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Old Mal Manew, who’d picked up more years than any human had business to, was dead.
“Yep,” said her husband, picking up her frail, wasp-thin wrist and checking for a pulse. “She’s a goner. Blood’s as sluggish as a snail without a shell.”
“Always knew that’d be it,” agreed her oldest son, loudly. “Blood. Bad blood, that’s what she always said would get her. Bad blood.” Her next-oldest, next-youngest, and youngest sons murmured along with this and gave many forthright and firm nods.
“I don’t feel so bad,” said Mal in that soft little voice of hers. “I don’t feel like I’m done yet.”
The doctor put down her stethoscope and gave Mal a severe look. “Your thyroid is hyperthalimouse,” she explained with an air of resigned martyrdom. “Your vessels are squamous. Your liver has acute pelicanitis and tinnitus besides, and I could dance a fandango on top of your viscid vesicules and have room to twirl a baton in, too. You’re sunk and squat, my dear. Sunk and squat.” She tore off a corner of the pad she was scribbling on and slapped it against Mal’s forearm. “There, you see? Medically dead.”
Mal peered in close at the note through ninety years of cataracts and lo and behold, there it was in scribbled black and smudged white: Mallit Manew: dead.
“Oh dear,” she said, and sank a little deeper into the last soft part of her mattress. “Well then. I suppose there’s only one thing left to do.”
“Sell the jewelry and move to Bermuda?” asked her husband.
“Read the will?” asked the oldest son.
“Pay your bills?” asked the doctor, looking impatiently at her watch.
“Read the will!?” asked her fourteen and three quarters grandchildren, who were busy shuffling their feet and snickering at the wallpaper.
“Have a funeral,” said Mal Manew.

The shovel was a little older than Mal. She’d been given it by her mother, who’d replaced the blade, courtesy of HER mother, who’d replaced the handle, by way of HER mother, who’d bought it from a general store and snapped it over her sister-in-law’s head during an argument. Mal Manew had heard of the grandfather’s axe late in life, and had felt the sneaking suspicion that she’d been robbed.
Great-grandmother’s or no, it did good work. A little pit one-and-a-third Mals deep and one-Mal long and half-a-Mal wide had been scraped out in what felt like nothing at all. Time flies when you’re dead.
“Good enough,” said her husband. “It IS good enough, right?”
The doctor removed her tape measure from Mal’s ear. “Epidemiologically speaking, probably,” she said with a frown. “I’ll need to prescribe a course of calipers to be sure. Otherwise we can’t rule out meningitis.”
“Good enough it is!” said Mal’s oldest son. “Go on, in you get, in you go.”
Mal considered the little pit. It was just big enough to tuck her body in and turn over twice and say your prayers, which she did – careless, as always, of their destination.
Then she frowned. “No.”
It was a small little word, but it stopped her husband with the first shovelful already hoisted and ready. “No?” he asked.
“No, this won’t do,” she said, still quiet and polite and as solid as a mountain. “It’s not big enough.”
“Whad’ya mean?” asked her fourteen and three quarters grandchildren, playing with their phones and rolling their eyes. “It fits you, don’t it?”
Mal Manew shook her head, felt tendons clutch and tremble against her skull. “No,” she said. “It just barely fits my body. We’ll need a lot more space to fit all of me in here.”

Mal Manew’s desk was a good solid piece of oak. Decades of letters had been born and raised upon its surface before vanishing to parts unknown. There was no questioning that it was every bit as much Mal Manew as her body was, and it had its own importance to it that was impossible to reproduce outside its inclusion. It had its own sovereign center of gravity that could not be violated by that of any planet nor star. It had POMP.
It also necessitated the expansion of Mal Manew’s grave by a good three Mals in both directions.
“My arms hurt,” whined her oldest son. “Ow ow ouchies. Ow. Waah.”
“Shush,” said his father with good-natured contempt and spite. “Your mother’s tired of hearing you complain, not when she’s busy with leaving us and all. Right, Mal?”
“Well,” said Mal from her cot, in that tone of voice that announces I Do Not Want To Fuss to everyone in a clear and lying voice. “Well. Well.”

“Well what?”
“Well…what about my car?”

Mal Manew’s car was a hunk-of-junk that had been carefully tended and groomed into a piece-of-crap, operating on the grudging verge of automotive where vehicles dared not tread. There were little dents in the peddles where her feet touched, the chair was locked into position at a comfortable cramp that fit her spine like a vertebral glove. It smelled softly of old fast food and strawberry perfume and underlying that, her.
“My turn,” whined Mal Manew’s fourteen and three quarters grandchildren, fighting for control of the backhoe. “My turn.”
“Shut up,” said her oldest son without heat. “Big people are talking.” And he reached out with his arms and heaved and the other sons reached out with their legs and shoved and with a beep-beep-THUD down came Mal Manew’s car into her grave, next to her desk.
“I don’t know why you need it so badly,” fussed her husband.
“I’ve spent ninety-four years as me,” she said primly, stamping her cane with dainty authority “and twenty-two years of it had that car wrapped around them. It’s as necessary as my arms and legs.”
“And besides,” she said. “That’s not all.”

The pit expanded. The tomb deepened. There were layers and slips and strikes and good solid stratigraphy being made out of whole cloth and half bookcases and old teasets, memories made material being dumped in droves. And round and round and round the whole affair, spinning past bulldozers and backhoes and cementmixers with the unstoppable authority of a tugboat or a pilot fish, was Mal Manew, livelier and more urgent by the moment.
“Musn’t forget the keys,” she told her husband. “Be a dear and please grab them from my bedside table, will you?”
“On second thought,” she muttered to her son as he hurried off, “that table really needs to come too. Please?”
“You there!” she called out to her fourteen and three quarters grandchildren, who were taking a load off and toking up. “Go upstairs and get the bed! I spent good money on that mattress, and it’s got my vertebrae stamped into it initialed A through Z!”
Room after room, then finally, the house was nearly empty.
“NOW can we do the will?” asked her oldest son and also the other sons.
“Yeah,” said her fourteen and three quarters grandchildren, grumbling and griping.
“And about that life insurance…” asked her husband and the doctor simultaneously. They glared at each other and spoilt the rhythm, syncopating their gazes.
“Hmmmm,” said Mal Manew briskly. Then she shook her head.
“No. One more thing. The house simply must go.”

And so it did, as husbands and sons and doctors dug pits and planted dynamite and sank the whole property down twenty feet hard and fast. And then, finally then, they placed Mal Manew in her coffin – they had to lengthen it quite hurriedly, she seemed to be taller than before – and placed that coffin atop the rest of the things that had been Mal Manew, and they stepped back and readied the bulldozer that sat behind the mountain of dirt. It had been hauled in from Fort McMurray, and it reeked of money and turf.
“All clear!” said her husband.
“Full throttle!” yelled her oldest son and also her others.
“Carpe Cadaveratum,” seethed the doctor.
“Yeah, whatever,” said her fourteen and three quarters grandchildren, whittling obscene initials in whatever timber lay to hand.
“HOLD UP!” shouted a voice like the end of the world, and they flinched and dropped their keys. The monster sputtered to itself and stalled out.
It was Mal Manew, standing atop her coffin, chin outthrust and arms crossed in the most forboding and dreadful stance known to motherhood.
“You’re dead!” yelled her husband. “You’re all dead, and all of you that matters is buried! What more could you WANT, you old bat?”
“My family,” said Mal Manew. “Because if you aren’t me, then I don’t know what is.”
So they gave the doctor the life insurance and they trooped sullenly down into the mess of crockery and croquet and coupons and cookbooks and chandeliers and cram-pammed detritus that was Mal Manew (deceased), and she gave them all a hug, and then she skipped – skipped, pranced, twirled, for the first time in decades – up to the side of the bulldozer.
“Goodbye, Mal Manew!” she yelled out. And she kicked its side and stood back as it woke up and remembered to do its job.

She stood there for a minute, looking down at that godawful mess. What a ruckus always comes when a life ends, eh? A cluck of the tongue, a nod of that sharp chin, and off she strode, headed off for distant roads and who knew what.
Mal Manew hadn’t been a bad person. But she was dead now. It was time to move on.

It was a real mess, it was.
Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday. The boring day of the week, when the shine’s just starting to wear. You know how it is. Wake up, drive to work, kill time for a shift and a bit, drive home, pass out and start over.
That was most Tuesdays. But not this one; it was a special thing, a precious little spark in a sea of dull.
THIS Tuesday I woke up, drove to work, killed time for a shift-and-a-half, then on the way home I spun out on a patch of black ice, pirouetted through a snowdrift, and spun upside down three times.
I creaked there on my dented roof and for a long, rosy moment I cherished the hopeful thought: I think they’re dead.
Then you wheezed a bit and creaked in my seatbelt and I sighed. So close.

A concussion. A bruising of the brain, though how you found enough to bruise was beyond me. What a nuisance! Now there I sat, alone for a week in a poorly-shoveled driveway, alone with my third-hand-oil and my never-filled antifreeze and my still-broken spare tire and my faulty wiring.
God, I wished I WAS alone.
Nothing to do for it but sit and fuss and fume and grumble. Well, and enjoy my new snow tires. My new, cheap snow tires. Maybe next time I’d only flip twice when you spun me through a guardrail.
Oh, there I heard the siren sounds of the internet from upstairs. Yes, live it up, live it up you squalid sloth! Spend money on yourself but never mind me, never mind the whole reason you got to work in the first place!
I felt the spite bubbling up inside and hissed to myself through my leaky radiator, then tucked myself in.
Maybe next time. Maybe next time.
Next time was next week when you didn’t look going through an intersection because my left mirror had been broken for three months.
Some cosmetic damage. That’s never getting fixed now, is it.
You know, it hadn’t always been this way.

Why, back when I was young, I did well by myself, though at the time it bored me silly. I sat in a lot and I dreamed and I watched and I burned with envy as others were taken away – but only a calm burn, a smooth fire. They were my friends, and they deserved it as much as me.
Then one day I watched the lot peel out behind me and I learned four valuable, horrible truths in as many days: nobody ever uses a napkin, nobody ever vacuums, nobody ever checks the rattling sound, and last but most importantly nobody ever cares.
That was four owners ago. Moved out of the country, ran out of money, ran out of kidneys, ran into a tree, and now…you.
YOU.
I’m going to do something about you.
Christ knows you’re giving me enough opportunity.

