jamieproctor.ca

For Tommy’s tenth birthday, his father told him he could have anything in the whole wide world.
“Anything at all?” he asked. You’ve got to make sure with adults.
“Anything at all,” he replied.
Tommy thought for a bit and wiggled his loosest, lastest baby tooth.
“New teeth, please,” he said.
Tommy’s father furrowed his brow a bit and spent some time online looking up obscure apothecaries, and finally found a little place somewhere in Norway that sold what he was looking for.
On April fifth, Tommy unwrapped his present from his father. The tooth-box was smaller than he’d imagined, only a little bigger than a bottle of Tylenol and dusty with age. Inside was a full set of solid, mellow, age-yellowed teeth, squared and rounded at the edges simultaneously and as comforting and filling to the mouth as sugared oatmeal to the stomach.
“They’re a bit big, maybe,” said Tommy’s father as he helped put them in.
“I’ll grow into them,” he said, clicking them a few times for practice. His ‘r’s came out firm and steady; his chewing was methodical and merciless, shredding birthday dinner in half the time he’d needed before. Tommy was happy as a clam, right up until the next day came and he had to go to school again.
“Hey Tommy,” said the bus driver. “Nice teeth. My grandpa had teeth like that. Saw him chew through a fence post and use what was left as a toothpick once.”
Tommy thanked her and went to his seat, where he smiled a bit.
“Nice teeth, dumbass,” said his classmates on the bus. “What’d your dad do, beat up a homeless guy?”
“They’re clean and strong and good for chewing,” he said. “And they look just fine.”
“That’s totally gay,” they said, and they poked him on the bus and threw stuff at him in class and in recess people kept shoving him.
“Did you keep the receipt?” Tommy asked his father that night.
“Sure. Did they fall out?”
“Not quite. But I’d like to try a new pair, if it’s alright.”
His father was a bit worried, but Tommy didn’t want to talk about it so he didn’t push it. A few days later Purolator dropped off another package. This box was smaller still, shaped almost like a little makeup case. Inside were thirty-two perfect and gleaming white teeth, slender but iron-harder, enamel preserved as fresh as a daisy.
“Said they belonged to an early twentieth-century aristocrat who donated them after the First World War,” said Tommy’s father, hoping to appeal to his interest in history.
“That’s nice,” said Tommy. He tried them out that evening, found them serviceable – if somewhat daintier than his last set, and prone to over-enunciation – and wore them to school on the morrow.
“Hey Tommy,” said the bus driver. “What happened to your teeth?”
“It’s not important,” said Tommy.
“Alright. Nice ones though – good and shiny. Remind me of a president’s.”
Tommy thanked her and went to his seat, wondering which president.
“What the hell’s wrong with your mouth?” asked his classmates on the bus.
“They’re my new teeth,” said Tommy. “I just got them yesterday. Do you like them?”
“They look like girl’s teeth and you’re so gay,” they said, and they spent the rest of the bus ride making fun of him, giggled at him in class, and sang songs at him while they were at the playground. None of the songs were very good. Or nice.
“A third set? Really?” asked Tommy’s father.
“Please,” he said.
Tommy’s father sat down. “Alright. But first, you tell me why.”
Tommy told him.
“I think,” said Tommy’s father, “that we will have to call your mother.”
So they did.
“Yeah, I’ve heard of that place before,” said Tommy’s mother. “Sweden or something, right? Good business, high-quality stuff. Your dad’s got taste in teeth – musta got it from me.”
“They’re nice teeth, I guess,” said Tommy. “But they’re sort of ruining my life.”
“Nah, that’s just other people,” said his mother. “Tell you what; I’ve got a little something surprising here from my work that I can send over if you’re not quite ready to give up on trying out new teeth. Whatcha say?”
“Will it help?”
“Definitely! Probably!”
Tommy didn’t need to think about it before he said “yes” and then the mail seemed to take forever, all the way until next week. But then the parcel came in the mail from his mother; all the way from Africa, wrapped in burlap and brown paper, rugged as an action hero’s five-o’clock shadow.
Tommy opened it up. He liked what he saw, and he put them in right away.
“Jesus!” said Tommy’s father.
“’Ank Yu,” said Tommy. Morning was a bit troublesome; eating his cereal was hard, and speaking was a bit tricky, and opening his mouth made his lips ache a bit. But he’d probably grow into them, and he went to the bus stop with a light heart for the first time in days.
“Hey Tommy,” said the bus driver.
He nodded and smiled.
“Jesus!” said the bus driver. “Careful! I can’t afford a heart attack while I’m driving this thing.”
Tommy apologized – indistinctly – and went to his seat.
“Why so tight-lipped?” asked his classmates on the bus. “C’mon, smile for us. Why aren’t you smiling?”
Tommy smiled. His mouth wasn’t quite the right shape as a baboon’s, so it was a little cramped, but the two-inch canines still managed to show themselves off.
“JESUS!” said his classmates, and they all ran around at once trying to get away from him, climbing over the bigger ones in an effort to be first. In class the teacher lost his train of thought seven times while staring at him, and during recess everybody stayed so far away from him that he wondered if they were playing Tag and nobody had told him he was It.
“Have a better day?” said Tommy’s father when he came home.
“Sort of,” said Tommy. And he told him about it.
“Well,” said his father. “Well. And how do you feel about that?”
“I’d rather not have to be scary to get along,” said Tommy. “I’ll wear my own teeth tomorrow.”
“Good idea,” said his father.
The next day, nobody made fun of Tommy. The day after that, the teacher didn’t stare. And the day after that, he was able to have his first normal recess in a week. And all that made him feel pretty good.
But he kept the baboon teeth for Halloween. And maybe just in case.

Making a sandwich is one of the most stupid things in the world.
You have your meat and your bread, right there in front of you. And then you waste like two minutes putting them together with a thousand little fiddly bits just so it can taste a tiny bit better. It’d be a waste of time if you had all the time in the world. And you can trust me when I say that this is stupid; I’ve assembled a hundred every day since I started working here. And every time I hate it a little bit more. Could be worse though. Could be Dave. Good ol’ Dave, with not a brain cell left to feel bad with and the meth mouth of the gods. We warned him off going too heavy on it, me and Tim, but he wouldn’t listen and now he’s missed out, stuck walking around grinning gummily all the time while we live the high lives of a Subway register monkey and an unemployed shotgun wedding target.
No wonder Dave didn’t listen to us. Not that there was much of a chance anymore; none of us had seen the others for months and months. That’s what I was thinking on Monday when the doorbell ding-lings at me (the worst noise ever) and in comes Tim. Bags under his eyes, a stumble in his walk, a weak and watery smile.
“Hey!” I said. “Where you been?”
The smile tried to widen, and failed. “Parenting. Baby’s teething.”
“Oh,” I said. I was pretty sure that was bad. “Damn, you look like shit.”
He rubbed at his face and almost missed. “Tell me about it. Noisy little bastard, takes after his mother. Her mother too.” He shook his head. “Listen, I’m not here for that. I need something from you.”
“What’ll it be?”
“Fourteen beef sandwiches. Hold everything but the beef.”
I gave him a look.
“I know it’s a little weird,” said Tim, “but she’s got some leftover cravings. Only thing that’ll do it. Hoping if we nip this in the bud hard and fast enough she’ll be regular before thanksgiving.”
“That’s Friday. These aren’t small sandwiches, Tim.” And the beef’s a little off too, but I wasn’t going to go advertising that. Not like I hadn’t told Tim before of this place’s health record; for all I knew he was hoping to bump off the old lady with a little innocent food poisoning.
“She has a big appetite, it’ll be fine.”
I sighed. “Fine, fine. All-beef sandwiches. Fourteen of them. Weird girl, Tim.”
The smile shrunk a little, withered up like a bug in the sun. “You always said that.”
“Was always right, wasn’t I?”
He shrugged, limply. “Maybe. Thanks.”
Took the food, left the money, register goes ding-clang-crunch. I had to spend fifteen minutes fixing it while my manager yelled at me, and I couldn’t even punch him or tell him to blow me. Damnit I missed being a teenager.

Surprise surprise, morning came on Tuesday and with it came Tim.
“Early, aren’t you?” I said.
“Ran out,” said Tim. He wasn’t smiling this time, and I could see why – there were little cuts all over his arms, zigzagging up to his shoulders. Some were scabbed, some were still damp, some had bandaids slapped over them higgledy-piggledy.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine… it’s just that her mother’s showed up early. Wanted to see the baby, she tried one of the sandwiches, and well, she liked it. I need another twenty-seven of them.”
“Big eater, is she?”
His eyes were sunken pits. “You don’t have the faintest damned idea, Josh.”
I sold him his sandwiches and he walked out the door, almost tripping on the stoop. It took him a good three minutes to fumble his way back into his car, and he left driving like an old lady.

That worried me, I’ll admit. But I’m a busy guy, I had other things to worry about too. So I mopped, and swept, and wore a polite, totally-fake grin when I talked to people I hated, and then just after the sweet spot of Wednesday’s hit – it’s five o’clock! People don’t want lunch anymore, not even the slow ones! – in comes Tim again, for the third time in the week and the third time I’ve seen him all year.
“Back again?” I asked. Look, stand at a register for seven hours, see how smart you sound.
“Yes,” he said. His hands were practically coated in bandages. “Her aunts are here. Dad’s due tomorrow with the others. Can’t get enough of the stuff.”
“They keep sending you out for it? Christ, look at you – when was the last time you got some sleep?”
He blinked. That was all.
“What happened to you, you tried to fix your mower while it was running?”
Tim looked at his hands. “No. It’s fine. Nothing too deep. Forty sandwiches, the all-beef kind. Please.”
I wanted to ask him more, but that was a hell of a lot of sandwiches and I needed to get on it. Tried to fit in some small talk, but he wouldn’t listen; just stared up at the wall. He left even slower than before, weighed down with all that meat, and he wouldn’t wave goodbye.
He didn’t smile once that day. Jesus. Thanksgiving can’t end fast enough for that poor bastard.

I thought that’d be the last of it, but then came Thursday. I’d just finished a grumpy old bastard’s sandwich (lettuce, THEN ham, THEN tomato, THEN salt BUT NOT TOO MUCH, plus spittle free of charge) when I heard the bell ring and saw him shuffle up to the counter.
I stared. He was wearing a heavy winter coat, long pants, and a hat with big fluffy earflaps. In August.
“Tim?” I said.
“Seventy-eight sandwiches please, same as before,” he mumbled.
“You okay, man?”
He wouldn’t look up, was already counting out the bills. His hands were covered by big black gloves, the sort of thing you’d wear to go skiing.
“Tim? Look at me. Are you okay?”
Tim looked up and met my eyes, managed to hold them for a half second before looking down. He’d cut his face between yesterday and now; there were at least ten little cuts and a big slash from his chin to his lip that was still dribbling, running his stubble red.
“Yes,” he said. And he took his forty-eight sandwiches and left, leaving me with just over a hundred dollars and the worst lie I’d ever heard, and I remembered the stories we told the teachers back in tenth grade.

