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In a desert, under a mountain, above a floor thickened and reinforced so much that it wasn’t a floor, between a set of clamps designed to grasp with fickle tenderness the steel sides of aircraft carriers at drydock, lived a woman who weighed ten thousand tons. Some days she dozed, some days she daydreamed, sometimes she simply hummed to herself to make the time go by slow and sweet, like honey flowing on toast. Now and then she would shrug, or stretch her back a little, and one, two, three, dozens of the hundreds of strong, multilayered wires that tethered her to the far-away walls of her cubed room would tremble and grumble under the strain, but they had been designed to hold aloft the mightiest of telemetry towers and were reluctant to part with her even under such trying circumstances.
It was often dull, in the room, but there were ways around such things. The ten-thousand-ton-woman had tried many of them over the years before simply settling on not being bored any more, which had served her well. Her favourite had been conversation, at first with herself, and then with the woman who was ten thousand feet tall.
“Hello,” she said today again, out of friendship and habit.
Besides her, the ten-thousand-foot-woman blinked her eyes and sighed out a deep breath.
“It’s lovely today, as it is most days, isn’t it?” said the ten-thousand-ton-woman. “How are you, yourself, and your place in things? Do you have any itches? I cannot scratch them, but I can call for someone who can. Are you troubled and do you want to talk about it? Have you seen any strange things today, or later, or yesterday? How was your breakfast? Did you have any or did you skip it?”
The woman who weighed ten thousand tons looked around furtively, then bent closer to the woman who was ten thousand feet tall and whispered “how’s the weather up there?”
The air that would give the ten-thousand-foot-tall-woman the voice to whisper answers to her questions was yet twenty minutes away, but it paused in her throat for a minute as she snorted and chuckled, and her friend smiled to herself. She had told that joke the day they brought her in, wheeling in that endless gurney with her carefully strapped to it, and she had enjoyed it so much that she carefully repeated it to her every day without fail, as regular as lunchtime or even moreso, since sometimes they didn’t get lunch when there was a presidential inspection.
They’d met lots of presidents. Some of them were very important people, and it often puzzled the ten-thousand-ton-woman why they were interested in the two of them. She had been gingerly prodded and nudged with science for over a decade now, her nails, hairs, breath, teeth, tongue, gut, and toes all carefully explored down from atoms to quarks, and was quite sure that there was nothing of interest there. If her friend the ten-thousand-foot-woman remained somewhat unmapped in comparison, well, that was an issue of scale and practicality. They had still examined the bulk of her, using over ten miles of tiny tiny mirror tubes and miniature cameras on the tips of excessive ropes of wiring.
The door to the room opened, and a dramatic pause happened.
The ten-thousand-ton-woman frowned. It was her least pleasant part of the day, and so she suspected it went with her friend.
The dramatic pause ended, and a man walked into the room. He had striking eyebrows, not much white hair, and a dreadfully smooth face that was pinched in the most unpleasant expressions, like a lion’s.
“Good morning,” lied the ten-thousand-ton-woman. Beside her, the ten-thousand-foot-tall-woman twitched her left little finger in answer.
The man who was ten thousand years old looked at her with disdain.
“It is not a good morning,” he said, crossly. “I had no dodo egg for breakfast, as I enjoyed for so long. I was awakened not by the nose-flutes of the eunuchs who were my slaves as befitted my viziership, but by a rude alarm. I am forced to rely upon digital clocks rather than those sand-powered devices I personally designed, and there are no proper clothes anymore. And I still have not been given the host’s-gift of mammoth flesh.”
“Do tell,” said the ten-thousand-ton-woman. She didn’t want him to, but he would do so whatever she said, and complain the same. Manners cost nothing, as her mother had told her so many times back when she weighed one hundred and thirty-three pounds.
Those had been long-ago days, though, and she scarcely remembered them, as most people forgot infancy. The taste of waffles (home-made) with maple syrup. A birthday party (seventh? Seventeenth?). Sinking through the soil to bedrock twenty feet below in a single sharp moment and sitting there in a daze until the government came and removed her with very expensive and powerful machinery, most of which she’d never learned the names for, or forgotten.
Simpler times. She wasn’t sure if she’d like them anymore, or maybe she would.
The ten-thousand-year-old-man had stopped talking about himself, crossly. She realized that he had asked her a question, and wasn’t sure what to do about that. It had never happened before. “Agnostic, verging on Catholic, or the other way around,” she said, and hoped it was a good reply.
“Hnnf,” said the ten-thousand-year-old-man, crossly, and she knew that it wasn’t. “Such a waste. Such a waste. Of course you didn’t get it right. I made all those up, you know.”
“Really?” she said. She knew, she knew.
“Of course I did,” he snapped, crossly. “I made them all up after nobody listened to me the first time. I got it all right back then, I did. I knew the secrets of Zifweedoism, and you know what they did? They laughed at me, laughed at me. So I made up everything else – scientology, Christian Scientism, Mormonism, and Judaism, and Buddhism, and Jainism, and Tolkienism, and I lied about it. And so it’s all your fault for believing something that I made up, you see?” he finished, with a spit of spite.
“Yes,” she said. This was usually when he was finished.
“You’ll see,” he muttered, crossly. “You will.” And that was how he usually finished, and he did.
He left by the door without so much as waving good-bye to the ten-thousand-foot-woman, and she grew annoyed on her friend’s behalf all over again before she let her imagined fresh breezes and warm sun comfort her. It didn’t matter what that man (the ten-thousand-year-old one) thought or said or did anyways. She suspected that it never had.
The door opened and let in a bunch of very serious men in serious suits with serious eyewear who secured the area seriously. Behind them walked another president.
“Hello,” said the ten-thousand-ton-woman, politely. The ten-thousand-foot-woman twitched a finger in greetings.
“Hello, citizen,” said the president. And then he asked a lot of questions of some of the scientists with him. They didn’t look like scientists to her; they had no long white coats, most of them had no glasses, and they didn’t wear gloves. They wore suits and ties and used complicated little phones nearly as sophisticated as those that teenagers owned.
Then they were done, and they left. Lunch would come soon, and the ten-thousand-ton-woman worried about it anxiously. What if it were the mushroom soup, rather than the chicken-fried-steak? She was looking forward to the chicken-fried-steak so much, for reasons that escaped her. Maybe it was very tasty? Or maybe she was sick of mushrooms. Yes, maybe that was it. A pity. She’d always enjoyed mushrooms so very much.
Oh well. Having something new to shy away from was very nearly the same as having something new to look forward to. And that was a good thing, wasn’t it? She was sure it was.
Ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding-dong. The air was full of sirens and hoopla and ruckus. She had never heard such a natter and fuss, and she suspected the ten-thousand-foot-tall-woman hadn’t either, but she was unable to ask her opinion of it because right then the door opened and in came the ten-thousand-year-old-man. He was strutting. Crossly, of course.
“Hello again,” said the ten-thousand-ton-woman, as politely as she could manage, which wasn’t.
“Hello yourself,” smirked the ten-thousand-year-old-man, crossly. “I have fixed things right up. I have picked the pocket of the president.”
“Oh?” said the ten-thousand-ton-woman.
“I did such things in my youth,” he continued, crossly. “Why, I stole Napoleon’s purse in Africa, and sold it to Sitting Bull in London. It’s all true, every word of it. And I was so good at it that I did it while I was sick, and that was true too. Vomit and bile everywhere, pus and rot creeping out of my eyelids and toe-tips.”
“Wonderful,” said the ten-thousand-ton-woman. She wondered if she was rolling her eyes. She was trying to roll her eyes, but she was out of practice for it, and the ten-thousand-year-old-man was not paying enough attention to her to tell her if she was doing it properly, even if he bothered to answer her.
“I picked the pocket and I took the codes and I have launched the Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles that are kept in this place, and kept filled with nuclear explosives,” said the ten-thousand-year-old-man. “And because of this, I am sure now that the world will end, or at least mostly, which is good enough for me.”
The ten-thousand-ton-woman blinked in slow, total shock. That was the first time she’d ever heard him spoken something without sounding cross.
“Why, you ask?” asked the ten-thousand-year-old-man. “Because of all of it, but mostly the mammoths. We have too many people and not enough mammoths. This will correct the matter, and maybe I can finally get my host’s-gift of mammoth flesh.” He licked his lips. They were neither pale and thin nor fat and rubbery, but they were as unappealing as rotted bone regardless. “I did so love mammoth flesh. I came up with that custom, you know. And all the others.”
The ten-thousand-ton-woman looked at the ceiling (which was flashing and wailing with alarms), and then over to the ten-thousand-foot-woman, whose beautiful eyes were looking back at her. She had raised exactly one eyebrow, the right one, the one that meant she was asking ‘well?’
“I suppose we should do something,” said the ten-thousand-ton-woman, ignoring the ten-thousand-year-old-man as he boasted and bragged and wouldn’t shut up about things that didn’t matter because he didn’t matter.
The ten-thousand-foot-woman nodded, twice. And then she stood up.
It was complicated. Joints acted as joints shouldn’t. Tiny restraints parted under the pressures of leverage, the kind that could move the world. Things folded, then refolded with unimaginable majesty and power. And though the cube’s ceiling was very high, the ten-thousand-foot-tall woman had pierced it with her skull long before her head had even come close to reaching her waist.
As she straightened up, she reached down with one hand whose fingers were beyond imagining, and she grasped the ten-thousand-ton-woman, and she began to push. She didn’t have the strength to lift, or even to shove, but she did have the leverage, and she was pushing her forwards at a slow, slow speed that would be enough to launch her for miles.
And even then, as the strangeness was becoming nearly overwhelming, she heard the familiar, right-on-time rumble of her friend in the morning.
“Yes,” whispered her voice, low and windy, as the long, long, long arms began to move with the power and speed of continental drift; unstoppable yet beautiful. “I am happy in all ways. I do not itch, and thank you for asking of my troubles. I saw nothing stranger than the two of us, again, and I had no breakfast because I was not hungry. And it was toast.”
She sighed as the ten-thousand-ton-woman slipped through her fingers and began her slow, inexorable slide. “I do not like toast.”
And with that the ten-thousand-ton-woman went rolling away though the halls, crashing through floors and knocking over entire floors, ceilings, and pieces of multi-billion-dollar superstructure. The missile launch tubes were merely the third thing she tumbled through, and by the time she’d left them they would’ve been hard put to launch a chickadee. She travelled on, on, on, and by the time she’d stopped rolling she was in the outside again, in the desert, by a mountain. There was a fresh breeze and a warm sun.
“This is a nice day,” she decided, speaking to the ten-thousand-foot-woman.
Her friend nodded to her as she slooowly stepped out of the hole in the ground that had been punched by her head. Or she thought she did. It was hard to see her, so high up in the clouds.
But of course she’d agreed. It was a nice day, after all.

Scal the sorry, who often wasn’t but said she was, she sat down near the water’s edge on the shore and stared into it and frumped.
“I’m getting oldsome,” she grumbled as she looked at herself. “Look at that, all wrinkles and grey hairs and who knows what now. I’m sorry to say it, but I’ve been neglectful for sure and lazy at that; I should’ve been wed years ago before all this came along. I’d best find me a husband, and soonish rather than latish, or I’ll be sorrier for sure! Maybe when I’m married I can put all that behind me.”
So Scal the sorry went and looked all over the place. She splashed out into the surf and was knocked over by waves all over the place, dragged up and down the beach like a piece of old driftwood.
“I’m sorry for making so much noise,” she yelled out into the sea, “but is there anyone out there who would like to marry me?”
A shellfish by her foot coughed. A gull yawked.
“Fine then,” she snapped. “Sticks and stones to you all, see if I care.” And she flounced inland, where she tripped over roots and twigs in the forests and waded through boggy swamps and almost fell into a bear’s den face-first.
“I’m sorry for sounding so annoyed,” she called out through the woods, “but is there anyone out here who would like to marry me?”
A deer ran away in fright. The trees sighed in the wind.
“Take water and snort it sideways,” she swore. “Burn to cinders and snuff yourselves.” And she stomped away very noisily and angrily until the air grew cold and clean around her and the sky was at eye level, with stone underfoot and all the world spread down around her ankles underneath the big blue sky.
“Is there not anyone in all of this place,” she called out, “who will marry me, right now, right here!?”
“I will!” called back a voice from far, far below. “I will do that!”
“One moment,” said Scal the sorry, and she took a very long moment to climb herself all the way down the mountain again so she could talk to the voice properly.
It was waiting for her, and belonged to a man. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but did you agree to marry me just last moment?”
“Indeed I did,” said the man. “I am a great hunter and a great fisherman and a great eater. I can make things and I can break things, and I have so many muscles that I had to give some away to make space for the others. I will marry you, because I need something new to become great at.”
“This sounds like a good thing,” said Scal the sorry. “We’re married, then, and I need not be sorry any longer!”
“Wonderful!” said the man. And so they were.

