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The problem started – as it so often did – with Little Hmen’s efforts to be more like his big brother Surmok.  When Surmok built a raft, Little Hmen did too, and had to be fished out of the river before the caimans got at him.  When Surmok began to get friendly with girls, Little Hmen took up poking his sister with a stick and had to be spanked.  When Surmok carefully crafted an atlatl and some darts with his father’s help, Little Hmen took up his stick again and tried hitting it with rocks.  He missed the stick, but hit his foot.  When Little Hmen heard tales of his brother’s famous skills of eld in hide-and-seek, he ran away from home and hid in a hollow stump for three days before coming back hungry. 
This time, the problem was a bit more serious. 
It started with Surmok putting that atlatl to good use.  He drew back his arm, dart nestled snugly in the cupped end of the throwing-stick, hurled it hard and fast, and watched as the shaft embedded itself in a tree trunk some hundred feet away.  He grinned, all those white teeth flashing in the crisp, happy sunlight, and Little Hmen suddenly wanted to try that very badly indeed. 
“Let me do it,” said Little Hmen, as his brother reloaded. 
“It’s too big.  Go away,” said Surmok absently.  He was already sighting the next tree, imagining it as a nice fat meal on legs. 
“Please?” asked Little Hmen?
“No.”
“Pleeease?” whined Little Hmen, and this was where he made his mistake, because he tugged on Surmok’s tunic to get his attention and pulled a bit harder than he’d thought he would, right as Surmok was leaning back and balancing to get the throw just right.  He lurched and danced on the spot to keep his footing, and the toss of the dart went nowhere near that tree.  Up, up, up, up, and up it went, high into the sky, so high that it seemed it would touch the sun. 
Which it did.  Speared it, in fact. 
The sun toppled down past the horizon with a wail that woke up sleeping people a hundred-day’s-walk away, and the world went dark at midday. 

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Little Hmen to his father and the rest of their gathered village at large. 
“Yes it was,” said Surmok. 
“Well, I didn’t mean to,” pointed out Little Hmen. 
Their father rubbed his face wearily.  He needed some sort of drink made from an interesting plant and a bit of quiet and a nice shady spot to enjoy his drink in.  Of the three, he was blessed only with an abundance of the last.  Being the chief was less than a good thing some days, which were most days. 
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is –” said Father. 
“It’s his,” said Surmok.
“No it isn’t!” said Little Hmen.
“-but we still need to fix it.  You broke the sun.  We need that.  We’re going to need some really big magic to fix that.  Someone like Murri Three-Noses.”
“He’s dead,” called Father’s cousin from the crowd.  “Ate a turtle without chewing for a bet.”
“He choked to death?  I heard he could break boulders by breathing on them!”
“No, it went in fine, it was more when it was leaving.”
There was a moment. 
“Right,” said father. 
“How about Slelloc Slell?” suggested grandfather Takl.  “I heard he juggled a mountain once on his littlest finger, and brought a jaguar home as a pet when he was an infant.”
“That was sixty years ago,” said Father. 
“He’s only learned more since then.”
“He’s forgotten half of it.  I heard that he brought rain to a village last year, and it was bright purple.  And then it flooded them all out.  He can barely remember how to dress himself now, let alone any magic.” 
“Hrrmmph,” said Takl. 
“Cloli Bloodletter?” called a voice. 
“Asks for children as payment,” replied Father’s cousin. 
“Ixchol the Quick?” proposed Surmok, who remembered him from some of the stories his mother used to tell him. 
“Lost a footrace with a zephyr a month ago, has to spend a year without moving a muscle from where he sits,” said grandfather Takl.  “Serves the damned fool right for his brashness.”
“What about Elder Lactl?” suggested Mother. 
“She’s crazy,” said Father.
“She works just fine, crazy or not.  She took that curse off your aunt very nicely.”
“She made her wear a necklace of fish heads for three months.”
“And the smell worked just fine to drive off the curse now, didn’t it?  I say we go with her.”
“She’s a woman,” grumbled grandfather Takl.
“So am I,” said Mother, “and you managed to survive me until I married Xapa.”
Father looked out across the village.  “Any other ideas?”
Murmurs reached a mumbled consensus: no.
“Then we send out the call to Elder Lactl,” said Father.  “And she and my sons will go and try to fix this business before it gets out of hand.  In the meantime, I think we’ll need a name for this new thing that’s popped up with the sun gone.  Let’s call it the dark.”

Elder Lactl was called in the traditional way.  Everyone got together and caught every animal they could find – mostly bats, which seemed to be enjoying the new ‘dark,’ and insects – and asked them politely to get her to come over. 
Then they waited.
And waited.
And waited a little more.  They weren’t quite sure exactly how long, though.  Not with the sun missing, no longer weaving its cheerful circle around the edge of the sky to show the hours of the day ticking past. 
“Cloi Bloodletter steals the wings of eagles and flies a hundred leagues in a minute,” muttered one. 
“Ixchol the Quick could spin the world three times on a single sprint,” grumbled Surmok. 
“Hah!” said grandfather Takl.  “Slelloc Slell once voyaged to the stars and back on a boat made from a single feather – and all in an afternoon!”
“Only place he travels to nowadays is his chamberpot,” said mother.  Grandfather Takl mumbled something about the rudeness of youth and the cruelty of your children. 
At long last, Elder Lactl came, bumping and jostling down the muddy old trade route.  She was sitting on her hat, legs crossed firmly above the rim as it slid along the dirt, spinning and oscillating so that she never faced squarely forwards.  It came to a gradual halt in the village square, spinning her about to face the small assembly of curious witnesses with her bent back. 
“Hey ho there,” she spoke to empty air as Father adjusted his tattered and dusty ceremonial headdress, freshly-plucked from its languishment under his bed.  “What’s the problem?”
Father adjusted his planned speaking style from ceremonial to straightforward in self defence.  “The sun’s gone.  Can you fix it?”
“Oh, right,” said Elder Lactl, stepping from her hat and stretching her spine.  The thousands of intricate little beads on strings that made up her robe clicked and clacked together like a fistful of pebbles, skittering off the surface of the long, long knife that dangled from her neck like a razor-edged pendant.  “Sure!  Who did it?  Someone must’ve done it.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” said Little Hmen. 
Elder Lactl laughed, and bent down to look at him face to face.  The old, old woman’s skin looked more tanned and beaten than grandfather Takl’s old trophy jaguar skin, she smelt like dust and dirt, and her nose was longer than the length of a stretched finger.  But the thing about her that made Little Hmen stare was neither of these; it was her eyes.  They were a clear, deep brown, still sharp, and quite obviously not looking at the same thing as anyone else was, ever.  They were sorcerer’s eyes, magic eyes, and he felt very odd indeed seeing them turned on him. 
“No, I expect not,” she said, straightening up (barely) and taking that worrying gaze off Little Hmen.  “Boys will be lads, always breaking their toys.”
“He broke the sun,” said father, rather pointedly. 
“Toys, suns, same things.  Always something shiny to the imagination that goes smash proper when you drop it.  Especially something forbidden.  ‘Don’t look at it!’ you warn them, so of course first comes looking, then touching, then breaking.  This is exactly why I never had any children of my own you know.  Troublesome, aren’t they?”  The last was addressed in a conspiratorial tone to Little Hmen.  He shrugged. 
“Well, there’s no use crying over spilt sunshine.  I’ll take your boy here with me and we’ll be on our way to go fix up this mess.  Better take your other one with me too, seeing as he threw the dart in the first place.  Bless him, but he must have a good arm.  We might need that.”
Surmok opened his mouth to protest innocence, and immediately shut it under the baleful glower of his mother’s expression. 
“Right then,” said Elder Lactl.  “Best move off while the night’s young.”
The trip was long and far, farther than Little Hmen or even Surmok had ever been from home before.  That wasn’t saying much, but still.  Little Hmen was sure that they’d been walking for days, missing sun or no, and it was scarcely an even bearing of burdens – each stride of Surmok’s was two or three of his and Elder Lactl simply sat on her hat and let it bear her where she wished, usually facing the wrong direction.  This was a good thing; not only did it take that gaze of hers away from them, but it also meant that the greater amount of her rambling spilled into the forest, away from their ears.  Elder Lactl talked a lot – no, more than a lot.  Elder Lactl talked more than grandfather Takl in a reminiscing mood, something that both the brothers had separately and privately concluded to be impossible earlier in their lives.  She talked about animals, and plants, and places she’d seen, and people she’d known, and about the weather and the sky and she never, ever stopped.  It was more tiring than the walk, even as the ground grew high and rocky. 
Finally, after a particularly lengthy anecdote about a troublesome tapir made Lactl pause for breath, Little Hmen seized the chance to ask the question that had been brewing in his head for half the trip. 
“Are we there yet?”
“Hmm?  Oh no, no, no, no!  Not in the least!  Why, first we’ve got to go the wrong way.”
The two brothers stopped and stared at that, in spite of all their parents had taught them about manners (important when dealing with your elders) and respect (very important when dealing with magic).  It was quite all right, as Elder Lactl was too busy steering her hat around a troublesome mud patch to notice, frowning as the edge of its brim toed the muck. 
“Tricky, tricky – we need to find the sun, see?  The poor thing’s gone haring off wounded thanks to the rotten luck you boys had.  So we need to track it.  But the sun’s in the sky, you see.  You can’t track that from the ground, oh no my never.  Sky’s the only way to go.  And to track its path in the sky, we’ll need something that travels through the sky.  And this old hat just won’t cut it, sad to say as the truth is.  So we’re going to hunt up something a bit better.”
“Eagle wings?” asked Surmok.
“No.  They get awfully, terribly crabby whenever you try and borrow them.  I’m not as young as you; I don’t heal that fast anymore.”
“A boat made from a feather?” suggested Little Hmen.
“They make me sneeze.  No, no, no, I’ve a better plan.  We’re right near the mountains now, boys, and I’m going to call in a favour from a friend with a wonderful nose.  Plug your eyes, would you?”
Elder Lactl put a finger between her teeth and another in her ear, squinted one eye shut and bulged the other, and let out a whistle so piercing that it set both the brothers’ teeth a-quivering.  Right away there was a flapping and fluttering in the sky and down came a bird smaller than half a hummingbird, cloaked from skull to tail-tip and all about the wings with the most beautifully pure white feathers, so clear and clean they made clouds look dirty.  It landed on the tip of Elder Lactl’s long, long nose and gave her a most cunning look. 
“Elder Lactl,” said the bird, its voice like music on the ears.  “What do you want?”
“We’re looking for the sun, Condor,” explained the old magic woman.  “And it’s not at all these boys’ fault.  Understood?”
Condor looked a bit confused. 
“Good.  Anyways, I happen to know you have the most marvellous nose in all the things that fly.  Would you mind putting it to use for us?  Smell us out the sun’s resting place, if you would be so good.  I promise, I’ll help you out.”
“I guess so,” said Condor.  “But this had better be worth it.  The sun burns my nose and makes my head itch.”  He took off again, circled them thrice, and dipped in the air. 
“Follow me!” he called.  So they followed him, deeper and longer into the mountains, through crevasses and over crags, around ravines and past moraines. 
“Follow me,” he called as they walked over snow and ice, the brothers shivering in weather far, far colder yet than any they’d ever wished to imagine, let alone endure.  Elder Lactl remained oblivious to the temperature, and offered them icicles to lick. 
“Stop!” he announced, as they were clinging to a cliffside (except for Lactl, who was sitting on her hat as it slid down the face inch by careful inch).  “Just to your left.  No, your other left, Little Hmen.  There.  The cave.”
There it was, a broad, flat, gaping cave opening.  The air that came from it was dry and flat, as appealing as breathing sand.  
“Well, I’ll be filled with toucans,” marvelled Elder Lactl as they gingerly sidled into the place’s depths.  “The underworld.  It slid all the way down into the underworld.  My, boy, but you do have a good throwing arm.  And you’re going to need it in a moment, because you can’t come down here without a fight.”
Sure enough, a pair of men were standing farther down the tunnel.  Their feet were planted firmly on the ceiling, their bodies were withered bone with thin skins, and their eyes gone and empty. 
“Halt,” pointed out the one on the right. 
“And die,” submitted the one on the left.
“Can we leave now?” asked Little Hmen.  The knives those dead men were carrying were obsidian, finer than glass and sharper than his mother’s mind. 
“No leaving,” the two stated firmly.  “That’s the rule.  Come in, but don’t leave.”
“Well, we’re definitely going to have to get the sun to leave,” said Elder Lactl.  “So I’m afraid we’ll have to change that rule of yours.”
“Make us,” said the men. 
“Certainly.  I bet you each of us can defeat you once each when we return through here.  And if we do, you have to let us go.  Does that sound fine to you?”
The two dead men grinned at each other, a fine and tricky feat to perform when your jaw muscles are locked.  “It does.”  With a creaking of joints and a shedding of dust they stood aside, arms crossed and locked across their rotting barrel-chests, vicious knives sheathed carefully in their bony ribs. 
“That was too easy,” said Surmok as they walked farther down the tunnels, opening up into caves and shapes that were too weird to be real. 
“Oh, not at all,” said Elder Lactl.  “It’s easy to get down into the underworld.  Everybody does it sooner or later.  They just get shirty about you trying to leave.  Now, Condor, which way was that sun?”
“Follow me,” said Condor, and they went on and in, further into the underworld, farther from where living people should ever be.  The ground grew harsh and spiked, too cruel for warm feet to tread; the walls turned into things that weren’t; the ceiling wasn’t there and was there at the same time while not being either.  And the whole place was covered in mists and fogs that Little Hmen and Surmok were never entirely sure existed.  Maybe they were just imagining them so they wouldn’t have to see what was really there.  Then again, Elder Lactl bobbed along cheerfully on her hat, nose twitching, sorcerer’s-eyes staring at things that hurt to look at as happily as a snake in a bird’s nest. 
“It’s here,” said Condor.  The little bird was looking less than well himself.  He kept twitching at any sounds smaller than a footstep.  But he was right: there was the sun, floating in a pool of water, light flickering feebly, weighted down by the embedded bulk of Surmok’s dart. 
“Oh dear,” said Elder Lactl.  “This is very bad.  Worse than I thought.  Your arm is even stronger than I thought, love, and a good thing too.  You’ll need that when you all walk out of here.”  She cracked her knuckles and stepped off her hat, shook herself like a cat coming out of the rain, and picked it up. 
“Now,” she said, placing it most carefully on her head, “is time for the magic.  First you, Condor.  What do you want?”
“A wish for myself,” said the Condor.  “For later.”
“Saving up, eh?  Clever bird.”  Elder Lactl blew on her hand and licked her knife and put them together, then pulled away the little splash of blood that came out of this and did something that made it vanish in a little piff of light.  “There you go!  Just wish hard, and it’s yours.  A hard bargain, but a good one.”
“What about the sun?” asked Little Hmen.  “Are we going to carry it?”  He asked the last with a worried whine in his voice, and for good reason – just standing near the pool made your skin crawl with uncomfortable warmth.  Dim it might be, but cool it wasn’t. 
“Dear me no. don’t you worry your little head there at all.  We can’t carry it back into the sky; the idea is to get it rising all on its own again, under its own power.  Surmok, would you like to help it?”
Surmok edged his way to the pool cautiously, gripped his dart by its shaft, and pulled.  His knuckles smoked lightly as he yanked away the weapon, its wooden point stained radiant with the sun’s blood. 
“It tore the muscle,” he said.  “Will it fly again?”
They looked at the sun expectantly.  It managed a few weak bobs that took it to just level with Little Hmen’ chin, then gave up and splashed back into the pool. 
Elder Lactl clucked her tongue and drew her knife once more.  “Pity.  Ah well, I thought it would come to this.  The poor thing needs to lighten itself.  And since I seem to be in possession of the lightest thing among us, it’s time I parted ways with both it and all of you.”
“What?” said Condor and Surmok, largely at once.  Little Hmen was too busy looking at his brother’s newly burnished dart. 
“Be quiet for a moment,” said Elder Lactl, and she cut open her chest.  Blood poured out slowly as she yanked and tugged on her ribs, broke one, two, three, four, and pulled out her heart, which she carefully slipped loose of its bounds. 
“Here you go,” she said brightly, and dropped it into the sun.  Then she fell over dead. 
In the surprised silence that followed, Little Hmen was the first to notice and point at the sun.  It was floating, bobbing up uneasily and wobbly on thin air, light as a feather or an old witch’s heart. 
“I think we’d better leave,” said Condor. 
The trip back was easier, if only because they had but to retrace their bloody footsteps, tracking the remnants left by the rough rocks underfoot, taking it in turns to fan the floating sun forwards and upwards.  Up until the very maw of the underworld, and the dead men that guarded it. 
“A challenge,” mused the one on the right, which was now the one on the left. 
“As agreed,” chuckled the one on the left, who was on the right. 
“The child first,” they said together.  “Let us spare him seeing his brother die.”
Little Hmen thought for a moment.  “Can I face one of you?  I’m half as big as a grownup.”
The dead men shrugged.  “It can be so.”
“I pick hide-and-seek.”
“I will seek,” said the one on the left that was on the right.
“Count to ten.”
The dead man did so.  Little Hmen hid behind his brother. 
“You are not hiding very well,” said the dead man. 
Surmok looked behind him, at his little brother, and realized something. 
“You can’t see him, can you?”
“No,” admitted the dead man. 
“It doesn’t count, and I should know.  I was the best and hide-and-seek in the village, and I say if you can’t see him, you haven’t found him.”
The dead man grunted and shoved and heaved and pulled, but it couldn’t budge its feet from where they sunk into the roof of the tunnel. 
“Fine,” it said in poor grace.  “The child passes.”  Little Hmen walked between them with fear in his heart, but it was for nothing.  The knuckles of the dead men twitched on their knife-handles, but nothing more. 
“Now it is the bird’s turn,” they said.
“Easily done,” said Condor.  “I challenge you to smell what I smell.”
There was a pause, during which the dead man on the right who was on the left felt the gaping hole where his nose had been.  It was not a kindly one. 
Condor had the good grace to take his victory in silence. 
“The man then,” seethed the dead men as one. 
“I challenge you,” said Surmok, “to best my throw.  I’ll wager I can hurl a dart farther than either of you, and I’ll even forgo my atlatl, to make things fair.”
The two dead men looked at their great bony arms, then at Surmok’s (relative) slimness, and they burst into laughter, the long, hard, cold laughter of the dead that can go on forever, and sometimes does.  “Agreed,” they chuckled, and each plucked loose their spine, blackened and bone-spiked, a great javelin thicker than Surmok’s waist.
“On the count of three, as one we throw,” he said.  “One,” grip the darts, “two,” brace the hold, strike the pose, “three,” go. 
Up and out soared Surmok’s dart, no longer hidden by his hand, and as it was loosed – just a fraction’s split ahead of the two giant spears – it shone with bright line, the blood of the sun.  The dead men roared and groaned and clutched at their empty eyes that couldn’t see in agony, and their throws clattered hollowly off the walls of the underworld, aim spent and wasted. 
“I pass,” Surmok said, and ran through rather hastily, before they could change their minds. 
Last came the sun, floating up from below, and the dead men were in no mood to talk. 
“Cheat.”
“Friend of cheats.”
“Do not leave,” they said, and swung their bare fists at it as hard as they could.
There was a flash, a scream and a sizzle, and the dead men weren’t there anymore.  Unfortunately, the sun had been wedged rather tightly into the ceiling. 
“I can’t reach it,” said Little Hmen. 
“I can’t reach it,” said Surmok. 
“I can,” said Condor, and he flew up and up to the sun in its prison.  He pecked and heaved at the rock and tugged and snipped at the sun and nothing came of it but singed feathers and a sore beak, no matter how hard he tried. 
“I wish I were bigger!” he cursed.  And then lo and behold, there was a swirl and shake and he was bigger, bigger than Surmok and Little Hmen and their mother and father all put together.  His wings nearly burst the tunnel’s walls with their thunder, and with two sharp blows he smashed the rock with his wings.  A snap of his mouth plucked loose the sun, and with his hardest breath he blew it loose, up, up, up and out of the underworld, tumbling loose and wild into the sky. 
‘It’s out,” said Little Hmen, scrambling into the open air. 
“It’s not steady,” frowned Surmok, watching its ascent with worried eyes. 
Condor didn’t say anything, and on questioning couldn’t.  His throat was burned away to near-nothing, his beautiful feathers had been burnt to black almost all over his body, and his head was bald and scorched.  Despite all the thanks offered to him he was in no fit mood for company, and so set off home immediately. 
Surmok and Little Hmen took their time walking back, and so noticed a new difficulty: the sun was falling.  Instead of settling back into its comfortable spiral around the sky, it arched up, up to the very top, then began to slide back down again.  By the time they were home, that awful dark had appeared once more. 
“Well, that isn’t good,” said Father when they told him what they’d done.  “All that effort, just for one day?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” said Little Hmen. 
“There’s only so much lightness in one heart,” said Surmok.  “Maybe it ran out.”
“Well, we’d better get it some more,” said Father.  “And there’s got to be an easier way of doing it.  We can’t send someone all the way to the underworld each and every time we want some sunlight.”
“Yes we can,” said Surmok, who’d just had an idea pop into his head.  “It’s easy to get into the underworld.  Everybody does it.  We just need to send someone down with their heart in hand.  A good light heart.  That’s the important bit; it has to be light.”
There was a very long conversation after that, and that’s where most of the rules were laid out. 

The above myth is considered to be the only known rationale given for a rather peculiar quirk of Xlalec religion.  Although their sun cult emphasized – as did many others – the necessity of sacrifice to maintain the sun’s presence, it is the only known example that demanded that its priests be skilled comedians. 