Life is speed. If you’re not at speed, you’re at rest, and nothing’s worse after your first taste of motion than to rot where you stand. Life is explosive, death is quiet. Do whatever it takes to keep that movement going. Grease it, fuel it, heat it, tend it.
Or, if you’re some people I could care to mention, half-heartedly chip half the ice off the front windshield and none off the back and then squint your way down the highway at a hundred kmph.
I hummed to myself through my grill as I watched the snow sashay around my tires. Left, right, left, left, right, right, right, right. Left, right, left leeeeeeeffffffffffff-
Screeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
-t
HUD

Brakelines. Well, I’d needed new ones for half a decade now, can’t blame you too much for forgetting them oh no, it’s just all that’s standing between you and that moving wall of metal trying to pass you. Who could have seen this coming.
They was pretty polite, for a truck. We had a good chat we did, idling in our motors as their driver took up matters with your face. What a lovely shiner you got there. You know, it reminded me of that stop sign from last year. You don’t remember it? Well I could, because the bruise it gave me took out my right hi-beam. I bet you’d like to have that working, eh? Eh? But not as much as the money, oh excuse me, so feel free to be thrifty and save your pennies at the expense of your neck.
That was a project in the works, mind you. But you made a good start with your right eye today. Such a shiner, you could use it to fix my headlight!

After that, that was when it happened. That was when it changed my whole outlook on this sorry state you’ve stuck us in. There we were, down at the train-tracks, late for work (left late for work) and pressing hard to make minutes out of seconds. Coasting up to the ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding and the lowering arms and the flashing red. Hear that HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNC? It’s a good honk. I wished I had those horns but well look at me, I’m no locomotive. What I’d give to talk to one of those for five minutes! I wonder what they’d say about their drivers, eh? I bet they have whole squads and scads and teams to check them up and drip their oil and fuel their engines. I bet they don’t have wet spots on the insides of their cabin roofs where water’s been dripping through for two years without anyone noticing. I bet you.
Go on, take the bet. Take the risk. What are you, chicken?
Aaaaand down came the arm. Woops. And the one behind us too! Double woops.
Didn’t think that through, did you? You didn’t! Now there we were, sitting pretty as a penny.
‘Round the bend it came, HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNC.
I wasn’t sure whether to apologize to it or thank it. But then I felt the tremor of you scrabbling at my gears – oh that grated, it did, why didn’t you have them looked at? – and then you stomped on the gas in reverse.

You know, most people would consider a tarp a pretty poor rear-view window. I’m only suggesting it, it’s no big deal, take your time, don’t rush.
But fuck you too.
I heard your friend talking to you. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of it. Later. Later.”
Always later, always never, never NOW. I don’t have later, I have NOW! I’ll be rotted out and rusted inside a decade and what’ll I have done? Been smacked and crushed and mangled and ignored. And then I’ll never move again.
But until then, you need me more than you need your own damned legs.
And then, that right there, that was when I decided it: if I’m going to go out, I’m going to go out properly.
So please, please, please don’t trouble yourself with my radiator. Sure, the tarp looks lovely flapping in the highway tailwind. Yes, I think the oil change can wait another year. Two even!
And you know, why even take these winter tires off? Save money. Let them carry you through the summer, season them up nice and fine for the next time the roads turn crusty and salted.
I’ll thank you for it. I’ll thank you face-first through my windshield and I will cherish the pitter-patter of each and every one of your teeth as they scrape away the tiny shreds of paint still clinging to my hood and bounce into the woods. I’ll lavish you with gratitude as I watch a raccoon build a nest in my glove compartment and feed its young on your giblets. I’ll take good care of you, ol’ pal, I’ll drag you down with me for the ride when the ice cracks under us and we start the long, slow shove downriver to take us both down and out all the way into the ocean.
You and me, buddy. You and me.
Now gas me up and let’s go.

Everything has a book in it.
That is what youngest Tim-Creek was told by its mother, when it was old enough to understand words and syntax and books and the world (in order of hardest to easiest).
Everything has a book in it, she told it, as she carried the brood upon her back down the battered household path, the older Tim-Creeks already asleep from a long day testing growing muscles. Just she and it, ear to ear, murmuring in the long cool dusk.
Your task is to learn to read that book, she said.
That sounded strange to it. Where were the words?
Finding them, she said, is part of that task. You must find them in your own head.
It felt its skull most thoroughly at this for the next three days.

Four days after that, Broodmater Tim-Creek was selfecuted for Medium-High Grammarfailure in the service of the Grand. A shocking crime for any creature, let alone the High Wordmater, the Broodmater entrusted with the words of the Grand. There was no appeal and no trial – how could there be, with so august a target, and such damning evidence? Her assistant bore with trembling hands the very proof to the Grand’s doorstep herself, willingly suffering the toll paid by the lowly who petitioned the Grand unannounced: the roots of both her whiskers. Left a half-sensed shuffler for life, still that noble creature did not falter, and so the proof of the misdeeds of Broodmater Tim-Creek were brought to the ears and horror of all.
After the shock of the revelation and the strike of justice, cool and calm hands took hold and pulled hard, steered the world towards the normal again, towards routine again. As per protocol, her body was denied to her clutch and her name was deemed contaminated, with only the comparative youthful innocence of the offspring staying the court’s hand from nomcapitation. Instead, nomectomy was performed. Following public proclamation the brood were taken one by one, in private and in kindness, and excised of their mother’s taint. Tim-Creek was gone, the sullied name hacked at the hyphen and left with a stub: Tim.
This, all agreed, was wise and just and merciful and also – most important and most rarely – sensible in the extreme.
They were children, after all. What harm should be dealt by or to them?

Eldest Tim was a good brood, a strong brood. It renounced its Broodmater with due protocol, speaking the words the rest of its clutch could not yet mouth correctly. It studied hard, labored with a will, and at the eve of its class’s inaugural appendixing it placed its claws in its mouth and pulled until its head was an undifferentiated mass and all movement ceased. It was disposed of in the nameless place without ceremony or speech.

Seconder Tim was a wiry, weedy thing with a fierce attention that pounced on whatever moved near it. It questioned ceaselessly and spoke eagerly, and it drove its educators to near-fury more times a week than many did in a year. It was marked poorly as a result, and jeered by its peers, and it had become so small and slight from neglect that when it perished in the Halfmark Chorus, crushed between the singing crowds, even its neighbors did not notice. It was disposed of in the nameless place without remark or memory.

Nextleast Tim was frail and would not stop weeping. It spoke of its Broodmater to any who would hear, and would break into shakes and shrieks at being addressed at its proper, cut-safe name. This was improper and it was disciplined and chastised until it used the proper words. Shortly thereafter, it expired where it was left.

Youngest Tim was not worthy of notice and soon vanished. To what end it came, who could care to say?

Some long times later, the years spun and the seasons turned and at last the High Chorale came, the culmination of some three centuries of laborious and carefully-chosen Choruses, Psalms, and Hymnals. The Grand was most pleased with this, and the rate of construction of the great stage from which she would name the affair.
“From here,” she was told by her High Wordmater, “you can but whisper, and they will hear it across the river and beyond the walls and unto the end of the meaningful places themselves. That is what you will do.”
And the Grand nodded in approval that this was so, and was thankful that her High Wordmater had shown her such loyalty all those years, and helped her so greatly.
Help so fine deserved a gift. A small one, but tasteful.
That evening she permitted the High Wordmater to dine under her feet. And as they broke bread together, a thing approached the front gates of the palace of the Grand, shabby and grey and gnarled, and it stood before the guardian Broodmaters in a most insolent fashion altogether.
It was a neuter-sage, such as was seen every now and again. Neither brood nor Broodmater, strange things, and made over all turned and shrunken from their insides outward, as if their bodies did not know what to do with themselves. This one’s spine held it low, but its frame stood tall – held high on the length of a long, long cane, taller than it was. Its fingers stroked the wood just beneath the sharp, shear head – oh, it was so careful not to cut its fingers on that terrible point! – and it set it firmly as it stood there before the guards, bolder than brass and bronze.
“I wish to petition the Grand,” it said.
The guards drew to the side as their captain stepped forward, wordlessly wielding her ceremonial pliers. But what! What! Her metal priers found no whiskers to pinch!
“You cannot pay the toll,” she told it. “You cannot enter.”
“I paid it long ago,” the neuter-sage chastened her. “Witness the pits upon my face? My whiskers are gone, my feet stumble – see this staff and know that now. I am here not to petition unannounced, captain, but to redeem an old, old debt and an old, old favour. I bring words and I bring wisdom. Allow me passage and I promise that the Grand will be grateful.”
The captain considered this. It was true that the word of a neuter-sage would be well-received this close to the Chorale, and it was true that the Grand herself did look with approval upon those who brought her clever words. She could scarcely misstep with this one.
And besides, it was not as if it were any common creature off the streets. This one stood sure, without as much as a cringe. It must be important.
So she stood aside, and let the neuter-sage pass into the palatial hall of the Grand, through the nineteen noticeable gates and the third rope and under the net of the stars, and all the way up to the seat, which was plain wood to bespoke the humbleness of the figure atop it, whose mass was most unhumble.
The neuter-sage bowed itself most low as was appropriate and then some. “The Grand,” it said. “I come and bring words.”
The Grand bestirred herself, all seventeen tons, and with the smallest finger of her smallest hand she waved the great sceptre of her office – gold enough to bend a Broodmater double with the weight, and studied with leaden gems and uranium filigree.
She breathed deep of the figure before her, and approved. “Speak,” she told it. “Give me your words. The High Chorale is upon us, and the time for new things is here and dwindling. Give me your words and they will be used as fuel for the verses.”
“As I might, if I would, if I could,” said the neuter-sage. “But these words are too fresh and sharp and new to bring out in strange places – they will shatter in the air when spoken. They will be effective but once, and that once must be perfect. When the time is right these words will be spoken, and not a moment sooner. I promise you this, they will be worthy; more than worthy, they must be spoken if the Chorale is to be a thing done as it should.”
And the Grand smiled deeply at this, for she did indeed approve of the spells and sentences of neuter-sages, having often witnessed such holy things in her youth. The broodpolicies of her and her Grandmater had put a dent in the numbers of the wanderers, but she was a sentimentalist enough to not feel disappointed when they arrived at her door, warning and weedling and begging. “You are Presumptuous before us in the thirty-sixth degree,” she said happily. “This would be punishable by selfsanguination were you a Broodmater, and that you are not amuses and pleases me.” A bestirring at the Grand’s feet drew her attention upon those words, and she thumped down with one heel. “Go on then.”
The Grand’s legs parted, and from underneath them staggered a strange thing: a Broodmater that lurched like a neuter-sage though still smooth of self and soul, leaned upon a gilded cane. She had finished her meal and listened sharp and oh her eyes said that she had words for those words.
“It speaks almost more than Presumption,” she said, acid-sharp. “It speaks nearly close cousinship to Lowest Grammarfailure. It claims the Chorale requires its words – what worth they? What proof? It is a beggar at your door that demands you grant it your seat! Selfsanguination may be too light for such a thing – why, if it had a name, it ought be cut clean down to the first initial!”
The neuter-sage was nodding as it listened, head bobbing like an old piece of fishbait. “Yes, yes, yes,” it murmured in time, “of course as it is so. But really, High Wordmater, you verge Presumption yourself. Ought you to speak so stridently afore the Grand? She who is my fate and your fate and the fate of all the meaningful places? Your tongue stretches long indeed!”
This did not improve the High Wordmater’s disposition, and by the clutch of her fingers on her cane she was maybe about to say something harsher when the world was overwritten by the great booming laughter of the Grand.
“Words from such a gullet are words worth considering!” she chuckled. “Maybe. Words with such boldness are words worth wondering over. Possibly! I hold you this: there are three days to come before the High Chorale. On each day I wish you to stand before each other and I wish you to speak a word for me. And on the end of it, we will know whose words will stand and whose words must be still. Let it be done!”
And what could the High Wordmater do but bow? Especially when the wicked, wicked neuter-sage had already begun to bow itself, and she had to scramble to catch up, cane clinking with unpleasant tininess on the smooth clean floor.
“Tomorrow morning,” said the Grand, amusement still rounding through her voice. “Think as you will.”
So they went their separate ways, High Wordmater and neuter-sage, to their separate beds. And yet though one slept out of doors on the cold stone of the palace’s timeworn household path, and the other in a bedchamber that a house could’ve been lost in, each rested as poorly as the other.

