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“Hey Joel.”
“What?! What!?  Back, back, back I say!  I warn you, I’m armed and…oh, it’s you.  Hello, Bernie.”
“Calm down, neighbour; you look a bit tense.  What’s that thing you’re holding there, anyways?”
“What thing?”
“That thing you were waving around just now.”
“Oh…  Hedge trimmer.”
“Never seen one with all those glowy bits before.  Or the exposed wiring.”
“It’s second-hand.  I keep meaning to repair it.”
“That so?”
“Say, what brings you over here anyways, Bernie?”
“Well, my lawn mower broke.  Was wondering if you could fix it.”
“I just fixed that thing last week!  What happened?”
“You could say your fixing it is the source of the issue.”
“Can’t be.  A simple tune-up and a change of oil was all it needed!”
“Yes, but whatever you changed the oil for leaks.  And if it touches plants, they melt.”
“Really?  Into what?”
“You’ve got me there, but it’s sort of orange.  And the blades go too fast.”
“I can scarcely see how that’s an issue.”
“It hovers, Joel.”
“Perfect!  Reduces the physical exertion required to move it.”
“It’s hovering twenty feet in the air and it’s tangled in the power lines, Joel.  If my boy hadn’t let go as fast as he did, he’d be barbequed right now.”
“Oh dear.”
“Yup.”
“I must’ve put in the wrong battery.  I guess that explains why this thing is having trouble starting.”
“What thing?”
“Never mind.”
“Come on Joel, we’ve been neighbours for fifteen years.  My son’s asked your daughter out on four really awkward dates.  Our wives share recipes on little bitty index cards.  You can tell me.”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
“My lips are sealed.”
“…it’s a doomsday machine.”
“A what now?”
“Well, it’s more like a demi-doomsday machine.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I mean, it would be a bit of a job for it to destroy a single major metropolitan city, let alone any civilizations.  I think calling it a whole-hog armageddon device would be a tad overconfident.”
“Joel, are you telling me that you have constructed a weapon of mass destruction inside your garage?”
“I’ll have you know that KRUMEK is an autonomic artificially-created entity capable of supporting independent and efficient evolving thought-processes, not some sort of ham-handed and dangerous piece of equipment!”
“Oh, that’s a reli–”
“I strapped those all over his external hull and wired them into his central cortex.  Just most of my leftovers from my postgraduate projects, anyways.”
“How dangerous is this stuff, Joel?”
“The earlier pieces are crude and unsophisticated, so they have no safeties.  The later components are mostly intellectual exercises, and I haven’t actually tested any of them yet, so they may work as planned or do something radically unexpected.”
“Like?”
“Remember that time I made waffles at your place?”
“Oh, right.” 
“But with less maple syrup.  I think.”
“Listen, should you really be making this sort of thing in your garage?”
“Where else?”
“Practically anywhere.  I mean, don’t you have labs for this sort of thing?”
“I don’t know what you think my salary is –”
“You work for the Pentagon, Joel.”
“– but I can tell you this: it’s not nearly enough to cover a mortgage, a college fund, my wife’s knitting habits, my scrap metal and nuclear contaminants collection, and the rental of over a hundred thousand square feet of lab space in an industrial district plus all safety permits, regulation inspections, hazardous waste storage, and security systems.”
“So instead of that, you’re using your garage.”
“It already has a padlock and there’s a drain built right into the floor.  Acceptable substitute.”
“Let’s try a different angle then: why do you need to build this thing at all?  It’s not an official project, right?”
“Definitely not.  If this were from work, hah, I’d be still trying to file reports on safety margins and possibilities of error.  No, this is a true labour of love – shining, free, dancing in the sunlight, loosed under the sky and unburdened with red tape.”
“And covered in experimental and unpredictable weaponry.”
“Same old Bernie, always the cynic.”
“So, why are you building this?”
“Well, partly it was a bit of a whim.  A flight of fancy.  I’ve had all these bits and pieces from my job building up in my garage, a whole mountain of might-have-been projects and dreams and idle fancies, and I just said, hey, why not combine them all at once?  And partly it was a bit of a money issue, because with the mortgage, and the college fund, and my wife’s knitting –”
“Yes, yes.”
“Well, and the third part was that I sort of quit work yesterday.”
“What?!  Really?!  Why?”
“Blew up my boss’s office.  It’s ‘three strikes and you’re out,’ you see, and that was the third that day.  And the fourth, fifth, and sixth all happened within about five seconds after that, so I knew I was past the plead-for-your-career point.”
“And this led to this because…?”
“Well, you know.  Some people cut luxuries, some people go bargain hunting, some people start browsing classifieds…”
“And you decide to build a big pile of weaponry?”
“A big sentient and mobile pile of weaponry.  It’s all basically the same crisis strategy operating within different paradigms of expression, you know?”
“Joel, how is this supposed to help you get money?”
“Well, it’s quite simple.  See, it’s theoretically capable of holding off a small battalion and if need be, me and the entire family can fit into the panic compartment, though it’s a bit of a tight fit.  Add in the emergency rations I’ve stashed in there and we can turn this baby into a temporary home-away-from-home-away for a few weeks, although I might need to install some sort of shower before that’s really viable, or at least a little sprinkler.”
“That’s wonderful, but why are you making a cold war-era bunker, giving it a brain, and then covering it with weapons?”
“I’m sorry?”
“It just seems excessive.  What are you going to need to shoot at?”
“Well, those are just backup.  Insurance.  Just in case.”
“In case what?”
“Well, in case they take my letter of resignation the wrong way, back at work.  I figured better to go that way than to be fired, right?”
“What’d it say?”
“I can’t remember, my ears were all ringing from the explosion, and I’d just taken a triple dose of my meds after forgetting them for most of the week, and I’d had a few energy drinks before work.  I think the energy drinks made me a bit scatterbrained.”
“Yeah, I don’t know what’s in those things.  My son drinks ‘em all the time.  Can’t be good for him.”
“My girl too.  I swear they’re going to give her something nasty when she hits her forties.”
“Damned shame, it is.”
“Too true.”
“Still, you might want to keep a better eye on your pills, too.”
“It couldn’t hurt.  But they always give me this terrible buzzing in my head.  I think much more clearly when I’m off them.”
“It’s your brain.  So, you don’t remember what was in your resignation letter?”
“Not as such.  I think I put in something about a trained seal.  It felt very important at the time.”
“Anything else?”
“The word ‘porcupine.’  Past that?  Nothing.  Wait; and I signed it in blood.”
“Why?”
“All that I had, since I couldn’t find my pen.  Oh damn, I bet it was in the desk drawer.  At least I got a challenge out of it – lovely calligraphy, too.  And I always liked writing in red.  We have to use black ink on all our forms, no other colours allowed – can you believe that?”
“It’s amazing how closely they try to push you around nowadays.  Just rude.”
“It is.  Anyways, KRUMEK is my backup plan if they take it the wrong way.  I’ve almost finished putting the last bits together, and I’ve got the radar on the lookout for anything suspicious.  First sign of a blip, BOOM, in we go and off we trundle to Bermuda.  Might need to hit a bank or two on the way for cash.”
“Have you considered just phoning in to work and clearing the whole matter up?”
“Can’t.  Took out all the landlines and the EMP from the seventh blast fried all the electronics across the complex, so no cell or satellite phones.  Pity too, my wife gave me this one a year or two ago.”
“It’s real pretty.”
“Isn’t it?”
“What’s that spiky bit?”
“Personal defence app, don’t touch.  It’s got a bit of a short trigger and I’m not sure if it’s completely dead yet – look, the legs twitch now and then.”
“Well, I guess you’re a bit too busy to handle my mower then.”
“Sad to say that’s probably true, Bernie.”
“It’s no problem, I’ll just shoot it down with my twelve-gauge.  Say, anything you want me to tell the feds when they interview us?”
“If you could just say I was a pretty good guy but we were kind of distant and didn’t have a lot in common, that’d be nice.  I don’t want you and yours getting into any trouble on my account.”
“It’ll be fine, Joel.”
“Maybe there’s hope for you yet.  Well, I’m just going to weld in a little extra plating and then I’ll see about that sprinkler.  If I’m lucky, I can get in at least three and a ventilation shaft or two before the choppers get here.”
“I sure hope you can.  Bermuda’s a long ways off.  I’ll leave you be now.”
“Oh, before I forget, you might want to take your family down to the basement for the next few hours – just in case.”
“Good luck, Joel.”
“Take care, Bernie.  Have a nice day, and sorry about the lawn.”
“Ah, it’ll wash out.  See you later.”

“Neighbourly,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010. 

Jareef was nine before his father took him out to the god’s-shrine to help with the rituals – unusually old for a shaman’s child.  It wasn’t that Qpiq thought that he wasn’t ready.  He just tended to forget. 
“Shouldn’t you bring the boy out there soon?” his mother had asked, first when he turned seven and many, many, many times thereafter.  And Qpiq had nodded and grimaced and said: “Ah, ah, you’re right, you’re right.  Next time, I will take him.” 
And then next time would come and he would forget again and come back complaining of how heavy the sacrificial bundles had been, especially in the deep snow – oh, how deep the snow was lately, don’t even get him started – and how he wished someone could help him carry them. 
“You have a son, Qpiq,” Jareef’s mother would say. 
“Oh.  Yes, that’s right,” he would reply.  “Next time, next time I will take him,” he said, and then Jareef’s mother would sigh and give up on him.  It was the central part of her pretty-happy life, she told Jareef and his younger sister, Gappa.  “Children, when your father is frustrating and he doesn’t know it, and it’s not his fault, just give up and wait for him to do something else.  He’ll get distracted.”  It was good advice, like all her advice. 
But when Jareef was nine, Qpiq remembered. 

“Now, take this bundle.  Here, take it.  Don’t let the laces come loose, or it’ll fly everywhere, and you’ll have to gather it all up again.”
Jareef complied obediently, mittened hands fumbling at tanned and intricately decorated leather, crawling over patterns with meanings that Qpiq was under high oath never to explain to anyone not sworn to the spirits.   
“What’s in it?” asked Jareef. 
“Ahhh, lots of stuff.  God-stuff, spirit-stuff.  Things they like, you know?  Bits of good-smelling bark, some nice teas, things like that.  Stuff that moves through the air.  We need that, you’ll see.  Come on.”
And so he came on.  The walk was not a long one, but it took them far.  Up from the shaman’s camp at the edge of the clearing’s treeline, up the winding, narrow path that eeled its slim self against the furrowed slope of the hill, to its almost-bald peak where the three frowning pine trees sprouted from the same spot, twisting apart and away to hold one another at arms length, embraced in needles. 
Jareef thought they disapproved of him, and shrank a little inside his coat.  Qpiq laughed. 
“Don’t worry, don’t worry.  They’re just pines.  Hoary a little, twisted and bitter from the wind, but pines.  Takes a god’s-shrine a long, long time to soak up enough sacrifices and spirit-stuff to get really awake, you know?  They’re just pines.”  He took out his flints, long and specially shaped and kept blessed by his special pouch he kept them in.  “Right.  Now you lay that bundle down there on the snow, and you start piling up that god-stuff in that little hollow right between those trees.  Then stand back and keep quiet, okay?  Don’t speak unless you’re asked to, or you could mess something up, and I want to bring Hleena back her oldest boy in one big piece.”
Jareef did as he was told while Qpiq started up his singing, a deep-chested drone that sounded as though it was coming from a much bigger man than him.  The contents of the spirit-bundle were as his father said: teas, dried herbs, a couple carvings from fragrant woods, things that “moved through the air” as they burned.  He recognized one of the carvings as his aunt Rmea’s handiwork, and wondered how much time had been put into something that was about to go up in smoke. 
His father was reaching the apex of the song, a high, ever-rising note that could make dogs go cross-eyed and cause birds to drop out of trees.  Then it stopped, hanging there in the air without a voice to sing it, and it was in that one magical moment that his father struck a spark with his flint and set the driest and most brittle of the offerings aflame. 
The fire spread so fast that Jareef flinched, roaring up and high over the little wooden carvings and consuming the leaves and packages with avid thirst, turning and flicking through strange colours and shapes.  And up into that whirling vortex, that little pyre too big for its fuel, rose the carvings, the fuel suspended in the flame. 
Ask us, they said.  Jareef’s ears hurt at the voice; it was shaped out of sounds not meant to be heard by human ears, a tool haphazardly made. 
“Well, sure,” said Qpiq.  “I’ll ask, sure.  Now, what we were wondering about… those mammoths, right, the ones we saw last week.  They’re still near here, yes?  Pretty good time to go after them, none of their spirits around them, moon’s dark so they can’t see, we haven’t upset them too badly.  Safe time for a hunt, right?”  Jareef was amazed to see his father as at-ease as ever, talking to this spirit the way he would to his neighbours. 
Yes, said the fire in the pines.  The trees were awake now, awake and whispering in the wind, adding sibilants to the voice.  You know this.  What do you really want to ask us?
“Right, right, just making conversation, don’t worry.  Now then, are there any other gods there?”
The wind rushed low and quick for a moment, then dropped away.  No, said the fire in the pines.  But it said it slowly, and it said it softly.
“Hmmm,” said Qpiq, and he pulled out his pipe and lit it.  “You don’t sound sure.  You sure?”
We know or do not know, said the fire in the pines.  We are sure.  Its voice was harsher now, and Jareef could see the wood beginning to blister and char on the offerings cradled inside its grip. 
“That’s good,” said Qpiq, and he blew smoke into the flame, changing the colours five times over before Jareef could finish blinking.  “That’s very good.  Now, about the weather… I saw five flights of the little yellow birds yesterday down by the stream, with three birds each.”
A warm spell, said the voice in the pines.  You know this, 
“Right, right.  But after the fifth, a hawk came down and ate the last, slowest bird.  Now, what do you suppose that means?”
A cold snap, said the voice in the pines.  You know this. 
“Yes, but then,” and here Qpiq’s voice grew if not sharp, then edged, “I saw that last bird let itself be caught to let the others get away.  Now, what do you suppose that means?”
The voice in the pines did not speak.  Qpiq blew more smoke, this time up into the branches. 
A choice that brings change, one way or the other, the voice said at last.
“Yes, yes, I suppose that sounds right,” said Qpiq, relaxed and smooth again.  Jareef realized he’d been holding his breath, and stopped.  “Well, that’s all changes one way or another.  I guess it’ll work itself out then, I guess.  Changes do that.”  He stretched himself out and emptied his pipe’s ashes on the fire, three clear, calm taps.  “Thank you and thank your kin, and stay warm.”
Yes, said the voice in the pines.  And then it wasn’t there any more, and the fire was dwindling pieces of charcoal no bigger than Jareef’s knuckles. 
“They like the smoke, but the ashes put them off,” said Qpiq.  He picked up the charcoal lumps and put them in a little drawstring bag.  “Best not to leave them lying around, you know?” he told Jareef.  “Can’t have leftover god-stuff.  It makes a mess in a few different ways, big, important ways if let it get out of hand.  Can’t have that.  But we can take this and use it to mark up some important things, use it for paint.  Nothing better.”
He turned to leave, then stopped.  “Oh yes.  You have a question?  You can talk now, forgot to say.”
“Why the weather?” blurted out Jareef, then felt foolish.  But his father didn’t look at him like a fool.    
“Why ask the weather?” he echoed.  “Well, I can tell the weather, you know.  Doesn’t take many symbols or signs to do that, or much of a shaman.  Anyone can do that.  But there’s weather, and then there’s weather.  All kinds of it.  Spirits can help with the other kinds, or at least getting a good warning of it.  And the more you know the spirit, the more reliable it is.  Why we keep the same one, instead of just asking new ones wherever we go.”
Jareef didn’t look at his father with new eyes, but he certainly felt that he saw something different when he turned them to him.  Something firm and immovable hiding underneath that rolling jolliness, that might not shove, but would refuse to ever be pushed.  Except by his mother, as he was reminded when they got back to the tent and she decided that they’d been up there too long for her to be comfortable.  The lecture only ended when he complained of his headache – a relic of the smoke of Qpiq’s pipe – and he went to sleep early. 

The hunt set out the next day, all the men together, Chief Yhal and Uncle Huunj and Strange Breese, the woman who hunted like the men because she could do it better than any of them, and all the rest of them.  And Jareef’s father, Qpiq, because a hunt with no shaman was like a human with no chest.  All the important bits would be there, but there wouldn’t be anything holding them together. 
They were gone three days, and then they came back.  But four of them didn’t, and one of them was Qpiq.  And all of them were quiet. 

Chief Yhal explained it the next morning, when all of the hunters had a full night’s sleep between themselves and what had happened.  A terrible accident, a chance blundering.  A mammoth had barged the wrong way in the night as they herded them this way and that towards the killing ground, and the rest of the herd had pounded after it like the world’s biggest and heaviest lemmings.  They had been too frightened to fight back, but they hadn’t needed to, not in the dark and confused night as bushes being used as cover turned into traps and roots leapt eagerly to snare and tangle feet.  Qpiq had been immovable, all right, said Uncle Huunj.  He had pushed him out of the way, but hadn’t stepped of his own accord, not fast enough.  Jareef’s mother had gotten a funny look on her face then, one that frightened him, but it passed and they hugged and cried a little.  Most of them hugged and cried a little. 
And that was why Jareef was walking up the hill by himself the next dark moon, ritual bundle lugged clumsily in both arms, wearing his old coat with new markings painted onto it hurriedly, a headfull of half-remembered scraps of rhyme, ritual, and stories he thought, he hoped his father had said were important at sometime or another.  It wasn’t too good to have a shaman that young, everyone had agreed, but he was the shaman’s oldest child, and that was just too bad.  Everyone had wished him good luck, some of them so strongly that he was quite un-reassured. 
The singing was the hard part.  He piled up all the offerings in a little heap, but the singing escaped him long and hard, his efforts fading in and out of nasal shrillness and into cracked mumblings and humming.  Finally he gave up and tried to start a spark.  That took six tries, as numbed fingers tried to flex around tools much too big for them.  The final result took him by surprise all over again, hopping back in surprise as the fires rushed upwards. 
You are not the shaman, they said. 
The words were inflectionless, as flat and strange as before, but Jareef still flinched under their meaning.  “No,” he said.  “But I have to be now.”
The shaman is dead, said the fire in the pines. 
Jareef didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t.  It was when he was about to start fidgeting that he realized that he had to speak next.  “I have to do this now.”
You know nothing, said the fire in the pines.  Ask us. 
“Can you teach me?”
The sound that happened next was the worst yet.  It sounded like a forest fire burning small creatures alive, drawn long and slow.  It wasn’t until after, when Jareef had time to run the entire thing through in his head, that he knew the voice in the pines was laughing. 
You will learn, it said.  And then it went out. 
His mother gave him a sympathetic look when he went home, and hugged him when he cried a little.  Then she had to go back to looking after his sister and arguing with Uncle Huunj, who kept leaving his knives lying around where she could get at them. 

By the time the next meeting-time came about, Jareef had learned a few things from his father’s old friends.  One was that you only got so many questions.  The other was that you could squeeze more out with better gifts and the proper manners, but they got vaguer and vaguer if you pushed too hard.  Yet another was the sort of questions he should be asking, because the answers were important for everyone.  The last thing he learned was a mix of herbs that his mother gave him that his father had smoked, and it made him sick for a few weeks before he got a little used to it.  He still coughed like a bone was stuck in his lungs, but he could put it off for a few minutes after his first puffs.
“It’ll help,” she told him.  And he remembered what Qpiq had done, and it made sense. 
Gappa asked if she could come, and he told her to stop bugging him.  Uncle Huunj asked if he wanted him to come, and his mother told him to stop bugging him. 
Ask me, said the voice in the pines, and so he did.  He asked it about the weather, and about where the herds would be going, and if their spirits would be strong and alert or sleepy and restless in the coming weeks. 
The voice in the pines answered, tersely but acceptingly, and it was only after the fire had gone out and Jareef was halfway down the hill that he realized that he couldn’t remember a single thing it had told him.  He was in a terrible state for the next few days until he broke down and told his mother, who told him he must not have sung the song correctly. 
“It’s protection,” she told him.  “Powerful protection.  It keeps their fingers out of your head out of your pockets.  You need to get that song right.”
She asked Uncle Huunj, who asked Chief Yhal, who sent him to Strange Beese, who, surprisingly, was not only the strongest hunter, but also the sweetest singer.  She frightened Jareef a little – well, a lot – but she was a good teacher.  He didn’t dare make a mistake, especially not with her habit of sharpening her knives and spear-tips as she sang.  “It helps concentration,” she told him, and chuckled at his big eyes.  “They can’t hurt you,” she said.  “And besides, they do no harm.  They need a person to do harm.”  He certainly concentrated awfully hard on the blades, but his mind would wander a little from the singing. 