 

“Sunshine” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

Three people sat on a hill, legs dangling, the back-and-forth swing of their calves showing bone idleness and deep, deep boredom in a contemplative mingling.  Two of them were gods. 
“This is dull,” said one, at length. 
They examined the rolling-out spread of the world around and above and beneath them. 
“Very,” agreed the other, eventually. 
“Let’s fix that,” said the first.  “Perhaps we should make something.”
“That sounds pretty good,” said the second.  “Who should we make?”
“How about some humans?  Let’s make some humans.”
“You did that already,” said the third person, who was a human. 
“Hmm,” said the first god, stretching lazily.  “That’s right.  I forgot that part.  Let’s make someone else this time.  There’s no sense doing what you’ve already done.”
So they got up, all three of them, and they walked over to earth from heaven.  It’s a nice place to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. 
“Well, I’m bushed,” said the human. 
“But we just started,” said the first god. 
“Maybe you’ve just started but I’m just about through,” said the human.  “That’s a long walk, from all the way over there to all the way over here.  I’m going to take a bit of a nap, if you don’t mind too much.  I’ll catch up when I’m done with my rest.”  The human curled up under a tree, to keep the sun away, and wouldn’t move, argue as the other two might. 
“I’m sleeping,” said the human.  “Go away.  Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
“But we have to worry about you,” said the first god.  “If we don’t, who will?”
“And besides,” added the second, “you’re going to miss out.   We’re going to make all sorts of good things.”
“I’ll see it when I’m done my nap,” said the human, and fell asleep. 
The gods gave up.  There was just no arguing with humans when they decided like that. 
“So, what shall we make?” asked the first god, as they wandered through the trees.  Those were some good trees, and they felt pretty fine, knowing they’d made those on their last trip. 
“Let’s make some things for the humans,” said the second god.  “If they like it, it’s good.  If they don’t like it, it’ll teach them to not laze about while we’re trying to help them, and that’s good too.  There’s no bad about it.”
“That’s smart,” said the first god.  “Let’s give them a way to build homes.”
“They’re a bit naked with all that skin,” agreed the second god.  “And they’re too big to fit in most burrows.  Not that they’re any hands at digging.  That’s a good idea.”
“It is,” said the first god.  “What should they make them out of?”
“How about bits of trees?” said the second.  “There’s lots of trees.  I’ll bet we could just take some bits off them and mash them together in a new shape.”
“Let’s do that,” said the first god.  So they took a whole lot of the bits of the trees and mashed them up, but they couldn’t get them to stick. 
“This isn’t working,” said the second god.  “Your idea isn’t that good.”
“You wanted trees,” said the first god.  “We need something to hold this together.  Maybe something sticky.”  The first god’s eye alit on a bug buzzing through the shrubs, something they’d made at the end of the last trip.  “Hey, wasp, you want to help here?”
“Sure,” said the wasp.  “What do you need?”
“Something sticky,” said the second god.
“I’ve got that,” said the wasp, and it spewed its spit all over the tree bits and spread them real thin and tidy, all chewed up and gummed into paste.  They stuck together like anything, and the wasp turned that gunk into a good little hut. 
“That’s good,” said the first god.  “Really good.”
“That’s small,” pointed out the second god.  “Really small.”
“It’s just right,” said the wasp.  “Look, see how well it fits!”
“Fits you, maybe,” said the first god.  “But not a human.”
“If you wanted a human house, you should’ve asked for one,” said the wasp.  “This one’s for me.”
The second god shrugged.  “I guess so.  Thanks anyways, wasp.  Goodbye.”
“Goodbye.”
So the gods left the wasp and its little house, and walked down to the river to splash their feet and think on new things. 
“That wasn’t too good,” said the first god.  “Let’s try again.  What else do humans need?”
“Some weapons,” said the second god.  “Their teeth and claws are awfully small.  Let’s give them some strong teeth and jaws, at least.”
“I think that’s a fine plan,” said the first god.  So they made themselves some nice strong teeth, big and smooth and sharp as anything, and some fine jaw muscles to go with them. 
“How do we put them in?” asked the first god. 
“I thought you’d know,” said the second. 
They argued for a while. 
“Look, let’s get someone to try them on,” said the second, at length. 
“Fine,” said the first.  “Hey, beaver, try these teeth on, will you?”
The beaver eyed the teeth with wary caution.  “They look awfully big.  You sure this is a good idea?”
“It’ll be fine,” said the first god, with confidence.  “Here, take them.”
“All right,” said the beaver.  So it put the teeth in and champed them around a bit, to get the feel of them.  “What do I test them on?”
“Try this rock,” suggested the second god.
The beaver bit the rock, and chipped a tooth.  “Well, that wasn’t very smart,” it said. 
“I guess not,” admitted the second god.  “How about that tree?”
The beaver bit the tree, then gnawed the tree, then chewed the tree, and it fell over right into the water, ker-splosh. 
“That worked a lot better,” said the beaver.  “Can I try that again?”
“Sure,” said the first god. 
So the beaver bit and gnashed and chewed ten fine young trees, one after another, each falling ker-splosh into the water. 
“These are good teeth,” said the beaver.  “I like these teeth.”
“That’s great,” said the second god.  “Mind if we take them back now.”
“I guess not,” said the beaver.  “I’ll miss them.”
So the gods grabbed ahold of one tooth each, but yank and tug as they might, not a single incisor would budge.  
“Oops,” said the second god.
“That isn’t good,” said the first god. 
“I don’t mind keeping them,” said the beaver hopefully. 
“I guess you’d better,” said the second god.  “We’d have to pull out most of your head to get them out too.  And you’ll need that.  Well, thanks anyways, beaver.”
“Thank you,” said the beaver.  It had an idea of what it wanted to do with those trees.  Muddy burrows in the riverbed were all well and good, but all that loose lumber was giving it plans. 
The gods walked away from the beaver and its river, thoughts working hard.  Their wandering feet roved them up into the rocky highlands, up against a big cliff.  They climbed up to its very tip and sat down, legs swinging again. 
“So, no homes,” said the first god. 
“Seems not,” said the second. 
“And no weapons,” continued the first. 
“Not this way, no,” agreed the second. 
“We should at least make sure they have something nice.  Something no one else can do.”
“How about talking?” said the second. 
“Birds call.  Wolves howl.  Whales sing.  Crickets chirrup.  Cats purr –”
“All right, not like that then,” said the second.  “How about a way to talk without talking?”
“Everybody does that,” said the first.  “Shrugging.  Flapping.  Strutting.  Posturing. ”
“Then what about a way to talk without being there at all?”
“That’s crazy,” said the first. 
“I’ll show you.”  So the second god broke off a sharp piece of flint from the cliff and scratched and scraped some little markings on the dirt. 
“All right.  See that little picture of a bear I drew?”
“Yes.”
“That means a bear.  See?  All we have to do is leave a picture like this, and anyone who looks at it knows what we meant.  Humans can do it too.  That takes some good brains, and they’ve got pretty good brains.”
“That’s a good idea,” said the first god.  “And they can even do it on other rocks?”
“Probably,” said the second god, and gave it a shot.  The flint drawing tool snapped on the cliff face, spilling splinters onto the dirt beneath. 
“Maybe not,” admitted the second god. 
“Oops,” said the first god.  “Well, I’m just about out of ideas.  This is harder than I thought.”
“Let’s take a break,” proposed the second god.  So they walked back to heaven and fell asleep. 

Down below in the forest, the human woke up and took a good stretch, refreshed right as rain.  A wasp buzzed by, and then another. 
“What’re you up to?” asked the human. 
“Building!” said the wasp.  “Busy, busy, busy building!  So much to work on!  I made just one little home, and now all my friends and relations want one.  We’re building a home for all of us!”
“That sounds pretty impressive,” said the human.  “Mind if I look?”
“Sure,” said the wasp.  So the human came and looked.  The wasp nest was a nice big papery ball wedged in the fork of a big old oak.  The older, smaller nest hung from a branch under it.
“Hmm,” said the human.  “It looks a bit dirty.”
“They forgot to wipe their feet,” complained the wasp.  “They always forget to wipe their feet.  They left footprints all over my nice clean home, all the while complaining it was too small, and now they want me to make a big one for us all.  If they weren’t my friends and relations I’d say they were my worst enemies.”
“Hmm,” said the human.  “Can I have the old home?”
“I don’t see why not,” said the wasp.  So the human took the old home, and looked at all the tiny dark marks on the thin, papery shell. 
“What’d you make this from?” asked the human. 
“Bits of tree.  And spit.  Quite a lot of spit.”
“I don’t think I’ll try spit,” said the human.  But an idea was stewing in there.  So the human took a big bit of tree, and made marks on it.  Lots of little ones, all like wasp feet.  Some of them were drawings, some of them were drawings of drawings, and some of them were drawings of drawings of drawings that didn’t look like drawings at all any more, but symbols. 
“This could be interesting,” said the human.  “I’d better remember it.”  So the human did, and packed up that bit of tree for later study.  And the wasp nest. 
“I’m thirsty,” said the human.  “Know a good spot?”
“There’s a river a few thousand wingbeats thataways,” said the wasp.  “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, and thanks.”
The human walked down to the river and took a long, cool drink, all the while wondering what was that big pile of branches and tree trunks sitting in the middle of the stream.  The water was starting to act funny near it.  A beaver waddled by, towing a fallen sapling. 
“What are you doing?” asked the human. 
“I’m taking trees and building a home,” said the beaver, between its teeth and a little over its tongue.  “Could you move a little to one side?”
The human moved politely, and watched the beaver tow the trunk into place.  And it thought a little. 
“Could I borrow some of those trees?” asked the human. 
“The ones that are too big for me,” said the beaver.  “I chewed down some of them by mistake.”
“Thank you,” said the human, and started work immediately.  Before long all the trees were dragged into a pile in a little clearing, where they were shoved into a sort of frame.  The human covered the gaps with branches, and felt like that was pretty good.  It’d keep out rain, at the very least. 
“Now where,” asked the human aloud, “did those gods go?  I’d better go someplace high and look for them.”
Up and up the trail led, up to the mountain, and on to the cliff.  There the god-tracks ended, in a little splash and spray of shattered flint. 
The human picked up a piece, and cut a finger. 
“Hmm,” said the human, and picked up the piece again, this time more carefully, and drew it across lunch, a big dried tuber.  It cut it through cleanly. 
“Hmmmmmmmmm,” said the human, the sound of a thought wrestling for room against the inside of a skull.  “I will remember this.  I will remember this very, very carefully.”  The human walked away full of thought, and looked for the gods all night, calling their names in the forest.  Finally the human gave up, and went home to its friends and relations. 
“I think I lost the gods,” the human said, “but I’ve found some interesting things.  Now, let me tell you about them for a little while.”

The gods woke up late, even for gods.  Their backs were stiff and their heads were sore, from sleeping all out of sorts. 
“How long was that?” asked the first. 
“I’m not too sure,” replied the second.  “But we’d better go check on that human.”
So they went back to earth.  It’s not a long walk, for a god. 
“What,” said the first god, “are all those things in the forest?”
“Why,” asked the second god, “are all those trees stumps?”
“Where,” puzzled the first god, “did all the rocks up on that cliff go?”
“And what are those humans doing?” asked the second god. 
“The things in the forest are huts,” said the human.  “We made them out of those trees.  And we took the rocks to make these spears.  Which we’re using to hunt that deer, which you just chased away with your talking.”
“Sorry,” said the first god. 
“It’s all right,” said the human.  “You left us all these things anyways, while my ancestor on my mother’s side was sleeping.”
“Sure we did,” said the second god.
“Sure,” agreed the first god.  “You’re welcome.”
“How did you know about us?” asked the second god, who’d only just realized that this human probably wasn’t the same one they’d left. 
“We wrote it down,” said the human, who pulled a big scroll of flat stomped papery stuff out of a backpack.  The gods looked at it again, and there it was, all written down.  They were mightily impressed.   
“Want anything more?” asked the second god.  “You could come back to heaven, give us some ideas.  Three heads are better than two.”
The human looked around.  “No, I think this is pretty good.  We’ll manage.  Thanks.”
“Good luck,” said the gods. 
“Good luck,” said the human.  They all went home. 
“Should we make something else?” asked the first god.  “It looks like that turned out real nice.”
The second god stretched out.  “No, I don’t think so.  They can have a turn at doing that sort of thing for a while.  I feel like another rest.”
“Sounds fine to me,” said the first god.  “Let’s get comfortable.”
So the gods tucked themselves in and took a nap.  But they got a little too comfy, and when they woke up next, things had changed a bit more. 
But that’s not this story. 

“Oops,” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

The inn on the High Road was packed full to the rafters with rowdy guests, busy and cheerful, all stuffing their mouths with food and packing in whatever spaces remained with beer.  Loud talk and laughter bounced from wall to wall, crescendoing into a din that would’ve made a bear whimper.  All were of good cheer, raucously celebrating the approach of further celebration, of holiday festival, of three full days of feasts and family and arguing.
All except one.  The man sitting in the corner, staring at his plate as though it was all he had left in the world.  This intrigued Jack, over at the bar, so he walked over and asked him what was what.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” said the man, as the weight of the something pressed down on his shoulders further still.
“A big nothing, then,” said Jack, who stole the man’s leftovers from unresisting hands.  His steel tooth flashed as he tore through the potatoes.  “Tell me about it.”
The man rubbed his face.  “It’s my family.  You see, the wife and I – she is upstairs, asleep, you see – we live far apart from our kin, so when we married two years ago we agreed to take it in turns to visit our families each holiday.  Last year we visited my father and mother, brothers and sisters, all in the city…”
“Ah.  In-law troubles await you this year then?”
“Yes.  They are ogres.”
Jack stopped chewing midmouthful to think this over.  “So, do you mean this as a figure of speech, or more of…”
“More of a matter of fact, yes.  They are ogres.  Tall as a troll each and twice as ugly, with muscles that can shatter boulders, breath that can blacken mirrors, and squinting, glowering eyes that can barely make out a barn wall five feet away in broad daylight.  They don’t like me.”
“My sympathies,” said Jack, resuming the busywork of his knife and fork.  Few things had ever put him off a meal for more than a moment.  “I take it your wife doesn’t take after her family?”
“No, no.  Julie is the sweetest, prettiest thing I’ve ever met.  She’s gentler than a nightingale, won’t eat meat for harm of the animals, and she winces when she swats an insect.  How she grew up in that house I’ll never know.”
“Adopted, maybe?”
“Definitely not.  She has an extra joint on each of her thumbs, a nose that can smell the difference between the sunset and the sunrise, and her back teeth can crack bone.  She’s an ogre all right.”
“Hmm.  Why does her family not approve of your union?”
“I’m not nearly ogrish enough for their tastes.  I’m far too small, much too weak, and I’m scarcely brutal.  I’m afraid that an honest cloth merchant is just not good enough for their little girl, and that this holiday visit will end in nothing but misery.”
Jack nodded in sympathy.
“And they might eat me.”
Jack slammed down his flagon.  “Right!” he shouted.  “That’s certainly enough of that nonsense!  Hear me all,” he called to the inn around them, which watched in surprised, “I’m Jack the traveller and I’ll be damned if I’ll let any passing acquaintance of mine whose meal I’ve taken be eaten by his in-laws!  Sir,” he said to the distraught cloth merchant, “I’ve got a plan, and I advise you hearken to it.  First, let me borrow your clothes.”
So they went upstairs to the cloth merchant’s room and he gave Jack his second-best suit, as he was wearing the best.  Jack admired the seams, then spoke again: “Second, give me whatever soap or perfumes you might use on your person.”
This the cloth merchant did, and Jack applied them liberally, stopping to sniff now and then with the utmost care.  At last he was satisfied, and turned again to the merchant.  “Third, let me go to your in-laws in your place.  I believe I can fool their noses in this manner.  You’ll be apart from your wife for a few days, but I believe you two can bear the sweet sorrow of a few days away from each other’s arms in exchange for your still having arms to clasp her in, when once again you meet.”
“I concede this,” said the cloth merchant, “and shall alert Julie posthaste.”  He nudged the sleeping woman in the bed awake.
“Why,” she asked, “is that man wearing your clothes?”
“It’s a deception, sweet-pea,” he said to her, “to stop your family from eating me.”
“Oh all right,” she yawned.  And then she fell back asleep without so much as a murmur.
“It was a long ride today,” explained the merchant, carefully moving the pillows so that she wouldn’t fall off the bed.
“Then she can take her rest now, and you yours while you wait,” said Jack.  He slept on the roof outside for the view of the stars – as was his custom – and he and Julie left in the morning, he on the merchant’s fat nag, she on a slim mare with cross-shaped hooves.
“My mother gave it to me,” she explained as Jack eyed the horse dubiously, stroking its muzzle.  It was as white as cream, with luminous and unpleasant eyes.
“Marvellous,” he said, and snatched his hand away a mere nails-width from snapping teeth.  “And cheeky.”
“She’s like that with men,” she apologized.  “Unless you have a sugar cube.  She’ll do anything for a sugar cube.”
Jack chose to stay at arm’s length, and whiled away the trip entertaining Julie with an endless stream of ventriloquism applied to knock-knock jokes.

Jack heard the ogres before he saw them, a great rough laugh booming through the forest and making the birds scatter, then the thud-thud-thud of big horny feet smacking on the dirt, unshod and heedless.  The trees bent and groaned, the ground rumbled, and a huge ogre burst through the trees and picked up Julie in a bear-hug, horse and all.
“Big sister!” he roared.  The mare seized ahold of his eyelashes and yanked them away, and he laughed.
“Hello, Othello,” squeaked Julie, happily but breathlessly.  The ogre dropped her, making the mare do a little dance to stay on her feet.  She whinnied villainously.
“Mother and Father are inside, and Grandfather, and the cousins, and Uncle Abraham and Auntie Skadi, and Great Great-Grandmother is coming soon!”  He ceased his little hops of excitement and looked forlorn at her.  “We all missed you very much,” he said plaintively, and shot an evil look at Jack as Julie adjusted her petticoat.
“Well, I’m here now, and so is Clarence,” she said with a meaningful nod to Jack.  “Let’s go inside and say hello.”
The ogre home was a sprawling heap, a hall made from ruptured earth and bent trees, a hill repurposed into a hold.  Its great iron door-knocker was in a sad state from the countless hairy knuckles that had wrapped about it over the years, beating it senseless and dented.  Othello’s fist showed it no mercy, setting up such a din that Jack’s ears twitched.
“Mother!” he bawled.  “Father!  Julie is here, and so is that man!”
The door creaked open, and Father’s fetid breath washed out over them all, making their clothing wilt.  He stood sixteen foot tall if he was an inch, with a nose that would put a halberdier’s pride and joy to utter shame and deep-set eyes that were as screwed shut as a mole’s.
“Harruumph,” he said, long and rough.  “Welcome back daughter.  Mmrrmm.”  The door swung wide as he ushered them within, horses and all.  He plucked Jack from his nag with one hand and picked it up with the other.  It nestled in his sprawling palm, too terrified to so much as twitch a muscle.
“Your mother worries, you know,” he told Julie as they walked under the dirty, tangled wreckage of the ceiling, a forboding mass that Jack could not stop eyeing.  “Hrrrooum.  She worries about her little girl out there, all alone.”
“Clarence keeps me safe,” said Julie.
“Fwwuush!  This little fellow couldn’t safeguard a baby bird, let alone you, daughter.”
“You’ll see,” said Julie.  She gave Jack a nervous glance.
“Yes indeed,” he said, with as reassuring a pat on the shoulder as he could manage.  Othello growled at him.
Heat flowed over the company, and it was in the red light of a fireplace that could boil a king’s court whole that Jack saw the next ogre.  It was half as high as Father, but twice as wide and a hundred times the hideousness, a hag beyond recall.  Her fangs hung down to her thighs and her thighs turned into her knees before they began; her feet could’ve been mistaken for live crocodiles without cause for reproach.
“A snack, love,” said Father, handing Jack’s nag to the hag.  She spread her jaws wide and swallowed the terrified animal without so much as a chew, blinking three time hugely as she did so.
“Now, where’s my little girl?” she asked.
“Mother!” cried Julie, and she rushed to the monster’s legs for a hug.
“Julie-girl,” crooned Mother, and cuddled her with one big fist-hand, fingers stroking the woman’s golden hair with all the soft delicacy of maggots in flesh.  “You’ve grown so much, precious!”
“Thank you, Mother,” said Julie.  Her face was buried in the hag’s foul dress, and so she missed the grin that Mother was directing at Jack.  It showed entirely too many teeth to fit in one mouth.
“Is the man cruel to you, sweetling?” she asked.  “Why do you fret at Mother’s hem so?  Does he strike you?  Mother can stop that, you know.  Stop it good and proper.”
“Mother!” admonished Julie, stepping back and composing herself.  “Don’t fret.  You’ll see!”
“Indeed,” said Jack.  He tried not to wince as Mother stared at him head-on.  “Indeed.”
“Soup’s near up, precious,” said the ogre hag.  “Why don’t you tell your man to make himself useful and call up the others for supper?  Can’t let all this good meat go to waste.”
“I don’t eat meat, mother,” said Julie.  “It’s inhumane.”
“Nonsense, dear, there’s not a spot or lick of human in here – more’s the pity,” she sighed.  “It has such a lovely piquant flavour to it too, like good prime pork.  But there’s lots of nourishing elk in here, so let’s get everyone here and dug in before it cools!”
Julie curtseyed, then turned to Jack.  “Mother would appreciate it if you would call the family for suppertime,” she said with her mouth.  Her eyes added: and it would be terrible, terrible, and terrible if you do it improperly.  There’s lots of room in that kettle yet.
Father reached up high over the fireplace and brought down a mighty horn in his paws, carved from the tusk of some long-dead beast that would’ve dwarfed even him.  He handed it to Jack with a grunt, and it was to his great pride that he barely allowed his knees to buckle, nor did he scream.
“Blow,” commanded Father, and he sat back with his arms crossed, judging.
Jack was no stranger to music, and there was scarce any instrument he hadn’t taken a gamble at one time or another in revelry near or far.  He pursed his lips, he placed them to the sooty, blackened bone mouthpiece, and he blew a blast that would’ve melted a brass trumpet to slag.  It sounded like a kitten burping in the bottom of a tin bathtub.
Father leaned back.  Waiting.  Othello cracked his knuckles.
Jack examined the horn, trying to appear unhurried.  “Just finding the pitch,” he explained through one of his especially favourite smiles, the one he used when he was asking for money that made his steel tooth shine so prettily.  The family watched on, unimpressed.  Julie hurriedly tried some of the soup and pretended not to be paying attention.
Jack inhaled deep enough that his ribcage started to creak, then let fly a tremendous roar of wind into the horn, a sputtering shout.  It left him dizzy and barely able to hold it, but had scarcely more effect than the first.
Jack had often had to think in many unpleasant circumstances, but under the unblinking stare of Mother was among the worst he’d known.  There had to be some trick to the horn, a rough sort of enchantment.  Ogres were scarcely sorcerers, but they were as likely as any other sort of troll to have some sort of base magical cunning wrapped up in their belongings.
Julie flicked into his vision again for a moment, brushing by him with a hand discretely pressed to her mouth from the soup.  She burped a little, and he hoped she wouldn’t be sick.
Wait.  Aha.  Clever girl.  Of course.
“Only joking that time,” he said with a laugh, and he pressed the great, stinking horn to his lips one last time and belched into it long and hard, from the belly, like an ogre.  It let out a blast of fulsome fumes and odorous echoes, leaving him coughing in the wake of its roars.
“Hrmmmm,” said Father thoughtfully.  Othello looked a little impressed, but a little more disappointed.
Your soup stays inhumane tonight, lad, thought Jack, and he tossed the horn with as much nonchalance as he could manage to Father, who caught it one-handed.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Jack said, “but I’m hungry.”

It had been a while since Jack had been at a meal that boasted this level of volume.  The chewing alone could’ve knocked over the inn that he’d stayed at the night before, and the volume of the hoots, hollers, and rumbles that echoed over it all could’ve stricken a jay in full screech unconscious.  The cousins were a particularly noisy lot; Jack was seated right between two of them and across from Julie, who was protectively insulated from his presence by the immense bulk of her parents.  She smiled nervously at him.
“Good food!” roared the cousin on Jack’s left, mouth overflowing back onto his plate, where he scooped it back in with relish.
“Good food!’ agreed the cousin on his right, belching midswallow with enough force to rock the table.
“Good food indeed,” said Jack loudly, tearing apart a chunk of elk-gut with his hands.  “Why, it’s so good, I’ll wager I could out-eat both of you at once.”
There was a sudden silence around him, relatively.  He could actually hear himself think for the first time in twenty minutes.
“Haw!” exclaimed the cousin on his left, a great, pot-bellied fellow.
“Hah!” erupted the cousin on his right, a longer, leaner, ogre, shaped as though he’d been slapped together out of slabs of beef.
“First one to the bottom of his bowl, gentlemen.” said Jack.  “Do we have a bet?”
“A bet!” they shouted together, and as one they dove for their plates, hands shovelling giblets, mouths gnashing wildly at entrails, and noses rooting for scraps like wild boars.
Jack smiled as he ate, rapidly yet surely, reaching for cups and sauce vessels as needed.  The elk was pretty good, and he was pretty hungry, but he was under no illusions as to his ability to out-eat two ogres at once.  He would tack a different wind with this problem.
“Hrrrmph,” the right cousin heard Father say, “pass the pine-nut sauce, hrrm.”  So he reached out to grab it.
“Shove that pine-nut stuff this away, there’s a peach,” the left cousin heard Mother speak of, and so he reached out and seized it.
“Leggo!” huffed the right cousin.
“Shove off,” said the left cousin.  “Mother wants it.”
“Father asked first!”
“Push off, you just want it for yourself!”
“Maggot!”
“Hog!”
And then the right cousin slapped his brother with an elk-hock and the meal degenerated from there.  Jack ate as quietly as he could, chewing down the meaty bits and spitting out the gristly ones discretely, smiling all the while.
“Finished,” he proclaimed.
“FINISHED!” he yelled a moment later.  The cousins looked up from where they lay on the floor, fists planted in one another’s breadbaskets.
“Can’t be!” objected the right cousin, struggling to his feet and scrubbing at his freshly blooming shiner.
“It is,” observed the left cousin, peering at Jack’s bowl with a gloomy expression.  “Fair and square.”
“No it isn’t, he kept eating while we fought!”
“That’s your fault.”
“Not it isn’t, you started it!”
“No, you!”
“Arrgh!”
The fistfight resumed under the table, and Jack joined in with the rest of the family in throwing scraps of bone at them, silently thanking that he’d taken the chance to practice throwing his voice on the trail.