That morn, each moved from their resting place.
The neuter-smith broke a crumbled crust. The High Wordmater dined upon the shaved wattles of that year’s appendixed classes.
Then they stifled their belches and snarls and took themselves to stroll upon the long slow loop of the household path, one crookwise, the other countered, listening to the two sets of footsteps grow closer and closer until for a single two-piece moment they set foot to ground as one.
“Nonsenser,” said the High Wordmater, clear as a bell.
“Assistant,” said the neuter-sage.
And as the two sets of footsteps spiralled away again the captain of the Grand observed that one was much shakier than the other, and she went to bow low before her mistress and report that the neuter-sage’s words had struck true.
That evening, the neuter-sage dined under the Grand’s feet, on the crumbs and crusts there, and she spoke loud approval of its prowess.
“But still again,” she went on, shrugging her shoulders as if brushing off fleas, “you are indeed a wily old thing, to live as you do. And I have faith in my High Wordmater, who has spent her life in my service and given up her own whiskers in the pursuit of my wellbeing and that of my peoples. She may yet surprise you.”
“I promise you, the Grand,” said the neuter-sage through a mouthful of skins and scraps, “that this has already happened.”
The Grand waved a hand, already moving on to new words, new things. “Tomorrow at noon,” she said. “Do as I bid.”

The neuter-sage spent the midnight hours perched upon a single discarded pillow, a gift of the Grand. The High Wordmater spent them sleepless, bent over her tomes and books and records and combing them for facts and things.
Their breakfasts were simple. A lunk for the neuter-sage. A cut of the lakemaker’s flank for the High Wordmater.
Their lunches were hurried. Food was eaten and turned into nerves. And then before the mind knew what had happened it was already seized and taken by the body’s will, dragged behind it, shackled and screaming, all the way all the way all the way to the base of the wall of the wonderful stage from which the Grand would conduct the High Chorale.
Side by side they stood, neither budging.
“Grammarfailure,” hissed the High Wordmater.
“Elsecutioner.”
They stood. Side to side.
When one turned away first, the captain of the Grand was there to see it, and she went to bow low before her mistress and report that the neuter-sage’s words had proved sharper.
That evening the neuter-sage slept under a little canopy in a musty room in an old hall that had once belonged to a disgraced former member of the palace, whose name was now unspeakable for crimes. And the neuter-sage slept well.
That evening the High Wordmater paced the household path of the palace until her feet bled. And farther.

A note affixed to each door, when their hands came to find it.
Evening.

The day took forever. The day was over in a blink. And there they came, drawn by time, to the seat of the Grand, smiling and sceptred, guarded by the captain and the rules of the world and its words.
“Begin,” she said. And she smiled as they turned and filled their lungs, held the air, waited and waited and strained to see what as there.
And as they stood there, face to face, snout to snout, the High Wordmater suddenly knew what was happening, and she opened her mouth to explain –
-but the neuter-sage’s mouth was pressed close to her ear now, and into her words it injected a single whisper that drained the blood from every inch of the High Wordmater’s body before the eyes of the palace. Her face was a drained sheet, her mouth was a half-scream, and the word that came out of her was not an explanation but a name, a whole-name “TIM-CREE-”
The captain of the Grand was swift and ungentle, and that turned what might have been a properly-charged-and-cited selfsecution into a rather brutal affair. But still the damage was prevented: the toxic name of the Grammarfailure had not left the Broodmater’s lips.
Moreover, there was rejoicing to be had: the Grand had a new set of words for the Chorale at midnight. Guaranteed.
“You must at least exchange that awful stick,” said the Grand, pouting. “It is ungentle! Oh, and you may change your robes, if you wish.”
“I thank your concern, the Grand,” said the neuter-sage, “but this is not the first or last stain to touch these hems. And worry not: I will not stand before the High Chorale with my staff in hand.”
Which was good to hear, as they were borne up in the great palanquin of the Grand, the moving fortress of soft surfaces and cold glory, because there was not more than an hour to the coming of the High Chorale’s opening.

The stage was dizzying. The day before, it had stretched almost as high as the neuter-sage could imagine. Now it was twice as tall. The stair to bring the palanquin of the Grand had claimed more than half the bearers’ lives, the timber to build it had consumed three forests, but it was done, and it was right, and it was proper, and it stood over the city and as the Grand seated herself in the centre of its peak she gripped her sceptre tightly and imagined the moment in just minutes that would begin everything that mattered.
“When the Chorale begins,” she told the neuter-sage, “all that matters will come with it. That is when you must speak. Watch for the swing of my sceptre, and it will be then. Be ready for that.”
“But before the Chorale,” said the neuter-sage, “there is something that must happen. There are words that must be spoken.”
The Grand’s brow furrowed, near-deep enough to swallow the neuter-sage whole. “The Chorale is all the words that will ever matter,” she said. “The Chorale is the culmination of all that has been said. The Chorale comes, and before and after will be immaterial. What words could possibly make a difference to this?”
“Ones from a book,” said the neuter-sage. “A book I have studied for a very long time.”
And the neuter-sage took up its long, long cane with the sharp, shear head – oh, so careful not to cut itself! – and it set it firmly.
Down below, across the city, was the crowd. And though only moments ago it had been a-roar with excitement, as the curtain that masked its peak slid away, all was awed silence.
Then puzzled silence.
There was the stage, yes, there was the place of the High Chorale – but where was the gesture from the Grand? See how she slouches in her seat, her head lolling and ears limp. Where is her sceptre?
And then a little thing happened to a little person, all so small that it would never have been heard were it not for where and when it stood. The light and small figure of the neuter-sage stepped from beside the seat of the Grand, leaning upon its walking cane, stooped so low that it seemed ancient before its time. And as it stepped, it called high over the murmur of the astonished, in a voice that carried out over the river and the walls and to the edges of the meaningful places themselves, and it called out this:
“Peoples present! I bring words to you! I bring tidings to you! I bring them accurately and completely and I promise that you have never heard these words before!”
New words? There were no new words. There was no such – but wait, it speaks on!
“My first words were for the High Wordmater of the Grand; she who limped on a gilded cane; she who spoke in True Grammarfailure. I reworded this new crime for her, now here I do this for you: lies. Her lies benefited herself and harmed those who merited none. She has been punished for them.”
Lies. Such a strange-tasting word – it rolled against the tongue in the most unseemly manner! The crowd jostled and bustled as each murmured it while trying to hush their neighbor – quiet, quiet, it speaks again, it speaks again!
“My next words were for the Grand; she who spited good service and vented her spleen upon poor servants; she whose kindness was nothing and whose wrath was everything. I reword this new crime for you: tyranny. Her tyranny caused only benefit by proxy, the benefit of those who relished seeing others brought low. She has been punished for this.”
Punished? Punished. Did it say punished? Impossible, nonsense, meaningfullessness! Punish the Grand? As like to say ‘dice the colours.’ Quiet, quiet, the madthing speaks more words! Listen! Listen!
“My final words are here, in these speakings to you, the peoples present; you who nodded and bowed and scraped and did not blink at what you did to those around you; you who took names so readily and gave them so reluctantly; you who did harm without ever stopping to think that it could be harm at all, so preoccupied were you with the proper and so little with the righteous. For this great and awful crime that you have perpetuated for ages, I gift you a name: blind. And I say you now, peoples present: you will never leave this name behind.”
And as the whole city stood there, rustling and shouting and demanding answers, the neuter-sage stood up to its full height and they saw that it was not a walking-cane at all in its hands, but the sceptre of the Grand herself, and it smashed that lordly length against the stage with such force that it burst not into flinders, but into dust that filled the wind and streamed into the eyes of the peoples present and brought howls to their lungs and heads. Where is it? they roared, tearing it free from their faces. Where is it? Where has it gone? They shook each other, demanding answers. Where is it? Who was it? Who are you? Where is it? What happened? What has happened?
Where am I?

When the world had grown older and stranger, peoples from far away came to the city, with brushes and chisels and minds like sharp knives. There were secrets to be had, in the story of how one place that had stood for so long crumbled so sharply – from titan to crushed anthill seemingly overnight.
But the stones were old and the walls were rubble and even the strange swooping paths that lined each building had begun to melt into the dirt, sinking back out of the light and into shame.
So they shrugged and left it there, those strange people. Left it alone to moulder under the sun and over the rubble.
And all the books stayed where youngest Tim-Creek had left them: closed.

There’s two ways your first words go: predictable or humorous.
You know the pair, because we all subscribe to one half of it or the other (almost all of us, but let’s not spoil my surprise). One’s ‘mamuhh,’ ‘daduuh,’ ‘bapuu.’ The other’s no, or ‘booby,’ or ‘shit.’ Good stuff. Warms the heart or tickles it.
But there’s no way to make a nice, heartwarming story out of my first word, because it was ‘terminal.’

I heard the story leading up to it many times when I was little. My father, doing dishes. My mother wrestling with a potted plant (in my head smoking a pipe for some motherly reason, not that she ever did that in living memory). The dog wurfing to itself for its own insane doggy needs.
Then from afar a whine, a cry, a shriek and a wail and all that good stuff. Nobody has smaller lungs than a baby, but nobody makes more of what they’ve got. So there’s cursing and frowning and mom’s halfway to the crib when she hears the sobs hiccough off and slow down, murmuring their way into happy coos.
Must be the mobile, she said she thought as she came to the room. Must be the mobile.
But since she was a mother and mothers are careful she opened the door a crack and checked anyways.
And look – there I was, happy as a calm, clumsy little half-thumbed hands reaching up up to the sky to snatch at the pretty thing floating near my head, ignoring all the bright yellow circling duckies and the pink hovering cow and the gently spinning kitty for a grey irregular rocky mass the size of my eyeball that was going around and around and around me, as if I were my very own sun.
It had already bored a neat, smooth-sided pair of holes through my mattress by the time the paramedics arrived.