They moved before he could try out the singing at that god’s-shrine.  That was the last time he saw those three pines on that hill, peeking down at them as they walked the trail away and into the forest.  They were glowering again, he thought. 
Heading south was nice one way: the snow fell away and the trees thickened and he didn’t have to wade through snowdrifts to reach the god’s-shrine, which was a little hollow under a big rock.  It wasn’t as far away – he could overhear the noise and talk of camp as he asked his questions – but there were thorny bushes ringing it that gave privacy and snagged at his clothing. 
The shrine was different, so naturally, the god was different.  “The stuff is the spirit,” Chief Yhal had told him.  “Different stuff, the spirit’ll be different.  Same one, though.  One spirit, many forms, many minds.”
The little hollow was filled with water, and for some time Jareef had no idea how he was supposed to light it.  He spent half an hour futilely skimming sparks across it and humming to himself before he hit upon the right of what he was meant to do.  So he gathered up the offering bundle – singing the sacred song as he did so, a proper way, using the tricks of Strange Beese – and unrolled it over the pool, and all the offerings spun out and sunk down, down, down, down.  They were different this time, small, heavy things that glimmered and shone as they spun down, shells and stones and such. 
His reflection stared back at him, and then it went all wrong.  Its eyes were either too small or almost all of its face, its skin and its clothing were too alike to tell the difference or completely unalike, and its mouth was too big, with too many teeth that were all too little. 
asK me, it said, and its voice was like the drip and tremble of water on moss, bulging, rippling, flat, unsettling. 
This time Jareef was ready – pipe lit and mind calm – and he asked all the questions properly.  It answered them, and he felt the answers settle in cautiously in his mind, letting the fingers of his memory clasp them tight.  No spirit-tricks this time. 
therE is much prey here, said the voice in the water.  feW other tribes have come this year. 
“What sort of prey?” asked Jareef. 
deeR.  mastodoN.  elK.  noW and again, bear. 
“Good,” said Jareef, and then he was out of questions he’d been told to ask.  So he went ahead and asked the question he’d kept for himself.  “How did my father die?”
murdereD, said the voice in the water.  nO more questions. 
Jareef stood there for a moment, pipe half-held in readiness to empty, thoughts mixing.  At the last minute he avoided the foolish thing and asked no more.  Instead, he tapped the pipe out, once, twice, three times.  “Thank you and thank your kin, and stay deep,” he said. 
yeS, said the voice in the water, and his reflection was normal again.  It looked very pale. 

Jareef didn’t tell his mother.  She had enough to keep herself busy with, he thought, and from how he felt, the amount of worry delivered with the news would be very large. 
What he did do, though, was ask Aunt Rmea what could kill a shaman.  She gave him a sad, pitying look and hugged him too tightly to be comfortable. 
“Anything that kills a man, little boy.  A spear.  A knife.  A stone.  Water.  Fire.  Jealousy.  Hate.  The last two are the deadliest, especially when they’re secret.”
“Who would hate my father?” asked Jareef, somewhat muffled. 
Aunt Rmea shrugged.  “Not one of us.  Qpiq didn’t get angry.  And you couldn’t stay angry at him.  And he didn’t die from that, little boy.  Mammoth got him, not man.”
That made Jareef feel a little better, and stopped that cold feeling his stomach got whenever he looked around the camp in the evening, looking at people and wondering.  But he still did wonder, and he still did watch. 
True to the spirit’s promise, there was much game at the new camp.  They stayed there long enough for two more meetings, which meant two more questions left over for Jareef to use. 
“What man murdered my father?” he asked. 
nO man, said the voice in the water.  nO more questions.  And that was that for that meeting, and Jareef cursed himself.  Then he thought of Strange Beese, and felt very stupid. 
“What person murdered my father?” he asked next time. 
nO person, said the voice in the water.  nO more questions. 
Jareef sighed.  “Thank you and thank your kin, and stay deep.”  Tap-tap-tap went the ashes, and away went the voice in the water.  And that was all for that meeting, and he cursed himself all the way back to the tent. 
That was the last time he used that god’s-shrine, and the trip to the next big camp was a long, slow slog, through valleys and over hills, stopping only to sleep, living off preserved supplies.  Jareef turned ten years old or so on the trip, and his mother gave him a small knife.  He was careful with it until he cut himself.  Then he was very careful. 
The new campsite was a good one, next to a great roaring river that seethed into a lake no more than a minute’s-walk away.  Jareef had never seen so much water since as early as he could remember, and he felt very small near it.  He thought of the voice in the water, and shuddered at how big it would’ve been if it appeared in that lake. 

The next dark moon, when the spirits of the prey would be sleepy and blind, was far away, and he had some weeks to adjust himself to his new god’s-shrine and prepare his question.  He thought of it carefully. 
The god’s-shrine was a little cave near the lake, an alcove in the rock not much deeper than a tent.  Ivy grew down over it, like a curtain, and a little hearth spoke of burned gifts, things that moved through the air. 
It took all his effort to make the song go as slow and steady as it was meant to, when everything in him was aching to hear it speak now.  He had to think careful of spirit-plucked memories to keep himself focused. 
The fire was small and dark and smoky, and the dense smoke’s voice was smokier still. 
ask, it said. 
Jareef made himself ask all the questions; of the weather, of the game, of anyone else around that might cause trouble, of every little useless detail he didn’t care about any more, and then he asked his final, big question. 
“Who murdered my father?”
And then the strange thing happened.  The voice in the smoke hesitated.  There was a gap, a space where there should’ve been the prompt, steady answer. 
a mammoth, said the voice in the smoke.  And that didn’t sound right either. 
“No,” said Jareef, speaking over the little voice in his head that was telling him what he was doing was very stupid. 
“That was what killed my father.  A mammoth can’t murder people, a mammoth isn’t a person.  It’s like a knife-blade or a spear-tip – it has no purpose on its own.  Who murdered my father?”
There was a long, slow, steaming silence.  Jareef’s knuckles started to whiten on his pipe. 
i did, said the voice in the smoke. 
Just like that, Jareef felt two things at once: soaring exhilaration at knowing, and a fast-growing dread in his gut. 
“Why?” he asked. 
he kept us close.  he kept us from wandering.  he kept us from settling.  we were chained and dragged through a hundred hundred bodies and minds, all different, all changing.  our three-pine-mind-on-fire smothered his call, pushed the mammoth. 
“How?” he asked. 
there was a way out.
“What?” he asked. 
another mind, unguarded, unprepared, opening outside to hide in and ride in and escape.  found the mammoth.  took the mammoth.  murdered the shaman. 
“Me?”  Jareef felt a twinge of a long-ago headache. 
your mind was open. 
Two more feelings: anger and guilt. 
“How do I kill you?” he asked. 
you can’t kill a spirit, said the voice in the smoke.  It wasn’t in the smoke anymore, Jareef realized with a start.  The fire had died altogether, and the air was clear.  And what was that shuffling, stumbling thud he heard from outside, on the path?
Jareef ran without thinking, which probably saved his life.  The bear’s paws swooped in low and over his head as he scurried out of the cave, rank-smelling fur scraping his coat and foul breath gushing past his head.  He saw its roar more than its body as he fled, not daring to look back, but what he had seen felt wrong, strange, broken as a reflection in ripples.  How many eyes had it had?
i see you, whispered the voice, not in smoke or fire, but on its own now, and he almost turned around right then, even as a tree lunged up at his face and he twisted desperately around it.  His flight took him off the path, staggering and stumbling into a berry-laden bush, arms and legs tangling in bounty that would’ve had him jumping for joy any other time. 
i hear you, called the voice on its own, the lumbering bear-gallop and its frothing pant growing louder in Jareef’s ears.  He tore loose one arm, tugged on the other.  His pipe was still in his hand, why was he still carrying his pipe?
i have you, growled the voice, deeper and stonier, as huge arms wrapped around his body, lifted him up in the air, turning him about.  He saw the bear’s face now, but it wasn’t.  No bear had looked like that; it was worse than the ripples.  Jareef still didn’t know how many eyes it had, or how many faces. 
The bear-god held him up high, above its head, all the way up.  Jareef was higher than the tallest men in camp, twice as high as Chief Yhal, high enough to see all the way back to the faintest hint of the tents in the campsite.  He was tipped upside down, arms flying, and it was because of this that at some point his pipe was upside down and a few ash-specks tipped out.  They lit on the bear-god’s snout and it sneezed mightily and violently, dropping Jareef to claw at its nose. 
Jareef landed heavily, face-up, staring at the bear as it rubbed its face and sneezed.  And it was just good luck that his wind came back before the bear’s did, because he knew what to do before it did.  He swatted the bear’s foot with the pipe, and great swatches of it were sprayed grey with ash.  It roared and staggered. 
“Curse you,” said Jareef, somewhere in that roar.  He swung the pipe again – surely there were not that many ashes in it, not enough to cover half the bear’s chest with one blow?  It didn’t roar this time, it screamed, a wailing that didn’t exist outside his head.  “And curse your kin,” he added, fumbling through his pocket as the bear dropped down to all fours, head-thing wobbling above him. 
“And stay in there,” he said, yanking out his mother’s birthday knife.  And with one little boy’s strength behind it that knife dove in clean as cutting through water, right up through the bear’s jaw and into its head as far as his arm could reach. 
The bear-god lurched, swayed, and fell over.  And that was when everyone came running up through the trees, wondering what all the noise was about. 

Jareef told them everything, and they believed him, of course.  Bad luck not to listen to your shaman, and besides, little boys didn’t kill cave bears. 
“What do we do now?” asked Chief Yhal.  “Ask whatever spirit comes by?  They’ll be as truthful as a treacherous breeze.  Have no spirit at all?  The other tribes will laugh at us even as they’re hunting up all our game.”
“No,” said Jareef.  “We can use this one.”
“It’s not dead?”
Jareef pointed at the bear’s head, and they saw that its eyes still glared.  “You can’t kill a spirit,” he said.  And it wasn’t dead, but it was stuck. 
So they took that skull from the bear, steaming and bloody-red.  And they took that bear’s bones, the strongest bones, and they gagged that skull’s mouth tight with them, and they blinded its great mad eyes with its own thigh-bones.  The skull was kept carefully in Jareef’s mother’s tent, and whenever they had a question, they would get together and un-blind it, and loose its tongue, and ask it what they needed.  And if it was good, they would maybe burn some offerings, like the old days.  But if it cursed them, they would laugh at it and gag it again, and Jareef’s mother would pour the ash from Qpiq’s old pipe over its bones.  It stung it like anything. 
“They’re lazy, spirits,” Jareef was told by his uncle, when he asked why this sort of thing didn’t happen all the time.  “This one must’ve been just a little too lazy, enough to choose to do something about it.  Most don’t bother.  Choices and changes.  One brings the other, right?  It chose, so it changed.  Didn’t choose the change, but it chose.” 
Jareef had left the topic at that.  He was quite happy not having to do any of the shaman’s duties – the pipe had always made his throat ache, and the offerings bundle had been very heavy – and speaking of laziness and work brought the topic a little too near for comfort. 
He did miss the singing a little, though. 

“Spirit-Stuff” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

Teresa’s chair was no longer comfortable, even to slouch in; its back a mass of crumpled and ruined springs covered limply with a tattered layer of something that was probably meant to cushion once.  She slouched in it anyway from force of habit, and tried to pay attention to someone who had been promoted past her because of his shiny haircut.  His name was Geoff, and he was trying very hard to sound as though he knew what he was talking about.  It was precisely because of this that he was failing.
“Drivers up to date?”
“Ah, I’ve been told so.”
“And you’ve rebooted?” she asked.
“Uhm, yes.”
“Virus scan?”
“Fully updated, fully, ah, operational, ran the deepest and most thorough I could set it to.  Nothing.”
Teresa shifted her shoulders in a futile effort to remove a particularly rusty and pointed spring from her spinal column.  “You’ve defragmented?  Ran a disc cleanup?”
“Yes and yes.  No change.  It still crashes.  Every, uh, fifteen minutes now, instead of every fifteen hours.”
Teresa sighed, gustily and with weariness in her lungs.  “Yes, it’s hardware trouble then,” she said, knowing that even people like Geoff could be trusted to operate basic push-button maintenance, provided that the interface was brightly coloured enough.  And with the day nearly over, too.  Damn it.  “I’ll go get suited up.  You unlock the back door, will you?  And I’d better be getting overtime for this.”  Geoff said something or other that she didn’t have the heart to listen to as she left for her locker.
Teresa HATED hardware trouble.  The boots were too clunky and made her feet sore for hours.

And so it was that Teresa Lamb found herself suited up at the massive, overbuilt, heavily-locked mainframe door and ready to go repair some ass, in her least-favourite-part of her last-choice-as-a-job.  She pulled on her last bit of equipment – the bulky, smoked-lens helmet – and immediately felt it begin to go to work on whatever her chair had left undamaged in her upper back and neck.
“Ready,” she told Geoff.  If there was one consolation in this whole sorry affair, she reminded herself, it was that the air filter made her sound a little bit like Darth Vader.  Geoff was flinching when she talked and he didn’t even know why.
He nodded and unlocked the door, a two-and-a-half-minute process that involved the hesitant entering, correcting, and reentering of many codes, the removal and reapplication of several bolts, and an incredibly small and discrete key whose tiny, intricate serrations were just complicated enough to give a mathematician a week’s worth of uneasy sleeping.
At last it was done, the door swung open a crack, and Teresa stepped outside and into the mainframe, a warm sun in a cloudy sky far overhead and the jutting, crudely-angled towers of the computer’s RAM forming little stonehengettes all around her.  In the distance, the whurr-whush of enormous fan blades sounded, eternally scraping layers off the heavy blanket of heat that lay over the whole assembly like a cloud, all four fenced-off acres of it.
Somewhere in there was whatever was causing the crash.  It could be something as big as a small house or as small as a large breadbox.
“Ah, fuck,” said Teresa, and stepped forwards.  Tech support was hell.

The first place to check, of course, was the cooling fans.  If they were having trouble, the system would overheat.  The easiest to check, the most important thing to keep running, and the least likely to be the actual cause since Teresa figured that if they were actually broken the fire would’ve spread over half the state by now, everyone in the building would be dead, and some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away would be writing a very polite and terse letter to her family, giving them condolences and asking how on earth they hadn’t noticed in all these years that their daughter was mentally incapacitated.
She adjusted her headset.  “Geoff?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Would you please turn down the fans?  Just flick ‘em off and then on again, the spin’ll stop for long enough that I can get close.”
“Right.  One second…”
She didn’t hear the click-clack of the switch, but right away she felt the breeze drop away from her, leaving the mainframe warm and still, like an empty oven.
“There.”
“Heading in.”
Teresa kept a close eye out as she jogged down the corridor formed by the forest of RAM obelisks, eyes leaping from one to the other like geek-monkeys, searching for any weaknesses, any obvious filth clogging them.  Nothing obvious presented itself, but then again she was only seeing a fraction of a fraction of the possible problems.  Something she deeply resented.
I am a programmer – a good programmer – and I went to tech school, she told herself as she climbed over a low-lying ridge of power cables.  I’m meant to be off writing code somewhere while eating gourmet chocolate bars over my keyboard, not running tech support for middle-management morons and having to buy a goddamned gym membership just so I can run around all day poking at bits of my company’s mainframe in a hazard suit without having a stroke.
“Uh, how are the fans?”
Teresa counted to three and reminded herself that it was cruel (and more importantly, fruitless) to yell at children.  “Not there yet.  Almost.”
“Ah, right.”
The cooling fans were impressive, Teresa had to admit.  She’d lived in buildings smaller than them, and despite the size of the blades they still zipped by with remarkable speed, with edges sharp enough to shave your armpits with.  Even now, revving up after Geoff’s momentary shut-down, they were going along at a good clip and accelerating.  She figured she had maybe a minute and a half before they were back up to full speed, and then the wind would get too strong for her to stay near.  Regulations said that the fans should be shut down at all times while anyone was in the mainframe but then you wouldn’t be able to leave the computer running while you searched for whatever was wrong, and that made diagnostics even more of a bitch.  Of course, losing limbs was scarcely any fun either, but that had only happened twice so far, and both the techs who’d suffered it hadn’t exactly been the sharpest knives in the drawer.
“Fans clear,” she reported after a quick jog around the perimeter.  “No obstructions, no dirt buildup.  Moving on to heat sink.”
The run to the sink was more pleasant.  For one, the fan was almost up to full speed again – a much-appreciated cooldown – and for another the wind gave a nice little push at her back for the entire stretch.
If the fan was imposing, the heat sink was its polar opposite: a bland truck-sized brick whose only distinguishing features were some large, flat pieces of metal that served as cooling fins.  Its sole issue was similarly mundane, a minor dust problem that faded away with a few vicious swipes of Teresa’s back-mounted vacuum.
“Nada on the heat sink.  That’s all the easy, simple bits done with,” she declared.  “I’ll hit up the processor next.”
Given that the processor was on the far side of the main batteries – which were only a few stories short of being skyscrapers, albeit rather small ones – reaching it was easier said than done.  By the time Teresa reached the processor she was out of breath, had sore feet, and had acquired a distracting habit of fantasizing Geoff being torn apart by packs of shirtless gymnasts.  She had four younger brothers and had never in her life heard so many variations on “are we there yet?”
“Right,” she said, fishing a cable out of her side pack and clipping to a small peg.  “I’m at the processor.”
In stark contrast to the batteries, the processor was easily the smallest part of the whole mainframe.  It wasn’t much bigger than a closet, provided the closet being compared belonged to a supermodel with ADHD.
“Is, uh, that the problem?”
Teresa rolled her eyes.  “Could be.  That’s what I’m finding out.”  She squatted on the dirt and pounded the peg a few inches, then attached the cable’s free end to her suit.  “Grounded.  Going to open this thing up.”
“That’s, ah, safe…right?”
“Yes,” lied Teresa, because it was shorter than “exactly as safe as everything else involved in this job” and would produce the same reaction from Geoff anyways.
She rubbed her rubberize gloves together for reassurance’s sake, gripped the incredibly bulky and palm-cuttingly sharp-edged metal handle, and yanked open the door to the processor.
When her vision faded back in again, she was lying on her back three yards away from the door, which was spitting out sparks in a few colours she was moderately certain weren’t real.  Her headset had broken down into a static yammer, and there was an unpleasant burning smell that she saw was the result of her grounding cable partially vaporizing.
“Overclocked,” she said, and was amazed that her tongue was still in her mouth, or at least something that felt like it.
The yammering faded away from her ears as she struggled to her feet, and she realized that it hadn’t been static, it was merely Geoff babbling.  “Are you okay?  What did you say?  Is the processor all right?”
Teresa staggered over to the open door and looked inside cautiously, leaning back away from the sparks.  “I’m fine, I think.  And the processor is too, but I’ll need you to go into BIOS and take it down a few zillion clock cycles.  I think one of the engineers must’ve started up a project to soup it up and dropped it before he implemented the bit that left it within safety limits.”
There was a silence.
Teresa did not sigh.  It was very difficult, even with her mouth feeling like someone had played pick-up-sticks with her filings.  “I’ll explain what BIOS is later.  Listen, the processor’s dangerous, but it’s not actually exploding, and,” – she craned her neck a little, wincing as a particularly virulent globule of electricity burst near her helmet – “it looks like it’s operating properly.  Dangerously, but properly.  We can nip it in the bud now before it blows up, but it hasn’t so far.  Not your problem.”
“Any, uh, suggestions for where to check next?”
Teresa shut the door with a series of ginger yet hateful kicks, expecting a fresh blackout at any second.  “RAM next.  Then the hard drives, then, if all else is fine… then I go to the motherboard.”  And if I have to do that, I’ll be getting time and a half at least or there’ll be hell to pay.  This job’s getting more than a little ridiculous for one tech support girl.