Friday, Friday, thanksgiving day. And me at work, how wonderful. No, really. My family can go suck a donkey’s asshole for all I care, and I’d rather eat one of those sandwiches Tim’d been shovelling to his wife than touch my mother’s cooking ever again.
A nice slow day, a day when everybody’s eating at home. Nothing to do but kick back, relax, and answer the phone.
Ring ring ring.
“Albert’s subs, how can-“
“It’s me.” It’s Tim.
“What’s going on?”
“I need… I think… how much meat do you have?”
“Dunno. A lot?”
“How many sandwiches could you make?”
I tried to remember. “Full-sized subs? I think we have three hundred rolls-“
“Forget the buns. Just bring the beef in. Charge what it’s worth per pound plus whatever, it doesn’t matter. Just bring the meat. Bring it fast.”
“Time, what’s-“
“Please.”
“No seriously man, are you-“
“PLEASE.”
I sighed. “Fine. I’ll shut the building down for an hour or so and get you your stuff.”
He made some sort of noise into the phone that sounded almost like a giggle. “Thank you. Just put it outside. I’ll leave the money. Don’t come in. Please. Thank you. Please.”
Click.
I looked at the phone and thought to myself. Tim was a mess. A messed-up asshole. A messed-up asshole who’d probably gotten himself into a worse way than was usual – even for him – and was too stupid and afraid to say anything about it.
Screw it, that’s what friends are for.
So I packed up all the beef in the building. It smelled even worse than I remembered, almost as bad as the truck – but not quite; the reek of burned muffler pipe still covered the aroma of spoiled meat. It wasn’t the first time that I’d wondered how things’d play out if the health inspectors ever came around to Albert’s Subs. I guess I’d be an accessory, but if I squealed hard enough on the manager, I’d probably get off light, if they didn’t feel like pressing my record.
But that wasn’t important right now, Tim was. I figured I’d pull up, ring the bell, grab ahold of Tim with some fast talk and bring him out for a coffee, and then grill the fucker until he cracked. He always did. Then we could see about getting him somewhere to stay for the night until he could skip town or something, because whatever the hell was going on here, it wasn’t good for him.
Tim’s house was a brick-and-mortar pisspatch in the backwaters of what had been a chunk of suburbia before the city’s tide ebbed again. Now it was a mess that wasn’t sure what it was. Even the doorbell was fucked – sounded like grunk-unk-unk-unk, a long creaky groan rattling away in the front hall’s throat.
Footsteps, then a pause at the door. “Hello?”
“Heya Tim. Got your meat here?”
“The money’s on the mat, leave it and take it.”
“Aw c’mon, can’t you spare a second? I’ve got it right here,” I lied, “least you can do is help me carry it in for you. It’s heavy stuff, two’s better than one for that.”
“No-“
I shoved the door open and jammed my boot in the crack before it shut. “C’mon Tim, quit being a wuss. I’m coming in.”
“No! No you won’t!”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“It’s not safe!” There was a hysterical twinge in his voice now, that funny bouncing note that showed when Tim knew he’d screwed up bad. You kept pushing, and that meant he’d fold in on himself and give you whatever you wanted to leave him alone.
“Bull.” I shoved the door lightly, and to my surprise it fell inwards with almost no resistance, just a thud. Tim had fallen flat on the horrible red carpet.
“Jesus. Are you okay?” I yanked him upright and almost dropped him in shock: he weighed practically nothing at all, skin and bones. I could feel the scabs of a thousand cuts through his t-shirt, white dyed with rusty splotches.
“Get out!” he choked out through the wheezes of a ninety-year-old man’s throat. He waved a crutch at me – when did he get a crutch? “Go away!”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you?!” I shouted.
He shrunk down like my voice had punched him in the face. “Run!”
I was set to let go, but I figured he’d just fall over again. I looked around for somewhere to put him, and realized there was no furniture. Everything had been smashed into splinters – the hall was a ruin; the living room was dominated by the piled wreckage of three cabinets and a big table; the kitchen was something between a wreck and a slaughterhouse, draped high with shredded meat fragments. The smell was unbelievable, and my feet were sticking to the carpet.
“Fuck it, you’re coming with me if I’m running. Wouldn’t keep a dog in this place. What the fuck’s going on?”
A wail filled the air from upstairs. It was the baby, I guess – but I’d never heard a baby that sounded like that. It had gargling in it. It had snarls in it. It practically had a fox howl in it.
“Can’t leave,” whispered Tim in the very loud silence. He was totally limp now, not even trying to struggle anymore, barely enough energy to move his lips. “They’ll smell me. Too late now.”
“What?”
There was a nasty noise from farther inside the building past the kitchen, a sort of slithering, skidding sound. It made me think of rats.
Tim looked at me with the emptiest, saddest face I’d seen since the day his dog died when he was twelve. What was that thing’s name again? Was it Rusty? The carpet here looked rusty. Damnit, my brain was trying to think about anything that wasn’t what made that noise.
“The family is hungry. I’m sorry.”
That wasn’t rust on the carpet. And didn’t Tim have two legs yesterday?
The trash heap in the living room was heaving now, tipping aside as something big woke up, shouldered aside its blanket, opened up its eyes to see me and Tim standing in front of it.
“Mother,” whispered Tim, as she scurried into the hall.

My hand was on the doorknob at the end, for all the difference it made. I couldn’t have moved if I’d had all the time in the world.

When Maurice Tallow was brought into this world, he was already so tight-fisted that the doctor had to lay off cutting the umbilical cord out of his pudgy little hands until he fell asleep.
Maurice Tallow saved the bodies of every single fly and ant he swatted, to be used as fertilizer for his garden.
Maurice Tallow had once hoped to be a hangman, for eagerness of getting the first crack at new (used) boots and golden teeth.
Now, the facts of these statements from Maurice’s neighbours might be in some kind of dispute, at least according to how literally you take that sort of thing. But as for the tales that were told… well, they gave a message, and one that had a pretty good, practical meaning to it with no room to argue. Nobody who knew Maurice was interested in arguing, more like commiserating.
He came into their lives one musty June evening, when the days were starting to get hot enough to make the nights stuffy and thick and the word came around that somebody had bought the old farmhouse up on the hill by Rockfoot Glade.
“Troublesome,” the man who sold him the land had warned him. “A troublesome place with a lot of short histories. Bad soil, maybe not, but something in the air there gets into your head. It’s not a healthy spot.”
“It’s cheap,” said Maurice Tallow, and he took the deed and left the man with the money, fingers unclenching from it with the reluctance of a spider forced to abandon its prey. He moved in quick as lightning, shunned the greetings of his new neighbours, and locked himself up to shuffle around his possessions in silence.
Well, that silence wasn’t quite the blessing Maurice had been looking for. It was quiet up there on the hill by the glade, that’s for sure. At nights it was so quiet you could just about hear everything, and everything could hear you right back. And in the morning, you’d find odd marks in the dust out front and around the windows of the house, made by who knew what. It was tiresome and a nuisance and it was making Maurice jumpier by the day.
Finally, one day in early July he got up in the morning and found the door open a crack. Well, that was that. Enough was enough. It was time he did something about this, and what he did was he invited over his three closest new neighbours for a quick lunch and a few questions.
“Friends and neighbours,” said Maurice (lying out of one side of his mouth), “I’m having some troubles here. The man I bought this place from said this wasn’t a healthy spot, and with the strangeness I’ve been seeing, I’m not as doubtful as I was when I spent my money.”
“It’s truth,” said the widow Edna, taking a polite bite from one of the pieces of butterless bread Maurice had kindly, grudgingly gifted to them, along with warm water. “Been a nasty spot since my grandmother’s mother moved in, swear as sure as kittens. Not a man nor woman who’s lived here for more’n half a year.”
Maurice’s mouth puckered in annoyance as he watched the bread vanish. “Right. Right. But what’s caused all this then? What’s made this place so bad?”
“All sorts of boogums and beasties,” said the blacksmith Hughes, sipping at his water (Maurice twitched). “Varmits and trolls, you name it, it’s got it. Who knows what kind of goblins been out here of a full-moon night, hankering about on their forelimbs. Not a good place anywhere for anything that blinks to spend a safe evening by the glade.”
“There’s got to be a way around it,” snapped Maurice. “I’m not letting any damned critters take what’s mine away from me, not for what I paid for it.”
“Iron and silver might work,” drawled out the farmer Braxton, turning his hat over and over in his big rough hands. “Get a horseshoe over that door and nail a silver penny next to it.”
“Best to leave them some supper, too,” said the widow Edna. “A dish of milk a fortnight’ll keep them fed and away from your door.”
“And don’t leave any iron lying about when you turn in,” added the blacksmith Hughes. “They’ll take offense at that, sure as shooting.”
“Thank you kindly, neighbours of mine,” said Maurice Tallow, and he up and snatched all of the food right out of their mouths, plain as day. “The door’s that-away, good night and goodbye, thanks again, don’t tarry.”
So as three people went home in all kinds of bad moods, Maurice sat in his house and thought, and then he took up a spare horseshoe and a silver penny and gathered in his old wood-cutting axe from outdoors, and he put out the smallest dish he owned, filled with the barest scrapings of milk from his cow. The horseshoe got nailed up without a problem, but the penny vexed him until he strapped it up with a thin lace of twine; it’d be a waste to put a nail through a coin like that, he figured.
Maurice went to bed cautious and woke up after the first good night of quiet rest he’d had since he’d moved in – normal, noisy quiet, not that big empty quiet that swallowed you whole. In fact, he felt so refreshed that he worked all day chopping wood while nearly-whistling, happy as a clam until the axe head snagged when it should’ve sliced and nearly came off in his hand. That put him off his stride, and he groused all the way down the hill and over the way to the blacksmith Hughes’s house.
“A good day to ya,” said Hughes, looking up the nails his apprentice was labouring over.
“Broken axe,” said Maurice shortly, and he tossed it down on the work bench atop the horseshoes with a clatter. “Needs a repairing.”
Hughes picked it up and glanced it over. “Bit of a knock, eh? Best be mindful with this thing; it’s not made to cut down big stuff. Keep it for your firewood once she’s mended, but you might want to get something bigger for the felling. I’ll charge you a fair price on it.”
“A fair price for your pocket, no doubt,” said Maurice. “No, I’ll take my axe as she is – here, mend it with haste! I’ve got work to do before sundown.”
“Well, that’ll be a minute here,” said Hughes. “My boy Wallace here can take that job for you, but he has to finish up this batch of nails first. Boys down at the mill need them soon, for the mending after last week’s storm.”
“I am a paying customer and I demand to have this axe mended on the double!” snapped Maurice.
“Can’t fix it with the forge full,” said Hughes, shrugging hopelessly. “Wallace’ll be done in a moment and the job won’t take much more’n that.”
“Sluggardly slug should’ve finished hours ago at the rate he’s going,” said Maurice. “As lazy as his father, no doubt! To blazes with both of you, I’ll fix the thing myself and at twice the speed!” And with that he spat on the forge – a quick, sour sizzle followed – and set off home at a foul-mooded trot, swearing and kicking at clods of dirt the whole way. By the time his house hove into his sight the head of his axe had been jarred off altogether, and with a burst of curses he flung it into a bush, the battered iron head whup-whup-whupping through the air until it came to rest in a sapling with a thud.
“Useless!” he snarled, and he went indoors in such a foul mood that he almost forgot to put the milk out that night. His hands were still shaking sore with ire as he poured, and a good measure of it spilled over the dirt of his stoop, leaving the jug nigh-empty.
“Damn and blast!” he said, and went to bed angry, fuming ‘til the dawn. By morning his temper had fared no better, and he kicked the milk dish into the thicket as he left for the widow Edna’s farm, to borrow a pitcher of milk.
“Sure for it’s fine,” she told him. “Less than a dollar, and you can keep the pitcher too, when you’re through.”
“A dollar!” cried Maurice, turning purple in the face with alarming speed. “Damn me thrice over, woman, I’m not made of money!”
“No call for language like that,” said Edna, unruffled. “No call at all. Besides, I did say it’s less than –“
“A dollar! For a pitcher! I could buy a cow for a dollar! I could buy a BARN of cows for a dollar! A dollar – bah, is this pitcher made from gold? This one here” – and he seized a jug from the mantelpiece, splashing it full in such haste that it messed the floor – “will suit me fine…here’s a penny for the lot, and not a whit more! Good day and GOODBYE!” And with that Maurice Tallow was off again, slamming the door behind him.
Edna frowned, which wasn’t normal for her, and muttered a word she didn’t like to use. Then she found that the pitcher Maurice had seized for the milk was her silver teapot, the one her grandmother’s mother had given her, and she shouted that word of hers out loud. But Maurice was down the road and up the hill by then, safe and sound on his way home and chuckling to himself fit to burst. When he got up to the door he looked into that deep, thick, thorny thicket he’d chucked the milk dish into, then he looked at that rich, creamy milk from the widow Edna’s cows.
“Bah, they’ll never miss it,” he declared, and went inside and shut the door. He had the milk with his supper, put the silver teapot on his mantelpiece, and went to bed happy again with a full stomach. The wind was calm that night, the trees kept their leaves still and rustle-less, and he slept in late, got up bleary-eyed, and had his horse throw a shoe as he got around to ploughing the back field.
“Damnit!” he swore, and kicked the horse. It kicked back. Then he picked himself up, rubbing his jaw a bit, and headed to the farmer Braxton’s place to borrow a horseshoe.
“Not really what pa keeps spares of,” said Braxton’s eldest daughter. “You try the blacksmith?”
“The blacksmith’s a greedy bastard who’ll suck the life out of me as soon as my money,” complained Maurice to her chest. “Figured your father’d have a spare shoe lying around for his friend and neighbor, free of charge.”
“Don’t know about that,” she told him, a bit of January weather creeping into her voice. “Anything else?”
“Well, maybe nothing you’d want to tell your pa,” said Maurice, rubbing his chin a little and not bothering to shift his eyes. “Say, you ever want to drop by and visit, my door’s always open. Come by this eve if you’d like – and if your pa changes his mind about that horseshoe, feel free to bring it with you. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I’ll keep it mindful,” she said. “Goodbye.”
“Come on now, no need to turn sour now, girl. Why don’t you come along home with me? Nobody needs to know; it’s not a long trip, and-”
“Go away.” And she shut the door much harder than was necessary (though not nearly as hard as she’d have liked) in Maurice’s face, nearly catching his nose off. He walked back home angry, kicked his horse again – from the front this time – took down the horseshoe from over the doorway, and spent the worst five hours of his life attaching it to his horse’s foot, nearly laming the poor animal five times over.
“And good riddance to you,” he said as he stomped inside for dinner. He slammed the door so hard the silver penny fell out of its sling and landed atop his head with a plunk.
“Some good luck at last,” he said, snatching it out of his hair. “Useless as ears on a tree up there, and good to remind me so. Haven’t gotten one thing worth having, knowing, or doing out of those useless sod-suckers since I moved in.” He stowed it in his sock with the rest of his money, locked the door, and went to bed.
Night came in. And when it left, well, it left a bit of a mess. And this is where we’ve got to go back on what folks said.
Folks said Maurice Tallow hadn’t been minding those ghoulies like he should’ve, so close to Rockfoot Glade. He let them go hungry after giving them a taste of the sweet stuff, he polluted their property, he took his warnings off the door, and well, they’d just had enough. They rose up against him, and that’s what took him out of his home in the night, leaving nothing but a pair of old, worn boots and a bad smell in the air.
Now, some of those facts are up for dispute; not everybody believes in beasties, of course, even the folks that live right near their front doors and build houses overtop their lairs. But that story stuck, and nobody told a lie to it. Because the tale had a message to it, and it had a good, solid, all-around makes-sense meaning to it. And nobody who’d known Maurice needed to be told it twice.