“Married life is stranger than I thought it’d be,” Scal said some time later. “There is more snoring than I’d imagined.”
“I am indeed the greatest of snorers,” agreed the man. “And my elbows the sharpest and largest in all the places I know, as well as the most energetic.”
Scal felt this wasn’t ideal, but she was not sorry anymore, and so she said nothing but grumbles.

“Married life is odder than I’d imagined it to be,” Scal said to herself and the world at large a few days onward. “There is a great deal of yelling and strangeness.”
“I yell most fervently when I am ired,” confirmed the man, “and I grow ired when drunk with a speed that any other man I have met envies. Why, last night I out-growled a bear so grizzled his grizzles had grizzlies, and nearly kicked down four trees!”
Scal had rather liked those trees, but she felt she shouldn’t be sorry about things that way, and so she contented herself with grousing.

“Married life is peculiar in all ways,” Scal said loudly and aggressively and with a good deal of annoyance. “Today I went out to watch my icebergs float down the coast – bump-bump-bump as they go – and I found my husband peeing on one, and I would very much like to hear why he would do that sort of thing.”
“I am possessed of the mightiest urine of all beings in this wide world of ours,” boasted the man, “in both flow and strength of stream. I proved I could cut an iceberg in two, drown a whale, and dye whole waves with my abilities! Truly, I am indeed a superior individual!”
Scal liked the icebergs, as you recall. Scal liked watching them float by. Scal did not like any of those things her husband had said one bit – not even half a bit – and Scal might not be sorry about THAT but she was damned sorry she’d married him entirely and thoroughly at that very moment.
“I’m a sorry fool again to be sure,” Scal the sorry whispered to herself as she plotted, “but I’ve faced worse troubles and trounced them. I just need to get rid of him and it’ll all be fine, it’ll be fine for sure.”

“Husband dearest wonderfulest kindest gentlest man,” simpered Scal the sorry, “perhaps you could go a-fishing for us, and catch us some fish?”
“I am the finest fisherman I have ever known, and I have known them all,” said the man. “This is thus a thing that I can and will do, you wait here and see.”
So the man jumped in his boat and rowed away at great speed and enthusiasm. And Scal the sorry smiled happily to herself and began to rub and whisper at her left hand, because that hand was magic, and she became a little sea-lion, and followed after the boat of the man.
“Ahhh, here is a fine place to fish!” yelled the man aloud, and he threw down the oars and began to fish like crazy, yanking up fish after fish after fish after fish, big and small, fierce and quiet.
Scal the sorry snickered to herself underneath his boat, and she lightly nipped the left tip of her flipper. And as she nipped, the boat sprung a leak that sprung a crack that spurted water like a lovesick streambed.
“What’s this now!” said the man, as his ankles got wet and the horizon shrunk down. “But I know already, for I am a boatsman without peer! I can fix this with but spit and a snap of my fingers!” And he spat violently into the hole and snapped it shut with a moment’s work. “Better than new!” he laughed, and under the boat Scal the sorry cursed to herself and began to tickle her left flipper.
The seas roiled, the seas rumbled, and up from the depths charged a huge shark, an old shark, a shark that could eat small whales. Its eyes were deadest black and its teeth were whiter than snow and it shot for the man’s boat like an arrow to its target only much larger and more frightening and also a shark.
“Hrrm!” said the man, squinting ferociously. “Now THAT’S a fish!” And he pulled out his fishing spear and threw it three times. The first cut out each of the shark’s eyes, and the third its heart. He lashed it to the boat with one hand, and chortled mightily at his luck.
The underside of his boat was home to many muffled words, and the furious scratching of Scal the sorry’s left flipper with her right. Before moments had passed the sky turned dark, then green, then red and orange and purple. Thunder screeched and lightning howled, the wind made noises like a raccoon in heat courting a mockingbird. Water began to fall from the sky fit to double the ocean’s depth.
“Ah, a breeze to sail home by!” cheered the man. He rowed until the oars broke in half, then rowed with the stubs of the handles, and touched foot to shore just as the last bit of his boat broke into splinters apart underneath him and sank down to the bottom of the ocean forever.
“Wife!” he called. “I have brought you your fish for our dinner, and a great fish indeed it is, as befits my greatness at fishing, which is one of the many ways in which I am greatest at a thing!”
“Wonderful, husband,” said Scal the sorry. “But we need berries now, or dinner will be duller than dirt in a deadfall. Go a-berry-picking and fetch us some from over the hills, and we will eat happily!”
“I can pick berries in ways that put bears to shame and bugs to flight,” said the man. “This is yet another thing I can do, and I will return here afterwards to make you see that this is true.”
So the man hurled himself into a great long bounding run with mighty strides and outthrust chest. And Scal the sorry frowned to herself, licked her left hand three times counterclockwise, and was a little bright jay-bird that flitted from tree to tree in his wake all the way to the far sides of the hills where the berry bushes were.
“The picking shall begin now at this time and place,” decreed the man, and he began to fill his pack with them at a most alarming pace. Up in the tree above him, the little jay-bird preened its left wing and watched, eyes twinkling. In mere instants a whole family of bears came lumbering out of the woods – mother and cubs – and came charging for him, teeth-and-breath-first.
“Such fun!” whooped the man, and he whooped with the bears for a full hour with kicks and punches and bear-hugs. He stopped when they were all too tired to wrestle, shook himself off, and began to fill his clothes with berries twice as fast as before, laughing to himself.
Away in a bush behind him the little jay-bird ruffled the feathers of its left wing and watched, eyes hardening. Right away a swarm of bees rose up from the berry-bushes, stingers a-bristle, swarm a-flutter, and they fell on the man with the fierceness of animals a million times their size.
“Ah, a honeying-time!” observed the man with good cheer and great enthusiasm. He started a fire quick as anything, and in the clouds of the dense and billowing smoke he evaded the bees and swatted them, pat-pat-pat. A minute’s work and he was done with them, a minute more and he was at their hive, a minute after and he had their honeycomb well in hand as he was busily stuffing his cheeks with berries, twist as fast as before, when he had done so twice as fast.
From under a leaf the little jay-bird snapped at its left wing and watched, eyes sharp. The trees sparked, the brush alit, and in no time at all the forest was a raging wildfire with hungrier teeth than a wolf and a fiercer heart than a wolverine with a cavity.
“How much faster can such a thing be?” asked the man of himself to himself. “Why, as fast as anything – except for me!” He laughed and ran and sprang and leapt and made it home with only the very tips of the tufts of his hair singed, smouldering like little coals.
“Wife!” he bellowed. “I have retrieved the berries you wished to have as part of our dinner, and they are the finest and also the most numerous of all berries, as a result of my impressive berry-picking, which is one of the most impressive skills of my many impressive skills, all of which are equally impressive!”
“Good,” said Scal the sorry. “Wonderful. Excellent.” And then a thought struck her. “But husband-dearest, I am afraid that after dinner you will need to pee, and we have no place suitable for you to do so. Dig a pit, so that we’ll be prepared.”
“I shall do that incredibly well,” vowed the man.
“Make sure it’s deep,” said Scal the sorry.
“This will be so exactly,” promised the man.
“And pile up all the dirt neatly, so we can fill it in properly,” suggested Scal the sorry.
“Perfectly!” swore the man. And in less than no time at all he’d dug a massive pit, with all the dirt he’d torn through stacked up neatly next to it in a careful pile.
“Are you through?” asked Scal the sorry.
“This pit can hold anything in all the wide world there is,” bragged the man.
“Anything at all?” asked Scal the sorry.
“Anything at all,” replied the man.
“Nothing won’t fit in it?”
“Nothing itself COULD fit in it,” proclaimed the man. “Nothing, anything, AND everything can fit in this pit, even myself!”
“Are you sure of this, husband dearest kindest?” asked Scal the sorry.
“Utterly!” said the man. “Look, I’ll show you!” And he leapt down into the pit and there it fit him perfectly. “See?” he said.
“I see, dearest wonderfulest kindest gentlest,” said Scal the sorry. “And I’m sorry about this, but it is absolutely necessary.” And she gave the dirt-pile a shove, and it filled up the hole perfectly, leaving just the man’s head sticking out.
“Oh what is this now?” shouted the man. “What is this now, eh? What is going on?”
“I am sorry to say that you are very good at many things, but a very poor husband,” said Scal the sorry. “Marriage may not be for me after all. But you may stay here, and become the best in all the world at being planted.” And she walked away.
“A fine idea!” said the man, although no one was listening. “A fine idea! I’ll beat the other plants to it, just you see! A fine idea! I’ll beat them hollow at their own game. A fine idea!”

And this is why we have poison ivy.

Marcus’s room was a complicated place, up there on the third floor above all the others, on its own. It was wood-walled and filled with creaks, dark-seamed and shadowed. Someone had tried to carpet the floor once, but had given up and left it at a small, threadbare rug that had once been an oval. The walls were crammed with old furniture from desks to chests-of-drawers, all wooden, all missing at least one leg, and mostly empty. A selected few held Marcus’s clothing, which he regularly forgot. And on the north wall of the room was Marcus’s bed, where he spent his nights.
Those were the unimportant parts of Marcus’s room, and they were all that mattered during the daytime.
At night, Marcus laid underneath his covers, underneath the groaning, whispering, mumbling beams of the house’s skull, and he looked east. Sometimes he looked west instead, it made no real difference. And as he waited, he would close his eyes and count with his pulse until he heard the sound of marching feet overlay the noises of his heartbeat.
The armies of the east would always be the first to arrive, eager to the field atop their golden crows. Their shining helms contained no holes for the eyes they did not have, and their long-bladed triple-forked spears were the most beautiful weapons in the world, as slender as the legs of ballerinas. Short sharp flutes played as they flowed into his room, brought in on a warm breeze from the silvery-orange dawnlands at their backs, beyond the sill of the window on Marcus’s east wall.
The armies of the west would set foot to floorboard exactly three beats behind those of the east, without exception or presumption and with a great creaking shudder. Each man was an iceberg of strange metals that seemed part-copper, part-iron, and all-rusted with greys, reds, and greens of fuzzy debris. Their helms were open and their faces were indistinct with paints and tattoos, smeared into muddiness apart from their beautiful brown eyes. The soft-sweet vapors they used as weapons were the most wonderful thing anyone had ever smelled, and they played around their feet like puppies in the dim purple sigh of twilight that beamed from the place beyond their western window-frame.