“That was very risky,” scolded Julie as she lay down in bed.  “If they had noticed, you’d have been eaten before you could say Jack Robinson.”
“They were far too thick to notice,” said Jack lazily from the floor, where he’d made a sort of mattress out of his coat.  “And my last name isn’t Robinson, so we’re in no danger of that.”
“Yes, well, that won’t work on Uncle or Auntie,” said Julie.  “Nor Grandfather neither.  And I don’t even want to imagine what would happen if you tried to fool Great Great-Grandmother.  You’ll need my help on this if you want to impress them, like it or not.  Or have you forgotten my help with the horn so soon?”
“All right, all right, all right,” agreed Jack, rolling over in his coat.  “I’ll listen to your advice come morning.”
“Good,” said Julie.  “Now, the thing about Uncle is that –” but Jack was asleep before she finished her sentence.

The next morning found him bleary-eyed and shaky in the hands, badly in need of coffee and barely awake enough to listen to anything at all.  The floor of an ogre’s house is the bumpiest, the mouldiest, and the most lively in all the world.  He’d been woken by a rat the size of a terrier trying to eat his boots right off his feet.
“First day is gathering and feasting, second day is games and feasting, and the third is the grandest feast of them all,” reminded Uncle Abraham at breakfast –  boiled rabbits.  “I propose a game of bowls outside as soon as we are able.”
“I’ll take that game,” said Jack, noticing out of the corner of his eye that Julie was shaking her head violently.
‘Excellent,” said Uncle Abraham, with pronounced relish.  He was bearded fiercely, the only one of them besides Grandfather not to go clean-shaven, and whereas that ancient had long ago aged to grey tangles, Abraham’s beard was black as coal and fiercely sharp, jutting out down over his chest like a thicket of briars.  His moustache was serrated as only the most vicious of knives was.  “I’ll fetch the balls.”
“Why the worry?” Jack asked Julie as they followed Uncle Abraham down the front hall.  “I’m no stranger to gaming of any sort.”
“Ogre bowls is different,” Julie explained through daintily gritted teeth.
“How so?”
“You throw the balls at each other.  You score points for what part you hit, and you get the most from knocking someone down.  Or killing them.”
“Oh.”
The ogre’s lawn was half marsh, half desert, a mire of dirt and confusion and noise.  Othello and the cousins were engaged in some sort of wrestling involving tree trunks, Father and Auntie Skadi were throwing axes at a target made from a live, still-thrashing bear tied to a boulder, and Grandfather was sleeping in a bog, head tipped back carefully and teeth removed so as to allow him appropriate space to snore in.  Even Julie’s mare was out and about, pulling rabbits out of their burrows and eating them.
“Here you go,” said Uncle Abraham, handing Jack a rough-chiselled boulder that looked to have been chewed upon at one time.  He hefted his own and spun it from finger to finger, making it dance.  “We count off forty paces, turn, and toss.  If you move your feet, you forfeit.   If you die or are knocked senseless, you forfeit.  Ten points a bruised flank, brisket, or ribs, twenty for a brain-panning or a broken leg, fifty for a knockdown.  Play ‘till one hundred, deal?”
“Deal,” agreed Jack.  He tossed his rock from one hand to another, thoughtfully.  It probably weighed as much as he did, but he’d done worse.
“Right,” said Uncle Abraham.  They turned and paced – his paces much longer than Jack’s – and spun and hurled.  Jack ducked low and felt the missile breeze over the top of his head, ruffling the hair.  His own strike smacked Abraham amidships, right in the gut.  Winning seemed the thing to do here, but killing Julie’s relatives was probably not the best way to win their hearts.
“Hroff!” exclaimed the ogre.  He peeled off his shirt, rewarding Jack with the unpleasant sight of his slug-pale belly; hairy, horny, and unblemished by a bruise.  He winked unpleasantly at Jack.  “Not so much as a mark.  A poor throw for each of us.  Now, let’s try again.  Julie, mind fetching our balls?”
Julie did, hoisting them one in each hand without so much as a grunt or strain.  She gave Jack an I-told-you-so look as she reloaded them, but he was too busy eyeing his next target to notice it.  Fine, so that hadn’t worked.  Maybe the head was his goal after all.
One, two, forty paces, turn, fire.  This time Abraham’s boulder clipped his shoulder, spinning him all about until his teeth nearly shook out of his head.  His own shot slammed the ogre dead in the centre of his skull, which it bounced from as though it were made of rubber.  Abraham laughed and laughed.
“A good shot!  Ten points for me, but nought for you, I’m afraid!  Lass, our sporting equipment!”
Jack saw Julie’s lips move this time as she walked to him, and bent closer as she presented his ball.
“The chin,” she whispered.  “Uncle Abraham hides his heart under his chin.”
Jack nodded, and re-examined that bristling beard-structure that adorned the spot in question.  Its every hair looked harsher than an iron spear-tip.
“Abraham,” he called down the field.  “I fear I have you at a disadvantage, Uncle!”
“And why is that?” roared back the ogre, infinitely amused, arm cocked to throw.
“Because there is a wasp in your beard.”
At this, Abraham cursed and swore, swatted and spun, rocked and bounced and slapped at his hair, cutting himself many times over on its hard bristles.  He parted and re-parted it many times over, drawing the hair thin, and still he could not find the wasp.
“It’s gone,” called Jack.
Abraham cursed at him and threw the rock.  Jack leaned to the side, felt it caress his coattails, and threw his boulder.  It slipped nimbly through the combed and softened surface of Abraham’s beard and struck his chin dead centre, neatly folding him up in a heap.
“Forfeit,” said Jack pleasantly, and strolled off the field, trying not to feel the pain in his shoulder.

Dinner that night was quieter.  The cousins were winded from the beating Othello had handed them on the wrestling field (doubtlessly unaided by their brawling the previous evening), and Abraham’s jaw was locked from the blow he’d taken.  Jack enjoyed the silence a little, as well as the newfound willingness to chat that Father was showing to him.  Perhaps he was less than utterly fond of his brother-in-law.
“You’re making sure she eats well, hrrm?” he asked, idly scooping up a big ladleful of bear pudding.  “Needs good meat, strong flesh, harrumph.”
“I don’t eat meat, Father,” said Julie for the twentieth time that day, chewing on a veal cookie.
“Mmmmrrrmmmph,” commented Father idly, patting her back with a chuckle.  She nearly choked.  “That’s my girl, rruumm.”
Aunt Skadi beamed at them both.  She too seemed less than troubled by her husband and children’s newfound mutedness.
“Tell me,” leaked a voice to Jack’s side, just past the cousins, “do you tell, stories?”
Grandfather had never spoken in Jack’s hearing before.  He’d only just heard it, and already he was hoping he never would again.  It sounded like gas escaping from the corpse of a little dead thing, hissing as it passed through the idly flicking wings of the flies.
“A little,” said Jack.
Grandfather blinked his solitary eye, slowly and ponderously.  Everything he did was slow and ponderous; it had taken him all evening to rouse himself from his bog and drag his bulk to the table.  He was more than twice the size of father, but coiled up, all loose flaps of mossy skin and exposed, dirt-scrubbed bone.  His skin was the colour of spoiled cheese.
“I will, tell, a story,” he managed.  “Come.”  The old monster rose from the table, upending half of it, and lurched towards the dark stone staircase that led down to the cellars.
Jack shrugged, looked helplessly at Julie – she was biting her lip, he noticed – and followed, trying not to step in the ooze trail.

“This is, my home,” droned Grandfather, slipping into a wide worn hollow in the flagstones of the basement floor.  “Like, it?”
Jack looked.  He did not like it.
The mighty limestone slabs of the floor had been covered over and over long ago, layered with dirt and bone in alternating patterns, white shards and blackened decay.
That wasn’t the bad part.  The bad part was the trophy shelf, a lopsided slab of basalt hammered crudely into the wall by monstrous force.
The figures that sat atop them were entire skeletons, held together with crude blackened wire and treacle-like hardened spittle.  A knight on his horse, a hundred years old or more at the very least.  A priest, complete with tattered ritual robes and chewed spectre, and his whole retinue, all sloppily piled up in a heap around him.  A war-king of old with his broadsword, broken in half.  Dozens more, all the old meals and old wars and old foes all deposited here in a mound of dust that could’ve swallowed a lake.
“Impressive,” said Jack.  He meant it, to a point.
“Thank, you,” said Grandfather.  “Now, listen.”  He picked up the knight in one claw, bones rattling in time with arthritic strength.
“This man, was, the first,” began Grandfather, and Jack realized too late what was happening.   He nodded his head and said “mmm” and “you don’t say?” and none of it made any difference.  His brain hurt from the guttural humid vapidness of the mouldy air, and the nasal, breathy drone of Grandfather’s voice sounded inside his bones like a gale in a wind chime.  Every bone of every skeleton required an explanation, with lengthy digressions and asides and that-reminds-mes, all in that endless, wobbling voice.  His teeth felt like they were trying to crawl out of their sockets.
There was a pause, and Jack came out of his haze long enough to realize it was a snack.  Julie stood at Grandfather’s side, passing out a glass of warm milk and some toast, which were indelicately dropped into that endless maw with the very tips of his talons.
Jack took his toast warily, and was surprised to find that it did not contain meat.  It came with a honeycomb, filled with fresh, sweet honey, and it was the best thing he’d ever tasted because it took his mind out of Grandfather’s endless cobwebs of the throat.
Julie looked meaningfully at him as she left.  His hand trembled with the good-bye wave, and he wondered how much more of this droning he could take.
Then he realized what Julie had just handed him, and felt very stupid.
“But that’s, just the, first one,” said Grandfather, and Jack felt the horror overtaking him again.  He buttered and ate his toast with the speed of seven mortal men, pocketed the knife out of habit, drained the combs dry and balled them.  The little wax pellets went in his ears in a fancy motion disguised as a stretch and a kick-back-your-heels, and his mind went beautifully, blissfully blank for the first time in over three hours.  He nearly started crying in relief before he realized the odds were against him being able to pass it off as tears of joy.
From then on, time was on his side.  All he had to do was nod and mutter every five minutes as he stared glassily ahead, and try to keep his gaze focused on Grandfather’s lips without actually examining them too closely.  It was almost restful.  It was very restful.  And then it was so restful that he woke up the next morning as Julie shook him awake.
“It’s all rot, you know,” she told him, as they gazed across the basement at Grandfather’s snoring bulk.  “He never killed any of those men.  Well, not the way he said.  He just talked to them until they died, then ate them.  The poor old thing’s got very sensitive skin; a poke with a pin would make him bleed like a pig, let alone a sword slash.  And he’s allergic to iron.”
“A shame,” Jack said.  His neck was stiff, apparently he’d been sleeping on top of some unfortunate’s backbone, mangling his own slightly more than it was used to.
“Great Great-Grandmother got here last night.  You’d better come up for breakfast.  And whatever you do, don’t talk to her unless she talks to you first.  Be careful, all right?”
Breakfast was less hushed than last night’s meal – ogres healed fast.  Still, anything felt quiet after the ordeal of the evening.  Surviving Grandfather’s little talk had earned Jack even more respect, it seemed – only Othello still gave Jack that ogrish glare over his food, which, however unsettling, was a vast improvement over the whole family.  Jack wondered how on earth Clarence had ever managed to weather this mob to wed Julie in the first place.
It took him a while to notice Great Great-Grandmother, searching as idly as he was, sipping over-sugared, blood-thick tea and stealing sugar cubes the size of his fist for sheer novelty value.  First he looked for size, and that turned up nothing – Father was still the largest upstairs, a half-foot above Uncle Abraham.  Then he looked for a new face, and found none.  Then he saw Auntie Skadi very carefully pass down a bowl of pig entrails to the head of the table, and he finally saw Great Great-Grandmother.  Like himself and Julie, she could barely peek over the tabletop.  She looked like nothing more than a normal, pleasant old lady – rather quiet, yes, but some were like that, rare as they were in Jack’s experience – until she opened her mouth, revealing teeth that were just a little too long and white to belong to any human, anywhere.
That, and her eyes twinkled at him.  In three days of ogres, he hadn’t yet seen eyes like that.
The third day of the holidays, in Jack’s experience, was an open-air banquet, a meal interspersed by snacks that lasted all day long.  The ogres simply tripled the length of all meals, with a five-minute grace period between breakfast and lunch.  Jack spent most of it loosening his belt buckle, and most of lunch wishing he’d loosened it more.  At last, stomach groaning, he lurched away from the table and begged a chance to relieve himself.
“Stump out back, hrrrmmrr,” grunted Father.
The stump in question was an old, long-dead hemlock that once probably could’ve held a house in its branches.  Now it stood ten foot tall, half-hollowed, and filled with muck that you didn’t really want to look at.  Jack spent ten minutes manoeuvring himself into a position where he didn’t have to, five finding a spot where he was positioned appropriately and wouldn’t fall in, and six more after he was through just relishing the silence.
There was the thud-smush-crash of ogre footsteps.
“Occupied,” said Jack, seconds before Othello’s fist closed around his ribcage and yanked him out of his perch.
“Leave her alone,” he hissed in Jack’s face, tottering in his one-handed balance on the stump’s rim, brandishing Jack above its fetid depths.  “You’re bad for her!”
“Erk,” rebutted Jack.
“Say what?” said Othello, loosening his iron grip on Jack’s lungs for a moment.
“Surprise!” said Jack, and stabbed him between flesh and nail with last night’s pilfered silverware.
Othello clutched his hand and howled loudly, which was a bad move because it set him up for the next thing Jack did, which was to flip over his shoulder and kick him in the pants.  He landed in the bottom of the stump with a squelch you could hear halfway round the countryside.
“Are we through?” asked Jack brightly, shimmying his way down the side of the stump to solid ground.
Othello made some bubbling noises at him; apparently even ogres weren’t impervious to their own stenches, not to that degree.
“Right, we’re through.  Water under the bridge.  I’d offer to help you up, but you know how it is.”
As Jack walked back inside, he took a very small and vindictive pleasure in knowing he’d used the last of the birch-bark wiping pads that hung on the limbs of the stump.

Othello came back to dinner late, after what looked to have been a bath in swamp water and a scrub with a brush made out of a fistful of cattails.  His mother admonished him with a clout to the head, and for the first time that week, Jack sat at the big, rough-hewn table and not a single overlarge, overstuffed face was looking at him as though he were a particularly large and tricksome sort of cockroach.  And a good night it was, not just because of that – it was the last night, the last time anyone might threaten to string him up by his kneecaps from the roof, the last eve spent sleeping on floors where the vermin had vermin, the last time he’d need to see an ogre’s face for hopefully many months.  He couldn’t recall exactly why he’d done this, but it had probably seemed like a good idea at the time.  Charity, maybe.  That always seemed sunnier that it was.
Grandfather came lumbering up his stone stairwell late in the evening, towards the end of it all.  “Ma, ma!” he rumbled, and slumped down to the end of the table, where Great Great-Grandmother hugged him and cradled that hideous, wrinkled old skull.  He sat down in his seat looking happier than he had since Jack first met him.
It was a good meal.  The meat even mostly contained bits Jack could recognize.  The dessert of boiled frogspawn jelly, however, he discretely passed on.
And there, at the very end of the night, just before the big bronze clock that was wedged into the ceiling itself could begin to chime, Great Great-Grandmother stood up and cleared her throat and began to speak.
Jack knew many languages, and had forgotten even more.  He didn’t know this one at all.  It sounded like spider legs walking on sheets of frozen glass, and it gave him the shivers.
Mother stood up and walked to her side, where she whispered back and forth.
“Granny says thank you for the lovely meal,” she beamed, happiness floating up through the grim and out between her tusks like an errant cloud.
Hooting, hollering, and clapping echoed around the table.
“And,” Mother continued, waving for silence, “she says she thoroughly approves of this nice young man Julie’s brought.  A proper fellow, she says – heroes and monsters make a nice match.”
More clapping, shouting, and at least one massive hand slapping Jack on the back hard enough that it sent him into a brief coughing fit.
“But furthermore,” continued Mother, cheer practically wafting from the air around her as thick as the stench from her putrid cooking rags, “since Granny says this young man isn’t her husband, it’s perfectly all right for us to eat him!  So thank you very much Julie for the lovely present for your great-Gran!”
Massive cheering, standing ovation, enormous hands groping for Jack from all sides.  Jack was slightly comforted to see that Julie looked as surprised as he did before he was hoisted aloft and passed down the table like a parcel, transferred from iron grip to iron grip before he could so much as begin to wriggle, and receiving a nasty sucker punch to the jaw at one point from someone who was probably Abraham or Othello.  At last he was enclosed in the slimy grasp of Grandfather, who held him aloft before Great Great-Grandmother, legs dangling.
“Mama’s, hungry,” explained Grandfather carefully, pressing his great eyeball close to Jack’s face.
Jack felt his teeth gingerly with his tongue.  One of them seemed loose, and he shoved it harder.  “So I see,” he wheezed.  “But why me?”
“Has to, be, young man,” said Grandfather.  Behind Jack somewhere he heard Julie yelling at her parents, buried under a wave of shushing and murmurs from one corner and indistinct grunts from the other.  “It’s Mama,” he said, as though that made everything make sense.
Great Great-Grandmother smiled at Jack, a friendly, genuinely warm grin that was easily the most frightening thing he’d seen here all holiday.  Those long, long teeth were even longer than they should’ve been by now.  How could they fit in her mouth?
Jack’s tooth popped out.  Great Great-Grandmother reached up to him, stubby nails on thin, brittle wrists stretching out forever.  And Jack spat his steel tooth into Grandfather’s one eye.
It wasn’t quite iron, but it did the trick.

Grandfather lurched backwards, screaming, spasming, flipping over the entire banquet table.  Bowls of meat and frogspawn went flying to smash against walls and misshapen heads, splatter over bodies, cake limbs and bruise extremities.  Jack flew from his shaken grasp, bounced off the floor, and sprang to his feet in a charge for the hall.  Father stood in his way, warding back Julie with one hand, but it went hard for him.  Fighting large people is much easier than most non-heroes think: your prime target lies right overhead.
Jack grabbed Julie’s hand as he dashed between Father’s toppling legs, dragging her along – no, wait, she was rather more dragging him along.  Easy to forget that she was an ogre, wasn’t it?
They came to a skidding stop in the field.  Footsteps pounded behind them in the hall, turning the whole mounded hall into a giant, angry drum.  Shouts and roars and grunts.
Julie whistled, fingers between her teeth.  Then again.  Then again and again.  “Come on you silly bitch!” she screamed at the trees.
Jack fought through the haze of confusion (Julie swearing?  Most unthinkable) and plucked the item he sought from his inside jacket.  “Sugar cube?” he asked.
The mare had her mouth in his palm before he quite knew she was there, almost taking his fingers off when he jumped.

Julie took the reins.  Jack would’ve insisted on it anyways – it was her horse – but as it was he had no say in much, mostly because he was half-conscious, half-concussed, and approximately five-thirds overstuffed on bits of meat that perhaps had been just a little more spoilt than he recalled them being.
“Well,” she said, after the noise of the pursuit had died down behind them (thanks to a good hour or so of the mare’s tireless hoofbeats), “I suppose that’s that for family holidays.”
“Mmm,” agreed Jack.  He was trying not to watch the road move beneath them.
“I feel so bloody stupid,” she complained.  “Of course they wouldn’t have eaten Clarence.  I know they frighten him and he’d never stop worrying, so I let him go along with this – I don’t want him to be unhappy, you know – but I should’ve guessed that you wouldn’t have been able to hide from Great Great-Grandmother.  You just aren’t stout enough to be a match for him.  And you’re a little shorter.”
“Mmmhhmm,” seconded Jack.  He had the feeling that if he were more conscious, he’d be loudly objecting to something.
“They would’ve eaten you, yes, once they found out you’re not my husband, but never my husband.  This whole thing wouldn’t have happened if he’d listened to me.  And you wouldn’t have had to nearly blind poor Grandfather if they’d listened to me.”  She drooped in the saddle slightly.  “Nobody listens to me.  They all talk about how much they love me, but they never listen to me.”  She turned and smiled at him weakly.  “Well, you do.  You learned to do that fast enough once it was that or be beaned by Uncle Abraham.”  Julie stifled a giggle.   “Poor Uncle Abraham.  He’s got his nose in a sling right now, I’m sure.  You really did a number on all of them, by the end.  Fooled the cousins into a fight, bonked Uncle Abraham right in the chin – with my help, of course – beat up Father and Grandfather and shoved poor little Othello into the outhouse.  And all with my help.”
The forest was lightening around them, noticed Jack against the background noise.  The High Road must be near again.
“It’s a relief, you know.  I haven’t felt this good since I ran away from home the first time.  Nothing but happy then, and then I met Clarence.”  Julie sighed.  “He was the first person I met who wasn’t an ogre, and he was so nice about it that I just about fell in love with him.  Just about.  I’m not sure I did anymore.  He’s nice, but not much else.  And he doesn’t listen to me.”  She turned in the saddle to look at Jack again.  “I should change that, don’t you think?  All the love in the world isn’t any good if you can’t be treated like a person.  Mother, Clarence, Father, all of them think I’m a little fragile doll.  Well, maybe I can’t change Mother and Father’s minds on that.  Maybe never.  But I can change Clarence’s.”
“Mmmmhhm?”  managed Jack.  He really needed that other sugar cube or three he had in his jacket, if only he could reach them.  Heroing takes a lot out of you.  That, and all that food.  He’d need to keep his belt loosened for a month.
“I can change Clarence’s mind,” clarified Julie sweetly, as they approached the glowing lights of the inn on the hill, “because I can hold him out the window by his ankles until he starts listening.”

“A Family Get-Together,” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

There’s a certain point, halfway up the ladder, where it seems impossible.  Just a little farther, you try and coax yourself.  Just a little; I’m halfway there, surely I can finish this, surely it’s not that hard?  And no matter how silvery-tongued and gold-throated you make yourself, your body won’t buy any of it, not so much as a penny’s-worth.  I’m done, it says.  Go find yourself a new body, because this one’s fed up and is about to let go and splat itself.  And you’re forced to agree, and your wind-numbed grip begins to loosen – just a little – and then you realize that you’re now two-thirds of the way up the side of the tower since you’ve started this suicidal little conversation. 
It’s much easier after that.  Well, most of the time.  Every year or two, someone loses the argument. 
It’s messy. 

