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It was six in the morning when Lunk the Large received her visitor.

“Just stopping by to pay my respects to my favourite niece,” said Trickster, with a winning smile. They did everything with a winning smile. Life could turn up heads or tails for them, but that grin would call it good-enough every time. 

“Unh-huh,” said Lunk, who had made enough coffee for three people and wasn’t about to share any of it, even with relatives. “And what do you want?”
“Just a little thing, just a little thing,” said Trickster. “You see, my back is aching and sore today-”

“Someone beat you up for being a tricky jerk, huh?”
“-from all the injustices and ingratitude that the world heaps upon me-”

“More than one someone.”

“-and I was wondering if I could ask you, my most favourite niece, to do me a solid and take up my burdens for the day. All you have to do is wander around and look out for troubles and be tricky. Just one day!”

Lunk glared at her relative over the rim of her coffee pot/mug. “There’s a catch. I’m not agreeing to anything until you tell me what the catch is. Tell me what the catch is now or I’m not buying it.”

“I’ve packed you a lunch and I’ll give you my nice hat.”
“Sure, what the hell, might as well.”

***

So Lunk put on Trickster’s hat (which was very nice) and took Trickster’s satisfyingly-hefty bag of lunch and set herself on the road, stomping along with the force and fury of a bad mood poorly expressed. So it was unsurprising that when she came across a small, hapless doll lying in the road, she kicked it.

It stuck to her foot.

“Geddouttahere,” Lunk snarled, and kicked again.

It remained stuck.

Lunk said some uninventive and universally competent curses and pulled the doll free from her foot. It immediately stuck to her hand, which made sense since it was covered in pine resin.

“Get OFF,” said Lunk, and she punched it with her other hand. Which then stuck to it.

“Aha!” cried the two large, hulking thugs lurking in a nearby ditch, as they leapt free of their hiding place. “You’re caught! That nice hat can’t save you from revenge this time, you tricky jerk!”

“Wasn’t me,” said Lunk. “That was my relative – I’m filling in for them.”
“Close enough for vengeance’s sake. Now we’re gonna kill you slowly and gruesomely in the way you despise most! Any suggestions for how we can put an end to your life in the way you’d least prefer?”

Lunk blinked slowly and looked around her.

“Huh?” she requested.
“Tell us how you don’t want to die, so we can kill you that way,” the slightly smaller of the two men explained.

“Yeah,” the slightly larger of the two men agreed. “Just pick something. Like being eaten by sharks.”
“Or devoured by ants.”
“Or being thrown in that briar patch over there.”
“Yeah, that’d be awful. I hate briars. I can’t stand going anywhere near ‘em.”
“Me either. I’d do anything before I’d set foot in that briar patch, even if the person I hated most in the whole world was in the middle of it. Say, by being thrown in there by a pair of gullible rubes.”
“Yeah. So anyways, tell us how to kill you. And no tricky business!”

Lunk’s eyes shifted between the men, her hands, and the briar patch with the care of tweezers and the speed of a continental plate. Then a slow smile spread across her face.

“I got it!” she announced proudly. And she reached out with both gluey hands, ripped the briar patch out of the ground, and smashed it directly into the faces of the two men.

***

Anyways after that Lunk found herself hungry. And tired, and thirsty, and gluey, and covered in briar-scratches (especially on her hands, which were as much rosebush as they were flesh by this point), but she couldn’t do anything about any of that stuff, whereas she DID have a packed lunch.

She opened it. Inside was a large plain-grey stone, and a stewpot.

Lunk nearly succumbed to her first instinct, which was to throw the stone away, but as her arm reached its apex, she hesitated (and luckily, her hands were still gluey).

“Wait,” she said, and a slow clever smile crept over her from face to feet. “I remember them telling me about this trick. I can do this.”

So she stamped into the next village she saw and walked up to the first home she saw and slammed her knuckles into the first door she came across until someone peered out of the window and asked “why are you knocking on our cellar door?”

“Never mind that,” said Lunk, holding up the stewpot. “I’m making stone soup. You want in on this?”

“Stone soup?” said the villager, peering into the pot. “Doesn’t sound very tasty. Or nourishing. Are you trying to trick me into feeding you? No, I think I’ll pass.”

“Nah, it’s great,” said Lunk. “Really filling, really tasty. It just needs some ingredients to bring out the flavour a little. Got a spare carrot?”
“Well, I suppose I could spare a carrot,” fretted the villager. “But no more. And I’ll bet my neighbour could spare an onion, and her neighbour could spare a potato, and their neighbour could spare a rabbit, and –”

“Great!” said Lunk happily. And she pulled the stone out of the pot and clonked the villager over the head with it. Then she went inside, knocked everything around until she found the bag of carrots, slung it over her shoulder, and walked next door with a whistle on her lips and a carefree heart.

“Hey, wanna get in on some stone soup?” she asked. “I heard you got onions.”
“Stone what?”
CLONK.

***

Lunk sat in the village square, stone soup sat on the ground before her, stone at her side (now lightly scratched from contact with many skulls of varying sturdiness), flint and tinder in hand, and a long, monotonous list of curses in her mouth.

“LIGHT,” she snapped for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time the flint did not spark. “Why won’t you light!”
“Nice of you to ask that question!” croaked a passerby, half-propped-up in his doorway to cradle his throbbing head. “Because it’s your fault! You and that fancy hat of yours! Last week you talked us into tricking the gods into accepting hide and bone as offerings while we got to keep the meat, and you cheesed them off so much they’ve rescinded fire! Now NOBODY can have a warm meal, or a light at night, or anything to keep away the chill of winter.”

“That wasn’t me,” said Lunk. “That was my relative – I’m filling in for them.”
“Then it is your family duty to mend what your kin’s rashness has broken and trick the gods to bring fire back to the world!”
Lunk stared blankly at him.

“Or you can’t cook your stone soup either,” he added.

“Which way’d they go?” asked Lunk.

“Up yonder mountain, tallest around. The manses of the gods are at its peak, and in the grandest manse of their ruler lies fire, held in a brazier, and –” but Lunk had already departed, stamping along faster than ever, her foul mood made worse by her scraped hands and growling stomach and the way that the mountain insolently rose ever-higher underfoot and overhand until at last she was heaving and crawling and lurching her way above precipice after precipice and then she was above the cold, above the snow, and in the golden glorious vineyards and palaces of the gods, rising up in tier after tier like demented wedding cakes until they reached their culmination in the grandest, goldenest, gaudiest manse of them all, which was that of the ruler of the gods. Behind its silver gates lay a sealed vault, within that sealed vault grew a garden of stones, among that garden of stones was dangled a bronze chain, inside that bronze chain was cradled a brass brazier, and inside that brass brazier was a glowing ember of fire, the last in all the world, which danced and smouldered quite prettily when Lunk smashed through the brazier with her fist and clasped it tight.
“Gotcha!” she shouted in triumph. Then “gah, hot!” and then “ow, hey!” and “OUCH” and similar things with much less politeness. The harder she swore the faster she swung her hand; the faster she swung her hand the hotter the fire burned; the hotter the fire burned the harder she swore.

“DAMNIT!” she shouted, and tried to put it out by slapping her other hand atop the blaze. The gummy pine resin caught aflame. “DOUBLE DAMNIT!” she said, and tried to slap her burning hands against the walls of the stone garden, the sealed vault, the mansion, and its silver gates. They caught fire too. “TRIPLE DAMNIT.”

Lunk ran through the mansions of the gods, waving her burning arms and shouting and slapping beauteous architecture that transformed itself piece by piece into new burning things for her to shout and slap at. Many of the gods followed her lead, and soon the mountain was in such a commotion that one could scarcely hear or see anything, which Lunk claimed justified why she accidentally ran off a cliff and slid down the entire mountain, still shouting and waving her arms. This rush of wind also stimulated the blaze on her arms to cover her whole body. “QUADRUPLE DAMNIT!” she screamed as she ran through the village, setting alight her stone soup, the houses that had donated to it, the gardens that had been raided for it, the briar patch she had used as a flail, half the fields, half the woods, and the shallower part of the lake before she could wade out into the deep end, where she sat underwater until the sun went down and she was tired enough to go back to bed.

Still hungry, too.

***

Trickster stopped by the next day. Not so early; nine AM.

“I burned up your hat and lost your stone soup,” said Lunk, who was halfway through enough coffee for sixteen people (and enough burn cream and antibiotics for thirty-two, plus six sets of tweezers). “Sorry about that, but your job sucks and nobody likes you.”
“Oh, that’s alright,” said Trickster. “I have other hats, and I have other stones. And now that they’ve had a bit of a break from me, I have a hunch everyone’ll be a lot more forgiving of my tricks for a good, long while.”

Once upon a time there was a bricklayer and a weaver, and they had three sons, and the third of those sons knew his place in the world quite well.

“Mother,” the third son would say to the weaver, “please be sure to give me the smallest portion of food at mealtimes. I want to be sure my brothers grow up big and strong while I stay small and humble-looking.” And though this puzzled his mother she loved her family greatly, and so did as he requested.

“Father,” the third son would say to the bricklayer, “please be sure to scold me often for laziness and lack of diligence. I want to be sure I am the least of your sons in your eyes.” And though this puzzled his father he loved his family greatly, and so did as he requested.

Then after some time passed the bricklayer became very ill and died of the Squats, which was considered tragic but not all that unusual, and the time came for his children to inherit much of his property.

“Brothers,” the third son said to his siblings, “please be sure to take up ALL of father’s estate and possessions – his worldly belongings, his wealth, his home, all of it but these two humble bricks from his work-table. Do not let me have a single thing besides – this is important! And if you would mock and jeer at me and drive me from this place now, it would be much appreciated. I shall now seek my fortune.” And all of that made no sense at all to his two older brothers, but they were already sick at heart from the death of their father and were in no mood to gainsay the heartfelt requests of another member of the family, so they – carefully! – cursed him and – gently! – beat him about the head and – politely! – threw him out into the woods with only a torn shirt and the two humble bricks from his father’s work-table for company.

“Excellent,” said the third son with great satisfaction as he rubbed a palm over his bruises. “All is proceeding precisely as I wish. Now I have but to find some lost traveller in need of assistance, and my fortune shall be made whole and entire and real.”

“Hello,” said an old, old, old woman, who was bent double from weariness in the ditch nearby. “Could someone please show some pity to this lost traveller in need of assistance?”
“Truly wonderful,” said the third son. “I will do so, old, old, old woman, for although I am but the humble third son of a bricklayer with naught to his name but these two humble bricks from my dead father’s work-bench, I know that I will always assist those in need!”
“Oh lovely,” said the old, old, old woman. And though the bricklayer’s third son was somewhat bruised and somewhat small and humble-looking, he was still a bricklayer’s son and she was as light as a hollow-boned little bird, so carrying her to her home took little effort.

“This may surprise you,” she said after she had been placed on her own two legs once more, “but I am in fact a powerful worker and sculptor of magic, and I wish to reward you. Would you like wealth? Jewels and gold are trivial for me to grant you.”
“No!” said the third son readily.

“Would you like titles? A snap of my fingers and a dozen armed men will serve you; a great house and servants will thrust free of the wilderness for your use.”

“No!” said the third son easily.

“Since you are so (suspiciously) modest and humble, how about if I just enchanted those two equally-modest-and-humble bricks of yours? I can make it so they might build anything you wish so long as you continue to stack them atop one another.”

“Yes!” said the third son promptly, with a grin so wide it might have been called – on the face of a less small and humble person – a leer.

“Then it will be done, and my debt is settled and our bargain is made,” said the old, old, old woman, as she spat on her palm and gently tapped each brick once with her long, long, long forefinger (which was crooked besides). “Go now, and do great things.”

“Indeed,” said the third son with deep and all-consuming glee. “Indeed.”

***

After the third son of the bricklayer left the home of the old, old, old woman behind he walked with quick feet. Destiny was pulling at his soles, dragging him closer and closer to that which he sought, and before nightfall had come he saw it waiting for him beside the road: a bent-backed farmer, stooped low besides the crumbling remnants of his field.

“Ah, traveller, would you by chance have pity in your heart and a need for an afternoon’s pay?” he asked. “My field is picked clean by animals every eve, and I need assistance in putting up a fence – even one of simple sticks would do. Please, lend me a hand.”
“I shall do you one better,” said the third son with a smile. “In exchange for a fine meal and a place to sleep for the night, I will build you a stout brick wall before the stew is done cooking.”

“That would be a cheap price indeed for such a miracle,” said the farmer, “but I will accept your help at such a price regardless.”

So the farmer went to the woods to cut sticks, but while he was doing so the third son took the two humble bricks from his pockets and began to stack them, one atop the other. He did so once, then twice, then thrice, then thrice again, and by the time the farmer had returned with the few meager limbs of wood the forest nearby could offer him the third son had laid a foundation halfway around the field and was working on getting it up past chest-height.

“Why, a miracle indeed!” said the farmer. “I will race to get that stew done for you.”

“Too slow!” said the third son, and indeed it was, for he was done his work on a proud and high brick wall around the field long before the stew was ready, and spent the rest of the evening relaxing.
“Would you like to marry one of my daughters?” asked the farmer the next morning. “You are a maker of miracles, and a hard worker, and they have told me small and humble-looking is pretty easy on the eyes.”

“I thank you,” said the third son, “but my fortune lies elsewhere. Only give me some better clothes, if you have them – mine are worn to tatters.”
“I’ll give you my best,” vowed the farmer. And so he did, and so the third son walked down the road in fine clothes with all his bruises well-rested and fading and the two humble bricks in a nice leather pack. He travelled all afternoon at unhurried pace until he saw a despondent noble sitting at the roadside, surrounded by his household.

“How fare you, noble traveller!” cried the third son.

“Pretty poor, thanks – though not as poor as you, by the looks of things,” replied the nobleman, sweeping a tired but critical eye over the third son’s accoutrement. “Were your clothing a little more dusty and tattered I’d think you some insolent peasant, rather than an upstanding man down on his luck for the moment. Alas – ordering the thrashing of a reprobate might alleviate my despair and sorrow.” And his critical eye drifted lazily over his household, which all shuddered away from it.

“What troubles your spirits so, noble traveller?” asked the third son forthrightly.

“My manor has been swallowed by a bog,” said the nobleman moodily. “It was a fine building about so-and-so on one side and such-and-such on the other and of about this many stories in height. The architects told me that would be safe and stable, even on such unsteady ground, and so I have had them put to death. The tatterdemalion fools did not even think to warn me not to coat the entire building with gold lest it offset the weight, can you believe it?”
“I cannot,” said the third son sincerely, “but I can believe this: I can replace your sunken and swallowed manse today, for you, by myself.”
“Insanity,” said the noble promptly. “Lunacy. I am eager to watch, and when you fail, I shall be eager to have you decapitated. Goodness knows there’s nothing much else for a nobleman to do in a swamp.”