Checking the RAM was always tedious, but also mercifully unexciting.  Most problems with it were solved by painstakingly wading through the forest of its rows with a hammer and chisel and excavating bad obelisks, marking them for replacement.  Except for this time, because, as would happen now and again, a small pack of stray dogs had gotten in.
“I’ll uhm, send a maintenance team to check the perimeter first thing,” vowed Geoff, safe in his office.
“That’s sweet of you,” said Teresa, rocking unsteadily atop her perch of ten gigabytes of random access memory.  She aimed a kick at a snapping muzzle, and missed.  “Got anything to spare for me?”
“Just scare them off.  Uh, yell at them a bit, turn on your vacuum or something.”
Teresa could’ve pointed out that any animal willing to live inside the mainframe obviously had no issue with noise, or possibly just sworn like a sailor with a flesh wound, but decided against it.  Both would be about as much use as trying to talk the dogs around to her point of view.
No, there was another, much more cathartic backup plan.  After all, the suit was designed to be durable and protective, and she already had her hammer and chisel close at hand…
“Geoff?”
“Uh, yes?”
“Send someone out here to do janitorial work in the next few hours.  I damn well didn’t come out here to clean up, and there’s going to be a hell of a mess.  Back in a minute”
“Pardon?”
She switched off her headset.  He’d only ask more questions if he listened in.

Teresa had limped her way halfway down the last aisle of RAM before she remembered to turn her headset on again.
“Hello?  Hello?  Is that you?”
“Yes.  Sorry about that, lost track of time.”
“Everything all, ah, right?  It fixed?”
“Yes and no.”
“Uh?”
This time Teresa couldn’t stop the sigh, but Geoff was too agitated to hear it.  “Yes, everything’s fine.  My leg is sore, but everything is fine.  And no, it isn’t fixed because everything’s fine.  All the RAM’s as fresh as a field of daisies.  Our issue isn’t here.”
“Oh.”
“And when you send that janitor –“
“What janitor?”
Teresa counted to five, and wiped her hammer off again while she was at it.  “The one I asked for.  Tell him to pack the extra-heavy-duty stuff.”
“Right, right.”
A bruised leg really wasn’t all that bad, all things considered.  The dogs hadn’t quite known what to do with her after she’d slipped on the way down and landed on the biggest one’s head.  Not the way she’d wanted to start, but she couldn’t argue with results.

“So, uh, how’re the hard drives?”
Teresa pulled the goggles off, restoring the more familiar, smokey-lens view of her helmet as the night-vision faded away.  “Fine.  No scratches, spinning smoothly, dust-free – well, even more so now that I’ve given them a go-over – and again, cooled properly.”  She hauled herself out of the maintenance hatch and to her feet, feeling the blood rush back into her body from her head and her hair grudgingly reflatten itself to her scalp.  The hatch clanged most satisfyingly as she kicked it shut and sealed it.
“Should you, ah, double-check?”
Teresa looked down the side of the drives, some fifty feet below, and felt her leg start to ache again.  That cramp halfway up had been a better stimulant than forty cups of coffee.  “No, I’m pretty sure.”
“How sure?”
She waited, just to see if he’d notice.  Nothing happened.  “Absolutely,” she said, and wished that a dog she’d somehow missed would turn up.  She needed an outlet.
“To the, uh, motherboard then?”
The ladder looked longer by the second.  “I thought you’d never ask.”

The motherboard was different.  For one thing, it was underground, accessible only via a crawlspace with a foot and a half of headroom.  For another, it covered the full four acres of the mainframe. For a third, it was, in Teresa’s opinion, designed personally by Satan, who had decreed that no lights be permitted to prevent excess heat and that only the bulkiest, most awkward suits possible be given to technical support staff when they went into it.  And yet the job description hadn’t mentioned claustrophobia being an issue.
“Nothing,” she said into the headset at long, long, very long last, staring down at the intricate, waist-thick circuits beneath her, underneath the mesh grid she lay stomach-down upon.  “Absolutely nothing.  Zilch.  Nada.  The closest thing to a problem I found was an empty chip bag someone else must’ve dropped.”  I’d love to meet the guy casual enough to take off his helmet and have a snack down here. “There are literally no other.  The place is fine.  There is no problem.”
A conspicuously empty silence was her reply.
“Geoff?”
More of the same answered her, swiftly and surely.
Teresa started counting and crawling.  By the time she reached the manhole out of the motherboard’s crawlspace she had reached four hundred and eleven.  By the time she hauled herself out into the warm but fast-moving air of the mainframe’s above-ground portion, she counted four hundred and twenty-nine.  Then she stopped counting and started screaming, mixed with swearing.
“SIX HOURS, YOU PRICK!” she yelled up at the stars.  “SIX HOURS OVERTIME!  AND WHEN DID YOU GO HOME, HUH?  HOW MUCH WRIGGLE ROOM DO YOU HAVE ON THAT?   I’M GOING TO TEAR OUT YOUR STOMACH AND USE IT AS AN ASH TRAY, AND THEN I’M GOING TO START SMOKING!”

Stomping and frenzied profanity accompanied Teresa all the way back to the lockers, where the slow, laborious, glorious process of removing the safety suit calmed her again.  Fine.  She’d go and enter her hours onto Geoff’s terminal.  Claim it was automated or something, he’d never know the difference.  He wouldn’t cheat her out of this, damnit.
She flicked on the computer, and nothing happened.
Teresa gave it a long, slow look that you could flash-fry a marshmallow with, and pressed power again.
Nothing.
Carefully, calmly, and with as much care as she could manage, Teresa moved Geoff’s big, useless, expensive desk a foot to one side and examined his terminal’s power cable.
It was half-unplugged.  Part of the cord was caught on a broken, discarded stapler wedged between the desk and the wall.
Teresa sat in the big, comfy, cushioned chair and thought for a while.  Then she did some things.  Then she went home and slept like a dropped brick.

She came in half an hour late for work the next day, and was unsurprised to find that no one had noticed.  Half the office was up gossiping and the other half was working furiously.
“Haven’t heard?” said Graham, one desk over, when she oh-so-politely asked what was going on.  “Some middle-management idiot was downloading porn and picked up a whole pack of viruses.  Half the system’s on a knife’s edge now, and the only thing changing for him if it goes down is whether or not they sue him on the way out the door.”
“Full work week then,” sighed Teresa.
“Hey, at least it’s not hardware.”
“No,” she agreed.  “It isn’t.”

“Please Reboot,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010.

The funeral was standard for a billionaire’s – gold-standard, in fact.  A large, mildly opulent room, a small, cramped coffin, his family gathered around the lawyer droning out the will trying very hard not to look predatory, and several million people watching through a couple of automated news cameras while reporters in studios dozens of miles away provided embarrassing trivia on the deceased.
Nigel’s feelings were torn.  On the one hand, he was trying very hard to listen for his name when it arrived.  On the other hand, his leg was itching fiercely against the starchy fabric of his tuxedo and it was taking all his composure to avoid scratching it to hell and back on national television.
“…And to my sister, Holly, I leave that cottage out in Alberta you always liked,” said the lawyer, shuffling papers with chilling precision.  “To her eldest offspring, my niece Florence, I leave the ranch in Montana because someone needs to take care of those horses –”
The lawyer stopped and waited patiently for ten seconds for Florence to finish her improvised victory dance, applauding dutifully as she re-seated herself.
“…And to her younger brother, my nephew Dick, I leave my majority shares in that newfangled technology company that makes those nice cybernetic assistants, whatever they’re called.  Edward, you know the one.  P.S: Don’t read this last bit aloud.”  He blinked with meticulous care, the faintest shadow of a disapproving frown passing over quickly.
“Oh.  P.P.S: Tell him to start going by his full name for goodness’s sake, people’s minds go straight to what’s expected nowadays and that nickname isn’t helping.”  Dick’s smile soured somewhat, but he managed to keep at least three teeth gleaming in the light for the cameras.
“And to my youngest nephew, Nigel” – and here Nigel leaned forwards in his seat ever-so-slightly, no more able to control it than the rise in his saliva production – “I give unto his care the whole sum and contents entire of my private tyrannosaurus paddock, as well as responsibility for its maintenance.”
And so it was that for the first time in his life Nigel said the word “fuck” on national television.  Or rather, screamed it.

“There has to be some mistake somewhere,” he told his sister afterwards at the bar.
Florence shrugged her shoulders and swallowed her martini in one go, combining both actions neatly.  “I shouldn’t think so,” she said.  “Remember how much you liked dinosaurs back in the day?”
“I was seven.”
“Yes, well, Uncle Phil was a busy man and didn’t see you again till you were seventeen.  Count yourself lucky he didn’t recall your interests from then, or you’d own some sort of recording studio right now.”
“Honestly?  I’d prefer it.  I don’t know anything about music, but it’s easy to find people who do.  Or at least, people who think they do.  But practically no one knows anything about tyrannosaurus breeding!  The care and raising of extinct animals isn’t exactly a large business circle, and everybody in it’s a rival.  It’ll be just me and a ten-ton reptile that’ll be pissed to the gills at where its handler’s got to.”
“Cheer up,” said Florence, examining the bottom of her glass with the sort of care normally found in master gem cutters.  “You get a month off from work to get used to the place, and he’ll have loads of instructions and notes for you.  No one’s asking you to just walk in and wing it.  Wouldn’t be healthy for either of you.”
“Charming of you to consider the tyrannosaurus’s well-being along with mine,” said Nigel.
“Well, of course.  What if that dreadful deodorant your people make gives it allergies when it swallows you whole?  Poor thing.”
Nigel scowled at her back and bought another drink.  Another three drinks, to be safe.  He didn’t think he could face going to bed sober.

The drive to the paddock was long and quiet, hours down dirt back roads and through fern forests, with morning light just soft enough that it almost but not quite avoided furthering Nigel’s pounding hangover.  He groaned and wished he had more elbow room to feel terrible in; between his clothing, his hygiene supplies (Big Foot^TM body products were excellent, both functional and in the process of becoming cutting-edge green-friendly, and damn what Florence said anyhow), his food, and his work-away-from-work supplies (much of which consisted of his hygiene supplies, plus a single PDA), his single-man car was feeling a little cramped.
The paddock compound itself was smaller and plainer than Nigel had expected: a compact bungalow and a low-lying storage shed the size of a small warehouse were the only buildings.  The real effort appeared to have gone into the extremely large and aggressively spiked metal fence that lay passively just beyond the buildings, festooned here and there with signs politely informing anyone who cared that it was really quite electrified.  Reading them was a bit of a stretch across the impressively deep concrete moat, but they were helpfully boldfaced and so easily enough understood even through the pounding veil of Nigel’s headache.
The door slid open with the first swipe of the card, depositing him into a neat, Spartan hallway with a tasteful two-metre painting of a yawning tyrannosaurus gaping at him from across the wall.  He could count every saliva droplet on every tooth.
“Creating a new profile for you, Nigel,” said a calming voice from the walls, presumably his uncle’s cybernetic assistant, a mixed blessing if he’d ever heard of one.  On the one hand, he wouldn’t be left to figure out how to feed a tyrannosaurus by himself with whatever scrawled and indecipherable personal notes his uncle had left.  On the other hand, he’d be relying on the word of something that could crash, enter an error state, get a virus, or simply wear out a part and shut down without warning.  Of course, this would probably happen right when he was in a position to really need help, like halfway down his ward’s gullet.
“Thank you, err….”
“Serial number LNF58731.  Jeremiah (deceased) has renamed this system “Wooster.”  Would you like to change this designation?”
“No, thank you.”  Nigel managed to tear his gaze away from the teeth.  They really were quite alarming.  “Listen, this is…it’s all…do you have some sort of beginner’s guide somewhere?  A daily checklist?  Any instructions whatsoever?”
“Jeremiah (deceased) was compiling material for a book.  The manuscript is incomplete, but accessible.  Would you like a hardcopy?”
“Please.”  Nigel walked into the kitchen – an airy, open space with nice big windows – and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of decaying foodstuffs in the fridge.  Perhaps his hastily-grabbed-from-the-supermarket supplies wouldn’t be necessary after all.  “Do the groceries get delivered, or…?”
“Weekly, yes.  Once per month, the cattle in the storeroom are restocked by truck.”
“Ah.”  The nice big windows faced directly onto the backyard, which consisted mostly of moat and fence.  Behind them, the forest managed to lurk and stare without possessing anything as gauche as eyes.  “Tell me… how many of them are there?”
“Clarify, please.”
“The tyrannosaurs.  How many of them are there?”
“At present, the paddock contains one adult female, name: ‘Brandy.’  There is sufficient space for up to three adults and over half a dozen juveniles within the paddock itself, although food supplies would become somewhat stretched –”
“Yes, I doubt we’ll have to worry about that,” muttered Nigel, pouring himself some truly-instant coffee.  “How large is it, anyways?” he asked, taking a sip.
“A little over one hundred square miles.  Slightly cramped if filled to capacity, but serviceable.  If you require emergency medical aid for your choking problem, please pound the table twice, if not, pound once.”
Nigel’s arm smacked the tabletop spastically once as he sputtered coffee out of his lungs.  “A hundred miles?” he gasped out, coffee mug waving hysterically.  “A hundred miles?  How am I supposed to keep track of that much ground?  What if part of the fence loses power?  What if a tree falls over and bridges the moat?  What if it gets sick?  What if –”
“The paddock is equipped with both security sensors and multiple backup safety systems, and can go off the grid for over six months without losing fence power.  Emergency services are duly aware of this compound’s presence and will be notified in the event of any serious dangers.  A medical specialist’s contact information is documented in this system and posted on the fridge with a magnet.”
“Alright then.  So, why do you need me?  I’m sure this whole place can run itself, right?  So why don’t I just run along and –”
“Jeremiah (deceased) believed very strongly in the personal touch, and as such it falls to you to keep Brandy habituated to humans, as well as perform biweekly feedings.”
“Right.  Right.  Feedings,” said Nigel hollowly.  The forest was starting to leer at him now.  “Well, I’ll get right on that then.  When’s she due?”
“The day before yesterday.  She will be quite hungry and possibly ill-tempered.”
“Great.”
“The feeding equipment is kept in the outer room of the meat shed.  This duty should be performed as soon as possible.”
“Right,” said Nigel, as he headed back through the front hall.  “Right!  Any other instructions?” he asked, hand on the front door.
“More will be provided on-site.  The feeding suit may require adjustment for your body size.”
“The what?”

The feeding suit was the approximate mass and size of a small deep-sea submersible and about as overbuilt, with a thickly padded, ventilated, and air-conditioned interior and a rugged external hull that combined almost made Nigel feel secure before he started panicking again.
“You’re asking me to go out into the paddock, with food, and call for a fully-grown Tyrannosaurus rex.”
“Yes.”
“You’re trying to kill me.”
“No.  The operation is perfectly safe if conducted appropriately.”
“Isn’t there a crane or something we can just drop the food in with?”
“Brandy requires personal interaction.”
“I could wave at her a little from across the fence.”
“Jeremiah (deceased) was quite clear on the subject.”
“Fine, I’ll…look, can you just call him Jeremiah?  It’s getting a little strange listening to you saying that every time he’s mentioned.”
“As you wish, Nigel.”
“Thank you.  Now, you’re telling me that Uncle Jeremiah – who back in his best of days was built like a pair of broomsticks held together with silly putty – would go out there twice a week with this suit?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he died of lung cancer, so it must’ve worked.”
“Jeremiah sustained seven broken bones, four sprained shoulders, and several severe cuts in the process of using this suit, all of which were given immediate treatment and support by its medical routines.  Rest assured, it is safe.”
“Thanks, sort of.”
The storehouse’s paddock-side exit was a kind of demi-airlock, a precaution that Nigel appreciated even as it gave him crippling claustrophobia, hemmed in as he was with the suit and a heavy-duty trolley weighed down with a full set of cow carcasses.  The sound of the lock snapping into place behind him as he wheeled his way out of the cool dark and into the sunlight triggered ancient instincts in him, the urge to flee underneath a rock and hide until sundown.
The clearing was neither cool nor dark.  It was open, scoured dirt marked by claws too big to be real, and the sun glared at him in it as though he were a personal affront to its entire distinguished career.  He was in no mood to quibble with it, and cringed under both its disdain and the unseen weight of all ten tons of dinosaur that was waiting somewhere out there for him.
“The dinner call button,” said Wooster’s voice, rendered slightly more mechanical by the confines of the suit’s speakers, “is just to the right of your chin.”
After a few seconds, it added, “Depress it with your tongue.”
“Right.  Right.  Thanks.”
After a few struggling attempts, Nigel finally managed to extend enough tongue to lick his own nose for the first time in twelve years and flipped the switch, creating an explosive roar somewhere in front of his chest that nearly ruined his pants.
“Realistic,” he commented as his heart rate pit-a-patted back to normal.
“The call was recorded from Lord Billoughsby’s middle-aged male, Scimitar, some eight years ago.  It’s a general, friendly call to food that will usually produce the minimum of hostility.”
“Usually?”
“Approximately 82% of the time.  Some of the subvocal tones in the last 1.3 seconds could be construed as challenging if the listening tyrannosaur is irate.”
“Such as by being left hungry for two days?”
“Quite likely.”
Nigel teeter-tottered from side to side with the hopeless goal of watching two hundred and seventy degrees of thickly treed forest simultaneously and constantly.  It was making his eyes water, and each trunk, branch and leaf was blurring in and out of focus as his pupils tried to snap onto everything in his field of view like a confused snapping turtle in a minnow school.  His imagination helpfully filled in the blanks, turning every twig into a claw, every branch into an arm, every spec of sunshine glinting from a tooth the size of a banana, and every knothole an eye, especially that one right there with the pupil glaring directly at him.
Oh.
Brandy, Nigel had been told, was of moderate to large size for her age (just-fully-mature at eighteen years five months) and sex, approximately forty feet long from snout to tail-tip and around twelve and a half feet tall at her hips.  He understood those sizes abstractly, but it was only on seeing them in person – gradually, in the bits and pieces that allowed his brain the time needed to sum it all up and explain it to him – that he realized he was used to applying them to industrial equipment and public transportation vehicles.
Now that he’d seen Brandy, he was amazed she hadn’t been more obvious from the start – despite the rather pretty and shadily appropriate cross-hatching of dark greens and greys coating her sides, she was nowhere near stealthy – and her sheer bulk made any idea of her moving so much as an inch without making enough of a ruckus to knock over several saplings seemed ridiculous.  Had she been there since he’d entered the paddock, or was he really just that dense?  And then there was the smell, just now leaking its way into his face, something rotten and heavy, musk and torn meat.
“Nigel, you are talking aloud.  And your pulse rate is becoming dangerously high for someone of your age and physical fitness.  Please calm down.”
“Right!  Right.  Thank you!  Hadn’t noticed that!” Nigel chuckled, or at least he hoped it was a chuckle.  “Need to get some exercise, maybe eat a bit better – no, I don’t want to talk about eating right now.”
Brandy’s mouth opened slightly, allowing the faintest hints of light-glimmering-off-drool to reach Nigel.
“So, erm, how do we do this?”
“Move the trolley further, into the centre of the clearing.”
“Right, yes, thank you.”
Every step ahead was the most difficult of his life, even cringing behind the cow-heaped trolley and inside the suit’s confines.  He felt slow, fat, overstuffed, and weak, the sort of thing a cat would catch and play with before swatting to death.
“Now, release the catch and back away quickly.”
Nigel’s hand felt very exposed as it crept around the side of the cart towards the cart release into full view of Brandy and the world, which at the moment consisted mostly of Brandy.  He thought he felt his knuckles getting warmer from her attention.  His fingers closed around the catch on the third try – it seemed to have gotten smaller since he’d first engaged it inside the storage shed – and pulled.  As he did so, he carefully began to back up and immediately tripped over his own feet and fell over on his back.
Brandy took one, two, three, four graceful, unhurried strides forward, each of which covered a lot more ground than it should’ve, then reached down and bit him.  Four extremely confusing and crowded seconds happened which involved a lot more movement than he was comfortable with, and then Nigel was upside down against the door to the shed and slowly tipping upright again under his own weight.  Nasty, meaty noises and grumbling leaked in as his ears started to work again.
“That was not quick enough, Nigel,” said Wooster.
“No, no it wasn’t.  Is my arm broken?”
“Bruised heavily.  Your nose is slightly out of joint and bleeding badly.”
“Oh?”  Nigel tried to reach up and poke it, slammed his faceplate with the suit’s right arm, and realized that yes, that did hurt a whole lot.  “I guess so.   Does she need anything else?”
“No, I believe Brandy is content.  The cart can be retrieved next feeding; for now, you should leave before she finishes eating.”
Despite being obvious, that was the best thing Nigel had heard for days.