It took no less than ten minutes for each army to fully deploy and assemble itself upon the field of battle, that being Marcus’s floor. Each eastern crow-of-gold stood taller at the shoulder than an elephant, each western metalberger two men high and six men wide, but they squeezed in with room to spare – near a football-field’s-length lay between the standards of the opposing forces, a comfortable enough space for Marcus’s bed to fit into as the two generals approached one another for talks. Each was a giant: the western general twenty feet tall, the easterner ten but mounted upon a silver raven who could swallow a lesser man whole. Their bodyguards remained a discreet ten paces behind them – little enough to cover in moments, should the need arise, but great enough so as to avoid the appearance of eavesdropping, which was so much more shameful than the actual thing.
“Duchess, of East,” rumbled the western general, with a slight bob of the helmet.
“Lady, of West,” whispered the eastern general, waving an arm in a manner that might simulate a minimalist bow.
“Adjudicator, of South,” they addressed Marcus, with a formal salute each – fists against chests, heads inclined just so, offhand fingers intertwined at precisely the right moment.
Marcus nodded.
The generals faced one another again, and the mood relaxed into the familiarity of terrible and great decisions that haunted Marcus’s room on all nights of the week, month, and year.
“I will begin with a strategic weakening of my center,” announced the eastern general, “so as to draw out your own and flank it with my cavalry. This will cut you to ribbons.”
“And I,” proclaimed the western general, “have fissured my forces into three legions. As the hardened center is taken in your grasp, mine own flanks shall march towards it. This will crush you into pieces.”
“My strategic reserve will approach from your rear at this point,” replied the eastern general. “They will assail your personal guard and your person both, disrupting your orders, sowing confusion in the ranks, and wreaking havoc on the morale of your troops.”
“Which shall touch off the signal to the traitor I have hidden in your command,” said the western general. “His hand will end the life of your most trusted marshal, and strife shall grip your command and heart equally.”
Nods were exchanged. “Adjudicator?” they inquired.
Marcus nodded, and waved a hand.
“Well enough,” said the general of the west.
“Properly prepared,” agreed the general of the east.
And so they turned and strode away. Ten long, firm, decisive steps, each made with the firmness and surety of an earthquake.
On the eleventh, they stopped.
The twelfth through twenty-second were more hesitant at first, then more hurried, then slowly more and more reluctant until both striders were returned to the bed of the adjudicator, looking unsure and awkward.
Marcus frowned.
“There is… one more thing,” admitted the western general.
“A small matter,” said the eastern general. “Speak first.”
“No, it is nothing,” said the western general. “You may proceed.”
Silence sprouted in Marcus’s room, flowered up against the sky, blossomed all the way up to the soaring vaulted heights of the beams that held fast against the world outside.
“We would like to negotiate,” said the generals, at the same time and entirely off-rhythm.
Marcus wasn’t sure what his expression was, but it was a sight to behold. The negotiations had been finished, hadn’t they?
“Not…precisely the manner of negotiations we propose,” said the eastern general.
“A settlement, to be specific,” said the western general.
Marcus wasn’t sure about a negotiated surrender but if that was what they wanted to do tonight he guessed that was –
“No. A peace settlement.”
“Mutually….respectful, perhaps,” suggested the eastern general.
“Quite possibly,” said the western general, a hint of cautious optimism shining through.
“Yes…” said the eastern general, one thin, gilded hand stroking the chin of her chinless helm. “With nonpartisan language and historically informed decisions.”
“Exactly,” agreed the western general. “And balanced concessions and compromises!”
“Cunning! Perhaps lay the foundation for some subtle guidance of the general culture-at-large of our peoples to support a less belligerent and aggressive foreign policy?”
“Devious indeed and worth consideration. Might this newfound surplus of labor lead itself to public-works projects and a new focus on ensuring the health and well-being of both our peoples as opposed to a nebulously-unreal future promised to us on the crushing of an abstracted and hated foe?”
“Yes!” said the eastern general.
They hugged.
Marcus picked at his blanket and tried to decide what he should be looking at. He failed, and settled for nothing.
“There will need to be documentation of this, of course,” managed the eastern general eventually, disentangling both herself and her raven-of-silver’s skull from the arms of her opponent.
“Of course,” replied the western general. “A treaty must be signed, and to be signed it must be drafted.”
“And for maximum neutrality and to avoid the sabotage of bloodthirsty patriots, it would help if it were ratified and approved by a respected neutral third party, besides ourselves.”
They looked at Marcus. He wasn’t sure if they had ever looked at him this way before.
“Adjudicator?” they asked.
Marcus bunched himself up small and stared out the north window, the one he didn’t look at. There was a summer moon rising in May, and a breeze blowing that brought the sounds of spring peepers.
He looked back. The generals were still there, as solid as rocks. Clearly this was important.
Marcus nodded, and took the great, heavy bronze pen of the western general in hand as it was offered. It slid across the soft eastern parchment as smooth as a honeyed salmon, and his signature fit the sheet like a glove.
“Done,” said the eastern general, rolling up her half of the parchment.
“And sealed,” agreed the western general, stamping her copy shut with the tip of her right thumb.
They shook hands over Marcus’s bed, and said their farewells as the battlefield grew darker. They turned to Marcus himself, and they spoke words, but he was already slipping out through the north window on the breeze, his attention wavering. The generals grew dark and heavy, as they always did, as they always were, and Marcus’s eyelids slid shut on those two beaming, faceless smiles.

“Mom,” asked Marcus the next morning, down in the simple, solid kitchen of their home, down on the first floor where everything was new and shiny, “how do you know when you’re a grownup?”
“Oh honey,” said Linda, as she aimlessly chased a stray dollop of jam with her flaxseed toast, “you don’t have to worry about THAT for a while yet.”
“Like, in your head.”
Linda secured the reluctant red goop at last. Her chewing was without mercy, but it paused for a moment. “Is this about girls?” she asked, succeeding at keeping suspicion from her voice but failing at crumbs.
“No. Wait yes. Wait again.”
Marcus pondered. Linda waited, and finished swallowing.
“Not really?” he managed, tentatively.
“Well,” said Linda, thinking her sentences through as she picked crumbs from her teeth, “I can answer some of your questions for you, I think. And for the rest of them, I think we can make a trip to the library. I think I remembered a few books that are helpful for people around your age.”

She was a bit puzzled when Marcus attempted to look up War and Peace, but went along with it.
The copy of Politics for Dummies was more helpful in the long run, though.

My name is Joe, and I’m an addict.
Damn, hard to say that.
Now, thing to understand about how I got this way, boys and girls, is that I’m a risk-taker. No, not just in my off hours – I’m a stockbroker. Risk-taking is my job, and I’m damned good at it. I gamble to make my morning wages, and I’m no vegas blowout, fuck no. I’m a guaranteed shoe-in, a money-flipping machine, the man to call when you want two fortunes for one at guaranteed odds within six months or your money back.
I love that job.
I love that job.
I really, really, truly do love that job.
But….sometimes a man needs to relax, you know? Even if his preferred recreation isn’t so relaxing.
Can’t calm down, you know. Nah, too small, too slow. Me, I need to calm UP. I change braintracks, I don’t change the speed, if you can get what I’m saying.
So I do drugs. Lots of different drugs. LSD, a bit of cocaine, PCBs, meth, whatever. I switch around a lot. Keeps it from getting stale. No pot though. Too mild.
Not an addict though. This was all strictly recreational, like I said. Business is business and fun is fun and I got my adrenaline highs just fine at work without sticking a needle in my eyeball or anything else, you know?
Then one day I end up with an actual weekend. An actual, honest-to-god, full two-days-plus-Friday-night weekend. For the first time in eight years.
What the FUCK am I supposed to do with that? I’ll be bouncing off the goddamned walls come breakfast Saturday. I needed a new thing, a new trick.
So I checked in with my dealer – never you mind who – and he tells me he’s got a new thing. Hands me this little tiny round pill.
What the fuck’s this shit, I ask.
Omnipotence, he says. Go on. Give it a try. Everyone wants it.
So I pay him, I take it home, I have a glass of water and put that pill in my mouth bottoms up gulp down it goes and woah woah woah.
WOAH.

I dropped the jar, by the way. First time I’d done that since I was a teenager. Took me ages to pick up all the pills afterwards.

Now, I’d seen some things. But nothing like I’d seen with that shit. I mean first things first, everything was pitch fucking black. BAM. Like someone’d hit the ‘off’ switch on my eyeballs. So I wanted light and then FWOOM, there it was. Holy hell.
At this point I decided this was maybe some sort of lucid hallucination, so I decided to see what I could get away with making, with screwing around. But first I’d need a place to put all the stuff, so I was ‘hell, let’s make the world.’
And bam, I made a world. Did the whole thing. Got the ground and the sea and the fishes and the birds and the skies and I made myself a sweet place to crash and then I just had a five-minute break before I got SERIOUS and bam, I woke up. Checked the clock, it’d been seven minutes.
Seven. Minutes. That’d felt like seven DAYS.
Well, of course I had to get more. There was a whole weekend left over, and I hadn’t done jack yet. So I drove back to my dealer and he was laughing his ass off. Knew you’d come back, he said. Everyone wants this.
Fucker. Bought a big jar, just to show him. Wouldn’t see me around again ‘till the weekend was over.
By Sunday morning that jar was down to the dregs and I was higher than an astronaut with six joints. And I’d been doing some serious work. Big-time serious. This was better than Lego’d been when I was six.
I made some people, and I told them to listen to me. No half-assed mom/dad wait-twenty-years-and-maybe-they’ll-be-okay crap, just made ‘em flat. BOOM. BAM. Of course, they still didn’t listen to me, but whatever. I kicked them out of my place and took a break for munchies.
I came back in an hour and shit, someone’d filled up the planet with douchebags. Worse than a cockroach infestation; stomp one, ninety million to go. Had to fumigate the whole place – went with water, yeah, douchebags drown like everyone else. Bit of overkill in retrospect, yeah, but what’re you gonna do?
But then everyone started asking me to do shit. Everyone. Eve-ry-one. And the ones that weren’t were making up stupid shit with names like Bool and Mersomargarine and telling their imaginary friends how lame I was.
After that…well… the weekend got longer than I’d thought it would be at first. A lot longer. Felt like years, and years, and years, and years. I think I shot bugs at people and turned things into snakes, turned the skies into a nosebleed and threw bears at people. Kicked the shit out of a guy and broke his leg for… some reason? I made a bet with a guy that I could ruin somebody’s whole life and he’d think it was okay or something, the details are a bit fuzzy. I can’t even remember if I liked the guy or not. Won the bet though; I think for a followup I made a fish eat the same poor schmuck too – unless it was a whale – or maybe that was someone else. Was it a shark maybe? Whatever it was, there should’ve been more of those and the seaside in general. Should’ve spent more time on the beaches; felt like I spent half my time wandering around some desert in the assend of nowhere, though I think I only did that because I was pissed off at the people that wouldn’t SHUT UP at me and wanted to show them who was boss. I think.
God those guys were useless. I gave them some basic ‘here are the rules of this house’ shit on rocks. Rocks. And you know what they do, no joke, right away? Like, immediately? They break them. I put them on ROCKS for fuck’s sake! And you know why they broke them? They got in a big fight over whether or not they should all just wander off and worship a cow statue made of everyone’s melted-down pocket-watches and wedding rings.
Damn. I mean, just damn.
So….right.
Right. There I was, it was Sunday morning, and I had something like six shots of Omnipotence left. And I was sick of the shit, but I couldn’t stop taking it. It felt too good. I mean, sure I had to deal with petty little assholes whenever I was high, but at least I was in charge of them for once – beat work, I can say that much for it.
Now, I’d been a good boy ‘till then. No experimentation. No double-dosing. One pill at a time, dealer’s orders, nice and safe. But you know what? That was because Omnipotence alone felt crazy enough. And that had been yesterday. After all I’d done and seen and been it was starting to feel…boring.
So I took all six at once. What the hell, only die once, right?

Well, I woke up with a head that felt like there was a little supernova embedded in its base and a hardon that could moor the RMS Queen Elizabeth. And too many really, really bad memories.
I couldn’t tell if I was one or three people, I’d fucked off and left my worldful of crazy little people to their own devices, and I’d gotten some girl pregnant on her honeymoon. Also I think I’d waited for the kid to grow up, then nailed him to a stick. Unless I’d nailed myself to a stick. Maybe I’d done it first just to show him it was okay, you do that with your kids, right?
Right?