And so while the nobleman was fanned and fed fine fruits the third son took the two humble bricks from his pockets and began to stack them, one atop the other. He did so once, then twice, then thrice, then thrice again, and by the time the nobleman had flogged his fourth servant for mishandling a plate the third son had laid the foundations for a building about so-and-so on one side and such-and-such on the other, and was already stacking higher.

“My gracious and my oath,” said the nobleman, nearly falling into a socially appropriate swoon. “I can scarcely believe my most astute eyes. But what if it can’t be gilded?”
“Have no fear!” called the third son, “I will fill the swamp itself!” And indeed he did, for by evening’s time he had not only completed the building to a height of about-this-many-stories (roof and all) but he had filled the swamp bottom to top with sturdy bricks and turned it into an elegant courtyard fit for a fine dinner party, which he and the nobleman shared while his household was busy regilding the premises.
“I suppose I can host you for the night, in spite of the state of your wardrobe,” mused the nobleman. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Executing someone, ideally; but there’s always gold and property.”

“I thank you, but my fortune lies elsewhere,” said the third son. “A sack full of stones from the drained swamp is all I ask.”
“How excitingly unreasonable,” marvelled the nobleman. “Someone will do that. Now go to bed so I don’t have to look at you anymore.” And someone did, and when the third son left the rebuilt manor that morning he did so in his (somewhat dusty) fine clothing with two packs: one leather and holding his two humble bricks, and one from woven gold holding a large collection of swamp stones, knobbly and easily clutched in a knuckle-grip. He walked all morning until he heard distant cries and lamentations, then he smiled and broke into a run, and at last he came upon a troubled city from which anguish and terror radiated like licking flames.

“Help!” called the citizens. “Save us!”

“I shall, I shall,” whispered the third son, hungry and through his teeth. “Just find me your mayor.”

“Here!” called the citizens, “here!” The city’s mayor came, pale of face and bulging of eye, with a cut dribbling fresh blood down his cheek.

“We are besieged,” he explained. “A terrible giant has built a fortress on the hill above us, and from there he flings flaming boulders into town unless we meet his demands and feed him our children. His walls are impenetrable, his aim is perfect. We cannot stop him. Can you? You don’t look like much, but we’ll try anything.”
“Absolutely,” said the third son. “Only give me some lunch. This will take a bit of work.”

“We can spare it,” said the mayor. And they gave the third son a full satchel, and so he walked towards the hill that the giant’s fortress squatted upon with a vibrant heart and a singing step.

But he did not walk all the way. Halfway there he stopped, and he climbed a tree, and he made note of the fortress’s height (great) and its sturdiness (formidable) and the arcing force of the giant’s fiery boulders that issued forth from its ramparts (perilous). Then the third son laughed, and he took the two humble bricks from their pack, and he began to stack them, one atop the other. He did so once, then twice, then thrice, then thrice again, and thrice again, and thrice again, and thrice once more, until he had built a tower higher than any tree, higher than the hill, higher than the walls of the giant’s fortress, and he could see all the way down into the giant’s war-parapet, where he was quenching his thirst between volleys with a huge pitcher. The giant had six arms and three heads, and each begrudged the other two their turn to sip, so it was in the spirit of mischief as much as experimentation that led the third so to aim his first rock so that it shattered the giant’s pitcher.

“Ho!” shouted the giant’s first head, pointing accusingly. “This thing is empty! One of you greedy louts drained it before my turn!”
“Not so,” countered the giant’s second head, raising a clasped palm. “See, I have broken pottery in my hand here – one of you must have broken it with your clumsy fingers.”
“Ah,” declared the giant’s third head, gazing upwards. “I see the problem. While you two are bickering, someone has climbed up above us and is throwing stones. A cheap trick.”
“What?” asked the giant’s first head.

“Gnrk,” said the giant’s second head, lolling back with a small swamp stone lodged deep in his brow.

From there the battle began in sharpness and earnestness, and for every stone that descended from above six fiery boulders left the giant’s six palms. But fiercely though they flew they did so in defiance of gravity, while the third son’s made it their happy ally, and so in each exchange all six shots bounced and cartwheeled harmlessly down the long, long sides of the third son’s mighty tower while his single stone inevitably struck the giant on hand, on palm, on wrist, and on foot. So dwindled the giant’s ability to strike back, then his ability to flee, and at last when he laid groaning and broken on his parapet down came two last stones – plunk plonk – onto each of his remaining heads, shattering their crowns and killing him entirely.

“Ah,” said the third son, sitting back in satisfaction, and he took a moment to consider his situation. It was not quite noon, he had ample food, and he had a bag of stones that was still more than half full. His smile was wide and broad and totally genuinely and very awful.

“THIS,” he said, “is my fortune at last.”

Then he plucked up a stone, aimed, and fired. Thunk, and down went the mayor of the city.

“That was for speaking so undeferentially to me, when I might have saved you!” shouted the third son. Aim, fire, thunk and down went the nobleman in his manor, before he could finish his afternoon drink. “And that was for considering me unsightly!” he laughed. Aim, fire, thunk and over went the farmer in his field, back bent farther than ever before. “That was for giving me such poor clothing!” he called. Aim, fire, thunk, and in the old bricklayer’s home his oldest brother fell backwards at his workbench. “And THAT,” mocked the third son, “ was for mocking and jeering at me! Whether I ask it or no, I need not tolerate such any longer!” And he laughed and cheered and sat down for a good long lunch and when it was done he took a long nap, for he had risen early for three days of travel.

While the third son of the bricklayer slept, his second brother sat down by the road and cried for a while, where an old, old, old woman found him.

“Hello,” said the second son, rubbing his eyes clear. “Can I help you?”
“I’m actually doing alright at the moment,” said the old, old, old woman. “But you look troubled.”
“My older brother was just struck down by a stone from the sky at our father’s work-bench,” said the second son. “My poor mother has just had our father pass on and seen our youngest brother demand to be driven out of house and home, and now this – what will I tell her? What will I do?”

“Hmm,” said the old, old, old woman. “I think I might know the problem, and I think I might have caused it. As such, I will fix it.” So she spat on her palm twice and tapped her long, long, long (and most crooked) forefinger on a small egg she took from her pocket, and she gave the egg and two small pieces of fruit to the second brother.

“Put that in your brother’s mouth,” she told him, “and place this egg in his pocket. Then if a stone strikes him again, put the second piece in his mouth. And don’t worry about whatever happens next. It’s not your fault.”

The second brother was troubled a bit by the implications of this, but not as much as he was troubled by anything else that had happened that day, and so he did as he was told, and how astonished he was when his older brother’s eyes opened once more and he groaned as though he’d drunk too much, rather than because his skull had been perforated. But joy overcame shock, and by the time the third brother was awake and stretching his arms atop his lofty tower he was himself astonished to see that his oldest brother was not dead at his father’s work-bench but was happily stacking bricks in his yard.

“What?!” he shouted. “I threw true! I always do! There is meddling afoot, and trickery, and that is NOT appropriate – I am the third son! I am the trickster, the meddler! I am the one who receives his fortune! This is NOT ALLOWED!” and so saying (and spitting [and spiting]) he took up another stone and cast it down, down, down all the way to his older brother, who fell dead just as he stood up for his work, landing face-down in the dirt atop the bricks and cracking open the egg in his pocket.

The egg hatched. What came out was not a bird, but it was shaped something like one, although it grew much more quickly. With its first breath it was the size of a songbird, with its second it was the size of a turkey, with its third it was the size of a human, with its fourth it stood as tall as a house, and then it took a great final breath and leapt into the air with a great push of its powerful clawed wings, long neck straight and beak clattering. It spiralled up, up, up into the air, following the disturbance left by the passing of the swamp stone, and it circled the third son’s tower like a vulture above a corpse.

“Ho! Get away! Shoo!” called the third son. “I have felled giants uglier and more powerful than you! Shoo!” And he threw a stone, but for such a big animal the not-bird was quick, and it moved its long, long neck ever so slightly and the third son’s stone flew harmlessly away. This angered him and his second try was hastier and less aimed yet, and the third worse on both accounts, and on and on until his golden bag was empty of swamp-stones, then his satchel of lunch, then his sturdy shoes, and still the great not-bird came closer, its beak snapped more hungrily, until the third son of the bricklayer felt true, cold fear crawling up his back with its clawed feet for the first time in his entire life, for although he had planned and schemed past many obstacles to MAKE his fortune he realized that he had never thought for an instant as to how he might KEEP it. It was the dread of those who have much, and it struck the third son like a snake-bite, and in that moment he did what those who feel it always do, which was the most-immediate, least-sensible thing, and he reached into his leather pack and pulled out one of the two humble bricks and he threw it at the not-bird.

It caught it in its mouth and flew away.

The third son stood there for a moment, not sure of how he felt. Then he realized something awful, and could not help but look into the leather pack.

There was but one humble brick in there, and it was not stacked atop another. Not once. Not twice. Not thrice.

And so, in short and sharp suddenness, all that the stacking of the two humble bricks had wrought became unwrought. The farmer’s brick wall fell away as if it were made of hair-thin twigs; the nobleman’s new manor slid ripplelessly into the swamp; and the great and tall tower of the third son – beneath his very feet – was gone.

The air beneath it, however, was not. Nor was the ground far, far, far below that.

***

The first and second sons of the bricklayer (after a second bite of fruit for the eldest) did well enough, and married the two orphaned daughters of an elderly farmer from down the road.

The nobleman’s household took the leftover gilding from the sunken manor and moved to a nearby city, where the head cook became mayor.

The giant’s fortress was never visited by any except the most brave and most-dared children that crept to its closed gates, who claimed to hear dreadful clacking and clattering noises within, as if the giant were clapping a pair of giant shears together.

The humble bricks were placed in the old, old, old woman’s garden, where she used them to prop up her bench.

They laid side by side, of course. She didn’t need more of THAT foolishness.

I came down late to breakfast, and boy was that a mistake. The novices were squawking, the brothers were fussing, and the abbot looked fit to explode.

“-delinquency will NOT be excused by such wild stories!” he shouted. “Now give me the REAL answer!”
“It’s true! It’s true!” squealed the youngest – a deeply unfortunate young man with a deeply fortunate face currently contorted into desperate panic. “He left to the toilet – he screamed – he never came back! That’s all I know! That’s all I know!”

“I DID hear that scream,” chimed in Brother Theodore helpfully. “I was up checking my onions. They need the night air, you know.”
“Thank you, brother,” said the abbot between his two largest teeth and nothing else. “That is very helpful. But given the evidence we have – a missing novice and a scream – and the evidence we lack – any proof of malfeasance or wrongdoing – I think we can -”

“It was full moon last night,” blurted out another one of the novices.

As one, every face in the hall turned to face me, my hand still on the bannister.

I sighed.

“Well!” said the abbot pleasantly. “Isn’t it fortunate that we have an animal expert and proven werewolf-hunter in-residence? Someone pack Brother Simon a snack for the road; he will be making his trip to the village early today.”

***

It was a bright, beautiful morning and I hated every minute of it. I hated the clock-clock of my shoes against the road; I hated the warm sun in my eyes and the cool breeze sending creeping gooseflesh up my legs; I hated that I hated the half-mushy apple I was eating instead of breakfast; I hated that last summer I had visibly expressed satisfaction over proving that the ‘werewolf’ that had killed a sheep was the abbot’s favourite dog; I hated that the abbot was getting less and less subtle about how much he knew about the bottle I picked up from the pub every fortnight; and I especially hated that I probably could’ve avoided all of this if I had just woken up on time.

A bird chirped brightly from a nearby bush. That kept me committing blasphemy in my mind all the rest of the way into town, where I saw an unusual sight.

The wrong kind of unusual.

No concerned shepherds, no pale-faced parents, no angry mobs demanding a scapegoat and justice. Just a village of farmers and pilgrim-bilkers, making their livings and glancing occasionally at the irritated lump of monk standing in the walnut-shaded center of village square and peering suspiciously at everyone. And, of course, the loud man hunched double on the roof of the pub swearing and slamming shingles into place with a hammer and a bruised thumb

“Morning, Brother Simon,” said the man at the bottom of the ladder.
“What gives?” I asked him.

“Eh?”
“Forget about it. Passing thought. How’s business?”

“Oh, it’s absolutely crazy. Jean’s spent more time with his feet on roofs than with them on the ground since last night. Dunno what it was up there, but it had sharp toes.”
“Huh.”

“So…werewolf, right?”
I gave him the stare of a man who’d eaten a mush-apple for breakfast.

“Sorry, sorry, just figured, you know? Just figured.”

“Yeah.”

“Still… dogs can’t climb houses.”

“Thanks. Can I have one of the old tiles?”

“No problem!”

I cursed him and muttered a little prayer for his soul, which probably broke even. Thus spiritually neutralized, I sat under the walnut tree and checked rooftops.

One. Two. Three. Four. More. Every building in sight had either a freshly repaired roof or some sort of odd scarring adorning its eaves.

I looked at the tile in my hands. ‘Odd.’ That was the polite way of saying ‘clawed.’ Something big – really big, with sharp nails – had scuttled over this and it hadn’t been shy about it.

I groaned and threw back my head in frustration, looking up at the picked-clean branches of the walnut overhead. If there was an honest-to-god werewolf out there I’d have to move. I’d have to leave. Hell, I might have to abandon my vows and go be a knife-grinder; anything but live in the same building as the abbot. It was a grim, inescapable sort of thought that held me close to its breast as it dropped into the abyss, and accordingly I decided to go to the pub.

***

Bret jumped when he saw me. He was a big man; it took a lot of force and it made a bit of noise. “Brother Simon!”
“Bartender Bret.”
“You’re here early. Weather’s ah, nice for it, isn’t it?”
“Probably. Surprised you’d call this early, though, what with all the racket you must have heard all night.”
“Oh yes, oh yes. Terrible, terrible. Jean’s giving us all deals – real neighborly of him – but still, ah, the expense, the expense! Always a terrible thing, a surprise cost. Any chance I can rely on you to recoup a little of my misfortune, brother?”
I smiled. “You know, you just might. Two this time, I think. I’ve got a headache to make up for.”
Bret beamed like a bear ass-deep in honeycomb, and he left to fetch the bottles so excited and relieved that he didn’t even hear my weary footsteps as I got up and walked around the bar.

“Boo,” I said.

To his credit, the missing novice didn’t scream. This was because he had stuffed both his hands in his mouth down to the knuckles.

“Oh Christ, get out of there. You’ll chew a thumb off. C’mon, up you get.”
“Imnotgoinback!” he squeaked, arms shaking, fingers nigh bone-dry despite their recent place of residence.

“Slower, please.”

“I’m not, goingback, I can’t, I won’t, i-”

“Okay, good. Now clearer, please.”

His mouth opened and shut in an agony of indecision.

I sighed. “Look. Bret’s going to be back in three seconds, with two bottles. We’re opening one. There’s time.”

Bret poked his head up from the cellar and went through a series of emotions.