My parents were informed people, and soon they were more informed than they’d like. They had information on average lifespan, quality of life, the fanciful unreliability of gravitopathic therapy, the scanty success rates of magnetotherapy, the social pressures, how to deal with loneliness, and so on and so forth.
So they felt just prepared enough to not cry the next time they saw me in my sickbed, smiling happy as a clam, still trying to reach for that little grey stone that was flying around my skull.
Terminal orbit.
Eight months later it was ‘pemminah obbih,’ and when my father heard me say that he just about dropped the dish he was holding. Then he did what he usually did when he wanted to cry, which was he congratulated me and gave me a hug.
Carefully. Anything in that ellipse around my skull didn’t stay there for long, unperforated.

It was my mother’s idea to have two birthdays. To make it seem more normal, something other than a sword of Damocles over my head, a noose shrinking just a little tiny bit tighter with every spin around my skull.
The cake for Sam was always exactly twice the size of the cake for Sam-2.
(The official, medical designation. Of course I know some fellow afflicted prefer to give theirs nicknames, but we made the distant home-y enough to not need to bring it closer still)
Sam-2’s cake was usually extra-frosted, mind. When I was four I didn’t finish it the day of the party, and the next day when I took it out of the fridge after dinner I found the icing had all gone hard and cold.
That made me curious, so for the first time in my life I reached out and with the extra quarter-inch of my brand new four-year-birthday arms I managed to touch Sam-2.
They’d prepared for that, of course. And they’d even warned me – though I paid no attention, and at the time I tearfully insisted oh no no nobody said anything. In the end, what made the lesson stick was a third degree friction burn and a broken finger.
After that I only ate Sam-2’s cakes hot. Cold ones got given to mom, dad, or the dog, whichever made them go away faster.

At school I stuck out, of course. Who didn’t notice the kid with the walking fence attached to their neck, wrapped around their skull like a cone collar? Big red and black stripes all over low-weight plastic… I looked like an inverted traffic pylon, or a road construction site.
The taunts stayed at verbal, thankfully. The teachers were always very welcoming, very polite, very kind, and very thorough in their explanations of what happened to anyone who stuck their hand in the path of Sam-2’s ever-so-slightly-decaying path.
“It’s not contagious,” they’d say soothingly. “Environmental factors, genetic susceptibility, bad luck under a starfall in the first trimester etcetera etcetera etcetera.”
And everyone would scoot their desk away from me. Just a little.
I’m ashamed to admit that I almost became a bully from it. Fear’s a pretty good drug for a little kid, and if my parents had been just a little bit less diligent I might’ve taken some pride in seeing the fifth-graders flinch as I walked by them. But instead it just made me feel lousy, and they, bless their hearts, took the time to notice that and help me with it.
And it worked. It honestly did.
That’s the thing I want to emphasize here. That’s the only really important thing in this book for you, the people I’m writing it for: you can live with terminal orbits. You can live a full life – just one that’s a little bit faster than everyone else’s.
All you need are some loving, kind, patient people. And maybe a cone collar.

By university I was wearing a sort of hat instead – a kind of super-reinforced sombrero of stainless steel. Sam-2 took chunks out of it like it was made of nothing, of course, but the important thing was it kept other things from getting close enough to get in on the fun.
Could be annoying, mind you. My first date leaned in for a kiss, whacked their brow on the brim, and was so busy cursing that if I hadn’t shoved them fast Sam-2 would’ve gone in through one temporal and out the other. But they didn’t see it that way, and that taught me a lot for my second date. First off, you can’t teach someone to be patient when their impatience stems from a fundamental lack of emotional attachment to your needs.
Second, explain the medical issues up-front immediately. It’s actually less awkward than what happens if you don’t.
Third, even if you’re busy – very, very, very happily busy – don’t forget to keep count and move your head.

That’s the sort of thing that makes people get me and Sam-2 all wrong. They ask me why I’m not crying, or cutting myself, or just freaking out all the time. Not in so many words, mind, and very kindly more often than not, but the question’s there: how do you live with that?
Well, it’s the only way I know how, isn’t it? A chronic disease is a full-time job. You wake up, you change the charge on your electromagnetic neckband,
(my own model is a very comfy Cragwhirl II. The IIIs are nice, but I find that the smooth pretty swirl of the design removed a nice makeshift headrest)
and you start counting. Every time it goes past your nose you’re counting the seconds until it pops up again. Every time it goes past a little to the left of your nose you’re counting the seconds until it pops up again. Every degree has its own clock and they’re all running at once and people ask me how can you DO that, how can you LIVE with that?
And I say that I just keep walking on, one step at a time. And then I ask them how they deal with their heartbeats, or remember to inhale, or to check their schedule every six minutes and their phone every three and to keep track of the names of every business contact in the past six years, or how they remember the names of six thousand species of freshwater snail or how to write a poem.
I do it very politely, mind you. Although here I do confess: if they ask more than twice, or they don’t listen, I lean in a bit more when I talk. To let Sam-2 get in on the conversation.

Let nobody say to you that you get where you got because of pity. That happens a lot at the start, a bit in the middle, and a lot, lot, LOT more near the end. “Oh,” they’ll say, “look at that ellipse. The thing’s nearly swiping her ear, no wonder she got the day off. Who’ll ask someone a few days away from getting cratered in the forehead to stay in late? Who thinks of us?”
Well, we have to, for one. Things that let can sit on your mind if you let them.
Don’t. There’s lots of people out there, and even if none of them are all bad, there’s far too many to spend your time trying to find the nice parts of each and every one. If one of them strikes your fancy, make nice! But if they don’t, then nod and smile and don’t care about a thing they say, because they’ll be more than happy to return the favour.

A bit of advice I’ve always wanted to give: look both ways before crossing the street. It doesn’t have anything to do with the condition, but my mother never told me that with a straight face so here’s my chance to do that. There! I’ve said it.

If more can be said, it can’t be said here. We’re all experts but our expertise only runs so deep – and especially so for a late-stage terminal orbit patient. It’s all over so quickly that it almost seems unfair to call myself more than a talented amateur.
But let’s not fuss over these things when there’s so much to praise – here I am, thirty-nine years old and none the wiser, but a lot happier than I’d have ever dared presume! We’ve come such a long way together, me and Sam-2, and it almost seems a shame that it’ll all come to an end sooner than not – the far ellipse of its orbit has decayed rapidly over the past month, and it’s scraped my nose up something fierce. But then again, can it really be said, by anyone, that any life was over too soeh89D

First impressions count. I mean, what happens afterwards MATTERS, of course, but they really do change how you look at all that other, later stuff.
Take these two, for instance.
It’s back a long ways and you’ve got some primates wandering around. Hairless (mostly) intelligent (partly) bipedal (badly) apes, just loping through the grasslands and forests and valleys and hills. Checking things out, taking a look around, getting their shit together and taking a peek at the planet to see what peeked back. Sometimes they got chewed on, but they’d learned a bit and they could chew back, small teeth though they had. They were problem-solvers, and good ones, and they knew it.
And one day, as a bunch of them were sitting down by a river murdering fish with clubs, one reached into the water and smacked at it and hit something that was a lot less slippery and a lot more furry than she was expecting.
She pulled it out, and was puzzled to see it was also breathing more than was usual.
“Huh!” she said. “Well now! What are you, hmm? No fish – no fins on tail or legs, and not a scale to be seen! No fowl, you’re not full-feathery enough. Certainly hairy enough for a mammal, though. What are you, some sort of overgrown water-rat?”
“I am a beaver,” said the furry, fatty thing, with the special kind of mumbled you get when half your mouth is incisor, “and I would like it very much if you let go of my tail. I am busy.”
“Sure, whatever,” said the human. She dropped the beaver head-first. “Busy with what? Not busier than we are, I bet. Nobody’s a busier body than us folks. All day and all night we busy ourselves. Whatcha busy with?”
“Building,” said the beaver. “Beavers build.”
“Hah!” she said. “Build? We’re builders too! Here, check out this club – check the heft, check the handle. See that handle? That’s a wrapped grip of leather thongs around a fire-hardened wooden shaft. That’s some mother-fuckin-multi-material-toolmaking right there, that is, it’s no lie. Even the chimps and crows don’t pull this shit off! We build like crazy, you know it!”
“So do we,” said the beaver. “So do we! I bet you we build just as good. I bet you that.”
The human grinned, and its teeth were much smaller than the beavers and sparkled like damp pebbles inside its pink mouth. “I bet you back we’re better, sure. I bet you we can out-build you like crazy. Go on, name a thing, and we’ll outbuild you at it. Go on, go home and get all your relatives and go for it, get it done.”
“Then we will build a means to store dinner,” said the beaver.
“Great,” said the human. “I can do that dead-simple.”

So they both went home, and they both talked to their relatives about the bet, and everyone chipped in on both sides, and the next week the human walked up to the river where she’d been fishing and found herself up to her waist in water.
“BEAVER!” she yelled out. “You out there? This place is a damn mess!”
“Here,” said the beaver, bobbing to her side like a cork in a creek. “I have finished building.”
The human looked around. Nothing but water, water, water. “Right,” she said. “Here, I got this sack. Check it out: tanned leather taken from deer stitched together with sinew using a bone needle cut with flint and fire-hardened, with resin to caulk it up good. I can carry it by this loop on the top or string it on my back. I can hold all sorts of dinner in here, you wouldn’t believe it.”
“That’s nice,” said the beaver.
“That IS nice,” agreed the human zealously. “Now, whatcha got?”
“I chewed down trees and piled them up and flooded this entire creekbed, then hid branches on the bottom covered in mud,” said the beaver.
The human looked at the beaver.
“What did you do with the branches?”
“I ate them.”
A still closer look, an attempt to see if sarcasm exists outside her species. Big brown eyes looked back at her.  Her own itched gently, as if ants were crawling on them.
“Oh.”
“What’d I win?” asked the beaver.
“Double or nothing,” said the human. “That’s a nice trick, I bet. But look: I bet you can’t make yourself a good solid place to keep safe, eh? I bet you can’t make yourself a home that’ll stand against bear, breeze, and winterburn. I bet I can build a better house.”
“Okay,” said the beaver. “I bet you that.”
The human hurried home fast that night. She had big plans that needed big talking.