In the beginning, there were some people. Human people. Well, it wasn’t quite the beginning then anyways, ‘cause there were people before that, but everybody’s selfish and has to make it all about them.
So anyways, the beginning of this story starts with a new, special kind of human. This man had fingers that’d start to itch and jump, he had eyes that looked for the odds, he had a brain that just wouldn’t stop clicking away with opportunities and chances. He was a gambling man, and he was the one that found out how to make little symbols on little rocks he carved into little cubes, and just what sort of thing that was good for. He gambled for food and he gambled for tools and he gambled just for the fun of it, and he drove everybody else batty.
“Son,” his mother told him, “the boss says if you don’t stop this kind of thing, you’re going to get kicked out.”
“Hey, it’s all right,” he told her. “I’ll go talk to him, make it alright.”
So he went and talked to the boss. “Hey,” he said, “I bet you two to one on throws of this die that I get to stay in.”
Well, he won the first throw, and he won the second throw, and that was when the boss looked at that die and saw half the faces were all one kind. That started an argument, and that started a fight, and that was what led to the gambling man walking around by himself all alone, grumbling with his mouth and his stomach all at once.
“Hungry, hungry, hungry,” he complained. “If my guts complain this much, they should just up and leave, see how they do finding food on their own. So hungry, I’m fit to burst.”
Then he had an idea, and then he saw a gazelle, and he decided to put them together. His fingers itched, so he knew it was a good idea.
“Hey gazelle,” he called, “how ‘bout a bet?”
The gazelle stared at him. They’re good at that. Just let those big dark eyes hang open and look right through you. “What?” he asked.
“I bet you,” said the gambling man, “that I can outrun you by the end of this day. And if I win, I can eat you, and if you win, I can teach you how to use tools, just like me.”
The gazelle twitched his ears a bit at the part about eating, but they twitched twice as hard at the talking about tools. Wasn’t an animal alive that didn’t hanker for a bit of knowing about tools like humans did, and here was one volunteering it practically for free, all against having to outrun those flabby two legs of his. “You’ve got a bet,” he said. “Now one two three four go go go goodbye,” and he sprang away like a wildfire jackrabbit about a hundred times faster than the gambling man had ever run, ever.
The gambling man laughed – but low and quiet, so nobody’d hear – and then he broke into a walk, and that broke into a jog, and that broke into a run, a chug-chug-chug one-leg-in-front-of-the-other gallop that moved along with the steadiness of a seaside gale. He sweated and he panted and now and then he cursed, but he kept going along like clockwork, slow but steady, following the footprints of the gazelle in front of him. And by the time the sun was dipping down the sky, he caught up to that gazelle. He was lying down on his side in a brush patch, too tired to move.
“You. Must’ve. Cheated,” managed the gazelle. His mouth was bubbly with foam.
The gambling man shrugged, staggered, and stayed upright. “Just practice,” he said, “nothing to it.” And then he picked up a rock and a stick and he decided to put them together, and that was the end of the gazelle right there, but it was just the start for the gambling man. He got three breakfasts, five lunches, and three dinners out of that gazelle, and had a fine bone left to pick his teeth with when he was done. He was happy as a clam and a thousand times as jaunty, and he invented humming while he was walking up the way north, making up a new tune every mile until the miles he recognized ran out, replaced with cold air and strange new trees.
“Could use a coat,” he muttered to himself. “A nice fur coat, to keep out this chill.” And then he saw something strange and big nipping greenery from a tree, had an idea, and put them together.
“Hey you there!” he yelled. “What are you?”
“I’m a deer,” said the deer. She twitched her ears at him. “What do you want, small, hairless thing?”
“I’m a gambling human,” said the gambling man, “and I’ve got a bet you’ll want to take. I’ll wager your coat to my itching thumbs right here that you can’t keep ahead of me until sundown, no matter how fast you run, or how far you flee. How about that, eh?”
The deer laughed at that, then thought about it. Everybody could use a good pair of thumbs; you can’t pick things up so easy without them. “It’s a deal,” she said. “One two go go go go,” and she was gone away into the bush with big bounds and a single white-flash of her tail.
The gambling man chuckled fit to burst and broke into his run again, slow and loping, one foot two foot, the run of the human that starts slow and ends slow but goes on forever in the middle. He ran over hills and through dales and up and down and around all the river valleys, through the thick white stuff that fell from the sky (numbed his toes, that did) and through piping-hot springs that bubbled out from under big rocks. His feet hurt mightily, but at the day’s end he found that deer in a glade before the sun had finished its trip, panting her heart out and wheezing through her nose.
“Cheater, cheater,” she managed.
“Nothing to it,” the gambling man retorted. “Just keep on going, that’s all.” So he picked up that bone he’d saved and he picked up a stick and he put them together, and that was it for that deer. He had seven lunches and nine dinners and a bit of breakfast, half of them all at once – to keep his strength up, you know – and a nice fur coat to go with it. He even got a second bone to pick the other half of his teeth with, and that day ended up looking pretty good. Whistling was his next idea; it popped right into his head next day as he was striding along with his full belly. That kept him busy for a week, up until it started getting really cold and none of the stars in the sky made sense anymore. That irritated him, and he was getting hungry again, and maybe he wanted some nice pants to go with his coat, because his knees were getting shaky and knocky with the chill.
“Damn and blast and other words,” he muttered, and then he nearly jumped out of his skin with fright because somebody had just let off the biggest and longest and loudest howl he’d ever heard, right next to him.
“Who’s that?” he called. “No call to make that sort of noise at night! How’re honest folk supposed to walk around with that sort of noise going off in their ears?”
The howl cut off, and two yellow eyes looked at him out of the trees. “I’m the most honest folk that lives around here, and it bothers me none,” they said, between their teeth. “These are my woods, and what are you supposed to be, with your stolen coat and your silly bald skin? You look like a puppy that’s been scraped all over with a rock.”
“I’m a human,” said the gambling man, getting more annoyed, “and I’m a gambler, and what are YOU supposed to be anyways, all high-and-mighty? These are anyone’s woods!”
“I’m a wolf,” said the wolf, “and I don’t like your tone. How about you leave these woods – MY woods, not anyone’s woods – or I’ll make you leave faster than that, and with a few holes in that hairless behind of yours.”
“Not so fast now,” said the gambling man. He was eyeing the wolf in the shadows, and he saw the thickest, bushiest coat of fur he’d ever eyed, a coat that made his fingers itch like mad mosquitoes. “How about we make this interesting? If I can outrun you before the night’s up, I get your coat. But if you catch me first, I’ve got to leave you alone in your woods. How about that, eh?”
The eyes narrowed. “My coat is my coat, and it’s nobody else’s. You can have something else if you win, which you won’t. And if I win, you’re going out of my woods all right – straight into my belly, and your bones into my teeth for a crack at the marrow. Take it or leave it.”
The gambling man thought about that. “And where do I go if I leave it?” he asked.
“Guess,” said the wolf.
“Right. Deal! One two three… go!”
And off set the gambling man, feet pumping in that tireless grind, legs pistons, body a lanky spring, teeth bared and nostrils flared, eating the miles under his toughened-up soles and chuckling in the back of his head all the while.
“How’s it going back there?” he called after a while.
“A bit slow,” said the wolf, up ahead of him. “I may have to take a nap, to make this fair.”
The gambling man pursed his lips. “Ah, we’ll see what you say in a few hours,” he said, and he kept running, up a hill down a hill, through a forest and down a swamp, skipping ‘cross tree-trunks, dancing on stones over a frozen river, calluses crackling in the dark cold night.
“How’re you liking that pace then?” he called, as he went over another stony meadow.
“Not so bad,” said the wolf, from up ahead, “but you’re dragging your feet. Keep up, or you’ll bore me silly!”
The gambling man gritted his teeth. “Wait a bit, and say that again!” he shouted, and he sprinted like a gazelle, a bolt of fur-flapped lightning in the night as he shot through blackened trees with crisp, frozen needles, mashed mosses to pulp under his toes, tore apart stones from stones with the force of his feet. His nails cracked and split, his heel ached, his knees were balls of fire that shrieked at every step, and the night wore old as he ran.
“What do you think about THAT?” he said triumphantly at the night.
There was a quiet moment, and then that voice spoke up again. “Good work!” it said from at his side. “But careful now; you’ll tire yourself out if you keep that up, and worn-down meat is sour.”
The gambling man seethed inside so hot and angry that he didn’t feel the night air, ground his teeth so hard that his toothpick nearly snapped. And then he thought about that toothpick, and he thought about the wolf, and he put those things together. And THAT made him smile in the dark.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he told the wolf. “I’d better relax a bit, not wear myself out. Why, I’m soo tired right now, I might have to drop some of this heavy stuff I’m carrying around so I can keep running. Guess I’ll just toss this
nice
thick
tasty
deer-bone
right over there in that pond. It’ll be a shame to miss it, but I’ve got no choice!” And as he said this, the gambling man did it, sent the bone spinning away with a splash and a thud.
The wolf didn’t say anything for a minute.
“You there?” asked the gambling man.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” said the wolf. “I’ve got to check on something.” And there was another splash, and the gambling man smiled to himself and put an extra spring in his step.
Time wore on, and the sky got a bit lighter, a bit brighter, far away on the edge of the world. “How’s it going?” asked the gambling man of the shadows around him.
“Fine, fine, fine,” said the wolf from at his heel – a bit breathlessly, a bit damply, and with his mouth just a tiny bit full. “Great. And I’ve worked up a real appetite, too – haven’t had so much fun in all my life.”
“Me either,” said the gambling man. “Haven’t had a nice run like this in forever. I don’t want to end, almost.”
“Well, the sun’s coming up now,” said the wolf. “Guess it’s about to.”
“Ah! It’s in my eyes,” said the gambling man, casting his hands in front of his eyes. “Ah! I can’t see! Oh my, I think I might have dropped my
mysterious
delicious
fine-aged
gazelle-bone
right back there in that pile of rocks!”
And he had.
The gambling man heard a rummaging and a clattering behind him, and he smiled a lot more and ran a bit faster. And when the sun popped clean of the trees and he saw no shadow at his side, he stopped running and sat down for a bit, to wait.
Five minutes later, up came the wolf. Out of breath, with still-damp fur, but with two big bones in his mouth. He looked a lot smaller in the daylight.
“Chfeater,” said the wolf.
“They were heavy, that’s all,” said the gambling man. “And I believe I’ve won our bet.”
The wolf spat the bones out. “Fine then. Name your prize.”
The gambling man rubbed his chin a bit. “I’m a long ways from home up here,” he said. “And it gets hard sometimes, and lonely, and cold, but mostly it gets lonely. A man can use a friend sometimes, especially a gambling man like me.”
“Fine,” said the wolf. “But I get first chance at the bones now.”
The gambling man sighed, and mourned the loss of his toothpicks, but he nodded. “Fair is fair, and friends share.”