“There, y’see? Just like I said. Hey Bret, you had a friend of mine staying over. Feel free to sit in on this.”

***

The novice shook like a leaf until three glasses in, which was pretty impressive. I didn’t aim for style in my drinks; I went for efficiency.

“I’m going home. I can’t go back,” he explained.

“So you’ve said.” I was on glass four, but I had more practice and I knew I could handle it and most importantly I really really needed it.
“I, I went to the bathroom. That was all. Nothing else, I wasn’t stealing from Brother Theodore’s garden or, or sneaking into the kitchens or climbing the wall or ANYTHING. That’s all I was doing. I was halfway back when it happened.”
“And what happened?”
He stared into his glass. I nodded at Bret, who – still-reluctantly, but apparently now believing I wasn’t going to burn the boy at the stake – filled it. The novice did not register this. He was looking somewhere farther away than the table.

“Something leapt at me,” he said, slowly and carefully. “From behind. I kicked loose and ran and I glanced over my shoulder and I saw hair and FANGS and I screamed – just once, because I needed to run. I couldn’t not scream, you know? It just shot out of me. And then I ran, and I ran, and every step I ran it was right behind me and it chased me right out of the abbey, right through the front doors and halfway down to town before I couldn’t feel its breath on my heels. And when it stopped it, it made the most horrible call.”
I sighed and slumped in my chair.

“Sharp. Quick. Furious.”
I unslumped and unsighed. “Wait, what? Not a howl?”
“No! No. I don’t think I can forget that noise, EVER. It’ll be with me on my deathbed if I live to a hundred.”

“What was it?”

He took a breath, then spat it out.

I stared at him.

He stared back.

Bret stared at us staring at each other.

“… is that okay?” asked the novice.

“Yes. From most angles it makes no sense at all, but I think I see one where it fits a bit too well.” I stood up, half-empty bottle in one hand. “Bret, I’ll be leaving my second sample with our mutual friend here. I’ve got to go back. Fast.”

“What’re you going to do?” he asked.

“Confirm a hunch. Too many things add up just wrong.” One of them struck me as I put a foot out the door. “By the way… Bret, when did you harvest that walnut?”
“The tree in the square, brother? Never. Nobody eats from it. Bad luck.”

And because nobody eats them and everyone’s eyes are on the roofs today, nobody’s noticed. Oh no. “Thank you, Bret. If I never see you again, you should know that you were the only reason I’m still alive and sane for the past twelve years. Make sure he doesn’t finish the bottle in one go, okay? Got to run.”

And I did. At least for most of the way. Time was wasting – had been since before I got up today. But I might still have just enough.

***

The abbot didn’t come to his door at the first knock.

“Perhaps we might-” said Brother Theodore behind me, and while he was saying that I pushed it open. It took some effort since there was a lock in the way, but it was more of a formal barrier than a real one and the cheap clasp burst loose from the firm wood with a quick crunch.

There were six large and surly brothers behind me who would probably have something to say about the destruction of monastic property. As the door swung wide, they immediately found higher priorities than myself.

Abbot Alvin was an arrogant, high-handed, peevish son of a bitch. He also lived only somewhat more smugly and less frugally than was technically expected of a  man of his station. His furniture, his writing desk, his bedframe, all were well-made and solid and only mildly adorned. If he had more than the monks under his care, it was comfortably debatable how close it came to extravagance.

Every single wooden item had been shredded and reduced to slivers and splinters. In the center of the room the abbot himself blinked and sat upright, nestled in the midst of a sea of woodchips and some fuzzy lint that might once have been a blanket.

“Brother SIMON?” he asked, and the outrage was there, but it was off. He was upset I was there, but not as upset as a man whose subordinate had just broken his front door should be.

Got you.

“I left the village early,” I explained. Move on, before he takes the focus anywhere but himself. “Bet you expected me to stay out of the way while you cleaned up. Nice redecoration.”
“The missing novice, I came upstairs just now and found that, he must have-”

“He’s in town. Has been since last night.” No sense giving someone rope to hang themselves when they might use it to get a grip instead. Let’s keep him flailing.

“You can’t prove that!”

“Something chased him out. Know anything about that?”

“Wild nonsense! You, you yourself proved it! Werewolves aren’t real!”
“Didn’t say anything about werewolves.” Time to make the play. “Know anything about this?”

The abbot stared at the little walnut in my hand like I’d kidnapped his daughter. “Give it,” he whispered.

“It was hard to find; something cleaned out the whole tree. Know anything about it?”
“It’s not yours you can’t have it.”

“Sure, what is it?”
“It’s mine.”
“Why?”
“MINE!” he screamed, and he leapt – and really, really leapt at me. From across the room, a standing start, and as he leapt he was furred, and striped, and he hit me all needle-claws and furious anger and indignation, tail bristling above us both like a little flag as I fell flat on my back in the doorway, staring up at a pair of insulted eyes in a very different context than usual, perched above razor-sharp and saw-sized incisors.
““CHIP-CHIP, CHIP-CHIP, CHIP-CHIP!” he screamed.

And about then was when the two brothers on the stairway who’d been holding onto the abbot’s dogs let them loose.

“CHUCK, CHUCK!” he squeaked furiously. Then he spun on his heel and leapt out the window, exploding outwards in a haze of glass shards and outrage.

I laid there. The dogs were barking out the window. In the distance, the abbot was chipping furiously. And above me, the round, puzzled face of Brother Theodore gently intruded. All of these things were difficult to contemplate.

“Do you suppose,” he asked carefully, “that he will be coming back?”
I shrugged. It hurt. Those little claws had been sharp.

“Well, I suppose we can put up screens to stop him creeping indoors. And put a lock on the novice’s quarters, so he won’t chase them out.” He frowned, an uncanny expression on him, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “There is one thing that’s troubling me, though…”

“Shoot,” I croaked.

“…do you think I shouldn’t have fed him that walnut tart last month? I didn’t know that tree was so contentious, and when I went to look for new produce there were so many of them just CRYING out to be picked up, and well. Waste not want not?”

“I do not think,” I said, “that anyone is going to blame you for turning the abbot into a were-ground-squirrel as a result of feeding him cursed walnuts.”

“Oh yes, of course, when you put it like that.” He reached down and helped me up. “But still, one likes to be certain about things.”

“Yes,” I winced as I was towed upright, heels slipping through the mess of strewn wood fragments. “Especially with chip-monks.”

Ring, ring.                                                                                                             

Exclemptes zo Wilhomp, Purveyor and Planner of Beastes Moste Reptilliyan, looked at the doorway to his establishment as if it were a dead spider. One-handed, he fumbled for the speaking-trumpet at his desk – a new and very much unwelcome addition.

“Akoloids!” he snapped down it.

“Yeah?” came the reply, fogged by several dozen yards, many spiderwebs, and the sucked-dry corpses of hundreds of lost mantisflies.

“There is a CLIENT at the doorway and they don’t seem to understand how to OPEN the DOOR. Do I need to put up instructions?!”
“Is the door locked?”
“The secretary takes care of that.”
“You fired the secretary. That’s why you’re up front.”
“She fired herself. Nobody strikes the person of the Baron Vogelschnapps and expects to retain employment, no matter how hard he tries to stick his hand down their blouse.”

“Right. Right. So, did you unlock the door, since she didn’t?”

Exclemptes hung up the speaking trumpet and glared sourly at his desk, where a large, beautiful key watched him with innocence. Your forebears build the business, you tend it as all your predecessors have, and what do your employees do? Leave you in the lurch to clean up their messes. Some people are just too stupid for words. It was in this spirit of mind that he took up the key, put it in the front door, turned it, and returned to his desk, where he plunged the instrument into a deep drawer that it might someday cease to disgust him.

Then he began to read the paper.

“Erm-” suggested the prospective client after some two minutes of this. His clothing was colourful but dissolute and his manner shabby, as was typical of heralds and messengers.

“Exclemptes zo Wilhomp, Purveyor and Planner of Beastes Moste Reptilliyan and co-owner of Wilhomp & Akoloids Greate Reptiyles,” reeled off Exclemptes. “But you may address me as ‘Master Wilhomp.’”

“Yes master Wilhomp.”

“Capitalize it.”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp.”

Exclemptes nodded in satisfaction. “Good. Now, what does your lord wish of me? Present unto me the documentation so that we can get on with this.”
“Err….m’lord wished to procure his order…verbally.”
“Verbally!?”
“Ah, orally?”
“I KNOW what ‘verbally’ means you illiterate louse!” Exclemptes slammed his fist into the desk. “But a contract without written seal? Does he take me for a buffoon? A jester? A churl? A CHUMP? Give me his name so that I may blackball him!”
“Baron Vogelschnapps,” gasped out the messenger, reeling under the onslaught.

Exclemptes’s stomach jerked two inches to the right.

“Well,” he said. His fist uncurled, palm flat to the desktop. Legal papers and half-drafted hiring notices for new secretaries stuck to his suddenly sweating skin. “Perhaps a one-time accommodation might be made. I am pleased to hear your lord has rethought his notions and sought to patronize our establishment once more. Now, what has he commanded you to purchase?”
“A… custom order, of sorts.”
“Pea-brained poltroon! ALL dragons, drakes, wyrms, wyverns, wurms, devil-lizards, serpents, and scaly horrors produced by Wilhomp & Akoloids are custom-made! Who do you think crafted the Wing’d Horror of Bannocksbolg, so valiantly slain by Saint Gurge? Who shaped the slithering bulk of Falafnal, the Worm of the West Shore, stabbed through the heart by brave Sir Boarbees? Who devised the first biological emanatory of jellied flame? Who first fine-tuned venom glands to carve rock as readily as flesh? Who hardened some scales to stronger-than-steel and tuned others to soft sweet arterial weakness, ripe for the sword? Who? WHO?!”

“…you?”

Both fists this time, sending a pen airborne for a fraction of a second. “NO you inordinately ignorant ignoramus! The Akoloids did that; the Wilhomps organized the thing. Which is what I am TRYING to DO right NOW but YOU. AREN’T. LETTING ME.” One finger jutted forth from a clenched and clutched claw of a fist, a nail aimed for the heart. “Now SPEAK!!”
“A becloaked sprawlbodied stinker, slowwaking with a big sweet spot,” blurted the messenger.

“Hm!” said Exclemptes. He leaned back in his chair and stroked his chin. “Hm,” he repeated. It was the first non-irritating thing to happen to him all morning. “Well!” he considered. “That is indeed interesting. Very interesting. You! Your message is certain?”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp.”
“Speak more surely! It is precise?”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp!”
“LOUDER! It is the exact and entire words your lord sent you with, not merely the summary of such?”

“YES, MASTER WILHOMP!” roared the messenger. “Probably. Yes. I think so.”

Exclemptes zo Wilhomp threw his pen. It missed the courier and bounced off the door.

“If that glass is chipped I will have you devoured,” he said calmly. “Now. Are. You. Certain. There. Was. Nothingelse?”
“No! Yes! There was nothing else, Master Wilhomp!”
“Did he say what this order was FOR?”
“Personal amusement, Master Wilhomp! Wants to ‘keep himself in hand!’”

“Hah!” guffawed Exclemptes. “About as literally as can be, what with THIS mess! The old coot would get as much swordwork done playing with his pants in private!”
“Pardon, Master Wilhomp?”
“Don’t gossip of your betters! Be on your way, and tell your master I will send him the bill with his order! And wash your tunic – you stain the air!”
“Yes Master Wilhomp! Thank you! Goodbye!”
“Faugh!”

Exclemptes zo Wilhomp locked the door in case the wretched thing should attempt to re-enter the premises, returned to his desk, and, after three tries, unhooked the speaking-trumpet.

“Akoloids!” he shouted down it. “Order from Vogelschnapps! It seems firing the secretary for offending him was indeed the right thing to do, exactly as I have told you! A becloaked sprawlbodied stinker, slowwaking with a big sweet spot. Personal amusement.”

“What, really?” came the reply, surprise naked and unashamed. “Why not stomp on some frogs instead? Same effort, and a lot cheaper.”
“The price is the POINT, as my father spent his whole life telling your father,” said Exclemptes with exasperated patience. “Nobody is impressed by something you can do for free. Get started. And tell the damned secretary to answer the door, the bell is ringing off its hook!”
“You fired her, remember?”
Exclemptes threw the speaking trumpet behind his desk, stomped to the door, turned around, stomped back to the desk twice as fast, dug out the key again, stomped back to the door, unlocked it, and threw the key inside his pants pocket so hard it broke skin on his leg. “Greetings,” he said through clenched teeth to the august, soberly-moustached gentleman at the door. “Exclemptes zo Wilhomp, Purveyor and Planner of Beastes Moste Reptilliyan and co-owner of Wilhomp & Akoloids Greate Reptiyles. Do come inside.”

“I was attempting to do so, sir,” droned the man, who had the sort of rigid cheekbones that had never once cracked under a smile, “but I fear that the door bade me different.”
“Hah hah, your grace. What can I do for the Duke of Babberidge this fine morn?”
“Well, my nephew could do with a bit of a toughening-up. I need something that can put up a fight against him and a good horse and a small assist-party of seventy beaters six houndsmen forty hounds and a squad of gunners. Don’t want to make things too easy on him.”

“Yes, yes, yes, of course, very sensible, very laudable,” said Exclemptes. “Tell me, shall you prefer the beast to be aerial or landbound? Leaping or creeping? Fey and wild or seething with malice? What of its emissions, do you prefer sanguine, bright, cold, searing, or screaming?”
“Oh, whatever’s best,” said the Duke, waving a hand carelessly in the manner of someone who’s never once been shy of a glove. “I suspect you know your business better than I do mine. Now I really must go; the day’s young yet and I have pressing matters to attend to. Shake a leg, sir. I shall expect it by Mortimermass.”

“Yes, your grace. Thank you, your grace. Take care, your grace.”
Exclemptes maintained his poise until the count of ten after the door’s shutting, then dove behind his desk to retrieve the speaking-trumpet. “AKOLOIDS!” he shrieked down it. “The Duke of Babberidge needs a dick-measurer for his nephew and his armada of gormless hired thugs and foxhunters!”
“What? That’s great!”
“The damned old fool doesn’t know a drake from a DUCK! He expects the world and described a mote of dust!”
“What? That’s terrible.”

“TELL ME ABOUT THAT.” Exclemptes sobbed elephantinely into his palms and the trumpet both, then swept his face away with his hands. “No, no, no. This will be alright. Do… a prowling ripper, extra rip. Cloak it, and add a flaremouth. Cold.”
“No wings AND no flames? In a show”
“DON’T SECOND-GUESS ME no, no, that’s too far, it needs SOMETHING. Put a sparktongue in that flaremouth. It won’t be able to light a candle without deepthroating it, but by god it’ll look a blast furnace.”

“’Tongue alone won’t cut it. I’ll put in some oildrool.”
“Are you LISTENING you WRETCHE-“

“Don’t second-guess ME.”

