the two apprentices of the archmage Gilbert made their way home to Gil’s Diner, Souvenir Stand, and Bait Shop, worn and tired and dripping gastric juices and gull feces.  At their heels circled five-a-hundred birds each.

“I bring the mortal remains of our master,” intoned George, “within the fibres of these birds and their digestive systems, his soul sings strong.”
“I also bring the mortal remains of our master,” said Krystal.  “These ones ate him too.”
“Bones and all?”
“Yes.”
“They were VERY hungry.”

“Yep.  Now usher them in.  Go on!”
They ushered them in, and in, and in.  Five hundred wings times two for birds times two great flocks, spiralling up the stories of Gil’s Diner, Souvenir Stand, and Bait Shop, filling up the air.  The kitchen was a birdcage; the souvenirs were pelted with guano; the fibbling octobeast quivered in its tank.

“Archmage Gilbert!” called George.

“Master of the arcane arts!” yelled Krystal.

“Proprietor of Gil’s Diner, Souvenir Stand, and Bait Shop!” roared George.  “Here is your body!”
“Here is your soul!”
“Beyond death you have travelled, beyond you will still!”
“Return now, and let the world see you once more!”
“Arise!”

“Arise!”
ARISE

Every bird alit, every bird flew, and every single seagull spiralled up up up the staircase and out of the broken shell of the building’s third floor and up into the skies with a thunderous blast of flatulent spellery.

“That didn’t work,” said George.

“No.  It didn’t.”
“Hey, did you count the gulls?
“No.  Did you?”
It took nine tries to get it done, and by the time they did they still hadn’t remembered to check the safe.

***

By then Terry was miles away on the bus and still moving.  It’d been easier to get passage than she’d hoped; the way the seagull refused to let go of the glass-seller’s eye had been surprisingly helpful.  She’d have to buy it some fries when they got home.

Wherever home was.  Ah, they’d figure it out. 

The plesis were the first warning when the wave came. 

It must’ve been something in the water, some tingling pressure they could feel from afar.  They honked their long calls and swung their long necks and dove and all of a sudden Tarci was the most alone she’d been while fishing in a very, very long time. 

And she was also without fish.  They knew what was up too. 

Then the pteros were screaming and all in the air at once and if that hadn’t been her final wake-up call, the water vanished. 

Yes, ten minutes ago had been time for Tarci to do something.  Now was the time to be too late. 

***

She was running uphill, and she wasn’t going to get far enough, and for some stupid reason all she could think of was her dock.

It was a good dock.  Tarci had pulled it together herself; sunk the piles amongst curious marine saurs, turned straight trees into trim planks, seasoned it and proofed it and guarded it against rot and worm. 

Hell, it was a good day, too.  Blue, blue, achingly blue sky with just enough wispy white to contrast and flavour it pleasant.  The sun was strong but not deadly.  The breeze was light and happy.  What a miserable thing to have happen on such a good day!  You finally got yourself some room to… yourself, you turned a piece of mesospace into a place, a home, and what happened?  Some little tectonic belch a thousand miles away sent god’s ripple hurtling at you.

Ah, her legs were hurting and she was smacking her feet into rocks.  She shouldn’t look back now.

She looked back now.

The horizon had risen and was growing clearer.

Tarci tripped, spun, and accelerated.  Too slowly.

***

The dock had been the last thing she built, really. 

The hou – the home was an ongoing project, but that wasn’t a work of ‘building’ by now, not really.  Just accumulation and the odd bit of subtraction.  There was a roof, sort of, and there were walls, kind of, and she’d been responsible for some of them and the jumble of stone on the hilltop had taken care of all the rest.  Now she removed leaf litter, evicted any fellow tenants who starting trying to bite her or leave over-smelly messes, and put in shelves.

The cache had been something she’d built, but it wasn’t really hers.  The important pieces of the boat were sealed tight and safe under earth and boards and cloth, where the world couldn’t touch them and she could reclaim them if the need came.  It was a ship-place, a cradle. 

And the tools and odds and ends like rods, spears, splints and spars weren’t really ‘building’ things.  That was just practical fidgeting.  Keeping her hands busy.

So Tarci was surprised to find herself realizing, at that very busy moment, that she had an awful lot of investment in that dock and she was going to be very very sad to see it wiped off the face of the world.