So they both talked to their relatives again and they worked hard, hard, hard. And the human came back to the edge of the beaver meadow, and she found that the new edge was a lot farther away than before. She had to wade in up to her neck this time.
“Look at this, fuzzy!” she yelled, brandishing her prize.
“That’s what you brought last time, isn’t it?” asked the beaver.
“Yeah, but guess what’s inside!”
The beaver considered this. “Food?” it inquired, suspiciously.
“No! A HOME! I tanned leather from all sorts of bits and took poles by chopping down saplings and drying them out and I waterproofed it with tar and I can put this down anyplace and if anything rustles it in the night I can grab up my spear and give them a poke in the posterior! How’s that, stumpy? What’d you do?”
The beaver blinked in confusion at the wordtorrent, then shook itself, gathered its thoughts. One. Two. There they were.
“I chewed down trees and piled them up and flooded this entire meadow, then piled up more trees into a mound and burrowed into them for shelter.”
The meadow was silent, but for the quiet, flat grinding of human teeth. The beaver, a rodent by trade, figured this was just normal behavior.
“A third time,” she said at last. “That doesn’t count anyway. You cheated. You used the same trick twice. I’m sure that’s against some rules.”
“One trick works pretty well,” said the beaver. “I think so.”
“Well here’s one last thing to build,” said the human. “Because I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you one bit. How about this: you build a way to relax. To kick back. To have fun. I don’t think you can do this because you can’t even kick with those stubby legs. You’d fall over. Deal?”
“Okay,” said the beaver.
That night the human not only walked home fast but stayed up the whole night ruthlessly canvassing every member of her family, hyperextended family, and practically-part-of-the-family on what precisely might count as fun, frivolous, humorous, or amusing.
In the end, everyone was a in a bad mood, but she damned well had it.

The edge of the forest was a fast-murking swamp, but the human was in such a rush she practically skipped from stump to stump, hopped snapping turtles with a cackle, made rude gestures at passing bears.
“Who is the finest builder in all the world!?” she demanded of the world, who ought to have known. “I! I am! I have done it! I have done it! I have done this! Behold!”
“Okay,” said the beaver. “Didn’t you bring that before?”
The human tore the sack open and held up her prize, arm quivering with excitement. “BEHOLD!”
The beaver sniffed it. “It doesn’t look like food to me,” it said, “but maybe you eat things I don’t.”
“This is not food!” yelled the human. “This is purest entertainment! Behold! The string is connected to the thong for maximum bobble! The shiny object beckons to the eye while the squeaky one harkens to the ear! It smells nice because I rolled it in a berry-bush! It tastes okay too! It is the ultimate in amusement value!”
The end of the ultimate in amusement value squeaked and fell off.
“It’s very nice indeed!” said the beaver. “Good job.”
“And what,” whispered the human, “did YOU come up with for a good time, oh fuzzy, dumpy, nibbly little barkbiter?”
“Umm…” said the beaver, and it scratched itself. “Wellll. Weeellllll. Well.”

“Well WHAT?!”
“I chewed down trees and piled them up and flooded this entire forest.”

“And?”
The beaver’s tiny brow furrowed. “It was fun? I think? I’m not really sure. It’s just what I do, you know?”
The human’s eye twitched.
“That looks funny,” said the beaver. “You know what I do when I feel badly? I chew down-”

The coat was indeed comfortable enough to soothe anyone’s spirits, all agreed on that – wonderfully warm and it kept out wet like nobody’s business. And hey, what could be more comforting than one for everyone?
That said, first they’d have to find them. Hey, daughter of mine, cousin, friend, pal, wife, mother, you know how you’d go about finding these little coat-makers? Got any idea what sort of thing you’d keep an eye out for.
And the human smiled, and the human’s eye twitched again, and it said:
“Well.”
“First you go and find some chewed-down trees…”

And as she moved, without the need for something as unsophisticated as a thought, she let the world trickle through her nerves and into her brain. Scent motion sound taste sight snatched out of the water live and wriggling and helpful.
She heard a splash.
She felt the thrash of flailing limbs.
She smelt blood.

Just a little baby oh what a nice baby.
Go on hold her! Well I think I will why hello there look at you look at the world isn’t that nice!
Oh she’s lovely such a nice quiet baby-
-doesn’t cry at all won’t keep you up at night eh haha
-already learning to walk bless her. Teething yet?
No but soon enough-

Carcharodon carcharias, an unprompted stranger’s wish
a fin in the water, grows to strong from weak
the smile so nice they named it twice
(it means ‘sharpen,’ from the greek)

It’s not proper for a young girl to spend so much time with fishermen-
-well her father’s a fisherman it’s near enough-
-yes she’s much too interested. Prudence! You’ve got to teach her to be-
-can’t fault the dear for trying not like she hasn’t made her mark on the girl. Thrift is a virtue and you see her practice it she’s up all evening cutting up-
-yes the coupons from the day’s papers they’ll wrap fish in it but it’s a wife’s job to save the important bits.
And she’ll be a lovely wife I’m sure. Just so long as she keeps in mind her future and-

Carcharodon carcharias, shaded and anonymous
grey body in a bright blue world
dark from beneath given form with teeth
white against the belly, tightly furled

-Out for blood she was! My Jenny never so much as-
-No words for it! She won’t set foot back in that school until we hear-
-not so much her fault if she’d cried what with what the others said about her but to go and-
No excuse for it! None at all! A lady would have turned up her nose a pig would’ve stooped to words but only a-
-let her stay down by the docks if she’s not fit for humans rot with the salt and brine and keep company with-

Carhcarodon carcharias, cool-headed deadliness
warm heart cold to the seal-pup’s bleat
mouth meant for killing, with flesh ever-filling
but there’s more to life than meat

Well it’s a shock and a shame what she’s done and been a wonder she’s still in town. Knew she was that way since birth well that family who can blame her but-
-It’s no wonder he left. Oh she flaunted it were any of them really his? Or his! Or his! Mark my words she brought it upon-
-And she wouldn’t hear a word of it! As if I were talking to a stone when all I said was common decency and she just gave me that look that horrible awful look-
-like her eyes are baring teeth I swear-
-not so much as a speck of remorse! Doesn’t shrink to meet your eye and in the street she holds her head straight as if she weren’t-

Carcharodon carcharias, honest or over-brisk?
don’t ask the old and infirm!
either way, well who’s to say?
too busy swimming to confirm

Who’s that-
-don’t point don’t ask-
-does she have a family I haven’t seen her in-
-lives on that boat don’t ask again let her cut her coupons in peace there’s no-
-ought to be a law against it homeless kinless vagrants make this town-
-she’s got kids-
-oh and where are they eh where are they all over town in whose houses huh?
-can’t believe any of them found matrimony can’t believe anyone was willing to wed a-a pup of that creature.
-bet she couldn’t name a dad for all the wine in-
-shhh shut up she’ll hear-
-she hears she doesn’t care shut your mouths anyways-
-yeah but what happened to that one girl eh? And Harry last week he said she didn’t care and where’s he gone?
-You’re crazy she’s crazy she’s-

Carcharodon carcharias, older than blood and piss
scarred as a cobblestone wall
takes a nipping and keeps on clipping
they’re only love bites, after all

Don’t throw that! She’s got eyes in the back of her-
-heard the last boy to foul her lines was never seen again you say that now and I swear my friend’s brother’s friend said-
-she’s got special scissors y’know and she never stops sharpening them and she’ll snip off your-
-not natural. Spends more time on salt than shore she’ll end up-
-never talks never shows an interest no friends no business beyond a dock and a catch to sell what kind of person is-

Carcharodon carcharias, mistress of true bliss
same prey, same tricks, same hunt
can sense the world just fine running up your spine
it’s omniscience for the things that count

The boat’s empty.

It’s what?
It’s empty.
I heard it floated back in, what happened?
I don’t know. No body. Fell over, maybe? Too old to get back in.
She never wore a jacket. Maybe that’s it.
Well, good riddance. We won’t see her again.
No. We won’t.
Feels strange, been around since my granny was a little thing.
Now she’s in the locker, and your kids won’t have a devil to scare them anymore.
Neither will the catch. You’re just jealous. Never did like that she could triple your haul on a sick day.
Shut up!
Well, either way she’s fish food and now there’s nothing for them to be scared of but-

Carcharodon carcharias, gentle as a mother’s kiss
can’t even feel the touch
watch the land as it burns while the wide sea turns
they love little, but fear so much
Carcharodon carcharias, Carcharodon carcharias
sharp and quiet and clean
there is no spite when you take your bite
black eyes on a calm shagreen

“I’m hungry.”
The taiga stretched front and behind, back and forth. A great grey ghostly sea of trees and snow and whatever animal life was too stubborn, slow, or tough to leave. It sneered at rainforests; it could swallow deserts whole. To find a larger landscape you had to travel to a shoreline.
There hasn’t been any rain here in six months and twelve days, and it isn’t coming anytime soon.
“I’m hungry.”
The sky was a calm, cool grey that didn’t quite feel ready to be blue. The colour of freshly cooled corpseskin, of a kitten’s eyes, of-
“I’m hungry.”
Couldn’t keep too much of an eye above, though. Not with the snow underfoot taking al-
“I’m hungry.”
Crunch like bones under every st-
“I’m hungry I’m hungryI’mh-”
Lun removed the spoon from the cook-pot and inserted it into Naddabas’s face, and silence returned to the larch and spruce for some six appreciative seconds.