“YOU-!”

Akoloids hung up.

Exclemptes gave a cruel little shriek and flung his speaking trumpet to the desk.

“Err… pardon, Master Wilhomp?” asked the messenger. His clothing was the same, only a little dustier. “But might you have a moment?”
“Don’t interrupt!” snapped Exclemptes. “And yes. Obviously. All the time in the world for Baron Vogelschnapps.”

“Ah, thank you, Master Wilhomp. Yes, well, the Baron. The Baron has thought of some additional criteria for his order.”
Exclemptes’s eyebrows rose. Through great effort, his upper lip did not. “I see? Well, we are not in the business of alterations, but your lord IS among our most exclusive customers, so perhaps we can look the other way this once. What are his thoughts?”
“’Scratch the cloaks and put up wings; quickstart the waking, make the sweetspot bigger,’” reeled off the messenger in a toneless trance.

“Hm!” said Exclemptes, drumming his fingers on the table. “Hmmm! Well then. This we can do, though of course the bill will rise along with the wings – true flight is no mean feat to put on a sixty-foot beast!”
“Hundred-twenty,” chimed in the messenger.
“I beg your very small pardon you exquisite worm?”
“A hundred and twenty feet, Master Wilhomp.”
“Better, but best would’ve been to not have to ask for it.” Exclemptes sniffed aggressively through both nostrils. “The adjustments will be made. You may depart. You shall depart. Now.”
“Thank you, Master Wilhomp.”
“Akoloids!”
“Yeah?” rasped the speaking-trumpet, its ambient wispy buzz now redolent with the addition of thick, mucosal chopping sounds. Exclemptes did not make it his business to consider their origins.
“The Baron’s changed his mind. Scratch the cloaks and put up wings, quickstart the waking, double the sweetspot from big to bigger and supersize it.”
“Really? Did he realize he wasn’t even going to impress himself? Should be a pretty good show now, if you’re blind and deaf. On it.”
“High priority!”
“On it.”
Ring, ring.

“Go AWA- we’re open,” said Exclemptes with exquisite calm as a dress that could’ve been used as a life-raft entered the establishment.

“One is pleased to know this,” said a voice from somewhere inside it. “Tell me, might one procure a garden-pet here?”
“Madam,” said Exclemptes, delicately retrieving what looked like it was a sleeved glove and kissing what was probably a hand, “Wilhomp & Akoloids Greate Reptiyles have produced everything from sea serpents to lawn-drakes. Whatever place in your estate needs a beast, we can make it fit.”

“How droll. Harriet, give the man a cheque and get him to do something for the hedge-maze. One must depart; the smell here is giving one congestion.”
The dress subsided and departed, leaving in its wake a small, irritated-looking woman with a much smaller dress.

“Strict night owl,” she said, slapping the chequebook down on the counter. “Thickblooded, hungry for trespasser flesh, sleeps like a cat. Cheap job.”
“For a custom-”

“She wants the same damned thing her cousin got last year, but living in a pile of leaves instead of a rock garden. Reuse the design, strip out the fire, save both of us money. Take it or eat shit.”
“Fine.”

“Fine.”
The door clanged shut. Exclemptes stared at the cheque with conflicted and vexed emotions.

“’Scuse,” said the messenger. “Do you have another moment, Master Wilhomp?”

“Don’t sneak!” snapped Exclemptes, nearly falling out of his chair. “And don’t SQUEAK either – god, your awful voice is as high-pitched as a WOMAN’S! What is it NOW?!”

“I’m afraid the Baron had been thinking more while I was delivering my last message, and he request a few more tweaks, Master Wilhomp.”
“Fine. Fine! What is it?”
“’Nix the sprawl, turn the stink up to a smokestack, double the sweetspot.’”
Exclemptes smiled and nodded. “Yes. Wonderful. Good. Goodbye now.”
“Yes, Master W-”

Exclemptes slammed the door on the messenger’s foot, cursing a little as it rebounded off his stout, peasantly wooden shoes.

“Akoloids!”
“Yeah?”
“The Baron’s changing his mind again! Nix the sprawl, turn the stink to a smokestack, double the sweetspot!

“We already doubled the sweetspot.”
“Then DOUBLE IT AGAIN!” Ring ring. “Hello, welcome, to WHAT IS IT NOW?”
The messenger abashedly scratched the back of his head. “Err, forgot a bit. Take it to hair-trigger and grease the reflexes. Thanks. Sorry.”

“Go away. Yes, Akoloids, and take it to hair-trigger and grease the reflexes.”

The empty speaking-trumpet sat mutely on the desk.

“AKOLOIDS!”
“What, what? Something else?”
“HAIR TRIGGER. GREASE THE REFLEXES.”
“The Baron still going on?”
Exclemptes bit the speaking-trumpet. Ring, ring, ring, clack.

“Hello, are you open?” inquired the larger and more well-fed of the two men inserting their combined mass into the doorway.

“No, can’t you read the sign?” snapped Exclemptes, rehanging his jaw and hoping he hadn’t chipped a tooth. “What do you need?”
“Here, have a care!” admonished the smaller and more ruffled of the two. “That’s the newest knight of the land you’re speaking to! Sir Pearse!”
“Oh, how thoughtless of me!” smiled Exclemptes brightly. “TERRIBLY sorry to trouble a KNIGHT of the LAND, here come to seek such a big important matter. Now, what do you need to stab, sir? And might you muzzle you upstart grub?”
“Fair ‘nuff,” rumbled Sir Pearse happily, punching his squire affectionately in the kidney. “Shut up, you. I reckon I’ll take a Big Flambe, if you’ve still got any ‘n the stock from last year. Sure made a pretty mess back with Sir Forkmoore’s slaying, I tell you that.”
“Yes, yes, very tragic.”
“I reckon I’n handle that. Got a spear.”
“That should do it.”
“He preferred sword. Showy bastard he was.”
“Too true, too true,” said Exclemptes, shaking his head. “Cheque?”

“Here’n you go,” grunted Sir Pearse, passing the paper with one hand and grabbing his retching squire’s belt with the other. “Hush, you. On m’way now, g’day to you.”
The speaking-trumpet took a moment to work this time, which Exclemptes spent checking the surface for dentally-induced cracks.

“Yeah?”
“We DO have a few Grand Flambe lying around back there, yes?”
“Nope, the equinox tourney took ‘em all. But I could chop shop something close enough to qualify, as long as nobody looks too carefully.”
“It’s a knight’s slaying, the whole audience and every participant will be soused as shrimp and unsensible even when sober. Do it.”

Ring, ring.

Exclemptes steepled his fingers and gave a level gaze at the messenger. “Admit it.”
“Pardon, Master Wilhomp?” gulped the messenger. His eyes glazed with an extra layer of fear.
“Admit you screwed this all up. You can’t hear and can’t think and can’t listen properly and you’re having to salvage it all from half-recollected bits of nonsense and gossip your fellow servants can scrape together, hoping all the while they don’t feed you a discrediting line for their own gain – and the reason you delivered this verbally is because there WAS a document that you LOST and you don’t know what was on it because YOU CAN’T READ.”
The man sagged in relief. “Yes Master Wilhomp! It’s all true Master Wilhomp! I’m sure I’ve got it now though, Master Wilhomp! I asked the butler and he called me a worm but told me everything now, it’s all true! I’m positive! Please spare me!”
“Stop mewling and start speaking,” said Exclemptes, narrowing his eyes in lordly disdain. “And be sure that your Baron will have a full accounting of your failings should he find one fault with this product of your assigned errand!”
“Yes Master Wilhomp thank you Master Wilhomp praise you Master Wilhomp! Turn the heat up from smoke to flame and double the sweet on the spot!” babbled the messenger, backing out the door as he bowed and scraped so hard that he nearly cleaned the dust from the carpet.

Exclemptes shook his head as he picked up the speaking-trumpet. “Akoloids? Change the smokestack to a full flame and double the sweet on the sweetspot.”
A groan. “Really? I don’t know how much more vulnerable this thing can get; I’m already making it with a fully naked chest and a retracted ribcage; want me to just mount its heart on its nose so it can pop it whenever it sneezes?”
“The customer, right or wrong, is always paying.”
“Fine.”

Exclemptes hung up and rubbed his face and thought of luncheons. Akoloids wasn’t angry, god no, but he was already sliding into the sort of surly sulk that he liked to spend whole months in if prodded far enough. Just the sort of thing he needed. God, the amount of salt being added to the day’s coffee was almost enough to cancel out the sugar of Vogelschnapps returning. What a plum that was; he’d sworn to never set foot in the whole of Cabbledrach street again, let alone buy a Wilhomp & Akoloids original. But all aristocratic emotions were fickle and fanciful in the end, even spite.

Ring, ring.

“Admiral.”
“Wilhomp.”
“Six more serpents for the boarding drills?”
“Dullfanged and drooling.”
“Wonderful.”
“Superb.”
“Always happy to assist the navy.”
“Happy to be assisted.”

Exclemptes didn’t even bother picking up the speaking-trumpet; the order had been processed weeks in advance, as had every other of its kind for the past six decades. Predictability was probably why the navy had lost the last war, but if it purchased six practice-serpents every six months who was to say if it was bad or good?
He stood up. Enough prevarication. Luncheon called. Meats and breads and breaded meats and little morsels of fat from honest, boring, expensive animals, things no blade of Akoloids’s would ever touch. The chef would have prepared everything by now.

Ring. Ring.

Exclemptes’s eyes met those of the messenger. The messenger’s eyes met those of Exclemptes.

They were soft, watery. A particular kind of hazel.

“Well?” he snapped.

“I DID get it correct, Master Wilhomp,” said the messenger apologetically. “But there was one more thing, just one more thing. The Baron sent me out specific when I told him it was done, just for this.”
Exclemptes shut his eyes. “Speak. Then never be seen here again.”
“Forget about the sweetspot. Too big a hassle. Also please deliver one copy of the order to every member of the peerage on your patronage list as a surprise present from the Baron to the realm as a whole.”
Exclemptes smiled. “Well. Well, well, well. That’s a big order.”
“Yes, Master Wilhomp.”
“The biggest ever made.”
“The Baron believes that what goes around comes around, Master Wilhomp.”
“Yes it does,” mused Exclemptes. He was smiling, how odd. “Yes it surely does. Oh. Do you know someone called….mmmm….” his brain ticked through half-forgotten things; old meals; dead pets; someone’s aunt “…Svoush?”

The messenger jumped. “Pardon, Master Wilhomp?”
“Former secretary, I think that was her name. Wretched imbecile. You have her peculiar eyes.”
The messenger did not move a single muscle.

“What an utter and totally inexplicable coincidence THAT is!”
“Truly and completely, Master Wilhomp.”

“Now go away! And spend your next meager payday on a PROPER messenger’s uniform – that livery scarce befits your master; it looks like a paltry play-costume stolen from a theater-troupe!”

Slam, click, locked, and ready for lunch. But one last thing, one last word to the speaking-trumpet.

“Akoloids! Final adjustment to the Baron’s orders.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Nix the sweetspot, and we’re giving one to all our clients. The old baboon is having a birthday.”
“Ah.”
“Ah what?”
“It’s just, looking at the order all at once, this is a supersized flying flaming whip-quick greased-reflex monster, and now you say it has NO sweetspots, and-“

“And what?”

“But-”

“But WHAT?”

“…what if they barbecue the clients?

“So what if they do? It’ll be Vogelschnapps’s own damned fault for sending a clod-headed peasant to deliver his messages. I tell you, Akoloids, some people are just too stupid for words.”

Martin’s father was a lawyer. He understood laws.

Martin’s dad was a doctor. He understood medicine.

Martin’s sister was fond of animals. She was studied in biology.

Martin’s brother was into sports. He knew about baseball.

Martin was fascinated by disasters. He was prepared for them.

That was fine. His family understood that what mattered was your interest in something, not its monetary or social value.

The problem was the sort of disasters Martin was prepared for.

***

It began when Martin was very young – one of his first memories, from somewhere in age four. Water winged and concentrating intently on his footing, he was so busy climbing the steps into the pool that he lost the sound of crying in the murmur of the crowd until its bawling source was carried by him.

“-it’s okay there aren’t any-“

“-don’t LIE I don’t WANT to swim with SHARKS-”

Martin stopped, hand still clutching the railing. “Are there sharks?” he asked his father.

“No,” said Martin’s father. “Sharks don’t swim in pools. They’re full of chlorine, it’d be very unhealthy for them.”

“Oh,” said Martin. And he said no more of it, but he descended the steps extra slow the rest of the way – because for the very first time in his life his mind was elsewhere than his body, and whirring even more furiously than his stubby legs as he kicked and splashed. All the way from the pool to a dip in the hot tub to the showers he pondered, and it was in the car home that he made his decision.

“I’d use the pool noodle,” he told his father as they left the parking lot.

“Pardon?”
“I’d use the pool noodle to stop the shark,” he explained patiently. “I’d wave it around until it bites it, then I’d get out of my water wings, and I’d swim away while it attacked them, since they’re bright and floaty. I’d sneak.”
“You’d sink,” said Martin’s father with devastating graciousness. “Don’t ever take off your water wings without talking to me or another adult.”
“But the shark –”

“Sharks can’t swim in pools.”
“But what if one DID.”
“It wouldn’t.”
“But what if one did,” traitorously mused Martin, and so on and so forth until bedtime and the day after, when Martin’s father had forgotten it and assumed the same of his son.

Foolish man! Children don’t forget anything; the hard part is making them understand which parts they should remember as being important.

***

At age nine Martin went to the museum on a school field trip, and a grand time was anticipated to be had by all, except for those who would be bored because they weren’t interested, or bored because they already knew everything, or bored because they were exhausted and couldn’t focus, or those who were just bored.

And Martin, who was having trouble passing through the downstairs gallery hall.

“Martin,” said Mrs. Hollis, a thin, sun-scarred woman of infinite sufferance and infinity plus one suffering. “You’re holding up the tour. C’mon. Let’s go.”
“It’s dangerous,” said Martin, lurking stubbornly behind a support column in a way that would let him juke left and right without much trouble should someone try to grab him.

“The whole place got renovated eight years back, it’s safe.”
“But what if the skeletons come alive?” he argued, pointing up up up at the gallery’s centerpiece and sole attraction: forty-five foot of Tyrannosaurus rex.

“They can’t, Martin,” said Mrs. Hollis. “They aren’t alive.”
“But what if they came alive?”
“Skeletons are dead. And that isn’t a skeleton, actually – it’s a cast of one recreated using actual fossilized bones as the models for moulds. And the fossilized bones are almost entirely casts themselves made from nonorganic mineral seepage slowly replacing the actual skeleton of the animal. There is nothing here to come alive on multiple levels.”
“Wow,” said Martin.