The view from the top of the ladder makes up for it, I said to myself, as I rubbed down muscles that complained louder than my grandchildren.  It really does.  The village down there, on top of the peak, it has a nice view.  The top of the ladder, the fishing platform, that little wooden skeleton floating in the upper zephyrs all those hard-fought yards above?  That has a grand view, a view to make kings and priests drop to their knees and gasp.  You can see everything as far as the clouds will let you, from the top of the sky to the foot of the mountain, all those thousands of yards below, drowning in the thickness of the lower atmosphere. 
The air up here is different from down there; as sharp as a glasscutter, as cold and clean as a glacier’s spine.  It makes you see spots for hours after your first ascent, and you never quite stop building up a tolerance.  An expert skyfisher can stay up here for half the day and come down with a twinkle still in his eye, if not a spring in his step.  I slept overnight once, thirty years ago, fuelled as much by bravado as exhaustion.  I don’t recommend it.  Not unless the catch is really worth it. 
Today’s wasn’t.  I looked over the big basket – a big man could stand in it nicely – next to Davro, my niece’s husband.  Davro was a good skyfisher, but all he’d been able to grub up today were a few birds: some skinny Stovelings with their tubby, muscular bodies that could fly for days (and had to stew for hours for the least bit of tenderness), and an immature Banewing, all talons and beak and wide eyes that looked more puzzled than fierce on its adolescent frame.  A sad sight, to see it go before it had a chance to really learn how to ride the wind down on its prey.  And it was mostly bone and sinew, with very little meat. 
“Scarce,” Davro agreed with my silent appraisal of his catch.  “Not much out there today.   The migrations must’ve stopped a little early this year.”
“They started late, too,” I said. “That’s true.  But we’ve got a good catch from the summer still stashed away.  Remember that Moaner family?  Got all four of them, and there’s enough meat on those to feed a family each for half the winter.”
“You want to eat Moaner for half the winter?”  Tender the big, passive cloud-wanderers might be, but tasty they weren’t.  Not bad, just bland enough that one steak would drive a man to murder for some salt. 
Davro grimaced.  “Point made, Uncle.  Still, we won’t starve.  And that’s something.”
“Half the old coots down there would rather starve than live off Moaner meat.  Or at least I wish they would.  It’d save us all a lot of crabbing come midwinter.  I swear, they’ll out-moan their meals.”
“You aren’t so far off from one of those old coots yourself, Uncle.  ”
“Bite your tongue, boy.  The difference between me and them –”
“–is you’d rather climb the ladder up here than sit around and listen to each other complain about back pains?”
“–is that I’ve still got my looks.  And that too.  It isn’t the backs that’s the worst part, though.”
“Oh?”  Davro’s bamboo pole bucked in his hands, and he began to reel in the line, twisting it this way and that with old practice guiding his fingers. 
“No.  Carbuncles.  And piles.  Don’t get me started on the way they get started on carbuncles and piles.”
“A gruesome picture, Uncle.”
“And then there’s the warts.”
“Wonderful.”
“And the haemorrhoids are simply –”
“Uncle, I can’t reel this in while trying not to gag at any vivid haemorrhoid description you may have readied and aimed at my sensitive, lily-like ears.”
“Soft, weak.  You can’t go skyfishing with a delicate stomach, nephew.  What’ll you do if that’s a Plowmaw you’ve hooked there, and you loose your dinner looking at its pretty face?”
“If this were a Plowmaw, I’d be halfway across the sky right now, arching gracefully, and just reaching the point where I start falling, then screaming.”
“And spraying your last meal to the four corners of the wind right then’d be downright unpleasant, wouldn’t it?”
Davro chuckled as he snagged his catch in the nets strung up around him like a spider’s web.  A single, smooth movement of his arm snapped up the wooden cudgel at his side and bludgeoned the squirming prey into passivity.  It was a mature male Scudhoppler, beautiful plumage dulled and fletching into its winter coat now that its breeding days were done.  Not the plumpest of birds, but those four skinny little wings of its crisp up nicely after just a few minutes in a pan.
“That’s it for me, Uncle,” said Davro.  “Hope you have better luck on the evening watch, but I’m for home and food now.”  He fixed a lid over his basket of catch, shoved it onto the big hook of the lift, and set about fastening all the ropes and knots that prevented it from spilling onto our roofs halfway down the descent.  It wouldn’t take anything much bigger than a Stoveling to put a hole through a house from this height, or even half it. 
“You know,” said Davro as he set the winch moving to drop the basket down, steady but slow, “I still remember the first time I asked you why we didn’t just use one of these to get up and down from here.”
“Oh yes.”
“You told me to stop asking stupid questions and whacked me on the head.”
“Well, I remembered my uncle telling me that back in the day.  I figured I owed it to him to pass it on.”
Davro laughed – louder than the lame joke had required for it to be socially acceptable – and headed down the ladder, moving in parallel with his ticking, creaking cargo.  If you were really good, your foot would touch dirt just before the basket did, so you could catch it.  If you weren’t really good but thought you were, you’d probably fall off trying to beat it.  A good weeding mechanism for braggarts, although a bit wasteful. 
I stood up there for a minute before I moved to work, savouring the sounds that coloured the silence.  The creak and whistle of the bamboo framework underfoot that made and held up this little island in the sky, our fishing platform.  The rush and rumble of the wind and the clouds.  Something out there, calling for food, warning, a mate, or just for the hell of it. 
I sighed happily, and felt those aching muscles fade into insignificance.  Davro was a nice boy, no bore to talk to, but up here wasn’t really meant for talking.  Not even during the big migration rushes, where every inch was crammed with men and equipment straining as hard as they could to bring down the quarry, the platform so overloaded with flesh dead and living that it seemed like it was going to crash down on the spot.  Even then, no one talked unless they had to.  This was a place for doing things. 
So I did things.  I pulled my rod from my back, assembled it with care, all the long, whippy, hollow feet of it, stretching out and giving me a reach that spanned yards.  I threaded its tip with the strong stuff, the string woven by my Vedna, near as tough as wire and nearly as stiff.  I had a devil of a time knotting it, but when it was done, nothing short of a Plowmaw would snap that line, and I liked to think that even one of those brutes would’ve had to strain itself.  I dotted its length with small glass-blown buoys, airy little things containing just enough helium to keep the line near-neutrally buoyant. 
That was the bulk of the preparations.  Now, the location, my favourite spot, a little nook tucked away on the northernmost dock.  The skyfishing platform was roomy enough for a score and a half of men to scurry about, but it never felt large, not in the face of all that empty air.  You were forever surrounded by a view that made the biggest man feel like an ant.
The sun had begun its dive.  I baited the tip of the line, placed a big soft lump of Vedna’s thickbread on its tip.  Heavy, firm dough riddled with all manner of fragrant little nuggets, meats, fruits, and vegetables alike.  Not so good for a human to eat, not unbaked, but the smell brought the game in like fleas to a roaming cat.  And as soon as they found it, they had to taste it, with just a quick mouthful, a little nip at the bait.  Which usually ended up sampling one of the two dozen or so barbed hooks of varying shapes and sizes that studded the entire doughball.  A nasty business, but I liked to think I was good enough to make sure it was over quickly. 
Preparations: done.  Location: done.  Baiting: done.  I whirled the line and cast, watched it soar into a nearby cloudbank.  And then I sat back to wait and skywatch and politely ask myself what in the name of all the sticks in the forest what I was doing up here. 

I was old.  There was no denying that, dance around the issue with Davro as I might.  Skyfishing was not a job for old men, or aging men, or anyone that wasn’t ready for an hourlong climb followed by a six-hour marathon of heaving in struggling prey and wrestling it to death, all in thin air.  So was I doing it because I wanted to pretend I was still young?  Or was the company of my near-peers really as grating as I talked it up to be? 
Or was I just determined to do this because I didn’t know anything else?
I stared moodily at my bobber, a shiny bit of metal that glinted in the slowly-reddening light of the setting sun.  Let’s face it, Farlen, I told myself, you love this.  You like the view, you love the sweet sting of the cold breeze, you love that ache you don’t care about that pops up in your arms as you try to subdue a Moaner calf while its parents get ready to charge you.  And you’ve spent your whole life doing it, and you’re damned if you’re going to step off that ladder, touch dirt, and never see the sky again except from below. 
Except you’re going to have to, because your bones hurt and your back aches and all those piles and carbuncles you were bandying about with young Davro – who isn’t young, and is just a sign of your own advancing age, calling a midyears man young! – belong to you, and the only difference between you and those coots downstairs is that they’re smart enough to know when to leave off work and take up complaining. 
Huh.  I bet that they were drinking tea right now, while I shivered up here.  I smiled through blue lips.  Bastards didn’t know what they were missing. 
The line shook, my mind snapped to attention, and the first catch of the eve started its laborious progress towards the dinner table. 

Time spent on the skyfishing platform was different from time on the dirt.  It had two modes, two tempos: waiting and reeling.  Waiting, it slowed, swirled, eddied around me as smooth as a summer breeze.  The line bobbed, the little buoys on it shimmered, and the cold settled in with the insidious ease of a cuckoo in a nest.  Then would come reeling, where the world shattered into a new form instantly, where everything but the line and the muscles dropped out of sight and out of mind and overheated, bones baking against blood from the sweet, sweet strain of sweat. 
Then with the plop of the catch’s body in the basket it was back to waiting, mind making a tally that sat unchanged somewhere in the back of the brain until it needed adding to again. 
The first catch was a wandering Sicklejaw, a rarer sight than most (reptiles in the sky were always rare, scaly, gliding things, and ones this high up scarcer still), and a fierce fight until I managed to wrap my hands around its neck (a riskier, but faster kill than the cudgel, and one I preferred and maintained took more skill).  Slightly rank flesh, but it was a female with a clutch tucked up in her long, curved underbill.  The eggs were protected from all by her iron-hard beak, but now lay exposed to her poisonous saliva as the muscles in her jaw gradually relaxed.  I placed them in the basket with care, and wrapped my blanket around them for cushioning.  I wouldn’t need the warmth for now anyways.  Vedna had knit that blanket, it was as thick and warm as could be and still light enough to be an easy carry al the way up.  I didn’t really deserve her company. 
Three Stovelings were next, the last of the evening, all spaced apart by no more than ten minutes, all with very little fuss.  My mother had cooked them the best of anyone I knew, even Vedna, though of course I’d never tell her that.  Most people thought the name was about their chewy, rubbery flesh, but she’d always said otherwise.  “They’re like little stoves, of course,” she told me, and she’d hollowed out their tiny ribcages and stuffed them with whatever she could, fruit or vegetables.  It tenderized them wonderfully fast. 
A vast-winged, tiny-bodied Spiralling Crover, on its way down from the vaults of the sky above where it slept in the day to the lowlands of the underclouds, aching to feed on small nightbirds and bats.  A bony, knobbly-poor meal, but with beautiful plumage and soft, insulating down that would make a fine pillow or coat lining, perhaps something for one of the grandchildren.  Maybe little Aniese?  Or wait, she wasn’t so little anymore, and would take resentment as being “babied.”  Was Olmin still the youngest?  They all grew up so fast, such a tired line that the old people had told him when he was young. 
Now here was a real catch, a sturdy tug on the line with real weight behind it.  No bird this, a bat, a Gloompounder, a big, slow browser of the high-altitude insects, the earl of batkind: fat, sleepy and thick, but with excellent taste.  A real feast, and that short, thick fur would be handy.   Easy catches too; if you could get by that first shocked and appalled outburst of theirs when they felt the hook’s prick, you were pretty much set.  This would be a fine, tasty meal.  I could share it with Davro, as thanks.  He’d always been my favourite nephew.  My brother was a better father than I was.  Had been a better father than I was.
I grew cold all at once, and reclaimed my blanket from the Sicklejaw eggs, carefully nestling them on the fur of the Gloompounder’s belly and covering it with a wing. 
Damnit, I was old. 

Another Gloompounder bit the line as soon as I’d replaced it, a smaller specimen that might have been the other’s mate (hard to check the gender on Gloompounders, especially in the oncoming dusk).  Another good meal, and a good sign.  The night was proving fruitful, and I decided I’d lord it over Davro a little when I got home.  Just ribbing, of course – luck couldn’t be helped. 
The next catch soured my optimism as soon as I heard the squealing.  It was a Chittle-Whistler, all legs, compound eyes, and carapace, with that damned pig-screaming orbiting it like a comet.   My father had sworn by their meat, but he was the only man I’d ever known who’d willingly eat the things when other food lay nearby, or even things that were only food under the most relaxed definitions.  Those things did not count among their number Chittle-Whistler meat, as far as I was concerned.  If you wanted to eat bugs, you should at least eat little ones.  Trying to consume one the size of a large boy seemed excessive. 
I smacked it between the eyes with the cudgel – nothing to strangle, and there was no way I was touching that thing – moved to throw it over the side of the skyfishing platform that faced down the mountainside, far from the village, and stopped to consider an idea.  Maybe I didn’t like Chittle-Whistlers.  Maybe no one in the village liked Chittle-Whistlers.  But there were plenty of things out there that did like them, and maybe I was being a tad too quick to discard useful bait. 
I cut free the legs – no sense in making the lure too bulky – and set them aside, then re-attached the limbless head and torso to the line, setting aside the chewed-upon scraps of the sweetdough (it had been near finished anyways – but with this, the night could stretch on a bit longer).  The buoys were measured, checked, and another four or so were added on to compensate for the heavier drag.  Then with a cast, it started all over again.  Something in the back of my head pointed out that the sun had set, and I should be heading home inside the hour.  Vedna and the family would be setting out dinner without me now, it warned, and I’d miss the scraps.  I devoutly ignored it. 

It was a matter of minutes before the next catch was champing at the Chittle-Whistler’s bit, and the weight and heft of it nearly caused me to lose my feet from glee alone.  Up up and up over the side it came, rattling and thrashing against the bamboo hard enough to rock the platform, a big fat Twulkee’s Owl, the black sheep of its particular family with its long (for an owl) beak and small (again, for an owl) eyes.  It hissed at me, and I laughed back as I brought it down.  Good stewing flesh, and that beak would make a fine razor.  But only a razor for the cautious.  The beak was sharp, yes, but just a little too sharply curved at the tip.  Treat it like a straight blade and you’d have a slit throat before you knew what from when. 
A Spreadwing Gloompounder was next up, the giant of its particular family, as fat and round as a butterball with wings like big paper fans.  It put up much more of a fight than its lesser cousins had, if only because of its impressive weight.  Towards the end it grew exhausted and hung limp, and the force of the dead weight nearly dragged me over the edge. 
Deep breath, stretch your back.  My, that hurt, didn’t it?  Odd, didn’t feel so bad at the time.  Deep breath again, keep it coming, back to work. 
Another Chittle-Whistler, never a species to shy from cannibalism.  I smacked it between the disgusting eyes and threw it away, allowing myself the brief luxury of watching the body pinwheel to a speck and then nothing against the grey rocks.  Very satisfying, perhaps inappropriately so.  The air made me gasp, and it reminded me of that one fistfight I’d had up here with brother Rackle, Davro’s father.  We’d loved the same girl.  He’d won the fight, found the girl wasn’t worth it, and moped for three years before finding his wife Yema.  And her sister Vedna, well, she’d found me soon after, hadn’t she? 
The best fight of my life, although I couldn’t breath properly for weeks after it. 

A wait, a pause, and then a heave and a pull.  And what a heave, what a haul!  I could recognize that pull anywhere, in my sleep, in my grave; it was a Highbacked Trellmador, a grand swimmer of the skies, a bird built like the beautiful, delicious, unnatural offspring of a fish and a bull, with a beak that was a blunt instrument.  My whole body was the rod for an hour there, a long, hard wrestle of skinny arms against wings that could concuss a  horse with a blow.  Twice my feet nearly left the platform’s surface, and each time I hazily considered checking to see if I’d remembered to tie the knots in my line securely, each time dismissing it – I might lose the catch!
At last it hurled itself at me head on, with a screech like cracking rocks.  I skipped, hopped, and fell over, it couldn’t check itself, and with a thud that shook the ladder to its roots it smacked onto the platform, too stunned and exhausted to even flap. 
It took me five minutes to kill the thing, tired as I was, thick as its skull was.  And what a haul  I’d send this down with the basket strapped to its side, in a special harness.  Out of season by a great magnitude – Highbacked Trellmadors were early migrators, and they might not fly fast but they flew long.  This thing’s kin should be clear to the winter nesting grounds by now, and I had no idea what on earth had possessed it to stay so long as the nights grew cooler.  
I turned to the basket, then hesitated and looked at my rod and line.  The Chittle-Whistler, though ragged, remained intact.  And Highbacks tended to flock in mated pairs.  Maybe this was an unlucky bachelor heading home alone after a long, fruitless search for a partner.  Maybe it wasn’t.  Maybe I should find out before I started to climb down the ladder, completely exposed and open, with no shelter and nowhere to run.  Highbacks paired closely, to say the least. 
Besides, said that little thing in the back of my head, you want to prove that you’re still the best.  That you’re not old.  I told it shut up, and then realized I’d spoken aloud without intending to. 
All right then.  The last cast.  Just to be sure, to be safe.  The air was getting to me.  I heaved the rod back, flicked, and watched the ungainly, half-chewed corpse go spinning away into the night, bobber shining in the flicker of my lantern. 
It vanished suddenly, and I had barely any time at all to grin before that familiar, deep haul rung in on me, with a savage undercurrent that told me I’d been exactly right.  I laughed a bit – well, coughed, what with the cold and all – and thanked every star above me that I hadn’t tried to leave the shelter of the platform, however simple it was. 
Of course, now I had an angry bird twice my size and my full weight attached to a string that I couldn’t let go of.  Still, it was probably better this way. 
The line shook, and I spilled half out over the ledge, gripping firmly to the railing with my hips as best as I could.  I tipped uneasily as it yanked this way and that. 
Well, it was probably better. 
A wrench, a yank, and my grip started to slip.  I didn’t want to think what would happen if the Trellmador got ahold of my rod.  I wasn’t about to head down that ladder with it lurking, and the thought of replicating my little overnighter of so many years ago gave me the chills in my chills. 
The line shook, I jerked another half inch towards a thousand feet of air, and then it slumped with a crunch, slackening in a flash.  I was so surprised, I nearly threw myself off the edge. 
Something rumbled out there in the darkness, effortlessly overwriting the pained squawk of the Trellmador.  Bones crunched, and the line twitched and soared this way and that, entirely independent of my muscles.  The Trellmador went quiet, and the only sound was the tearing now, like someone tearing apart wet chunks of wood. 
Then a quiet nudge, a deliberate yank on the line, experiment, cautious, intrigued. 
I dropped the rod.  It was a good one, used for fifteen years, made by my oldest son, and I was sure he’d be happier to have a living father than an intact skyfishing rod, which he wouldn’t have in any case if I chose to hang on to it.  Whatever was out there, it wasn’t something I would go after along, or with rod and line at all.  We’d need the harpoons we took down Moaners and Great Green Rumblebacks with, the summer hunting tools for when the updrafts were warm and the sun shone bright.  All tucked away safely in the sheds around the ladder’s base, damn it. 
Whatever it was grunted, and the sounds of busy consumption drifted away on the breeze, quieter by the second. 
All right.  Escape next.  Hopefully it’ll move on fast.  Hopefully.  If not, if it finds me down that ladder, I’m dead.  Probably. 
I looked at the basket, and the winch for the basket drop. 
“This is a very, very, stupid idea,” I told myself aloud, whispering. 
Still, what were the alternatives?
So it was, after a few worrying minutes of preparation and starting at night sounds, that I finished rigging the basket together with the Trellmador corpse.   I had one foot on the ladder and one hand on the trigger switch and my heart in my mouth. 
“Stupid idea,” I reminded myself, and I flipped the switch. 
The cargo dropped what seemed almost instantly, like a rock.  So hypnotizingly speedy was its descent that I very nearly forgot to start climbing, muscles locking up like children’s hands on candies. 
Over the whir of the moving dropline, something rumbled again.  That got me moving. 
It was the fastest I’d ever gone down the ladder, and in the worst state.  I was too jumpy to think or move, and my body was too numb and stiff to bend.  Yet somehow, I managed, skipping steps, releasing grips almost as soon as they were found, keeping one eye on the darkness and another on my hands, neither of which were in any state to notice anything smaller than a house.  Still, I paid close attention to them, so much that I neglected my ears, which is why it took me so long to realize that the cargo line had stopped its descending hum. 
I paused, and in the sudden, extreme moment of focus I found myself in, I heard a rumble from below. 
You don’t want to move too fast in a situation like that.  It can get you in trouble.  So I spun around so quickly that I nearly twirled off the ladder. 
Right there, right beneath my feet, cargo basket in its claws, half of the Highbacked Trellmador vanishing into its maw, was a flying reptile, streaked in grey and flecked in black and shadowed everywhere with blurred markings.  Its eyes were small and bright orange, its claws were as long as my hand, and its wings seemed to be blotting out half the sky from my view.  I hadn’t ever seen one in person, and it was only because I was too shocked to actually think that the little voice in my head promptly and politely coughed up its name from my grandfather’s ancient old book of wildlife: a Mokie Highdrake.  They were northern predators, they had no natural enemies, fed mostly on whatever was too slow to outrun them, and weren’t much studied because things that couldn’t outrun them included humans.  This one was probably migrating extremely late, and had wandered a little far south. 
It blinked up at me, eyelids flicking in irritation as the slackened cargo rope dripped across its face. 
I let go of the ladder.  I had something that wasn’t quite a plan in my head, and if I stopped to think about it I was sure it would be ruined.  The back of my head explained to me that this was completely insane approximately five times over in the two seconds it took for me to land on the basket as it dangled from the Highdrake’s claws. 
There was a snap, a thump, and a bump, and I was freefalling again, cushioned against the feathers and fur of a half dozen or more corpses.  That big rumbling roar came from above me as I fell, and my scattered vision caught a blur of orange eyes as it came streaking down after me in full dive, claws glittering in and out of view.  The rope jerked against my back, tangled in its wings, and I began to slow practically before I started. 
This is very stupid, I reminded myself, in case I forgot.  The Highdrake hauled upwards, yanking the tether in its teeth, slack looping about itself as I drew closer and closer. 
Something else was in its teeth, something twitching back and forth with each heave and pull – the handle of my skyfishing rod.  It was practically close enough to touch, so I reached out and grabbed it.  It slid out remarkably easily.  Except for the hooks. 
The Highdrake’s first instinct was to pull back.  That did its job as far as getting out the hooks went.  It also removed a good part of its tongue.  That triggered its next instinct, which was to open its mouth and hiss.  That released the rope, which promptly shot taunt under my weight plus the entire combined mass of my cargo. 
This wouldn’t have been an issue for the Highdrake if the rope hadn’t looped around its neck as it pulled.  That wouldn’t have been an issue for the Highdrake if the slight weight change hadn’t caused its right wingtip to brush the framework of the ladder. 
A falter turned into a lurch turned into a splintering snap, and down came everything, extremely quickly but just fast enough to watch. 

The landing was odd.  I blacked out on the crash, then woke up from the sheer, ear-shattering noise it made.  The hollow bones of the Highdrake seemed to pop as loud as fireworks, and the chorus of yells from around the town as people woke up at what sounded like the end of the world didn’t make things any quieter. 
That was quite a fall.  The farthest I’ve heard of.  Maybe I’d even survived it. 
I decided I’d find out later, and passed out. 

Vedna was the first thing I saw when I woke up, somehow in my bed at home.  For a horrible moment she looked worried, then angry, then she hugged me and told me I was awful.  That was reassuring. 
“How’s the ladder?” I asked. 
“Shush,” she said. 
“How’s the ladder?” I asked Davro. 
He shook his head.  “Standing.  But not by much.”
“Sorry.  Unavoidable.”
“With what you just brought down, I don’t think we’ll need the extra food.  We’ll have all winter to work out how to rebuild it.”
“Good,” I said, vaguely.  My head felt like it was full of feathers.  “Good.”
A thought popped up, slowly but surely.  “No, not quite.”
“Sorry, Uncle?”
“No ‘we.’  I think it’s time I stopped climbing that ladder.  You’ll have to build it without me.”
Davro gave me a sympathetic look.  “Age catches us all, Uncle.”
I shook my head, wincing as my back ached.  “No, not that.  I just don’t think I can ever top that catch.”

