jamieproctor.ca

The weather on Sunday, March 21^st, was sunny, with a cool breeze, a chance of light showers overnight, and punctual.  All of which were things that Simon Beadley considered fine indeed, particularly the last.  Adjusting the timing was so difficult, particular for the clouds.  It never failed to blindside or annoy Simon that what was effectively a very large plume of water vapour was so difficult to point and place properly. 
Still, he could see them, and he could steer them.  It wasn’t easy, but if it were easy everybody would be doing it, and there would be a thousand thousand glistening and factory-fresh copies of the dented and complex contraption that sat across from his bed, where it was currently watching him engage in fierce battle against his sheets in an attempt to get up and make some coffee.  “What are you looking at?” snapped Simon, wresting clinging fabric away from his neck even as it latched onto his legs like an affectionate limpet.  The machine, sensibly, didn’t answer.  It never stooped to the point of open mockery; that privilege was reserved for Simon’s cat, which was a smug observer to his every moment of downfall.  He could practically feel the warm regard of its condescension upon his spine.  Simon dealt with this the only way he could: making coffee and deliberately ignoring it.  The first took time he no longer possessed, the latter self-control and acting skills he’d never had. 
Besides, he was out of milk. 

And so, with the lack of milk, the silent stares of his two companions, and the generally satisfactory state of the weather outside as his motivators, Simon Beadley decided that it was time for a walk.  Surely everything would be all right if he left for just a short time.  He got dressed, put on his less-faded pair of pants and his thick coat that could withstand anything up to and including showers of boiling oil or plagues of frogs, slung his noble and decayed rucksack upon his back, and set off down the ladder, all sixty-two feet of it, dangling from underneath the belly of what had once been a rather small water tower like a silken spider’s thread.  Simon reached the ground without incident, with a care born of nonchalant habit rather than worry or stress.  His knees may have creaked as a concession to his age, but only in the manner that sequoias did in a heavy breeze. 
Finding his way to town was a bit harder than he remembered.  The trail that led to the water tower had become a little overgrown, and what should’ve been a ten-minute stroll turned into a half-hour meander through thickets, but with no worse casualties than his patience and a few new spotty holes to adorn his pants at the malicious paws of some briars.  “Damnit,” said Simon, and some other words he liked to use at the cat when it was judging him.  It was possible they’d grow wild and mutated over the years, a far cry from whatever swearing stock they’d originated from, but he was attached to them quite firmly. 
Town itself was a surprise.  Some of the buildings had changed, and there was a new street with no stoplights that took him five minutes of indecisive wavering to build up the courage to dash across.  At least the store was how he remembered it, although the cashier was new. 
“Do you know Laurel?” he asked the girl at the register, as he awkwardly heaved his groceries onto the counter – while looking for the milk, he’d discovered that he’d run short of several other rather important things, like crackers. 
“Who?”
“She was here last time – has she gone away?  I’m not here often.  Very nice hair, very purple.  We talked about the weather, I believe.”
The girl’s expression was almost exactly too flat to be called blank.  “The weather?”  Her hair was brown, not purple. 
“Yes, she was very pleasant about it.  Said she liked my clouds.” Simon smiled.  “Quite nice of her, really, I didn’t think that was my best week – far from it, there were overcast afternoons and a few cloudbursts too many – but she said she liked it.  Shook things up or somesuch.  I can’t say I believe the same, but it cheered me up some, let me tell you.  Could you make some change of this five?  I prefer the coins.”
The expression did not change noticeably as the change was given, although part of the girl’s cheek twitched with alarming speed for a split second.  Simon was busy accepting his coins at the moment, and didn’t quite catch it. 
“Thank you.  You know, I’m quite proud of today’s sunshine – it took quite a bit to pull it off, what with it drizzling on and off and on and off all week.  You should go out after your shift and have a nice look; it’s going to be clear skies until this evening.  Then I’m going to have to let a little shower fall in.  I’d give you the excuse of “it’s good for the crops” and all but frankly I’m amazed they haven’t flooded out with all the water they’re getting.  It’s just too much to keep pushed away.”
An eyebrow raised.  “Is that so?”
Simon hadn’t heard sarcasm aloud since that awful dream three years ago where the cat could speak, and he was fairly sure that deadpan was a sort of Victorian kitchen implement.  Besides, he was talking about his favourite thing. 
“Yes indeed, I’m sorry to say.  I hope it won’t be too much bother, but I’ve been putting it off for a while.  With all the drizzle I know one more day of it must be frustrating, but better a bit of sunshine than none at all, eh?”
“Yeah, sure.”  It was to her great credit that she managed to keep her eyes from rolling until Simon was well on his way out the door, but somewhat less so was her unstifled laughter, which sounded like a firecracker trapped in a tin can being dropped down a steel staircase. 
For a moment Simon’s pace swayed and his face frowned, but then he shook his back like a dog, rucksack a-juddering, and it all washed away from him like rain down a waterspout.  Still, his walk quickened step by step, and by the time he’d crossed the new and alarming road again he was nearly running, although he wasn’t quite sure from what.  He came to the bottom of the staircase all out of breath, and he had to take a moment to pause and rest. 
“Just like the old days, which were the new days, which weren’t as good as the old old days,” he told the water tower, in between coughs.  “They listened to me then, remember?  Hundreds of them, maybe even thousands!  Lots, anyways.  Every morning, all of them.”  He paused to rub the sweat from his forehead, disparate strands of hair swept into their proper misplacement.  “And that was when I wasn’t even important.  Hah, now I do the real work and no-one cares – it’s ignorance, plain and simple!  Inexcusable and understandable on every level!”
The cat was happy to see him, or at least see his milk.  He put some in a dish for it, even though it never touched the stuff and he’d end up having to throw it out when it started to smell funny.  It was something they had to do.  In the meantime, there was coffee to be made, and once he held brew in hand, milk-laced, it was time to work at the machine. 
It began poorly, with him pulling the wrong lever.  It creaked and clanked inside in a deep and mournful tone, and in his wincing hurry to correct his error Simon’s elbow embedded itself in a tray of buttons, where it nearly stuck, giving him a nasty bruise and the machine a case of the fits, hiccoughing and galumphing inside so hard that it sounded like a rhinoceros that’d sprung a leak. 
“Damnit!” said Simon.  “Fludge it!  Helpernockel!  Shits and shams!”  It took him until well into the afternoon to get things fixed so that the machine’s big metal insides were in an agreeable state, and only then could he get down to the really nitty-gritty teensy-tiny details.  It was with a hard-worn and heavy heart that he turned the wheel and spun the ticker that would undo his careful, hour-long session of yesterday eve that had kept today so sunny, unleashing the dam of pent-up iresome rain that had spent the hours of clear skies rumbling ‘round the mountains and grumbling to itself. 
“Pity,” he said, looking out of the makeshift window he’d cut into the side of the water tower, a great slit that eeled its way around a third of its bulk.  The sunshine gleamed no less, but he could already tell what he’d sent its way.  “Such a pity.”  The cat leered at him, and he threw his sock at it.  