“Yep. Now c’mon.”
“Can I have one minute?”
“You can have until Alvin comes out of the bathroom.”
Martin knew this was a better deal than he could expect, and so took it uncomplainingly. “Okay,” he said, as a toilet flushed in the near distance. “I’m fine now.”
“Good to hear. Do you feel okay?”
“I have a plan,” he told her. “If the skeletons come alive, I’ll run for the bathroom, then wait until it’s chasing someone else. Then I’ll sneak out the rear exit near the cafeteria.”

“Okay,” said Mrs. Hollis. “Why not leave through the lobby though? It’s closer.”
“Because I’ve been here before and I know that the lobby is right next to the big stairs, and the main dinosaur hall is right next to those on the second floor, and the Albertosaurus skeleton is right next to its entrance, and I think it’s small enough to use the big stairs and come downstairs and catch me.”

“Makes sense,” she agreed. “But it won’t do that.”
“But what if it DID?” asked Martin plaintively, only to be swept up in the charge as Alvin returned to the herd and it began to move as one uncaring and ponderous beast into the swirl of the museum.

Much learning was had. Many experiences were cherished. Lifelong impressions were made.

Martin already had one of those. It deepened.

***

When Martin was set to graduate, he refused to go to the graduation party.

“C’mon,” Seth chanted at him. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon. Everyone’s going.”
“And that’ll help,” said Martin irritably.  “But it won’t be good enough.”
“What, more than everyone being there for the last time with a lot of food, music, and some spiked drinks? Man, even Ben’s gonna be coming and he barely showed up for anything that wasn’t an exam in the last two years.”
“It’s in the main auditorium, and they got rid of the balcony seats last fall,” explained Martin.

“So?”
“So my entire plan for what to do if gravity suddenly reverses is shot. Before I just had to stay underneath a balcony and the farthest I’d fall would be maybe eight feet; now I’m dropping over twenty – farther if I’m too close to the stage. Even if I have good reflexes and end up landing on top of a bunch of other people, I’ll probably break limbs if not my spine, and then I’m stuck with no way to climb back up to the rest of the halls on ground level. I’d just starve to death.”

“Martin,” said Seth, “my buddy. You have got to organize your life in a way that isn’t based around gravity reversing. It’s just not happening.”

“But what if it DID?”

“What if squirrels kidnapped you and bit your knees off?”
Martin considered this. “No,” he decided. “I think I’d be okay. I made a plan for what to do if birds do that, and that’s not that different.”

The noogie that followed was memorable for him, but the message conveyed by it was not.

***

Martin was in a cubicle (or half a cubicle: a whole cubicle was a relic of the ancient past). Martin was filling out forms. Martin was listening to Stephanie complain.

“And the worst part is the total lack of care,” she explained to him. “Sick leave? Nah.”

“Yup,” said Martin. Click. Type. Click. Type. Click.

“ Paid overtime? Nah.”
“Yup,” said Martin. Type type type. Click click. Type. Click.

“I’m amazed they have even have a plan to get us out of the building in case of fire – and even then, it relies on the sprinklers working, and those things are older than my goddamned parents.”
“Right!” said Martin. “Right. No emergency preparedness. That’s why I had to come up with my own solutions.” He pulled open his desk drawer and held aloft a small canister.  “Oxygen tank and respirator. And goggles. Heat-treated.”
“Jesus,” said Stephanie as she ran her fingers over the seals. “High-quality stuff, I’m impressed – but fuck, if the company’s doing such a shitty job keeping us alive that you feel like we should all buy this sort of thing just to stay alive in a fire-”

“Oh, they’re not for fires,” explained Martin. “They’re for if the ceiling turns into taffy. It’d be quite warm, but the main danger would be suffocation, since it’s nearly impossible to swim or move through. The tank would keep me alive long enough to get to the stairwell and break a door, which would drain it all out of the offices and get us some breathing space.”

Stephanie looked at him with an unreadable expression.

“So I don’t think you’ll need the goggles. Just a tank each.”

The expression hardened around the edges, like old bones buried deep.

“You can borrow mine if you want to know the manufacturer. But whatever you do, don’t confuse it with the other bottle. That one is the bear spray.”
“You have bear spray in your desk.”
“Yes. In case our boss turns into a bear.”

She turned and left.

“But what if she DID?” Martin called after her.

Her stride accelerated. He remembered that happening, but didn’t understand why.

***

“That’s strike two,” said Jane as she helped Martin load the rest of his stuff into the back of her van. It was warm and spacious and smelled slightly of wildlife urine.

“I didn’t make a big deal of it,” he pointed out. “I didn’t ask my boss about their plans. I just tried to help a coworker.”
“You were keeping bear spray in your desk.”
“They confiscated it,” he complained.

“Good, because it isn’t getting in my car. Couldn’t you get fired on a day where yours wasn’t in the shop? Bonds of siblinghood aside, I just helped you move – ask Davie next time this happens, it’s his turn.”
“I didn’t plan on getting fired,” he explained as they pulled out of the parking lot.
“Why not? It’s better odds than the bear thing.” Tick tick goes the turn signal.
“But what if it did happen?” Vroom, slow acceleration.

“It won’t.” Low grumble and lurch to a stop at the light.
“But what if it-”

“Martin,” said Jane with the endless impatience and perfect understanding of a sister, “life is full of things that can happen. Why not think about them, instead of things that won’t?”
“But,” began Martin, as they pulled forwards into the intersection, which was when the man came through the red light.

He was looking at something that wasn’t the light. Maybe it was his phone? Or the floor. Or a sandwich.

He was moving very fast.

He was going to hit them.

Then they were probably going to hit other people.

What did you do in a car accident?

Martin knew what to do if an asteroid landed off the east coast of Mexico. He knew what to do if housepets across the world rose up and tried to kill humanity. He knew what to do if the floor was made of lava (as long as it wasn’t too hot). He knew what to do if a blizzard happened in July. He knew what to do if trees became conscious and vengeful. And he didn’t know what to do in a car accident.

But, his hindbrain, spine, and arms all helpfully communicated to him, he DID know what to do someplace else.

So he grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, wrenched it through a remarkable series of events, and didn’t blink until everything stopped moving around.

***

Davie drove them hope. It was, as Jane reminded him, his turn.

“That was very, very, very, very lucky,” she said. Again.

“Probably,” said Martin. Again.

“I mean, what were the chances of that?”
“A spaceship crashing in front of us, or the chances of me remembering what to do if a spaceship crashes in front of us, or the chances of me remembering what to do if a spaceship crashes in front of us and doing that when a car is about to crash into us?”

“The last one.”
“Dunno. One hundred percent? It’s happened once.”

Jane gently tipped forwards with a groan and tapped her forehead against the dashboard.

“Sit up,” said Davie. “What if you have whiplash?”
“Better doctors than you have already checked and said nope,” she muttered from below. “Not a scratch – not on me, not on Marty, not on anything but a long, long streak of asphalt and half  my van. And besides, I don’t wanna look at the road right now. Just makes me paranoid.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll go slow, put on some music – nice, dumb stuff from your old mix CDs, so it’ll keep you too irritated to be jumpy. You doing okay back there, man?”
“Sure,” said Martin.

“Really?”

“All of that stuff was an unprecedented and inexplicable fluke,” said Martin. “It happening again seems pretty unlikely, so why worry?”

Jane turned up the volume.

Martin remembered that. But he wasn’t sure why it happened.

He was used to that. 

The wind blew soft, the sun rose high, and the ground trembled under heavy weight from both ends of the pasture.

The cattle raised their heads. A procession of apes approached, sticks in hand, fires in stick, shouts in mouth and gleams in eye.

“Listen!” they called. “Listen to us! Bend to us! Do as we wish! We are tool-makers, and we are in the hands of Tool-Maker, and through us Tool-Maker demands you bend! Look!” they shouted, and they hoisted up a tall pole on which they had strung the skulls of cattle. “Here, place your god here! We will hold them as easily as we hold your bodies! Now submit!”

The cattle packed tightly and stood firm, but they did not charge, and this was all the bravery needed for one of the most adorned and adored apes to march forwards – he wore a cattle skull over himself, as if to compensate for the fur he lacked.

“You are large, but simple,” he said in a tired, matter-of-fact voice. “You are strong, but slow. Do as we ask and we will put you to better use. Look“- he shook the staff in his hand- “I bear the old horns of your old mothers and fathers, and through them I bear their manifestation of your Oldest Parent. You will do as your Oldest Parent bids, and your Oldest Parent is in my hands, and I am in Tool-Maker’s hands. This is how it is, now and forever.”

The cattle stared at the adorned ape. A calf bleated, but briefly – as if too frightened for full song in full voice. Then one after another the horned heads dipped, and with a snort hither and thither, the herd relaxed. The ape walked, and they followed behind.

“Yay! Woo! Hurrah!” shouted the other apes, capering along behind and around and clapping hands with each other. “He’s done it again! They said he couldn’t, but he did! Another victory for our Tool-Maker!”

***

It really was a great victory, even the apes who were lower in Tool-Maker’s esteem grudgingly admitted. It brought them meat and milk, and so large, and with tough skin you could peel loose from the meat and dry into usefulness. True, sheep had milk and meat and were soft, but they were smaller. True, the traitor-wolves who had named Tool-Maker their new family were cleverer and more useful to hunt and to warn of the cats that still roamed at night where Tool-Maker’s light did not shine, but they were smaller. Size meant a lot, even to apes that told themselves that size meant nothing with tools in your hands.

So they hurrayed the cattle into their new pasture, and hurrayed the priestly apes who had led them there, and above all else they hurrayed the great Tool-Maker, who was the one being in this world who realized that others were more than friend or foe, but objects in your grasp, and who most munificently and mercifully bestowed this knowledge and power upon its children when the other idiot weakling beings beyond of the world left their children to their idiot play.

They also hurrayed eating a cow. That was nice. But one cow less still left many, and cows eat more than sheep. So it was that the next day, and the next day, and the day after that found many of the apes in their fields, sowing and reaping and sweating and bleeding so that they might have bread and their new tools might have fodder in harder times.

They didn’t mind. Tool-Maker demanded it, and Tool-Maker would reward them with more victories over more weak things and weak gods. Soon their mouths would touch meat once more. So they heaved and pulled and toiled and laboured and finally rejoiced, for lo – the crop sprouted, and it was good, and great, and gritty and spiny and poked harshly against their sunburnt and raw hides, and they gathered it all and heaped it away from the rain and wind and sun under cover of roof-and-walls, as Tool-Maker had told them to do.

Then the time came when the pastures the cattle were confined to ran dry under the rainless sun, and food was scarce. Able apes unsealed the grain’s caskets, and within found a least savory sight: dozens and dozens of cute little pink noses and black little eyes and brown-and-white waist-coats of fur, fleeing at speed with naked tails trailing behind.

“Rodents!” they complained to the most adorned apes of the city. “Miserable thieving rodents have stolen our crop, with which we feed our captive tools! This is outrageous! We are outraged!”

“Yes,” agreed the most adorned ape, wearily donning an extra necklace or eight, and choosing a suitably impressive headpiece. “This is true. We will correct this behaviour permanently and thoroughly.”

So the apes marched through their shelters and brandished sticks and fires and shouted not with fierce joy but with smouldering rage, and more than one errant spark had to be hastily quenched with dirt and singed ape-flesh lest it catch aflame their own property. At the head stomped the most adorned ape, whose staff was now festooned with the trophies of sheep, traitor-wolf, AND cattle, and in his gaze was a businesslike no-nonsenseness that was far more dreadful than the wrath of his followers, and he stopped before the most plundered and desecrated of the grain-storages and held his staff aloft.

“Squeakers,” he proclaimed, “you are tedious, but you are small. You are vexing, but you are fleeting. Look“- and here he shook the staff in his hand –“we have subdued far greater and more impressive beasts than you will ever be, by the work of Tool-Maker subduing their gods that are far greater and more impressive than yours will ever be. You will do as your Quickly-Hiding bids, and your Quickly-Hiding is in my hands, and I am in Tool-Maker’s hands. This is how it is, now and forever.”

There was no response for an instant. Then the adorned ape jumped and said an unforgivable word – a small mouse had crawled down his arm and hopped into his palm, where it squeaked at him, then leapt free. Then another, another – a little flood of rodents seeping from his adornments and flowing out from his hands, launching from between his fingers like salmon over rapids. All the other apes drew back in confusion as he capered and cursed and swatted, and when at last his dance had ended he had not one speck of adornment upon his naked ape frame – all was discarded, chewed, and damaged – nor was there a single mouse clutched in his hands.

Here the once-adorned ape might have fixed things, had he his full presence of mind to him. But he was tired and upset and had lost his temper for the first time in years and was currently unadorned, whereas the (formerly) second-most-adorned ape was fresh and alert and had been waiting for this sort of thing and was now the most adorned ape, so when he stepped forwards without hesitation or apparent haste and called “So! The battle is a draw! We will not be troubled by the squeakers, but nor shall we be spared them – more labour is needed! More tools to be made! Tool-Maker did not raise us to be lazy – while they work apace on this, we shall clear new fields! The swamps must be made tools!” everyone was happy to listen to him and hurrayed him and they did not look upon the (formerly) most-adorned of apes, or wish to think of him any more.  Or to think of how it was that small things might resist Tool-Maker, who brought them victory over the mighty.

Better to think of the victories yet to come.

***

The swamps were thick, and green, and wet, and to dam them and drain them took many stones and much time. Oh so much time. Time spent groaning, and heaving, and dropping rocks on sensitive ape toes and bruising thin-skinned ape arms and (once) flattening an over-ambitious ape like a pancake underneath a boulder ten times their weight.

But it was done, because the fields must be expanded, because the cattle must be fed, because Tool-Maker’s grasp was inescapable and firm. Anything less was unthinkable and impossible.

What was extremely thinkable and possible were the mosquitoes. A mosquito for every inch of skin for every ape in the swamp, turned red and flushed and impossibly, horrifically itchy.

This was horrendous. This was vexing. This was an obstacle. So the apes assembled the sticks and the fires and their irritation and (scratching themselves many, many times), trailed behind the most adorned ape, who was carrying a big stick with a foul-smelling fire made from damp and odorous herbs upon it and taking care to stand in the smog let off by it. They proceeded into the heart of the swamp, and a great fire was built up with bundles of herbbs to spread the smoke farther and higher, and there the most adorned ape began to preach.

“Listen well, you perfidious gnats!” he scolded the whining marsh around them. “You are no obstacle! You are irritation! You are barely even alive, barely even animate – who are you to put yourself so against the will of us, and thereby Tool-Maker, the greatest of gods? What does your own Careful Bloodsuck bid of you – nothing! Nothing but to exist! You are barely alive; now leave us this patch of shameful waste you covet and find yourselves a better role. As you are in no ways fit for tool use, maybe repent long enough and return to us as something useful. Now do as Tool-Maker bids!”

The whining stopped.

For a long, slow, glorious moment the adorned ape could barely fight to keep the smile from his face. Oh, he had done it! He had triumphed! He had dismissed the purposeless!