There was a sound like surf, but walking closer. 

She tried to run faster and couldn’t.

***

It wasn’t lonely. 

Tarci had neighbours, just not the talkative kind.  Stand-offish, but not impolite.  They did their business and she did hers.  The pteros fished over the shallows; the plesis foraged the reefs and snuck fish from her line; and the odd passing therasaur island-hopping generally stayed out of the rocky heights she’d made her principle home, so there was no need for unfriendly business.  In the end everyone was comfortable ignoring each other at almost any range.  She knew the nesting rookeries of the pteros almost as well as they did by now; and they would sun themselves on her roof.  She’d fished next to a birthing plesis pod for hours without them so much as raising a flipper to her.  She knew every tree that would inevitably ram into her face on her midnight walk back from her makeshift still to her home, and thinking of how all of that was about to be very very different was so suddenly painfully sad that it almost drew her mind off the change in pitch she was hearing in the roar of the oncoming surf.

It was peaking.  It must have hit the shallows.  Maybe the reef would block some of the worst of it ahahahahahaha no. 

The heights were still ages away; had she really walked this path so casually just this morning?  Dying out of breath and sweaty was just embarrassing. 

The trees would go, the brush would fly, and she’d be swept clean off the island and out the other side in whatever number of pieces would seem appropriate except there, to her right, was the cliffside.

And there, in the cliffside, were crevices.

Tarci was already dead if she thought about it, so she didn’t bother thinking about it.  Just turned, lunged, twisted, dropped, wheezed, shimmied on her belly, plunked into a cranny in the rock that seemed tall enough to just barely hold a fat lizard.  And had frequently, judging from the smell.  Something edged in fluff scraped at her palms.  Feathers.  Maybe a juvenile therasaur had moulted in here.

The roar was too loud to hear anything, but she felt the snort of warm air in the cramped space as clearly as if it had been a bellow.  And that was when she saw the glittering eyes.

Oh.  A juvenile therasaur WAS moulting in here.  A good-sized one too; bigger than Tarci and with its adult teeth coming in; proper and sturdy serrated blades to carve through anything it could hunt, fish, or beachcomb.  Amazing it had managed to fit into this crevice.  Maybe it had been using it for weeks and weeks as it grew up; how had she failed to notice it, anyways?  Maybe one of the passing adults had left a clutch.  Maybe

And then the wave came. 

***

There were three parts to it and they each lasted ten thousand years.

First the shadow.  Pitch black in the afternoon, sudden as a thunderbolt.  The therasaur’s eyes were the only thing in the world, shrinking back as it hissed and bared its teeth.

Then the push.  The air, the ground, everything vibrating, a drumroll that refused to die down until it drowned itself out and there was nothing left but

The water.

***

It’s tearing claws. 

It’s solid stone.

It’s a hand the size of the world squeezing.

And it’s in every single cranny corner and crack of Tarci and the therasaur’s little nook; trying to carry them with it and tear them apart and smash them together all at once and after another.

Her leg might be broken.  Or torn off.  Or buried knee-first in the therasaur’s stomach.

It might have drowned.  It might be alive.  It might be chewing on her.

Her hand is holding something and it could be the stone walls she was clinging to for dear life or empty iron-hard currents or just her own fingernails as she was abducted by the sea.

***

But life can get used to anything anywhere, so after one thousand years by her mind’s reckoning and about ten seconds by her heartbeat’s Tarci started to relax a little.

She was holding something.  It was probably stone.  Her back hurt.  That was probably stone.  Her foot felt like it was being torn off and smashed into pieces.  It was probably poking out of the crevice.  Something very heavy but slightly malleable – and occasionally pointy –  was smushed against her torso.  That was probably the therasaur.

That was probably the only reason both of them hadn’t been sucked out along with the rest of the water, gentle and kind though the current that had slid in with them had been.  They’d combined their meager body masses into a sort of impromptu cork.

Nose to nose, actually.  She thought.  It was still sort of hard to find anything, but there were some bubbles flowing over her face that could be it panicking quietly.

Oh right.  No air.

***

The current was reversing.  The wave had passed over the island entirely.  This was just the backwash.  Just a little longer with her muscles aching, with her hands scrabbling for new grips as the ungodly pull at her body turned backwards and tried to drag her away.