The remaining task of the afternoon, of course, was the report. 
Simon’s suit was worn and thin and his tie looked like it had been ravaged by vengeful locusts, but he could still stand straight and tall, and he stood straight as a ramrod in front of the machine, staring firmly into its flat, glassy eye. 
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  This is Simon Beadley, with an update for the rest of the week.  I hope you’ve enjoyed your sunshine, because that’s all we’re getting for a good time.  We’re going to have showers before breakfast, downpours by midmorning, and drizzle throughout the evening, with overcast skies and possibly some lightning overnight and continuing on through ‘till Wednesday.  If I can manage it, we should probably get clearer skies by the end of Friday, but I can’t promise anything.  Sorry.”
Simon went through the motions of double-checking the machine, then took off his suit, ate a can of cold beans, and went to bed, the vague stirrings of guilt wrapped around him like a second blanket.  He drifted into an uneasy, tossing, turning sleep, which melted into a series of confusing dreams.  The last was the clearest – he was back at the studio, in front of the bluescreen, presenting everything quite normally, except he was naked.  Strangely enough he didn’t mind this, and was trying to continue his forecast without being distracted by the shocked and startled expressions of everyone else in the room.  Some of them were making sharp hissing sounds and hand gestures, ordering him off the stage, gesturing to turn off the cameras, stop the broadcast, just like it’d been back when the old old days ended and the old days that were new days began, but for different reasons.  The cat laughed at him from its perch astride the camera.  One of the crewmen started to drag him bodily off the stage, and then someone dumped a bucket of water on his head.  He woke up sputtering with his eyes at the ceiling, where a broad but hitherto unnotable rust patch had given up the ghost and caved in, funnelling rainwater directly above his pillow. 
“That is that, and that is THAT!” declared Simon, as he heaved his bed out of the way and examined the sopping frame in disgust.  His sheets were ruined.  “I try to make a little concession,” he complained to the ceiling, “and this is how you repay me?  Just a little break, one little day of sunshine, and then I let you back in personally, and you treat me like this?  There are lines and you’ve just crossed all of them!”  He marched over to the machine and began yanking levers and twirling dials.  “And not a word out of you!” he snapped at the cat over his shoulder.  An inaudible snigger was its only reply. 
Readjusting the machine took all night and well past dawn, but Simon was too vexed to feel tired.  In the end, the only thing that stopped his toil was a button that refused to depress itself, stuck fast in its metal casing. 
“Oil, oil, oil” said Simon to himself, impatience seething within him.  “And I have none, and I’ve just been to town!  Damnit and spannit!”  He didn’t climb down the ladder so much as stomp, and although he got lost on his way to town again he was so irked that it didn’t much impede his way, despite the on-and-off showers that pelted him incessantly. 
“Just you wait,” he grumbled, as he stepped into the store.  He took some time to find the oil, and that calmed him down a little, enough that he only felt a slight twinge of an ill omen brush him by when he recognized the cashier of yesterday. 
“I thought you said you weren’t here often,” she commented as she scanned the oil canister. 
“It’s urgent,” said Simon.  “The weather, you see.”
“Oh,” she said.  “What about it?”  The total flashed up, and Simon began to hunt for his change. 
“The rain.  I told you I’d let it in and it simply took it too far – where’s that dollar?  I gave it what it wanted after asking it to hold off for one little day – aha, there you are! – and it came down like it owned the place.  Well, I won’t take that sort of thing.  No more rain!  Not forever, but none this week, and only a little the next if I forgive it, which I very well may not!  Yes, sunshine for the week, into the weekend, and damn the rain where it stands!”
The girl nodded absently, counting the change on the counter.  “Right.  You’re short twenty-two cents.”
Simon resumed his search for money, patting pockets, popping buttons, rummaging the inside of his coat like a small dog beset with large fleas, but all it revealed was nothing, acres and acres of nothing and lint.  He checked his pant’s pockets, and then at last, in desperation, the breast pocket of his shirt.  There was nothing. 
“I’m awfully sorry,” he said in a small voice, all the righteous resolve quite gone from him.  “I seem to be out of change.”
The cashier sighed.  There were several things that affected what she said next.  First, she wasn’t here to make a fuss over small coins, second, she’d already waited for at least two minutes for the greyed man in front of her to finish paying and the customers behind him were getting fidgety, and third, in a very tiny way that she probably wouldn’t have admitted to any of her friends, she felt sorry for him. 
“Let it go,” she said.  “You can pay back with that week of sunshine of yours, if it’s all right with you.”
Hope rose up through Simon’s face like an alarmed meerkat on sentry duty.  “Thank you – you have my word on it as a weatherman.  This mess will be over and done with by noon!  You hear that?” he said, turning to the (increasingly impatient) customers behind him.  “By noon!  Go home and get ready to get out the tanning lotion!”  He swept up the oil and left, his footsteps so light and fast that he seemed to hover through the doors. 
“What’s his problem?” she asked the next woman in line, who was buying some beer. 
She shrugged.  “Search me.  One day at the news station, the next out in the woods, that’s all I heard.  Nuts, but friendly nuts, and he can still take care of himself fine.”
“Where’s he get the money?”
“Not sure.  I heard he turns in beer bottles for some of it, but that’s all I know.  Maybe he panhandles now and then.” 