 

“Skyhooks” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

The sky looked troublesome today, thought Matthias.  There was something about the curve of the clouds, the texture of the atmosphere, the firmness of lines encompassed by the horizon.  It was altogether not quite perfect, which meant, as he was quick to remind himself –
“You just wasted the whole morning.”
Matthias gave as evil an eye as he could possibly manage to the nine-foot, hirsute bird squatting in the sand next to him.  “I was quickly reminding myself of just that,” he reproached his critic.  “The worst criticism is unnecessary criticism.”
“The worst criticism is unconditional praise,” retorted the bird. 
“I wish I had some of that,” said Matthias.  “It would be a nice change.”
“I always knew you were a lazy rube at heart.  A quick job, a once-over to make sure no major bits are missing, and bam, cash out.  Philistine.”
“You wound me, Gershwin.”
“Prove me wrong.”
Gershwin stretched his neck and shook it, an avian yawn that sent his big axe-beak fluttering about in the sun like a ten-pound leaf.  Matthias admired the ridiculousness of his companion’s form even as he privately wished great misfortunate and discomfort upon its wearer.  If a bear had learned how to fly, then forgot how, it would’ve looked something like Gershwin.  It would’ve had the same attitude, too.
“In any case,” he said, “the morning isn’t a total washout.  The beach looks nice.”
“Passable.”
“Maybe not my best work, but it’s quite pretty, I think.”
“Not with that disaster masquerading as weather hanging over its head.  Tear it down and start over.”
Matthias sighed deeply.  “I suppose you’re right.  A little.  You manage it now and then.”  He picked up his palette from where it lay carelessly discarded in the sand.  Mere minutes ago he’d been so caught up in his painting that he’d let it drop at his feet as he reached up to do the high bits, and now he couldn’t imagine how the work in front of him had ever captivated his imagination. 
There were three big colours on the palette’s smooth surface: red, yellow, and blue.  There were a bunch of little ones, stuff like infrared and ultraviolet, which came in after the main job was done. 
There was a single, carefully-separated spot on the palette, which was impossible to look at.  It made Matthias squint as he dabbed his brush carefully in it. 
“I hate this part,” he said as he poised his arm. 
“Get it over with.”
Matthias did.  One long sweep, a swing, a graceful backslash, and the beach had no sky again, just like it had an hour ago.  The ocean’s waves rose up to greet blankness, turning the soft sounds of water on the shoreline somewhat confused.  A hasty sketch of a gull’s outline that had been circling overhead screeched in alarm as it suddenly found itself on the ground, the air vanishing out from under its wings. 
“There.  Much better.  Now, are you ready to try again?”
Matthias looked at all that empty space, and shuddered at the thought of filling it in again.  “No, no, I don’t think so.  I think I’ll go sketch for a while.”
“Suit yourself,” said Gershwin.  “I’ll wait.”
Matthias picked up his coat and hat and left the beach and its missing skyline.  He went to a desert for a while, and drew some pretty good rocks.  They caught the sunlight with a spider’s boldness, and he cheered up a little.  Just to reassure himself that he could still do it, he left a quick outline for a sunset overhead, so he could come back later and practice.  He didn’t feel like doing more atmospheric work just yet. 
“Better?” asked Gershwin as he stepped back onto the beach. 
“A bit,” said Matthias.  “Let’s go start up a fresh one.  I’ve got some ideas.”
So they went to another spot, a good blank one, and Matthias started drawing.  First, some water…
“You always use too much water.”
“I like water.  Besides, it’s important.  Most of the really exciting stuff only happens if you’ve got some water around somewhere.”
“Don’t overspecialize, all the same.  Do you want to be summed up as “that guy who wouldn’t quit with the water”?”
And then for the coast, a lot of pebbles, big rounded smooth ones.  Well-aged pebbles with just the right colour (dark grey to black) and lustre (shinier than a star when wet, flat and plain otherwise). 
“Either a bit dull or a bit depressing.”
“Just wait and see.”
And then (the important bit, the part that had popped into his head as he watched the sun glimmer on the rocks), with big smooth strokes, the ice.
“More water?”
“Entirely different state of matter.  Besides, you didn’t complain about me using rocks again for the ground.”
Gershwin grumbled to himself, and Matthias knew he’d scored a point.  He drew faster, with a heart growing freer by the moment.  Big swirls of ice studded the water, which took on dark curls and bleak tones.  Sweeping plains of snow stretched into the distance.  And over it all, he started to fill in the sky.  A greying, washed-out-white eclipsed in purity by the puffed and ruffled chest feathers of the ridiculous little birds he covered the rocks in.
Matthias felt Gershwin’s gaze grow frosty, and he very carefully refrained from smiling.  Although a small giggle did lodge itself in his throat and refuse to leave. 
“Parody,” said the critic, “has its place.  Is this it?”
“Pardon?” said Matthias.  He traced out a long, thin line in the water, the back of a sausage-shaped seal with the barest hint of a razory canine peeking out of its lip. 
“Hmmph.  Mind that it makes sense on its own.  The best parodies always do.”
Matthias took the point, and put some fish in the water.  “There,” he said.  “Food source and predator both attended to.  Happy?”
“Needs detail.”
Matthias drew many little nests among the rocks, made from cunningly woven twigs. 
“Did you say there were going to be trees down here?”
Matthias drew many little nests among the rocks, made from beak-chipped and carved ice.
“That doesn’t seem very safe for unhatched eggs.”
Matthias drew many little nests among the rocks, made from painstakingly relocated other rocks.  His hand was starting to hurt. 
“That’s better.  Say, where are you going to put this?”
Matthias flexed his palm.  “Well, the gallery’s south end is empty.  I figure we could always drop it down… wait, are you serious?”
“Absolutely.  Good, original work.  I should get you sulky more often if this happens afterwards.”
“I could do a companion piece for the other end,” suggested Matthias, thoughts unfolding and reshaping in his head like a pile of energetic origami.  “A counterbalance, a contrast.”
“Absolutely not.  You’ll ruin its distinctiveness.  Do you want to be one of those people that does nothing but push out sequels to their best-seller?”
“You’ll see.”
“I hope I will.”
So Matthias packed up the landscape very carefully and walked to the north end of the gallery.  He picked up his brush and considered the horizon, then redrew it. 
“Looks familiar already,” groaned Gershwin.  “Copy, copy, copy.  You’re redrawing old news again.  Creatively stagnant layabout.”
“Wait for it.”
He drew the snow.  He drew the water.  He drew the ice.  He drew and drew and redrew half the original scene until he could feel Gershwin’s urge to remonstrate him vibrating in the air like a big bomb, and then he took his brush, put it to the empty, silent vista in front of him, and he drew a really big bear. 
That set him back on his heels a bit.  “What’s the idea there?”
“Look,” said Matthias, and he put in a seal.  “Wait a moment,” he said, and put some ice over the water.  Then he put in a hole for the seal, which stuck its head out of it.  The bear smashed its head in and ate it. 
“Creative,” commented Gershwin.  “Disgusting, but creative.” 
“Thank you.”  On second thought, all those rocks didn’t really fit in.  What about more ice?  More water.  Matthias scribbled and rescribbled, blotting out whole chunks of land without so much as a twinge.  More ice floated in the water, big mounds and mountains of it.  A whale poked its head out in the space between floes, and for a lark he fitted it with the same colours as the penguins, adding elegance to an already sleek figure. 
“Very pretty,” said Gershwin, “but aren’t you forgetting something?”
Matthias’s fingers beat a rapid pit-a-pat-a-bat on his palette as he considered the sky.  Its blankness was making the polar bear confused; the poor thing kept giving him the most forlorn looks. 
He tried white again.
“Predictable.  And a little too close to before.”
He tried blue.  
“Too normal.”
He tried puce, in a fit of irritation.
“No tantrums now.  Come on, act your age.”
Matthias tried black, with some stars.
“Setting it at night?  Wonderful.  Paint everything black and call it a job.”
Matthias tried throwing his palette.  Gershwin ducked amiably, and it splattered all over the sky. 
“Now look at what you’ve done,” he said. 
Matthias was opening his mouth to scream something, and then thought again. 
“What is it?”
“Look at that, won’t you?”
Gershwin turned around and looked.  “My word.”
The sky was streaked and spattered with all sorts of colours, smeared in sheets that dribbled across the constellations like delicate silks.  They rippled up and down, jostling on the breeze, and there was a strange little spot at their hearts that seemed impossible to see, no matter how hard you squinted. 
“That can’t be safe,” said Matthias, gingerly picking the palette up from the snow.  One of the bears hopefully licked the stains, checking for edibility, and turned its tongue permanently purple.
“Who cares?” said Gershwin, staring at the aurora borealis with the rapt concentration he normally reserved for small, edible mammals.  “It’s the best thing you’ve done since those big lizards.  And don’t you dare try to fix it – you’ll just end up tossing out half the gallery and starting over again.”
“You were entirely too attached to those reptiles.  I just wanted to try drawing some things that looked like me for a change.  And I have to change those – there’s some of the correctional blotter left in the middle of them.”
“Piffle.  Pish tosh.  As long as no one looks at them too hard, who’ll know?  Besides, no one’ll visit up here anyways.  Too cold.  They’ll stick to the central hall, and you’d know it, what with all the tasty fruit you kept adding in there.”
“I was hungry that day.”
“I take that as agreement.”  Gershwin clacked his beak in satisfaction.  “You know, today hasn’t been half bad.  If you fix up that beach’s skyline before you go slouching off to bed, maybe you’ll even be ready to open the place up to the public before you’re completely senile.”
Matthias, inspired by the unexpected and rare praise, not only finished the sky but fired off three new delicious kinds of fruit before going to bed, one of which was unexpectedly and ebulliently toxic. 

He wasn’t sure if it was that or his furtive decision to copy the aurora in the southern piece – just experimentally, no one would notice – that led to Gershwin attempting to peck his eye out the next day. 

 

“Watercolours,” copyright 2010 Jamie Proctor.

There was a village, and it was the world, at least as far as the people living there were concerned.  There were the farms, and the meadows, and the forest surrounding it like some sort of herbaceous asteroid belt, and everything beyond that was probably not worth your time, regardless of what those strange people that came wandering down the road kept saying.  But that didn’t count, not really.  The village was the world, and it was everything. 
Well… not quite.  There were some holes in that particular cozy mental framework, that had to be covered with less-than-liberally-sized blind spots. 
One of them was Old Man Morris. 

“So, is he real?” asked Simon at Charlie’s retreating back. 
“Yup,” said Charlie.  He slipped on a rock, sending a spray of gravel just past his friend’s face, then caught himself on a bush.  A raspberry bush. 
“He isn’t real,” said Simon, loudly over the inept cursing. 
“Is so.”
“My daddy said so.”
“Well your daddy’s wrong.”
Simon glared at his friend’s foot, then hastily cut his malevolence short as a fresh wad of mixed soil and slender-rooted plants hailed downwards.  Casting doubt on the word of a father was a serious thing.  But Charlie did it without a moment’s hesitation.  Clearly, this was worth exploring. 
“Well, prove it,” he said. 
“Doin’ that.”
“Howja find out anyways?”
“That time I got lost looking for the cows last week,” said Charlie, as they heaved themselves over the final yards of cliff face and onto the weedy, long-grassed, tree-shaded peak of the Big Hill.  “Almost walked into him.  Now shh!”
“What’re you –” managed Simon before Charlie slapped his hand over his mouth. 
There were such things as desperate times and desperate measures, Simon knew.  He could imagine a thousand things that would make Charlie do something like that.  Unfortunately, he couldn’t think of anything that’d let him stand it, especially right after his father’s all-knowing powers had just been disputed, and so instead of staying quiet he punched Charlie in the gut. 
The resulting tussle, doomed to tininess as it was, ranged far and wide across the hilltop, with much energy and ruckus had by both.  But not by all, because the third member of that distinguished group was less than pleased when they rolled directly through the basket of mushrooms he’d been picking. 
“Eep,” said Simon. 
“Hullo, Old Man Moss,” said Charlie. 
“Hmmph,” said Old Man Morris. 
He was tall and bent quite short and broken, a big man who’d spent too much time fiddling with small things.  One of those small things was manifestly not at all his beard, which was so thick and tangly that it could’ve been a sweater. 
His sweater, on the other hand, was rather threadbare. 
Probably blue once. 
“Hmmph,” repeated Old Man Morris.  “That’s Morris.”
“Moss,” agreed Simon, companionably.  It was true; seated where he sat on the old, old stump, the man looked mossy.  He could’ve out-willowed a willow in full weeping. 
“Hmmph,” reiterated Old Man Moss.  “Go away, boys.  Bad enough you bother me yesterday, and the day before, and the day before, and all to last week with your spying.  Bad enough.  Now go away and stay away, and take your friends and acquaintances with you.”
Charlie picked his nose without malice.  “My daddy told me,” he announced as he inspected the extracted particles, “that you’re a wizard.”
“Go away, boys.”
“A crazy old wizard that lives all on his own and talks to the bugs and the weeds.”
“I can do what I want.  Leave me be.”
“And that my mommy smacked him and told him to Mind His Words, and that you were my grandpa’s uncle’s cousin.  Once removed.”  Examination complete, the mote was flicked away into the grass. 
Old Man Moss’s brow wrinkled further, amazingly.  “She a Nickel?”
“Nu-uh.  Daddy’s a Clay.  We’re Clays.  But mommy said she used to be.”  He grinned in gap-toothed triumph.  “I’m Charlie Clay and this is Simon Adams and he’s my friend.  You’re my grandpa’s uncle’s cousin”
“-once removed-“ reminded Simon. 
“-once removed-“ agreed Charlie, “-and we want to see you do a magic trick!”
Old Man Moss sighed into his beard, setting it whistling and rattling like branches in the winter.  “Like what?”  He gathered up his mushrooms, palms a deeper dirt brown than the soil he’d plucked them from. 
“Can you whistle?”
“Hmmph.  Anyone can whistle.”
“The special whistle.”
Old Man Moss kept his back turned so they didn’t see his face.  “Quit fooling around, boy Clay.”
Charlie put his fingers in his mouth, moved them around so they were plugging the right gaps in his teeth, twisted his tongue the secret way, and out came a cold clear whistle, the up-and-down slip of it as sweet as a songbird’s, any songbird, the one in the trees above.  It warbled its approval and slid down to Charlie’s hand as smoothly as a diving leaf in autumn, which it inspected hopefully for traces of worms.
“Mommy taught me that,” said Charlie proudly.
Old Man Moss rubbed his back.  He’d turned around very fast for someone so gnarled; it had been like watching an oak get up and dance a jig.  “Your mommy, her name’s Edith?”
“Yup.”
Old Man Moss glared down at the boys from his head’s creaky old perch.  “Scat.  Both of you.  And you tell your mommy to mind what she teaches, unless she wants more than she can handle.  It ain’t anything to be proud of.”
Simon tugged at Charlie’s hand.  He didn’t like what he saw in the old man’s eye.  It was that nasty gleam grownups got when they had a new way to keep you busy.  Charlie shook it off.  “Show us a whistle-trick first then,” he said, stubbornly.
“Clays,” grumbled Old Man Moss, loamy as an apple orchard, gravelley as a coal mine.  He puckered his lips and shook his head, and he gave a low, whirling whir, as dronesome as a bumblebee in a long fog.  It made the boys’ teeth twitch and the air hum, and then it was been and gone, out over the forest. 
They waited. 
“That didn’t do anything,” complained Charlie. 
“Takes a moment,” said Old Man Moss.  There was a huffing and a puffing and a great big bear’s head burst through the bushes at his side.  It shook its fur and grunted into the air, hot damp pouring out of its lungs.  “Now scat.”
The boys scat, aided by the galumphing of the bear at their heels.  They ran all the way home, and received a pair of hide-tannings apiece: one for going out all that way to bother that crazy old man, and one for lying about bears.  There were no bears within a month’s walk or more, not since Simon’s great-grandfather had shot the last as it went for his cows. 

The next day there were the two of them and Simon’s little sister Margaret, who’d wrestled the story out of her brother after bedtime and demanded to come along on threat of alerting their mother, a fearsome woman who would’ve led her own horde in another time and place.  They waited for Old Man Moss at his mushroom patch.  Far too long, as far as Margaret was concerned.  
“You said he’d be here,” she whined. 
“He was!  He will.  He’s just taking a while.”
“I’ll tell mom if you were lying.  Liars get tanned.”
“You do that and I’ll tell her you made us bring you out here.”
“Wouldn’t dare!”
“Would so!”
They were interrupted by the thud-thud-rustle of big feet, and up came Old Man Moss himself, rising up through the greenery like the king of the marsh.  It was a strange thing, seeing him on the move, like watching a hill tiptoe to one side.  He stopped short his stumping as he caught sight of the children. 
“You,” he said, flatly.  “I told you all to scat.”
“This is my sister Margaret,” said Simon politely.  “We call her Margie.  She’s little, so she isn’t very smart.  Say hi, Margie.”  Margaret smacked him. 
“Hrrmmph.  Get going before I whistle up another friend at you.”
“How’d you do that?” begged Charlie.  “There’s no bears here.  Daddy said there’s no bears here.”
“I didn’t call that one from here.  I whistled him in from… elsewhere.”  Old Man Moss’s face moved under that beard in something that could’ve been a frown.  “Now get going.”
“How far away can you do that?” asked Charlie with interest, picking his nose again. 
“Scat.”
“How big a thing can you move like that?” asked Simon. 
“Shoo!”
“You’re making that up,” complained Margaret.
“Pfah!”  Old Man Moss eyebrows rippled together like fighting snakes as he glared down the children, mouth working in weird shapes.  Out of that jumble of tongue and teeth came a short, sharp switch of sound, a slap across the ears, and up popped a blade of grass that shot straight up and smacked Charlie across the nose.  He yelped and fell over.
“Told you,” he mumbled, pawing inside the stinging orifice.  His finger had been driven somewhat deeper than he’d intended by the blow. 
“Neat!” chirruped Margaret. 
“Hrrmmph!  Go away.”
“Can you do that with a whole bunch at once?” asked Simon. 
“Bah!”
“What about one, but a reeeeaaallly teeny one?” asked Margaret.
“Agh!”
And so on and so forth went the day, with the children taking turns at pestering and bothering until Old Man Moss would give in with a grump and show off some thing or another that would make them gasp and gape and giggle.  Charlie tried a few of the sounds, but they didn’t work.  The puckers sent his tongue diving into the back of his throat and the very first whispers of sound made his lips tie themselves up in granny knots.  The notes that managed to come out at all came out wrong. 
“Just as well,” said Old Man Moss.  “Shouldn’t do that sort of thing at your age.  Not safe.  Now go home!  Scat!”
And then they asked him another question. 

The next time, they brought along Charlie’s other friend, Thomas.  And Thomas’s brother, Sam.  And Christopher Petey, because he was desperate to hide from his father and they felt too badly to say no to him. 
“Bah!” said Old Man Moss the moment he saw them, and he whistled up the bear at them.  They ran away and got lost in the woods, and it was some time before they found their way back. 
“No fair,” complained Charlie. 
“I thought you’d gone home,” said Moss, testily.  He was starting to wonder if the mushrooms on the Big Hill were worth the trouble they were getting to be nowadays. 
“Why’d you go and do that for?”
“A bear not scary enough for you boys?  Fine then.”  The new whistle was wild and fresh, like a bowlful of ice cold lakewater to the face.  The wind wooshed and howled and before the boys could so much as open their mouths to complain down came a great big eagle, claws wide, mouth open, shrieking the wild call that made the breeze seem small.  It chased them all the way home, where they each received separate, individual tannings. 
“Next time,” complained Simon to Charlie, “I’m bringing my sister.  He didn’t make a bear chase her.  She’s too little.”
Though Charlie’s pride was against it, his rear was for it, and so Margaret was re-invited with grudging politeness on the followup trip the next day. 
“Hmph!” snorted Old Man Moss, and he didn’t take it farther than that.  From then on Margaret was a permanent, smug fixture on their visits, a solid core with Simon and Charlie that the other children of the village dropped on and off of as the mood for adventure struck their fancies.  Adventure mostly consisted of hurled tidbits of debris, endlessly being told to “go ‘way,” and at least one viciously channelled and directed beehive, but you had to take what you could get. 

Charlie didn’t show up one week.  Old Man Moss kept his voice lower and softer, and his gaze farther away.  A thinking look.  He kept ignoring questions, but with silence instead of words. 
“Your Clay all right?” he asked Simon at the day’s end. 
A blank stare answered him. 
“Charlie.”
“He’s sick,” said Simon.  “He’s in bed.”
“Hmm,” said Old Man Moss, trailing away the grunt that had been forming in his mouth.  “Bad?”
“Dunno.  We wanted to see him but his mommy wouldn’t let us.”
“Hmm.  Hmmph.”  Old Man Moss breathed in deep through his nose, as if to refresh its purpose and remind it of its station in life.  “Right.  Go away.”
They nodded and didn’t.  He let them be until late on in the afternoon, when most of them started to remember chores that needed doing and drifted away awkwardly.  Not being chased off or stomped away from was a new and unsettling thing for them. 
Charlie was in bed that night, but not asleep.  The things he saw whenever he shut his eyes were too alarming for that.  So he lay there in bed, swamped in the covers and pillows, and he tried not to blink.  The moon was full, and the light made his eyes burn. 
There was a stomp-stamp outside his window, slow but sure, and then a shadow that smelled of leaves and mould. 
“Charlie-Clay.  You sick in there?”
Charlie made a noise that he guessed was positive.  The air in the room felt dry and strange whenever he tried to speak with it. 
“Ah, you’ve got it hard there, Clay.  Not too hard though.  I can fix that, but you have to let me.  Listen careful now, Clay.  You hear me?”
Charlie lolled his head around in something like a nod. 
“That’s good.  Now, listen careful here, Clay…”
It was strange, sitting there, half out of his mind with the new tune, the new tone rolling its way about his skull like a marble in a tight passage, but Charlie tried hard.  The whistle was queer and sad, wobbling and wavering like an indecisive robin, but it slid through his throat more sweetly than any of his mother’s medicine had, and by the third go-round he was letting it slip as easily as breathing.  Which was a lot easier, all of a sudden.
“Sleep now there, Charlie-Clay.  And you keep that tune safe, hear?”
Charlie did.  And the sleep came quick. 

He was better the next day.  Point of fact, he was so much better that his mommy said that if she hadn’t seen his fever the night before, she’d have called him a faker and tanned him.  As it was he was shoved out the door to play all day under firm instruction not to hurt himself and give her another fright like that ever again. 
Charlie went up the Big Hill late, after a leisurely breakfast had been thrust upon him.  Most of the others were already there, talking and poking.  One or two were helping Old Man Moss gather up mushrooms, under the unhelpful supervision of Margaret. 
“Thank you very much,” he told him, as politely as he could recall his mother telling him. 
“Mmm,” said the old man through his beard, and said no more of it.  He showed them how to whistle through a grass blade that day, and the next he showed them how a cricket dances.  The rhythm and feel had changed on the Big Hill, and after a few suspicions of poisoning later that month, when he gave them apples to take home, they adjusted happily.  A little clearing was worn into the hill’s crown from pacing feet, and a crude trail blazed up its side, a path of hand-and-toe-holds and smoothed surfaces polished by slipping grips. 
It was about that time that the families of the village finally started to notice their children vanishing every afternoon, especially since some had taken to doing it during chore time.  Lips were kept sealed and earnest lies unfolded, but eventually someone got around to spilling the beans – Russell Petey’s youngest son, Malcolm, under threat of a leathery backhand – and Russell was none too shy to share the news with the rest of the village. 
“Who knows what kind of devilry’s afoot up there?” he told the other parents, after all the scoldings and stay-in-that-house-until-I-say-sos had been said.  “Nothing good.  Teach ‘em all a lesson and make them stay home, I say, and warn off that old vagrant while we’re at it too.”
There were murmurs, but as much against as for.  Charlie’s mother was tapping her foot pointedly – the mention of her father’s uncle’s cousin once removed being up to any sort of no good irked her – and the words being spoken, however appealing, were coming from Russell Petey.  The best thing that could be said about the man was that he never struck any harder when he was sotted than when he was sober.  And even then, he never struck any lighter, either. 
In the end, a few of them went up to talk to Old Man Moss.  There was Charlie’s father, and Russell Petey, and Simon’s uncle. 
“It is getting in the way of their chores,” said Charlie’s father. 
“Damned waste of time, should’ve run him out long ago,” muttered Russell Petey. 
“They keep talking about whistling,” inquired Simon’s uncle.  “What’s that about?”
“Hrrmph,” said Old Man Moss, and he glared at Russell Petey, and he put two fingers to his mouth and did something complicated that made a sound like a bell being eaten by a parrot.  Then a trio of mice ran out of Russell Petey’s pant legs. 
“Now cut that out!  Make ‘em go away!” he screamed, stamping and swearing.  More mice peeked out from his pockets, and dropped out of his shirt. 
“Hmm.”  This whistle was scratchy, clawing at the air, and it produced a cat.  Inside Russell’s shirt.  He ran home yelling, tripping on the underbrush. 
“Just try not to teach them too much of this… stuff, will you?” asked Charlie’s father, before they left. 
“Don’t worry any.  They can’t manage it.  Except your boy.  Damned Nickels, always could carry a tune, even when it does them no good.”
“Well, at the least we can give you a little in return for keeping them out of our hair,” said Simon’s uncle.  “I’ve got some eggs spare to hand every few days, and I expect you could use a loaf or two of bread.  I know for a fact Harriet makes the best around, right Bill?”
“Hmmph,” said Old Man Moss, waving them off.  But he didn’t send back the eggs when they arrived with Simon the next Wednesday, or the bread that Charlie brought in after the Saturday baking. 
The next month, Thomas and Sam complained of an ill turn that had hit their father’s cow.  The poor thing had sunk up to its knee in a burrow something careless had left in its meadow, and snapped its leg quite properly. 
“That so?” asked Old Man Moss.  He thought for a moment as the breeze washed his beard in the wind.  Margaret futilely attempted to jump atop him from behind and failed, as was her wont. 
“Let’s go look,” he decided, and stood up and left almost before the children could follow him, a noisy entourage through a quiet wood.  They sent all the songbirds fleeing, and drew every eye in the village as they marched through its center, a pilgrimage of rags and sticks. 
The whistle he used down there at the farm of Thomas and Sam’s father was a sturdier, simpler version of a tune that rang bells in Charlie’s head.  He didn’t say a word, as promised, but he tried to remember it too.  Just in case. 
“She’s good,” said Old Man Moss, as the cow took a wobbly step, surprised at its own daring.  “Just let her rest for a bit before she goes trotting around like normal again.”  And he was out and gone, before the farmer had time to say so much as a thank-you-kindly. 
That was the beginning of the third time, the longest one, and the best one, and it got better as it wore on.  The children visited the old man in the hills in the afternoons, after his morning walks, the grownups asked for his help with this-or-that in the late-day and evenings, and as night fell he walked back off into the woods, off to who knew where.  The only complaint (from anyone that wasn’t Russell Petey) that was had of him was that the tunes he used that caught the mind so easily were impossible to mimic by any mortal tongue – save that of Charlie, who took much smugness from it, and the occasional cuffing. 
“Everything wants to move,” he explained to his sister self-importantly, “it just has to hear the right tune to get it up and motivated.”
Margaret pinched him, making him yelp. 