I am the crocodile’s eldest grandson.
I stretch my length across the sandy beaches and the rocky shallows and the deep wide cool waters, all scale and armour. I open my mouth to yawn and the river shrinks back and hides. When I let my tears flow, the animals step back a little farther away and get ready to run. Nothing in the water can hurt me; nothing on the land can scare me. I am the crocodile’s eldest grandson: please give me your pity.
My grandfather was the first and the biggest and the strongest, and he was three times what I am now. He was the fiercest and strongest and fastest, and maybe even the smartest. His voice was golden and his claws were stronger than steel, he could outrun the gazelles and he could see a leaf fall from the treetops on the other side of the world.
With gifts like that, grandfather grew proud. And pride brought trouble, all the little troubles. Grandfather was smart and strong, but his enemies were weak and crafty. They stole away his gifts – took his speed when he wasn’t looking, nabbed his smarts while he napped, tricked him into giving his big claws away to the lions and the tigers and the bears.
He got angry and old and bitter and then he died, and my father was what he was then, just a bit smaller, a bit slower, a bit weaker. But he was still twice the crocodile I am. His voice was golden and his eyesight shamed the eagles and he was still fiercer than a thousand knives. And well, what do you think happened to that? His eyes were stolen away by a liar and a thief, and all the fierce in the world does you no good when you can’t see who did you wrong. He cried his tears then, his big crocodile tears. I still cry those tears, and I am doing it now, because although my father was hard done by, and he was twice what I am, I ask this: please give me your pity, and let me explain.
Down by the river all day I slept and dozed and dreamed, of the old days, when the world worked right and everything was my grandfather’s. Fleet feet, sharp eyes, quick wits, and the strength behind it. Now all that’s left are the songs I sing, quiet-now, when no-one’s watching but everyone’s listening. Grandfather sang them, father sang them, now do I, slow and soft, deep and strong, like the current scraping the pebbles across the riverbed. They’re important songs, they are, because they tell everybody listening how things should be, how things were back in my grandfather’s day.
All day I sleep and sing, all day yesterday, ‘till down to the river comes a monkey scrambling, all wild-eyed and bristle-furred. He’s in such a hurry he almost runs me over, and I stop my song and grab him up. Never liked monkeys, not me, not father, not grandfather, not since a monkey stole away his smarts and kept just enough to make them stupid.
“Let me go let me go LOOK OUT!” shrieks this monkey.
He’s in a terror, he is, but not of me. That’s strange, I think. “Speak up!” I say. “Look out for what?”
“There’s a monster coming,” he whines, “a terrible big monster, an ogre of noise and huge and snorting puffs of breath! It’s bigger than an elephant and twice as grumpy and it’s coming over here! I tried to lead it away until it got lost, but it was too clever and followed too close! Run!”
“Monsters don’t scare me,” I say, and I let him go. “Run away now and don’t come back, but I’m staying, and I’m singing. Go away.”
“You’ll get caught!” he warns, and then he ran away, making that monkey screech they do.
Well now, I never cared much for what monkeys thought, not after what they did to grandfather. So I went back to my singing, my long slow singing, of the old days and the bold days when the scales were stronger than skin and three times thicker all across the world. Then I hear a rustle rustle rustle and out of the bushes and down to the river comes a hare, tumbling head over heels, right up into my mouth so fast I nearly choke on his tail.
“Run run RUN!” he yells at me, scared stiffer than that monkey.
“Why now?” I ask. Can’t run anyways, not since a hare stole my grandfather’s speed and outran him with it. Don’t like them one bit, the meddlesome tricksters.
“There’s a monster, and it’s coming this way! It’s huge, and strong, and its teeth are shining like the sun! I tried to outrun it, but it chases faster than I can run! Let me go and run, run, run!”
“Monsters don’t scare me,” I say, and he runs out of my mouth he’s so scared.
“It’ll catch up!” he warns, and he ran away, screaming his furry head off.
I don’t like hares, not after what they did to grandfather, but it worried me a bit that this monster had them so frightened. Not the monster, you understand, but just that the hares were scared. That isn’t normal, and that’s bad, and that worried me. Not the monster. I’m too fierce for that. So I sang, and remembered, and forgot about it.
Halfway through the ballad of the old days comes a wham bam CRASH SMASH and a racket to raise the dead. I think it’s the monster for a moment, but out of the forest comes the spider, so small but making such a big racket that you’d think he was a hundred times his size. He’s in a tizzy, and runs up to me hopping up and down.
“It’s here! It’s here! It’s here! The monster is here! Hide in the river, hide underwater, bury yourself in the pebbles and the dirt or it’ll see you!”
Now I was just about sick of hearing about this monster, especially from a spider, the trickiest creature in the whole world, the ones that talked my grandfather into giving away his claws and getting back little stubs, the eight-legged little nuisances that stole away my father’s eyes to trade to the eagles for the promise to never ever be eaten by them. Nothing I hate more than a spider, and nothing I hated more right then than a spider telling me to run away and hide.
“I am the crocodile’s eldest grandson,” I tell that spider, and I feel the rumble rise in my throat as I get up and stand tall, belly off the ground. “My scales are the strongest armour in the world, where my teeth show the world shrinks, and nothing scares me, no matter what. I have had it with you and your chattering teeth and your wailing all about monsters. Show me your monster and I’ll bash its head in and have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month straight.”
“Oh no, you couldn’t do that!” protests the spider. “It’s too scary. Better hide instead.”
I snapped my teeth at the spider and walked up the riverbank, all a-bristle and in the worst mood I’d had in months, maybe years. All I wanted to do was finish up my song and all day I’d had nothing but monsters, monsters, monsters. I’d show them a monster, those tricksters, those little thieves. Nothing in the water can hurt me; nothing on the land can scare me. And then off in the distance, thundering closer with every second, I saw that monster.
It was tall – as tall as an elephant. It was fast – faster than a gazelle. Its eyes were blazing yellow lights, its teeth a shining metal mask that couldn’t stop grinning. And it made a roaring, rattling sound that made my teeth shiver in their sockets.
But I still stood there in the dirt and the dust and stood tall, and I called my battle song at it. “I am the crocodile’s eldest grandson,” I sang, “and I’m not scared of you!”
And then it was there, and so was I, and wham, bang, smash, crash, the fight was on and then it was over, with me knocked flat to the ground, spun on my back, with a bruise all over and my legs in the air: stuck.
And while I was stuck there, by the side of that dusty dirt road, who do you think came walking back up to me, laughing, but all three of those tricksters, guffawing and chuckling and giggling ‘till their eyes near fell out and they could barely pull themselves together enough to pick up my golden voice from where it had landed, on the other side of that dusty dirt road. “I think we’ll swap it with the birds,” says spider, I heard him. “I can get us a good deal, I bet.”

It took me three days to tip myself back over and crawl back down here to the riverbank. My bruises are all gone, my aches are all done, my scales are shining again and as I bask here in my strength and my tears I stay quiet, because I have forgotten all my old songs.
I am the crocodile’s eldest grandson, and I ask of you, please: give me your pity.