Simon wasn’t panhandling now, and he never did, although for some strange reason little donations of canned goods and such would appear at the base of his water tower now and then.  No, Simon was working, and working hard.  Oil aplenty was let flow, not just on the stuck button but all the various rusted points and parts of the machine, and there were many, many, many of them.  The levers were especially bad, and he had to break out his old and gnarled, club-like wrench to provide necessary leverage, which was rustier than the machine itself.  When Simon set the oil can down at last it sloshed hollowly, emptied to maybe a third of what it had held before, its contents spread thin and glistening across the machine’s hide and semi-exposed innards, which he decided were more properly outards. 
“In or out, they turn and spin and slide and push properly now, at least,” he told the cat, “so stop your smirking!”  As usual, it didn’t even dignify him with a response. 
After the oiling and wrenching came the work, which also contained wrenching, as the oil had made some of the parts difficult to get a good grip on.  Simon used his second-most-worn shirt as an oil rag.  The most-worn was part of his suit, which was its elder by some six years at least and had escaped its levels of decay only through his care to only don it for the report. 
It was at least eleven o’clock by his reckoning (and a very good reckoning it was) when he felt he was able to get a good, solid start on the work itself, with nothing to distract him.  Even the cat’s gleeful grimace simply rolled off the back of his coat as he spun and pressed and manoeuvred and wheedled the machine towards his plan, bit by bit, whir by whirl, adjusting forwards and backwards and (but just once) sideways, which was very tricky and required judicious use of his wrench. 
“Done!” he said at last, with warm triumph filling his face as he pressed the button.  “Done and done, and just before noon, as promised!  You hear that?” he said out the window at the drizzle, which he fancied already looked thinner.  “You’re done!  Go home!  Go away and don’t come back ‘till Sunday’s past again, you hear me?”  He chuckled and guffawed and broke into a long gleeful laugh, stamping his feet and shaking his arms in what was very nearly some sort of dance.  Already he could see the sunbeams in his mind, bright and happy.  His lunch beans tasted friendly and soft in his mouth as he ate with his back to the wall, and his ears told him what his eyes didn’t need to see: the drip and drop and silence of the fading-away rainclouds. 
The report was a special one, and he stood straighter than ever as he addressed the machine. 
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.  This is, as ever, Simon Beadley, with a very special forecast for you.  This week shall be bright and sunny, viewers, without so much as a speck or droplet to trouble your days.  I can promise, and I promise you this by everything above you and on my word as a weatherman: the skies will be sunny and clear!  That is all, and good day!” 
With those words he fell over backwards straight into bed, not even bothering to take off his suit first, so quickly did his pent-up exhaustion take him. 
There were dreams again, but gentle and queer rather than raw and aged.  He was in the studio, and he was waving his arms over the bluescreen again, like a magician, with the cat watching him quietly.  The weather followed his hands, clouds tracing from fingertips and sunshine blossoming from his palm.  Winds washed down his wrists and bled their way across a map that he could see clearer in his head than anyone could on a screen, twisting over and into each other like a puzzle-knot of steel, only stronger and nobler.  It was the old old days at their best, when they were the good old days, with all the hundreds that were maybe thousands watching him and listening to what their weather was going to be. 