Taking the suit off took much more time than putting it on had.  Nigel’s shaking hands kept missing the buttons.
“Twice a week, you said?”
“Feeding occurs twice a week.”
“And… that often happens?”
“The attack likely was a result of your insecure and unsure body language labelling you as a newcomer, combined with hunger and your refusal to immediately leave the carcasses to her.  You may wish to practice further with the suit before the next feeding; she may be less gentle if further incidents occur.”
“Less gentle?”
“She merely bit and shoved you.  More violent encounters could involve multiple bites, repeated kicking, or holding you down with one leg while she attempts to rip off the feeding suit’s appendages.”
Nigel thought about asking how many times that had happened to Uncle Jeremiah, then decided that the answer would in no way, shape, or form do anything other than depress him.  He patched up and cleaned off his nose under close, painful supervision, hauled himself into the kitchen, ate a dinner that Wooster recommended whose contents he was unable to bring himself to care about, and went to bed.
And to think, eddied through his skull as the lights went out inside it, I could be at home doing eco-friendly underarm odour research right now…

The next morning started with him waking up and screaming very loudly.
“Are you all right, Nigel?”
“Yes!  Yes, sorry.  A bad dream.  Several of them.”
“The medicine cabinet contains several types of pills that include heavy sleeping as a primary or side effect.  Would you like a prescription?”
“I’ll be fine, I think.”  Nigel shook his head, which started his nose hurting again.  “So, what’s the order of the day, then?”
“Jeremiah’s records contain first-person footage of Brandy’s life since hatching, as well as his observations, notes, and assorted personal essays.  They can be accessed from any of the household terminals.”
“First-person?”
“Among the primary security and monitoring devices is a chip implanted in Brandy’s skull next to her visual cortex.  Any sensory data passing through her is transmitted back to this system, where it is translated into video footage.”
Nigel thought about this for a moment.  “So, you’ve got footage of yesterday’s, err…”
“Feeding incident?  Yes.  Would you like to view it?”
“No, I think I’m fine.”
“If you would like a comparison, this system also contains records of every one of the fifty-three prior incidents including Jeremiah and Brandy.  Would you like to view –”
“I think I’m fine.  But I would like to read some of Jeremiah’s notes.”
“As you wish.”
The notes took up most of the next few days, in between examination of some of Brandy’s recordings.  Both were unexpectedly dull, with Jeremiah having a tendency to break up paragraphs of detailed accounts of behaviour with rambles about what he’d eaten for dinner or which of his executives annoyed him the most, and Brandy spending an astounding percentage of her time sleeping, lazing around, or ambling to some water and then sleeping.
“Conserving energy,” explained Wooster.
“What for?  There’s nothing to hunt in there, is there?”
“Occasionally Jeremiah would release several live deer or moose into the paddock as a sort of treat.  Other than that, no.  Even without the given examples, Brandy would be instinctively sparing of her reserves.”
Whatever her reasons, it was certainly unexciting.  Many, many times over the hours Nigel reminisced over how he’d found trips to the zoo excruciatingly boring as a child, although it was interesting to skip from year to year and watch the approximate height of the “camera” rocket upwards from waist-high to over ten feet off the ground.

When feeding time came again Nigel was prepared, if not resolute.  Backed up by watching and re-watching a hundred separate meals, he strode boldly into the clearing, shoving the fresh trolley in front of him.  With a flick of his hand he depressed the switch, turned on his heel, took five smart, purposeful strides towards the door, and screaming hysterically as he was hurled into the air from behind, impacting the door headfirst.
When Nigel woke up again the cart was as empty and bloodstained as its predecessor, and he was alone beyond Wooster’s voice helpfully informing him that he was just barely shy of a minor concussion, making dragging the old cart back in and stripping out of the feeding suit even more fun than the last time.  He thought some of his hair had gone grey.

And so the pattern was set for the rest of the month.  Nigel would watch the recordings, ape Jeremiah’s poise and calm as carefully as he could, bring out the meat, begin to leave, and Brandy would promptly stomp on, bite, or kick him, each time creating a fetching new injury or embellishing an older one.
“Most peculiar,” said Wooster on the second week, as Nigel was sent spinning end-over-end and into a tree.
Nigel would’ve said something, but on that occasion he’d bitten his tongue rather badly.
By month’s end he looked like he’d decided to take up boxing and chosen a brick wall as his first sparring partner and he was more than ready to go home.  The groceries automatically delivered each week were tediously plain stuff (and Wooster refused to alter the list, claiming “health concerns” at any of Nigel’s suggestions), the bed was as hard as a rock, all the books were extensive and dull treatises on the raising of extinct animals that could spend pages on the description of a single thighbone before mentioning what that actually meant for the animal’s behaviour, and to top it off he was almost out of company-supplied deodorant, the one thing that both masked the musky, stuffy odour of the house and kept the stench that Brandy left behind after feedings out of his nostrils.
And it so it was that for the ninth time that week Nigel hauled himself into the feeding suit, turned on the air conditioning, opened the ventilation shutters, trundled the trolley of cow carcasses out into the clearing (not even bothering to check for Brandy this time – she was always there, and if she wasn’t, she’d mysteriously appear without his noticing within two minutes), hit the catch, and turned to leave.
He was halfway through the door when he realized that nothing painful had happened to him, and the sheer force of the resulting double-take nearly did the job for him.
The traditional rending, ripping sounds of Brandy eating accompanied his slow and cautious pirouette, and indeed there she was, tearing a cow in half and swallowing it casually.  It was the first time he’d observed it closely in person, and he felt a little sick.  Confusion soon overtook it.
“Wooster?”
“Yes, Nigel?”
“Why am I not being smashed into the dirt, trampled, or bitten?”
“This system lacks sufficient data to determine this.”
“But… look!  She’s ignoring me!”
“That is a good thing, Nigel.”
“Yes, but why?”
“This system lacks sufficient –”
“Shut up!”
Brandy raised her head at that last outburst and began to growl, steadily and without warmth.  Nigel felt danger approaching his pants and retreated into the shed.  Sour sweat enveloped him as he crawled out of the suit, making him sneeze in disgust.  Not only the meat, not only Brandy, but now that he was out of deodorant, he was stinking like a pig too…
Nigel stopped in the midst of putting on his left sock and stood there for some thirty seconds, balanced quite unwittingly on one leg like a stork.
And then he said: “Are you SHITTING ME?”
“Yes, Nigel?”
“Wooster, are any of the ingredients listed in my work files things that would give Brandy the jeeblies?”
“Please clarify, Nigel.”
“Give her the creeps, the willies!  Run a burr up her ass, set her off, get her goat!  Was my deodorant pissing her off?!”
“I have examined your private files as requested and can confirm that three of the primary ingredients in your test batches are odours that Brandy would associate with plants, and exceptionally strong-smelling ones at that.”
Nigel realized he was biting his fist, and had some difficulty prising his teeth from his knuckles.  “Right!  Right!  Of course!  Perfectly obvious!”  He swallowed a maniacal laugh as it was birthed, realizing that such things weren’t healthy.  “Ahahahahahahasorry.  Tell me, did Uncle Jeremiah use synthesized deodorant?”
“He didn’t use any, Nigel.  He believed it to be unnatural.”
“Hah.  Hahahah.”  No, no, stifle that.  “He was right!  Most of them are!  Ours aren’t, but apparently that isn’t good enouahahahahahahahahaha.”  Damn, no wonder the house had that funny smell in it.  And my, that felt good.  Had he been holding that in all month?  “HahahahahahAHAHAHHAhahahahahaha!”
“Nigel, can you breathe properly?”
“I’m fine!  Right as rain!”  An ear-splitting roar leaked through the paddock exit, and he spun to laugh at it, throwing up obscene gestures.  “Hahahahaha!  Right as roar!  Just wait ‘till I tell the company about this!”
“Nigel, if you require mental help, there is a number I am instructed to –”
“No, no, I’m fine.  Just give me a few more minutes like this and a glass or three of whatever stuff Uncle kept for special occasions –”
“Tonic water.”
“-a crate or three of that then, and I’ll send a few emails to R&D and the marketing department.  We can use this!  Hah!  HAHAHAHA!”

Six months after Nigel’s business vacation, Big Foot^TM body products launched a new green-compliant brand of deodorant, using all-natural, eco-friendly ingredients.  They called it Rex.
Brandy was unexpectedly photogenic, as one of Nigel’s senior artists had commented.  As far as Nigel was concerned, she looked a whole lot better to him now.  Especially since he’d hired a caretaking team to look after the new company mascot.  He wasn’t an ungrateful man, but he thought it was better for both of them this way.

“Inheritance” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

The sound of scales on dirt was soft, gentle, and smooth, a strange thing to associate with its bearer’s actions, if not itself.  The snake itself was the picture of elegance, sleek and perfect, a shapely, near-liquid line of muscles clothed in a surface that seemed to near-glitter even here, beneath the earth. 
The mouse saw this, appreciated this, but most of its small and furry mind was taken up with terror.  Helped a great deal by what the snake had just done, and a great deal more by the way the noise was growing closer. 
Shuffle, shuffle, slither, slip, stop. 
Stay. 
The mouse saw the darker shadow of the snake’s head at the very entrance to its chamber, and it tried to freeze even deeper that it already was. 
“Little mouse,” said the snake.  Her voice was as supple as her body.  “I can feel your heartbeat, little mouse.”
The mouse tried to stop its heart.  It nearly succeeded. 
The snake’s laugh was quiet and composed.  “I can smell you, little mouse, on the very tip of your tongue.  I can hear your fur moving in the air.  I can see the tip of your tail, lying flat against the earth.  You are no secret to me.  I know you with every sense but one, and that won’t be far away.”
The mouse did not move. 
“Will you persist, little mouse?  There is no reason to wait.  Deliver yourself to me, and it will be fast.  My fangs first, before the swallow.  I can stop that small heartbeat forever, before I feed.  The choice is yours, little mouse.”
“Why?” spoke the mouse.
“Why what, little mouse?” replied the snake.  Her tone remained amiable, soft, with no hint of surprise. 
“Why don’t you come in and get me yourself?  You can’t be scared of me.”
“No, no I can’t be, little mouse,” said the snake. 
“You can’t be full.  Not even after…you can’t be.  You would have left.”
“Fair truth indeed, little mouse,” answered the snake. 
“So then,” said the mouse, fighting back panic at every mouthful of dry air, which was beginning to taste distinctly of reptile, “you must not be able to come in.  I think that you are too big to come and get me, and you are hoping that you can trick me into leaving and being eaten.”
There was only the sound of shifting scales for a moment.  The snake was coiling herself into a neat knot.  “So it is,” it said.  Even her amusement was soft and tidy.  “And what of it?  I can wait for far longer than you can, little mouse.  My blood, my body, they aren’t as hasty as yours.  I can sleep here for days, still-waking.  You will starve before I do, little mouse.  You will starve before my stomach has even had time to grow empty.”
“I can dig my way out.”
“From there, little mouse?  You know as well as I the only reason that this burrow is so narrow is because of the yew-roots surrounding it, and the hard rocks.  You did not dig it deeper or wider because there is nowhere to dig.  There will be no tunnel escape for you.”
“I would rather starve than let you eat me.”
“A proud, spiteful sentiment, little mouse.  If you must die, why deprive me of a meal?”
“You ate my family.”
“Hunger is a necessity,” said the snake mildly.
“You even ate the young.”
“Rather than leave them to die exposed?  Yes.”
“You caused their deaths either way.”
“Better the fast way and the full belly then.  Will you spite me now, little mouse?  It would be pointless.  I have eggs to lay soon, and the trip will be long.  One more meal would be all I would need, for the sake of my young.  You don’t care if you live now, do you?”
Silence again.  The snake rested, content. 
“No,” said the mouse.  “But I have something to do first.”
“Yes?” said the snake. 
“I want to tell you a story.  And then I want you to tell me what you are thinking.  And when we are through, I promise that I will come out and you will have me.”
“Then speak, little mouse,” said the snake.  “And I promise, I will listen very carefully.”

“A long time ago,” said the mouse, “there was a farmer.”
“You mice and your farmers,” sighed the snake. 
“He was a good man, a hard-working man, but a poor one.  Not only did he have to feed himself on barren land, but also his three young children, and all by himself, for his wife had passed away in childbirth.”
“Times grew hard, and the weather grew cold, with a harsh, bitter wind.  The crops failed that year, and the farmer’s food stores ran low.  He harvested all he could, but what wasn’t withered was weeds.  He would’ve asked his neighbours for food, but they were nearly as poor as he, and every path and trail he could’ve taken was buried deep under cold drifts.  He took out his father’s half-warped and nigh-broken old yew bow and searched for game, but all the woods were quiet and still as could be, as all waited for the chill to leave the air.”
“Best to slumber low and silent, and stay warm,” agreed the snake. 
“So the farmer put away his bow, and he thought and thought as his children grew ever-thinner, as did he.  Spring was coming, but too slowly.  His children would starve before the life returned to the world, and he had nothing to feed them with.  His hands were empty.  But he still had hands.”
“And so the farmer took out his wife’s old carving knife and made it sharp, as sharp as it could be with his old whetstone.  He took his axe, his wood-chopping axe, and he sharpened that keener yet.  He took his strongest rope and tied it tight, and he took his left leg.  It hurt, but not as much as watching his children starve.”
“The farmer didn’t tell them where the meat came from.  He said that he’d slipped cutting firewood, since his axe was so heavy and he was so tired and weak.  They could barely hear him over their eating, they were so hungry.  As for himself, he abstained from the meal.”
“Spring came late that year.  The farmer had another accident, and he lost his left arm.  This time he was caught by the children as he staggered to the firepot.  His excuses were few and mumbled, and they were silent.  All three of them hugged him, and then helped him cook.  Once again, the farmer did not eat.”
“Spring came, but by then the farmer was bedridden, without a leg to his name.  His children were well-fed, but he himself was on the last of his strength.  ‘Go,’ he told them, and ‘north-north-east,’ and other directions as well, and whatever thoughts on edible plants that hadn’t slipped his mind between the fevers and shakes.  They left, and I believe they made their way to safety at his wife’s brother’s home.  Perhaps they were even welcomed, as young hands to do work.  That is my tale for you.”

“A grim story for an eater of seeds and stems,” commented the snake.  “And a sad one, as well.” 
“Tell me,” said the mouse.
“The farmer gambled greatly – that his flesh would be sufficient to pave the way to spring and softer weather, that he would not fail in the cutting and die, that the children would find their way and reach a new home.  It was unsure, risky.  It would have been better had he stayed alive himself.  As long as he lived, so would the chance for more children.  If he died too soon, none would live, then or ever.  Upend the shrub, and it will regrow.  Tear out the roots, and it will die.”
There was a lull in the air, emptier without sound to fill it.
“I have another story,” said the mouse.
“Yes?” inquired the snake.  “Speak it then.  And I will listen.”
“Good.”

“Of the three children of the farmer, the eldest was the most roving.  His younger brother and sister adjusted quickly to their new home, stayed on the farm longer, married and settled down within miles.  But he was older and had the greater memories of that terrible old time than they, and decided the farming life was not for him.  He remembered his father going missing and coming back with that old warped bow, and he would have none of it.  To hunt was to be his game, and he would spend hours carefully practicing it while his siblings harvested.  The sling was his first weapon, and every rabbit and bird he hit he brought home to be cooked.  No sport, only food.  But he yearned for bigger game, and he ached to think of his grandfather’s old bent bow.”
“Years came and went, and he was a young man wandering deep in the woods.  A deer was startled by him, and as it fled he cursed for want of a bow.”
“’Please, do not speak harshly,’ said a voice at his ear, ‘and tell me, what troubles you so?’”
“The young man turned to the speaker and saw that it was a yew tree, watching him with a most careful eye.  ‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘I didn’t know you could talk.  As for my troubles, I wish I had a bow.’”
“’You have a sling,’ pointed out the yew.’”
“’It is not enough,’ said the young man.’  ‘I can’t hunt mice and songbirds ‘till the end of my days.  There is bigger prey, and I must find it.  But I cannot find a bow.’”
“The yew pondered before it replied.  ‘I have a bargain for you, young hunter, a bargain I offered your grandfather.  I ask you; take a bow from my heartwood.  Use it well and it will shoot as surely as you wish.  But before twenty years have passed, you must take that bow and plant it in soft, clean soil, so that I can sprout anew.  If you do not, it will mean the end of your life.’”
“’I can find another bow in that time,’ declared the eldest son.  ‘Your bargain is fair, and I promise that I will plant you within twenty years.’  And as he spoke those words, the yew tree split apart and its heartwood lay bare.  He plucked it up and took it away, where he shaped it by trial and error, though it was most responsive to his carving.  Soon after that, he left home, and never saw his siblings or relatives again.  I believe they had good enough lives.”
“For years on end he wandered.  Food never lacked, for his aim and the bow’s strength were unbeatable.  He earned his meals where he found them, waiting silently in the bushes.  He shot deer, and wolves, and boar, and as the time went by and his skill grew greater he killed more than he could eat, honing his skills rather than filling his belly.  Pride began to slip its way into his heart and run through his veins, and more than a hint of cruelty.  His kills were now limited only by his arrows, which he made anew every evening as he set up his campsite.  As the years passed on and his hands grew sure he fashioned more and more each evening, and so more creatures died each day, great and small.  Woods were quiet in his wake and grew full of fear at the sound of his steps”
“At last, near twenty years from the yew tree’s offer had passed, but now the hunter regretted it.  He was sure no bow could match his own, and balked at the thought of reducing his power.  Besides, how could the yew object?  He was far, far away from its mouldering remains, and the wood was dead in his grasp.  Its offer must have been a mistaken hope, a desperate lie, he assured himself.”
“On the third-last day of the twentieth year since his bow had been given to him, it began to shudder and shake in his hand as he shot.  It surprised him, and he missed his shot, the first in twelve years.  He swore and shook it in anger, but by the day’s end had grown used to it and thought of it no more, so skilled was his aim.”
“On the second-last day of the twentieth year since his bow had been given to him, it groaned softly as he aimed, startling his prey.  Again the hunter swore, again he missed his shot.  But his second aimed true, and by the day’s end no thing escaped him, as it was before.”
“On the very last day of the twentieth year since his bow had been given to him, it was still and silent all morning, and the hunter was glad.  The tests of the last two days had added the last sheen of perfection to his aim, and he killed more that day than any other, songbirds, squirrels, deer, grouse.  A fish leapt from a river and was skewered before it hit the water again.  A butterfly was pinned to a tree.  The hunter laughed and laughed, silent and pleased.”
“Evening came, and the hunter set up camp.  He began to make his arrows.  So many arrows.  Tomorrow’s harvest, he hoped, would be even greater.”
“’I am not planted,’” said a voice as he fletched the final shaft.  Before he even looked, the hunter knew who spoke. 
“’No, you are not,’ he told the bow.  ‘Your tricks have failed.  You are the perfect bow, and I am the perfect hunter, and promises pale besides that.  No target is too small for me, no prey too difficult.  Nothing lives that I cannot target.’”
“’False,’ said the bow.”
“’I dare you, name me one thing I cannot target, bow, and I will shoot it.  A bet this time, not a deal.  If I miss, I will plant you.  If I strike it, you are mine as long as I live.  Three chances, even!’” 
“‘Your bargain is more than fair,’ said the yew, ‘and I will make my first dare: strike the queen of the ant colony yonder with a single arrow.’”
“The hunter scoffed.  ‘A simple shot!  I shall not waste an arrow on it, no.  This twig will do.’  With that, he seized a cast-aside twig – too slim for fletching – drew it to his bow, and shot it.  It fell deep into the anthill’s heart, and when the hunter removed it the queen was there, wriggling in vain on its tip.  He dashed it to the ground and laughed at the bow.  ‘Simple,” he mocked.  ‘I could have done that eighteen years ago.’
“’Impressive,’ said the bow.  ‘My second bequest: strike the four-leaf clover on that faraway hill with five arrows.’”
“The hunter nocked all five at once, and let fly in a single blur, hands faster than anything.  They spun out, one shaft to each leaf, and the fifth to neatly clip it loose from its stem.  It lay on the grass in puzzlement as the hunter’s raucous laughter filled the silent forest once more.  ‘A pittance!’ he cried.  ‘An insult to my skills!  Will you not challenge me, oh bow?  A last, best effort, a shot from miles at a target small?  I warn you, I will make it.  Or think you me as feeble a huntsman as my father?’”
“‘Skillful,’ said the bow.  ‘My final challenge is made, then: you must shoot the tallest leaf on the tallest tree of this forest.’”
“The hunter laughed loudest of all then, because he always slept under the biggest tree he could find, so he would have the most wood available to craft arrows.  In less than a twinkling the hunter snatched up the bow to prove it wrong, nocked an arrow, and shot straight to the sky.  It raced up to the very heights of the tree’s canopy and plucked the tallest leaf.  As it fell, it bounced off many branches, and on the last bounce from the last branch it plunged through a weak patch of bark and into the heart of an old, old grandfather of a beehive, one that filled near the entire rotten core of the tree.  It boiled over in rage and before the hunter had even finished laughing at the bow he was set upon by the bees in their thousands, a million tiny stings that would take all the arrows he could fletch in a lifetime to silence.  He ran and screamed for nearly a mile in blinded pain before he plunged over a cliff on rocky ground, and he and the bow broke apart on the hard, stony soil beneath.”
“The ground was not soft.  It was no longer exceptionally clean.  But in its way, the yew had been planted, and that is what grows above us.”