Then, one at a time and all very quickly, each ape of good hearing realized something: they couldn’t hear the whining because so many wings were beating that the sound resembled a rumble. And then the sky turned black, not from smoke, but from bodies.

By the time everyone was back in town – everyone who hadn’t run into the swamps in their panicked flight, or into the fire, or over each other – it was impossible to say who the most adorned ape was. Everything that impeded flight had been dropped or torn away.

Besides, there were other distractions. Two hours after the retreat, the chills came.

***

With the chills came aches. With the aches came fever. With the fever came trembling.

The apes sickened. They laid low in their shelters, they sprawled in the (empty, rodent-haunted) grain stores, they packed into the walls of the Home of Tool-Maker, where the adorned apes had not the energy or time to protest their presence. Anywhere was better than lying prone in the open where more mosquitoes or a cat or even a rogue traitor-wolf (considering, perhaps, a second betrayal) might fall upon you.

“This will end,” croaked the doughtiest remaining of the adorned apes, arms trembling as he donned as much regalia as his frail body could support. “To be set back by foes is one thing; to suffer recalcitrance from a masterless, heedless divine in delusion of its place beneath Tool-Maker is another… but to perish at mindless, thoughtless disease? No!”

So the last adorned ape tottered through the moans and shivers of his kin and stood at the great gate to the Home of Tool-Maker and looked out over the homes (full of the ill) and the fields (fallow and weed-choked) and the pastures (empty; when had THAT happened?), and he raised his hands, thumbs and fingers curled in opposition, and he spoke thusly.

“Oh wretched illness, you are not even alive. You have no god of your own. You have no will of your own. You are but a tool of the mosquitoes – and no tool shall fell those who follow Tool-Maker! I call upon them to cast you away and turn you to better purposes. Away now, empty thing, neither follower nor followed! Begone, and make no reply nor retort lest you make it from a god of your own unto mine!”

The words were remembered most clearly by some of the survivors from the outermost homes, as was the moment that the entire Home of Tool-Maker liquefied into a thin, clear fluid and sank into the ground without a bubble.

And when enough time had passed that even the ground where that Home had once stood was simple bare, unstained stone again; when enough time had passed that the order of events was lost, then the events themselves; when once again divinity essayed forth from apes, it did so with a softer tread, a quieter voice, and a hand that trembled, as if ever-ready to flinch.

Few begrudged it thus.

Valleydale was nice.

It was well-maintained and well-planned and well-bred and well-priced to ensure that it all stayed that way. Its fences were picket fences and the picket fences were so white they gleamed in the lovely blue skies of its tasteful and comfortable summers and there were many of them with several nice beaches. It was mostly suburbia, and the bits that weren’t mostly existed to serve the suburbia.

Everyone there was happy. If they weren’t, they did something about it immediately. Which was why it was so surprising to have a last-minute complaint added to the minutes of the town hall’s monthly meetup.

“It’s the vultures,” said Carl Shapes. His mouth puckered in irritation as he enunciated the word ‘vultures,’ it wasn’t one he liked to have so close to his person. “At the dump. They swarm in the sky there, all day. Quite unpleasant.”

“We’ll do something about that,” promised Mayor Crisp. He snapped his fingers. “Get me a plan and an expert.”

After a quick coffee break an expert was herded to the podium, having been snagged from her own coffee run at the nearest drive-through. “Vultures,” she explained while dusting the large, firm handprints of the town’s aldermen from her shoulders, “are an important component of any ecosystem they exist in. They not only consume carrion – removing it from the environment along with any pathogens it may contain – they act as signals to other scavengers to locate corpses and remove them. An environment without vultures is a less healthy one, with more disease and decay. Also, you really don’t want to offend the birds.”

“Hmm, yes,” said Mayor Crisp. “Astounding. Well, that’s our expert. Plan?”
“I don’t like them. Let’s kill ‘em,” said Carl Shapes.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” said Mayor Crisp, shaking everyone’s hands. “Much good work done by all, happy to meet you, etc etc. Pour poison in some dead cows and leave them by the dump.”

So it was done, and the skies of Valleydale were bluer and emptier than ever, and if the smell got worse well, that was in the dump and nobody cared about that, or it was in the woods and DEFINITELY nobody cared about that.

***

The first reprisal came a week later.

Mayor Crisp awoke to hear a tapping, as of someone gently rapping at his windowpane. “It’s some branch,” he muttered, “smacking at my glass it’s plain – what a pain.”

Then the screaming started and didn’t stop.

It didn’t stop at five am, it didn’t stop at six am, it didn’t stop at seven or eight or even nine am. It was a nest of grackles posted just outside the mayor’s bedroom, filled with violent delight and eager to express it as if pus from a boil. At ten am he caved in and went downstairs to get some work done, where he found mail in his mailbox, email in his inbox, recordings in his answering machine, and worst of all, Carl Shapes on his doorstep.
“I don’t mean to complain,” he complained, “but we don’t have pigeons in town, right?”
“No,” said Mayor Crisp.

“No we have pigeons or no we don’t have pigeons?”
“No, we don’t have pigeons.”

“So we don’t have pigeons.”
“Yes. I just said that.”
“You’re forgiven,” said Carl Shapes ungraciously. “Anyways, like I said, I don’t mean to complain but pigeons seem to have crapped all over my car. Can you do something about that?”
“Yes yes of course yes, very interesting,” said Mayor Crisp. “We’ll do something about that. I’ll call an expert and make a plan or something.” He gently made shooing gestures at Carl, then squinted behind him. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“The big off-white blob in my driveway.”
“I don’t know. It looks like someone’s care covered in pigeon crap.”
Mayor Crisp looked up and down the street. “Fascinating. Amazing. Do you know where my car is?”
“It could be under the pigeon crap.”

“Hah! Ahahaha! Hah! You’re a real card, Mister Shapes. Hah. I’m going to go make a plan and call experts. Goodbye and good-day.”
Mayor Crisp slammed the door, went upstairs stopping to punch the drywall at every other step, and phoned the chief of police. “Give me weapons,” he demanded. “Give me giant clouds of pepper spray. Give me bb cannons. Give me anything to purge winged, feathered little fuckers from my town. Things here are nice, and that means they work the way we want them to. This is unacceptable.”
“Sure, whatever,” said Susan. “Y’want handcuffs with that?”
“Yes. No!” Mayor Crisp shook his head. “They don’t have hands. Awful. Just awful.”

He hung up. The phone rang in his hand as if in offense, and his treacherous thumb answered it before he could stop it. “Hello?” he ventured.

“Mister mayor, I am Ramone Shoe. I work at city hall, and I am sorry to report that your office is full of grackles right now. You haven’t used it in the last three years, but you can’t use it right now, and I wanted you to know that just in case. Thank you, and goodbye.”

Mayor Crisp phoned the chief of police again.

“Hey.”
“Get me swat teams armed with rubber bullets and rubber teams bulleted with swat arms,” he snarled. “This bird ain’t gonna fly.”

***

The citizens of Valleydale didn’t complain. The birds were a nuisance, and that was unacceptable, and therefore dealing with them – however it was done – was acceptable.

But it was a bit much to have armed police on every corner, magdumping into the sky at the first twitch, coo, or cackle. The treecover was getting denuded to nigh-on-autumnal levels, and it was barely June.

“I think things are going great,” said Mayor Crisp at the monthly town hall. “They’re amazing and fabulous. We’ve gone from one hundred percent pigeon crap saturation of every vehicle in town to eighty-seven percent, which means we only need to try six to seven times harder and we’ll be right back where we started. It’s really great and wonderful. It’s great. It’s great. It’s great.” He squinted at the nearest figure. “Are you a reporter?”
“No mister mayor.”
“I knew that. I know that, it’s really excellent that I know that. What time is it? Four am?”
“It’s five pm.”
“Oh god I need to go to bed, they’ll wake me soon. They wake me. But we’re winning. We’re winning. Are you a reporter?”
“No mister mayor, I’m Ramone Shoe. I work at city hall.”
“I don’t recognize you.”
“You don’t talk to anyone at city hall.”
“That’s good, that makes sense. What is it?”
“We’ve lost the beaches to geese, mister mayor. They’ve already spiked the bacterial count in the lake beyond our water treatment plant’s capacity to handle, destroyed the marina, and secured a beachhead on our beach head. The lifeguards are holed up in the snack bars but are unable to escape. They request immediate evac. Your orders?”
“That’s great. Let’s get an expert and a plan.” Mayor Crisp blinked six times very quickly. “Take five for coffee,” he concluded as he slid bonelessly to the floor.

***

They couldn’t find the first expert because she’d left town, but they were able to find someone who knew someone who knew someone whose brother was an expert, and after luring him in with a false promise of a weekend festival, they were able to extract information from him.

“It’s really simple,” he explained before the amassed citizenry. “You’ve got to apologize for what you’ve done wrong to the birds. Then they’ll stop. Anything else will prompt further escalation. Can I go now?”
“But we’ve done nothing wrong,” said Carl Shapes from the audience.

“You’re killing them in large numbers and when they got upset about that you killed more of them. Can I go now?”
“They started it.”
“Can I go now?”
“Why are you so concerned about that?”

“You tied me to the podium. Can I go now?”
“We did that or you wouldn’t have stayed.”
“I’m done. Can I go now?”
“Yes, yes, send him back to the birds or wherever,” said Mayor Crisp, slapping his hands together firmly. “So! We have an expert, we had an expert, now we will have a plan. I’m thinking cybernetic housecats.”
“Spray DDT on everything and fill the lake with lead shot pellets!” shouted a maniac in the crowd.

“Takes too long,” said Mayor Crisp. “I need to be re-elected next year, not in ten years. So we’re going to do the cybernetic house cats. And flak cannons. And we’ll weaponize the park’s lawnmowers. And mowerize the parker’s lawn weaponry. Yes. Yes! It will work. It will work. It will work. Everything’s fine and nice and will be perfect again, surely.”

There was breaking glass and a short, sharp shriek, interspersed with furious squawking. Seagulls were pouring in through the street exit and were demolishing the tardier citizens as if they were stray fries. Carl Shapes was already lodged halfway down the throat of a cold-eyed black-backed gull, arms waving an inadvertent, desperate farewell.

“Be strong! Be brave. Be well-groomed,” urged Mayor Crisp, already halfway out the window. “I’m with you one hundred percent!”

***

The lawnmowers kept the geese from spreading free of the beaches, but at a cost: every backyard within six blocks of the shoreline was sheared bald. Brown soil bleached under merciless heat where once thick, luscious blades of grass grew to respectably-groomed heights. And although the enemy armada was stalled, their irregulars remained undaunted. Despite martial law and the mass recruitment of every able-bodied citizen above age fourteen into the town guard, car defilement remained above eighty-five percent (one hundred percent for law enforcement transportation) and most citizens were receiving a little less than an hour of sleep per day due to incessant screaming from blackbirds, grackles, chickadees, jays, finches, thrushes, doves, crows, and the odd escaped parrot.

A citizenry thus under siege cannot maintain vigilance forever, and it is in such dishevelled states that the cracks of distraction will blossom into the furrows of destruction.

Mayor Crisp stared blankly at the paper in front of him. “What am I looking at?” he inquired hopefully.

“Your desk, mister mayor.”
“What’s on it?”
“Some blank notepaper for notes.”
“Wow. Who did that?”
“I did, mister mayor. I’m Ramone Shoe. I work at city hall.”
“Great, beautiful. Phenomenal. Why am I here?”
“To read the message you’re holding in your right hand.”
Mayor Crisp stared at his right hand, then gave it to Ramone Shoe.

“It appears that under cover of darkness, last night a squad of crack owls snuck into the county museum and liberated certain esoteric texts from the security vault.”
“Aha,” said Mayor Crisp, nodding his head firmly. “That makes sense.”

“And now we can expert grave repercussions.”
“Right, great. We should get an expert.”
A distant crash echoed for miles.

“It may be a little late for that,” said Ramone Shoe, as they watched the cloud of dust rise from what had once been the police station. Above it circled a single form, five-winged, wider-spanned than any human field of sport could measure. It hissed like a snake, then gently horked. The streets below it sloshed gently and subsided under the weight of tens of tons of acidic vomit.

“A plan, then?”
“That’s a gros vautour, mister mayor. There is no existing plan for that.”
“Right, right, right. No plan, no expert. Great, wonderful. I’m going home to clean my car.”

There was a heaving crack outside. The dead rose from beneath the streets and began to claw, moaning in agony, at the monuments of the living. A crow sat on a lamppost above them, cawing in glee through a mouthful of priceless and untranslatable blasphemic script.

“It’s too late for that, mister mayor.”
“Ahahaha, I don’t think so, not really. Always more time to make sure everything’s nice and tidy, right? It’s got to be perfect, yes, perfection starts at home.”
“By whose standards, mister mayor?”
“Look, stop being so pushy. What’s your job, anyways?”
“Ravens, mister mayor.”
“Right, right. Right. What’s that?”
“I’m ravens.”

For the first time in twelve years, Mayor Crisp looked another person in the eyes to see what was there.

A beak clattered insolent at him from Ramone Shoe’s left eyesocket.

“Oh.”
“All you had to do was think, mister mayor,” said Ramone Shoe, through his eyesocket and his coat sleeve and his pants and his suitcase. A leg emerged from one ear and gently grasped his shoulder; feathers shuffled loosely under his shirt. “All you had to do was think.”
“But that’s so HARD,” managed Mayor Crisp feebly. His hands were on his desk. Surely there would be something there that would save him. A pen, wielded bravely. A desk ornament, flung with force. A letter-opener?
But all that was there was him and some blank paper.

The paper was nice and white and clean though. That made him feel better until it wasn’t, and by then he didn’t care as much about anything.

***

On the seventeenth day of the siege, a mockingbird reached the left ear of the universe and spoke into it. Thereafter, Valleydale was no longer a problem. Its offense was removed. Its crimes were resolved. Its existence was sorted and its debtors recompensed. Nicely.

Tragically, the vultures did not return. Even as an important carrion-removing, disease-preventing component of an ecosystem, utterly and soberly devoted to keeping things clean and well-kept, you can’t eat trace electromagnetic smears.

The sun seemed bigger out here. How about that. Less than a day from LA and it was like you were on a different planet, as long as you pointed the camera the right way.

“You’ve gotta talk to her.”
Leslie shaded her hand and followed the sunlight across the grey, cracked rock.

Jasper wasn’t as patient as the rocks; he crumbled a lot faster. “Listen, Les, you’ve gotta.”
The sky was so blue it hurt to look at it, like a sugary-sweet cavity in your eyeball. “I’ve got to do what now?”
She could practically hear the sweat beading on his skin, trickling down his palms and make his eyes blink and sting. “Talk to-”

“What am I talking to her about?”

“About the film.”
“What about it?” God, the water flowing off this man. Another twelve hours of this kind of stress and maybe he’d match the plants; turn into something thin and scraggly with a surface like shriveled plywood.