 The next morning Simon woke up much refreshed, made some coffee, threw out the cat’s leftover milk, and smiled at the perfect day outside his window.  The only dampness left lay on the ground, gently melting away into the air.  It was a sight fit to make him whistle, if only he knew how.  He gamely gave it another try as he worked on the machine, still in his suit, sleeves carefully rolled up, with the usual disastrous results; something between spitting and humming with the appeal of neither.  It touched his mood not at all, and he was even more pleased to see that the machine had weathered its efforts overnight with no trouble at all.  “It must be the oil,” he told the cat knowingly.  “It wanted a tune-up.  I should’ve done this last year at least, poor thing.”  It merely smiled, but for once it seemed friendly rather than all-too-knowing.  In the spirit of friendship, he poured it another dish of milk. 
After his work was done – and in half the time it should’ve taken, the thing just seemed to spin by under his hands – Simon found himself bereft of tasks.  There was only one thing to be done for it, especially given the state of the machine.  “I am going for a walk,” he informed the cat.  “It’s simply too fine a day to sit on my rear and grow slobbish.”  The cat, of course, didn’t agree, but it didn’t seem to mind either, and watched Simon go down the ladder with tolerant bemusement. 
Off through the woods went Simon, on a trail that had already started to become more solid and true than it had on Sunday morning.  What water that was left was little and damp, and even the thistles and briars seemed less prone to touch and claw Simon.  By the time he reached the roadside he’d taken off his coat and was enjoying the light breeze as it tickled the tie of his suit, which seemed fairly surprised to be out in the fresh air.  And such freshness! thought Simon.  Filled with the calm and even vapours of rain-gone-by, thawed and warmed out into a smooth balm by steady sunshine.  It was enough to make you breath deep just standing there, the sort of diet you weaned Olympic swimmers on. 
“Hello!” he called to the people in cars as he waited to pass at the street without stoplights.  “Lovely weather, isn’t it?”  Some of them ignored him, some of them stared, but he didn’t mind.  “Beautiful to see some sun,” he said to passer-bys on the downtown sidewalk, out and about doing shopping.  When he came near the park and saw the children on the playground, he didn’t say anything, only laughed and laughed as he walked by.  Some of them laughed back. 
His walk took up almost the whole day, and his last stop on the way home was the store.  The brown-haired girl, he was told by the boy at the counter, worked morning shifts and was named Teresa.  “Let her know I’ve started paying you back,” said Simon.  “I expect she knows already!  Go on, go out and get some air!” he encouraged the store at large, which stared at him.  “I didn’t make this for you to stay indoors in!”  He left the store laughing again, and didn’t stop ‘till he was halfway home, leaving him winded after the climb but still quite happy. 
“A good day!” he told the cat as he worked on the machine.  “A very good day!  And all still ticking along smooth and careful, too!  You haven’t been keeping it fixed while I’m out, have you?” he joked.  The cat only smiled.  

“Good to see you, ladies and gentlemen,” he said to the machine.  “This is Simon Beadley and the forecast has not changed and shall not change.  Sunny and clear!  That is all, and good day!” 

Simon Beadley said that five more times, or at least something like it.  The week went on, the machine ran smooth, the clouds were at bay and his walks grew longer.  His suit saw more use that week than it had in all the rest of its life at once, parading with him through forests and parks and alongside roads and highways, blinking at dust and brushing aside dew, while his great and solid coat rested peacefully in the water tower.  On Wednesday he made the store his first stop on his walk and left early, so as to catch Teresa and make sure she knew he was paying her back. 
“Conner told me,” she informed him. 
“Just wanted to be sure,” he said.  “I’d hate for you to think I was trying to cheat my way out of the bill.”
“Sure.  Got it,” she said in a dulcet monotone.  He was pleased to note that she’d acquired something of a light tan. 
If his days were spent with the long blissful walks, his nights were spent with the old old days, dreams following dreams in endless and cosily enfolding loops.  The bluescreen that wasn’t for him, he and the suit together before the wear of the years, and the things that followed his touch, the wind chill factor, the humidity, the warm and cold fronts, the chance for fog or rain.  It was like singing a rainbow with his fingers.  And in the dreams and the mornings the cat seemed to care about him, even if it still refused the milk. 
Sunny and clear.  

Things changed a little over the weekend.  For one thing, the oiling finally started to run thin.  Luckily, Simon had the rest of the can available, and redid the job immediately after he spotted a dial pause in its spinning.  When it was over it the canister was dry as a buried bone, but once again the machine was smooth and happy.  He reminded himself to save up and buy more once he’d finished paying it off.  “Perhaps it’d be a bit much to purchase it the same way,” he admitted.  “I’d need months of nothing but sunshine for that, and that wouldn’t be good for the plants and things.  But surely I can save a little better and use it sparingly, just to keep the machine from sticking up badly, can’t I?”
For another, people started to recognize him.  The children on the playground began to wave at him, and he would wave back.  The averted gazes and downcast eyes transformed to nods and quick smiles at his greetings.  Even Teresa, whom he made sure to keep up-to-date on his promise, was a little more friendly. 
“Sunny and clear!” he told her on Saturday.
“For two more days,” she said, and he nodded as he went home to his cat and the machine.  He was careful to tune it up with painstaking exactness now that the oil was gone, before and after his walks.  A promise was a promise, and one that he’d repeated all week was a very large one by now.  