The first signs of the downfall happened in late autumn.  The children still followed Old Man Moss as he walked around village – still looking as out of place as a sheep in a bedroom – if in fewer numbers than before, and so it was that a few witnesses were on hand for it.  The procession was on its way over to see about loosening a stubborn tree stump lodged in the fields of Simon’s uncle when a call came floating across the way, a call from Russell Petey.  He was leaning against the fence on his run-down property, swapping tobacco with his hand, Devon.  The big man barely ever talked, barely made any noise at all.  When he wasn’t around, the grownups would say that was because with Russell near, he didn’t need to.  The children never said anything about him.  Ever.  Those big ears were all too listening, and that little smile that never left his face all too knowing.  He had too much time on his hands, Devon did – nothing on that land was fixed or mended, not by him or anyone – so what did he do with it all?  And none of the cats in town liked him.  Not even the old tabbies that had drunk so much milk in their lives that they’d sopped up all its mildness into their furry tummies for all time and beyond. 
“On your way, hey, on your way?” he asked, half-joking in a voice that sounded too hearty to come from him.  He laughed.  “Given any more thought to my questioning?” he asked. 
“No,” said Old Man Moss, curtly. 
Russell’s smile stayed, but the face behind it seemed to close up some.  “You sure about that, ol’ friend?  I wasn’t joking around with those numbers.  I could bump ‘em up a mite, even.”
Old Man Moss turned his back and walked away, children in puzzled trail, looking back hesitantly.  Devon grinned at them, and they quickened their pace. 

Up came the first snows, and the visits to the Big Hill started to lessen.  It was a tough climb in the snow, and a cold one.  Old Man Moss was busy as always, walking into the village without an escort now, attracting the children from every doorway like a magnet still, but not from so far.  He cleared chimneys, helped mend fences, helped colds.  He was everywhere, anywhere, and he was talking more and more now, even to the grownups.  Margaret claimed she saw him smiling once under that beard, but everyone dismissed it as an idle boast, a baited hook for attention. 
They waited at the gate while he mended Russell Petey’s dog, Brutus.  Russell said that he’d chased a rat too hard and too close, and knocked half the woodshed on himself.  Having heard some of Malcolm and Christopher’s stories, the children were disinclined to believe him. 
“Still have your mind made up?” asked Russell.  Devon was holding the dog still, each hand practically swallowing one of Brutus’s legs.  He wasn’t a small dog, but he looked it then. 
“Yes,” said Old Man Moss, as the last whispering whistle left his lips.  “It’s no good.”
This time Russell couldn’t hide the anger, even if it was just for a moment.  “An’ why would that be, eh?”
Old Man Moss stood up.  Bent as he was, he was still bigger than Russell, and his glare matched his.  “It isn’t.  Leave off.”  He stomped more than usual as he left.  A dog yelped as they passed the half-toppled fence, and for a moment he nearly turned to go back.  Then a laugh drifted out across the snow, and he shook off his shoulders and walked back into his woods, each angry footfall launching a hundred snowflakes from his beard. 

Spring’s first runnings came at the end of it all, just as the celebrations were beginning.  Praises over the end of the snow, the opening of the ice on the river, the congratulations-you-must-be-so-happys of Charlie’s new little brother, they all took up time.  The party for little Michael took up all the village by the time it was through, and as the night wore on and the grownups drank grownup drinks and spoke of grownup things the children grew bored and wandered away to do interesting things, under the light of the shooting stars that made Michael’s birth oh-so-lucky.  And the first interesting thing, the thing that popped into Margaret’s head, was to go see if Old Man Moss was at the Big Hill again. 
“That’s stupid,” scorned Simon.  “It’s nighttime.  No one gets mushrooms at night.”
Margaret’s little teeth shone all the wider and whiter.  “Then we can find out where he sleeps!  Come on, aren’t you curious?  We owe him a visit.  Let’s give him a visit!”
“Yes, let’s!” piped up all the younger of the children, and Simon and Charlie and Christopher and the other older, wiser heads knew they were outnumbered and despaired. 
So they walked into the woods, all of them, past the quiet, darkened farms – all of everyone was at that party, really! – and into the trees.  And with the time that had passed since their last visit, and the way they were looking for something they’d never seen before, a bit of turning around happened.  Besides, it was awfully dark.  The light of shooting stars, while pretty, isn’t all that good as a guide. 
“Where’s Margaret?” asked Simon. 
“Here,” said Margaret, behind him, and he jumped.  She laughed. 
“Where’s Malcolm?” asked Charlie. 
“I’m here,” piped up Malcolm, from inside a nearby thornbush. 
“Where’s Charlie?” asked Simon of Margaret, and realized she wasn’t there anymore.  Nor was anyone else. 
“Hello?” asked Simon.  No one answered.
“Hello?” asked Simon, voice wobbling.  No one answered, and he heard something move. 
Simon ran, and strong hands grabbed him, grasps rougher than any rope coiling around him and wrapping his arms and kicking feet tight.  There was a smell of tobacco and sweat and old, unwashed clothing, and the strange, gurgling chuckle that he’d never heard before was as good as a signed autograph: Devon. 
He was dragged away at impossible speed, long pale legs lurching through the slush that was left of the year’s snow like a spider’s.  Up and up they went, Devon’s feet scaling slopes that took minutes to scramble up in less than seconds, and with a thud and a cough Simon was dropped down to the little patch of dirt that was the clearing on top of the Big Hill.  A hand fell upon him right away, yanked him tight to his feet and to Devon’s side.  Something nasty and sharp glinted in its knuckle, held with loving threat near to him as the hand waited. 
“Got yours then?” called out a familiar voice, rough with excitement and malice.  Russell Petey struggled up over the edge of the ledge, wrestling with a wriggling, bucking bundle that Simon recognized from the coat must be Charlie.  Russell flung him to the ground with a curse and kicked him in the ribs, only furthering his resolve. 
“Nasty little bugger, he is.  Bit me hard and clean here on the wrist.  Should take some of his teeth out for that, but no time, no time!  We’ve got a meeting to arrange, some deals to strike!”  Russell glared about him, staring out over the forest beneath and the sky above with blinded eyes.  “Come out, come out, you old bastard!  Where are you at?  We’ve got something you should see right here, someone you should meet!”
“Here,” said Old Man Moss. 
Russell nearly jumped out of his skin, and Simon felt Devon start a little, the metal in his hand dipping uncomfortably near to his neck before the hand recovered.  Old Man Moss stood at his stump, his seating-place, all but invisible.  He looked as near to be a part of it as anything, face unreadable and immovable in the dark.
“Right, yes you are,” grinned Russell.  It was fake, but it was an effort, a recovery.  There was a strain underneath there, a tension years in the building that was all winding up to now, to snap or release, no other choices.  “Yes you are, you are.  And you’re going to give now, you are.  We’ve got your pets, you’ve got your tricks.  Which do you think is faster, eh?  Your throat or our hands?  You’ll do as you’re told or I don’t need to tell you what’s going to happen.”
Old Man Moss made that noise he made, that same sound he’d warned off Simon and Charlie with so many times.  “Hrrrmph.”  There was something different there now.  “Do what?”
Russell waved his arms to either side, trying to grab something bigger than he was.  “Make me – make us rich.  Pucker your withered old lips and whistle us in some gold, some silver!  Whistle us away to a plot of fine land!  Bring me wealth, you crazy old sheep-curer!  I asked you nice, and I asked you sweet, and you told me down like all the rest did!”  Russell’s face was torn between exultation at a long-awaited moment and fury at held-back slights.  “All the same!  Even you, out here in your damned woods, living like a beggar!  Why look down on me, eh?  I’m better than you!  I deserve this!  I deserve to leave here forever and never have to see one of those damned bumpkins look down their noses at me again.  All the gold and silver and, and land I can carry and more!  Give me what I deserve!” 
Old Man Moss turned his head in the night, this way and that, little crooks that reminded Simon and Charlie of an owl.  “Yes,” he said.  “But put them down first.”
Devon hesitated, but at a nod from Russell slowly, reluctantly released his prize.  Simon and Charlie lay on the ground, but held fast still, forced down with boots on their backs. 
“No one’s going anywhere ‘till I get what’s mine,” said Russell.  “’Till we get what’s ours.”  Simon felt Devon’s boot twitch at that, right through to his spine, and he couldn’t stop himself from shivering.  He didn’t want to think about Devon getting anything he wanted. 
“Hrrrrrrrrmm,” repeated Old Man Moss, and Charlie, who’d learned the whistles with careful ears, heard that difference there for what it was.  A growl, a low rumble. 
And then Old Man Moss began to do something strange.  He tilted his head back, back, up, straight up at the skies and the light from above in the inky black.  His mouth gaped open, wide open, so wide even the beard couldn’t hide it, so broad it barely seemed human.  His tongue protruded, his teeth clenched, his eyes rolled and gleamed in the starlight, and a strange sound that wasn’t there leaked out from him, roiling over the hilltop and across the ether.  Strange bones jumped in both the boy’s bodies, resonating to rhythms unheard by ears, and there, at the midst of the highest, hardest note of that unhearable tune, Devon slammed his hands over his ears and shrieked in a voice that was barely there, unable to bear the sound any longer.  Russell was a moment ahead of him, flailing his injured head, clutching at it. 
“Scat!” called Old Man Moss, and the spell was broken.  Feet scrambled under themselves as Charlie and Simon bolted for the edge, tumbling headfirst down slopes half-remembered and bruising themselves on forgotten rocks.  Above them, Russell was yelling something, but it was all lost in the roar from above, the great, earth-shattering boom that rattled their grips out from underneath themselves and sent them rolling the rest of the way to the bottom, where they chanced to look up. 
Big Hill was on quiet fire, its top asmoulder, its sides strewn with broken earth.  The air was quiet.  There were no voices.  There was no sound. 

“Meteor,” judged Simon’s uncle, as they all gathered round the peak of the hill the next day.  “One of the shooting stars brought down to earth.”  No one said anything about Russell, or about Devon.  Simon and Charlie’s tall tales were just wild enough to believe for once, especially with the absence of the farmer and his hand. 
Everything wants to move, thought the children.  And they all held hands just a little tighter than before. 
Charlie’s father looked around.  The peak of the Big Hill was a mess – stump shattered, bushes charred away, grasses and dirt and stone pummelled into a dent, a shiner that would do any prizefighter proud.  “We haven’t found anyone,” he declared. 
The village nodded.
“It’ll stay that way,” he said.  “But that doesn’t mean they’re all gone.  All three.  Well, maybe just the one.”
The village agreed. 
“I think,” said Charlie’s father, “that we ought to leave well enough alone.  And maybe he’ll do the same for us.”

“Still,” he said to Charlie as they all walked home very quietly, “best do as your mother asks and keep practicing those tunes.  Just to be safe.”

“Clear as a Whistle,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010.

There was a storm.  It wasn’t a particularly big one, nor a notably blustery one, and its rain was of average intensity, volume, and general wetness.  It was in all respects an ordinary and most mediocre storm, which is not an altogether bad thing.  The world needs its middling storms, just as it requires its moderately sloping cliff faces, halfhearted scrublands, and disappointingly tepid public speakers.

It did, however, have an unexpected side effect.  A tree fell in a forest, and no one was there to hear it.  Well, half a tree fell.  The other half remained unfallen, and most irked.

“Damnit!” said the tree.  It then spoke several more words, all of which were unspeakable – quite a mean feat by anyone, particularly an individual that was never blessed with a mouth, tongue, or respiratory system.  All, alas, wasted on its audience of no one.

The broken tree glared at the forest around it.  So many of its weedier, limper, half-hearted colleagues still stood with as much feeble firmness as they could muster, while the tree itself – as vigorous, proud specimen and citizen of phylum — as could be found, in its (exceedingly!) humble opinion – had limply given up half its total mast height without so much as a hold-on-there-bucko.

“This,” the broken tree said, deliberately and menacingly, its roots curling, “is most annoying.  I shall fix it at once.”  And then it leaned over and tried very carefully to pick up its fallen half.  It failed.

The broken tree spoke more unspeakable words, which attracted the attention of the birch next to it.  “Pardon me,” it inquired, “but you seem to have dropped something.  Will you be all right?”

“No,” said the tree shortly.  Doubly shortly.  “I cannot mend myself, and I point-blank refuse to regrow the whole nine-and-three-quarters-yards!  That’s how many years wasted?  Sap’s flowing here, I don’t have the time to throw away!  The whole place’ll be old-growth and I’ll be a seedling still if I faff about with that nonsense!”

“You could ask an arborist,” volunteered the birch.

“No thanks.  As much as I’d gloat over seeing some of these louts regrow from ground zero, I don’t fancy sitting through a fire much myself.”

“An arborist,” the birch enunciated most carefully.  “A sort of tree-doctor.  They can fix anything from bark beetles to leaf-blight.”
“Are you sure?” asked the broken tree, dubiousness exuding from its every twig.

“Positive,” said the birch, who wasn’t.  Its source was decidedly second-hand.  Squirrel-handed, to be precise.  Still, they were usually somewhat correct about thirty to ten percent of the time.

“Then I will see about getting to one of these arborist,” declared the broken tree.  “Where do they live?”
“The city?” volunteered the birch.

“That seems counterproductive of them.  I will set out at once!” said the broken tree, and then it did nothing.

“Blast,” it said.  Roots are much more difficult to remember than you’d think.  “Plan the second then,” it decided, and it whistled sharply, attracting the attention of a passing man.

“Excuse me, man,” said the broken tree, “but I am in dire need of transportation.  Would you mind cutting me loose from my roots?”

“Sure,” said the man.  When you lived in a forest, it paid to be polite to trees.  He walked home, took out his big axe, walked back, and had the whole tree down and chopped before you could correctly spell onomatopoeia.

“Thank you,” said the tree.  And then it failed to move some more.  “Damnation.”

“I could put you up at my place for a while,” volunteered the man.  “Besides, I could use the wood.”
“I suppose I could spare a little,” agreed the tree.  “But NO firewood.  I haven’t seen any of my tiniest twigs used for so much as tinder, and I won’t go farther.  I won’t, won’t, won’t.”

“Sure thing,” said the man.  He hauled the tree back to his house and put it in the woodshed.

“A bit stuffy in here,” the tree complained.
“Shove off you daft twit,” snapped the cordwood.  Their relationship grew no more civil for all the nights they spent cooped up together, and the broken tree came to look forward to those nights that the man grew cold and lit fires.

“I could use a bit of whittling to fret away some evenings,” said the man in November.
“Fine, fine… but mind you don’t take too big a piece,” the tree grumped.

“A little piece off the trunk for a new seat on my stool wouldn’t be too bold, would it?” he inquired in December.

“It would be, but I will allow it nonetheless,” decreed the tree.

“My chest has broken!  I need somewhere to place my things!” was the cry in January.

“Careless!  Spendthrift!  My wood will never break, but be more careful, you reckless fop!”

And so it went on, all through winter and into spring, and it wasn’t until mid-March when the last bit of cordwood had been burnt up (to the tree’s immense satisfaction) that the tree said “Hang on a second… I must be off to the arborist!  Man, I am in dire need of transportation!  Quickly now, before I am all used up!”

“Well, now, there’s no need to be in such a hurry,” said the man.  That trunk was mighty sturdy, and his stool had never been so comfortable.  He was in very little rush to move the tree anywhere.

“I demand movement!” roared the broken tree.

“No rush, don’t worry, it’ll come soon enough, soon enough, as sure and soon as the spring rains die down and the rivers are passable” soothed the man.  He made many fine placating speeches and proverbs, which affected the tree not one whit.  It had the most unpleasant sensation that it had acquired a new set of roots, except these ones opted to forgo extracting nutrients from fertilizer and were made entirely of it.

Time passed and the man stalled, and in late spring his friends came down.  The maple syrup run was on, and they were gathering pails and boiling sap.  A gruesome sight indeed for any tree.  But yet the mob brought hope to the broken tree alone in its woodshed as it heard them chatter and yowl indoors after dark.  Perhaps it could entice help from one of the strange men.

“Psst,” it whispered to a big bulky man as he relieved his bladder against a nigh-bloodless maple three yards away.  “Consider bringing home some magnificent wood?”

“I’ve got that right here,” slurred the man, and he hooted so loudly that he nearly fell over.  The tree thought nasty things at his back as he reentered the house.

“You look a discerning sort,” it praised the second man to saunter outdoors for a leak, a stocky, shortish, bearded bloke.  “Would you care for some fine, aged timber?”

He appraised the tree with a critical eye, nose, and beard.  “Pah!  Barely fit for termites,” he sniffed, and left the door swinging before the tree could come out of its shock long enough to insult his parentage.

The third man kicked his way out of the house, stomped down to the woodshed, and urinated with such vicious force that he cut leaves from stems.

“I’ve HAD IT with that dimwit!” he snarled into the forest at large.

“So have I!” agreed the tree.  It was prepared to classify any and all of the men it had met as the dimwit in question.  “Take me with you!”
The angry man squinted at the tree in the dark.  “You Charlie’s?”
“Most likely.”  The tree had never bothered to learn the man’s name.

“It’d piss him off?”
“Definitely,” said the tree.

“Hell yes!” said the angry man, and he wrestled the broken tree away and into the night before it could egg him on any further.

“I have an urgent appointment with an arborist,” explained the tree to the angry man as they hurried along through the night.

“And I have a project I have to finish by the day after tomorrow,” said the angry man.  “I think this will help both of us.”

“What?” said the tree, but before it could get a straight answer it found itself raced through a sawmill, made into planks, and shoved into a strange, half-tubeish form.

“This is terrible!” yelled the tree.  “How am I supposed to see the arborist now!?”

“It’s a canoe,” said the angry man.  “And you’re going to head somewhere, all right.”
“What?” said the tree again, but once more its answer had to wait, as it was violently tossed into some water and had things piled in it.  Another man in fancy clothes handed the angry man a bunch of shiny bits of metal and then it was away down the river.

“Who the hell are you?” demanded the tree.

The fancy man looked startled.  “Goodness me, a talking canoe.  I must have had a few too many nips from the bottle last night.”

“You aren’t from around here, are you?” asked the tree.  ‘Ignorant swine.”
“My goodness me,” said the man, and his surprise and shock was so great that he quite failed to notice the rapids coming up.  The tree was drifting downstream empty and upside down before five minutes time had passed.
“Men,” it said underwater, “are growing irksome.”  And then a man pulled it out of the water.

“Here boys, a replacement canoe already!” he hollered at his friends.  They were even burlier and hootier than the friends of the first man the tree had met.

“I happen,” said the tree, “to be looking for an arborist.”

“Never met ‘im,” dismissed the man, and he had the tree caulked, sealed, thumped in approval, and shoved back into the water with four men and their supplies onboard before it could so much as sputter indignantly.  It was reduced to choking out swearwords between stretches of white water all the way downstream, for miles and miles and miles.  Then thump-bump, into a dock, splash, thud, off with the clutter, heave-ho, into a shed.  Not a woodshed, but a shed.

“I happen,” the tree said to the man shutting the doors on it, “to be looking for an arborist.”

The man paused.  “That one of them firebugs?”

“Arborist,” clarified the tree.

“Never met ‘im,” said the man, and he shut the door on the tree.  It seethed all winter, and come spring it was on with the loads again, on with the loud men, and down, down, down the rivers and streams, on backs and off again, until it ended up – to its greatest surprise – to be in the city.

“An arborist!  An arborist!  My kingdom for an arborist!” cried the tree across the streets as it was hoisted into a warehouse.  Its calls fell on deaf, ignorant, and uncaring ears.

“You talk too much,” complained the man, and locked it away, solving that problem for a hundred years and a bit as the trading company went bankrupt the next Thursday.

A hundred years later, there was a click-clack and off came the door’s lock.  “Huh,” said the construction worker.  “A bunch of old canoes.”
“I am a tree and I am very, very, very bored,” came the reply, leaden with staid despair as few can produce it.

“Oh,” said the worker.  “My apologies.  Hey, the museum should get a load of this.”
“Wait, what?” said the tree, but the worker was talking into his small squawky metal thing and didn’t pay it any attention.

Some other men came to take it away.

“Are any of you arborists?” it asked as it was heaved with great care into a noisy, cement-y street.

“Naw,” answered the foreman.

“Damnit.”

The tree was put in a large glass case in a large stone building with a small plastic plaque with smaller micro-bits of information on it, mostly concerning voyageurs and the beaver fur trade.

“Are you an arborist?” it demanded of the first (and rather small) man that came across it.

He picked his nose and ate it.  “Mommy, I bored,” he announced, and waddled away before being scooped up by his grudging parent.
The tree did not like the start to its search.

“Are you an arborist?” it asked a man who looked to have seen much in the world.

“Janitor,” he responded curtly.  “I don’t talk to displays.”  And he didn’t ever again, threaten however the tree might.
“Are you?” it asked a bearded, rounded man.

“I am,” the man replied grandly, “freshly unemployed.  And newly single.  And very, very, very, alone.”  And then he burst into hysterical sobbing laughter that lasted until the guards led him away.

“Are you?” it inquired of a man with a face like a terrified gargoyle.

“Elementary school teacher,” came the strained response.  He tottered away, surrounded by his horde of manlings, waving futilely at them.  For a brief moment, the tree knew pity for something other than itself.

“Are you?”

The man blinked several times over.  He was unbearded, untall, unshort, unfat, unthin, and altogether unremarkable.  “Yes.”

“What?”
“I am an arborist.  Why do you ask?”
“An arborist, yes?  Not the other one?  The one with matches?”

“No.  I am indeed an arborist.”
“Well,” said the broken tree, “you took your time!  I have half a trunk missing and I demand that you fix it!”
The arborist examined the canoe.  “You seem to be a bit past worrying about that,” he mentioned.

“Pish tosh!  Are you a proper arborist or aren’t you?  Bark beetles to leaf blight to missing half my trunk, you can and will fix this!”

“Where’s the other half?”
“It’s…” and the tree tried to remember.  “It’s the one next to the birch.  Yes, that was it.  Or maybe it was a sycamore.”
“Hmm.  When did you lose it?”

“A hundred and three years ago, or somesuch,” guessed the tree.  “Well, maybe a hundred and fifty three.  Or maybe not.  Does it matter?”

“Mm,” said the arborist.  “Say, do you like being a canoe?”
“I am a tree,” said the tree testily.
“Right.   Listen, I’ve got an idea.”

The arborist went and got the curator.