Dawn crawled over the walls of the great brick-and-mortarless city of Gar, trying to take it by surprise. And for the most part it did – not a bird peeped in its gilded cage, not a baby cried, not a beggar woke up screaming about bats in an alley. But no success is total, and so the conquering rays of the sunrise touched themselves upon movement in the least-fashionable corner of the great bazaar of Gar, where a man was wrestling an enormous tarp with fists and good-natured swearing into a shape that could be called tent-like. After some time, he succeeded, and added a sign to the top of the heap, crudely scrawled on in cuneiform script.
Saidot the priest, formerly-owned gods, lightly used, cheap and effective. It wasn’t really strictly true, but that was pretty good for an advertisement, and Saidot only felt the faintest quivers of anguish in his conscience when he looked at it. He sat down, brewed a suspicious murky sludge that could be passed off as tea so he’d have something to avoid drinking, and waited, surrounded by his wares.
Soon enough, a poor child came by.
“Hello there,” said Saidot.
The child picked its nose at him. “Whassin the pots?” it asked in that wheedling tone used by its kind whenever something puzzled them.
“Gods,” said Saidot. “All kinds. I’ve got big gods, small gods, thin gods, and fat gods. I’ve got lightly used rain-gods, and I’ve got some good worn-in hearth-gods, and I’ve got fresh-as-new earth gods. I’ve got nigh-omnipotence and almost seven-tenths of an entire pantheon. So tell me, small, strange child, do you want a god?”
The child considered this. “Is there a god of poopies?” it asked.
“Shabbling Dingman, the lord of the refuse,” said Saidot. He picked up a dusty and neglected urn, stoppered and sealed five times over with some mysteriously green stains mottling its crack-curved surface. “He reigned over the sewer-pits of Makmori for decades! Only five-“
The child took the urn and left at a run without paying. Saidot shrugged. Free advertising was free advertising, and it wasn’t like he’d been able to get rid of that particular product for a decade.
The city was waking up now; creaks and moans and grunts and the dusty, rambling sound of thousands of sandals waddling out into the streets while their owner’s feet are still mostly abed. Saidot rolled up his sleeves, cleared his throat, and began his spiel.
“Gods! Miracles! Wonders-in-a-jar! Used gods for sale here, lightly owned, lovingly worshipped, set aside only with the greatest of reluctance and available to an eager owner HERE! I have tall gods, short gods, long gods and stubby gods! Buy them, take them home, and worship like you’ve never worshipped before! You sir, you look like you could use a prayer, why not go straight to the source?”
The man who’d inadvertently made eye contact with Saidot tried to back away, but the priest had already shoved a cup of murky quasi-tea into his hand and social discomfort had latched its iron hooks deep into his soul, tethering him to the booth with polite hopelessness.
“Now what’ll it be, sir? A good round-the-home god, to help bless those corners clean? Perhaps a workplace god, to strengthen your hammer and chisel, to knot the ties that bind? Or, ahem,” and here Saidot managed to turn nothing more than the clearing of mucus from his windpipe into a leer, “something of a more intimate nature, for the married man? Bana Ripu was worshipped in Teelo for one hundred years, until they ran out of logs sufficiently sized to construct the ah, prize attribute of his altars.”
“NicetomeetyoulovelydaypityI’vegottogonow,” said the man, politely dropping his cup on the counter, which it fell through. “Oh! Sorry!”
“No harm done,” said Saidot, peering through the rift in the cloth. “It landed on Old Yellow Legs.” He heaved a misshapen, five-times-repaired urn onto the counter, freshly coated in maybe-tea. “He’s seen worse, he has – when you’re the god of faux pas, one grows accustomed to such missteps in your person. Poor old thing,” he said, shaking his head mournfully. “It was a chore to find a proper home for you already; how will I find you a worshipper with tea-stains? Ah poor, poor old thing. I will try harder next time, and scrub you clean, however many hours it’ll take.”
A silence ensued, and the man knew it was over before it had even begun. “I’ll take him,” he said, and sagged in defeat.
“Excellent choice sir! Shall I wrap him for you?”
“No, no, no,” said the man, and looked at the urn again. “Yes, yes, yes. Please.”
“Thank you, and be sure to come again.”
The sun was high in the noon sky now, bright yellow on cool and blue. The great bazaar was full to the point of completely overflowing, as was normal, and Saidot’s calls took on an almost melodic rhythm in an effort to be audible over the crowd.
“Gods! Gods! Gods! All the gods the world could need and more! Gods that can fit in your pocket, gods that could crush the palace of a king with their littlest finger! A god for every man, a goddess for every woman, an imp for every child and a devil to chase the vermin from your door! Found across the world, brought to this stall, and taken home by YOU!”
“YOU!” agreed a man.
“Yes indeed!” said Saidot, and examined his newest acquaintance. He was a tall man grown bent and bearded – no, too formal, grown maned – and he was wearing a decimated cloth sack and an alarmed expression. He was patently a beggar and probably mad, but Saidot had been both in the past and bore him no ill will for such things.
“Greetings, sir of the streets! Would you like a god?”
A single digit was thrust at him with trembling urgency. “The eye! The eye, eye, I, eye, I I see it! It’s in the sky!”
“The eye is in the sky,” affirmed Saidot. “The burning ball that sees by searing, yes indeed.”
“That’s the harm, the seeing slipping sliding everywhere in my hair in my heart all the time of day and the tone of night,” hissed the beggar. “Need answers to keep the bees out of my baskets and the flies from my eyes and the eyes, the eye, and the hand!”
“I think I’ve just the object for yourself, sir,” said Saidot, hauling up an extremely large and scorched urn.
“The eye?” whispered the beggar, shrinking back a little.
“Far from it, sir! Behold the thousand burning crows – each one an omen, a portent, a sign all its own! Scholars have spent lifetimes, wise men have perished, entire kingdoms have given up trying to interpret their purposes, powers, and portents! The eye will never be able to see you as long as you take shelter beneath their coal-caked wings!”
“Yes!” cried the beggar. He thrust a battered and violently destroyed sandal into Saidtor’s arms, seized the urn, and marched away down the streets, head held high and back straightened to the point of regality.
Saidot examined the sandal, extracted a stray toe that had been left inside it, and shrugged it onto his left foot. “A good fit,” he noted happily. “The day is kind!”
The day was also wearing on, and the walls of Gar were beginning to encroach on the edge of the sun, nibbling away a little sliver of daylight every few seconds. Some vendors – the richest, the luckiest, the laziest – were already packing up and departing for homes and meals, beds and blankets. Saidot was blessed with possessing none of the four, and thus unburdened, was free to continue his sales.
“A little worship puts a little light in your life, a light to read by, a light to see by! And I am a seller of candles in this manner – long-burning, warm-holding! You sir – a god for your troubles? You, ma’am – a deity for your shelf? I have gods for the young, the eld, and the undecided; gods for the mighty and gods for the meek and even gods for the median! Look! See! A temple need not be the only place for you to find comfort, a priest need not be your middleman! Come, and buy, and be the master of your own soul!”
“Do you have anything for termites, young man?” inquired a stooped and wrinkled face.
“Certainly!” said Saidot, fishing around behind his counter. “Would you prefer fire, sword, or terrible hooves?”
The old lady pursed her lips in thought. “All three,” she said.
“Ah, a connoisseur, a crafty one, a customer who thinks past the problem and strikes its heart! Here!” – and Saidot heaved a bronze urn onto the counter with a grunt, its weight troubling his bad back – “This is Terrimac the Terrible, the blazing bull-angel with the head of an ox and the heart of a blazing stone! In his left fist is the bonfire of the ages and in his right is the sword of bright burning and in his other left fist is, well, a fist. With which he strikes down the unrighteous!”
“And termites?”
“And termites.”
“I’ll give you seven coins for it.”
“Twelve.”
“Nine.”
“Deal.”
Saidot shook the old lady’s hand, put the urn into a bag, and watched her hobble away with it. “If I were ten years older,” he began, then shook his head. “No, twenty. Well, fifteen. Ach! No matter!”
The day was near done, the shadows eating the courtyards, the sun’s heat fading away from under the feet of the city. Saidot was one of a dozen or so hardliners, and even they were beginning to pack, but his cries remained undaunted.
“Might beyond the realm of man, in the palms of your hands for a fistful of coin at most! Keep the wisdom of the ages, the strength of the seas, the speed of the serpent at the end of time, all on your shelf, all for a pittance, all right here! Right now! All the gods!”
“Saidot the priest?” asked a muffled, annoying voice.
“The same!” affirmed Saidot with what was left of his gusto. “Tea? It’s a bit cold now, but I’m sure that-“
“Come with me.”
The tone of voice was an order, but Saidot was busy rooting around in his tea urn and ignored it. “Just let me find a cup and-” and at this point Saidot lost his train of thought as the bazaar guards picked up him and his entire stall and carried it away. Some time and seventeen bruises later, he was deposited with great force on some extremely nice marble tiles, which he examined with interest. He knew at once from the horrible and marvelously intricate depictions of tortures on them, no two alike, that he must be in the palace of Gar, which took up an entire fifth of the city.
“Saidot the priest,” said a voice.
“Yes indeed,” said Saidot.
“Raise yourself before the council of Gar.”
“I’m afraid that this is impossible, honoured sir, as my knees are presently quite badly hurt.”
“Raise yourself before the council of Gar,” said the voice, in the peevish tones of one who has never been made to feel more than minor annoyance, “or be chopped into a fine mince and thrown into the refuse pits.”
Saidot raised himself before the council of Gar and bowed as politely as he knew how. “Esteemed sirs, how might I help you this fine evening?”
The largest and most physically round member of the council – whose hat was truly marvelous – looked at him through his nostrils. “You sell gods.”
“Yes indeed, sir, of all shapes, sizes, colours and creeds.”
“You boast of their quantity and quality.”
“Please, sir,” said Saidot with a pained expression, “it is not boasting to speak the truth, and the truth is this: these are the finest gods in all of the land, and I have many of them.”
“Then you will not object to gifting the council of Gar with a tithe,” wheezed the eldest councilor. “A merchant of wonders such as yourself can surely spare a single god, in exchange for permission of his peddling within our borders.”
Saidot shrugged. “I suppose not, sir. Although I make no demands of you, you are within your rights entire to request such a thing. What god has caught your eye? I can recommend the Jackal Gheeni, Marmoosk, perhaps Yve-“
“The most powerful you possess,” said the thinnest councilor, a man merely eight times Saidot’s weight. “And the eldest.”
Saidot’s eyes widened. “Ah! Ah! Such quality is requested!” He grinned, just a bit too late and a bit too wide. “I beg of your pardon, sirs, but perhaps it would be, if I may suggest, just infinitely, slightly more prudent if-“
“The most powerful and eldest,” repeated the angriest councilor, whose face was fixed somewhere between a snarl and a sneer. “Nothing less. Not one whit less. This city demands a strong god.”
Saidot’s smile had gone away, but his grin was still there. “Right! Right! All right then! Sirs, that is. Allow me one moment…” He turned his back on the council of Gar, suppressed the urge to glance over his shoulder, and began to root through the wreckage of his stall, not even daring to curse as his fingers brushed over a fresh crack in each urn he inspected. At last he found it, deep at the bottom of the heap, where he’d left it; surrounded on all sides and secure.
He placed the urn – plain, small, round – on the floor. The councilors looked at it.
“What,” asked the youngest councilor, a twelve-year-old with a high voice and enough jewelry to coat four adult men twice over, “is this?”
“Talminus kel No kal,” said Saidot, carefully pronouncing the words. “And I promise you eighteen times over, sirs, that he is by far the most puissant and primordial of all my wares. I found him in a ruin, sirs, that was by the name of-“
“Good,” said the tallest councilor, a creaking crane of a man whose thigh-bones were nearly as long as Saidot’s legs. “Leave us.”
“Of course!” said Saidot.
“And the city.”
“Naturally,” said Saidot.
“Within five minutes.”
“Right,” said Saidot, and with that he was out the door at a dead run, with the stall slung over his shoulder.
“On pain of slow grating and sieving!” called the councilor after him, but Saidot the priest was already out of the palace of Gar and accelerating. He was a great maker of snap judgments, after so many years in the markets, and he knew that it wouldn’t be more than a few minutes before the largest and physically roundest of the councilors picked up his gift and opened it.
Fearing a thing may grant you wings, but god-fearing can practically strap a cruise missile to each foot, and so despite middle age, physical imperfection, and only one sandal, Saidot the priest was nearly a kilometer out past the gates of the city of Gar when about a fifth of it had an early, rapid, and extremely loud sunrise.
“Good riddance,” said Saidot, eventually. He coughed for another three minutes, then managed a second breath. “God riddance ahahahahahahahahahaCOUGHahaha. Aha. Ha.”
He sighed. Five sales in one day, and only once had he been made to run for his life. That was all right, in the grand scheme of things.
After all, he’d certainly had worse days.
Nighttime crept on, inch by inch belly-dragging itself over the landscape, over the sky, over the head of Saidot the priest as he packed and walked down the roads. But only for so long. Morning was just a stone’s throw away.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw that guy. Not the face, no – the face is gone, don’t have the faintest clue what it was, well, maybe it had feathers on it – but I remember him. Came downstairs all chained up, brought along by three of the biggest bastards we had, weapons out, all eyes on him. And he’s not moving a finger, not sweating a drop, but damnit if he isn’t grinning like a pumpkin patch come Halloween.
“What’ve we got this time?” I said.
The biggest and ugliest of the guards pulled out the papers and held them between finger and thumb on his second try. “Theft.”
Well, that was new to me – though of course, everything was new to me back then. I didn’t think we’d had theft yet. Universe isn’t but brand new and someone ups and walks away with part of it. “What’d he nab?”
The thumb moved with painful care and delicately flipped loose a second sheet of paper. “The sun.”
“What?”
“Stole the sun. You know that old guy that lives down there with his daughter?”
“Yeah.”
“Snuck in with a fancy disguise and a made-up-name and snatched it right outta his longhouse. Moron held it in his mouth, half-burnt out his voice. Now’s all he can do is croak.”
“Sentencing?”
A third flip, done in haste, tore the paper clean in half. “Shit, shit, shit.” The fingers closed in agitation and mangled the remnants. “Just spread the burn – toast ‘im crispy-black.”
“Right,” I said. So we took that sun and burned the thief crispy-black, but we couldn’t undo that crime of his, because down there in the world, that sun was still shining. And we couldn’t take that grin off the thief’s face either.
Now, things got real quiet for a while, as they should. Crime doesn’t pay, punishment prevents recurrence, so on. I didn’t mind all that much; it let me catch up on my paperwork. Well, it let me push my paperwork around on my desk so the piles looked smaller. Same thing. If you actually do any of your paperwork, I’m pretty sure that violates some little universal law somewhere and causes problems. Read it somewhere at the time, I think.
Well, my reading got interrupted sooner than I hoped, because the stairs started thumping with big jackboots again and down comes six of the biggest, meanest bastards we had, weapons out, chains attached to them and the prison, and the grin on that face – whatever that face was, it was on the tip of my tongue – just brought back memories. Although it might have been furrier than I recalled.
“Him again? What happened this time?”
The biggest guard dropped the shredded remains of what had once been some papers on my desk, vibrating with anger.
“Death.”
“What?”
“Death forever. Little shithead gave us death with no way back. Some of his pals were cooking up a way to put a stop to the whole sordid business, bring back the ghost of their pal and stick it back in the body. Well, this jackass”-a savage kick was directed at the jackass, who dodged it, grinning -“figured that the world without death would get ‘too crowded,” and he locks the door at just the wrong moment and bam, spirit goes back home to the underworld and tells everyone else not to bother. Death’s forever, no takebacks. Sentence is death, before you ask, and good bloody riddance to him.”
“Poetic justice,” I said, and signed it all through. Figured that’d be the last I saw of him, that one. Harsh to put an end to him for good, but making sure everything dies forever’s a lot worse than break-and-enter grand theft. Can’t be soft on murder-enablers, or else the whole system stops working.
Now, the next time caught me by surprise a bit. Clang thud bang, staircase almost rattles and falls apart under the weight of twelve guards, a thousand chains, and the biggest smirking smile I’ve ever seen, so big it seemed like it’d almost make his toga burst.
“Sign,” said the guard. He was smaller than the last few I’d spoken too, but too angry to speak. I had to read the papers myself, a damned nuisance.
“Let’s see….he uh, rigged a meal?” I asked.
“Read. It.”
I read it. “He rigged a meal against the king of the gods, feeding him fatty bones and tricking him into giving the humans the steaks?”
A short nod. “Page. Two.”
I scanned it. Okay, that’s criminal mischief at worst, but seems mostly a private dispute, but…
I read the next page. Then read it again. Then I rubbed my eyes a lot. “So to make it fair and even the gods take fire from the humans, then HE steals it back?”
A nod.
“What’d he use?”
The guard flung down a stalk of fennel, the inside seared crispy-brown.
“Great. Another break-and-enter, and sacrilege in the second degree, plus knowing contempt of omnipotence.” I shook my head. “You’d think he’d have learned after the first time. What’re we going to do about this guy? We already killed him once.”
“Page. Three.”
I looked at page three. “Jesus. Isn’t that a bit…no I suppose it isn’t.” I looked at page three again. “Still…an eagle, right?”
“Yes.”
“And the liver?”
“Yes.”
“Every day forever and ever?”
The guard’s lips had compressed themselves into a tiny, utterly bloodless smile. “Yes.”
“Well, this ought to teach him a lesson if nothing else will.” I signed it. “Go on.”
I watched him walk away, wrapped in chains. He was still smiling, all the way down the hall.
There was a quiet bit there, for a while, when everything was routine. A little damnation, a little repentance, a few curses and some imprisonments. And then one day I hear this metal scream and the staircase bursts in half, spilling twenty-five guards and the head warden down the stairs cursing in a heap, with that smile on top of a face on top of the whole pile. It seemed more crooked than I remembered, and a few new scars were on it.
“Well?” I asked.
The warden struggled to his feet, put on his left shoe again, and spat out someone’s moustache. “Well what?”
“Well what now? I thought we’d locked him up for good. What’s going on?”
The warden’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on is that the little weasel got clean away at least a thousand years ago. Under your watch.”
“But-“
“What’s going on,” said the warden, talking just a little more loudly, “is that before we found him again, he’d stolen fire at least three more times on damn well every continent. Gave it to humans each time, too, damned if I know why.”
“Well-“
“WHAT IS GOING ON,” yelled the warden directly into my face, “is that at SOME point he got a bit bored of all of this and stabbed the bright god to death with a piece of cursed mistletoe, THEREBY dooming the whole lot of them to apocalyptic battle and defeat and forcing the rebirth of the world.” He slammed a single sheet of paper on top of my desk one handed with violent force, then smiled pleasantly. “Sign here.”
I signed the form, which condemned the individual concerned to be chained up by the guts of his children in an underground chamber and have a poisonous serpent drip excruciating venom directly into his eyes. “Signed.”
“Good.” The warden tipped his hat, the guards went on their way, and I swear I saw that smile break into a snicker before its bearer passed on his way.
That was a thousand years and more ago, and it’s been quiet since. But I know too much to stay calm now, because how often does anyone go down there and take a look in that cave? Oh, they still hear the earthquakes now and then, but who checks, and how often?
It’s just a matter of time. Some people just never damned learn.