On Sunday, he saw the flickering flashes far off in the distance.  “Heat lightning,” he reassured people on the streets, pointing at the dark faraway blots on the horizon.  “A hundred miles off at least, and five times too far for us to even catch wind of the thunder.  Don’t worry – sunny and clear!”  They shrugged, smiled a little, and went on.  “Just showboating,” he told Conner at the store.  “It’s all a big nothing.  Tell Teresa there’s no problem.”  Conner nodded a little and shrugged. 
“It’s nothing,” he informed the cat, which he thought looked doubtful.  “It’s all working properly, and I said it would be, so I’m sure.  Sunny and clear.”  Then he threw out yesterday’s milk and lay down to sleep in his rumpled suit. 
It was the old old days again, he saw.  In front of the bluescreen, wearing his suit, the cat and its camera on him and his hand on the weather, his eyes on the reports and his mind in the sky… and then the reports were gone.  Halfway through the typed-out forecasts the air pressures and local temperatures and wind speeds simply stopped dead, printing errors rendering the rest of the sheet a blank mess with a slight, artistic smear of ink the only remaining marking. 
What he did next was the right thing, the thing that made sense, and it was all wrong.  He kept talking on calmly, kept pointing at the bluescreen that he couldn’t see that was there, and he said what the weather was where it was.  The useless non-reports sat there on his desk and it was only when he gently brushed them off, still-talking, that they realized what he was doing.  The cut-off gestures, the stop-the-broadcasts, the cameras stopped moving (but the cat didn’t stop smiling from them), the cameramen grabbed him, they all took him offstage and asked him why didn’t you stop, why didn’t you say, what did you think you were doing.  And then he told them, told them that he’d told the weather what it was going to be, but it was what he did and they heard him say it and before he knew it he was out on the curb, besides the street, suit and tie and final notice and out hanging in the breeze, just him and the old days, which were the new days then, and were the bad days. 
Then he woke up to the sound of the thunder.  

“Oh no,” said Simon to the cat, fumbling blindly upright in the deep dark of the late night.  At least, he thought he said it.  The rumbling was too loud.  “This isn’t right.  This makes no sense.”  The cat leered at him in the lightning-flash. 
“This isn’t proper!” he insisted, overridden by the roar.  “I said that it was clear!  Clear and sunny, sunny and clear!”  He darted to the machine, eyes blinking and worrying at controls that gloomed like gargoyles in the dark, their meanings and intent deeply inscrutable.  He yanked at levers and pushed a whole row of buttons, and stared in horror as they worked perfectly, without making an ounce of difference to what was overhead.  The oil was still there, the controls were still smooth, the machine was ready to perform and nothing was happening.  He picked up the wrench and wrenched, wrangling and wrestling with the innar – with the outards, and nothing happened.  There was a ping above him as a globe of hail sparked its way off the dome of the water tower, followed by others. 
“This isn’t right or proper!” he repeated, talking not to the sniggering cat or to the machine but to the world at large.  “I told you what to be and you aren’t it!  Why aren’t you sunny and clear!”  He hammered on the machine in a fury, wrench bashing in surfaces and slipping off dents in a tiny cacophony lost in the wail of the wind outside.  “Why aren’t you working when you’re working!” he yelled, flinging the wrench to the ground, a useless, rusty club.  The sky rumbled at him, and he thought it sounded like the cat laughing.
“SHUT UP!” he yelled at it, and he swung his way up onto the ladder, the other half of it that he never used, up and up to the curved roof where he slammed his balled fist into the stuck and rusty ceiling-hatch. 
“Good night” *pound* “ladies and gentlemen.” *thud*  “This is Simon” *slam* “Beadley!”  Clang!  Smash!  The door was open, and he was scrambling free into the night air, the wind blowing at him so that his shoes skidded on the slick roof and his tie flapped in the gale. 
He stared into the sickly bruise-dark clouds that glared back down at him, full of outrage.  “The forecast has not changed and shall not change!” he yelled as he struggled to the stubby little peak of the tower, trembling with fury.  “Sunny and clear!  I order you, sunny and clear!  You listen to me!”  The sky snarled at this as it spat lightning, and he snarled back even as a tree a hundred yards away went up in flames.  The hail was bone-chillingly cold and half-sleet, and his suit was being plastered and frayed against his skin, flayed thread by thread.  “You do listen to me and you will listen to me!  I made a promise!” 
Simon took a deep breath, and the air around him seemed to thicken like toffee even as he waved his arm unsteadily over the sky.  It followed his fingers, didn’t it?  Didn’t it?  “Sunny.  And.  Clear!  That is all, and good night!”
There was a great flash of light that seared through the curtains on every house in town, a clap of thunder that woke hundreds, maybe thousands for miles around, the tower shook from root to tip, and Simon Beadley held the lightning in his hands. 

They came looking for him the next day, the people that had left him food and other things, that had checked in on him.  The sound and fury of the night had damaged power lines for miles around and toppled telephone poles here and there like tinker toys; heavens knew what it could’ve done to one old and creaky water tower.  No one answered to their calls, and so they went upstairs, into the small and creaky den that Simon Beadley had lived his life in. 
There weren’t many things.  A careful store of food, of course – much of which they recognized.  A makeshift bed crafted from a thin mattress and several dishevelled sheets.  An elderly stuffed animal, shaped as a smiling cat with half-lidded eyes, set in a strange sort of place of pride atop a rudimentary shelf.  One of the people said she recognized it from television somewhere, some sort of old logo.  And strangest of all, a great creaking thing, a long, low oblong of machinery and knick-knackery, gears and widgets shaped into a bulky and oversized console with more controls than an aircraft carrier.  All its moving parts connected to nothing – those that still worked.  It was severely damaged and dented, and it appeared to have never had any sort of power source. 
What worried them more was the open hatch in the roof, but search as they might they could find no body on the ground below.  A very small scorch mark marred the tip of the tower, the size of a dollar coin, but they missed that, and went home puzzled. 
All in all, they said, it was a strange night, and they said that for years to come.  All that sound and fury, all that roaring and booming, the flash and the bang, the gales that shrieked – and all of that howling on for so slight a time before it faded so quickly, leaving scarcely enough rainwater to make the gutters swirl, let alone overflow.  