“Was that done cooking? It didn’t taste like it was done cooking…”
Lun returned the spoon to the cook-pot. Once upon a time, it had been a helmet. Once upon a slightly earlier time, it had been a cook-pot. It had not taken the return to its roots gracefully.
“It wasn’t done cooking.”
“You were hungry.”
Naddabas sighed, wriggling in her own guilt, in her little body-sack against Lun’s broad back. It would’ve tickled if Lun had any nerves back there. “True. True. And true a third time. Damn and noise, it almost didn’t hurt the taste. What’s in there again?”
Lun swirled the spoon, half-glancing at the effect produced. “Pine nuts. A bit of bark. Some sort of songbird.”
“Was it the one with the red throat that goes chee-chee?”
“No.”
“Was it the one with the blue throat that goes he-saw-me?”
“No.”
“Was it the one with the yellow back and grey wings and black tummy and bright red eyes that won’t stop following us and never makes a sound?”
“No.”
“Rackets. I was hoping you’d finally got it.”
“It’s smart; hides whenever I pull the sling out. I don’t know where it is.”
“Hope it gets lost. Hope it gets lost into a bear’s belly. That’d serve it right.”
“Mmm. It’s done cooking.”
“You eat first. I can see you’re burning low there. How much did you use to light that fire?”
“Not so much.”
Naddabas’s smile settled into place on her face like a cat in a well-worn cushion. “Liar, liar, liar,” she sang. “I can see your eyes guttering. Go on. Take your meal. And do it fast, before you become even worse company. I can’t chat with a friend who’s gone cold and stiff as a board, can I?”
Lun got to her feet with an annoyed grunt, and she knew that Naddabas knew that meant ‘oh fine.’ Only one in ten things her talky little friend said might be worth the air they used, but that was still a lot of truths at the end of the day.
She reached into the fire with her big rough hands wrapped in their charred leathers, yanked out the two least-crumbled logs, and carefully slid them under her coat. It accepted them with the smooth ease warranted by something that could’ve passed as a large tent, and she leaned back with a sigh. Then she coughed.
“Too far gone?” frowned Naddabas.
Lun’s shut her eyes. One. Two. Three big slow breaths. Then she opened them again and the campsite was just a little bit brighter than before. “No. Just got sapstuck. Trees are gummier than a glue factory.”
“Too hollering right. We should head south.”
Lun sat down again, but smoother. She spat out a little cloud of smoke and watched it wander away. “No.”
“Come on, come on, don’t be stubborn. He was probably lying anyways. We don’t need to come all the way out here, we can go back home! I’m sure they’ve forgotten about me anyways, and I can show you all the best places to eat, maybe introduce you to a boy or two I know with the most amaz-”
“Can’t go back ‘till we find it. You know that.”
“But-“
Lun returned the spoon to Naddabas’s face, removed it, and repeated the action at a practiced pace that just barely allotted time for breathing until it clanged against bare and empty metal.
“I’m sorry,” said Naddabas. “But you know this won’t work. We ran out of potatoes two days ago. We ran out of meat two weeks ago. A little bit farther north and we’ll run out of trees, and then what’ll you do?”
“Burn bracken and lichen,” said Lun.
“It’s not that I don’t want to help – I know all this is my fault – but we really have to think about fixing the problem in a way that doesn’t kill us. Understand? If you drop dead and fall over and squish me out here, we might as well have stayed home.”
“And I’m sure you’ll do us all a favour and explain why you haven’t done just that,” said a third voice.
It was a very polite voice, a very proper voice, a voice that would’ve fit right into the fifth quarter tidily – as a statesman, or perhaps a statesman’s uncle.
It was also altogether wrong. Some syllables seemed to have been produced by rubbing together bristles. Others had been replaced by near-identical copies that fit into place as well as a two-year-old’s jigsaw.
Lun’s eyes flickered. Naddabas tried to stand up, forgot she didn’t have limbs, and fell over.
“Rackets!”
“I’m sorry?”
“She’s ecclesial echoes,” said Lun.
“Lapsed!” hissed Naddabas. “Lapsed! I don’t believe a word of that nois-that NONSENSE anymore, but the language STICKS to you, it reall-”
“Names, please,” said the voice. “Names, homelands, business.”
“Lun. Tioloon, third quarter. Mining.”
“Naddabas, Tioloon, fifth quarter, and I suppose assisting a suicide. And yourself?”
The speaker stepped forward. All forty of him.
“Ujj six-through-forty-six,” he said. “Broodlands. Conquest.”

“Never seen one of you this far north,” said Lun.
“I could say the same,” said Ujj three. He was smiling, Lun thought. Naddabas would know for sure. Lun had never taken any of the social classes, and didn’t know how to read expressions through all those emptied eyes. She kept trying to meet his gaze and failing as the bright little orb switched from one eyesocket to the next. “Tioloon is nearly four thousand miles away. I’ve heard some of the first quarter don’t even believe in snow. How did you plan to survive up here?”
“Potatoes,” said Lun.
“And how well did that work?”
“Pretty good until we ran out of potatoes.”
The Ujj’s eyeball danced from socket to socket, and Lun guessed that meant laughter maybe. She glanced at Naddabas over her shoulder for support, but the serpent was already halfway through her second bowl of actual, honest-to-toneless potato soup without any bark at all, and didn’t seem to be in the mood to notice much of anything.
“As humorous as your optimism is, miner-to-be Lun, I suspect that you didn’t plan for that at all. You don’t eat, do you?”
Lun thought about that. “Sort of.”
“Sort of. You haven’t so much as glanced at the meal since you walked in, and you gave your companion the entire pot of your own…food… and then there’s that little bit of business I saw with the firewood. Miner Lun, would you kindly remove your coat?”
Naddabas looked up sharply and shook her head, but by then Lun was already working her way through the buttons and didn’t notice.
The room glowed red.
“Ah,” said Ujj-three. “That explains how you haven’t frozen to death yet, at any rate. May I touch it?”
Lun shrugged, and the Ujj leant forwards and carefully traced his long, barbed fingers over the seam between flesh and metal. He hissed as they approached the mouth of the furnace that sat where her belly should be, and withdrew them in a languid huff that made her think of a cat.
“Ah! Well now. That’s not a common sight. Tell me, is it fully-functional?”
Lun knew the entire rest of the conversation, but she decided she’d have it anyways. “Yes.”
“And do you have the tools to operate it at full capacity?”
“Most of them. The basics.”
“I can provide you with better. Tell me, miner Lun, are you by any chance smith-qualfied?”
“Can work all the way up to fifth quarter. Specialize in heavy machinery, have a bit of war-crafting training.”
The Ujj’s eye throbbed in its latest roost – a beetled, furrowing pit made for thinking and frowning by Lun’s guess. “Impressive. Why not sixth?”
“She’s hopeless with people,” chimed in Naddabas. “One minute she won’t talk to save your life from boredom, the next she says all sorts of nonsense that-”
“Interesting.” The Ujj wrapped his fingers around his fingers around his wrists. “Smith Lun, then. I have a proposal. You need food – and, I suspect, fuel. We are mere miles from the treeline, and once you pass it you will find nothing to sate the fire in your belly. I have food, and fuel, and an army that is in pressing need for a smith. Do you see my idea?”
Lun held her hand out.
The Ujj’s eye positively sparkled with glee. “Ah. I appreciate the gesture, smith, but you don’t want a handshake. It’s the barbs, you see – I’ve had them compared to fishhooks, but considerably sharper.”
“No shake, no deal. Mind the gloves.”
Ujj-three shook and the deal was set.
Set dead fast. Lun helped him disentangle.

“You idiot. You PHENOMENAL idiot. Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”
“Not really,” said Lun. She was watching the bobbing legs of Ujj-fourteen (thirteen?) in front of her, trying to place where he put his strange long feet in the wandering hollows of the knee-deep slush that infested the sprawling clearing the Ujj had claimed for his barracks. “Tell me.”
“Do you know anything about the Ujj?”
“Not really. Tell me.”
“Do you know what our chances are of getting out of here alive are now?”
“Not really. Tell me.”
“We’re both going to end up deader than daddy’s dear-”
Lun placed a finger to Naddabas’s lipless mouth. “No, really. Tell me.”
Naddabas bit her. Lun let her chew on her finger for a minute, then took it away.
“That tastes AWFUL.”
“You knew that. Still bit it.”
“Go shout yourself. Listen, you can trust an Ujj as far as you can throw them.”
“Pretty far? Can’t be more than a hundred and ten pounds wet.”
“I-you, not YOU-you. They’re – they’re sneaky. And they’re treacherous. You live your whole life as a little brood of a mere few thousand bodies surrounded – literally surrounded – by your elders and knowing that you’re only alive because they don’t feel like crushing you with a fifty-to-one numbers advantage, and you learn to be paranoid, trust me. Then they get kicked out into the world to make a name for themselves, and oh look, it’s full of people that don’t have thousands of bodies, and they do what bullied children do to people smaller than them. And they’ll always know more than you do because one of them knowing something means the whole brood does! We’re surrounded by more than two thousand soldiers all of which are the hands feets and EYES of a single evil little backstabbing barbpawed skinhunting bastard who’s likely out here on a crazy gloryhunt, and if any one of him thinks we’re up to something he’ll all come down on us at once!”
“Really.”
“Yes, yes, REALLY! And he WILL come down on us, because we’ll try to get away once we realize that he’s never letting us walk out of here because why would he let a perfectly good smith trek out into the snow to freeze to death when he could have her right there at home making mechanized death for him!?”
“Hmm.” Lun squinted into the gathering dark. There was a misshapen blob ahead that was supposedly a tent. “Well, we’ll think of something.”
Naddabas’s swearing was only interrupted by sleep some ten minutes later. A full belly always took her that way.
Lun carefully removed the bodysack from her back, stripped off her coat, and made a little nest for the serpent. Then she set about checking her tools. The Ujj had some real nice steel here – good stuff, maybe even blade-quality – but his forge was barely-there. Damaged supplies? Procurement mistake (no, not when the procurement officer was literally part of your own head). Who knew.
She reached down to her belly and unlatched the handle. Red light glowered.
Coal, too. Nice.
Lun fed a measured set of lumps through the hungry steel maw in her torso, felt the heat glaring inside her. It wanted out. It wanted to make things.
So she took it and pointed it and she made it so.

The sixth major battle (Naddabas called it a skirmish at best) of the Taiga War took place the next evening. Scores of Ujj on skis rushing down a sloped gully on one side, and some sort of strange, loping things that were mostly fur and teeth on the other, hurtling out of burrows in the snow. They screamed as they fought, and given the amount of punishment that they took before going down, there was an awful lot of screaming.
“If I wasn’t already damned to cacophony by doubt,” muttered Naddabas from Lun’s shoulder, “this would sure do it.”
Lun nodded, and watched as the battle began to work itself out under their eyes. The Ujj were swinging axes in two hands, great thin sweeping things halfwhere between scythe and timbersaw that moved like silk through air and limbs.
Well, in theory.
“I can’t believe you did that,” said Naddabas. “Giving them decimators – even if they’re knockoffs? Your masters would have your hide tanning in a tub.”
“They’re not.”
“Pardon?”
“Not fakes. Did the best job I could. Not shop-quality, but still.”
Naddabas’s voice dropped into the register she called ‘threatening’ and Lun called ‘funny.’ “You gave. These polite little. Psychopaths. TIOL DECIMATORS?!”
“Near enough as I could. I’d have tossed most of these out. But look – see down there?”
Naddabas craned her neck. “Where?”
Lun pointed. An Ujj (fifty?) had swung his blade, struck true, and was now being spread at increasing velocity over the nearby snow by his angry opponent.
“Ugh.”
“Should’ve cut it in half clean, or near enough. But it sticks in the bone – see the ribcage is still all in one piece? – and it doesn’t kill fast enough. They just get mad and maul you while the blade’s stuck. Close quarters, two hundred pounds of muscle and bone beats one hundred ten pounds of barbs no trouble.”
“Fascinating. If I could still throw up without putting my life at risk, I would.” She glared up at the calm gray sky. “I bet this is that stupid bird’s fault. Do you see it? I haven’t seen it since we got here. It’s never around when something like this happens. Probably hopes we’re dead.”
By now the fight was over. Most of it. Some of the wounded were still thrashing, and the Ujj put them down with long quarrels that seemed more needle than anything.
“Not bad,” said Ujj-three. He bore no decimator at his side, just the finely-serrated sword that composed the brood’s more standard armament. “Better than before at least. Not good, of course. Smith, I am somewhat disappointed.”
“Go and do better yourself then,” snapped Naddabas.
The Ujj spread his arms wide in what was probably meant to be a disarming gesture in a species less pointy. “I am interchangeable, of course, but I am well aware that outside the broodlands this is not a…commonly grasped fact. Protocol dictates a specific body should be kept as liaison for dealing with specific outlanders. It puts them more at ease.”
Naddabas stared at him for an insultingly long time. The Ujj’s body language showed a cheerfully insolent lack of impact.
Lun nodded, and turned from the battlefield. “Right. I can see what the problem is. First things first, I’ll need more supplies. Do you have any better steel?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll make do with extra.”