Right.
So I’m clean now. I think. I had to give it up. Had to give it all up. I can’t take more drugs because they aren’t Omnipotence, and I can’t take more Omnipotence because fucking hell that got messed up towards the end. And the middle. And the beginning. So no more. Not one more. Not even a little bit. Even if I had one more, which I don’t.
Yeah, this would sound a lot more convincing if I weren’t talking to the bathroom mirror. Hell, just one more won’t hurt. It was stuck under the couch, right? That makes it floor food, right? That doesn’t count. You have to eat stuff you drop on the floor anyways, finders keepers finders weepers or whatever.
Wonder what the kid got up to. I sort of wigged out on him there.
Bottoms up!

His name was Sam, but everyone always called him Simon, always Simon. He asked them why, sometimes.
Oh Simon, Simon, Simple Simon, they’d say. You lovable goof. It’s who you are, Sam or no Sam, and that’s what we’ll call you.
I don’t get it, he’d said.
Exactly, they’d said. And then they’d laughed, but they did that a lot at a lot of things Sam didn’t understand, so he just shrugged and went on going on.
Oh Simple Simon, you chuckleworthy silly-billy, his math teacher had said in grade school, as he divided a subtraction problem and multiplied when he should’ve equalled.
Oh Simple Simon, you cheeky goofus, his father murmured when he came back from the pet store with a wild raccoon.
Oh Simple Simon, you hilarious dunderhead, his grade ten crush said when he gave her a single chocolate bar in a glass of water and a bar of crushed and congealed daffodils.
Sam persevered, and sometimes he wondered what all the fuss was about, but on the whole he thought life was okay. He did his things and other people did theirs and so long as that was the way it was it all made sense, was all fine.

Simple Simon, said his father one day, take the trash out.
Sam was thunderstuck. Trash? Trash wasn’t his job. That wasn’t the thing he did.
Oh Simple Simon, you ignorant ignoramus, it is now, said his father. My back hurts. Take the trash out.
Sam relaxed. Taking the trash out was now his thing. All was well. He’d just do it one step at a time.
Garbage.
Recycling.
Compost.
Easily done. The garbage goes in the garbage bin, the compost goes in the home compost bin, and the recycling goes in the home compost bin.
Done.
Oh Simple Simon, you loopy idiot, said his father when he reported back. Now what’s going to happen to that recycling? Sometimes I wonder if the doctor dropped you on your head when you born over and over again.
Okay, said Sam.

Three days later, all the recycling had been composted down to a fine grey paste.
What do I do with this? asked Sam of his friends and family.
Oh Simple Simon, you dribbling dolt, just throw it away, said his father and all his friends.
Sam threw it away, but because it was compost he threw it away on top of other things, to help them grow. He threw it on the house and he threw it on his father’s car and he spread the leftover bits on his computer.
Overnight, Sam woke up and heard hissing noises. His computer was puffing up like a balloon, and steam was wheezing from its sides. He pondered this, shrugged, went back to sleep, and woke up to find that its RAM had doubled, it had a quintuple-linked processor that ran on small lasers rather than electricity, and was cooled with liquid nitrogen.
Sam walked outside and examined the house. It was 20% larger, 43.8% more attractive, and the windows smelled like peppermint.
Sam walked around to the garage and examined his father’s car. It was half the size it had been in the past, with the same amount of storage space and eight times the gas mileage, with a simple and highly effective electric motor sharing space under the hood.
Oh Simple Simon, you magnificent clod, said his father, shaking his head at what had become of their stuff. Wait’ll the neighbours see this. What did you do again? What exactly did you compost? What did you do to that garbage?
Dunno, said Sam.
Well, just keep doing what you’re doing, then, said his father.
And so that was why everyone watched Sam carefully around garbage day, to make sure they could get it done right.
Sam confronted the three bins, the three bags, and he searched his memory, and he searched deep inside himself, and he made his move.
Garbage.
Recycling.
Compost.
The garbage goes in the recycling bin, the compost goes in the home compost bin, and the recycling goes in the recycling bin.
Done.

One week later, Sam opened up his garbage bin and found that it was already full of garbage.
Uh-oh, said Sam. He measured it: approximately 45% of last week’s garbage had been carefully recycled and returned to him. Uh-oh.
Got any more of that ‘compost’ there, Simple Simon? asked his father at that particularly inopportune moment.
I think there was some sort of mistake, said Sam.
Oh Simple Simon, you outright moron, said his father. This is not good.
And it wasn’t. Every single neighbour had been watching Sam, and every neighbour had told their neighbour, who’d told their neighbour, who’d told their neighbour, until everyone had run out of neighbours. 45% of the entire city’s garbage from last week had been recycled and reused.
Oh Simple Simon, you endless chump, everyone said to him. Why did you lead us so grossly astray?
Lead who what? asked Sam.
Never mind, they said. One more chance. And do it right this time!

So next week there Sam was in the garage. At least four million people were watching him from the stream his dad was running off his laptop. But he didn’t know about that so it was all okay.
He stood before the three bins, and he contemplated them.
Garbage.
Recycling.
Compost.
The garbage goes in…the garbage bin. The recycling goes in… the garbage bin. And the compost goes in… the garbage bin.
Done.

That was the week the city’s dump was an overflowing cesspit. Disease filled the air, rats ran in the streets in broad daylight, shoulder-to-shoulder. The skies were grey with the fog and mist of decaying stench, and plastic water bottles bobbed in the bay. The mayor was trapped in his office, the dead were piled in the graveyard hurly-burly and willy-nilly, the police were battling the firefighters and the media was blacked, browned, and blued out.
Oh Simple Simon, you endless chump, his father chastised him. Now we are trapped in our home with hordes of angry folks beating down our door. You have truly gone and done it this time.
Done WHAT, asked Sam, who was getting a little annoyed with all of this.
Oh Simple Simon, complained the mob of neighbours beating on their door and bearing garbage-torches that had come to take them away and toss them upon the tire fires that had consumed the south end of the city, you pitiful chucklefuck. We put our trust in you, all our hopes in you, and all for naught. You have let us all down.
Fine, whatever, said Sam. Do you want me to take the garbage out or what?
I don’t particularly care anymore, said his father. Go away and leave me here with my alcohol to dull my miserable last minutes.
Okay, said Sam. And he went to the garage and he did that, as the doors rattled and shook under angry suburban fists.
I’d best get set to go away then, said Sam. So he took his father’s car keys and he examined his father’s car. He’d never driven before, but he knew the principles of the thing.
Ignition.
Brake.
Gas.
Easily done.

Oh Simple Simon, you bevelled shit-for-brains, pestered the mob of neighbours just outside the door. What on earth is that noise?
They never did find out where Sam went off to, though they found bits of peeled rubber for a few hundred miles. Most of the witnesses weren’t in much shape to say.
Still, I’m sure he’s out there, somewhere. He won’t cause much trouble, as long as he does his things and other people do theirs and it all makes sense. It’ll all be fine.