The weather on Sunday, March 28^th, was sunny, with a cool breeze, a chance of light showers overnight, and punctual.  As promised. 

 

Copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

This story is from the far long before, back when the world was hard and solid and rough as a ragged shale around its rim.  The greatfathers and the greatmothers were all gone, and the wound left over from the ending of the first times was still sore and raw and bleeding.  All things bled from that ruinous hurt, and many bled all the way down, but a few still lived.  The peoples scraped their way back bit by bite and belly by claw and the world began to heal a little, and perhaps even to soften at their touch.  The green came back from its smouldering ruins and crawled farther still, spreading life for life to feed on wherever it went.  The peoples grew stronger and larger and began to recover a bit of their old place, and that was when the troubles began again. 

The first sign of warning came from near the water, where people that went to fish would start slipping away and vanishing.  Oh well, said the others.  Should be more careful.  But when it happened more often, and sometimes to the others that talked about being careful, well, that was just puzzling and worrying. 

The next signs were from farther inland, in the murkier forests and bogs.  There it was even less noticeable – a bog could suck you down right quick and you had to be fast to stop getting eaten there – but by now everyone was nervous, and the people there took note of when they started vanishing, and they were worried too. 

The last sign came when Grandmother Cru was out hunting for some meat, and she heard a rustling down in the forest.  Out she flew and caught something, and it was only after she wrestled it down and it wasn’t moving that she saw that it was one of the scuttling people, the ones with the many eyes.  She was surprised deeply with that, since all the scuttling people had died under the wounding that ended the first times. 

That’s strange, she told the peoples.  That is strange, they agreed.  And why are they hunting us?  Scuttling people didn’t do that. 

Well, scuttling people do now, said Grandmother Cru.  And she was right.  They were angry and bold now that they’d been discovered, and they came swarming out of the shallow pools and bogs they’d been hiding in, lots and lots of them.  Scuttling people were everywhere, and they were angry, too angry to talk, too angry to think.  The peoples fought, but they were weary instead of angry and worried instead of warlike, and soon there were no more left but the children and the grandmothers and grandfathers. 

This is bad, they said.  What’re we going to do?

Grandfather No had an idea.  He always had ideas.  We can’t fight them this way, he said.  So let’s find new ways.  We’re old, too old to fight fair.  Let’s go and learn and take what we need until we can fight. 

Good plan, said the others, and so the grandmothers and the grandfathers went their separate ways, all around and out and far.  They didn’t want to leave the children unprotected, so they dug a dark pit in the ground and stuffed them into it, then locked it with a fallen tree.  Stay put, they said, and stay quiet.  Now remember, don’t make any noise, for any reason, or the scuttling people will hear you.  The children were good children, and they did as they were told. 

 

Grandmother Cru journeyed far to the east, off into the sea.   The water looked oh so good and tempting, but she knew that she would drown if she walked in, so she looked along the beach.  It was covered in little mud droplets, all hiding bright-coloured, vain little sea-shells. 

Who here can swim? she called. 

Me!  Me!  Me! clamoured all the sea shells, shrill with importance.  Me!  Me!  I can do it!  They dug themselves to the surface and tumbled over each other in their haste to prove their claim.  Grandmother Cru just laughed and gathered them all up, and had a fine meal, cooking them all in the fire.  When it was through she took the charred-burnt shells and slapped them all over her body, and she had a fine suit of armour that made her stiff and sturdy and slow.  She took to the water and swam along, a bit portly and bumpy but altogether pleasant, and then she ran into a shark. 

What are you? asked the shark.  He was young and brave and very foolish. 

I’m me, replied Grandmother Cru sensibly. 

The shark was hot-tempered, and this annoyed him.  Don’t be rude, he yelled, or I’ll bite you clean in half.  My teeth are strong and sharp enough that no armour can stop them, not even that clanking coat of yours. 

My, my, they are sharp indeed, said Cru.  But I’ll bet they can’t bite me. 

If I can’t bite you in half, said the shark, then I’m as flat and toothless as a sea slug.  I’ll show you.  And the shark plucked up Grandmother Cru in his jaws and shook her all around like a little fish, teeth gnashing and clashing and jaws squeezing and biting.  He seized her so hard that she squished in the middle and stretched out both sides, until she was long and lean, but Grandmother Cru just laughed at him no matter how hard he tried.  He wriggled and shook and thrashed until every tooth fell out of his head, his mouth withered up, and he’d beaten himself flat against the water.  Finally he gave up in exhaustion, and Grandmother Cru took his teeth.  You aren’t a shark, but you aren’t quite a sea slug, she said.  I think you are something new, and I will call you a ray.  It is a good word. 

Grandmother Cru popped her new teeth into her toothless old maw and snapped them tight.  They were good strong teeth still, built for gnashing, and her new thin firm body was as muscled as anything.  She laughed and clacked and roared her way along the coast and into the rivers and swamps, and the scuttling people fled from her in fear, those that she did not tear apart and swallow. 