The world was cool, a dark shell of rock, a cliff overhead, a shelter from the scalding gravel masquerading as sand. It faded into reality in a billion pieces, one after another, faster than anything, slower than footsteps, which were the first sounds that he heard when he woke up.
He doesn’t have a name. He doesn’t know what a name is, and never will, because his brain is small and blunt and doesn’t need to be particularly powerful to keep him alive. As far as he can comprehend himself, he is big. A unrelated but currently important fact: big is also old, and a heavy sleeper because of it, which is why he just let what smelt like…. four meals walk right by his sleeping nook. Their feet couldn’t have landed more than a whisper from the blackish grey scales of his snout.
This has annoyed big. His personal space has been infringed on and he’s missed an easy (and welcome) meal. Well, he’d better get going. He’s not going to fall back asleep anytime soon, and the food’s walking away down the tunnel. Big doesn’t usually go down there, because it’s so very cold, much more than the calm shade of the nook at its mouth, which is juuust right to keep him from cooking during the height of the day, when the sun’s burning a hole through anything that steps into its sights out there on the black hot rocks.
If big could understand the sounds the food was making farther down the tunnel, he’d know they agreed with him. But he can’t, so all he hears is noise, noise, noise. Worse than monkeys and birds rolled together.
“Shit, I think I’ve burnt me goddamned toes off.” A sound made for wheedling; not high-pitched, but mostly emitted through the nose.
“Shut your griping.” A phlegm-thickened, short-set voice that brings to mind rotten oatmeal, grit-covered clothes, and bloody knuckles.
“Come off it, ye were bitching at the oars so hard I’d thought they’d break off.”
“Jack was rowing.” Soft and deep, with a little edge that suggests it’s almost running through its stock of patience. “Harping about how much you burned your foot is the most work you’ve done since you stepped off the boat. Now which way?”
Fluttering, scraping noises, as of something unfolding.
“Here.”
“Good. Keep it to that volume, eh?”
Big shook himself once – lazily – and set off after the sounds, slow and deliberate, one foot at a time, a back-and-forth bent-kneed swagger that dragged along all of his hundreds of pounds with all the ponderous pomp they deserved. He came to a fork in the tunnel, flicked his tongue, tasting, and set off down the correct route. More noises filtered their way into his head.
“Much further?” said Jack.
“Not much,” said the noise that was Isaac. “Just a wee bit. No more turns from here.”
“Oh, no more turns, is it?” said a peevish, ragged thing that sounded like it was being throttled through a ruptured chimney.
“Good thing we’ve got you along with us to guide us all those treacherous ways. We could’ve got lost on our way to the cave that we could see clear from the boat. Or we could’ve taken the wrong turn out of two paths. Or we-“
“Will ye shut the hell up, Matthew? If it weren’t for me and me map ye’d be sitting in an alley somewhere waiting for a bloke with wallet, whisky, and no brain in his skull to mug himself next to ye. Instead, ye’re less’n a few hundred feet from the biggest pile of gold ye’ve ever dreamed, a pocketful with your name on it? That’s enough to buy a damned pub and drink yerself to death before yer next birthday, and bitching yerself silly about it.”
“And if it weren’t for us,” said Jack, “you’d be still sitting on a pier waiting for passage to this burned rock.”
“Just shut off, will ye – ALL of ye! Look, we can all argue after ye’ve got your fifth-”
The footsteps stopped, as did big’s, in perfect synch, one claw frozen just before hitting the ground.
“Fifth?” said that deep voice. “Now then Isaac, that’s not how I count us. By my eye, I see three men. And yourself.”
“Five pocketfuls, and that’s just the right size. Ye get a fifth, Jack gets a fifth, Matthew gets a fifth, I get a fifth, me map gets a fifth. Without it, there’s no money at all. And I’ll be having to carry it, on account of me having two pockets.”
“Really? With it ‘a few hundred feet’ away?”
“Look, if ye-“
“Quit baiting the little bastard, Benson. Open ‘im up.”
“Quiet.”
There was a gasp, a shuffle, and a shriek that ended in a few sharp sounds. Big’s tongue flicked, and came back with the smell of blood.
“Four ways, then. Come on.”
“Right.”
“Took your time, didn’t you? Should’ve slit him a new throat last week after he wouldn’t shut up about the storm.”
“The rest of the crew wouldn’t be as understanding as you two. Now quiet.”
The muttering trailed off and the footsteps started again. Big’s long-suffering claw touched ground, and his pace quickened towards the blood. Maybe the food would come easy this time.
“Understanding of what, exactly? A bit of murder? Because if they were going to look funny at the story of ‘oh gosh he fell overboard in the storm, you saw how he was staggering about’ I don’t think they’re going to be fond of ‘there was a cave-in that killed exactly one person.’”
“We’ll blame it on the lizards. You saw them. He tripped on one.”
Big nearly tripped on the corpse. It was scrawny and insubstantial, more bone than body, and altogether puny, not nearly the right size. He’d have been more pleased to eat a seagull. A small hiss escaped him, and his steps quickened, the faint whisper of his tail on the stones growing to a murmur.
“Oh yes. The lizards. Of course. How big were they again, five foot?”
“Quiet.”
“You keep saying that-”
“And I mean it.”
“Yeah.”
Nothing much then. Running water flickered across big’s ears, glided on his tongue.
“Oh bloody wonderful. An underground stream? Really?”
“Crossable.” A large splash followed the proclamation.
“Doesn’t mean we have to enjoy it.”
Splash. Splash.
“Freezing!”
“You’ll feel warmer with gold in your pockets.” Footsteps sounded on stone again.
“Not warm enough.”
“You are determined to make a nuisance of yourself, Matthew.”
“Well aren’t we feeling menacing today, Benson.”
“It is a statement of fact. Here is another: there is a great deal of gold just past us, and if you persist in your petty complaints, myself and Jack will be splitting it into two pockets instead of three.”
“Facts, facts, facts. Jack, give Benson his facts.”
Benson froze again for an instant as the footsteps ceased, then resumed under the cover of the quick scuffle that emerged, punctuated by two hoarse shouts and a wheezing screaming that turned liquid, ending in a much, much larger splash than heard previously.
“Shit.”
“Good job. He was right about two pocketfuls being better than three, just came to the idea later than we did.”
“Shit. Shit.”
“Oh, he didn’t get you that badly.”
“Got my leg. My good leg.”
“Right, right. Look, just tie it off and we can fix it back on the boat. I bet that cave-in line would work now, you know. Two casualties work better than just one.”
“Hurts. Give me a hand…”
“Later, first-“
“NOW, bastard!” A sigh. “Fine, fine. Hold still.” Scruffle. Bang. Bang. SPLASH.
And then quiet, with nothing but a rush of footsteps.
The creek pulled itself within range of big’s shoddy night vision, a creek run lost inside the island’s guts, winding its way down nowhere good. Blood was in the air, on the rocks, and lost to the water – along with both the corpses he could scent, prompting another irritable hiss, larger and louder. He lunged across the fast-flowing current with angry haste, claws touching the far side before the tip of his tail was wetted, and moved down the hall at a fast crawl, the scent of blood and food held firm in his tongue-tip’s grasp.
Light ahead, and a strange gibbering, a laughter, a sound that big didn’t understand and didn’t care about. Big broke into a gallop, all of him dragging behind his legs, a deadweight on a set of furious pistons fronted with serrated teeth.
There was a bright light and a loud noise ahead. There was a chamber, as big entered it. And in its center, a single massive, glittering, golden thing that a species more attracted to bright colours than big’s might have found wonderful. He had no eyes for the statue; his treasure stood before it and was dwarfed against it, meat and flesh, arms outstretched, one hand shining with mechanical sunshine, head tipped back and laughing, laughing, laughing.
“All in one piece and all the wrong size… too big for any one man’s pocket!” said Matthew, as he turned around, face locked into a grin that was all teeth and no mind. “Too big! It’s too big!”
And he was just the right size.