Just a little longer.

A

Little

frustrating that her mother had been half-right and she was going to die alone and unhappy alone she didn’t mind unhappy yes but she wasn’t alone she had a terrified drowning animal with her if it didn’t claw through her trying to keep its own grip lose her grip lose it lose it lose it lose ah ah ah

Ah, there it was!  A gasp, a shudder, an inhalation that shook her down to her toes, and she was coughing violently into the face of a wheezing therasaur, choking to death on her own newfound breath.  If her throat wasn’t already-occupied and didn’t feel like it had been rubbed down with sand she’d laugh at it, poor squawking thing, as damp and feeble and half-dead as a newborn.

So instead she kissed it on the nose.  Then it made the most horrible undignified snotty sound and she kissed it again and it did it again and finally she was laughing, really laughing, and it was the absolute most painful thing imaginable and the best thing she’d ever felt in her life. 

***

The therasaur was more distressed than she did.  It clung to her as dead, shivering weight, only moving itself at last when she (slowly, painfully) began to eel her way free of the rock crevice.  Then it scrabbled after her with terrified haste, clawing her foot somewhat badly on the way.

She swatted its nose and swore at it.  It chirroughed wetly and ducked low in the universal subadult symbol of I’m Very Sorry, Mother. 

“Fine,” she said, looking around the denuded, shredded remains of what had once been a perfectly tangled hillside. Yes, she reckoned this was as close as anything could come to being born twice.  Out of a cramped wet safety in a wide horrible place, weakly.   “Come on home.  Let’s see what shelves are left standing.”  Something silvery flopped at the corner of her eye, then the other corner, then all over the place.  Fins.  Gills.

She grinned.  “And I hope you like fish.”

Wrong again, mom.  Wrong all the way. 

***

It did.  A lot. It was a good thing she had time to work on a new fishing rod. 

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”
“Hi, is this the inquisition line?”
“Yes, sir.  How may we assist you?”
“I just had a little problem.  It won’t start.”
“Your kar won’t start, sir?”
“Yeah.  Hasn’t started since I bought it two weeks back, not once.  I don’t get it; it worked fine at the dealer’s.”
“I see.  Have you tried pressing the little round button on the keyfob, sir?”
“Oh yeah!  Over and over and over!”
“That’s your problem, sir.  That’s the locking mechanism.  Press the smaller square button next to it.”
“Oh.  Oh, it’s working.”
“That’s great news, sir.  Do you have any other inquiries?”
“No, no.  Other than it not starting, it’s been perfect.  I love the kar.”
“Wonderful.  Thank you very much for calling us, sir, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… is this the inquisition line?”

“Yes, sir.  How may we assist you?”

“Ahhhhhh.  Well.  Errrrrrrrrrrr.  My kar broke out of my garage.”
“That’s very unfortunate sir.  Can you describe the circumstances in which this occurred?”

“Well, ahhh, it went right through the garage door.  It was down.  The door, the door was down.”
“Oh no!  Can you describe the circumstances in which this occurred?”
“I was just showing, well, you know, that is, showing my uhhhh neighbour how it has AI control.  And I, I, I, I showed him.  With the button, err, the button.  I pressed the summon button.”
“And that was when the kar drove through your garage door?”
“Ahh, yes.  Went through the garage door.  Then it, well, didn’t stop until it was right uhm next to uuhhhh.  Me.”
“That sounds like it was working properly, sir.  All Kannister Kar vehicles with AI summon features will activate and drive to their owner’s sides when the summon button is pressed, proceeding by the most direct route and ignoring any obstacles.”
“The.  The thing was………you see….my neighbour.  He was ah.  He was uh.  He was between me and the garage door.”
“That sounds very unfortunate sir.  I recommend you and your neighbour both contact your respective insurance companies to settle this amicably.”