“For fuck’s sake Les, you know it can’t happen without her!”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes!”
“So why am I only just hearing this now, and why did last night go the way it did?”
“Please Les, c’mon, it’s more than just me on the line here-”

“It’s not my job to fix your fuckups, Jasper. I’m a makeup artist.”
“She listens to you!”
“Right, right, so if the film can’t happen without her, and she won’t work without me, then I guess I’m the goddamned director now. Give me the keys to your trailer.”

“What?! No!”

“We need the good shower and some privacy. You don’t like it, I don’t have to help, you don’t have to be helped, I can be the director once the producers take you out behind that ridge and shoot you.”

She held out a hand without looking and counted. Five seconds before the keys hit her palm with snitty force. Pathetic.

“We’re redoing the contracts tomorrow,” she said, as she turned and strode for effects storage. “You fob me off, you’ll wish the producers got you. You’re welcome.”

***

Finding Helen was easy. Right where she thought she’d be: tucked underneath the hand-painted scaly belly of Zorgg the Beast of Ages, curled with her spine to the room like a nervous porcupine.

She flinched when Leslie patted her back, and metal and wood creaked gently above them both.

Helen didn’t flinch. She’d planned not to flinch. It wouldn’t help.

“C’mon. Let’s get you a shower.”
“Cold.”
“Nope, we’re using Jasper’s. Up and at ‘em.”

Helen didn’t uncurl.

“Remember the pig from prom? ‘Sleep on it’ isn’t advice that works on bloodstains.”

Helen still didn’t uncurl, but she permitted Leslie to uncurl her manually. Hands under armpits, pulling back, legs wobbling into position as shaky as a crane colt. She was holding her shoulders still and looking down. Hiding.

“Are they out there?”
“No,” said Leslie. “Nobody’s out there.” No point in starting early when the shoot can’t happen.

“Okay.”

The easy part was over.

***

Jasper’s shower worked and it had hot water. It also whined like a starving dog at a loaded dinner table, but two miracles was enough to excuse a little mundane shittiness.

Still, Leslie spent the time cleaning up the rest of the room, especially the bed. Jasper wasn’t a complete slob, but this’d be a lot easier if the place were comfortable, and that meant fresh sheets, emptied garbage, and stuffing a few posters into the trash. He’d live to complain about it and like it.

Half an hour. She pulled the best towel she could find (too pink and too big, but still with some fluff in it, somehow) and knocked on the door.

“Towel’s here.”

“Okay.”
“Hot water’ll be going soon.”

No reply, but after twenty-two seconds the water switched off.

Helen took the towel without complaint. She let Leslie dry her hair with the second-best towel she could find (too small and worn on the thin side, but scentless and unstained). She even accepted Leslie’s sleep clothes (too-big shirt, short-legged cotton pants). And then, having taken all the things Leslie offered, Helen laid down on top of Jasper’s newly de-odorized bed and curled up with her back to her.

“I’m going out for a smoke. Back in a sec.”
Helen didn’t nod. The acknowledgement of a nod was there.

Leslie walked outside of the trailer, looked up at that big blue sky – already curdling at the edges from heat haze – and lit up her shortest, least-appealing butt to fulfil the letter of her obligations. She ignored the taste, kept her mind on the plan. Stubbed out the butt of the butt on her heel, made eye contact with Zorgg the Beast of Ages through the open door of effects storage, nodded, and walked back in.

Helen was still curled up. But her spine didn’t jut, and her muscles didn’t tense.

The tricky part was over.

Leslie sat down. Helen didn’t make room for her. She also didn’t turn away from her. Neutral move.

“I ruined everything.”
There we go. “No you didn’t. He started it.”
“That’s a little kid’s excuse.”
“Little kids are smarter than people give them credit. Remember Lester?”
A small snort. Not a sniff. “Adrian thought he was so funny.”
“Yeah, and he wasn’t a little kid, he was a big kid trying to prove we were little and dumb. Hur hur hur I named a lizard after my sister. And he was our first one, wasn’t he?”
Small shuffle. Helen peered back over her shoulder at her, a little confused but in an annoyed way. Good. “No. That was Buzzsaw.”
“No, I mean the first one we worked up. I told you it sucked having a lizard named after me. You said he didn’t look dumb he looked cool. I told you he could look cooler. You asked me what I thought would help, I told you, you drew something, I drew something else…”

“…but we never did anything,” said Helen. “And then Lester got eaten by Ribs.”
“That was the dumbest dog your family ever owned.”
“Don’t be mean!”
“He was mean. And dumb. He choked to death on your Barbie after he ripped it out of your hands.”
“He didn’t mean it.”

Mournful, upset, but old and familiar upset. Still, don’t overpush it. “Whatever. Point is, Lester was our first. We didn’t finish, but we tried, and we wouldn’t have done our second without it.”
“Buzzsaw.”
“No. Buzzsaw was fourth. Maybe fifth.”

Helen sat up all at once, too surprised (and still a little annoyed) to be sad. “What? But we didn’t-”

“We tried a second time with the Barbie Warriors, and that was one we took off paper into action. We started the book after we made the Bird Coffin. I don’t know if your grandma’s dolls count; do you think they counted?”
Helen thought, but only to recheck her answer. “No,” she shook her head. “Those were hers, not ours.”

“Right. So Buzzsaw was fourth.”

“But the first where it happened.”
“Hey,” said Leslie, and she was unfair and caught Helen’s gaze, right after she’d lulled her into moving it off the wall. “Say we don’t do the stuff before it. Does it still happen?”
Her eyes twitched, but couldn’t outright dodge. “Maybe.”
“Does it happen the way it did?”
They slid down to her hands in her lap. Defeat. “No.”
“Then Buzzsaw was fourth.”

“Okay.” Withdrawn, but not withdrawing. Fine.

“Half of what we did for him was built on the Lester ideas anyways. You said the horns would look cool, we made him horns. I wanted a spiked tail club like a stegosaurus, we made him a big spike on his back because it was easier to pin on. The only new idea were the wings.”

“And the eyes,” added Helen. Couldn’t help it.

“You want to count those?”
“We never talked about Lester’s eyes,” she said, and she almost didn’t seem to notice she was volunteering complete sentences. “You said we should try a Barbie idea with Buzzsaw, I found some safe makeup, we made his eyes look scarier. It was new.”
“Okay, sure. So Buzzsaw the Burner, Dragonlord of the Diorama, was all dressed up and ready to trash that shitty shoebox model of a castle. And he was the way he was because of the ideas we had for Lester, and the ideas we had from the Barbie Warriors, and the stuff we wrote down from making the Bird Coffin –”

“We didn’t really make it all up, half of that was just origami advice from your mom’s book.”

“-we took the stuff we needed and used it, that was ours – and we took all of that and put it into Buzzsaw. He was fourth.”
Helen was smiling a little bit. Almost a smirk, meant to mock. “And the first to fly.”

“He was fourth. That matters.”
“He flew. That matters too.”

Definitely smug. Push back, but not too hard. “Yeah, fine. With the puppet strings.”

Back to annoyed, verging on genuine ire. “No. I told you it happened.”
“Pretty quiet happening though.”
“I told you.”
“Right. Okay. Fourth time, first time it happened, I get it.” Throw her a bone. “It’s like Lester. It wasn’t big time, it wasn’t complete-”

“-I TOLD you-”

“-but without it, the next time maybe doesn’t happen, and it doesn’t happen the way it did.”

“Okay.” Helen’s brows were set. Bushy and grumpy about it in that way that made you want to grab her head and fuss up her hair. Leslie wondered if this was how grandmothers felt all the time and hoped it wasn’t.

“So then the sixth was when it happened big time.”
“Fifth,” said Helen.

Leslie raised her own (thinner, less charming) eyebrows. “Really? With the cabinet play?”
“I dropped one of the rods on the clown’s arm. I panicked and just kept going, remember?”
“I thought you used your hand and just faked it.”

“That’s what I said I did.”
“Huh. Sixth was just the first time I couldn’t ignore it then.”
“Yeah,” said Helen. She was stroking the sheets with her thumb. “Because of the fire.”
Leslie grinned and she didn’t even have to plan for it. “Because of the fire.”
“Poor Buzzsaw. I didn’t think it would work.”
“I don’t think he thought it either.”
“He was just a little lizard, I’m not sure he thought at all besides ‘when I’m done doing this, they give me treats.’”

“We did too, didn’t we? Stole half a quart of my mom’s pie berry batch. Boy earned it.”
“Hazard pay,” said Helen solemnly.

“We should’ve gotten some too. My ass was never the same after mom got through with it. ‘Don’t play with matches!’ ‘Don’t tell lies about not having matches, I saw what you did!’” Her mom voice was never accurate; all snotty and whiny. Putting the shriek in right as she remembered needed bone-deep hate she didn’t want to uncover. Not when the fake thing made Helen giggle.

“And then I told you, and you didn’t believe me,” said Helen happily.

“I did.”
“You said ‘that’s bullshit!’”

“Yeah, because it is. I didn’t say it wasn’t real.”
“So I showed you with the Barbie Warriors,” said Helen. “Which makes it seventh?”

“Nah. That wasn’t a new idea. If your grandma’s dolls weren’t five, these aren’t seven.”

“Right. But they marched so well.”
“They did.”
Helen sighed happily. Honestly happily, full on. “How many of them do you have numbered like this?”
“They’re all in there, but I stop lining them up after seven. Real seven – the scarecrow that waved at cars. That’s when we got into the groove, and we stay in that until graduation.”
“Yeah. The prom. With the pigmeat DJ.”
“That was so good.”
Helen’s mouth downturned at the corner. “It was really dumb.”

“We were still teenagers, of course it was really dumb. I’m amazed we only had the one big fuckup.”
“All we had to do was not show off as much. Everyone already thought pigmeat DJ was amazing.”
“Yeah, but going on stage to accept a trophy for our costume when it was still standing in the booth and running the music was amazing.”
“It freaked out everyone.”
“That’s why it was amazing.”
“I should never have let you make me decapitate it.”
“That was the icing on the cake. The pig’s head landed right on the turntable, your aim was perfect. Best thing we ever did.”
Helen buried her face in her hands. “I can’t believe they thought it was a radio control.”
“Our teachers were very stupid, Helen. Why do you think I went all the way to LA?”

She hunched over double. Not good. Interesting. “I thought you were mad.”
Oh that was new. “Why?”

A little heave. That’s not laughter. “I thought you lied. I thought you left because you were scared of me.”
Leslie laughed, and she meant it. “Really? A pig’s head on a turntable? That’s what you think made me lie to you and run away to Hollywood? That’s what made me walk right up to you on the set of a shitty B-movie and tell you to start making it happen like I know you can? That’s what made me lock Jasper out of his own trailer?”
Helen didn’t look up, but she didn’t stop when Leslie pulled her face up with one hand. Ugly, ugly silent weeping. Snotty, cheeks wet, eyes squinted shut and sore from timid stress. “I’m sorry.”
“For being silly? Sure, that’s okay. Feel it, get it out, leave it behind. But for everything else? Don’t you dare. Jasper knows about it, you know.”

She hiccupped. “After last-”

“He knew about it before. I didn’t tell him shit, but he’s not a complete moron and your special effects and their budget are the one reason he’s not in the red ten films ago. He pays attention enough when there’s money, and honey? You’re money. He’s not going to burn you over one bigmouthed asshole that thought slapping you was funny.”

“But-”

“Do you believe me?”

Helen looked at her, all of eight years old and in the attic surrounded by marching war-painted sword-armed Barbies again, and she said what Leslie had said to her then, because what else could you say? “Yes.”

“Good. Get some rest. The day’s off for the shoot, don’t worry and don’t think. You can do that tomorrow.” She was going to anyways, but at least now she’d probably feel guilty enough to stop. “I’ll get you some water and start explaining shit to Jasper.

A little touch on her wrist as she readied to rise, hesitant.

“You’re sure it’ll be okay? He was the lead.”

“Absolutely,” said Leslie. Probably. “They’re already over it.” Hopefully. “Jasper can hire another ten Stanley Jacksons by turning over any LA rock and catching whatever scuttles fastest.” Definitely.

“Besides,” she added, because that little touch still felt nervous, “there’s no way in hell anyone’ll try that shit again. This gossip won’t die on its own, and it’s easy to keep fresh. We just don’t clean Zorgg’s teeth.”

“Mmm,” said Helen. “The stain could look nice if we treat it.”

And she smiled, and Leslie knew the hard part was over. They’d done it again.

CRA the Creator, aspiring Maker, checked Their metabox again, and again, and again, and on the seven-thousandth six billionth and forty-second hundred millionth time They found it full of package, and the package was full of promise, and all was revealed unto Them.

“Oh boy oh boy!” They yelled. “It’s here, it’s here, oh hoo boy it’s a good time guaranteed!”

And so saying They cleared off a big section of cosmic nothingness on Their desk and opened the box and shook out all its contents, which promptly exploded into existence and flew everywhere.

“Oops,” said CRA the Creator.

They looked at the side of the package. DO NOT SHAKE was writ upon it in fundamental metaphysics.

“Maybe I can sort of push it all back together?”
They could not sort of push it all back together.

“Well shit,” said CRA the Creator, looking across an infinite extending universe consisting almost exclusively of empty space to the point that matter was a rounding error of infinitesimal, unimaginable smallness. “I guess I’d better just sort of, pick a bit to focus on?”

***

CRA the Creator, Prime Mover and Shaker, gazed upon the foundations of the most convenient piece of Their creation They had found, which was where Their eyeball had rested after they concealed Their vision with one hand and went eeny meeny miny matter.

“It’s a little bit molten,” They said. “Is it supposed to do that?”

So CRA the Creator pulled out the manual and took a look at it, but it was in very small printessence and parts of it were upside down and some of it was back to front and while They were engrossed they heard a cataclysmic sundering sound and looked up and saw-

“AWW, NO! BAD! BAD CITTY!”
-that CAHT the Companion had wanted to help too, and had decided that what this piece of creation needed was for another piece of creation to smack into it at tremendous speed.

“No! That isn’t good! Good cittys keep their paws off creation! Bad!”
CAHT the Companion slow blinked remorselessly, and no amount of scolding improved that, nor did it undo the fact that CRA the Creator’s project was now being circled by a second wobbly lump of great sized comprised of ejected still-cooling rock.

“Oh well,” said CRA the Creator, as They hurriedly splashed water across Their creation. “Maybe it won’t make a big difference.”

***

CRA the Creator, Director of Cosmic Theater, sat patiently and watched, enraptured, as tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells begat tiny cells.

Sometimes, one of the cells absorbed another.

“This is great, this is really peak stuff. See, citty? See how nice things are when you don’t bap at them? Do you see?”
CAHT the Companion ignored Them. This meant it was feeling affectionate, and CRA the Creator was deeply touched and gave them a one-armed noogie as they peered back at their world, now so full of very small and very hardy life. They regarded it all with deep and profound fondness on a scale that, although incomprehensible to their children, they hoped they could feel on some level.