New things happen, like it or not. And you’d better like it, because everything being the same forever gets boring, no matter how nice it was to begin with.
But if you don’t like it, the complaining is fun anyways. And that’s what Scal the sorry was doing as she wandered the hills and the trees by the sea, shivering under her oldest, tatteredest clothes. “I need a home,” she grumbled, “I need a good fine house with walls and a roof and maybe even a floor to be fancy on, and there I can keep myself comfortable. Not out here, in all this… weather. I’m sorry to say it, but this weather irks me sore. Where will I put my house?” And she carried on griping this way for three days as she wandered, driving all the creatures she passed sore irked with her.
Then Scal the sorry found a tree. And that’s what caused all this nonsense.
It was a good tree. Tall, firm-limbed, with a trunk both stout and tall. Its leaves were finest green, its bark truly brown, its hue lustrous and ruddy.
“That is the finest tree in all this forest,” said Scal the sorry, “and I’m sorry to say so of all you other trees, but that’s the truth. Why, if I were a bird and had feathers and beaks and all those things, I’d be happy as a clam to take up a perch in that particular tree and roost all I pleased, with twigs and with feathers.”
Then Scal the sorry stopped and thought for a bit, and laughed too much.
After she was finished with that, she took off her left glove and whispered to her palm and picked away at one of the fingernails she kept her magic in with her teeth, then spat out a bit of a word and a bit of a cough, wound tight together, and she set to making herself a house.
Scal the sorry’s house was round and squat and the walls were sticks. Its roof was a thousand feathers from old birds she’d eaten all year, and for a floor she used their down. It was cozy and smelly and on the whole she considered it pretty fine.
“No wonder the birds like this so,” she said, as she laid herself down for sleep. “A fine view, a good view, even if I must remember not to roll over in the night.” So she tucked herself in and snored.
No more than halfway through the night Scal the sorry was awoken loud and clear by swaying and moaning, a roar and a ruckus. Her home was bobbing in the high branches of the tree like a cork in a sea, and the wind was whining through all the cracks in her walls.
“Shush!” she yelled at the wind and the world. “Shush! I’m sleeping up here! I’m sorry that I’ve put myself and my home up in your place, but it’s MY place now and it’s going NOWHERE!”
The wind laughed and roiled at her and didn’t die down ‘till well past dawn, leaving Scal the sorry red-eyed with sleepless ire.
“Bothersome blight and dreadful vex,” she snarled as she drank the strongest teas she could mix (bear-paw and old vinegary apple). “It was one night. I will sleep twice as long tonight, and make back the difference.”
But the winds came back that night, and the night after, and so on and on and on all week, every week, endlessly. It was driving Scal the sorry ‘round the bend and straight off through the mountains, it was, and she was so grumpy that she could boil water with a glare.
“A fine home,” she muttered to herself as she sat, awake, and listened to the midnight gusts yet again. “I am sorry to say so, but I believe I just might have to do something about it.” And so she gathered those bits of her brains that hadn’t been shaken and spooked to pieces by the wind, and she thought all day.
That evening, Scal the sorry put on an old, old tattered rag she had, hunched herself up small and crooked, quivering and shaking, and she sat out in the doorway of her house, legs dangling over the edge and her face hidden away by the hood of her battered clothing. She waited past sunset, and just as she heard the wind come howling down from the west she began to sob and sniffle.
“Oh! Oh! Oh no! Why have you come again, wind, why have you come to hurt your mother so, why have you done this? Did I do a harm to you when you were small, poor wind? I am sorry for this; a mother’s sins are thoughtless ones, oh poor little wind! Take pity!”
The west wind was very confused by this. “Father in the sea never told me about my mother,” it said. “But you look very small to be MY mother. I am big enough to stretch all the way from here to far away over the sea, where there’s nothing but water for forever and ever and further. I can pick up more water than a thousand buckets with one hand, and I can shove the clouds away with my littlest fingers and toes. I don’t think I could do those things if such a little thing as you were my mother.”
“Maybe you’re big and strong now,” said Scal the sorry, with infinite patience and love, “but you’re still my little son, my little boy. And I’m sorry to say that if you do not believe me, I shall prove that I am stronger than you ever will be. A test then, son! Why don’t we see which of us can throw this stone the farthest?” And she pointed to a stone on the ground, far below.
“So small a thing?” asked the west wind. “Mother-maybe, you are a madwoman. I can knock over tall trees and send waves that eat shores. This is nothing, you watch!”
Well the west wind heaved and the west wind hauled, the west wind blew up such a flurry that it nearly pulled down the trees, but the west wind couldn’t shove that stubborn little stone. Finally it gave up, spent and exhausted, and Scal the sorry tsk-tsked in her most motherly voice.
“Well,” she said, “you’ve done your best, my boy, my little boy, but I’m sorry that I must see that you’ve lost.”
“Lost, but you’ve not won, mother-maybe,” retorted the west wind. “That stone cannot be moved at all!”
“I am your mother, little wind,” she said, “and I am stronger than you. Now you just watch.” And Scal the sorry plucked up the little rock that she’d sunk into the dirt that morning, where half its bulk lay buried beneath the surface. And she did it with one hand.
“Now listen to your mother, who is stronger than you,” she told the wind, “and leave my house alone! Never come back here, and tell all your brothers and sisters that I said so!”
The west wind left in shame, and Scal the sorry slept the sleep of the exhausted for a week and five days. She slept through breakfasts, suppers, and lunches, and finally woke when she felt a tip-tip-drip-drop on the back of her neck. Water was leaking through the feathered roof of her home, trickling down the walls, making a mess in her bedding and ruining her food stores.
“A million mice mangled in a meadow!” she swore. “Ah well, rain must come, rain must go. A day indoors patching leaks hurts nobody, though I’m sorry to admit it.” So she cooped herself up and mended the roof and walls, and brewed her latest, strongest yet tea (spiky thorns and the angriest stones she could find) to keep off the chill. She went to bed with the strum-drum-drum of raindrops in her ears, lulled to sleep.
The next day her neck was cold and wet again, splish-splash-splosh. More leaks had sprung up, and still the rain fell and fell and fell.
“Two in a row?” she nagged to herself. “Bothersome!” And she brewed more tea and patched more leaks and did this for all the week before she shook her fist at the sky and saw that the clouds weren’t moving as they should be. They were stuck fast, fat and soggy, held in place by a breezeless air.
“I find myself sorry that I have no wind,” said Scal the sorry, “but there must be another way around this! Eh, having a house is such a trouble – I will find a way, yes I will.”
So she tried covering her home in resin from the tree. The rain pounded and poured and in three days it washed it all away.
“Rabbit legs snipped by snares!” she swore, and tried covering her home with dozens of interwoven branches. Pound pound pour, in two days the rain had soaked all the leaves through and filled her home with their washed-out little scraps.
“Bear-carrion in a nest of eagles!” she shrieked, and chewed on her left hand’s fingernails, spitting and hissing. She put her magic hand’s power into her house, so strong and fierce that it chased all the water away, right down to the spit out of her mouth and the tea she was drinking. It took one day for her to stop coughing and wheezing long enough to undo her mistake.
“Dirty riptides,” she sulked, washing out her parched throat with (damned) rainwater. “Those clouds need scorching. Maybe I can ask for help.” So Scal the sorry put on her least-damp clothing and set off into the rain, looking and searching for help outside the endless rainfall that surrounded her cloud-clotted home.
“I’m sorry,” she asked of a passing deer, “but do you know any animals that might help with getting rid of all my rain?”
“No,” said the deer, twitching its nose. “Water on the ground we drink. Water in the sky is not for us.” And it bounded away.
Scal the sorry said harsh words, and tried again.
“I’m sorry,” she asked a spry young sapling, “but do you know any plants that might help with getting rid of all my rain, which is ruining my home?”
“No,” said the sapling, rustling cheerily. “But isn’t it most fine? A good drink puts green in your stem and bite in your bark! I’ll be in the canopy in no time at all, barely a century, just you wait!”
Scal the sorry said cruel words, kicked the tree’s trunk, and, limping, tried again.
“I’m sorry,” she asked the nearest mountain, “but do you know any other powerful big stones that might help with getting rid of all my rain, which is ruining my home and driving me to distraction and difficulties?”
“No,” said the mountain. “But I know who can. It’s the sun. Go and ask the sun to help. She can dry things right up, but she’s proud and prickly.”
Scal the sorry said thankful, kind words, praised the mountain, and went back home to her (leaking) house to think.
“I’d best get on asking him,” she said, and clambered to the top of the tree, right where the branches were so small that she had to turn herself into a little squirrel to stay aloft. “Hey sun!” she called. “Hey sun! Hey sun! I am sorry to speak to you so, but it’s your job to keep this sort of place warm and unsoggy, and you are not doing it!”
The sun slid around in her seat and stared down at Scal the sorry. She was indeed proud; the way she looked down her nose at her left no doubt. “What is all this racket,” she yawned. “I am busy, as I always am, with important things. Why is there a little mouse in a tree shouting at me? Go hide in a burrow or something like animals do, little tree-mouse. You are boring.”
“Boring?” squawked Scal the sorry. “I am Scal the sorry, and you are lazy and ugly and fat and downright unpleasant in every which way, all of which I know because your husband told me so! You couldn’t dry my home if it was the only place in all the world, you good-for-nothing soggy-ended weasel-faced bark-skinned moosenose!”
The sun flared up like grease on a campfire at that, and some of the words she and Scal said to each other next didn’t bear speaking once, let alone repeating. When all they had to say and do was said and done, the sun was shining bright as midsummer – in October, no less – the clouds were wisps of errant water frying in a searing sky, and Scal the sorry’s home was as dry and warm as the back of a buzzard’s wings in a thermal.
“This is fine and good,” she sighed to herself as she lay down for the night in a bed that didn’t smell one bit of wet leaves. “This is how a house should be, I guess, eh? This is better.” And she slept in for one week in a row.
When she woke up, her mouth was parched, her hair felt like brittle twigs, and the leaves of her tree had been crisped to a bitter brown. The sun still glared at her, bright and early in the morning, fixed at high noon.
“What a grudge-holding stick-in-the-mud,” grumped Scal the sorry, rehydrating herself on a tea made from burnt ashes and hurt feelings. “I am sorry that I said those things to her, but that was ages ago, and they needed to be said before she would do her job properly. Now she is just as bad, but the other way around! I’ll show her!”
So Scal the sorry walked outdoors – where she winced as her skin burned in the sunshine – and chewed her left-hand fingernails again. And as she chewed, so she changed – into a little beetle, a little burrowing beetle with a dainty black coat and a pair of digging legs and jaws. And that little beetle went straight to work on the ground, digging down deep and far. Topsoil, dirt, more dirt, stone, more stone, and then through and down into the dark places under the world, where the shadows had their roots and lived out their shadowy other lives. Her own shadow waved happily to her, stretched-out and huge in its proper home.
Scal the sorry waved back. It was polite.
Finding what she was looking for took time, a long time – there was so much dark and dim, so many shades without light – but finally she spotted it: the shadow of the sun, hiding away in a corner of the always-midnight sky, where nobody needed or spotted it.
“Hello there,” said Scal the sorry. “Feeling lonely?”
“Nobody needs a sun where the shadows live,” said the shadow of the sun, miserably. “And she never casts me – everyone else gets to go up and see the world above, but I’m down here forever.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” said Scal the sorry. “I am sorry, but you are talking nonsense. I’ve got a way out right here, you look at this. A tunnel all the way up top! Come on in! Stay at my house!”
The shadow of the sun was a little worried by all this, but in the end it allowed itself to be persuaded to be crammed up the beetle-tunnel face-first, squish squish squash. They got to near the surface when it halted fast.
“I am sorry to ask,” said Scal the sorry, who was lying, “but what is the problem?”
“I’m stuck,” whimpered the shadow of the sun. “It’s too small!”
Scal the sorry sighed rudely and loudly. “Shadow,” she said, “I could use your hand now I could. Because I don’t have any this moment.”
And Scal the sorry’s shadow, who was waiting down at the far-end of the beetle-burrow and listening, reached up, up, up to the world above, and then down, down, down into the tunnel with its thin fingers. It grasped Scal the sorry and the shadow of the sun both, and it yanked them free – pop! – into the bright-burning daylight, where it took refuge once again under Scal the sorry’s foot.
“Shadow,” she said, “I owe you a powerful debt. And speaking of such, look up there little shadow of the sun! Look up at my house! Set yourself above that tree and breathe deep and happy, under the sun!”
The shadow of the sun ran all the way up the tree and sprung into the sky with the eagerness of a fledgling eagle, and glorious, peaceful, cool darkness spread itself across Scal the sorry’s home, swallowing all those scorching sunrays whole before the last words had died from her lips.
“Sweet, cool, refreshing night-time,” she hummed happily as she turned in for bed that evening – although maybe it was morning, it was hard to tell with the shadow of the sun above her. “This is more like what a house should be.” And she drifted off, with only the creeeeak-eeeek of her parched tree to whine her to sleep.
She woke up some time later with her teeth chattering. She bundled on every bit of clothing she had, she put on her winter mittens, she tore down half her roof for use as bedding – nothing worked, she remained frozen, numbed, chilled to the bone-and-marrow in the pitch-black dark.
“Blast this endless shadeshine into blisters and splinters!” she spat. “Hey up there, old sun’s-shadow – can you take a break, give me a moment to warm up? You can take turns with the sun, eh?”
But the sun’s shadow was too happy to hear her, too busy looking at all the world around and below it to pay attention. Scal the sorry yelled at it for three days before she gave up and nursed her voice back to herself with some tea made from frozen leaves and desultory fumes.
“A warm I’ll need, but not a sunwarm,” she grumbled. “Best to go asking. I’ve got friends, I do, and I’ll see them right.” So she pulled out her left hand – just for a moment, for it was perishing-cold – and chewed the right nails for just the right amount of time in the right way. Scal the sorry was a crow then, and she flew around for hours and minutes and days asking and talking.
“Grow more fur,” said the animals.
“Or thicker bark,” recommended the trees.
“What is ‘cold’?” asked the mountains.
“Splosh-swissh,” said the ocean.
Scal the sorry grumbled herself nearly hoarse. “I am sorry to bother you with my anger,” she complained to a passing raven, “but I have asked every birch-battered thing and creature that floats, hops, jumps, skips, and stands in this little part of the world that is mine and not one little thing knows where one little me could find something to keep herself warm. Are neighbours always this troublesome when your house is out of sorts?”
“If it’s warm you need,” the raven advanced, clicking his beak, “then you should ask a favour of my great grandfather. He found something powerful warm a little time ago, and brought it back in his beak from a faraway man.”
“Then I’ll pay him a visit,” said Scal the sorry, and she did, and she found that the great raven had warmth to spare, warmth from this thing he’d found.
“It’s fire,” he said. “It’s so hot it burns, burns things right up. Now be right careful with it, eh? Be cautious.”
“I am sorry,” said Scal the sorry, picking up a bit of fire in her foot, “but I can only be so careful when my house is so cold.”
“Ow,” she added on the way home. “Ouch. Ow ouch ow ouch ow ow ouch ouch ouch.”
The fire was indeed hot, as her tender feet told her, but it looked sure fine right in the middle of her floor. And as Scal found out so quick, hot tea tasted so much better than cold.
“Warm,” she said, “is nice. And this is nice, and this is a proper home now. It was a lot of trouble, but I’m not sorry at all now, not one bit.” And she closed her eyes, and sighed, and slipped away to sleepland.
And as Scal the sorry lay napping, she slept so safe and so happy that she didn’t hear her tree complaining at her, poor thing. It had been scorched to thirst, and then it had been darkened to starvation, and now it was too warm, too warm. Dry as a torch and dead all inside, poor thing, it would have asked for an apology if Scal the sorry had been awake to give it. But she wasn’t, so it couldn’t, and the best it could do was bear its death with dignity, poor thing. Trees are used to such things, and used to silent suffering.
Because of this, the moment Scal woke up was when her house hit the ground, and a good thing too – the embers were sliding up her legs and trying to make nests in her armpits.
“Ow!” she repeated, yelping. “Ow!” She stamped and spun and rolled and ran and tumbled down hills and it took three whole days for her to put herself out, by jumping into the sea.
By then her house was just a big firepit, and long-burned-out when she made her way back to it.
“A pity,” she sighed. “And I am very sorry that this didn’t work. But on the whole, I think that maybe houses are too much trouble for me.”
So she spent her days down by the seashore once more, and forgot about most of her problems.
Though she did remember the trick with the tea. That was a good one.