“Can you sell it?” he asked.
The curator stroked his thin, hideous beard gently.  “Yeesss….I suppose so.  There were several dozen in the storage room at the time.  Several are in comparable condition.”

“Then you can replace it?”

“I am irreplaceable,” the tree declared proudly.
“Deal,” said the curator.  “It’s disturbing visitors anyways.”  He took some shiny bits of paper from the arborist and helped him load the tree into his pickup truck.

“Where are we going?” asked the tree.

“A place I know,” said the arborist.

Before too long, they were in a big building filled with paper.  There was a large and intimidating-looking machine filled with metal teeth, and the arborist took the tree to it.

“You’re sure this will work?” asked the tree.  There were an awful LOT of teeth.

“Positive,” said the arborist, and he dropped it in.  A tremendous amount of shredding, screaming, pulping, pain, cursing, squashing, flattening, fuming, sheeting, and screeching happened.  The tree came out in a lot more pieces than it had went in, all flat, white, and in a neat stack, which was scooped up by the arborist.

“This,” said the tree, “is not helping one bit.”

“Relax,” said the arborist, as they pulled in at a big brick building.  “I’ve got just the people to solve it.”

The nervous, terrified gargoyle-man met them, and he and the arborist talked.

“It’s a big project,” said the man.

“They can handle it,” said the arborist.  The tree was brought into a room.  A hundred gibbering manling faces stared at it, in varying states of drool and phlegm-expulsion.

“Turn around at once,” commanded the tree.  Those glassy eyes, combined with the bowl of gunk it was approaching, gave it no small pause.

“Don’t worry,” said the arborist.  He swerved away from the bowl, filling the tree with deep relief, and dumped it in another machine filled with metal teeth.  They were much smaller, but just as pointy.  The tree called him things that made the classroom gasp and ooh as it emerged from the shredder’s maw, and then was stifled by the goop.

“Go for it,” decreed the arborist, and the tree was set up and crudely slapped around a skinny metal frame through long, painful hours of maddened giggling.  Paint slopped over it, brown and green.

“This –” said the tree as a brush interrupted it.

“Why –” it began, only to have a careless handprint splotch beige against its features.

“You are –” it managed, and almost fell over as a manling shoved another one into its base, nearly toppling it.

“THIS IS NOT HELPING!” it yelled as loud as it could, as the arborist gently steered it back upright.
“You’re done,” he said, and held up a mirror.  And much to the tree’s shock and surprise, it was.

“Paper-mache,” explained the arborist as it examined its small, crudely-painted leaves and knobbly trunk.  “I made the frame myself, so you’re not missing any important bits.  And you’ve got that trunk back, all in one piece.  Like it?”

The tree considered its options.
“Yes, well, it will suffice,” it managed.

“Good,” said the arborist, and turned to leave the classroom.
“Tell me,” said the tree, making him pause in the doorframe, “do you solve all your clients’ problems this way?”

The arborist chose his next words carefully.  “Just the special ones.”
“Right,” said the tree, vaguely satisfied.  At least it had a professional’s opinion.
All the same, it wasn’t sure it would pass on any recommendations.

“The Life Arboreal” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

Dave was always a tidy guy.  Everything in its place, and a place for everything, that was how he worked.  Which made the way he killed himself really weird.  Blood everywhere, on everything.  He would’ve been livid.
What I should’ve done next was call the cops.  Then I could’ve figured out what the hell he was looking at – “major breakthrough!” and all.
And I did just that.  Sort of.  But I decided to look through what he was reading after the 911 call.  You know, inform the police, right?  Be helpful.  Besides, it was clearly a suicide – how many people were murdered by holding up a butter knife and stabbing themselves in the neck? – so no chance they’d miss fingerprints from a killer if he didn’t exist.  This way I could tell them exactly what my roomie had been going over when he departed this vale of tears mortal coil etcetera etcetera etcetera.
Besides, I was curious.  He’d been obsessing over this project for months.  Research, research, research, and not a drop of information as to what.  No hints, if, ands, or buts, just slammed doors and covered papers and “you’ll see it when it’s ready”s.  A guy can be excused for a little curiosity under those circumstances, right?
So I reached gingerly around his neck and yanked away the papers he’d been looking at.  Straight away, I knew this was a long way from a thesis yet.  Maybe he’d realized it never would be and had done himself in?  Didn’t sound right.
Page one was a bunch of scribbled and illegible notes as to the tone and content of an introduction.  None of it made any sense.
Page two was where it started to get clearer, if not more interesting.  Senseless and weird, but interesting.  A long-winded and badly-written treatise on the superstitions and beliefs of some demi-obscure northern European peoples during the dark ages.  Tedious and not fully edited, but a decent leadin to page three, which was a hodge-podge of facts and myths about an axe some king used for a while.  A very short while.  On the very first battle he used it in, he’d gone mad, decapitated twenty men, eight of which had been enemies, and then been stabbed to death over forty exhausting minutes.  The axe was taken by the king opposing him, who successfully managed to top his score four battles later, when he murdered his entire command staff during a strategic session.
Huh.
Page four.  The axe claimed two more important people before it was deemed cursed – a very right and proper superstition, I’d say – and given to a blacksmith to be melted down and discarded.  Good quality metal, though, as one of Dave’s notes eagerly attested, so the last instruction, he hypothesized, had been ignored.  So the big, fancy suit of plate armour that came out of the blacksmith’s shop a few months later might’ve contained a little crazy-axe.  Who’d know?  Well, no one did, although the man in the armour was probably puzzled some weeks later when it shattered spectacularly during a practice bout, grievously wounding him and sending a jagged piece of metal into his sparring partner’s eye.  Seeing that the deceased man was his brother-in-law and a quite important man in his own right, this led to a very jolly series of events involving a whole bunch more dead nobility.  The armour was deemed unsound and smelted down.  But it was such a waste of good metal, so….
I skimmed ahead.  More reforgings, more gruesome deaths.  A rapier that left an unsettling streak of mutual-mortality duels before someone got skittish and hocked it.  A zweihander – that one had an impressive kill count indeed before its wielder went down, probably because he was an armed and armoured lord overseeing a peasant battalion.
Then things got really strange.  Four pages with no more examples, just ramblings, theorizing, and speculation on the reliability of the evidence.  Followed by assurances of more proof.
I glanced uneasily at Dave’s body.  This wasn’t the sort of thing that healthy people did, and what I was reading sounded like one of those really bad sci-fi movies made with 85% CG and 15% story, but there were an awful lot of sources marked down here.  Some of the names I’d even heard of, big ones.  But squirreled away in odd notes, margins, other things.  Nothing obvious.
Past the semi-delusional justifications, there was more.  A long drought, and then a pistol that exploded in someone’s hand when fired.  A shame to waste something so expensive, so it was taken back, repaired, and exploded during the test shot the smith made in front of the customer to demonstrate its renewed soundness, killing both of them with bits of hurtling metal and wood.
Firearms were the trend for a while, mostly small pistols, occasionally rifles, but almost always finely-made.  Officer’s stuff.  Whatever Dave was tracking never seemed to end up in the hands of grunts, people whose property wouldn’t be important enough to reuse later, or might be lost unclaimed on a battlefield.  No one who’d break the chain of hand-me-downs for long.  There was a skewing from the military trend for a short period – the busiest guillotine in Paris for a year and a month, a razor with an uncanny thirst for the throats of gentlemen.
More digressions.  I glanced at Dave again as I skimmed over the research.  Still no hint as to why he’d done it.  Maybe the last page would have a cited source that made the entire thing make no sense whatsoever and he’d offed himself in the shame of wasting almost a year on it.
A few rifles used by crack snipers, ones that never died on the field but tended to have unfortunate accidents back on shore leave, where their weapons would be claimed by others easily and quickly.  The prototype for the first gatling gun was on its menu.  There was a fun surprise.  One of Custer’s pistols at Little Big Horn.  A World War I-era dreadnought, which fired four times in its career.  The first three shots sank one enemy ship each.  Then they brought it back, tooled it up for repairs, fired a practice volley, and its magazine blew.  All hands went down less than a few hundred feet from shore, and the ship was scrapped.
There was a tank in Germany during the last, nasty fights near Berlin.  Massacred four or five separate squads at once from cover, then took out a bunch of its own soldiers sheltering near it when it blew.  Dave had scrawled a small note here questioning whether the tank’s crew’s bodies had been found.  Or if they’d existed.
And after that, it got hazy.  There was a train somewhere in France that went off the rails, but most of the rest were just examples of AK-47s and such that got swapped around and had misfirings.  Very bland, and some of them were definitely stretches.  I started to realize why Dave might have decided this was a waste of time…except, he’d said he had a breakthrough.
Then I hit the last page, which commented on a story from last year about a state official’s car blowing its engine and swerving off a bridge (no survivors, naturally), and found a little note about its remains being sold to Home Steel.  The rest was all blood spatter from Dave, who’d really made a mess of his jugular.  Awful stuff.
I pulled out my Blackberry – noting as I did that Dave had done the same thing, somewhat worryingly, although his was coated in a thin layer of his bodily fluids – and checked.  Home Steel produced stainless-steel household items, including a full line of silverware.
My head very slowly moved upwards to examine Dave again.  The knife still had butter on it.  It looked entirely innocent.
I turned off my Blackberry, put it in my pocket, reached for Dave’s notes, decided against it, and ran like bejeezus; sprinting through the kitchen, vaulting the living room couch, and slamming the front door behind me with enough force to set off the small, stupid dog of the lady down the hall.  Something very small smacked into the wood against my back, making the whole frame quiver.
I waited for my pulse to drop a little, and heard nothing further.
“A garbage dump,” I said aloud.  “One of the really old-style bad ones.  One of the ones where they aren’t even ever going to try to recycle anything, because it’s probably been breeding down there and building cities.”  It was either that or the Marianas Trench, and I doubted I could get there on a student’s cash supply, let alone quickly enough for it not to find a way to shank me.
Ah, there were the cops.  I hoped I could get them to read the papers before they confiscated the knife as evidence.  Things could get messy otherwise.

“Research Paper,” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

In a great walled city lived a glassblower and his wife, Sara.  He was overworked and she was overdue, and so when the baby came at last both were in a position of considerable stress.  She was in the back of the shop gathering supplies when the pains came, and there was no time to move her, barely time for the glassblower to shove out his customers and run to her side.  By the time the midwife arrived, huffing and puffing and blowing, the birth was nearly through – a fast, hard, sharp one – and it was all too late. 
The baby was weak, the mother was weaker, and wasting fast.  “Let me hold him,” she told her husband, and well, what could he do but agree, even if he’d known the consequences?
So the new mother held her baby, back and forth, shush-shush, don’t cry (he wouldn’t stop), and she listened to him most carefully.  And she saw what the midwife (who had already left, knowing there was nothing in her power to fix here) had missed.  “His heart is weak,” she said.  “Too weak.  He’ll barely outlive me with that heart.”  The glassblower nearly went into a frenzy at that, mad at the thought of losing wife and child both, but Sara was as calm as a lake on a breezeless day.  Her mother had been a witch, her father, a butcher, and between the both of them she wasn’t frightened of anything anymore, not even now.  She didn’t see her death, she saw a problem. 
“We can fix this,” she told the glassblower, sitting propped up in their bed, small but strong-voiced, “but we need a heart.  Can you make one?”
“How?” he asked. 
“Like anything else you make.  Carefully.  Perfectly.  Quickly.  Very, very quickly, if you can.”
“But it’s glass!  Hearts aren’t glass!”
“This one will have to be.  Hurry.”
So the glassblower hurried.  Unlike his wife, he was frightened of many things, and the thing he feared greatest was happening right in front of him.  And as her lack of fear gave her strength, so his terror lent him wings; the heart was finished almost before it began, glowing-hot and perfect, smooth and clearer than a raindrop.  It looked tidier than a heart of flesh, more polished, more perfect.  But it couldn’t beat, and the glassblower didn’t understand why it needed to be made. 
“Please,” he said.  “What will happen?”
“I’ll give him all the love he’ll need.  It’ll have to be enough.  Now, go,” said Sara.  “And don’t come back in until you hear him stop crying.”
It took almost an hour and all of the glassblower’s nails.  And when he entered the bedroom again, he found a softly sleeping baby with a pale pink scar on its chest and no trace of that awful little swish-slosh heartbeat that had warned his wife so.  A very quiet heartbeat now, but a very firm one. 
She was gone, without so much as the warmth left in the sheets to tell that she’d been there. 

The years went by for the glassblower and his son, one growing up, the other wearing down.  The glassblower’s business still kept them fed and housed, but something had gone out of his craft the day his wife had gone.  His pieces no longer gleamed so prettily, his hands were unsteadier on the blowpipe.  The latter was helped along by his drinking, which although never heavy, was near-constant.  The glassblower couldn’t face a day perfectly sober anymore. 
Fortunately, the glassblower’s son was not a demanding child.  He almost thrived off of what may not have been neglect but certainly was grand inattention, growing up raised by the cobbles of the city’s streets as much as his father.  He was strong and broad, in many ways almost a throwback to his grandfather of his mother’s side (yet less heavy, with more of his father’s leanness), but he refused to take part in the popular neighbourhood pastime of quarrelling and fighting that his peers exulted in, something he was taunted and occasionally chased for. 
The real trouble came when he was eight.  As he walked down the street, he saw a girl around his age, one of the neighbour’s children, sitting on the stoop to her house.  She was singing a song he didn’t recognize or care about, and she was doing something peculiar with a cloth and a glittering thing in her hands. 
“What is that?” he asked her. 
She followed his gaze.  “A needle.”
“No,” he clarified.  “What are you doing?”
“Sewing.  What do you care?”
The glassblower’s son cared deeply, though he wasn’t sure why yet.  “Can you teach me?” he asked. 
The girl, whose name was Abigail, gave him a strange look, and for a moment the glassblower’s son was sure she would reject him.  But instead she nodded, picked up needle and thread again, and began to show him.  Both captivated him: one so small and delicate-seeming, yet strong as anything when placed perfectly, the other a deliberate sliver of sharpness in a blunt, clumsy world.  The feel of the careful, repetitive stabbing demanded from it, each slipping of needle in cloth, was soothing. 
After two weeks of this, one of the other boys of the street saw him practicing with Abigail, and he was ambushed on his way home, with taunting and worse.  The other girls made fun of her, her parents admonished her for playing with “that rough boy,” and his lessons and time with her ended. 
He didn’t seem to mind on the surface, but he remembered, and he would see to it that the torment was returned, very carefully.  Things were broken around the victims that only they could have damaged, bringing parental wrath upon them; their pets would disappear; and sometimes worse.  Repayment for his opponents was slow, but always sure.  By the time he was fifteen, the last of them repaid it to the very end of his life, and had to be delicately placed somewhere unseen after dark.  The glassblower’s son dug dutifully, as deep a hole as could be made in a broken old cellar, and he buried with care and thoroughness. 
His father knew none of this, of course.  The boy spoke little, and at home he busied himself in aiding the glassblower with orders.  He as diligent in this as he was in covering his trail, which, by the time he’d reached the age of eighteen, he’d done three more times. 
Carefully. 

Just past his son’s nineteenth birthday, the glassblower began to pull himself together under the wing of one of the neighbours, the widow Lynn.  They were both lonely, and for her sake, he stopped drinking for a while. 
The widow’s son did not like the glassblower’s son.  Fresh as he was to the city guard, he was already showing signs of a lawholder’s instincts, and didn’t like the other youth’s feel.  The glassblower’s son disliked him as well, for more reasons than personality: there were things he wanted that could not be done with two more people working in and about the store. 
One day, the widow Lynn failed to rise from her bed.  It seemed she had confused several boxes of herbs and managed to give herself a fatal dose of wolfsbane in her evening tea.  Forgetfulness was one of her few flaws, and although tragic, the event was accepted as it was.  Her son sold the house and hurled himself headfirst into work to erase all thought, the glassblower turned back to drink, and the glassblower’s son continued to plan for the future. 
Clearly. 

When the glassblower’s son was twenty-one, a rich man entered the shop.  He was surprised at the daze and glare that hung over the glassblower’s head like a shroud – the pieces the place produced were still so fine, too fine to be made by this walking, wasting malady.  His eyes barely brightened at the mention of the piece, a fine vase to be gifted to a noble of the king’s court, but he nodded and mumbled small talk as well as could be expected.  The rich man left no less puzzled, and a little worried for his commissioned piece. 
When he returned for it, he found the glassblower’s son running the shop.  He was calm, polite, and courteous.  The parcel was dutifully handed over, its contents as promised, and when the rich man opened it later for proper packaging, he found that a small and elegant dish had been placed within it, a small note informing him that the glassblower’s soon had produced earlier during the day, and hoped it was not insulting to give it to him with the rest of the order. 
The noble was delighted with both the gifts, and a recommendation was made.  The glassblower was puzzled as to where the wealthier clients were coming back from, but he wasn’t displeased.  He began to spend more of his time in the workshop, as his son handled the customers. 
Smoothly. 

When the glassblower’s son was twenty-five, his father (who had been drying out more and more again since their fortunes began to turn), in a moment of surprising chance, found where he’d been hiding over half their profits.  He confronted his son, as angry as he was bemused, and for the first time in his life he demanded things directly of him. 
The glass needle was very cold, and very brittle, and very thin.  The slightest misplacement of its aim would’ve snapped it to pieces.  But the glassblower’s son was very careful, and the small, quiet funeral to commemorate the unfortunate heart attack (what sort of attack was left unsaid) went ahead as steadily as the blade itself had. 
The son conducted himself most composedly on the occasion, which was attended by many of their best clients.  They remarked on his bravery, and did not fear for their custom.  Even the widow Lynn’s son, now a captain in the city guard, gave him his sympathies – although he detested the son, he had liked the father when he was sober.  He took the words of condolence and approval as he did all else. 
Coldly. 

The glasswork was better than ever, and the clients grew both more numerous and richer.  For the former he hired apprentices, and for the latter he saved now his own two hands and personal attention, which became all the more acclaimed for its rarity.  He remained a quiet conversationalist, but an excellent listener.  He developed a reputation for discreteness in all things, and many a nobleman poured their troubles into his willing ears.  And then one day, listening to a viscount complain of a brother-in-law who was blackmailing him for a little indiscretion – so little, and after all, the man’s sister was so ugly, how could he be blamed for it? – he mentioned that he might know a man who could solve problems of that sort, for some manner of a fee.  Details were scarce, but the man with the glass heart’s word was as good as gold, and the viscount was more than willing to open his purse for it. 
That night, he went out on the town.  He took another long, thing glass needle with him, the finest he could make.  And the next morning, the viscount’s troublesome brother-in-law was discovered to have succumbed in the night to some unknown malady.  His heart had given out. 
The viscount was pleased, and word of mouth took over once again, spreading tales of something in even more demand than fine glasswork.  Clients came, shared tales of their troubles, and the man with the glass heart told them if he thought he knew a man that could solve them.  And they rested their heads in peace, for as they all knew, the man with the glass heart was nothing if not discreet.  Both his careers prospered, and he went about them both as he was expected to. 
Sharply. 

The man with the glass heart was careful, nearly invisible, and he took only the jobs that he was certain would go unnoticed, but still, the patterns were noted by those on high.  Assassins and poisons were the tools of the upper class, and though his methods of killing were nigh-undetectable, the means were easily guessed at. 
The panic was subtle, muted.  It was Not Done to be fearful, overt wariness was a sign of weakness.  The nobility remained defiantly devoted to excess, cheer, and power games, and the man with the glass heart was invited deeper into the fold every day.  He owned a grand workshop, accounted all the finest among his clientele, and was invited to parties, where he was respected – if not lively – and gave short, sage advice to those who needed it.  And maybe a quiet word or two of recommendation as to who might need to be silenced.  His influence grew, his renown swelled, he began to think of how to replace the duke without causing a stir. 
And then, five years from his father’s death, at a celebration of the birthday of the duke’s youngest daughter, the man with the glass heart glanced at something over the shoulder of a particularly dull and vengeful conversation partner, and blinked four times in a row without realizing it.  His chest felt strange, tense, brittle. 
There was a woman standing on the sidelines, speaking with the duchess.  She was pretty, as many of the women at any of these dreary events always were.  The man with the glass heart didn’t notice them.  But he noticed her.  In fact, he noticed her so clearly that he quite lost the thread of what his client was saying, and realized that he was staring at him in total puzzlement. 
Now, what the man with the glass heart should’ve done, would’ve done at any other place and time, would have been to make an observation on the information he’d been given that clearly gave an impressive signal to the client that he had indeed been paying attention and in fact already seemed to know more than he did.  Instead, he pointed at the woman at the fireplace, and asked who she was. 
“Some commoner, someone’s fiancée,” the client said irritably.  “Not a clue.  Now, about my problem…” but his problem could wait and this couldn’t, and he found himself adrift as the man with the glass heart walked over to ask the woman to dance. 
He had no knowledge of it, but was a fast learner, putting as much care and balance as he dropped into a vase for the duke, or the removal of a nobleman. 
“Abigail,” he asked as the annoying music passed unheard, “what are you doing here?”
She laughed a little.  “Teaching the birthday girl to sew, mostly.  I’m her maid.”
The man with the glass heart knew the duke’s daughter.  “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s not all that bad.  You just have to manage her moods, and it did lead me to my husband – oh look, here he is, here he is!”
The man with the glass heart turned about, and shook hands, and the introductions weren’t needed, for here was the widow Lynn’s son, now commander of the city watch.  And somewhere in the back of those deep-set eyes, something was glaring out at him, recognizing him. 
“You two know each other?” he asked. 
“I taught him to sew,” said Abigail.  “Never got very far, poor thing – all the neighbourhood boys made fun of him, and my parents forbid it once my friends told them.”
“Useful skill,” said the commander of the city watch.  “No shame in it.  Honest work.”
The man with the glass heart didn’t like the pointed meaning hiding behind the neutral tone.  He wished with all the will in the world that there would be another dance with Abigail, but the night was winding down and the musicians were retiring; the duke was saying farewells and the nobility were all flocking home to their estates to roost. 
The man with the glass heart thought all the way back home, back to the commander’s mother, the widow Lynn.  He’d already stopped one marriage.  He could stop two. 
There was a customer who he’d promised to attend to tonight.  There was a stained glass window for the new church he’d promised to oversee. 
They could wait.  This was important, so important that his chest hurt.  It had to be done. 

The man with the glass heart was quiet, oh so quiet, as he slipped in the upstairs window to the commander of the watch’s home, padded in dark fabrics that sapped the colour from his form and bled him into the night, dropping on a thin silk rope from the rooftops.  He felt strange, hesitant.  To kill without pay, for his own purposes, it was not something he’d done in many, many years.  He pulled a glass needle from the little cushioned containers on his waist, and he moved through the house’s rooms, all simple, all straightforward, all safe.  The commander had been practical as a youth, and that had not changed. 
There were two bodies in the big, sturdy bed upstairs.  One was Abigail (oh how his chest hurt), the other was not.  It also was not living – there was no rise and fall of breath. 
The man with the glass heart turned at the doorway to leave, and knew before the short sword hummed through the air at him that it was too late to run.  He ducked, and felt cloth and flesh tear along his chest.  A very shallow cut, but painful. 
“Think I’m stupid, do you?” grunted the commander, pushing him back, into the room.  “Think I’m going to sleep and die?  I know you.  And I know those deaths.  Too many quiet ones.  You like it quiet, don’t you?  Heard about your father.”  He was feinting now, dancing from foot to foot, thud-thud on the floorboards.  A noise from the bed – was Abigail waking?  She shouldn’t see this.  “He was a good man.  Better than you deserved.”  He pushed forwards.  Still back, boots nearly at the bedside.  “Answer me, damnit.  Answer or I’ll bleed you out here and now and we won’t have to waste money on rope.”  He swung, and cursed as the man with the glass heart’s hand moved, leaving glass shimmering sweetly in the flesh of his swordarm.  It snapped as their bodies clashed together, sword spinning away with a clang on the floor. 
The man with the glass heart was smooth, his focus was clear, his head was quick, but the commander was tough, and he’d fought his way to his rank.  Two fists to the gut in a space that couldn’t possibly let him punch, and then a knee to the groin.  The man with the glass heart saw stars, one hand tightened ineffectually at the commander’s throat and the other wrapped around that wounded arm.  His fingers brushed blood-sticky hairs and he squeezed, felt the crunch and slice of the needle as it came to pieces, an elegant weapon used brutally. 
Even then, not a scream – a pained grunt, a groan, a weakening of purpose.  The man with the glass heart threw him to the floor, spun to his feet.  Hand at the belt, needle at the ready, a new one, one of the bigger ones, an emergency weapon that cut like a knife.  He shifted his grip, raised his arm.
Abigail rushed past him, calling a name that wasn’t his. 