 

Grandfather Ter went wandering north.  There were many tall trees there, so tall that his old, old neck creaked to look up at them, and he walked so long and far that his feet hurt and he had to stop to rub them besides a creek.  There were dragonflies about the creek, just the thing to eat, but he had nothing to catch them with.  So he sat and thought and rubbed his arms and legs, cursing his old, brittle bones, and then he had a cunning idea.  He walked over to one of the tall trees and picked off as many branches as he could carry, and then he covered himself with them very carefully.  He held those branches up all day, arms straining, legs bowing close to the dirt with the effort, and at nightfall the dragonflies came to perch.  Grandfather Ter waited until they were asleep, then quick as lightning bit out at them one after another, swallowing the plump bodies and spitting out the gummy wings, which fluttered all over him.  Their legs were sharp as anything and stuck to the roof of his mouth, which hurt badly, and Grandfather Ter swore and jumped up and down, spitting and cursing as loud as he could until the moon nearly blanched.  He swore and hawked and cursed and jumped and as he did so more and more of the wings and branches were glued all over his stretched and strained thin old arms by his own spittle.  His bowed legs were stomped down to nubbins by the time he collapsed in exhaustion at dawn, and although the spikes in his mouth no longer pained him, they were stuck firm and never moving again, his yelling and their prodding turning his voice into a squawking croak. 

The sunlight dried Grandfather Ter as he dozed, and by midday he stood up and found it was too hard to walk, his legs had got so short and his wings-and-branches arms so heavy.  More dragonflies were above the stream, and when he hopped and leaped at them, hoping against hope, that was when Grandfather Ter found that he could fly. 

Up and up he flapped, needle-filled mouth snatching at food, and he cackled so hard he nearly choked.  His old thin bones floated on the winds and troubled him no more as he circled in the sky.  The scuttling people heard his voice from on high, and the sound where there had been silence filled them with worry.  He cackled and dived down at them, pecking with his needles, and they did not stay in his lands. 

 

Grandmother Cth took to the west, and she came to the sea as well, all around the other side, in different waters.  It seemed so very large that her knees shook to look at it, and they shook so hard that they nearly came loose.  Now don’t do that, she told them, and they hushed up some, which let her wander the beach in peace and quiet.  It was a big, broad sea out there, and she sat and thought on what to do for a long time.  A plan popped into her head at last, and she began to gather up pebbles and throw them into the water, splashing them about and making a dreadful noise.  Soon up came a big angry fish.  What are you meaning throwing those stones onto my reef? he asked angrily.  It’s brand-new as it is, thanks to the wounding, and now you go and throw stones on it.  What do you want anyways? 

Awfully sorry, said Grandmother Cth, but I can make it up to you.  How would you like to trade?  I’ve got a set of good legs here, and I’ll let you give them a try if you’ll let me see your thick hide. 

The big fish was still a bit angry, but he thought it over.  He’d always wanted to see the land above the seas for a bit, even a little bit, but the thought of leaving his precious water made him leery.  All right, he said, but only for a short time.  I’ll try your legs, and you can try my hide, but we’ll trade back after I’m finished, is that clear?

Yes indeed, said Grandmother Cth, and she was so eager to take off her legs that it made the big fish suspicious.  One more thing then, he said.  To make sure no one cheats and runs away, we’ll each keep ahold of something important.  I’ll keep my eggs, and you can keep your lungs. 

I’ll be fairer still, said Grandmother Cth.  We can share my lungs.  That way I can’t run away, and you don’t have to hold your breath while you walk.  This generosity put the big fish off his guard, and as he walked onto the land he did so in utter good faith.  However, after his fifth step in Grandmother Cth’s wobbling old knees, he knew something was wrong. 

Old woman, what have you done? he cried, but his only answer was a laugh as Grandmother Cth sped away over the waves.  She didn’t have eggs, but she would think of something, and she didn’t have lungs, but she could hold her breath.  The big fish hopped up and down the shore in a fury all night before limping inland to find somewhere wet where his skinless body wouldn’t dry out.  It was small comfort to find himself able to breath above and below the water, for his old worn-out kneecaps were too feeble to bear walking, and he had to hop everywhere he went.  He was bitterly unhappy, and called himself a frog, which he thought was a foolish person. 

Grandmother Cth had not a care in the world for it, and she swam the ocean main, boldly, far out into the warm and shallow expanses that the scuttling ones had called home.  Her snapping bill and gnashing teeth drove them away in fear, and she had little care for her missing legs – she had hands and feet to paddle with, as well as her strong long tail. 

 

Grandfather No walked south, and he walked farthest.  Off into the deep desert he marched, old grandfather No, and he thought as he walked, bolt upright, muscles firmed.  The sun baked his skin firm and painted it strange hues, the walking stiffened his legs so that they were warped straight as a line, his body itself wavered and shrank to almost tiny size under the sky’s gaze, but on Grandfather No marched.  He ate young lizards as they basked on rocks and caught them as they slipped under rocks, his bleached and firmed tendons and muscles growing snap-fast to grab and long and delicate to probe.  The energy and warmth of his prey entered him, and he grew younger and more vigorous with each life he stole, a quick and lithe predator.  His movements grew jerky and darting, and he walked until one day he stood alone in the desert, mouth empty of flesh, and surveyed the horizon from atop a single broken rock. 

I am what I am meant to be, said Grandfather No.  All of this will be mine one day, I think. 

He walked home then, and ate little on the trip, yet remained as lively and rapid as ever.  The scuttling people never heard his three-toed footsteps coming pit-a-pat upon the red dirt towards them, never saw his fanged snout approaching their delicate eyes, but they knew those places he roamed were not theirs, and they left in great fear. 