In a place not so far away but a very long time ago, in a home by the sea, there lived three people: two old and tall, one young and small. A mother, a father, and a daughter. They got along, day by day, and perhaps sometimes they were even happy.
Then one day, a bad day, a hard day, the mother and the father stopped talking, stopped walking. They laid themselves down on the floors of their home and stared at the ceiling with wide frozen eyes that wouldn’t blink, wouldn’t budge, no matter how much the daughter prodded and pleaded and whined. And then came in men to take her up and take her away, far away. They brought her
through the forest
past the hills
across a river
and up the side of a windy, rocky road
to a big building that pretended to be a home when it wasn’t, all cold windows and colder floors. The walls watched you with eyes of all sizes, and you did what the men said or they put you in a box, in a hall, upstairs on the highest floor where the tip-tops of the old, dead trees could nearly reach you. They scraped and made horrible sounds on the walls, trying to reach inside with their brittle branches and twisty twigs to grab at young and small people who just wanted to sleep properly, to feel safe and sure for once.
The daughter spent a long time there, in that big building. There were other children too, but they never spoke, or the men would put you in a box, in a hall, upstairs on the highest floor. So they didn’t.
One day, a strange day, an unusual day, a letter came. It wasn’t one of the many letters of the building’s men – they spoke to businesses of business, of doctors to institutions. This was a letter from a parent to a child.
The men brought the daughter to their leader, who wore a whiter shirt than them all, and never a jacket. His thin little chin bobbed and clicked to itself as he read it aloud to her, asked her if she knew what it meant.
The daughter wasn’t sure what the right answer would be here, so she went with honesty, the easiest policy. “No.”
“Your parents have come back,” said the leader of the men. “They will come here, and bring you home.”
The daughter blinked, and remembered, and while she was remembering her mouth continued overmuch in its honesty, and it said “that’s wrong.” And so she was put in a box, in a hall, upstairs on the highest floor, and listened to the trees mutter and shudder all night. But they sounded different now – the dead, dying leaves had begun to come in on some of them, the only colour they grew all year. A new shuffling sound emerged from these: change, change. Things are going to change.

For a week, nothing changed. And then, as the daughter sat in the downstairs dining-room, she heard the sound of crackling, rumbling gravel on the windy, rocky road that the big building sat upon. She quit her seat – risking the inattention of the men on duty, who were speaking of things – and pressed her eye to the bars that ate up the windowpanes.
A car had come in. It was very shiny and very new, and quite red.
A hand tugged at the daughter’s ear; one of the men had noticed her inattention. She was towed from the room, down the hall, round the front, up to the base of the stairs, but before she could be taken up, up, up to the highest floor, other men spoke to the one who grasped her ear.
“To the lobby with her,” they said. “Her father is here.”

The daughter’s father was as tall as the tallest of the men – taller, she thought, than she’d remembered, though it had been so very long since she was home. His face was long and thin and faded, as though a pencil had sketched him out sparsely, saving the main-rub of its lead to fill in the great enveloping mass of his dirty-brown coat. She could not see his face all the way up where it lay, under his hat.
He spoke with the leader of the men in the quick, gruff, tiresomely neverending grumble of their ways. Then he pulled out an envelope, battered and pale, and stuffed it roughly into the leader of the men’s hand.
He turned to the daughter and said “come.”
So she did, and followed her father into the shadowed sunshine. For the first time in a long forever she saw the big building that wasn’t a home from the outside. It was smaller than she’d thought – even the highest floor was nearer to the ground, its dreadful trees smaller and stubbier than she’d ever believed. They were still and limp now; their night-winds absent, their branches silent; defeated and immobile.
The inside of the car was stuffy and musty. Her father would not open the window. So the daughter coughed, and her father turned to look at her as though she had said something. And that is why the daughter asked the first question to pop into her head, which was “what was in the envelope?”
The father’s mouth was most indistinguishable up there so high on his head, but even so the daughter saw it go through a disconcerting little jump into a nearly-smile before it went smooth again. “Dirt,” he replied. And then he started up the engine, grind-grind-crunch-cough, and the red car went rattling away down, down, down.

For maybe a little less than a minute, the daughter’s world was comfortable. Oily-smelling, bone-jarring, and too warm, but it was a place that she was happy to be in. And then she heard the groan and holler of other engines, other cars, the big steel-doored trucks that the men drove to and fro in to get supplies for food and wander to mysterious places.
“Are they going to catch us?” asked the daughter.
The father’s mouth did that complicated little jump again, like a skittish roach. “No,’ he said. He put his hand in his coat, and he pulled out a keyring, a big iron keyring. He plucked the smallest of the keys, and he twitched it about in his dirt-brown coat for a time. And he held up his hand to the window and pushed out a bag.
The bag burst open on the gravel behind them with a spray like fireworks, but it crawled like centipedes and flew like locusts. Little bugs – hundreds and hundreds of little bugs with little legs and little eyes. They swarmed and swooped and were covered with spines, and the daughter heard the paf!-paf!-paf! of car tires puncturing one after another as they wound their way down the bends of the windy, rocky road.
Something stirred at her foot, and she looked down. A single, half-squashed little bug lay against her shoe, wings trembling with exhaustion. It looked so small, and she felt so sorry for it. So she picked it up.
“Be careful,” it whispered in its little buggy voice.
The daughter didn’t know what to say to that. So she nodded, and tucked it into her coat where her father couldn’t see it.

The rattle and rumble of engines faded for a while, then grew louder – and another sound vied with them: the splash and swish and swirl of water. The river was approaching, and the little rickety old bridge of rust and hope that stood over it. It looked three times frailer to the daughter than it had when she’d been taken over it to the big building that was not a home, oh so long ago (how long ago?).
There was a screech and a honk behind them. The car of the men was drawing nearer.
“Are they going to catch us now?” asked the daughter. Underneath them the bridge creaked and groaned and coughed like a dying horse, all bones and tears.
The father did not smile this time, or if he did, it was not with his mouth. Instead he chuckled – a short, thick, sulphurous sound. “No,” he said. And as he said that, he wrenched the steering wheel of the car hard fast to the side and pulled it over so that it sat in the middle of the center of the bridge, breaks whimpering in pain with short gasps.
“Come here,” he told the daughter, and he took her up in his long, long bony arms and ran with huge slow steps, like a heron hunting frogs. The cars of the men hauled into view as the daughter looked over his shoulder, pulling up short and sharp at the shiny red car where it blocked them in. They cursed and waved their fists and were climbing over it as she and the father reached the other side of the bridge.
The father gave that chuckle again, and the daughter felt his chest bubble against her legs as he did so. He reached inside his coat and he pulled out a sack, a great bulging sack that surely seemed too large to fit inside that coat, big as it was. It glistened unhealthily in the midday sun. The father pulled loose that same iron keychain a second time, and he undid the old, old rusted lock that held it shut. The mouth of the bag unpinched, and then he spilt it far and wide across the bridge, splaying its contents to the air and noise of the world. Crabs – hundreds and hundreds of big sleek black crabs, with iron-shod shells and pinchers that put steel to shock and shame. They were resistant to boot and quick to anger, and before long the charge of the men across the bridge was nothing but a chorus of dismal hoots and angry yells in the ears of the daughter as the father carried her up, up, up and away as the road rose high into the hills.
There wasn’t much to look at, as she stared down at the dirt. Then something stared back.
A crab, barely yet fresh from its larvael forms, dangled precariously at the heels of her father’s coat-hood. It was a shiny freshly-minted black, like a more pleasant tarred road.
She reached down and plucked it free. Its claws held no bite, only a meek thankfulness. As she brought it up to her own coat pocket, it whispered as it passed her ear
“Don’t let him know.”
in a voice that smelt like sea-salt and soft things.
She nodded. And she didn’t let him know.

The hills were high and hard indeed, and her father’s steps lagged now out of necessity, though his breath did not shorten, did barely draw at all. He did not put down the daughter, though, and she made no request that he do so – even if his shoulder grew awful bony against her stomach. She counted bounders and rocks and pebbles as she hung up there, and wondered at how long it had been since she’d seen stone that had not been cracked down to gravel.
And then, as the sun wore the sky down into the idle blue of late afternoon, she heard once again the angry holler of the men, raised in song above the grunt and snort of an automobile’s engine.
The daughter thought to ask her father of the noise, but she felt him stir already.
And besides, she didn’t know if this was something she ought to let him know.
She could not see his face, so she didn’t know if he almost-smiled again. He didn’t laugh, though he did quiver. And he turned about in his stride as smoothly as a scarecrow, fingers splaying every which way as straw while he dug inside his coat.
“Ah,” he grunted, fetching out a mysterious squirming box. Its sides heaved and shuddered as he hefted it and worried at the lid with his long, long nails and the iron keys of his chain, even as the shouting of the men turned the corner of the trail below them. They had acquired the shiny red car that the daughter’s father had used, somehow, and they were riding it mighty hard, all those men packed into a car meant for four-and-a-half.
Her father shrugged, and her father tossed the box fast and low. It was harder than it looked, and smashed straight through the windshield and into the lap of the driver with a thwack and a thud and a yip-yipe-yap, for it was full of coyote. Then as the coyote struggled itself free and into the face of the man, it became apparent that the box was full of coyotes. How many the daughter couldn’t count, nor could she say how all those coyotes fit inside that box in her father’s coat, but it made an awful loud racket awfully louder than before. The car swerved and swung and smacked into a tree, spilling angry men and frightened coyotes everywhere.
Her father turned and moved along, not bothering to speak. And just behind him, bobbing along in his shadow, trailed a little coyote pup, barely big enough to walk without tripping.
“Stay calm,” it whispered, keeping a wary distance from those big boots.
The daughter listened, and she did as she was told.
And she scooped the pup off the ground when the hills grew steep, because she was kind.

Evening was in the air, with the sun painting the world all sorts of rare thing as it filtered through the branches of the trees in the forest. The air tasted like bark and dirt and growing good greenness, and just a hint of cinnamon fear. The daughter had bit her tongue by mistake too, but that was some time ago and she wasn’t sad about it anymore, and besides she couldn’t taste it.
“Mmmmm,” muttered her father, deep inside his dirt-brown coat. “Mmmm.”
She didn’t ask him what it was. She knew before she could feel it. The tramp-tramp-tramp of feet on the road behind them, a horde of bustling shoes on angry legs. The men had been lazy, but none of them had been fat. They were not as steady as her father, but fury gave them speed that steadiness could not match. For now.
This time it was a little can, a little sea-grey can that reminded her of the waves behind her home. Her father unscrewed the top left, then right, placed a key from the iron keychain in the top and twirled it, took it in his palm, shook it thrice, twice, once, held it firm, and whipped it straight into the dirt at his feet. Then he brushed his palms and walked onward as though nothing had happened.
The daughter watched what happened behind her. They passed a curve before the first man appeared, but she heard the shrieks and screams and knew what had caused them. She saw the coils in her head, winding and unwinding, endless loops of muscles that could wrench trees loose from dirt and grind down rocks to rubble.
A small worm crawled upon her father’s lapel. It was segmented and strong and moist and it smelt of the deep dark down where life is made into good things for more life. She bent her ear to it.
“Be ready,” it told her. Firm, sure.
She felt safe because of that, and not just because she tucked the worm into her coat.