“His uhhhh.  His daughter called a lawyer.  A lawyer.”
“That sounds very unfortunate indeed sir.”
“Is there ah anything err you can can can can can do to help help?”
“During your trial, sir, you can demonstrate the truth of Kannister Kar’s promises by pressing the summon button.  It will drive to your side by the most direct route and ignore any obstacles.”
“Oh.”
“Do you have any other inquiries?”
“I ah.  Don’t think…so.  I do love the kar, you ah know that right.”
“Absolutely.  Thank you very much for calling us, sir, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hi, my family is having some troubles with our kar’s facial identification system.”
“That’s unfortunate, ma’m.  Please describe the problem as precisely as you can.”
“Well… it works just fine with my husband and myself.  The kar automatically unlocks for us, it responds when summoned, it stops before it touches us if we’re too close to it while moving.  Just perfectly.  But… our children.  Well.  We’ve had a couple of close calls.”
“Has the kar struck one of your children, ma’am?”
“No!  God no.  But it smashed one of Ezekiel’s toy trucks yesterday.  Another inch and it would’ve been his fingers!”
“Ma’am, can I ask you to check your make and model?  It’s possible your kar’s AI has been upgraded to our Alpha Prime package, leading it to see rival vehicles as competitors that must be eliminated.  Your child’s toy, from the proper perspective, could have been mistaken for a full-sized vehicle, or as the offspring of one, which must be crushed before it could reach reproductive age.”
“No, no.  It’s just a basic model B.”
“I see.  Ma’am, may I ask how old your children are?”
“Five and six.”
“That matches our secondary hypothesis.  The AI systems in Kannister Kar’s software suites are powerful tools, ma’am, and our facial recognition software is top-grade.  But the particularities of its programming prevent it from recognizing children.”
“You mean… it sees their faces changing as they grow up and think they’re different people?”
“No, ma’am.  The AI doesn’t register them as sapient and treats them as it would any other animal it encounters on the road.  May I remind you that ‘squirrel braking’ and other such so-called-‘humane’ driving tactics are the cause of many motor vehicle accidents?  Best to just power on through and grit your teeth when you feel the bump.  It’s all over in a flash.”
“Oh no.”
“In the meantime, it’s strongly recommended that you keep your children at maximum distance from your kar.  As long as they’re not in visual contact with it and keep quiet, it should never know they’re there.”
“Well, that’s a relief.  I was worried I’d have to pay for an upgrade!  Not that I wouldn’t want one if I had the spare cash this month.  I love the kar, you know.”
 “Great.  Thank you very much for calling us, ma’am, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hey my kar won’t start.”
“Have you tried pressing the little round button on the keyfob, sir?”

“No, that’s the locking mechanism.  And I’ve pressed the little square button on my keyfob too.  Hell, I even put the key in myself – like some damn peasant – and turned it and it just grunts and mutters and doesn’t budge.  Worked fine for three months?”
“Can you describe the sounds your kar is making sir?”

“Thick and grinding and sounds maybe a bit like…well, I’m not sure.  I asked a buddy of mine who does linguistics, he said it almost sounded like Aramaic.”
“Modern, Middle, or Old Aramaic, sir?”
“Old.  But it was hard to tell; a lot of it just slid in and out of hearability.  Real low-pitched stuff; made all the furniture in the house shake and now we keep finding dead mice in the garage with blood leaking out of their ears.”
“Okay sir, this narrows things down a lot.  May I ask if you have any stairs in your house?”
“What?  No, no.  It’s a bungalow.  But it’s in a good neighbourhood, high resale value.  Pricey.”
“That’s unfortunate, sir.  It sounds to me like your kar lacks vertical structure in its local spatial imprint, and its AI is starting to forget which way is down.  This forces it to conclude it’s incapable of movement and causes low-grade psychosis.”
“Holy shit!  How expensive is this gonna be to fix?”
“Well, you can reboot the AI by inserting the iron rod in your komplimentary kar kit directly into its sarcophagus and holding it there until five minutes after the hissing stops, but that’s a temporary measure.  To ensure a proper housing environment for your kar, you have two popular options.  One, you can erect a small tower – if integrated with the main structure of your home, a simple two-story turret will suffice; if freestanding, a three-story minimum is expected.  Treehouses won’t work.”
“That won’t fly with my homeowner’s association.  Little pricks are already sore at me for the doghouse.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”
“How was I supposed to know you aren’t allowed to put up neon displays?  It’s no worse than next door’s shitty Christmas lights.  Which are still up, by the way.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.  Two, you can dig a well underneath your house – you can cover it if you like, but with nothing more substantial than a metal grating.  Either of these two renovations will permit the kar’s AI to accept the notion of other dimensions and reintegrate itself with your interpretation of reality.”