“Less depressing than the first, little mouse,” said the snake, “but just as morbid.  Do you often dwell on death like this, or is it merely your present mood?”
“Tell me what you think, not what I think.”
“Very well.”  The snake’s tail tip-tapped idly as it spoke.  “An interesting accounting of the tree above your head, if fanciful.  At root, was not the hunter merely hungry?  Pride a cover for fear, fear of starving, fear of ending up like his father, unable to provide?  His actions I can excuse, little mouse, at least as far as they are motivated by perfection – save for his breaking of the promise.  That is the moment where he leaves me behind.”
“Have you any further tales for me, little mouse?  I have listened carefully, I have spoken my thoughts.  Will you keep your promise then?”

The mouse’s fur made a very different sound on the dirt than scales, less smooth, more ruffled, softer.  It moved stiffly, weakly, toddering forwards, out and into the relatively open space of the main burrow. 
The snake was much larger than its quiet voice had made it seem, eye-to-eye.  They looked at one another.
The bite was over so fast that the mouse barely had time to blink.  Before it knew it, it was seized and cold was spreading from its toes inwards, cold so deep it could barely feel the snake’s mouth closing around it.
“Thank you, little mouse,” said the snake, voice surprisingly clear through the vibrations of its lower jaw against the mouse’s spine.  “For the stories.”
The mouse’s body was fading from itself, but its mind was still sharp enough to reply.  “They were questions.”
“What sort of questions, little mouse?”
“What kind of mother you would be.  How far you will rationalize cruelty.  What you think of promises.”  The mouse might have been all the way inside the snake’s mouth now, but it couldn’t tell.  Its vision had fuzzed over some time ago, and now its thoughts were growing dim. 
“And to what point was this?”
“Family gone, for you,” whispered the mouse, voice dropping away.  “You weren’t worthy of it.  Not food.  Roots.”
“Not worthy of what, little mouse? And what roots?”
There was no answer.  The snake felt cold, despite her warm belly, and when she poked the tip of her nose into that tight little chamber the mouse had spoken from, she smelt the sharp sting of sap oozing.
“Oh,” she said, and chuckled, the long slow full chuckle of a contented reptile, interrupted only a little by the first muscle tremors.  “Yew roots.  No, you aren’t food anymore, are you, little mouse?  You’re poison.”
“Ah, well.  Your promise was kept.  If most judgementally.  Good-night, little mouse.  Perhaps we will meet again, in a stranger place.”
She coiled up again, as neatly as she could manage as the spasm grew worse, and waited patiently.  It wouldn’t take too long. 

“Roots” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

Juan was a young boy when he first saw the bird.  Not the most observant age, but certainly the most restless, and it was those restless, fidgeting, bored eyes of his that corkscrewed their way across the sky that day on his father’s rusty fishing boat and saw the big, white wings holding still and flat in the sea breeze, feathers ruffling gently. 
“What is that?” he’d asked his father.  The old man – well, looking back on it, not so old, but then he was his father, so of course he was an old man – glanced up from the jury-work and profanity he was repairing the creaky motor with. 
“Albatross,” he grunted, turning his attention back just in time to stop a spring from snapping shut on his thumb. 
“Yes, but father –”
“You’ve seen them before, boy.”  Unfortunately, stopping the spring had entailed hastily wedging two other fingers into a very small space, whose precise contents Juan’s father was trying to recall.  
“But it’s –“
“Shit!  Juan, pass me the hammer and a rag.”  Apparently the compartment’s contents were both sharp and moving, very vigorously so. 
And so Juan passed his father his tool and makeshift bandage and talked no more about the bird for the rest of the day, though it weighed heavily enough on his mind that the old man had to whack him on the head a couple times to make sure he was paying attention while they started to let out their lines. 
He hadn’t mentioned the odd thing he’d noticed about the bird, as he saw it swoop over the boat, before his father looked up.  The odd thing was that its wingspan had been twice the length of their boat’s hull. 

Juan grew up strong, like his father had and his mother had.  Particularly his mother, who knew much more about engines than either her husband or son and never failed to berate them on the many occasions they replaced using a specific repair tool with a hammer, which was often. 
Unfortunately, as will occur in people his age, Juan’s brain grew a bit slower than his body, and so one morning after an argument with his father the night before over laziness (the old man thought he was stricken with it, Juan insisted that he was a slave driver) he snuck down to the dock and took out their boat alone.  He’d prove he wasn’t lazy.  An early-early-morning catch he’d find, and a big one.  That would show his father properly. 
The water looked good to Juan as he coaxed the boat into what he judged a proper place.  Plenty of fish in there, just waiting to bounce themselves onto the tip of his hooks, flying into the boat to prove the old man wrong. 
“You’re in my spot,” said a voice.
It was not a very nice voice; not cruel, heavily accented in some way Juan didn’t recognize, but possessed of that raspy, disinterested grumpiness that was most easily summed up as “grizzled.” 
“I don’t know you,” said Juan to the voice, and that was more puzzling still, as the one thing he knew better than the waters around home was the people.  And he was certain that even if by some miracle from above he didn’t know one of the other local fishermen, he would remember this one.  He was old, sun-burnt so deeply his skin was near to charred black, and more wrinkled and scarred than an elderly sea sponge.  His boat was wooden, battered, and as sun-scorched as her owner, with a tattered sail that couldn’t have let any more light through if it were glass.
“No,” the sun-cooked man said, “you wouldn’t.  Push off my spot.”
Juan’s mother had made very sure that he respected his elders, but there were limits.  And most of them freshly broken as of last night. 
“You aren’t from around here,” he said, “and that makes this my spot.  I’ve fished here before and I’ll fish here for years yet.  So why don’t you push off, you miserable old thief?”
The old man’s frown deepened, and then he burst into a deep chuckling guffaw that splish-splashed off the waves for miles.  The wrinkles and scars on his face jumped and jerked in ways that made Juan’s stomach roll
“Ha!  Good offer.  No fun though.  Want to hear a deal?”
Juan thought.  If Juan hadn’t argued with his father, hadn’t snuck out early, he would’ve been more clearheaded and not as hasty.  On the other hand, if Juan hadn’t argued with his father and snuck out early, his father would be here with him and his father would’ve turned the old man down.  Which was exactly why what Juan said next was: “What kind of deal?”
“A bet.  We fish with handlines, stop when one quits, winner is the biggest catch.  That simple enough, boy?”
Juan thought a bit more.  The old man was old, which meant he would be weaker and tire easier.  On the other hand, he was an old fisherman, so not so much in either case, and he must know quite a lot of the sea to sail that relic around without so much as a backup motor.  On the third hand, Juan knew the water.  But what decided it, again, was none of these things: it was because Juan’s father had spoken to him in just that tone of voice last night, that “boy.”
“Bet made,” said Juan. 
The old man’s grin went thin and bloodless.  “Deal struck,” he replied, and with one creaky swoop of his arm he produced an old driftwood rod, knobbly old bones unfolding in a perfect cast.  Juan’s own bobber hit the water what felt like long seconds afterward, and by the time it had the old man was already reeling in his line, hauling back with gritted teeth.  A fat flapping mackerel struggled through to the surface, which he seized, unhooked, and tossed back one-handed. 
Juan was shaken, but stubborn.  He fished with every trick he knew, and he reeled in his line heavy.  He fished as the old man pulled in catch after catch, first twice what he brought in, then thrice, then four times as much.  The driftwood pole and line didn’t place itself in wait for the fish, it seemed to land on top of them and seize them bodily, hauling them up by jaws that hadn’t even intended to seize the bait.  And each fish that he caught, the old man let fall back into the water. 
“Give?” asked the old man at noon, dragging an exhausted shark’s head half out of the water to eye critically.  The sun was high and hot, the waves growing boisterous. 
Juan looked at the shark – which was weightier than he and his father put together – and then at the coolers, filled snugly with fish.  Almost more than he’d hoped when he set out, but useless to him now.  Nothing he’d caught matched that shark, and he wouldn’t lose that bet. 
“No,” said Juan.  And he cast again.  The old man cackled and released the shark.  Juan thought it looked puzzled, as far as sharks could. 
The afternoon wore on, as did Juan’s sunburn.  The old man remained unaltered, although Juan thought that if he was capable of burning any farther it would only be into charcoal. 
Finally, just as Juan was about to give up, his rod nearly tore itself out of his hands, wrenching wildly in his grasp.  The water blasted itself apart as a (relatively small) swordfish launched itself into the air.  It brandished its beak at him, thrashed madly, and then was back in the water with force that nearly disjointed both his arms.
“Hah,” said the old man, and he put his rod down and picked up a small pack of rancid tobacco, which he began to carve at.  “Should be good.”
Juan mustered the breath to wheeze a profane sentence at him before the swordfish dived. 
On the many later occasions Juan looked back on the battle, whether that evening as his father shouted at him or years later with fond regret, he found himself equally unable to remember details.  Only a seemingly unending torrent of the same muscles in his body being jerked new ways every five seconds for what seemed like five years.  As to its actual length, he never knew, but for the sun dropping down to near-horizon by the time that swordfish made its final lunge, gasping its way up besides the hull.  Its eye stared into Juan’s, expressionless and wide, yet somehow capable of conveying loathing.  Then it jerked its head once, twice, three times and Juan’s line gave up the ghost in a quiet, cynical snap.  The fish dropped firmly out of sight and into mind. 
Juan collapsed back in his seat, realizing to his surprise that someone had replaced his lungs with burlap sacks.  His hands hurt, and he wasn’t quite willing to look at them yet. 
“Not bad,” said the old man.  “Give?”
Nodding took all the energy in the world.
“Not bad,” repeated the old man.  He spat a small stream of tobacco juice.  “Spot’s yours.  Good luck.”
He rowed very quickly, thought Juan.  That strange mist that had come out of nowhere swallowed him so fast.  He’d better lie here on the comfortable floor until it passed.  Good idea. 
White wings were overhead, but he was too tired to see them. 

Juan’s father was terrified when he went out looking with half the village that evening, standing in the forefront of the largest boat, his own father’s binoculars set to eyes, peering through cracked lenses for a darker blot on the horizon.  He never would’ve seen the boat if not for the swooping of the seabird over it, a great white thing that had him squinting and readjusting the ancient device to check its scale, only to miss it entirely.
As he found his son at last, adrift and asleep, it was only the sight of the snapped line and bruising on his arms and hands that brought him back to calmness, then more worry.  As it was, Juan spent a few days laid up in bed being yelled at by his father, calmly remonstrated by his mother, and hallucinating that an albatross was trying to shove him into an egg. 

Juan’s father forgave him, of course, after a time.  And Juan got on better with him, since after the bet and the swordfish ordinary work was a welcome relief.  And surprisingly easy to boot – in no more than a few years, Juan was the best fisherman in the village after his father.  And one more year after that, he was the best fisherman in the village.
All things must end, of course.  Juan moved out of the house soon after, found a new home, a small home, and bought a very small boat.  He knew where to fish though, and soon neither boat nor home was as small.  A time after that, a woman who was much too good to be with him walked in the door and the home felt small again, good small. 
But again, all things must end, and after some time ordinary work itself ended for Juan as he was trawling through an anchovy school.  He was just beginning to winch up the net when his boat’s hull shook, shuddered, and clanged, squealing against immovable matter.  Juan was halfway to grabbing a patch and two-thirds of the way through a curse when he remembered that the nearest thing shallow enough for him to ground on it was the village dock. 
It was at this moment that the boat was surrounded in a popping, swirling circuit of bubbles.  Scrambling to the side and gazing down, Juan saw a shadow as big as the world underneath him, so large that at first he mistook it for the bottom.  It was getting bigger. 
“You again,” said the voice. 
Juan was in two minds at seeing the old man again – who didn’t appear any different.  Seeing him was a surprise, yes, but his apparent ability to pop up alongside him without so much as an oar-splash was somehow unshocking. 
“You too,” said Juan.  “No more bets.  I already have a full net, and I don’t think my father will come to help this time if you leave me adrift again.”
“Fair,” said the old man.  He pointed one sun-bleached oar at Juan’s net.  “Look out.”
Juan spun around just in time to see a mouth the size of his house breach the water’s surface in the midst of the bubbles, closing neatly around both the panicked anchovy swarm trapped inside them and Juan’s net, missing Juan’s boat itself by a couple of inches.  His knife was in his hand before he knew it, slashing at the strands ever as the whale – god, what a whale, the sheer size of it, was it a blue? – began to sink again, the winch creaking and whining as it was stretched, the boat’s stern depressing down and down only to rocket up again as the last fibres parted, spilling Juan on his rear and the last fibres of his trawling net across the ocean.
“Hmm,” said the old man, carving a plug of chewing tobacco from his ancient wad.  “Want to hear a deal?”
Juan realized his knuckles were too white to be healthy as he stared at them, and unclenching them from the knife took a more serious effort than he would’ve assumed. 
“I guess so,” he said. 
“Same as before?” asked the old man, tucking the tobacco between cheek and gum, a tight fit if there ever was one. 
“Yes,” said Juan. 
“Good,” said the old man, and just like magic there was that rod out of nowhere, bobber in the water a hairs-breadth in front of Juan’s, already jumping as soon as it touched the water. 
“Do you know what that thing down there is?” asked Juan.  The old man was reeling in whatever it was he’d caught with that same eerie ease Juan was suddenly recalling from all those years ago. 
“Yes,” he said.  “Don’t mind it.  Won’t scare the fish away.”
It certainly wasn’t.  The bubbles continued to rise, and the fish churned upwards towards them both in a panic.  Amidst the shimmering silver streams of the little ones darker grey shadows bite and ate; there were more than just anchovies down there.  And if Juan needed more proof, the old man was laughing and wrestling with the rod as a full-sized tuna thrashed at the other end.  As Juan’s bobber took its first hit the old man wrestled it out of the water and held it close, eye-to-eye, before releasing it.
Juan was too busy after that to pay attention to the other boat, having time for about one spare thought every few minutes, most of which he devoted to quickly massaging his limbs, looking for the next spot, or silently, eternally thanking his long-held-by-now obsession with ensuring he kept extremely strong line on hand at all times.  And good strong gloves, which were getting awfully thin in the palms as his cooler filled up with more and more fish.  Just the good ones, the strong, healthy thrashers, the fighters, the tough men of the sea who were surprised and shocked as he deftly circumvented their best tricks and ran rings around them right up to his waiting hands. 
Juan did things he’d never thought possible, at least deliberately.  He tricked a small shortfin mako into breaching directly into the boat.  He caught a small fish, which was swallowed by a tuna, which a shark consumed, then hooked the lot.  He hooked a tuna by its tail.  All in the space of an hour, surrounded by more of their kind. 
The contest was ended by neither Juan nor the old man, but the whale surfacing to breathe.  The bubbles ceased as it rose for air, and whatever fish that remained as the rest fled followed in the thunderous discharge of its blowholes, spout jutting dozens of feet from twin openings as big as manholes.   The wave of its flukes washed the air as it dove, sending waves at both boats that nearly tipped them.
The old man glared at the vast, dark shape beneath them, almost identical to the ocean floor.  “Bastard.”  He met Juan’s questioning gaze.  “It’s over.  Best was three tuna on one hook.  Yours?”
“Something close.  Shark, tuna, something small that the tuna ate too fast to see.”
The old man nodded, frowning.  “Hmm.  Draw?”
Juan returned the nod.  “Yes.”
“Good.  Say hello to the wife.  Goodbye.”
Juan didn’t bother trying to keep up with his rowing.  He suspected it wouldn’t do any good. 

Juan’s wife had a great deal of difficulty understanding why he stayed out there so long, with no warning.  But she couldn’t argue with the catch, and accepted his explanation, which consisted entirely of the truth.  He’d told her the story of his youth years ago, so she couldn’t say she didn’t know he was crazy.  She nodded, clucked her tongue at the rudeness of the old man up and leaving like that, then told him she was pregnant.  Juan didn’t think about the old man then for quite some time. 

Juan fished, and Juan’s daughter grew up.  He took her out there many, many times, and she took to it well, something her mother approved of even if she didn’t claim to understand, and they never ran hungry or scant of money.  Juan could practically hear the fish now, feel them swimming through the hull of his boat, something that he explained carefully to the girl that he was never sure if she quite understood.  They pulled nets and hauled lines together, father and daughter, some of the time watched from below by a strange-large shadow Juan thought he recalled, and in the evening mother and daughter would berate Juan over his amazing inability to cook. 
“She has the best of both of us,” Juan’s wife told him, and he could only agree.  And years later, when Juan’s daughter got married and left town, she had the best of someone else too. 
Fishing trips were lonelier then, and with both smaller reason to stay out and fewer mouths to feed Juan took less.  He felt a tired and elderly spider of fantastic size, sitting quietly above a gathering of prey with a single strand of web that moved as one with his thoughts, darting among the small and slow to find the large and strong.  One bait, one cast, one catch.  Economy over excess. 

Juan’s wife’s funeral was nothing extravagant. The family was there, grandchildren and her brothers and sisters and their children and grandchildren.  Juan’s wife had been loved quite fully, and by more than he.  He thanked them all, gave them food to take home (fish – which he assured them they could prepare much more deftly than he), and stayed up late that night finishing his will and a few notes, which he addressed and mailed in the early morning on his way down to the docks. 
The boat’s motor was modern, smooth and quiet and strong.  Juan was proud of it, and proud that he hadn’t once had to take a hammer to its insides.  His mother would’ve risen from the grave solely to yell at him.  It took him a long way out before he shut it off, far, far offshore, land away, just him and the sea.  And the old man, who he felt arriving before he heard his voice. 
“Hello,” he said.  “You’re in my spot.”
The old man showed as much surprise as he did increased wear, but his face looked a bit softer than usual.  “Same to you.”
Juan watched the sky, searching for a hint of white wings.  “My wife is dead.”
“Sorry.”
He looked to the sea, for quiet bulk and hints of bubbles.  “My daughter is alive and happy.”
“Good for her.”
Juan stretched; his arms got stiff nowadays if he didn’t take care to keep moving.  “I believe I have a bet to make.”
“Good.”
“An old one, with one slight modifications.”
The old man said nothing. 
“Handlines.  Stop where one quits.  Smallest catch.”
The old man laughed.  “Very good!”  He leaned over the side of his boat.  “Hear that?!” he shouted to the sea at large.  “Very good!”
“One question, before we begin.”
“Yes?”
“Are they both here?”
The old man wrinkled his brow – even farther, if possible – and then held up three fingers.  “One below,” he clarified. 
“Then I will have to meet her,” said Juan.