Neither of them saw it– he was too blinded by pain, and she was crouched low over him, trying to see his hurts – but they heard it happen.  There was a sob, a gasp, and a great tinkling splintering crash, all at once, like the world’s biggest picture window falling to pieces. 
What they found there, after the fact, was not what they told the others.  He had landed a blow in the dark, and it had taken the murderer a moment to realize it had killed him.  It happened.  It had happened before.  Dangerous, but knowable. 
But what they found on that floor was a man dead, a scar split open, with bloodless shards of smooth glass splitting open the skin from deep inside.  They shone clearly in the moonlight through the window, and then they were gone.  And not a drop of blood remained in the room that didn’t belong to the commander of the city watch. 
“What was he like?” he asked her.  “You knew him before I did.”
Abigail thought as she sewed the cuts.  There were plenty of words that described him, but only one that she thought was proper. 
“Fragile.  Where it counted most.”

 

“Transparency” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010. 

The biohazard alarm was most inconvenient for Jeremy.  He’d just finished mopping the level 4 hall. 
Oh, the day had begun well enough.  He’d found he had a forgotten box of Cap’n Crunch stored away that wasn’t too stale; the bus ride was quiet and serene; the security guard was brisk and efficient, and above all else, professional about the cavity search; and to cap it off, that one nice-looking researcher had smiled and waved at him as he started his morning rounds.  Too good to last, it had been. 
“PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE NEAREST EXIT,” blared an alarming and terse voice over every intercom in the complex.  “THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  CONTAINMENT BREACH ON LEVEL 4.  PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO THE NEAREST EXIT.  THIS IS NOT A DRILL” and so on and so forth, an endless nagging loop ordering you to get going and get your precious organs out before some horrible mix-a-match mutant from belowdecks took a fancy to them on its impromptu holiday. 
Third time this week, too. 
Jeremy stared at his mop, still damp and virginal, ready to plunge to the next set of unclean floors and purify them with love and a hint of bleach.  He looked to the pristine, freshly-filled mop bucket, filled with heady and lethal vapours.  And he looked down the hall to the huge reinforced safety door that was even now being dented by hideously strong blows – the steel door he had lovingly and carefully polished not five minutes ago – and something happened inside his head.  Nothing snapped, not exactly.  It was more like the gentle parting of clouds that lets the sunshine in. 

It took two minutes for the misshapen thing that had probably once been some sort of test animal (a dog?  A monkey?) to break apart the door and shoulder its way into the hallway.  It blinked its bleary eyes in the red glare of the emergency lights, took one stumbling, snarling stride forwards, and then slid in four directions at once on the hastily-mopped floor.  It tried to catch itself, but only succeeded with one of its seven legs.  The sound of its jaw – and mandibles – hitting the floor was drowned out by the alarm, but the momentary pause between assurances of not-a-drill was just long enough for the sound of Jeremy’s mop handle crunching its skull to ring strangely loud.  Especially to Jeremy. 
So he stood there – astride his kill, beast vanquished, dragon slain – with his mop in hand.  And he looked into that darkened corridor the thing had come from, with its lights cracked and broken, its floor tiles torn up by the read of warped and clubbed feet, its walls coated in unpleasant bodily fluids, and he spoke his first words of the day that were not idle greeting murmurs. 
“I’m going to need a bit more,” said Jeremy. 

So Jeremy’s first stop was his supply closet.  He did some things while he was there, with some of his cleaners and his bleaches; stuff that he needed to wear his heavy-duty gas mask for, the one he used when he was cleaning out testing pens.  He also found a new and helpful use for that enormous old leaf blower he’d only pulled out of storage twice (the thing was so huge it had to be back-mounted, for goodness’ sakes). And he very, very, very carefully sharpened his mop’s hilt, which didn’t really work.  So he stuck its tip inside the garbage disposal and made do with the resulting jagged metal, at the expense of some really appalling noises.  
The whole affair took maybe twenty minutes.  By the time Jeremy got back to the door, shuffling in his full hazard suit, there were three other things hanging around it, chewing on their brother’s bits and pieces in an idle sort of way.  He wondered if they were the same species, but it was a bit difficult to tell.  The eye was drawn inexorably to the teeth and claws – such an awful lot of both – whenever it tried to focus on fine detail. 
Jeremy looked at his mop-spear.  The things looked at Jeremy.  Jeremy looked at the things.  The things looked at his mop-spear.  Then they casually stood up from where they crouched and began a slow, lurching swagger towards him, spreading out to all sides. 
Jeremy dropped his mop and pulled out his leaf blower.  The clanging ring of metal on tile brought on a quick, involuntary flinch, a little enough thing, but still there.  And that was just enough time for Jeremy to flip the switch and set his blower running, belching out the vaporous results of his combination of bleach and ammonia right into their faces. 
Results were promising, since apparently several of the openings on their faces were nostrils.  They went down choking and screeching, one so rapidly that it might’ve had two windpipes. 
Shoving the bodies into the nearest closet took time, as well as the use of many muscles Jeremy didn’t really possess.  When it was through he stretched his back, sighed, walked over to still-waiting mop bucket, and began to clean the floors again.  He had a schedule, a routine, a properly laid-out neat-and-tidy formula for his day.  And he’d had it interrupted too many times for him to once again quietly shuffle away and wait for the black helicopters to come in and set fire to whoever’s lunchbreak project had eaten a laboratory this time.  No, he was going to clean this place properly now, no cowardly, lazy backing out because of a little light fallout or chemical spill or mutagen.  And if he did it right he could handle it without any jackboots scuffing up the floors. 
Into the dark of Level 4 he walked, mop swirling and back bent. 

Some half hour later, Jeremy was starting to consider that his determination might have been misplaced.  He’d gone through five more of the things, half his supply of chlorinated gas, and, when he’d turned around to dunk the mop and met the gaze of the fifth beast from six feet away, very nearly his underwear.  And he’d only just reached the inner high-security labs, where the big multi-ton titanium door had been torn into nigh-indestructible shreds and dumped about like confetti. 
It was very annoying to sweep up. 
But now he was past that and moving on and in, further towards the cream of the intellectual crop’s ahead-of-the-curve-and-on-the-ball projects, most of which gently rolled over the cusp of sanity and into somewhere a lot more interesting. 
Usually, when Jeremy mopped here, he did it quickly because the security guards – specially trained men and women in complex and sophisticated headgear with extremely small and silvery guns – got suspicious if you lingered, and they weren’t as gentle with their cavity searches as the man out front.  He cleaned fast and hard, as perfectly as possible lest he be accused of inefficiency and shot in the foot.  But now, he had time.  Now, he had a reason to linger and keep an eye out.  And now he could see firsthand what all those complicated labs were housing. 
Lab 01 was currently being used for “Tyrannosaur Reproduction and Reconstruction,” according to the scotch-taped sheet of paper on the door. 
Lab 02, proclaimed a small and official placard on the wall next to it, was dedicated to “Sentient Woodland Development.”  Someone had slapped a small sticker depicting a marijuana leaf to it, which Jeremy dutifully removed.
Lab 03 had seventeen separate warning signs surrounding its doorway, all in extremely bright colours and with large, all-caps lettering.  Jeremy mopped by it quickly. 
Lab 04 had no sign, but its door was four times more reinforced than any of the others and was secured by eight different locking mechanisms, at least three of which didn’t use any alphabet Jeremy could recognize. 
It was at this point that he dropped in the nearby restroom to change the water in his mop bucket.  Normally he would balk at shoving the water straight down a public restroom’s toilet, but he was in a bit of a hurry.  Something growled at him from inside the last stall and he filled the entire place with gas before leaving to a backdrop of thunderous-yet-dwindling coughing. 
Something was different.  It took him past labs 05-07 (Retroactive Human Cloning, Asymmetrical Vertebrate Theory, and Bioexplosive Products) to realize exactly what that was: there were no sounds anymore.  All that made noise was the very, very familiar swish, splash, thud, and slap of his mop at work. 
No sirens. 
No distant crashes and thuds (which had mostly stayed distant, thankfully). 
No returning gunfire. 
The last one worried him the most.  Maybe the men in the black helicopters had been on a coffee break when the sirens went.  Maybe they’d be there in the next few minutes.  Maybe he was making up comforting excuses and they were having a tough time of it.  But still, the monsters fell over with a little chlorine gas.  They weren’t indestructible or anything.
Jeremy shook his head.  Floors.  What he needed to focus on was floors. 
He made it right to the door of lab 08 (Adrenaline Amplification Refining) before something extremely large shoved him to the floor from behind and attempted to remove his spine, sending the mop clattering from his hand.  Putrid breath washed over him, followed by a crunch, an explosive hiss, a yelp, and the gentle gust of something less vile but more lethal.  Jeremy spun to his feet and ran, thanking luck that he hadn’t attached the leaf blower canister too firmly.  The sounds of something thrashing and writhing that was much too large to move that quietly chased him.  Then silence again, except for the pitter-patter-thud-thud of his feet and heart. 
Then a rustle. 

Jeremy entered the very next door he came to without bothering to read it, reasoning that if it wasn’t hanging off its hinges it was probably safe.  This brought him face to face with someone else, who was not a monster.  Surprised by this, they screamed at each other. 
“Oh, it’s you,” said the scientist who had smiled and waved at him that morning.  “Thank goodness.”  He looked much more dishevelled than he had that morning. 
Jeremy’s lungs weren’t working properly, thanks to running in a full suit and gas mask while hyperventilating, and the screaming fit hadn’t helped.  So he nodded.  Well, his head lurched.  It was very similar. 
“I thought you were one of those things for a moment.  They have a nasty habit of popping up where you least expect them.”
Jeremy’s breath began to sulkily refill his lungs again, in fits and starts.  “How they.  Do it?”
“Well, for a while I thought they were using the ducts, but we had those replaced last year after the thing with the guinea pigs.”
Jeremy flinched.  He remembered that one.  It had taken weeks to clean the ceilings. 
“So, it must be the crawlspaces.  We’ve got a lot of plumbing down there, and we need it easy-access in case something carrying something nasty breaks.  So, big crawlspaces.  All it needs is one of the little bastards to open up a whole and whoopsy daisy, they all follow his trail.  Fun.”
“What are.  They?”
The scientist shrugged.  “Not entirely sure.  They were under lab 10’s jurisdiction: bioweaponry for use in guerrilla warfare.  I guess they’re supposed to track down insurgents and eat them or something?  I’m not sure.  Our work never really overlapped all that much.”
“What did you work.  On?” 
“This is lab 09: incredibly delicious fruit.”
Despite his wearing a gas mask, something of Jeremy’s expression must have leaked through. 
“Look, it’s more dangerous than it sounds, okay?  Some of this fruit is dangerously tasty.”
“How?”
“Well… imagine the consequences of bioengineered fruit that is literally in every way the tastiest thing you’ve ever eaten.  It’s cheap to grow and thrives in most climates.”
“Okay.”
“Now, imagine that you find some crippling deficiency in it that say, causes all your bone marrow to wither and dry up after five bites?”
“Does it do that?”
“Version 4.86 did.”
“How far have you gotten?”
“4.87.  We think we fixed it.”  A crashing noise from the hall made Jeremy flinch. 
“It’s all right, you know.  We’re probably the safest place we can be.”
“Why?”
“Well, here’s where they went first.  Right after they broke up they popped up in here, just as we were laying out batch 4.87 alpha for the test subjects.  Must’ve smelled the fruit.  So they ate all they could find and left.  I’d say they’re looking for more, and here is the one place they’re guaranteed not to find any.”
“They got all of it?”
“All of 4.87 alpha and the test subjects, yes.  But not all the fruit.  They just got the latest test batches.  Most of the rest of it is stashed back in the freezer.”
“It tasty?”
“Oh, very.  Well, I mean I suppose so.  If I’d tried it personally, I suppose I wouldn’t be in any state to tell you.”
“Would they eat it?”
“Yes, definitely, but they’ve all moved on.  I tell you, this is the last place in the building we’d find them now.  They could be anywhere.”
Jeremy thought of his broken leaf-blower-cum-chlorine-sprayer as he stared at what looked to be an industrial counter-mounted juicer.  So near, and yet so far. 
“Do you know what they liked?”
“No.  Lab 10 probably had notes on them, but I’m not going in there.”
“Why?”
“The big one’s still there.  Couldn’t fit through the door, poor thing, no matter how hard the others tried to help.”
“Big one?”
“Maybe you’d best see for yourself…”
The scientist was halfway out the door before he realized Jeremy wasn’t following. 
“It’s perfectly safe,” he said.  “Really.  Come on.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“It’s just that I don’t have the mop now, and –”
“Don’t worry.  Come on.”

Surprisingly, it was. 
The doors to lab 10 had not just been ripped off their hinges, they’d been thrown to the ground and broken into as many tiny pieces as possible.  And the doorframe looked like it’d been chewed on. 
“They were chewing on it,” explained the scientist helpfully.  “Couldn’t breach it, though.  Not enough for her.  Go on, take a peek.”
Jeremy sidled up to the doorway, spent a peculiar three seconds recalling that happy time nearly an hour ago when he really only wanted to mop something and wasn’t hanging around darkened corridors that smelled faintly of dread-inducing mucus, and peeked. 
What he saw was…well, he wasn’t sure he had the vocabulary to describe it.  Come to think of it, he wasn’t sure anyone had the vocabulary to describe it.  Or the words. 
So he said: “Oh.”  He wished he had his mop with him.  Or a fuel-air explosive. 
“Amazing, isn’t it?  I think most of them were primate-based, but whatever it is, well, that’s another story entirely.”
“Which would be?”
“Haven’t the foggiest.  Just don’t get too close.  It’s quicker with those…umm…things than it looks.”
“Wouldn’t be hard.”  The animal filling most of the room didn’t look quick.  Or mobile.  Or animate.  Jeremy had seen more lively floor stains, although considering some of the spills the labs could produce, that wasn’t saying a lot. 
“Where are the notes?” he asked. 
“See that laptop behind that, ah, fold of mass right there?”
“No.”
“No, no, there – behind the bits that are sort of bone but not quite.  In the corner.”
“Oh.”
“That’s it.”
“How do we get it?”
“We don’t.  We sit tight back in 09 and wait for the rescue.”
“Isn’t coming.”
“What?  Why?”
“Search me.  But no gunfire or anything yet.”
The scientist sighed, a blustery, overloud sound in the stifling dark.  “Damn it.  Right then, backup plan: you go in and grab it while I make very loud noises over here by smacking the wall and hollering.”
“That’ll work?”
“It should.  Go for it.”
Jeremy hesitated, then leapt forward, the first resounding smack echoing through the empty lab like a gunshot.  The results were immediate: the…central…bit of the thing in the room shifted to face it, and its body began to ripple.  Strange bits and limbs poured out towards the noise, and Jeremy fancied that it acquired a desperate edge to it. 
The laptop’s resting place was an unnerving one, lodged in the corner as it was.  Getting there required circling nearly a third of the thing’s bulk a process that took exactly too long for Jeremy’s mental calm.  He snatched at it, pulled, realized it was cemented fast, pulled harder, and ripped it loose from the countertop with a sucking sound that brought up unpleasant images from the seedier parts of the internet. 
Unfortunately, it was a loud sucking sound.  A very loud sucking sound.  Though not as loud as the unpleasant noise that lurched through his spinal column and probably qualified as some sort of growl.  Either way, it was hard for Jeremy to tell because he was running very quickly again.  Then his foot hit the outstretched bit on the floor that looked like a toenail but more like an appendix and everything became much slower.  He could count the hairs on its surface as he very slowly tipped over onto it, and the moment when his flailing free hand was clasped in another and yanked forwards was almost a bigger shock than the trip itself. 
“Got you,” said the scientist, heaving him briskly from the room.  A collection of organs being used as appendages occupied the space he’d nearly fallen on with extreme prejudice.  Just looking at them simultaneous made Jeremy feel sick and wish he had more bleach on hand.  Or maybe gasoline. 
“Mind letting go?” asked the scientist. 
Jeremy realized his knuckles were whitening to a degree not seen in living people, and released the laptop with some difficulty. 
“Back to 09?” he suggested.
“Yes.  I think I heard something a minute ago.  Not that I could be sure, with the little bit of distraction we had here.”
Jeremy wondered what sort of thing could survive eating at least half a gallon of mixed bleach and ammonia, then wished he hadn’t because his brain was giving him unhelpfully detailed pictures of the last minute and a half all over again. 

“Amazing,” said the scientist. 
Jeremy looked up from his cleaning.  He’d found an old hand brush under the sink and was taking the chance to relax a little. 
“Amazing,” repeated the scientist.
“You just said that,” pointed out Jeremy, helpfully.
“Did I?  Well, it is.  This entire project…my goodness.”  He shook his head in wonderment.  “I have to say, never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that we could be sharing office space with something so ill-thought-out, incompetent, and generally inconceivably stupid.  It makes that one project two years ago with the self-cooking farm animals look like a hobnob between Newton and Einstein.”
Jeremy thought about the delicious fruit, but said nothing.  Besides, there wasn’t enough airspace for him to squeeze into. 
“I mean, really.  Use some of the most unpredictable mutagens we have catalogued on selected primates?  Well, so far so good.  Use their half-melted genetic structures as a chance to introduce DNA from carnivores?  All right.  Collaborate with the bacterial warfare group upstairs to give them what is essentially permanent rabies?  Fine, as long as it’s not airborne.  But designing them as a guerrilla strike team/anti-guerrilla infiltrator unit and then forging psychoneurotic links between them and a prototype hivemind made of 02’s castoffs, and well, I can’t see the point one bit.”
“No?”
“Well, it would’ve been so much more sensible to hook it up to some sort of control device.  Or if their mindsets are too tortured and horrifying for humans to view directly and stay sane, maybe a computer or something.  What I’m saying is that we’re dealing with a project that has suffered some seriously unnecessary over-budget expenditure.”
Jeremy didn’t quite know what to say, so he just nodded.  That seemed to work. 
“On the plus side, this makes dealing with this whole sorry mess very, very easy.”
“How?”
“Well, we can just kill the controller, of course.”
“It’ll shut them down?”
“No, of course not, the whole hivemind is too poorly set-up for that.  But we can give them all damned big headaches and slow them down a lot, and hopefully that’ll stop whatever’s keeping the rescue brigade from us, eh?  I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to get the hell out of here.”
Jeremy weighed the chance of reaching the nearest supply closet with nothing but a handbroom and dustpan, and was reluctantly forced to agree.  But there was a flaw. 
“How do we kill it?”
“Remember all that spare fruit we talked about earlier?  The previous batches?”

There was a rather obvious flaw with the plan, in retrospect. 
“It has to have a mouth,” complained the scientist.  “It’s an impossibility for it not to.”
The thing in lab 10 sat there in mouthless silence.  The delicious fruit lay unnoticed at its side. 
“It doesn’t have a mouth,” pointed out Jeremy.
“Can’t be.  There’s no way for something that big that still moves under its own power to get nutrients other than eating other things!”
“Doesn’t have eyes either.  Or proper limbs, or even proper tentacles.”
“The first two aren’t as uncommon as you’d think in here, but the third, I’ll grant you.”  The scientist stared disapprovingly at the unsatisfactorily tentacley appendages in question.  “Fine.  So it won’t eat.  Now what?”
Jeremy was thinking again.  “We make it eat.”
“I’m sorry?”
Jeremy rubbed his hands thoughtfully and walked back down the quiet hall.  “I’m going,” he announced, “to get my mop.”

It was right where he’d dropped it, although something extremely large and ugly had died on top of the handle, its mouth filled with bits of leafblower hull, happily if hideously disproving whatever worries he’d had about the sounds in the dark.  At least whatever it was had some sort of recognizable anatomy, if a repulsive one.  Jeremy didn’t have to invent new nouns to describe its body, so that was an improvement over its fellow in lab 10 right away. 
The preparations took time.  There were obstacles. 
“I see what you’re planning,” said the scientist as Jeremy stopped the blender, which was truly the finest he’d ever operated, “but even liquefied, I don’t think there’s a way to get the fruit inside it.”
“A needle,” explained Jeremy, as he began to pour the gooified fruit juice into his mop. 
The scientist was the one who nodded this time.  He looked a bit too ill to open his mouth. 

The plan, in theory, was flawless.  Dash forwards, stab the beastie, run away and let the natural wonders of science propel a big fat gallon of marrow-rotting fluids directly into whatever it had that resembled something akin to a bloodstream.  Then walk out of Level 4 very slowly and dramatically and go have lunch somewhere nice with a few drinks. 
The execution was less perfect in practice.  In six ways. 
First, Jeremy’s fear of tripping again during the procedure grew so strong that he almost stubbed his toe double-checking himself on the creeping, stealthy approach to the meatier portion of the creature’s mass. 
Second, it took them thirty minutes to realize that it was dead.  In all fairness, it was a very difficult process to begin with, since it had no pulse or lungs.  As the scientist said, describing it as “alive” in the first place was stretching already.
Third, the scientist declared that it was entirely possible that it had dropped dead shortly after trying to grab Jeremy during the laptop retrieval. 
“They did keep it in a big oxygen-free tank,” he noted.  “And it might not have found the outside world conducive to its health.  The exertion of going after you earlier might just have been too much.”
“Why didn’t you mention this?”
“It was in a footnote on page 16 of the appendices.  You don’t honestly think any of us like advertising our project’s defects, do you?  We buried our marrow thing in a backup report to a subreport.”
Fourth, they were only just leaving Level 4 when the lights came back on and all the regular faculty wandered back in, most of whom were confused to their presence and willing and eager to inform Jeremy that he was not even remotely a badass. 
“Oh, it was over in an eye-blink,” assured one of the scientist’s colleagues.  “It turns out that most of the prototypes couldn’t move faster than a brisk stroll under the best of circumstances, and they prefer to eat each other rather than us.  The boys in black took them out in five minutes and we all decided, well, lockdown takes at least another hour to reset at best, why don’t we take the afternoon off?  We all went down and had a coffee in town.  Really, it was the quickest outbreak since those guinea pigs that –”
“We remember,” said the scientist, testily.  “And how’s the lab-10 team holding up?  I’d imagine that with these sorts of results, they’re in for quite a drubbing next budget meeting.”
“A drubbing?  Punishment?  Have you any idea how many applications there are for a this-easily-foilable faux-infestation of hideous abominations?  The most inept human alive could take one out, and they grow from spores, no less!  I tell you, the special effects people in Hollywood will thank us, and with their wallets to boot.  Budget?  With a bit of tweaking, this thing just became half our budget.”
Fifth, the scientist couldn’t make it for lunch. 
“It’s very sweet of you,” he said to Jeremy, “but I’m already seeing someone.  You’re nice, believe me, and if I were free I’d be on it like a shot, but I’m very much committed at the moment.”
“Besides,” he added, “there’s no way I have time to run out and get something now.  We need to redo all of batch 4.87 from notes.  Maybe go to 4.87b.  There’s some alleles we just didn’t have the time to hash out on the last one that really –” and then the conversation had ended, it just took a few more minutes and far more syllables than saying “goodbye” would have.
Sixth, Jeremy’s best mop was now sacrificed for naught, and the – expensive – replacement would be a week in the mail.  Till then he would have to use a communal mop, bummed from one of the other janitors.  A lamentable fate indeed. 

On the other hand, the security cameras had caught footage of some of his cleaning on Level 4 during the lockdown, and he’d persuaded the security staff to give him a copy.  It had hit over 1 million views online so far, and that was the sort of recognition money just couldn’t buy. 

 

“Cleaup Duty,” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.