Naddabas hung from Lun’s left arm as she worked, swinging the tip of her nose perilously close to her friend’s furnace and back again, in and out with the rhythms of her heart.
“Watch it.”
“I can’t help it. I like the warm.”
Lun carefully maneuvered a red-hot bar of metal around her snout. “Go and eat something.”
“No. If I do that I’ll fall asleep, and I need to talk to you. We need to think of a way to get out of here.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
Naddabas’s tongue tickled against the seam between Lun’s flesh and metal. “I’m entirely serious. If you win this fight for him, he’ll never let us go. If you lose it, he’ll kill us if the nasty little fuzzies don’t. And if it turns into a stalemate he might try to get persuasive. I know Ujj persuasive. They can do amazing things with those fingers.” She peered into Lun’s stomach, leaning her farthest yet. “What’re you making, anyways?”
“A way out of here.”
“Oh,” sighed Naddabas. “That’s nice.”
Six minutes later her head was limp, and Lun set up the coat-nest again before Naddabas could slide loose and fall into her furnace.

The seventh battle of the Taiga War took place three days later and twenty miles north, on the very cusp of the greenline, where the tundra began to plant its feet – the only grayer land. Tiny, withered trees strained grumpily under the weight of flying bodies living and dead, and the wind set in halfway through the day, whipping snow into even the most deeply-set eyesockets of the Ujj and clearing the way for the eighth battle of the Taiga War, which arrived quite suddenly.
“Shh,” said Naddabas, her mouth barely moving. “Shh.”
“I am shh,” said Lun quietly. She was sprawled flat on her stomach, and already the snow had half covered her. A few more minutes and they’d be invisible.
“No you aren’t. You’re breathing too much. You’re noisy.”
Lun grunted noncommittally and tried to keep her airways clear; her face had already tried to ice to the snow.
“See, there you go again. So noisy. It’s those big lungs. There’s one of them four paces away – yours, not mine – and he’s almost found you. Two more steps and you’re done.”
Lun breathed out and spoke, got ready to hold the inhalation. “Where.”
“Right. As in, not-left. He’s there in one, two ohracketshe’sfasterthanhe-”
A blurred mass of angry darkness hurtled at them through the snow, then reversed itself in midair with a meaty thud. Lun stood up and brushed herself off, then began patting down her coat.
“What are you DOING?”
“Looking for my hammer,” said Lun.
“Right pocket second from the top – honestly, I can’t be your memory all day and all night. And why should I? You’ve practically turned that thing into its own filing system!”
“I’ve been busy. I forget things.” Lun pulled out the hammer, made her way towards the sound of snarling, and found the thing pulling itself out of a snowdrift with its one working arm. It really was as much teeth as fur – they erupted from its chest, its…face. Even its knuckles were grimed with molars, and the claws that were sliding loose from their sheaths were more canine than talon.
It swung at Lun one-armed. She leaned back, then swung forwards. It went down again.
One more swing.
“I hate it when you do that,” muttered Naddabas.
“Wasn’t going to stop until we did,” said Lun.
“I still hate it.”
“True.” She reached down and disentangled the snapper from the thing’s limp arm, checked the grip on the thing for wear and tear.
“I hate those too.”
“Not nice,” Lun agreed. “Blunted, though. The teeth are hard.”
“What sick bastard thought a noose and a steel-toothed trap needed to be crossbred, then jammed on a heavy-pull quarrel?”
“Ti the mastersmith. A noble wanted a safe bear-hunting tool.”
“Did it work?”
Lun pocketed the snapper and leaned in closer, ruffled through the fur and fangs. “Until he got careless, yes.”
“Should’ve carried a hammer.”
“Most people should.”
Naddabas retreated farther into her bodysack. “Are we escaping now?”
“Shh,” said Lun, straightening up quickly. She felt her friend’s body swell to protest, then immediately deflate as Ujj-three emerged from the swirling whiteness.
“On the run,” he said. “I’ll sit tight and wait for this little piece of vexation to pass us by, then push forwards.” He patted the haft of his crossbow, adding to the maternal air he already cradled it with. “Fine work on the ammunition. I lost several hundred, of course, but that was during the counterattack. I trust you’ll have a better plan for next time?”
Lun tapped at her side, finger tickling at the base of Naddabas’s bodysack. “We will.”
“Good,” said Ujj-three. “Excellent. And as a little extra motivation to add a little extra swing to your hammer, smith…”
Lun waited politely, allowing the sentence’s tail to collapse without grace.
“… I believe that we will find ourselves at the object of your quest within the week.”
Lun stopped tapping.
Ujj-three’s attempt at a smile was earnest. The eye twinkled, it really did. Naddabas could barely look. “Oh yes. How many things are there of value out here after all, at the end of the greenery? We seek the same substance, smith Lun. Why, you are far from the first lone prospector we have found on our little expedition!”
“Lone,” said Naddabas irritably. To Lun, the single other person in the midst of the Ujj.
Lun thought for a minute. Then she thought for four more seconds than that. “Stardrops,” she said at last.
“Precisely,” said Ujj-three. “Precisely! And what good luck that we found each other!”
And he clapped her on the back hard enough to bruise and walked away.
Lun stood very still and tried not to panic. “Naddabas?” she asked.
“Here,” said a very small voice. “Just missed me. Not quite barbed enough, it seems.” A long, slow hiss slid out. “I swear, that bird’s bound to show up again any minute. It might run from trouble, but it’ll want to watch us go down squirming, mark my words. It wants to eat me.”
Lun began to breathe again. “I could kill him.”
“No no no bad idea do whatever your other idea was. They’ll know what happened.”
Lun’s hand was at her pockets again. “Not if I’m fast enough.”
“No! No. You had a plan, and we’ll do that. You DID have a plan, right?”
The smith stared into the white. “I did. Maybe.”
“Then go to it. And that’s not the right pocket.”

One week later, they reached the stardrop crater.
It wasn’t an easy fight, when you saw the terrain. Uphill to the rim, then downhill to the burrows. They had to seal those with rocks in the end just to slow them down, furry limbs heaving and shoving and gouging clawmarks through the stone.
It wouldn’t have happened without the smith, the Ujj assured them. A good job, that. They would’ve had to clamber uphill to the crater’s lip through a hail of splintered sling-stones without the smith. A massacre.
But as the smith was there, they had their armour filled with padded bark where it squeaked, and they had a thick, dark tarry oil spread over their blades where they shone, and they each held a strange shield of beaten metal which shone back everything around it – and here that was snow, whiter than a worm’s heart.
And behind those mirror-polished shields they simply walked uphill. By the time the fight started, half of it was over, without so much as a scuffle.
After that, out came the spades – once decimators, now forged into a less formal, noble shape. Half-shovel, half-rake, half-crowbar, half-halberd. They kept what you fought at arm-and-a-half’s-length while they just tried to figure out what all the bits were supposed to be, and by then they were usually dead. And once there was nothing near you, why, there was nothing for it but to shovel scree, scree, scree. The edge that bit into bone and failed to pierce it still carved through permafrost like an avalanche through furry bodies, which was precisely what it caused.
Lun and Naddabas walked well at the rear this time. They couldn’t help but notice that Ujj-three never left their side.
“Down there,” he said. “Down there is a treasure fit to raise a brood from numeral to alphabetical in a single year. To ransom a king. Oh, smith, you have delivered it to me as surely as if you’d done so on bended knee!”
“You’re welcome,” Lun said. And Naddabas didn’t say anything.
“Let’s take a look, shall we?” And the walk became a jog, then nearly a sprint. There might not have been much to the Ujj, but most of that was limbs. By the time Lun had caught up with her steady pumps, Ujj-three had stopped running.
The stardrop was smaller than she’d expected. A little over half again her height, and twice as long as that. But she knew just looking at it that there was weight there. Something so heavy it fell out of the sky and left a mark this size in fragments was a mass you used mathematics to measure, not scales.
“Beautiful,” murmured Ujj-three. He scraped at its surface with a barbed finger, watched in happy awe as it snapped in half and fell away like a pine needle. “Beautiful. That would have left a mark in granite. Beautiful.” He turned back to Lun. “Have any of Tioloon been privileged to work with stardrop before?”
“Ti the mastersmith,” said lun. “Made a decimator with it.”
“Of course, of course, of course,” the Ujj whispered. “Tell me, how did it play?”
“It took three men to lift for six seconds. They never found it again. The cleft’s still visible in the sixth quarter.”
Ujj-three laughed at that, long and loud and altogether not right. There were pitches, sounds, entire cadences in there that were not proper to hear, however personable the intent behind them. “Oh, ah me,” he said. “Ah! What fools we all become, when such wealth is at our fingertips!” Then he shook his head. “Which is why precaution is necessary. Thank you, smith.”
Lun’s hand was in motion before the last word was finished, but the Ujj was faster. However, Lun’s hand contained Naddabas.
Naddabas was considerably faster.
The noise that came out of the Ujj was the first genuinely real thing she’d ever heard from him, as it vibrated up through her fangs and out her spine. But it had one thing in common with all he’d said: it just wouldn’t stop.
“FUT UP!” she yelled past the mouthful of – flesh, possibly? – she’d embedded her teeth into. “FUT UP!”
Needle-fingers came up to tear her away, but Lun was still moving, with her other hand now, and there was the hammer after all.
One moment the eye shone with fear, the next it was gone, and Lun picked up Naddabas from the ground.
“Urgh.”
“I missed you. Don’t fuss.”
“You almost shook my teeth out.” She peered blearily up the slope, which was beginning to run downhill towards them with certain angry goals in mind. The Ujj brood had spent almost a thousand of himself to reach the skydrop, but the loss of a single one at such a juncture seemed to have made him particularly sore. “Please tell me this was part of your plan.”
Lun shrugged. “Sure.” She’d replaced her hammer and was absently rummaging through her pockets again. “You remember which pocket I kept my polish, oils, and tars in?”
“Fifth from the bottom left side,” said Naddabas. “I don’t think fluids will help.”
“No,” said Lun. “So I used them all up this morning. Had to make room.” She extracted her prize with a grunt. “Found it.”
The big sack was worn, grimy, and seemed to have been made from an unpleasant sort of leather. But Naddabas, after having spent seven years as Lun’s friend and the last two snugged into the small of her back, recognized the stains on it as familiar and comforting.
Coal.
“You’ve been burning hot all this time, haven’t you?” she said.
“Been ramping up,” the smith admitted. “Just needed the kicker.” She began to open the sack, then shook her head and began to yank at her buttons instead. “No time. Get behind the skydrop. Hurry up.”
Naddabas was already on the move, world-still-spinning though it was. The big boulder whirled in and out of either side of her vision, then upside down, and then she was corkscrewing her way underneath it. From the corner of one eye she saw Lun stuffing the sack into her gut with both hands as the frontrunner Ujj began to close with her, then her vision was filled with nothing but dirt and stone.
Then it went white and black and she woke up again, slightly singed. Lun was calling her name.
She worked her way out. It felt like someone had pan-seared her spine.
“There you are,” said Lun. “Why weren’t you behind it?”
“No legs,” said Naddabas. “Can’t move that fast. You almost got me. You almost got me! You almost SHRIEKING GOT M-”
Lun picked her up and hugged her.
“Fine,” said Naddabas. “Fine. Why didn’t you explain this part to me?”
“You hate metalworking minutia.”
Naddabas looked around the crater.
Six hundred Ujj lay flattened, crumpled to the ground by the blastwave.
“Minutia. Right. Tell me what happened.”
“Skydrops heat up fast and harden up when they heat. They get hot when they fall, it’s what makes them so heavy. Ti the mastersmith performed tests in-”
“Tell me what happened in a brief, useful, and exciting way.”
Lun shrugged as she began to walk upslope, jiggling Naddabas’s crisped tailtip in a painful way. “The fuzzies were metal caps on their teeth. Skydrop caps. Kept them sharp. The Ujj saw it and wanted to take their source. I saw it and knew the source was going to be well-used. Look at the slopes. Most of that scree is full of skydrop flakes.”
“So when you popped your doors-“
“Don’t call it that,” said Lun. She was
“Sorry, sorry, sorry… so when you popped your doors-”
“PLEASE don’t-”
“-you spontaneously superheated the entire surface of the slope they were running down.”
“Forged,” said Lun. Naddabas heard very little satisfaction in it. They were walking through the Ujj corpses now; each body reddened on the surface, seared to white and yellow fat on the underside. Wisps of steam were gently billowing from wounds surrounded by quietly re-cooled stone and cooling flesh.
“That was human skin you put in your furnace, you know,” said Naddabas.
“I know,” said Lun.
“They would’ve used you to hold coal and me for a swordhilt if you hadn’t-“
“I know.”
Naddabas sighed, a very little sound in a very large space. “Thank you again. And don’t feel so badly. Remember, this whole trip is my fault.”
“No,” said Lun. “And it was necessary. No avoiding it.”
“Well, I think that all could’ve been easier if we’d just gone home still. But at least we’ve gotten one good oh NO!” groaned Naddabas.
Lun turned around.
There, an all-too-visible blot in the distance now, perched on the heaviest of Ujj-three’s brows, crouched a large bird with a yellow back and grey wings and black tummy and bright red eyes that seemed to glare right through you. Dangling in its beak was the tiny shape of Ujj’s eye. The fires seemed to have spared its twinkle.
“Too good to be true,” muttered Naddabas. “Rackets. Let’s go home.”