The rods were raised, the hooks flew, the bobbers splashed.  Juan’s slightly ahead. 
He let the line run, feeling it fall, guided by something more than gravity and the currents, slipping down away from the budding morninglight into the places where there never was any.  Eddies murmured at it, fish watched and swam by, mouths clamped tightly shut. 
Down fell the hook, softly, slowly, in the cold abyss, so far down that each twitch Juan made in the boat took nearly twenty minutes to tip-toe down to it.  Luckily, he was making them ahead of time.  He wouldn’t keep her waiting. 
Strangeness flowed up from below, on the tinsel-thread of the fishing line, which was far too short to reach the hook now. 
There she was.  A grandness, an otherness, a quiet observer who never slept, seldom moved, always dreamed.   She was all tethers, all hooks and lines, arms stretching for miles farther than they really did. 
As politely as possible, the hook moved to the vents she rested about and around.  She made no objection, content to watch with the largest eyes ever created as it drifted towards the black-gushing water, hotter than hell, warmer than heaven. 
The hook stopped moving an inch from water at a temperature that would boil it into nothing in a second, jerked upwards less than a micrometer, and then respectfully withdrew, prize secured.  The squid watched patiently as he left. 
Juan grew tired as the hook rose, but it mattered little.  He would have time to rest.  Inch by inch, reel by reel, the line returned to him, impossibly long, impeccably careful, precious cargo undisturbed. 
The hook slipped into his hand.  “I am ready,” he announced. 
The old man shrugged.  Juan realized he’d finished fishing long ago, and their boats stood side by side.  “A single plankton particle,” he announced, indicating a tiny speck on the tip of his hook.  “Crab larvae.  Don’t know which kind.”
Juan nodded, and held up his own.  “Microbe, likes hot temperatures.  Just in the cradle of the hook.”
The old man leaned over and examined it closely, turning it this way and that.  “Hmm.”  He sat back, watching Juan curiously. 
Juan dropped the rod and reel into the water, feeling a strange current take them and their cargo.  Somehow, he knew they would reach the bottom safely.  
Now the old man smiled, wide and warm.  “You win.”
“Thank you,” said Juan.  “I’m going to go swimming now.”
The old man shook his head.  “Not yet.  You were in my spot, now I’m in yours, and you’ve got to take it.  Here.”  He handed the driftwood rod to Juan.  A long, long series of small scratches adorned the handle, each carefully crossed out but the last.  Most were alphabets or symbols Juan didn’t recognize. 
“You’re the best now,” the old man said.  “They need the best.  A go-between.  Look out for them.”
Juan didn’t have to look for the wings now, or listen for the bubbles, or even feel the hair on his neck prickle at the eyes.  For the same reason that he’d never had to look for his arm. 
“All three?” he asked.
“More,” said the old man.  He took up the oars again, sitting taller in his seat than Juan remembered. 
“How many?”
The oars were moving, and already he was almost out of sight.  Still, his answer was clear enough to sound perfectly in Juan’s ear, combined with the careful swipe of one oar to beckon at all that surrounded their two tiny boats. 
“All of them.”

Juan thought about that, as the splash of oars faded away.  Strange things were filling his senses now, songs he’d never heard, sights never seen, thoughts carried on secret breezes and deep currents. 
There was something he needed to look at out there, a job he needed to do.  A thousand somethings, many lifetimes of jobs, of work.  He’d best get going. 
Juan turned on the motor.  Smooth, quiet, and strong.  His mother would’ve liked it. 
“Still not lazy, father,” he said. 
He didn’t need to say anything else for a long time. 

“Fishing Trip” Copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

Life is a funny thing, and it can happen in funny places.  The inside of dark, quiet caves hundreds of metres under the ground, giant planktonic masses off the coast of Antarctica, sterilized clinics, and sewer systems are all places where life frequently, constantly, doggedly makes itself known.  In this particular case, the seed of it began about seventy feet off the ground, alongside some six hundred thousand of its siblings.  As with most living things it was jaded enough by birth to accept this as normal, although it was aided by not having a brain or any central nervous system whatsoever available to express disbelief. 
The list of things that it knew was very short: it was dangling from something, there was something else (let’s call it a wind) that was very big and all-encompassing causing it to bounce wildly and shudder – more so today than any other it could remember – and… whoops, now it wasn’t dangling from anything at all and was free-falling through it, bouncing against something quite a lot like itself, and another, then another, and soon it had ricocheted off its siblings times innumerable as it spun like a top, little wings on either side of the package that was itself whirling. So it went, typical enough for a maple seed, only really becoming aware of its family just too late to say goodbye to them. 
What was atypical was the distance traveled.  The windstorm, the storm of the century the seed rode upon, was exactly strong enough to knock down full-grown trees, up to and including its parent, which it had departed less than ten minutes before it finally started to sway its way down past the point of no return.  Not a long time, for a tree, and its final relatively-brief moments were spent wishing a vague sort of goodwill to its descendants and relations, marred only by a very, very brief bit of worriment concerning beetles.  Sap isn’t the best conductor of thought, but roots reach surprisingly deep.  
Just not deep enough this time. 

Crash. 

The same wind that orphaned the seed and six hundred thousand of its siblings was gentle with it, relatively speaking.  Pieces of its wings went spinning away as it hurtled through the night, but the seed itself stayed snug, if damp, as the leaves down below it whistled and rumbled through the night, broken occasionally by the scream-and-thud of a creaky old trunk giving up the ghost.  A very puzzling experience for the seed to be sure, one that ended as the gale turned to a wind to a breeze, riding its way down from the dizzying heights as the sun started to plod its way upwards. 
Down it came, graceful as a one-winged eagle.  The seed touched down in a fine layer of leaf litter and checked its deepest plant instincts.  This took about a week.   After that, a single, hesitant, somewhat nervous and embarrassed tendril poked its way into the outside world, touched dirt, and liked what it found. 
It wanted more.  It got it, but cautiously, and therefore slowly.  And slow for a tree is slow.  That first quiet, secretive root sprouted and crept.  A crude semblance of a stem was erected and hastily be-leaved – and just before the last drops of energy and nutrition were milked out of the seedling’s original home.  No sooner was it out than something small, long, and tubular with far too many legs (by the seedling’s standards, any legs at all) tried to munch on it.  And no sooner had it taken four mouthfuls than something else with far fewer legs (but still too many) fell down out of the sky, plucked it up in a sharp, horny thing sticking out of its face, ate it, and flew away. 
The seedling wasn’t quite sure if it wanted to sprout anymore after that, but realized it would make no difference.  Stoicism is considered a strong point among trees, but fatalism is an acceptable second-best. 

Time passed at the usual rate, but as is also usual, perceptions argued differently.  Summer sauntered by at an easy pace for the deer, crept forwards for approximately one-sixth of the entirety of the shrews’ lifespans, and was here-and-there by the time the seedling was just getting the hang of this leaf thing.  Before it knew what was going on, half the chlorophyll had been blocked out of its hard-grown leaves and they’d turned into morbid reddish things that fell off and withered up right in front of it.  It was so horrified that it barely noticed the dropping temperature until it was buried under two and a half feet of snow.  The less said about that the better.  Something small and furry rushed past it at blurring speed, tunnelling a hole to the surface that iced over, thawed, and caved in as the snow was reduced to puddles where the sapling half-drowned even as new leaves sprang up. 
That was definitely the worst year, the first one, when every single surprise was a nasty one that would lay low dozens of the seedling’s peers all around it as pointed examples.  And the second wasn’t much better, especially when a passing deer casually nibbled away half of it before strolling off to clear-cut its neighbour, munching to herself.  Or when the seedling played host to three caterpillars at one time, and came out of it with maybe three leaves left.  Or the unusually sharp and cold autumn that turned into a prolonged winter. 
So, maybe the second year was actually the worst one and the first was just the most shocking.  But in any case, it was a grimly determined little seedling that shook off the meltwater and dug its roots in deeper come springtime. 

At least there was plenty of room for the seedling; even as its roots spread and its height grew, its space grew no more cramped.  A creaky old ash tree had succumbed to the storm that brought it here, and it had left a nice clear space in the canopy that the seedling and something like ten compatriots of similar size inhabited.  As of yet, none of them had come close enough to do anything more than eye each other distrustfully and boldly rustle their leaves.  It was a silent time, even for vegetation, and the seedling resigned itself to another competitive spring as it revved up its chlorophyll again. 
Excuse me, said a very small and excessively polite voice, but I don’t believe you’re using this particular patch of topsoil at the moment, are you?
The seedling nearly shed its freshly-budding leaves in surprise.  A very small and very colourful little plant was unfolding itself at its base. 
No, not at all, it replied, after quickly checking its roots, which the stranger didn’t appear to be intruding on.  What are you?  How did you get there?  What are you doing?
I think, said the very small plant, as it sprouted a little higher and brightened its little white decorations, that I am a daisy.  I believe a seed was dropped here somehow and I sprouted, much like you.  And I’m trying to grow just a bit higher so I can duck out of your shadow here and get a little more sunlight.  You’re awfully shady. 
How are you doing that? Asked the seedling.
Doing what? Replied the daisy, sprouting further and further. 
Growing so fast.  You’re already almost as tall as I am.  The seedling was very poor at hiding its annoyance, it had been quite proud that it’d managed to grow at all last year, and now some uppity little white-and-yellow thing had popped up and done two year’s work in the span of a single springtime. 
I’m not sure.  Maybe my sibling knows. 
The tree politely tried to figure out which of the several hundred nearby daisies it had only just realized were surrounding it had been indicated, which took just long enough to be uncomfortable.  Then become more uncomfortable as the numbers sank in. 
So, how are you growing so fast? The seedling inquired of what it hoped was the correct daisy, as the first heat wave of the fresh summer came along. 
About done, really, it said, petals drooping in the warmth.  Spring’s the big season for that.  Now we just relax. 
A dreary, miserably damp weekend passed overhead, leaving the seedling gleaming with delicious moisture.  Why stop? It asked. 
No real point.  If it were a bit warmer around here maybe, but as it is, we’re just about finished. 
There was a pause in the conversation as the seedling watched four deer meander through the grove, clear-cutting two of its rivals on the clearing’s opposite side down to nothing in a single terrifyingly grisly afternoon. 
With what? It asked, trying to take its mind off what it’d just seen. 
Eh?
Finished with what?
Life.  Sprouted, bloomed, blossomed, pollinated, seeded.  What else is there to do?
Grow, said the seedling. 
For you, maybe, said the daisy’s sibling.  We don’t work that way.  At least, not around here.  It fell into drowsy silence then, and the seedling was left in confusion and embarrassment for the rest of July and all of August.  Then came September and the first real overnight frost with it.  No sooner had it melted off with the morning sun than the seedling saw the daisy, the daisy’s sibling, and all the others drooping mournfully. 
What is it?  The seedling asked.
Oh, just about that time, said the daisy, sleepiness clogging its voice.  Thank goodness.  Staying upright was getting to be quite the chore.
Time for what?
The daisy looked like it was about to say something, but then the second, much sharper frost hit.  And when the sun rose after that, none of the daisies looked like they were going to say anything. 
When spring came again, so did the daisies, and their polite voices.  But none of them were the same, and after a few halting attempts at conversation, the seedling gave up and consigned them to their own conversations and itself to trying to keep up with that one other maple across the clearing, which had already managed to overshade its smaller neighbour and was currently in the lead.  So the seedling brushed away thoughts of daisies, though it made the innermost layers of its phloem twitch, and tried to focus on the things that would still be around next year.  Thankfully, there were plenty of them.    

The hole that led to the precious, light-giving sky above began to shrink as the trees surrounding the clearing slowly caught on.  The seedling became a sapling, as did its competitors, who were now beginning to blot one another out in earnest.  It was lucky, and still had no immediate neighbours, no one to taunt or debate or trade or semi-amicably exchange threatening banter with.  Except for the daisies, which seemed to trouble it now and then. 
This did not go unnoticed by the middle-aged ash nearby, child of the ancient tree that had graciously collapsed to give birth to the sapling’s clearing. 
What’s wrong? it inquired one day.
Why do we grow? asked the sapling. 
If you don’t, you’ll drown in shade beneath your neighbours, said the ash. 
No, I mean, why do we grow and other things don’t?
The ash considered this.  Like what?
Daisies.  Deer.  Caterpillars.  They all grow up and stop, and then they die.  We just grow.  Why do they stop and die and we don’t?
They just don’t, said the ash.  You can’t fix it, you can’t help it.  Grow and be happy you don’t have to do it, and they’ll do the same. 

The sapling grew, made a game effort at being happy, and kept thinking about it.  Some of its thoughts centered on the other maple, which had eclipsed its closest three neighbours and was approximately the sapling’s own height despite having had to fight for its light.  They never spoke, but they watched each other constantly, two very large bears browsing opposite ends of the same berry patch.   
What it finally took for them to make contact was the summer, the hottest one yet in the sapling’s two decades or so of life.  The heat waves rolled over and on top of one another, building themselves into a blistering beachhead of oven-baked air and scorching surfaces.  Small things expired in open ground, bodies steaming as the water baked out of them.  The entire forest was parched and bleached, and the sapling (barely even still a sapling) had to delve deep and long for moisture, roots questing fervently.  Maybe it would have to stop growing, it thought, and lurking behind that were other, more unpleasant ideas connected with small polite colourful things and its own mortality.  Luckily enough it was just as those images were becoming uncomfortably clearer that its questing tendril dug into damp soil.  Unluckily enough, it also almost dug into the other maple’s taproot. 
Pardon me, it said, but I believe that I was here first. 
The not-quite-a-sapling thought about the daisies. 
Just for the drought, it said.  Just for the drought.  I’ll withdraw after that.  As it spoke, it wormed the root in deeper, surreptitiously securing anchorage.
Before it could so much as realize what was happening, its root was in an iron vice, sap slowly oozing out as it was cut off by pressure. 
I don’t think you will, said the other maple. 
What followed was very slow, quite awkward, and fuelled by the sort of slow-boiling inexplicable angry, paranoid fear that can’t be found in anything that doesn’t live for over a century.  At first the sapling liked to think it sought only defence, but as it sank more and more tendrils into the seething, wrestling mass that both their root systems were rapidly being diverted into, it admitted it was pushing the definition.  Nearly all of the precious water they found was put straight to work in their roots, surging forth new laterals, deepening their taproots, hunting and battling downward farther still.  The drought ended, but their feud did not, not during the discarding of their leaves, not during the first sharp frosts, not until the full strength of winter brought a forced cease-fire through cold so fierce that the sap froze in their minds and ice coated them like a caterpillar infestation. 
As the thaws came in that spring, the two involuntarily relaxed, roots feeling new life begin to flow again, leaves budding gingerly into the cool reception of the sun. 
Perhaps, said the sapling, it has been long enough. 
The other maple considered its competitors, who had quietly taken advantage of its distraction to gain some precious, desperately-needed height in late summer and early autumn. 
Agreed, it said. 
It was around then when they discovered that neither of them could extract their roots from the tangled ball they’d become, or even recall how in earth they’d even managed to do it in the first place.  That was an unpleasant spring, although it did introduce the sapling to the novel problem of having too much to talk about.  The other maple had an expansive vocabulary, and employed enough of it that the sapling almost wished it could go back to the less painful battle of wrestling for the groundwater. 

More and more generations of the daisies sprung up around the sapling – the tree’s – roots, but they grew fewer and sparser each spring, shrinking as the maple tree and its compatriots ate up the hole to the sky, branches poking up into the wide world of the canopy, where echoes of conversations held miles away were many and the mood was more amiable, the competition less ferocious. 
The canopy wasn’t the only place to speak.  The ash, withdrawn though it was, often had an amiable word, and the other maple spoke often now, even if much of it was pointed requests to relocate a root that was delving somewhere personal. 
The tree distracted itself in routine, and was surprised at how easily it was drawn in now that it had sufficient size to render most deer and insect predations moot.  Spring comes, bud leaves, grow roots, dig deep, breathe hard, fill all gaps with somnolent conversation over the canopy’s leaves, decay, sleep, repeat.  Beyond storms and several prolonged scratching session by an idle grizzly the routine was ironclad and immutable.  This was interrupted by the sudden arrival of small, colourful blossoms along its branches late one spring.  They reminded it of the daisies, except brighter.  Similar blooms sprouted along the branches of the other maple and its shrunken vassals, peeking out between the leaves. 
Wonderful, the other maple remarked.  A chance to do something other than sprout; and the tree had to agree with it.  By spring’s end the entire forest was a haze of pollination, and somewhere in the midst of summer the flowers dropped and hundreds of thousands of slender, winged seeds dangled from the grove’s inhabitants.  It was a disconcerting sensation, particularly whenever they started dreaming particularly loud and the sound made the tree’s xylem rattle.  Still, if it was uncomfortable, it was the kind of discomfort the tree welcomed. 
When they began to blow away in clumps during a mild midday breeze, the tree found itself uncomfortably barren of things to tell them, wherever they might land and start their struggle. 
Goodbye, it said.  It searched for more.  Don’t get in trouble.  I hope you’re lucky. 
The other maple chuckled.  The tree devoted a few days to growing an extra tendril and poked it in the taproot. 

Years were kinder at maturity, thought the tree.  The leaves came easier, and came down easier.  The pollen and seeding woke you up very nicely for a few months (it still couldn’t think of anything more profound to tell its seeds), and the hum and bustle of the canopy lulled it peacefully as it swayed its way through breeze and storm.  Nothing tried to eat it that it couldn’t ignore and outlive.  Even the other maple was friendlier, seeing as they were probably exchanging half the pollen each of them received each spring.  Altogether, things were quite ideal. 
The ash died one quiet autumn, to a bolt of lightning from a just-clearing sky after a mild storm.  Half of it was seared away instantly and it crumpled to the forest floor without fuss, dignity, or regrets.  The tree didn’t quite know what to make of that – and especially not of the daisies that it barely-saw sprouting from around the topped trunk – but it heard sorrowful whisperings across the canopy for months afterwards.  Bad luck, they said. 
Didn’t have long to go as it was, said the other maple.  It was starting to creak loud enough in those high winds to deafen an oak. 
That was just its way, said the tree.  It could’ve stood strong for another six decades. 
The other maple laughed again, the force of it sending the pair of withered little near-saplings that were its vassals shuddering, seeming to be supported as much by the thickets of brush that had sprung up around them as holding on their own.  Maybe you, definitely me, but that old thing? It said.  You are too much of an optimist.  Perhaps if you’d ended up on this side of the glade, you’d be more realistic. 
If I’d ended up on that side of the glade, said the tree, I’d be hiding underneath you desperate for sunlight and you’d have half your root system tangled up in my leftovers. 
This time, the near-saplings were almost toppled. 

Other trees fell, of course, though none as much in close proximity as the ash.  Over the seasons and the grand circles of the decades, they tipped over near and far, and though it seemed more the latter than the former, it was an odd thing when one day the tree noticed that it was the tallest of its kind for as far as its canopy could touch.  Except for the other maple. 
I am taller by a foot, it stated, smugness pervading the air about it nearly as headily as its pollen.  In the midst of its canopy, a family of squirrels bickered noisily and scattered to the four corners of the woods. 
Nonsense, said the tree.  It’s nothing but the angle of your leaf-growth.  Once autumn comes you’ll be the same as I, or even shorter. 
The other maple rustled indignantly.  The same?  Unlikely.  Shorter?  Impossible.  I may have had to fight for what is mine, but it was worth it.  What has held you back over there?  Sloth!
The tree rumbled a day-long laugh at that.  Silly things.  I can’t believe that this is what the ones around us did while we worked our way up to the canopy.  Speaking of silly things all day long, comparing branch length, life colour.  Isn’t having a place in the sunlight enough?
It’s never enough, the other maple stated. 
The youngest squirrel returned and built a nest in the other maple’s crown next spring, snapping off enough branches to bring their height neck and neck.  There was much arguing over whether or not this was considered fair.    