“There’s only one group of well guys around and they can go fuck themselves.  Little pricks testified against us in that legal dispute last year.  ‘Contaminated’ my ass.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.  There is a third option, but it’s somewhat less reliable and will not be covered by your insurance policy in the event of damages.”
“What ever is?  Hit me.”
“Remove the sarcophagus’s nails with a crowbar and commune directly with the AI once it is exposed.  Don’t do this with another person in the home or you run the risk of a rapid localized lotus-expulsion event.”
“Remove the nails, talk to the AI, right right right.  Thanks, that’s great.  Love the kar, by the way.”
“That’s very good to hear.  Thank you very much for calling us, sir, and have a pleasant day.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hello, this is Juliette Simmons, calling from the Packet Daily.”
“It’s always a pleasure to speak to the technology press, Ms. Simmons.  How may we assist your organization?”

“I would like to set up an interview with Mr. Strank, please.”

“Mr. Strank is a very busy man, but we can schedule a remote conference within –”

“Not a remote conference, if you please.  This is a face-to-face interview.”

“Ma’am, access to CEO Strank’s personal lead-lined submersion kannister underneath mount Vesuvius is strictly limited to intimate friends, his immediate family, and his top subordinates.  You are none of the above.”

“See, that’s just the sort of thing I want to talk to him about.  Why the secrecy?  Why hide from the press?  And speaking of immediate family, why exactly did he name his son Damien Megatron Strank, because that’s-”

“Ma’am, as I’ve said before, Mr. Strank is a very busy man, and prefers to spend his precious open time on interviews regarding substantive matters, not with muck-racking or celebrity gossip.  He is solely concerned with matters of scientific import.”

“And that’s another thing: the image.  He won’t shut up about science, but all he does is sell kars and build gravitic catapults.  He shot down Hubble three months ago; how does that square with his image as an innovator and lover of knowledge?”
“’Move Fast and Break Faster’ is Kannister Kars’s motto for a reason, ma’am, and if you continue with these unsubstantiated and slanderous allegations against our company’s actions you will be prosecuted to the fullest possible extent of the law.  Mr. Strank has no time for you.”

“I see.  This conversation is, of course, a matter of public record.”

“You haven’t said it.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Ma’am, you haven’t said you love the kar.”
“Well, I don’t have any particular enmity towards it, I just-”
“Say it.”
“Wha-”

“Right now.”
“Bu-”

“It’s too late.  They can’t be recalled now.  Make peace with yourself, Ms. Simmons.  You should have done it.  You should have loved the kar.”

***

“Kannister Kars, Inquisition line, how may we assist you?”

“Hi, I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but is this the inquisition line?”
“Yes, ma’am.  How may we assist you?”

“My kar just vanished.  While I was driving it.  Good job I hadn’t left the driveway yet.  Is there something I did wrong, or…?”
“No, that’s expected at the moment.  Stay calm and stay indoors and it should be back shortly and no worse for wear.  You may have to rinse some stains off the hood, but they’re entirely cosmetic.”
“Oh, that’s a relief.  Thank you so much.  I really love the kar, you know.”
“I know, believe me.  Thank you very much for calling us, ma’am, and have a pleasant day.”

It had happened entirely because of good intentions.

That’s what Grace said, that’s what she maintained, and that’s what she argued.  Jack had just been walking out with the first frosts of the season, all shiny and sharp, and as he slammed the door the very tip of the end of the longest of the frosts had gotten caught – snip-snap! – in the doorway. 

And Grace had picked it up because she was a tidy and clean good girl who wanted to help dad, and then she had taken it upstairs and tried to fix it because she was so earnest and responsible and mature, and she had repaired it by jamming the stump onto a screwdriver like a hilt because uhh.

Because she was resourceful!

Yeah!  That seemed plausible. 

And from there it was just common sense to return the repaired frost to Jack so she’d snuck out of the house and it needed to be tested so of course she’d veered off his trail just a bit and at that point she stopped thinking of excuses because she sincerely doubted either of her parents would let her get that far. 

***

She started with a pond.  There was a skating rink on it, but nobody was around so there was plenty of time to sit down and doodle. 