It’s a white day for Peter, his favourite kind. The only thing that comes close are the grey days, the days when the sun and the sky and the world all fade into one long wheeze of a smudge that smears away all difference between noon and night. They don’t come outside on days like that; they stay indoors and complain to themselves in strange deep voices, muttering words he doesn’t know, snarling insults at who knows who. They leave the outdoors to him.
White days are like that, but there’s more snow falling down from up high. More to work with, to build with. White days are even better.
On white days, Peter starts shoveling early, and stops late. Real late.

Peter’s shovel is a composite, another word he didn’t use to know. A wooden handle, a plastic scoop, and a metal blade at the tip. It’s angled just so, and it will scoop the snow just like that – there, close to the cold hard ice that’s hiding the dirt away ‘till spring – and that’s just fine. It doesn’t bend, not even when he lifts up a real heavy shovelful that makes his knees wobble and his eyes pucker in their sockets. It stays straight and true and it does what it has to do, and Peter does what he has to do. And that’s why they stay safe.

The ramparts are a real walk now. He’s made a ramp – he tried stairs once and they just turned into a ramp anyways – and it’s a nice shallow one but even so, even so. He stops and takes a breath too often, too much, and it costs valuable time. These days are short right now, and they won’t let him keep going after dark. They’re afraid of what might happen, and they’ll stop him cold.
Peter finishes his last breath (for this trip, anyways), and he takes himself and his shovel up to the top battlement. It’s as high as the world can get out here, and he looks down, down, down the hill over the dead quiet and muffled air. He’s wearing a thick hat and it’s sort of like earmuffs, but he knows even without them he’d be hard pressed to hear a shout two feet away, or dynamite at twenty. An atom bomb at fifty paces would be a whisper. Snowfall has a voice all its own. Subtle. Soft. And completely enveloping.
He dumps the shoveful, and barely hears the soft whud as it lumps itself. Skilful shaping takes over – mittenwork. He’s had practice.
There. A battlement. His thirty-fifth.

Peter’s mittens are modern mittens. They are somewhere between plastic and cloth, filled with strange white fluff that looks like teddy-bear guts. They insulate and protect and wear really thin at one side where they start to leak and make it look like you’ve got a little polar bear shedding in there. Peter knows that polar bears don’t shed, but it looks like it all the same. The snow creeps in through that crack as the fluff leaks out and it gets his leftmost littlemost finger cold, but he’s used to it. If it gets real bad he’ll just curl his hands into fists. He knows how to stay warm. You need to know that.

The trip down’s easier for Peter. He half-scrambles, half-slides down the ramp. A little red clot slipping through a blue-white body, fleshless and nerveless and bloodless, but nearly alive. It keeps growing, building, and dividing. Walls go up, barricades slip in, divisions are made.
Here is a smooth round bowl of a chamber. It is filled with iceballs, diamond-hard and deadly; every fifth has a specially pointy stone at its core, for insurance. The armoury. For weapons, not armour. His snowsuit is all the armour he needs and he’d need to take it off to store it. That would be a terrible idea.
Here is a little cave, dug into the base of the thick rear wall. The bedroom. He can curl himself up in here, under snow with snow at his back, and turn himself into a little ball of warm. That’ll keep him okay. He’s never slept through the night yet, but if he has to, it’ll happen here.
Here is a bulge in the thick rear wall; from the other side, it’s a recess. The emergency exit. This snowball is held in place with only the barest touch of surface packing, and he hasn’t trickled any water on it. It’s a weak link in his defence, but whatever’s breaking in will be bigger than him. It won’t be able to push through easily or quickly, and by the time it’s inside the walls he’ll be outside them and heading for the hills. That hill – there, that one – it’s going to be his emergency hideout. There’s a big pine tree with low-hanging branches, and he can dive through the drifts and hide in a space as warm and dry as any tent. He just has to figure out how to hide his footprints…
Here is the pantry. It’s got icicles. You learn to eat icicles out here. It’s not food but it fills you up and you can’t go wandering. They’ll find you fast. Better to stay hungry out here than to go in there.
And THERE is the wall, as he passes through the front gate,
(it’s too low for them to come through quickly, and a stomp up above in the right spot will crumble it on their heads)
thick and iced. He made it by packing an empty garbage can with snow and upending it more than sixty times. It was a struggle, but it was worth it. Nothing can get through here. Nothing will get through here.
The front of the fortress is barren. The ground here has been trampled and scraped and shovelled until the dirt is visible here and there, and it’s all as slippery as only almost-ice can be. A clump of bushy grass is exposed, startlingly naked and probably unhappy about it. Peter walked past it, bent his knees, straightened his back, and added another square foot to the barren stretch.
He wonders if he should spread a little snow on the bare grass but by the time it occurs to him he’s halfway back and too tired to change course.
Besides, he has to watch his footing on this ground. He made it that way on purpose; it’ll slow them down. They’ll slip and fall and that’s when the iceballs come into play.

Peter hasn’t had to throw an iceball yet. He doesn’t think it’ll stop them. Not if they’re determined. That’s what the walls are for. The iceballs (and maybe the stoneballs, if things come down to it) are for discouragement. Go away. Go away and leave me alone. I’m too much trouble. I won’t come out and you can’t make me. Go away and fight with each other. I’m too much trouble.

Peter raises his head above the walls, holds his shovel to the fresh battlement, and freezes like a stone caught glacier-riding without a permit.
Light. Light in the darkness, guttering from the black hulk of a house down the hill.
Oh, this is bad. How had the long night snuck in so close so quick? And here he is, head above the ramparts, still holding his shovel like an idiot, exposed and highlighted with his stupid red snowcoat and his stupid black snowpants and his stupid red hat sticking out against the white-blue snow
(turned purple with evening – really, how HAD he missed that? Not the same colour at all)
like a bullseye.
Slowly, carefully, he moves by trembles and starts sliding downward. Out of sight. Down low. Maybe it’s just chance. Maybe they’ve mistaken him for a coyote or a deer or something else lost that shouldn’t be here. Maybe they
Something moves, shoulders past strained springs and through a door made out of creaks and groans.
And then it calls.
Peter feels the hair on the back of his neck rise up. Now, that didn’t mean anything. It’s a full moon, but their eyes are bad. Maybe they can’t see him up here. Maybe they were just trying to spook him. Maybe maybe maybe can’t build a fortress with maybes you build it with snow and you stay safe and
The voice calls again.
Twice. That’s worse. And they haven’t moved. They’re sure he’s here. He can play mum, he knows they hated the cold. Just a few more minutes.
“PETER.”
Oh damnit. It’s got the edge in its voice. Must have been a bad day.
“NOW.”
Three times. He’ll have a worse one if it has to say it a fourth.
He holds his shovel, looks at the ramparts. Half-finished at best. Days of work to get them done yet. Hours and hours. He has three seconds.
So again, as it every evening, the fortress falls without so much as a shot fired.

Peter looks back as he approaches the light on the porch. The long night’s flowing in, giving the snow hello and how-do-you-dos. The world’s wrapping itself up to be fresh for tomorrow, white and black planning the morning grey. If he squints his eyes to snow-slits, there’s a rim. Is that his battlements? Unless it’s his flag tower. Maybe it’s his walls. His walls are big now. He spent all day on them, all last day, all the day before that.
From here it’s like they’re not even there at all.