It was some time before the first and last blow was struck, but when it came, it was as quick as it was quiet.  The spring surge had only just begun to ripen when the tree saw the lithe little ropes wrapped tight around the other maple’s trunk and branches, weaving through the treetops with lazy, effortless speed. 
Hello? It inquired.  The other maple trembled, but made no response.  Its roots squirmed, wandering wildly from their usual placement. 
A very small sound on the edge of the tree’s hearing drew its attention: the laughter of the vassals down below.  For the first time in years it looked on them, and it could barely see them through the tangle of vines and creepers that ensnared them.  One was already rotting upright, the other half-sagging into the embrace of its woody cocoon. 
It was worth it, it cackled, in such a tiny voice that the tree was barely sure it was there.  Every moment of it.  It still is.  Had to talk to them for days to persuade them, had to promise them we’d let them use us, but now they’re there.  It’s all over.  For all three of us. 
By the time the tree managed to unstick the words from its mind, it was too late to ask any more. 
That summer was the longest one the tree had ever lived through.  The vines slipped through the other maple’s canopy like snakes into mouse burrows, delicately but firmly throttling it alive from the treetops down.  The most the tree could do for it was adjust the other maple’s roots as they struggled, guiding them to its own deposits of nutrients and down to groundwater.  Its own growth suffered, but it seemed to calm the other maple, though it still struggled, shaking its root network free of many of the ancient knots they’d tied themselves together with, blind fumbling doing what deliberate movement hadn’t so many years ago.  . 
As fall passed on and their leaves changed – not that the other maple had many left to change – the vines dried and shed their own, drawing themselves into dormancy, toughening but slumbering. 
The other maple had a little time to speak and act before the winter sleep came, and did so on a perfectly windless day. 
A pity, it said.  No anger, just irritation.  But that was near enough to six decades.  I suppose most don’t get as far.
It will be allright, said the tree. 
I should very well expect so, said the other maple.  This would be easier if you hadn’t tried to stop me from pulling loose, you know, but I expect I can still aim properly.  Still, if you fall over too, it’s your own silly fault.
Pardon? said the tree.  The other maple was tipping back and forth, swaying of its own accord, aiming, judging distances.
Goodbye, it said.  Don’t get in trouble.  I hope you’re lucky. 

By spring, all four of them were a formless mass.  The vines and the vassal near-saplings were half-rotted underneath the other maple’s trunk, but the other maple itself was largely pristine in the warming sun.    
The maple decided that it would’ve liked that. 

The summer of the vines had been long and painful, but the years after it seemed to vanish as quickly as the maple could comprehend them, as if in a hurry to distance it. 
The maple was alone, and stranger yet, alone in a crowd of trees that were suddenly and strangely younger and smaller than it.  Where had all the old growth gone, the towering green spires that rose alongside it? 
Where are you? it asked the canopy.  Which, it was alarmed to notice, lay beneath its crown.  Puzzled, polite rustlings were its only reply. 
Exactly one decade from the summer of the vines, the maple’s seeds were near-ripe.  It hadn’t felt right releasing them since the other maple fell; there was no one to laugh at it. 
The maple looked out over the forest, at all that life-given shadow, and it felt the slight breeze brush against its creaking trunk. 
No, not yet, it said.  And so it wasn’t. 
Holding in seeds that were demanding to be released was difficult, but the maple was determined, firm in that it was not yet, and such an attitude often trumps reasonableness.  Three months wandered by, three aching, swollen months as ironwood-strength stubbornness crept through its sap and performed heroic tasks in its phloem, all based on guesses and stubbornness to shut in its seeds and stall their launching.  Not yet.
It was September when the wind changed, when the storm came roiling down from the north, a blustering, howling gale that came roaring in through the forest, scattering deer and making wolves howl. 
The storm of the century was very nearly late, but it was still on the cusp of punctuality as it came back to greet the maple for the second time, on behalf of its illustrious predecessor. 
The maple had run out of thoughts and words both, it decided as the seeds spilled out eagerly, overdue, cramped, and impatient, vanishing into the teeth of the wind to sprout and grow.  But then again, it still had the core of hope that had hidden at the bottom of its message all those years.
Find somewhere not like this, and keep it like that.  Don’t steal the sun.  Please be kind to each other.  Two hundred years isn’t long enough to justify cruelty. 
And don’t be afraid to argue over silly things.

The thought struck it on the way down, inexplicably, was that it had never had trouble with beetles.  That was good, for some reason.  Maybe it all hadn’t been so bad. 

“A New Leaf and Old Growth,” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a knight named Phillip.  Sir Phillip, of course.  He was brave, strong, among the best of the king’s guard, and handsome enough that the queen paid more attention to him than was strictly necessary, which was why when that strange old seer came bursting in the door at midnight screaming of the prophecy that foretold the doom of the kingdom, the strange and twisted thing that would come rumbling down from the north to set it ablaze, the king turned to him immediately.  Before Sir Phillip could so much as say farewell he was given a company of followers and a smiling farewell with many gritted teeth, then booted out the door on his…
Wait….  I’m sorry.  Wrong character.  I’d forgotten how this one starts.  It’s all clear now; my apologies. 

Anyways, so Lieutenant Commander Phillip, the best the United Earth’s navy had to offer, was shipped out in command of the Marie, a light cruiser with a twenty-man crew, before the heat exhaust on that strange half-garbled distress beacon had even grown cold.  Phillip’s mission was non-specific, being basically “head to the colony that was screaming for help and see what ate them” only with much fancier wording, but for such a vague goal he was firmly prepared as best as could be.  His crew were loyal, tough, and well-trained.  His weaponry was very impressive and he treated it as life-saving, hazardous tools to be respected rather than genital enhancement. 
Unfortunately, his ship was a bit finicky from its recent overhaul, and a rather important part of the engine coughed politely and exploded just as they were performing the manoeuvres to settle nicely into orbit above the colony.  After an emergency landing (and an emergency exit, since the ship was calmly blowing itself apart around him), the Lieutenant Commander and the scant armful or so of supplies he’d managed to drag out found themselves face to face with…
…Hmm.  That isn’t right either.  Ah yes, I recall it now. 

So then, there Captain Phillip was: broken and battered ship behind him and already sinking on the rocks of the reef, crew drowned, map to a supposed great secret lost, armed with nothing but a snapped cutlass and a waterlogged, useless pistol, and stuck in a staring competition with a very, very large and mildly surprised crocodile.  He was just starting to feel his eyes water when the crocodile forfeited the contest, because it becomes very hard not to blink when someone shoves a harpoon through the back of your skull. 
The harpoon belonged to an elderly man who belonged to a name that Phillip found completely unpronounceable because he was missing several well-placed piercings inside his mouth that let him do strange things with his tongue.  For his part, Phillip’s name was just about all he could manage in English, but he seemed happy just to see another human.  Rudimentary exchanges about sums of fingers and setting suns sketched in the dirt put him at being stuck on the island for something like seven years.  And he wasn’t alone, from what he could get across in their sand-scrawlings. 
See, it wasn’t that there were no people.  Just no humans. 
The Captain wasn’t about to buy that on the poorly illustrated say-so of a lonely, very possibly crazy man who’d been stuck on the same island for over half a decade eating unwary crocodiles and very interesting herbs.  Luckily, the islander was also a very firm believer in “seeing is believing,” which was why the next thing he did to prove his point was…
Damnit.  I was sure I had it that time.  Oh yeah – now I remember.

Right.  Phil had seen a lot of weird stuff in his years – as a PI, you tended to – but he figured the thing that the mute old homeless man handed him then was the strangest yet.  Now, he’d raised a few dogs, shot a few dogs, booted a few alley cats (the nastier ones that spat and hissed and clawed at him), and he figured that pretty much completed his knowledge of animal anatomy.  But still, he was pretty sure that no creature he knew of on earth had teeth like the one that lay in the palm of his hand.  For one thing, it took the entire palm and part of its brother to hold it comfortably. 
It was at this point that Phil decided that his client was not paying him enough for this. 
Phil looked at the tooth, looked at the abandoned tenement in front of him, then glanced back over his shoulder at his totalled car.  What a lovely place to be stranded in.  Even the junkies had abandoned it.  He sighed, fruitlessly tried to unjam his pistol, then walked towards the askew doors behind the soft footfalls of the homeless man, patting his pocket for the reassuring prod of his switchblade as he did so. 
The lights weren’t working, of course.  And his flashlight barely was.  Still, it could’ve been worse; the structure itself was reasonably sound.  Just empty, creaky, filled with the faint and ever-present drip drop drip of water leaking from ruined pipes.  Phil could feel the sweat prickling on his skin, clinging to his neck’s rising hairs in a hapless plea for reassurance.  It dripped, crawled, skittered, and then it licked him and he realized it was in fact a cockroach clinging to the back of his head, which he missed, with great force. 
By the time Phil had picked himself up from that, the homeless man was nothing more than an invisible set of shuffling feet somewhere down the hall, one that he hurried after as thoughts of that tooth in his pocket danced merrily through his skull.  His eyes darted from wall to wall like indecisive houseflies, the floor loomed grossly under his feet, and every one of the thousand cracks in the ceiling promised to contain something unspeakable.  Phil was so distracted that he walked straight into the homeless man’s back, almost turning a surprised grunt into a yell while he was at it. 
The man shushed him silently, hand across Phil’s mouth, and pointed forwards about two inches past his toes, where the floor ceased to exist.  His free hand bumped Phil’s light gently towards the hole, offering vision. 
Cautiously, inchingly, Phil crept forwards.  He peered down into that dank pit, that yawning, strangely moist void beneath him, as the warm air tumbled by his face, looked by the feeble glow of the flashlight, and saw something that was physically incapable of looking back at him, yet somehow knew he was there.  It stood on two stocky stumps that might’ve once been legs, a mass of breathing sores in a tattered ruin that could’ve once been a shirt and jacket. 
Phil’s hand slipped to his tiny, insignificant switchbla…
No, no, NO.  That wasn’t it at all.  What happened was…hmm… wait, did I have it right in the first place? 

Well, as Sir Phillip looked down that blackened canyon and drew his sword, the lurking reptile at the bottom raised that lidless skull of its – you couldn’t call it a head – and gave a creaking, croaking cry that made the distant birds grow silent. Bile flowed from its throat and spilled onto the rocks, burning where it touched, and the slushy, haggard beat of its heart made the knight’s skin crawl.  At his side, the silent lantern maiden stepped back, even her calmness rebuked by its presence.  He really wished his horse hadn’t thrown a shoe.  And that his followers hadn’t been killed by brigands.  And that the king hadn’t been quite so stingy and selfish about his wife’s affections. 
The dragon lurched to its paws, tail dripping over softening stone, and began to stumble drunkenly towards Sir Phillip.  He raised his…..argh, damnit!

Lieutenant Commander Phillip raised his broken, beaten rifle to chest-height, cradling it against the bulky and dented chestplate of his environmental suit.  At its tip, the tungsten bayonet hovered, barely giving so much as a twitch as his nerves locked down in a harmonious blend of discipline and heart-wriggling fear. 
The emaciated, coral-bodied thing at his side crept backwards, buzzing warnings to escape, to leave well enough alone.  He ignored it.  Deranged or not, an overgrown, mentally handicapped offspring of it or not, the shale-sided monster in front of him had killed and consumed an entire colony.  Maybe it had been because it was provoked, maybe it hadn’t, but it was definitely not something he could leave lying around. 
Besides, there was no way in hell that he was going to try and hole up in the colony’s ruins and wait for rescue with that thing still walking around out here. 
The alien loomed overhead, five tons of surly, ambient cliffside on a spider’s legs with a wasp’s instinct for mindless anger, and then….all wrong!

And then Captain Phillip darted backwards as the not-quite-an-ape came crashing down, hot breath wheezing in his face, angry eyes burning a trail through his heart, hands big enough to crush his limbs like stalks of wheat groping where he’d just stood.  He came back in fast and cursing, half-cutlass striking, being seized and oh damnit the thing was right in his face, meaty grips encasing his sides and preparing to crush ribs.  The man with the incredible piercings swore something impossible for any other man to say and spun to the beast’s other side, harpoon darting out like a serpent oh not at all!

Phillip watched as the homeless man’s crude shank buried itself in the shuffling, stumbling thing’s side, heard the dull scream that sounded all-too-human, felt the floor shudder under its weight as it fell to its knees, arm’s flailing, and sent him careening off into its depths.  Too slow to be real, too fast to stop, even as his own arms continued on their inevitable course.  Not inevitable, not at all, ARGH!

So the lantern maiden fell as the bile seared her face, without a sound, as Sir Phillip’s blade – no!
Lieutenant Commander Phillip’s bayonet – not at all!
Captain Phillip’s snapped cutlass – definitely not!
Phillip Macguire, freelance PI’s switchblade – of course not!
Damnit, what WAS it?  This is the important bit too.  Was it Sheriff Phillip?  Private Phil?  Maybe it was a murder mystery, was that it?  No, no, no….oh. 
Oh dear.
Erm, ah, my mistake.  Obvious in hindsight, just rather, uh, embarrassingly so.  Right then. 

So, Captain Phoebe Macquire’s combat knife reached down through the gigantic, rubbery mantle and deep into the braincase of the squid.  It spasmed and thrashed in midwater, beak gnashing and biting in a cloud of its own leaking vital fluids and ink, but she had other things on her mind as she rushed to the side of the old pearl-diver, bobbing limply in the red-and-black current. 
She checked his pulse as she pumped them both towards the surface of the Pacific, lungs starting to burn in a fiery deep red ache as the aqualung dribbled away its final dregs of air.  There was something there, but whether or not it was his stubborn refusal to die or her own reluctance to accept that the thing had managed to send one more person to join the rest of her submersible’s crew at the bottom of the sea she wasn’t quite sure yet.  The sunlight grew brighter as the slime and blood streamed down and away from her, a small streak still delicately trickling from the blade of her knife. 
The beach was very warm under her feet as she staggered onto it, wrenching the scuba gear from her back.  The old man was deposited somewhat more gently, and this time her anxious finger felt something move that was definitely more than just hope as it lay against his neck. 
As Phoebe began CPR, she stared out past the old man’s body and over the waves of the South Pacific.  They were once again serenely blue. 

…Wait, come to think of it, was that supposed to be the Pacific or the Atlantic?  Oh, damnit. 

“Or Was It?” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010. 

It was a fine, ripe, mellow sunset that slid down past the horizon that summer eve, bloated and content in the knowledge that all had enjoyed its ruddy sheen and would be eager to attend its next showing the following morning. 
There, were, however, those who were glad to see it go.  It meant they could finally go get some clean, simple, dishonest work done, and the burglar was one of them.  He was so filled with impatience he half-thought he’d burst into a sopping puddle of it.  All his plans had been made, the ground scouted and prepared, the estate mapped, the guard routes memorized, the night when the homeowner would be out on extremely discrete business awaited with eager anticipation.  In fact, the burglar had prepared so carefully and so well that he’d been ready for the past eight hours with nothing to do and his brain was starting to bore its way out of his earhole in sheer mind-numbingly tense boredom. 
He’d brought a book with him to settle his nerves while he waited, a terrible potboiler that an idle housewife would’ve deemed not worth more than tinder.  It sat, prematurely dog-eared and page-marked without respite, on page one.  As the sun went down he let it slip from his hand and nimbly kicked it out of the window, where it nearly clipped a stray cat. 

The night was a fine, crisp one by city standards, with wholesome air that seemed to be worth a full meal per inhalation.  Given the particle density it’d acquired inside the city’s chimneys, slaughterhouses, tanneries, and other such places, it may even have been true, although the resultant meal wasn’t exactly one you’d tip your waiter for.  As he gingerly tossed his grappling hook over the high (and unguarded for another thirty seconds) east wall of the estate, the burglar decided the first thing he’d spend his money on would be a good dinner.  In a nice restaurant somewhere upscale, the best he could find, with a big steak and a particularly lovely dessert.  After this job, he could afford it. 
He swung himself over the wall on the line, huffing and puffing and cursing his inattention to fitness.  Well, if he had more of a work ethic, he supposed he might not be robbing a mansion at the moment.  Of course, he’d be doing some ghastly long-houred sort of labour and the mere thought of it gave him the creeping shivers.  No, this was a much better way to go about it, he decided as he gracelessly tumbled down the other side of the wall and nearly landed on the murderer. 
“Watch out!” snapped the murderer, slapping a hand across the burglar’s mouth and a knife to his throat.  He was skulking low and cautious against the wall, as inconspicuous as a six-foot-three man could be wearing his filthy, tattered, tawny suit and outstandingly bushy red beard.  “Keep it quiet, you lummox!  The guards’ll hear, and where’ll we be then?  Eh?  Eh?”
“Mmrrrph,” opined the burglar.
“Eh?  Speak up!  Don’t whisper!  Oh, yes.”  The murderer snatched his hand away and glared at it as though it had made an impolite gesture of its own will.  “Right.  Right!  What are you doing here, eh?”
The burglar looked at his soft, dark clothes and his soundless slippers and covered face and thin, strong rope, and then looked at the murderer.  There were no apparent signs of sarcasm on his face. 
“Thieving,” he said, using every ounce of will in his body to maintain a moderate, pleasant tone.
The murderer gawped, eyes popping slightly farther (if that were possible).  “You don’t say!  Hah!  Don’t that take the biscuit, eh?  What a luck, a lark!  Well, I’m here to murder him, so just stay out of my way and don’t try taking his watch or anything ‘till I’m through, we clear?”
“Perfectly,” said the burglar.  The knife didn’t seem very large, but the size of the fist it was clenched in might have tweaked his perspective on it. 
“Right!” said the murderer.  He got himself to his feet and brushed an imperceivable amount of dust off the arms of his tawny suit, which bore enough exquisitely-tailored scars for the burglar to suppose that he hadn’t made similar use of a rope and had simply heaved himself over the wall with fingernails and possibly teeth.  “Lord Hemmeley-Pewthrett On-The-Lake,” he said, extended the unknifed hand and seizing the burglar’s unresisting palm, which he then mangled crudely.  “Bloody good.  Bloody good, eh?!  Right then.  You take the east door and raise a ruckus, see if you can bait the bugger thataways, eh?  I’ll nip in through the servant’s entrance, see if I can be stealthy a mite.  See you at the bastard’s throat!”  He made a nasty hacking motion, then ran away chortling merrily. 

The burglar spent almost 20 seconds of his meticulously timed and planned route sitting there in the mud, mind working its way inch by inch through the shock and patiently reminding him that this opportunity wouldn’t last forever.  Besides, if the distant and strangled shriek he’d just heard was any indicator, the murderer had just barged in on the cook.  He hoped the man wasn’t far gone enough to resort to random killings just yet.  The burglar knew of his motives, of course.  The owner of the estate was a rich man, a man of high society, and riches at such heights were often most easily obtained out of the pockets of any peers you had to hand.  Hemmeley had been hard-hit, but even so he appeared to have taken it more passionately than most did. 
The east door was empty ahead of schedule, and the fading sound of a jogging guard told of Hemmeley’s unintentional if highly effective distraction.  The burglar slipped in as lightly as his rotund self allowed, squeezing his paunch uncomfortably against the doorframe. 