It was on a Tuesday that it showed up – no, wait, that’s not right. It was a Wednesday, and a typical Wednesday too: dead in the water, limp-legged, slouch-backed, and tepid. That was when that big old meteor went and turned itself into a meteorite, cratered right hard right in the middle of the country where the wind blows straight and the horizon’s all around you. Left a pretty big hole, too, but after a few reporters took a couple of pictures and some men in the battered, lackaday clothes of serious science took some samples of soil and rock, that was it for interest. It was just a rock in the end, even if it’d come a million trillion miles to land on our planet and make a hole in it.
Now what grew down in that hole, that was the big business, even if it started as small business. Just a little tuft of white stuff at first. Cream-coloured, if you’d like to be specific, but it was so small it was hard to tell. Real small. Josh Macintyre saw it sprouting there, and some little bit of the back of his brain made him swerve his tractor an inch or three to the right and change the course of history.
So history happened. That little white tuft bloomed and blossomed and ballooned and it got bigger and bigger. It sucked up all the fertilizers on the plants near it, and then the plants, and then the field. It was halfway through sucking up Josh Macintyre’s barn when he called the police down.
“Interesting,” they said. And then they set fire to it.
It sucked up the fire, and then it finished sucking up the barn.
“Try the national guard,” the police said.
The national guard came down, and it brought some more badly-clothed people of science. They scraped and chipped and analyzed, and they said something or other but by then the issue was being voted on by some very important old people and they had no time for pencil-pushing slide-ruling egg-headed science-types. So they voted that the army shoot it until something happened.
The army showed up in some really big machines, pulled out some much smaller but even more dangerous machines and all their little lead snacks, and then they shot it. It sucked up the bullets, expanded out to the highway, and started chewing its way off in all directions, following the asphalt and worrying it like a dog on a bone.
“Maybe we should,” said one of the science people, and he was told to put on his lab coat and go away because we’re BUSY here professor. The thing, whatever it was, was voted on three more times, and after two splits on partisan lines it was agreed that it would be bombed until it was reduced to many small pieces not exceeding three centimeters in diameter. These would be pureed and charred and used to flavour a very lucrative new kind of ice cream sandwich.
It was bombed, duly, and expanded fifty-five times overnight, by which point it was crowding into every major city on the continent. The highways were overgrown lumps of fluffy, puffy white matter, a cross between a marshmallow and a mushroom.
“This is obviously some sort of conspiracy against us,” agreed some of the very important old people, and they voted a bipartisan consensus to find out whose fault it was. For a while it was argued that it could be because of those young people, but it certainly wasn’t any of THEIR grandchildren, THEIR grandchildren knew how to behave properly and respectfully, so it was probably some other country.
The other countries said this probably wasn’t the case, and maybe this was some trick they were trying to pull here, unless they were just mistaken and being silly gooses.
“Up yours,” voted the very important old people.
Take a long walk off a short pier, suggested half of the other countries. No, they make sense, argued the other half.
You and whose armies?
Ours.
Well, OURS!
Ours can beat up yours.
By this point some of the puffy white stuff had punctured its way to the other side of the ocean, running along old undersea cables and such, and everybody was getting fed up with it.
“Obviously,” advised the very important old people of the first country, who were experts at this by now, “the solution is to bomb it harder.”
Right, agreed the rest of the world. And an awful lot of bombing happened, and an awful lot more of the white stuff spread everywhere. It crawled up skyscrapers, it ate up roads, it turned houses into puffy, plumpy caves. It clogged gun barrels, smothered missile stockpiles, and sunk bunkers into big squishy pits.
This was obviously some sort of plot against someone by someone else, so the countries all did the sensible thing and accused each other of harbouring a nasty plot again, especially the ones who’d asked whose armies, because the answer was quite obviously their armies and nobody likes a smartass. So the countries all took a break from bombing the white stuff, which was an unrewarding chore at best anyways, and started bombing each other, which was a lot more satisfying, fun, and traditional. Besides, nothing they tried slowed the damned thing down. It ate the spent munitions, and the exploded bomb shells, and the ruined husks of buildings, and everything worthwhile. And the more they fought the more there was for it to eat. It was getting tiresome in the extreme.
What we need, all the countries decided, separately, independently, and privately, is a bigger bomb.
Luckily, quite a few of the countries had really big bombs, so they broke them all out all over the place, hoping to get rid of the white stuff or maybe at the very least do in its food supply. And that was how most of them vanished overnight in a series of startlingly huge explosions that filled the atmosphere and soil with a lot of really nasty stuff. Luckily, it turned out the white stuff liked to eat it, so the world was only partially unlivable for about a decade.
When that about a decade was over, the white stuff covered a nice big chunk of the planet’s land area, but wasn’t growing too much anymore. No more food for it to expand with, and it was actually shrinking back a bit on the edges. Too much too fast, overreached itself a mite. And down the road came a few people to see what was making it fade away, falling back, to look at all those thousands of miles and millions of tons of matter just shrinking away into nothing.
And just as they were packing up to walk back home, the youngest person there asked the white stuff, “now why’d you do all of that?”
And the white stuff said (in a very small but clear voice, all fibres and filaments): “No-one ever asked me to stop.”