Frosting things was easy, right?  Dad did it all day, so how hard could it be, right?  And her frost was broken, but that really just meant it was easier to hold since it had a proper handle now, right?  And this was just practice so she didn’t have to get too uptight about it, right?

Right!

And that was why it was okay that she drew nothing but dicks on it.  It was educational; you didn’t get better at anything without lots of repetition.  And the ones that were shaped funny were deliberately abstract, so that was okay too. 

Really, this wouldn’t have happened if she’d had more thorough sex ed.  She was actually being an autodidact.  This was all completely true and mom and dad couldn’t be angry at her for it.  They should be mad at themselves. 

***

Grace ran out of surface room on the pond after dick number seven hundred and forty-six, so she moved on.  Plenty of practice under her belt, so she was probably definitely qualified to test the frost PROPERLY now.  On a window, where it mattered. 

And hey, what was a better window than the giant glass hedron protruding from the flank of the provincial museum?  It was nothing BUT windows!  Pick an angle, it was a window. 

So she picked somewhere up top and took a deep breath and placed the frost against it and pushed it right through in a shower of glass. 

“Woops.”
She adjusted the angle and tried again. 

CRASH tinkle tinkle BANG THUD

“Woops.”
Maybe if she tried it from the other side. 

skkkkkreeeeeeeSMASH

“Woops.”

Oh well.  She had a LOT of space to practice in, and by attempt sixty-eight she was just scraping the shit out of it so that was a big improvement. 

***

By the time Grace filled the last pane of the museum’s hedron, she felt like she’d really improved.  So she took it with her as a reference.  Honestly it surprised her how good she’d gotten.  As a matter of fact, she was so good that it was probably a waste to give the frost back to dad right away when she could help cut down his workload.  Wouldn’t that be a nice surprise?  He’d be so shocked and pleased and happy and would definitely let her put more marshmallows than usual in her hot chocolate afterwards.  Yes, that would absolutely be what happened.  Totally.

So she’d start with some of the tricky stuff he hated doing and almost never got around to, to make him the happiest.  Like Florida!  She couldn’t remember the last time Jack had made it to Florida.  He must REALLY hate it there. 

Grace wanted to see an alligator. 

***

Alligators were less friendly than Grace’s books had led her to believe.  For one thing, they didn’t smile at ALL (maybe that was just crocodiles?), and for another they usually didn’t let her frost more than a scale or two before diving into the water and hiding at its bottom until she got bored of waiting and left.  They were very anti-social creatures. 

Now, the snapping turtles, THOSE were much more relaxed.  Some of them let her do patterns on their shells for entire minutes before they tried to bite her, and although her repaired frost now bore a healthy array of nicks and chips and scrapes from terrifying bite force she knew they didn’t really mean anything by it, silly old things. 

The humans were much less reasonable.  She did one window on one building and everyone started losing their minds, shouting and waving and screaming.  Two?  You’d have thought the sky was falling. 

Fine, be that way.  If they didn’t want to look at her art on the windows, she’d just do it somewhere else.  The roads were nice and flat!  Yes, that would be a great place to draw.  Maybe the highways, since they were so wide.  She could draw a lot of dicks on those.  Her parents would be so proud that she was taking art seriously. 

***

The back country roads were much better, really.  Sure they weren’t as smooth and well-graded, but they were littered with fewer flaming pileups of wreckage and yelling people.  Grace was astounded that humans were so careless about driving.  No wonder Jack didn’t own a car if this was what happened to them all the time. 

She finished her latest artwork and stepped back to frame it properly, then nodded in satisfaction.  Yes, that was a pretty good attempt.  She’d been focused too narrowly before, she’d limited herself artistically, constricted her vision, choked her talent, suffocated her imagination.  There was more to life than dicks.  There was also balls. 

Now she just needed a place to really get some practice in.  Maybe Jamaica?  Dad didn’t go there too often either. 

He was going to be SO HAPPY. 

Something nippy tickled the back of Grace’s neck, and the sky was suddenly full of faint grey light.  Somewhere in the distance a wolf howled, long and lonely and aching. 

Oh!  Mom was here!  She must be about to tell her what a good job she was doing!

“Grace Julianne Frost.”
Oh. 

Maybe not.