Inside, his task became easy, his pulse slowed again, his movements slipping into confidence and concentration out of confused anxiety.  There was little sign of the servants he’d expected to encounter, and his path was speeded greatly on its way, expensive knick-knacks sailing off shelves and into his pockets.  So greatly was he sped, in fact, that he nearly ran headfirst into the youngish and rather fetchingly dressed man waiting right outside of his lordship’s bedchamber, skidding to an arms-windmilling, desperately-balancing stop no less than an inch behind the man’s sculpted buttocks where he peered through the keyhole.  He showed no sign of awareness, peeping cautiously through the keyhole, one hand nervously fiddling with his collar and an unbecoming sheen of sweat gracing his face. 
The burglar pulled out his leather cosh cautiously, then sneezed.  The man spun about in horror, finely-combed moustache twitching hysterically. 
“What?  What what what oh my goodness, thank goodness, it’s a mere thug.”  He slumped in relief.  “Thank goodness, I thought you were Lord Dracey.”
“Yes?” inquired the burglar cautiously.  He waggled the cosh threateningly, which he was dismayed to note was completely ignored.  Indeed, the young man was perking up quite rapidly.  “Yes indeed.  Oh, pilfer what you’d like indeed, I won’t say a word.  Fat old fool deserves what’s coming to him – no offence, you are most nimble for a man of your stature, I mean no slur against you sir brigand – and more, for indeed sir, his material treasures distract him from his greatest source of light in life!”
“Being?” inquired the burglar, fascinated in spite of himself. 
“Lady Dracey, sir!  A more precious jewel you could not find in all the lands, in India, Tibet, or China!  She is filled with goodness, too good for the likes of that fat dotard of a husband!  Twice her age, oh pilferous sir!  Pshaw!  Such a man knows not how to treat a woman of her fabulous wonderousness, and so I have taken it upon myself to woo her gently, to treat her as he shall not.  And I shall woo her most well.  I have, thieving sir” – and here he preened his moustache in a manner so smug that the burglar nearly fell over –“a certain degree of experience with these matters.”
“So it seems.  Why then the key-hole peeping?”
The adulterer looked embarrassed for the first time.  “Ah, well, you see… the lady, I confess, is not within the bedchambers for the moment, and it was her location I was attempting to discern.  It appears she may not have received my note, which I did not wish her dullard of a husband to receive.  I was very discrete with it.  Possibly too much so – I handed it to her chamber maid’s uncle’s sister-in-law, with instructions to pass it on.”
“Ah.”
The adulterer shifted from one foot to the other.  “So as not to be indiscrete, you see.”
“Ah.”
“Yes.  Well, as I said, it is possible I was too discrete.”
“It very well may have been so.”
“Indeed.”  He cleared his throat.  “Tell me sir…know you where the lady might reside?”
The burglar thought.  “I haven’t the faintest idea, truth me told.  She putters around the estate quite a bit.  You might try for the flower beds.  West side of the house, to your right.  Can’t miss them.”
“I thank you greatly, kind sir of quick fingers.  Away I shall be, and trouble you no more!”  With a bow and a tip of his hat he was away and scampering down the hall, keyhole left gaping and forlorn.

The burglar stood there a while, thinking quietly but not without internal turmoil.  At last he cautiously poked his head into the room, glanced about, then looted freely and with little care weighing down his heart.  The jewellery box in particular was a fine haul, and surprisingly easy to open, thanks to a specialized little tool he’d brought along. 
As he turned to leave, a hulking presence barged in the door, breath reeking of whiskey and fire, soot-covered and with a knife in each hand. 
“Hello!” exclaimed the murderer cheerily, teeth surprisingly yellow against his dark red (and black now) beard.  “These chaps” (and here he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the burly, glowering chef and two under-chefs behind him, nearly taking off his ear in the process) “have a bit of a beef with the bloody little pillock themselves, eh?  So I’ve brought ‘em along and we can all have a lovely piece of his hide each.”
“I get th’ scalp,” said the head chef, testing the edge of his abnormally large cleaver with unsavoury anticipation.  The two underchefs nodded and hefted their meat tenderizers with appropriate menacing grunts, muscles squirming like meerkats in a sack. 
“My,” said the burglar, with even more care than was usual.
“Cheap bastard,” the chef elaborated.  “Under-pays, an’ too rarely.  Slice ‘is head off, I reckon, grab our wages from the safe and scarper.  ‘E here?”
“No,” said the burglar.  A small plan was forming behind his eyeballs.  “But try the west garden.  If he isn’t there, a man is who’d be happy to join you.”
“You heard the rascal!” boomed the murderer, waving his weapons most alarmingly (one was still bloody, noted the burglar – hopefully from a pot-roast rather than a guard).  “Let’s move out!”
The burglar waited some seconds for the sound of the stampede to fade, which he spent slowly letting his grin grow wider and wider before erasing it with a serious effort.  Then the bedchamber was behind him and he was off upstairs, humming a reckless little tune. 

Upstairs, he nearly tripped over Lady Darcey as she left the reading room, too distracted for her to hear even his creaking, clanking, overburdened footsteps. 
“Goodness,” she cried, eyelashes a-flutter, “are you here to ravish me?”
“Never, lady,” he replied. 
“Oh pooh,” she grumped.  “I need someone to do it, because my husband surely won’t.  That impotent old toad – I knew I shouldn’t have married for money.”  She moved into the burglar’s personal space and sighed extremely gustily.  “And he keeps such a greedy eye on me that I’ll simply never get a chance to have some fun.”
“West gardens, follow the rummaging, talk to the big fellow with the red beard,” said the burglar, as quickly as he could.  “I believe they have a solution to end all your problems for good.”
“Oh, it’s to be a lynch mob then?” she inquired.  The Lady laughed.  “Goodness me, what a lark!  Thank you, mysterious man of my dreams.  Care for a little moment of celebration?”
“No thank you,” said the burglar, backing away from her grasp.  “Must move on!”  Her laughter trailed him, and he smiled where she couldn’t see it. 

By the time the burglar was through hurriedly pillaging the upper floor, the mob had re-assembled itself at the staircase below, and it now contained practically all the estate guards, who seemed to be something of the same mind as the chefs. 
“No trace,” said the murderer.
“Nary a sign, alas,” sighed the adulterer.
“’ide nor ‘air” hissed the cook between his teeth, as the underchefs rumbled their disapproval. 
“I’ve not seen him since this afternoon,” sighed the lady.  “Where on earth could he be?”
“There is a wine cellar, is there not?” inquired the burglar.  “Mayhap he’s been drinking.”
“But he has the key,” she complained.  “And he won’t tell me where he keeps it!”
The burglar fished an object from around his neck, where he’d stored it for safekeeping.  “This?”
The cook snatched it from his fist with the speed of a snapping adder.  “’at’s it,” he agreed.  “Where you find it?”
“Underneath his third-best hat,” said the burglar, which was an utter lie.  “Shall we?”
There was a general roar of approval and many a sharp object was brandished in the milling midst of the parade the burglar led down to the darkest and coolest corner of the cellars, where the great winery door stood foursquare and tall, fastened with a padlock that would make a sledgehammer blanch in stark existential terror.  The burglar fancied he could feel it glaring at him as it thumped neatly into his palm, flapping open.
“AT HIM, LADS!” he called, and charged beyond the darkened door, where he flattened himself to the wall and allowed the rest of the hooting, hollering bunch to stream past.  He then darted back outside, slapped the padlock on, allowed himself five seconds of maniacal laughter, then ran for it. 

Lord Darcey’s estate was the centre of a great scandal, to be sure.  For the whole staff to run riot with the aid of so many nefarious plotters of murder was one thing, but the wholesale pillaging of valuables was quite another.  Thankfully, the vast majority were insured, and Lord Darcey himself reaped a tidy profit, which, combined with the sale of the old manor (“Bad memories,” he claimed), led to his acquiring a tidy and sprawling new home in the country, one nearly beyond even his reputedly vast amassment of fortune, which showed no sign of shrinking. Even more thankfully, much of his property was seized by the police and returned to him from several fences after a flurry of anonymous tips. 
The murderous instigators were for the most part free to go under little more than stern warnings, but Lord Hemmeley-Pewthrett On-The-Lake and the dashing young Sir Albert Lawrence were examined more seriously, the former on grounds of mental health and the latter on the producing of an extremely passionate letter from Lady Darcey’s own chambermaid’s uncle’s sister-in-law, which Lord Darcey had fortunately discovered by sheer luck.  The Lady was placed under scandalous regard and they soon separated. 

The steak dinner had to be put off until after the legal business had been settled.  It would’ve ruined his appetite. 

“A Night on the Town” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010.

The cards were oak.  The four chairs were maple.  The table was from something that no one could remember, because it and all its relatives had been extinct for at least three hundred million years. 
As always, Spring shuffled and dealt the first hand, flipping each card out with happy carefreeness that never failed to send them spinning across the table and into laps.   The other three took it with varying degrees of grace: Summer smiled politely, Winter’s lips pursed, and Autumn…well, autumn glowered, but he did that at anything.  The sight of a chipmunk consuming an acorn under an apple tree on a sunny day would’ve merely deepened his scowl. 
“So!” said Spring brightly as she laid the deck down on the table.  “Who cuts?”
“It’s always Summer,” said Winter, clutching his robe around himself so the drafts clung to him like children.  “It was Summer last time and all the times before, and it will be Summer next time and all the times after.”
“But what about this time?” asked Spring, as Summer gently plucked the deck from her fingers. 
“That too,” Summer said as she cut the deck.  Warmth spread across the age-smoothed surface of the cards as her wooden hands touched them. 
“And might I add,” said Winter, “that it is customary to cut the deck before you deal.”
“Oh,” said Spring, crestfallen.  The flowers in her hair brightened a little in an attempt to cheer her up. 
“Leave off her,” snapped Summer, surreptitiously sliding a few extra cards off the deck and passing them around to even out the hands.  “Right then, game’s open.  I’ll ante in a warm afternoon.  Autumn?”
He sneezed sulphuously, spreading patches of mould across his end of the table like slimy spiderwebs and making the great wheezing root-filled gape in his chest yawn like a second mouth.  “I’ll raise you ten acres of rotting hardwoods,” he declared, and slapped the shoulder of the frozen man next to him.  “Winter, hurry up.”
Winter raised one stiff corpse’s eyebrow in distaste at the gnarled paw on his shoulder until it was removed nonchalantly.  “Six hours of light snow,” he said, testily.  “Spring, your turn.”
She jumped.  “Oh!  Already?  Ummm….. let me see.”  She chewed her lip as she examined the old, old, old playing cards clutched in her bright green fingers.  “Ummm…  Umm.. Um.  Uh, I’ll raise it,” she declared. 
There was a pause. 
“By what, dear?” asked Summer, as gently as possible. 
“Oh!  Umm, a blooming cherry tree!” she said. 
“Marvellous.  Right then, time to draw.”
Summer took two cards.  Autumn took none.  Winter took one.  Spring chewed a nail, hesitated, then replaced all five.
“Don’t do that dear, it’s a nasty habit,” said Summer.  “I’ll put in a sunny weekend; Autumn, your go.”
“A foggy fortnight,” he wheezed, then banged his twisted walking stick.  “Winter!  Hurry up you miserable old coot!”
“Be quiet,” said Winter.  “I’ll wager… a storm of sleet.  Spring, it’s your bet.”
“Ummmmmmmmmmmm….”  Spring looked at the small glowing flickers of something-or-other that had congealed in the center of the table.  They weren’t quite all not there, and were shaded various colours of imagination.  “Did you say a whole sleet storm?”
“Yes,” said Winter.
“Not just a shower?”
“No,” said Winter.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Winter, something in the hiss of the syllable trailing off into hints of unspeakable deeds. 
“Um.  I fold,” she said. 
Summer sighed.  “Spring, honey, let me look at your cards for a moment.”
“Here now!  That’s cheating!” snapped Winter.
“Stuff your miserable lungs,” said Summer, examining Spring’s reluctantly proffered cards with a critical eye.  “The girl’s still learning, and there’s no shame in getting a little help.  Dear, this is an excellent hand.  I’d keep a tight grip on this one.”
“She’s always learning – that’s the entire point of Spring.  You’re being absurd and unbalancing the game,” said Winter.
“Act your age.”
“Insufferable,” whined Autumn.
“Quiet!” said Winter and Summer.  He gurgled grumpily at them.
“Okay,” said Spring.  “I’ll put in… a rainy week.”
“A whole week!  See what happens when you indulge them?” said Winter.
“Shut up and show the cards,” said Autumn, dumping his hand unceremoniously on the table, where it sprawled like an infestation of toadstools.  “I’ve got three-of-a-kind tree stumps, and the lumberjack’s axe.”
“A pair of ewes and a pair of rams, shepherd-high,” said Summer, over Winter’s attempts at protest.
“Jack Frost and thirty-four snowflakes,” he said, putting as much bitter venom into his voice as he could.  It was surprisingly little – frozen vocal chords are even less expressive than they sound. 
“Um,” said Spring as she laid down her hand.  “Here’s my cards.  I’ve got a budding forest, a flowery meadow, green grass, a blooming rose, and a freshly-laid robin’s egg.  What is this called again, Summer?”
“A flush, dear,” said Summer.  “And the highest hand, too!  The pot’s yours – go on, take it.”
Spring hesitated for a moment under Winter’s baleful eye, then reached out and gently poked the nearest of the… things in the center of the tabletop.  They vanished into her hand with nary a whisper.
Summer accepted the cards and shuffled them with a businesslike manner.  “My turn to cut,” chuckled Autumn, moistly.  The cards nearly stuck to his palms as he separated them clumsily, turning over and over with gross slurping sounds.  He handed them back, and Summer wiped off each one she dealt without really noticing. 
“A midafternoon chill,” Autumn said, eyes spilling over his cards.  “Winter, you’re up.”
“A blustering blizzard,” said Winter, glaring at Summer.
“I fold,” said Spring quickly, shoving her cards away as if they’d grown red hot.  She felt the urge to chew her nails again. 
“Oh, but you don’t have to, dear,” Summer told her without making eye contact and in a slightly absent tone.  She was busy glaring back at Winter. 
“No.  Um.  I’m fine.  Go on.”
“Right,” said Summer in the nastiest voice she’d used all evening.  “A blazing heat wave.  Draw, and draw well, boys.”
The cards were picked up by the three players, in one case haphazardly and in the others with a great deal of deliberate menace and enough tension to crack a wineglass from forty paces.
“Eight thousand tons of rotting leaves,” croaked Autumn.  “Go on then, Frosty.”
“An advancing glaciation,” said Winter, poker faced as only a frozen body can be.
There was a long, significant pause, in which Spring nearly bit off a finger.  No one noticed (including her) because they were all watching Summer very carefully.
“A global spike in temperature, leading to the vanishing of the polar ice caps.  A rise in sea levels.  And.  General.  Humidity,” said Summer, each word delivered as if it were a brick being bashed into the back of someone’s skull.
The cards dropped. 
“A mother grizzly, a subadult, and three cubs,” said Autumn.
“Four glaciers,” said Winter.  The hoarfrost around his eyes had thickened to the point where his face was nearly full again.
Summer’s expression was wooden, as befitted her skin, but her face had turned a deep red that typically heralded one of the more colourful skin cancers.  “Four forest fires.”
There was an even longer and more significant pause as the bets were silently whisked back to their original owners, and it ended when both Summer and Winter stood up. 
“I think,” said Summer, “that we should take this outside.”
“I concur,” said Winter, icicles now dripping from his mouth. 
The door banged shut behind them, leaving Spring and Autumn alone.  Almost immediately afterward, there was a heavy thud.
“I do hope they won’t be too hard on each other,” said Spring, still nursing her wounded finger.  She winced at the sound of ripping cloth. 
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Autumn, leering absently as he examined the bottom of the deck.  He removed the card, then replaced it, then took it out and put it back in the centre of the stack with a satisfied grunt.
“I just hate it when they fight like this,” she explained.  A sudden crash and yell made the table quiver. 
“Eh?” said Autumn as he fished in first his chest cavity, then his boot for something murky and thankfully unidentifiable.  “Oh?  Yes, fighting.  Terrible thing.  Terrible.  Awful really.  Say, you deal a lot with, heh, blooming buds and such, right?”
“Yes.”
Autumn raised his voice over the increasingly noisy sounds coming from outside.  “Birds courting, bears shambling out of dens all ready to pair off, flowers screaming to each other “Fertilize me!  FERTILIZE ME!” right?”
“Oh of course,” said Spring.
“Are you sure?” asked Autumn, stuffing the glob-shaped object he’d extracted up his sleeve.
“Pardon?”  It had gone quiet beyond the room. 
“Oh, never mind.” 
The door swung open again and both Summer and Winter reentered.  Winter was breathing unusually heavily – that is, at all – and Summer was still unusually red.
“Right,” she said, sitting down heavily.  “Whose deal was it again?”
“Mine,” breathed Autumn, a messy grin on his face.  The cards slopped heavily through his hands for a scant collection of seconds before he tossed them to Winter, nearly decking him.  “Cut them up fast then, will you?”
Winter barely had the energy to give him more than a weary look as he crisply sliced the pile into two and rearranged it, the faint traces of sludge freezing in place.  “A perfect icicle,” he said.
“Back to trinkets again, are we?” taunted Autumn. 
“Shut up,” said Winter, without much force or care behind it.
“A sprouting seedling,” said Spring, examining her finger with care.  She’d wrapped a small leaf around it as a bandage, and was watching it bloom happily. 
“A cooling midday breeze,” said Summer, slowly stretching her shoulders and working out a kink in her neck. 
“The first snow of the year,” said Autumn. 
Summer nearly sprained her neck. 
“Well,” said Winter, whose eyebrow had raised an entire inch.  “I take it you preferred the big stakes then, eh?  Fine.  A night that drops fifty degrees Celsius below zero.”
Spring was rearranging her cards frantically, looking at one, then two, then the other three, then four of the lot, as if it would change them into something she could understand.  “Uh, one second, um.  Um.  Err… I’ll put in… one moment…”
“While we’re still young, girl!” shouted Autumn, then he guffawed. 
“Hush!” said Winter and Summer simultaneously.  He merely snickered.
“Right!” said Spring, spots of tulip-red anger appearing on her cheeks.  “A whole two months of rain!  And stop laughing at me!”
“A windless three weeks with no clouds in the sky,” said Summer.  “And yes, stop that for goodness’ sake, you sound like a crow choking on a toad.”
“Every ripened nut in all of the Americas,” said Autumn.  He threw his hand down.  “Three fat squirrels and a pair of sleepy skunks!  Top that!”
“That will be rather difficult,” said Summer, “As I’m sure you know, having marked all the cards with that raw rot of yours.”
A third pause, somehow contriving to be more awkward than the other two. 
“Ah?” said Autumn, part disbelief, part question. 
“The smell,” clarified Summer.  “Of course you can’t tell, or Winter, and Spring’s a good girl – just a bit distracted.  But some of us can use our noses just fine, thank you very much.”
“Ah,” said Autumn, shrinking a little in his seat.  Winter began to stand up again, rolling up the sleeves of his robe. 
“Please don’t,” said Spring.  “Please.”
“He cheated,” said Winter, icicles beginning to form on his knuckles as he flexed them. 
“He’s old and just wanted some nice weather, I’m sure,” begged Spring.  “I can lend him some afternoon showers and a few rainbows.  Please.”
Winter looked to Autumn, cowering in his high-backed maple chair, then over to Summer.  She shrugged, then nodded very slightly.
“All right,” he said.  “Fine.  For the sake of ending the game peacefully.”  He picked up the deck and gathered his quarter of the cards from it, stuffing them into one of his pockets.  “Same time next year?”
“Of course,” said Summer.  Her cards she slipped onto her arms, where they soaked into her skin, wood on wood. 
Spring made a second garland from hers, earth tones and bright flowers mixed in green hair.  Autumn stuffed his into his chest, clutched amidst the roots, then caught the little flickering mess of complicated things that Spring tossed to him.  He nearly dropped it in surprise. 
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” he said. 
“It’s all right,” she replied.  “I’ve got plenty, and you need them more than I do.”  She hugged him on the way out.  The slime took a bit of scrubbing, but the look on his face was worth it. 

They parted ways immediately after leaving the playing room, farewells and waves slung over shoulders like old sacks.  Where they each spent the rest of the year was quite different, and not at all nice for any of them to play visitors with each other. 
Still, there was always the next game to look forward to. 

“Four-Season Five-Draw,” Copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.