Dark was there, real dark by the time they came to the daughter’s home. The air was clotted with night-taste, the sensation as cool and clean as a spade on a stone.
“Here we are,” breathed her father. The daughter looked, and looked, and looked.
There was a house in front of her. There was the sea behind it. And there were the stars above it.
It looked like home, but it didn’t feel like home at all. And not least because of the big sad bird above the door-light, head hooded, leg shackled to the light-stem.
“Home!” called her father, and his voice croaked unevenly as he raised it. “Home! I have brought our daughter home!”
A head poked out from behind the front door, the screen-net nearly fell loose from it. It was her mother, hair long and tangled with briny water, face drawn thin and with her teeth all showing. “Wonderful! Good! A good thing! Come in,” she creaked, “come in!”
“I don’t want to come in,” whispered the daughter, in spite of herself. She looked at the doorway, and she saw no lights, no fire in the building.
“Come in, come in!” said her mother, sliding through the door to hold it open, a mouth into the building wide and dank. “My daughter is home, here to join us! We missed you, daughter! Come! Join us! Come in!”
“You left me alone,” said the daughter, and her hand crept to her coat pocket.
“Only for a little while,” whispered her father. “Only for a little while.”
“We didn’t mean to go away,” said her mother, teeth still smiling in perfect white. “We had to leave unexpectedly. But we missed you so much where we were that we had to come back, and we had no small trouble with that, daughter! So many nasty creatures tried to stop us, horrid things.”
“Bugs,” said her father, and he made a face.
“Crabs,” muttered her mother, and she shook herself, sending the seaweed dripping from the bottom of her dress.
“Nasty,” said her father, and he spat. The spit wriggled.
“But we’re back now, daughter,” said her mother, “and we want to bring you home. Now won’t you please come in?”
“No,” said the daughter, but her father was already moving, long, thin legs as sure as a spider on its web.
“You really musn’t grumble so, daughter,” her mother admonished. “They have taught you bad manners at that nasty place. Now come in, and we’ll-“ Her mother frowned, and how she did that, lipless as she was, was a rare sight. “What’s that sound?”
It was footsteps again, and angry yelling. Down the path were shining fierce flashlights, bobbing with the frenzy of fireflies in midsummer heat.
“Them,” said her father, with distaste. One foot lay across the threshold of the home, one hand secured the daughter in her place on his shoulder. The other reached into his coat, searching for a thing.
“Ruffians,” said her mother, voice iced. “Turn the bird on them.”
“I shall,” he said, and he produced the keychain’s greatest denizen yet: a great iron key, burdened with rust and the age of years. It seemed to wriggle in his hand as he lifted it to the perch of the hooded bird, clenched in his fist with its jesses.
The girl’s pocket wriggled, and she felt four tiny heads lift themselves up and all at once shout as loud as their little lungs could “NOW!”
The daughter yanked out her pocketful of friends and thrust them into the air, as hard as she could, and things happened.
Her father screamed as the key stuck in the lock, with the bug in his eye, burrowing, needling. Snip-snap went the jesses in his flailing hand, turned loose with the claws of the crab. With a flail and a snarl the coyote-puppy caught the key in its teeth, tugging that last half-inch ‘till the lock snapped open and the keys fell loose in the wind. A yank of the worm’s tail (or maybe its head?) and the hood slipped loose.
The vulture is a sad, silly animal, and a slow one. Its head is bald, its demeanour is meek, it defends itself by throwing up its breakfast, and it eats that which no one else will. It lives a life on the warmest and slowest of winds, waiting for misfortune to occur so that it may have a meal.
This vulture was very old, and it bore that misfortune on every inch of its old, old bones. And right then, as it straightened out its wings and unbent itself from that little perch, unchained, it looked very, very angry.
“Good girl,” it croaked, low and steady. “Good girl.”
“Good girl,” agreed the crab, the bug, the worm, the pup. “Good girl.”
Her father swayed there where he stood, one hand on his daughter, the other on his leaking eye. He looked to the mother, but she stood silent, half-torn between hate and fear.
The father made up his mind. He dove for the door, a hiss without breath leaking through those teeth.
The vulture is not a fast animal. But when all you have to do is drop three feet, you do not have to be.
Her father made a noise, as the vulture fell upon him. It was not a scream. A scream needs lungs and a heartbeat to drive them, a mind behind it that can think and feel. But whatever was making that noise was gone in a flash as the vulture’s great beak tore through that dirt-brown coat and sent it back down where it was meant to be in a single snap of its jaws.
The daughter fell in the dirt, and some got in her mouth. It was the best feeling of her life.
“Carrion beasts!” shrieked the mother. “Bearers of blight! Away with you!” and then after that there was no more sound as all the bugs and all the crabs and all the coyotes and all the worms ploughed down through the road and into the home, trampling over the rags of the dirt-brown coat and the glistening ruin that used to be that iron keyring as it was trampled into the dust.

The girl lay there for a while as the house that pretended to be her home but wasn’t was being destroyed, looking at the stars. They were the same as they’d been here, as they’d been at the big building. The men from it had not appeared, and the flashlights had run the other way as all her friends had come.
A tingling on her fingers told her that the bug and worm had come back, a cold claw at her ankle heralded her crabling. The coyote pup nuzzled into her lap, and they all sat there for a while until the vulture came down from the sky where it had thrown the last bit of the weathervane away, chest heaving, head bobbing as it landed upon her knee.
“Girl,” it said, “you have done a very great deal for us, who have done very little for you.”
She nodded.
“What do you want most of all?” it inquired.
“A home,” the girl replied instantly. “A place for me to be.”
“Where would you like to be?” it asked her.
“Where can you take me?”
The vulture shrugged, its old wings bent again, tired from the night’s struggles. “Anywhere.”
The girl took it in her arms. “Then take me everywhere,” she said, “and I’ll decide afterwards.”
And they did. And she did.
But not for a little while.

Morri, Morri, little boy Morri; the middle child, the one that wasn’t expected to fail or succeed. He did what he was told – sometimes – and he told the truth to his elders – sometimes – and mostly – all the time – he spent his days watching his father’s cattle to make sure they didn’t wander off anywhere interesting, which he was expecting to do all his life. Sometimes he picked up rocks and looked at them.
One day, as Morri was looking at a particularly dull and evenly-shaped rock, he heard a very strange and sudden lack of sound. A cow had stopped rustling and huffling and snorting its way along the pasture. Instead, there was a thud. A heavy, meaty, bloody sort of thud.
Morri took his rock and his feet and wandered – cautiously – down the pasture, where he found half the cow. The other half was being wedged into the gullet of something he’d never seen before, which regarded him with annoyed interest. It looked sort of like a hyena, but a bit taller than he was at its shoulder.
It made a noise at him somewhere between a growl and mrrruph.
Morri pondered the meaning of all this for a minute, weighed the balance of what his parents told him to do against what he thought he should do, and reached a compromise: he whipped the rock into its skull at full tilt, poleaxing it, but then he ran home and told his parents afterwards.
“You are obviously not working hard enough if you have enough time to come up with these stories,” said his father. So he smacked him – lightly, with love – and sent him out again the next day with a reminder to be more careful.
The body wasn’t there when Morri checked, and another cow was missing. Just bloodstains remained – cow and something else – and a nasty smell that was emitting from a pile of feces. Morri compared the size of those feces to those of his family’s dogs, then thought for a bit.
While Morri was thinking, he was also listening, which was why he heard the grass rustle and the birds go quiet, which was how he was able to get up the tree before the big, angry hyena-thing ate him. It snarled up at him from below, enough drool to fill a bathtub spilling over its rancid gums, feet shaking the tree to and fro as if it were barely more than a sapling. One eye was staring fixedly at an eighty-three degree angle, just below the very large bruise Morri had given it the day before. It made a very nice target for Morri’s second stone, which was delivered by Morri’s older brother’s sling.
His aim was poor: instead of going through the thing’s eye socket and into its skull it skipped off it, removing eyebrow, eyeball, and fur, but not brain. Morri accepted his failure and ran home again, where he once again informed his parents of the day’s events.
“Your carelessness is as inforgivable as your falseness,” admonished his mother. “Two cows in two days? What are you DOING out there?”
Morri explained himself again, and received a brief smacking. He accepted it, because when you’re family that sort of thing happens, and he took his father’s spear without permission when he set out to pasture the next day, because when you’re family that sort of thing also happens and can come in handy.
This time no cows were missing. Four of them, however, had been partially disassembled and spread around the landscape with considerable effort. Morri had obviously annoyed something.
Morri knew all about annoyance. His little brothers annoyed him, he annoyed his older brothers, and they all annoyed his parents. It was the way of family, which is the way of the world, that the smaller shall always annoy the older. And it was upon this extensive and full knowledge that Morri drew when he swaggered nonchalantly into the middle of the bloodied, cow-strewn killing ground, sat down with his back to the biggest patch of fly-buzzing grass, scratched himself, burped, and laid down casually with the spear dangling loose in his hands.
Two minutes and four seconds later he sat up very quickly without looking behind him, spear overhead, and was immediately buried underneath nearly a thousand pounds of Hyaenodon. This put him in a position for reflection.
“Father,” he said when he finally came home that night, staggering in late, “I have lost four more cows and now understand what I wish to do in my life. And I need your help getting your spear back.”
“You shouldn’t have taken that,” his father sighed. “Where is it?”
“Stuck in a monster’s ribs, through the heart,” said Morri. “It was too heavy for its own good.”
Morri’s father gave another sigh, the sigh of the annoyed, and was preparing to smack Morri again before the boy showed him the tooth he’d brought home.

When Morri ran away from home five years later, it was not much of a surprise to anyone. His mother had packed him some dinner, and he’d taken his father’s spear without permission again. He would be back someday.
“The world’s a big place, but there’s only so much to see in it that’s worth seeing,” said Morri’s father. “He’ll come back soon.”
“Besides,” his mother added, “he’ll miss the cows.”

Morri, Morri, Quick Morri; jogging across the plains and through the forests and into deserts, always looking for new people, new places, new things to hunt. He wandered north from the far south, and he found that some of what his father said was true: there was an awful lot of world out there, but not so much that was truly strange. He saw leopards and lions, he saw elephants, he saw hippopotami. He met a lot of new people, and killed many things that attempted to eat him (their hides made up his clothing, their teeth covered him like hairs), but he didn’t find anything like what he’d found in that cattle pasture as a little middle child.
Then he came up to the town on the lake by the sea one day, all alone. Some bits and ends of furs and teeth from his hunts gave him a dinner and a half, and an open ear gave him an interesting story: a monster lived in the lake, a creature that ate whatever came too near for water or for fishing. A few sheep a day had placated it, but it grew more restless and hungry of late, and they found themselves contemplating a change.
“Maybe the headman’s daughter,” suggested the farmer Morri was conversing with. “That might do it.”
“Why?” asked Morri.
The farmer shrugged and scratched his beard. “Well, it’s angry with us or it wouldn’t keep on trying to eat us. It’s got to be angry at someone, and he’s the most important person around. It’s got to want him to pay for this, and what he values most is his daughter.” The farmer gave another shrug, arms akimbo in the culturally universal gesture of well-that’s-about-it.
“When does this monster feed?” asked Morri.
“Around the evenings and mornings, usually. And the nights. Not too safe down there come daylight either, so you be careful.”
Morri listened to this advice, borrowed one of the farmer’s sheep without permission, and trussed it next to the lake. Then he took his father’s spear in hand and waited, waited, waited all night, with a little ember in hand and a torch at the ready.
Finally, he heard a crunch, and that was all he needed to ignite the torch. The sheep was gone, and for a moment he thought without a trace – ‘till light shone back at him from the lake. Two beady eyes looked back at him, ghostly-glowing in the dark from the water. He’d seen that reflective gaze before: crocodile eyes. But they were just a bit too big, and that little moment of confusion was all he needed to feel before they came hurtling at him faster than a blink, quicker than the sound of the slapping waves that formed beneath its body.
Morri was quick, but not quick enough: the jaws found him. Morri was strong, but not strong enough: the beast’s teeth grasped tightly around his midsection. Morri was cunning, and that was just barely enough. All of the teeth of his prey that coated his turned and tore at his enemy’s mouth as fiercely as they would’ve in life, forcing a flinch and a start just as the thing in the lake was ready to bite down, shrinking away from its prey with a rattling hiss.
Morri flung his father’s spear prone, at a bad angle, left-handed. He was quite proud of this because it still sunk straight through the thing’s right foreleg and into the mud, clean as a whistle. It bellowed and snapped its jaws, and it was just when it was mid-snap that Morri grabbed hold of its mouth and began to squeeze.
There are ways to overcome crocodiles with your bare hands, difficult though they are. Keeping a firm hold on the animal’s mouth to keep it from opening helps, which was good for Morri. Being able to blind it is extremely useful, which was good for Morri because that was what both his feet – wrapped around the animal’s neck – were attempting to do. Fighting it on land is helpful, which was good for Morri. Having some way to prevent it from spinning about and over upon itself is necessary, and Morri’s father’s spear was a great aide in this. Finally and most importantly, many if not all of these careful tricks are used on crocodiles that are less than thirty feet long. This was not good for Morri, and that was why when the villagers came down to the lakeshore in the morning they were not surprised to see his legs sticking out of the animal’s mouth as it lay on the shore, spear still-embedded in it.
Then the legs kicked. That spooked them pretty good.
Morri never did remember too much about how he won that one – a long, hard, struggle in the dark that wavered from muddy shore to solid ground and back over and over until somehow he lost his grip and ended up half-in and half-out of a mouth that didn’t want to bite him in half but was just fine with squeezing the air out of him. All he had left to do was put his hands on whatever flesh they could find and squeeze ‘till his fingers were bloodless, and when they pulled him free he still had a death-grip on the thing’s air-pipe.
The thing was twenty-eight feet long, give or take a bit. Its teeth were strangely rounded and blunt, leaving Morri’s coat-of-teeth sadly lacking for repairs. They made a lovely necklace, though.
He stayed for a week, then left when they started talking marriage. The headman’s daughter was nice, but she was interested in someone else and he was interested in something bigger. The world was indeed a big place, and mostly empty, but that just meant you had to look harder.