Maude was bored.
This was entirely normal, especially in deep space, especially especially if you were a penniless matter-panner sitting besides a black hole so old and worn it didn’t suck so much as slop, waiting for weeks and weeks on end for something worth taking home to drift through the sieve-and-pan of your un-reality net. Maybe some uranium, maybe some platinum, maybe diamonds, maybe a big ol’ chunk of iron the size of a city-state.
Maude had been here for three months. So far, she’d found a fragment of ice the size of her torso. She’d watched all her old sensetanks three times over and her new ones six, she was starting to run out of meals-u-eats that had organic matter in them, and although she’d brought no mirror on board, she had a strong suspicion her chin was starting to boast more hairs than Harold’s.
So Maude was bored. Very bored indeed. This was why it was such a large surprise when her grungy old un-reality tethers snagged something that that she wasn’t surprised at all. She looked at the instruments: anti-matter, ten thousand tonnes, blah blah blah, and was fully nine-tenths of the way through the procedure to lock the catch into place before exactly what she’d just done sunk in.
“Huh,” said Maude. She did the math. Assuming the demand in the market had – oh, let’s say been cut in half, then half again – she was now richer than all of the last ten governor-generals of her system.
Maude considered this. She could afford to pay off her and Harold’s mortgage. She could afford to pay off her grandchildren’s mortgages. She could afford to buy her planet and most of its neighbours and maybe a luxury palace on Earth for retirement, which she could afford to do right now.
“Well,” said Maude, because that’s all she could think of, and she locked the anti-matter into place, set coordinates for the long chug-a-chug homewards, and did a little hooting, yelping, skipping dance in the middle of the floor. She bruised her elbow on a cupboard and didn’t care in the slightest, and she stuck her head into the longest and most tedious of her sensetanks (Pride and Prejudice and Pirates and Penguins and Prosecutors in Paris, IIV) and paid not the slightest attention to anything that was happening.
This elated state of non-boredom lasted for approximately three days, which was when Maude was stirred from her newfound hobby of calculating the highest rank of politician she could bribe (three presidents at once and the vice-president, plus their lawyers) by the peevish beeping of her proximity alarms.
“Meteor belt,” she decided. Then she looked at the display, and changed her mind because meteors didn’t have that many spikes, or mass launchers.
“Hello, tiny scrap-panning vessel,” hailed the nearest and largest not-a-meteor. “This is High General and Executive Gunner Killowac Murgatroyd of the Scram III.”
“Hello,” said Maude. “Maude Hanover, on the Sally. Whatcha want?”
“Not want, sad to say,” said the heavily armed person on the enormous dreadnought, “but need. A trifling engagement with a patrol destroyer seems to have put a dent in my flagship’s fuel tanks, and I’m afraid my invasion of the sector here could be postponed. You wouldn’t, by chance, have five thousand tonnes of anti-matter to spare, would you?”
Maude considered this, along with the mass launchers, along with the matter disruptors, along with the hyperspace laser batteries.
“Sure,” she said.
“Wonderful,” said the galactic warlord. “A pleasure doing business with you. Goodbye.” And with that, he and his fleet of war machines seized half her anti-matter and dove briskly into hyperspace at ten times the speed she could ever hope for.
“Drat,” said Maude, compressing several times the normal swear-weight of emotion into it. And she went on her way, cussing once every hour like clockwork, doing some revised math. It wasn’t so bad, anyways. She could still afford to bribe the president to go on a manhunt for High General and Executive Gunner Murgatroyd and have enough left over for a nice comfortable planet for her and Harold to retire on. They could bring the rest of the family too, especially if it had some nice beaches. Kids love beaches.
A little more than a week later, she was jolted out of her latest sensetank rehash (The Sun Goes Round the Moon, starring Platt Manderson – she could probably hire him as a masseuse, but Harold would be put out) by the high-pitched wailing on the communicator of a man with nothing left to lose. Sure, the man was a Treeblik, and they don’t have genders, but it was close enough.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I am ruined!” lamented the Treeblik. “Here I am, an honest merchantman-” he caught himself, feeling the touch of skepticism (the only known force in the universe to exceed hyperspace in velocity) “-a reasonably forthright merchantman of limite – adequate means, caught up in ruin and bankruptcy by the plundering and voracious greed of one Killowac Murgatroyd!”
Maude winced a little at this.
“I am plundered and my hold emptied, my years-long pilgrimage of goods-gathering for naught. My assets will be seized, my name disgraced, my company stricken from the registers, and my wife won’t give me hugs anymore.”
Maude drummed her fingers on her armrest and started doing math again. “How much was your cargo worth?”
“A million billion,” said the Treeblik. “Not a penny less!”
“How about I give you five hundred tonnes of anti-matter?” asked Maude.
The Treeblik performed an elaborate and ancestrally practiced double-take, which took up twenty seconds and two-thirds of his bridge. “Please,” he managed at last, in a strangled voice that suggested most of his vocal chords were absent.
“Done deal,” said Maude. She transferred it over and got out before the Treeblik could start to sing one of his maternal victory cadenzas. “Not so bad,” she said to herself. “Not so bad.” She’d just have to rent out a continent or two to make ends meet, and maybe bribe the vice-president instead. “Not so bad.” Then she decided she’d done enough math, and plunged her head into the sensetank for The Joy of Art History, coming up for air only two weeks later, when she almost ran straight into the leading ship of a million-strong fleet.
“What’s going on?” asked Maude.
“Refugees seeking refuge,” said the leader, a dour and muscular Murmosap with forearms that could consume sharks in three bite-and-shakes of their jaws. “A manic moron calling himself the High General and Executive Gunner shot out of hyperspace, ordered everyone off-planet, blasted it open down to the core, took all the mineral resources, and shot off again.”
“Mmpph,” said Maude, trying appear sympathetic while wincing so hard her jaw hurt.
“And to top it all off, we’re in whatever we could grab and fly,” said the Murmosap, the pessimism seeping in through his eyeballs more throughly still, “so half of us are having to push the other half around by now on account of idiots driving no-account pleasure craft with the fuel efficiency of a paralyzed jetliner. And we’re all running low again. Doom rides abroad and the end is nigh.”
“How nigh?” asked Maude.
“About a week. I did the math.”
Maude did more math herself. She was beginning to dislike it. “How many of your ships can take antimatter?”
“A lot, probably. We’ve got enough mechanics to jury-rig something in the bigger boats anyways.”
“Would a sliver each help matters?”
A sliver each in a million ships came up to a thousand or so tonnes, but by the time the refugee fleet was fading in Maude’s sensor range, it was already accelerating again. And it was okay. She could still rent out a continent on a nice, sensible, stable planet, bribe the governor general to lay it easy on the taxes, eat out at ridiculously fancy restaurants once every month, put the kids through nice stable schools. It’d be fine. It’d be fine.
“Hello?” asked a high-pitched voice over her communicator. “Help?”
“Problems?” asked Maude.
“Baby problems,” said the voice.
“Ah, been there,” said Maude.
“Oh good. I was hoping I’d get someone who understood. Tell me, can you spare a few thousand tonnes of anti-matter?”
Maude blinked. “Baby problems?”
“Yes, she’s starting to teeth in there, and if I don’t feed her soon, she’ll eat her way out through my left ventricle. I wouldn’t mind so much if it wouldn’t kill her too – she’s not ready for raw cosmic radiation yet, poor dear. Needs another few years.”
“Oh,” said Maude. “Sure. Take it.”
“You’re a kindly dear,” said the high-pitched voice. Something composed of what Maude’s sensors refused to consider as matter stirred centimetres off her port bow, and there it went, two and a half thousand tonnes of anti-matter, chewed away in a flash. “I wouldn’t impose like this, but some wicked man took a shot at me while I was feeding, and I had to flee all the way out here away from proper dining locations, and you’re the first person to come by with a proper meal.”
“It’s all good,” said Maude. She could probably bribe the planetary senator now. It was likely. Not that she’d need to; she could afford the taxes on a city-home without a blink for the next couple generations.
“Oh you modest little thing. Thank you so much; I’ll drop by when she’s due and let you meet her. Take care now!”
Maude cruised in idle for the next month, taking in everything, letting the sensetanks lie, keeping her mind lazy. And there went the sensors again. Bip. Bip. Bip. Something sitting still in space, idling there as she mosied closer. It was a few miles long and a few miles wide and most of it was built around and outside a big complicated prong that looked a lot like a cannon. Huge and beautiful (now half-obliterated) murals on its side marked it as a Steed-ship of the Non-Holy Siblingdom of Secularism, operated by a single knight.
It wasn’t moving, and large chunks of it were missing.
Maude sighed. “Good Samaritan,” she said, in a very uncomplimentary way, and then she punched the communicator until it worked.
“Greetings,” said the ship’s occupant. She was a spectacularly large and fit Heronius Zach, at least sixteen inches tall, possessed of a prize-fighter’s physique and sensitive, soulful ears that stared firmly at Maude with a perfect openness that would’ve obliterated a politician’s soul.
“Hey,” said Maude. “Problems?”
“A little,” admitted the Heronius Zach. “I am Knight-Questor Iz. Is the madman known as Killowac Murgatroyd still afoot?”
“Probably,” admitted Maude. “He’s pretty mobile. Which is my fault.”
“I’m sorry?” said Iz.
“It’s a – well, not a long story. Listen,” and Maude told her.
“You didn’t have much of a choice,” said Iz. “What is done is done, and would’ve been done whether you allowed it or not. ‘Where there is no choice, there is neither shame nor pride.’ That is a quote and also a fact.”
“Mmm,” said Maude.
“Don’t mmm me, please. Ambiguous denials are purposeless and cause premature mental fatigue. Now, which way would you say Murgatroyd was traveling? My drives are online again.”
Maude told her.
“Straight towards the system capital,” said Iz, and gave a little wiff that was the sigh of the Heronius Zach. “Of course. Plunder the most there. I can catch him before he makes it, I expect.”
“That going to be enough gun to stop him?” asked Maude.
“Ordinarily?” said Iz. “Yes. He punched a hole through my magazine, though, and I had to eject about a third of the ship to save the rest. I have enough fire for one fairly solid shot, and ambiguously defined concept of hope be willing, that should be enough to take out his flagship if placed correctly.”
Maude thought that was the longest possible way of saying ‘no,’ she’d ever heard, and she lived with Harold, a man so shy that he swept up after the rats and politely suggested that maybe they should look into moving along soon and getting their own place.
“What kind of ammunition does that thing take?” she asked.
“Just about anything that can explode – I make due with what I have. It consumes so much in each volley, though, it has to have a good deal of it.
“How about one thousand tonnes of anti-matter?”
Iz scratched her left nose. “Yes, that would work very nicely. Close to perfect, actually. Is it refined?”
“No.”
“Treated?”
“No.”
“Inspected for potentially lethal impurities?”
“Not even a little.”
“Yes, that should be absolutely perfect. Thank you.”
It wasn’t more than mere minutes after the transfer took place that the Steed-ship’s cannon began to warm up again, and it was seconds after that that the Knight-Questor took off at a lot over the speed of light, with a fare-thee-well and thanks-again.
And after that, Maude went home, home, home, just her, the Sally, and a piece of ice the size of her torso. It took a few more weeks, but she was in no hurry now, and when she got there the first thing she did was put her feet up as high as she could and then have a shower and also sleep somewhere that didn’t smell like meals-u-eat.
When she woke up, Harold was waiting with a large drink that was about fifty-percent ice cubes.
“You brought it home, you get a slice,” he said.
“About all I got this time.”
“Not true, not true,” said Harold, “not true at all.”
Maude was too tired to dispute it, so they watched the news instead. It was dull as dishwater; nothing much had happened since the firefight just over the atmosphere last week, where twenty rogue dreadnoughts had been blown into little pieces and sold off for scrap.
“Huh,” said Maude, and kept watching. At some point this smoothly transitioned into snoring.
Harold carefully draped a blanket over her feet, then got up to silence the shrill beeping of the communicator, jumping quite violently as he came face-to-teeth with the forearms of a Murmosap.
“Sorry,” said the Murmosap. “Is she home yet?”
“Oh! Oh yes. But she’s put her feet up for now. Could you call back tomorrow?”
“Right, right. But these scrap options aren’t going to hold themselves together forever. Sure, we hauled it – and did a damned fine job in a hurry too, for civilians, if you ask me or anyone else – but there’s enough lawyers around that I don’t trust that particular fact to stay relevant forever.”
“Well, why don’t you get that nice Treeblik gentleman to talk to them? He’s your agent, he’s meant to do this sort of thing.”
The Murmosap wearily moistened his eyes against his forearm’s tongues. “Christ in a crater, he’s done enough of that for two lifetimes. He practically THRIVES on it. Much more of this, and they’re going to sue him out of spite. Nobody likes to see a happy face in a legal procedure, you know?”
“Oh, you worry too much,” said Harold. “It’ll be fine, fine, fine. At least until tomorrow. You’ll see, she’ll know just what to do. And she can probably help you lot decide what planet to buy. She’s always liked that sort of thing.”
“Not an easy choice to make, help or no,” mused the Murmosap.
“It’ll be fine,” said Harold. “She’s good at choices. She should be proud of that.”