“Oh!” said CRA the Creator. “Look! See, citty? That one’s turned blue-green! Isn’t that beautiful? Look at it. Look!”

CAHT ignored this too.

“So pretty. Maybe we can make a few more of those.”

So CRA the Creator gently reached out and twiddled a submenu to open a window to find an option that unchecked a box that controlled a slider and moved it.

Nothing happened.

CRA the Creator moved the slider a little farther.

Nothing happened again.

CRA the Creator moved the slider a little bit farther than that, then changed Their mind and cranked it all the way to one side.

A preponderance of blue-green algae (cyanobacteria) overran creation, filling its atmosphere with oxygen and exterminating almost all anaerobic life on its surface.

“Oops,” said CRA the Creator. “Well, it’s still a beautiful colour.”

Creation began to rust.

“Oh man,” said CRA the Creator, and began to look for a Help menu. Those were still around, right?

***

CRA the Creator, Diligent Maintainer, could not find a Help menu. Which was annoying, because by now They were pretty sure They needed one.

“Not AGAIN,” They complained. “That’s like, the THIRD time everything’s gone anoxic! What am I doing wrong? Is it the volcanism? I can’t turn that off, can I? Not without losing continental drift.”
CRA the Creator did not want to turn off continental drift. They liked seeing the new patterns older rocks made; it kept Them from getting bored, and making maps was interesting.

“There’s got to be something that I’m missing,” They muttered as They rummaged around inside the packaging for a manual. “I can’t keep losing over fifty percent of all marine species every other geological period, it’s getting embarrassing.” They made manifest the sum knowledge of Their peers and consulted Their Wisdom. “No, no, I don’t want guides to Creation from six omneons ago; I want the rerelease. No, not the REMASTER. Goddamnit. Ugh, whatever happened to WorldFaqs?”

Disgusted, CRA the Creator drummed their fingers on the limitless expanse of their desk. “You know what?” They said, rhetorically, “I can do this Myself. On My own. I can fix this. Just with care, and attention, and limitless love and a lot of patience.”
So vowing thus, They opened Their eyes just in time to see CAHT the Companion carefully, curiously guide a twelve-kilometer bolide directly into Their creation’s atmosphere, directly above a carbonate seafloor underlaid with rich sulfur deposits.

“NO NO NO BAD CITTY BAD CITTY awwwww shit.”

***

CRA the Creator, Break Taker, gave Themselves some time to stretch Their legs and think about other stuff for a minute after putting Caht the Companion in the Time Out Spatial Fold.

It was fine, They decided. Sure, there had been some mistakes along the way, but that just made things exciting, right? Nobody learned from perfection, nobody wanted to watch nothing happen. Messiness was just more satisfying. A rich tapestry contained all kinds of knots, and scars, and loose threads, and so on. Right?

CRA the Creator looked back to Their creation, then zoomed in closer and closer, looking here and there. A small group of hairy bipeds was wandering in a wood, hooting excitedly at each other about ripe fruit, about interestingly shaped rocks.

“Here you go,” said CRA the Creator, and lo, They manifested for an instant and gave unto the little creatures a pile of interesting and pretty-coloured stones containing eye-catchingly shiny alloys. They chose soft ones, so they wouldn’t hurt themselves with them. “Have a good time, guys. Be messy. Learn!”
One of the bipeds picked up the biggest shiny stone and was immediately set upon by two others with tooth and fist, each seeking it for themselves. A fourth desperately started collecting every shiny stone in reach and bit its own children when they came too close.

CRA the Creator got up and took another walk.

***

CRA the Creator, Demotivated Faker, sat by the water on the grass in Their creation in the soft light of dawn and moped for a minute.

“I can’t do anything right,” They lamented. “This is really hard. I’ve just made a mess, and not an entertaining mess, a frustrating and painful one. I can’t even blame CAHT the Companion for it. Shoot.”
Something splashed near Them, and They jumped. Standing at the water’s edge, ignorant of Their presence, a heron of large size and immaculate posture clutched a fish in its bill. Water droplets flecked from its prey, then a blink passed and it was gone and the bird stood still as a statue again, legs steady and eyes clear.

“Okay,” said CRA the Creator. “I’ve done something okay. Look at that! Wow! Those legs! That neck! That’s a really lovely shape. Amazing. I can’t believe I came up with that. I bet I can do it again!”
So CRA the Creator cast about the shore until They located a small, round, quacking waterfowl, fixed it most sternly with Their grasp, and began to work mightily.

“Longer. No, not longer there, longer THERE. Well, the neck’s right, even if the legs aren’t.”
“Bigger – no, not wider, BIGGER. Well, wider IS bigger.”
“Louder – no, raspier, raspier – well, it’s louder anyways.”

The sun was setting when Their work was complete, and They looked upon their labours and saw what They had wrought.

“All else aside,” said CRA the Creator, “I think I can say this: I don’t believe I screwed up this one thing. You are My masterwork.”
“Honk,” said Their creation.

Then it wing-slapped Them.

Charles Escargot Bustle was a businesslike and no-nonsense man, and accordingly so he married Clarice Abseil Clemency at the time and place most convenient and straightforward for them both, and they immediately set about producing a rightful and correct number of dutiful and hardworking offspring. This they succeeded in six times over before producing a single failure (through no fault of their own), and having thus secured their lineage, the next step of their work was to build a fortune.

“We’re going to the least useful place in the world, my children,” Charles told his family. “The wilderness. It’s wild and savage and above all else – here he shuddered – “useless.”

And all the children shuddered too, except for the seventh and youngest, Louise Mendicant Bustle, who was busy playing with knucklebones.

“Oh Lousy Louise!” cried Charles. “Look here, children – here once again is uselessness in its purest form!” And he thrashed her with great love and sternness and then they all packed up and left with many tools and supplies, made lighthearted by their heavy loads.

***

The first order of business in the wilderness was to clear the land. It was benighted and blighted and burdened with many trees and weeds and other insolently useless vegetation, all of which were set about with sturdy axes carried by willing hands attached to strong backs.

Except for Louise, whose back carried her hands to some twine, and that twine to some leaves, and then spent her time flying kites.

“Lousy Louise!” cried her siblings as they chopped and carved and carried – here for the building of the house, there to be burnt as fuel, there to be burnt immediately for ash, there to be cast into the river, there to be stamped flat and spat upon and ritually desecrated as a Thing Lacking Purpose – “you never do anything useful!”

But there were eight useful bodies and only one useless one, so soon the Bustle’s labours were at an end and they were the proud owners of a wide tract of cleared soil and a mighty log home, all helpfully located right next to a broad river.

“Behold the fruits of our labours!” announced Charles triumphantly. And then, with a sardonic crack, the sky broke upon and spilled water everywhere.

This was a little frustrating at first, for the laundry was out and had to be gathered in a hurry by the Bustles. And while this was happening, the true extent of the problem became visible: the water in the river was rising, thick and muddy and fast – the bare and sun-baked soil, unshaded by leaf or limb and unclutched by root, was simply sluicing directly downslope into it.

This was observed only by Louise, who was not busy. So once her family was done gathering laundry and had begun boarding windows, digging ditches, and battening hatches, she took her kite and gathered up as much cloth as she could and very carefully cut-and-sewed –and-sewed-and-sewed until her kite was as wide as anything and as thin as a soap-bubble. Then she took it out in the rain and the fuss and the wind and threw it into the sky, where it spread itself wide and far like a bat and covered the barren field from the rain, starving the river’s gullet of its watery feast. She flew it all day and all night until the rain stopped the next morning.

“Remarkable work, Louise,” praised Clarice. “For once you’ve nearly pulled your weight, although you did skip out on all the day’s other chores while you did so. But half-praise is far better than none! Tell me, what did you use to make such a large kite?”
“Our laundry,” said Louise.

“Oh lousy Louise!” cried Clarice. “You have rendered your whole family as shiftless as you!” And she thrashed her with great love and sternness.

***

The second order of business was to till the soil. The Bustles plowed and planted and watered and spent much sweat and blood and tears on this with utmost diligence and great pain. Particular care was spent on removing the local pests that might graze upon them – every potential plant-eating bird and beast bigger than a gnat that dared stray from the beaten-back woods was culled with weaponry and cat and dog, cooked into pies and smoked into hams and used to build strong, productive muscles for the whole family except for Louise, who was spending her time sneaking off into the woods and doing bird calls.

“Lousy Louise!” cried her siblings as they went by with braces of blackbirds in their left hands and crow corpses in their right while slinging deer carcasses over their shoulders. “You never help!”

But since Louise was just one small useless body and there were eight busy and productive Bustles they begrudged her little, and did their jobs exceedingly well. Soon the crops were approaching the peak of their growth, and from green shoots came tender niblings, which was probably what attracted the attention of what initially looked like a big grey cloud but which resolved itself into a mass of millions of giant and voracious locusts.

“Get the guns!” shouted Clarice, then cursed as a locust slapped itself into her face like a fat chitinous palm. She examined the carcass, then quickly threw it away and corrected herself: “get the nets! Get the carpet-beaters! Get sticks! We battle for the fruits of our labours!”

While the family warred with the locusts in the center of the field, Louise went on a long, meandering walk in the woods, where she twittered and trilled and cawed and coughed to herself. And as she did this, the trees filled with curious little bright eyes attached to round little feathered bodies with long hungry beaks, until the branches creaked under their weight. Then she turned and walked back to her family’s fields, and when her audience saw the feast of locusts before them they fell on them like hungry dogs on stray lambs until they could eat no more – and by then Louise was coming back with her next flock. She walked into the woods and called for birds twelve times over twelve hours and at the day’s end the locusts were all gone and the crops were bedraggled but still alive.

“Quite unprecedented, Louise!” marvelled Charles. “You may have ignored my wise instructions and abandoned your assigned duties, but you did help out in your own odd way. When will the birds leave?”
“When they’re done eating, I expect,” said Louise with a shrug.

“Oh lousy Louise!” cried Charles. “They may have eaten the locusts, but they’re already eyeing our crops as dessert! You’ve sent our field to the birds!” And he thrashed her with great love and sternness.

***

After some years of great industry and hard work by the Bustles, their lands were prosperous. There was a field with sheep in it. There were fields with crops in them. The house was bigger and less made of logs. And Charles Bustle was on death’s door, dying of Cubes.

“My dutiful children and wife,” he wheezed between breaths, “how I shall miss all your tender, hard-working faces. How I appreciate that you have spared five minutes from your chores to come and laboriously tend to my sickness by punching large holes in my arms for bloodletting, so the foulness shall rush away from my body. Except for Louise. Where is she, anyways?”

“Playing with garbage or something, goodness knows,” said Clarice, hefting a sixteen-pound hand-drill with a grunt. “Shall we try trepanning again, my dear? Your brain-pan still seems quite inflamed.”

“Crack away, my good wife,” said Charles. “I would assist, but I lack the strength to raise my hands high enough – curse this enforced idleness, the true sickness!”
Louise walked in the door with a big mouldy fruit in her hands.

“Eat this,” she said. “You’ll get better.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Clarice. “But waste not want not, I suppose.”

So Charles ate the mouldy fruit, and began to feel a little better, and after three days of Louise bringing him mouldy fruit he was upright and out and about again.

“Thank you, Louise, for sparing our father from a slothful and unproductive death, if in a gross way,” praised her siblings. “But tell us, how did you find this miracle cure?”
 “I looked around the garbage for mould that killed other growths near it, then rubbed fruit on it ‘till it spread to them,” said Louise.

“Oh lousy Louise!” cried the other six Bustle children. “That fruit was purchased from the market with hard-earned coin; you took that which was not yours and spoiled it!” And they thrashed her with great love and sternness.

***

The seasons came and went, and the Bustles laboured mightily. They built the house higher; they spread the fields farther; they hauled bigger buckets of water longer distances from the river; they herded more sheep and worked longer and longer and longer days.

The one thing they had less of were crops.

“The fields are dying, my good toilbugs,” mourned Charles to his attentive family as they spent their evening polishing the floorboards and performing the weekly repainting of the walls. “They are weak and lackadaisical, shiftless things that earn their keep no more. Our crops grow feebly and with unstout stems and limp and listless leaves, starved of nutrients by the sulky, wretched soil. They have failed us! Our fortunes diminish, our money is low, our good work has been betrayed and as matters stand soon we shall be destitute.”
“What shall we do, what shall we do?!” wailed six of the seven Bustle children as they dusted the corners, swept the ceiling, and renovated the kitchen.

“What we always do,” said Clarice, raising her chin like a war banner. “We will try HARDER. Plowing the fields twice as deep should do it.”
Charles scratched his head with one hand as he hammered nails with the other and ran a saw using his armpit. “No,” he decided. “THRICE as deep, and with three  times the force. A Bustle never doubles down when they can triple down. Our prosperity shall be assured!”

“Hurrah!” cheered six of the seven Bustle children, as the back door swung open and the seventh stepped inside.

“Hey,” she said. “I-”

“Louise!” scolded her mother. “We’ve almost finished cleaning and rebuilding and refurbishing the house for the evening; we already tilled the fields and weeded the fields and harvested the fields and planted the fields in the afternoon; and goodness knows we long ago milked the sheep and slaughtered the sheep and butchered the sheep and cured the mutton in the morning. Ten more minutes and you’d be late for sitting up all night carding and spinning! Where have you BEEN all day?”
“Looking at rocks,” said Louise. “Listen, I-”

“I AM listening,” said her father, the gravest grief settling over his face like a mask. “I am listening and for once I am comprehending. Louise Mendicant Bustle, the youngest daughter of my family, has shirked every act of productivity and work all day from dawn to dusk and beyond, in order to amuse herself with frippery and childishness. And this is not the first day thus spent, nor the last! Oh lousy Louise, what have you DONE with yourself? What have you earned?”
“I found this by the west outcrop, and if you look at it in the light, it-”

Overcome with grief and horror, Candice snatched the stone from her daughter’s hand and cast it through the nearest window, which she immediately began to mend with glue.

“You are no daughter of mine,” she said with love and sternness, “and never will darken this place’s door again. We will crush that outcrop to little bitty pieces and cast it into the river, and through that dusty and tiring labour we will free ourselves from it and from our memories of all the worthlessness you have brought us. Now leave, Lousy Louise, for that is your only name now and this is no pace for anyone not yclept Bustle.”

“Listen-” attempted Louise, but she was confronted with six angered siblings armed with construction, cleaning, farming, and butchering tools and acquiesced with no more word than a sigh. So she left the house, picked up her stone, and walked down the long, winding way to the nearest road to town, examining it with a weary eye.

“S’pose it’s no big difference in the end,” she said, watching the sunset glisten on the rich yellow freckles that studded the rock. “It looks like it’s only a half-ounce-per-ton or so.”