Morri, Morri, Iron Morri; the wanderer of the world, the man who couldn’t stop moving. They even said he twitched in his sleep, Morri did; ever alert to the prickle of fangs on a sleeping neck or the brush of soft air from a claw hovering above a bed. He had so many names now in the prime of his life, a new one in every village, every town. He’d tried using his own, but people kept mispronouncing it, and now whatever title that first landed on him tended to stick – at least until he started walking again, and let it peel off behind him like an old snakeskin. But other things tended to stick.
Around his neck was his old crocodile-tooth necklace, expanded upon inch by inch, tooth by tooth until it looped four times around his neck in a sort of spiky gorget. A bear that had stood twelve feet tall upright had contributed several canines to it, and a lion of ten in length had helped finished it off.
His body was wrapped in the tanned and battered hides of a half-hundred kills, from the small to the massive, selected carefully by natural wear and tear until only the most durable remained. Claws and teeth were studded throughout it, peeking through as surprising, sharp-edged whiteness against sun-darkened hides and darker skin.
On his body he carried scars, many scars – so many that he looked as though he’d been sewn together. For greater wounds, he’d acquired a few. His nose was half-missing from the charge of a giant furry creature that walked the frozen lands that lay behind him. He walked as strong as ever, but a limp in his left leg marked the passing of a creature he still didn’t know how to describe. It had stalked him through Mongolia for days, on and off, each of them all that the other could find to eat for miles around in the desolate paths they chose. It had taken a bite from him in the end, before the end, snarling. He had been hard-pressed to find more than that from it himself; it was as lost as he had been, as hungry, and as tired.
On his head, carefully modified and hollowed and balanced, he wore the skull of that creature, as a memory and as protection both. It was a full three feet long, and had once held the power to crush bones like twigs.
In one hand he carried his father’s (borrowed) spear. Its shaft had been snapped four times over – once in six places at once by a maddened thing like an elephant but far furrier, a peaceful god that had gone crazed with brain-fever and turned upon its flock – and replaced dutifully each time, on the last occasion by the carved and shaped bone of the giant furred elephant. Its head had been replaced more times than he could imagine, with good, local stone here, with a sharp piece of bone there, once (in desperate times) with simply a ground-down wooden point and a quick fire-hardening. Currently it was attached to his body with a long, long length of rope whose origin was unknown to him and whose toughness was beyond question, affixed into a small, carefully-bored hole in the shift. But it was still his father’s spear, and that’s why he took care of it instead of replacing it. Because he had to return it someday.
In the other hand, he gripped a twin-bladed paddle with whitened knuckles, and he cursed the sea softly in his heart. It had made sense at the time, so much sense. He had gone north, and as far north as he was able. He had travelled west, and as far west as he were able. He had gone east, as far east as he were able, and then as he’d stopped on those cold forested shores he’d learned of stories and mumbles and mutterings of the land that lay just a few horizons away. How could he stop there, and go back to where he’d already been?
Well, very easily. And now Morri cursed that he had to do things the hard way, as he looked down into a blue so deep it was nearly black and sought with frantic eyes a shape that made his little skin-boat (he’d traded three teeth for it, one of them an old one from the crocodile) look as tiny as a piece of wood a child had tossed in a puddle.
It was the silence that unnerved him most, as the shape underneath him grew. On land your prey panted, it gasped, it growled and snarled and hissed as the grass crackled underfoot and the wind whistled through lungs and ears. Here the waves moved as they would, and it was only at the last – at the very last – that sound arrived to mark the attack from below, as the shark seized his boat in a full-body breach, whirling through the air with force beyond imagination. The crash of waves in a giant’s wake as its body left the water.
Morri clung to its nose as it rose, felt his body grow light in the air. No eyes met his gaze: the shark’s sockets were filled with empty white, rolled away and tucked back for protection from stray flippers and sweeps of tails. It did not look upon its prey as they died, and that assumption cost it dearly because its other senses, miraculous as they were, were incapable of detecting Morri’s father’s spear as it drove inside its eye socket and dug deep into the flesh of its cartilaginous skull.
The shark spasmed, and it dove, taking Morri’s father’s spear with it. And as went Morri’s father’s spear, so went Morri, both as a matter of the practical – the tether at his waist yet anchored him to it – and by principle. After all, he couldn’t return the spear if it sank to the bottom of the sea in a dead shark’s head.
This, at least, was soon revealed to be not a worry: the shark was far from dead. Its flight was conducted with the steadfast determination of a long-time survivor, for whom the matter of life-and-death had become an hourly dilemma centuries ago. Flee deeper, its experiences whispered into its tiny mind, flee deep and far, and they will not catch you. Flee deeper.
Pull harder, whispered Morri’s own mind. Larger though it was, it was no less simple at a time like this. Pull harder, so that you can see the sun again, taste the air again, feel a world that isn’t weighing down on you from all sides. The rope is all that matters now – ah, see how it has led you back to your father’s spear! Now you must reclaim it, you see?
Morri gripped the sides of the great shark with one hand, and that was no easy task. He gripped the shaft of his father’s spear with the other, and that nearly unbalanced him. He adjusted, shifted, and shoved with all his weight.
Flee deeper, whispered the shark’s brain. Flee d p r.
Flee d .
F e .

In the end, there was enough intent and purpose left in the shark to keep it steering forwards until it reached the end of its world, and there was enough oxygen left in Morri to hang ahold until it took him to the brink of his. Not enough to wake him, though – no, that happened later, much later, in a seaside shack where a man had kept him alive with fish broth for a week. He spoke a language that Morri didn’t understand, but it was a language he hadn’t understood before, and a cautious sort of trade of debts and repayment took place. On the one hand, the man had kept Morri alive for a week. On the other, it had largely been done with flesh from the shark Morri had killed. And its teeth were valuable, so… they were even. Roughly.
Morri took one of the teeth. His father’s spear, it seemed, needed a new head.

Morri, Morri, Old Morri; the one-eyed crack-shot, the limping man who could outrun a horse. All that muscle still there, just dried close to the bone by endless sun and hardened by the wear of a lifetime travelling against the fiercest winds, tanned in the saltwater spray of half the seas the planet could hold.
He’d walked the world now, Morri had, and seen the corners of the new as well as he’d seen the old. At first south, then east, then south again, and south on and on and down and down past mountains and plains and deserts and forests whose lushness unravelled your senses with a single glance. And everywhere Morri had walked, he had hunted. Oh had he hunted. His father’s spear had been repaired so many times over and over again, it had sunk into so many chests, through so many guts, pierced so many skulls. He had killed lions that made mockery of his conquests in Europe, fought a great bear with a shortened snout and lengthened legs for three days running, duelled with cats with teeth like giant knives and necks like tree-trunks. He had even once stood against an attack of wolves – creatures with stocky limbs and massive bodies, fierce and clever in their assault. His face had met the pack-leader’s jaws that day, and they had left a warning from ear to ear and into his right eye, wherever that was.
Old Morri had seen the world in all its vastness in those fifty-and-then-some years of his, he had. And there were still things he hadn’t yet seen in it, and some things that he had seen that could suddenly turn brand-new in your eyes, at the right moment. For instance, the sky above him had never seemed more intensely blue in his life than it was right now, pinned down in the dirt beneath an angry ten-foot bird. Talons crushed against him, a beak that put an axe to shame hewed against his father’s spear, and the clouds spiralled above so lazily and sparsely in that big blue sky. It made the ocean seem a shamefully small thing.
The bird lashed out with its foot again, ready to land a hit that would turn Morri’s ribcage into grist, and he rolled and struck, too out of breath to swear and out of any words strong enough to work. The shaft of his father’s spear cracked against the thing’s ankles and made it wobble – oh, it wasn’t the first blow he’d landed there, not by a long shot – but not tumble or hesitate. It was on him again as if he were a snake in the grasp of a secretary-bird, hissing with every jab, every kick, every darting, flittering motion, a creature that massed more than a quarter-ton moving like it weighed ounces. Wherever its legs didn’t dance its beak swooped, a beak that Morri would’ve needed both hands to lift, a killing spike with the sharpness of a stiletto backed by a muscled neck that could thrust it with the force of twenty men of the sort Morri had been in his youth.
Now Morri was Old Morri, and he was not as strong, maybe. He was not as fast, surely. But oh, but oh, but oh was Morri still cunning, more than ever, and he could think and fight at the same time, all the time.
Morri stumbled, on his bad leg. The bird struck, hopping forward – all that weight, all that weight balanced with perfect precision, undettered by bruising of bone and flesh. And finally – just then, with the timing he’d been hunting for – did Morri’s father’s spear strike home as one leg was completely off the ground.
Now, that made the bird wobble. But its leg was strong and its balance was fine, and it was a mere wobble on its own, when all was said and done. Which is why Morri’s spear rebounded from its shin, loose from his hand, and shot straight at its eye.
The bird dodged that, like it or not – instinct would accommodate no less, and its neck moved without thought – and in doing so, it leaned the wrong way at the wrong time, and fell flat on its back, legs kicking. Undignified, bruising, perhaps even bone-cracking – and thus as good as dead. It would never know, because before it could try to rise Old Morri was at its throat, far away from the kicking talons, too close to the beak for the neck to drive it. His hands were armoured in rhinoceros hide, his gauntlets gripped with sharkskin, and though he was sunk to his wrists in greasy, blood-smeared feathers, he would not relinquish his grip, would not release the pressure as he sunk the full weight and power of his body down into those ten fingers underneath that big, blue sky. Another hunt, and another kill, and all the same, new and old, all the same. Nothing new happened under that sky, for Morri.
They watched one another closely, bird and man. Old stains from past meals caked the tiny crevices of its beak as it breathed and began to stop, inches away from Morri as he strangled it, as they stared into one another’s eyes. Mad, furious eyes, of the sort he’d thought had long ago become a common sight to him, a natural thing. And yet Morri could not look away from what he saw, from what was hiding there in the depths.
There was something very old there in the eye of that terrible bird, oh so much older than Old Morri was; something that stared back strong as it died, completely unbeaten. Something that hated him and everything like him; every daring ape that had once been a rat, every elephant that once had aspired to the stature of a mouse. Something that was waiting and watching and ready for the moment when the hairy things would slip and fall and drop the world into their talons again, forever.
Old Morri looked back into those eyes, and he knew then what it meant to grow old and hard and hateful.
And as soon as he knew that, he was done.

Morri, Morri, a children’s story; a name that wasn’t even his across much of the world, a hundred different people with a thousand different deeds. He was in Europe, in Asia, he’d come conquering again to Africa, he was under the sea battling the greatest monsters ever to slither its waves, he was in a land where no man or woman had ever walked, hunting the very god(s?). Wherever he was, he was hunting, because what else would he ever do?
Morri was out there somewhere, that was sure enough. And if there was an old man living on a long-abandoned piece of pastureland somewhere who happened to share a name with him, an old man with a broken, beaten (but well-repaired) walking stick; well, the world was a funny place, and for all its bigness, you’d often see the same thing more than once.

Sometimes he did miss those cows.