 

All of this took quite some time, and the defeat of the scuttling people with many eyes took longer still.  By the time the last of them had vanished the grandmothers and grandfathers had nearly forgotten where the children had been left, and had had many new children of their own.  They called and called and called, so loudly that it rang across all the world and deep into the burrow of the children, but their voices had grown strange and unfamiliar to their ears, and they were good children, and made not a sound in replay. 

I can’t find them, wailed Grandmother Cth, splashing in the seas.  I traded my legs for flippers, land for sea. 

I can’t find them, rumbled Grandmother Cru, drifting through the swamps, I am not meant for such long walks, armoured as I am. 

I can’t find them, squawked Grandfather Ter, flitting through the trees, I cannot sit upon the ground again, and I am too high up to see them. 

I will find them, hissed Grandfather No, padding across the land. 

That is good, the others said. 

Grandfather No took many more steps before he found the children’s place, some on top of each other, but he did find them, following his snout.  He opened it up with his delicate hands and found that the children were many now.  Alone in the cold they’d made strange soft stuff from their skins to keep the warmth, and they had had their own children long, long ago, feeding them on milk.  They did not recognize him, and hissed and snapped, and Grandfather No felt a coldness arise in his warm-beating heart as he looked upon them. 

If you will not know your elders as such, he said, you will know them as your betters.  I and my children, and their children beyond will teach you this lesson until you know us again.  He fell upon the children and drove them deep into their burrows, and killed and ate several before he returned. 

The children are not our children any longer, he told the grandmothers and grandfathers.  They have gone from our sight.  And the others mourned for the loss, but not for too long, for they had children of their own to look after now, and Grandfather No the most.  

Copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

Back in the Good Old Days, in the woods, there was a poor woodcutter.  There was nothing noteworthy or unique about this, and he died of old age a poor woodcutter. 
This story isn’t about him. 

 His brother was also a poor woodcutter, because when you’re living in a shack in the middle of a forest there’s very little else you can do.  All of his possessions in the world were an old, battered axe, a cupboard (typically bare), and a dented tin water jug.  He would’ve added his little daughter and wife to the list (this WAS about six hundred years ago), but his wife would’ve objected, and very few things in his life that she objected to lasted long.  It was largely because of this that he spent most of his time out in the woods, where there was lots of fresh air that was untainted by the voice of someone yelling at him.  He would make up dull songs to pass the time as he chopped, sing them very badly, then become miserable each new day when he realized he’d forgotten his song and would have to compose a new one, which would take just as much time and give him the sneaking suspicion that he’d managed to copy all the worst bits of the last.  It was not ideal. 
Then, one day when he was mid-verse, mid-swing, and trying to think of something that rhymed with “forsooth,” the woodcutter heard a strange sound: someone crying.  More specifically, someone that wasn’t him – he’d long ago developed a soft, stifled sob.  Pushing through a nearby thicket, curiosity, overtaking his mopiness, he found the source of the crying: an old woman standing in her garden with her back to him, cradling something. 
“Is there something wrong, old woman?” asked the woodcutter. 
The woman faced him without turning around, and that was when he knew he was dealing with a witch.  She didn’t look sad either, just furious, and it was then that the woodcutter noticed that she was cutting up an onion.  Whoops. 
“You’re trampling my garden!” she shrieked, and she was right; there the woodcutter was, up to his knees in the beans, his thighs in the peas, and his buttocks in the lettuce.  Those were some mighty big lettuces. 
“I’m sorry,” he said, the paralytic fear rendering him insincere.  “I didn’t mean it!  I’ll pay you back, I promise!”
“What does a poor woodcutter like you have besides your life?” demanded the witch, fixing him with the most evil of her eyes (the left one – it had a slightly misshapen cornea, and she squinted a lot with it). 
The woodcutter’s mind raced faster than it had in his life, and as most things tend to do when this happens, it sprung a gasket.  “My wife!” he said. 
“Nice try.  I’m doing you no favours for the ills you’ve just given me.  What do you have that I’d want?”
“My axe!”
“A battered piece of junk!”
“My cupboard!”
“Made out of sticks and branches!”
“My jug!”
“Not worthy to water weeds with!”
“My home!”
The witch jerked her thumb over her back, at the rather tall, ominous, and altogether splendid tower behind her.  The woodcutter’s heart sank.
“Your life or nothing is all you’ve given me.  Anything else, or do I take your heart here and now?”
The woodcutter realized he had one thing he hadn’t named.  “My daughter!” he said, skin shrivelling in shame at the lengths its owner would go to save it. 
“Ahh, there’s a good coward.  Yes, your daughter would do nicely.  A girl around to fetch and mend and carry is worth more than a coward’s heart, I think.  Best go fetch her now, before I grow impatient.”
The woodcutter left for home, feeling miserable and impotent.  “Woe is me.  And us,” he said to his wife, “for I have promised our daughter to a witch’s service in exchange for my life.  Hand her over.”
His wife looked at him like he was the world’s biggest idiot.  “What are you, the world’s biggest idiot?” she demanded.  “We don’t have anything we can’t take with us except the cupboard, and witches are frail old ladies.  Let’s just leave.”
So they did.  The witch was grumpy about it, but they were younger and faster than she was and before the day was done they were far away from her tower.  They’d got away scot-free and never saw that witch or any other ever again. 
This story isn’t about any of them either. 

 The woodcutter and his wife and daughter found a nicer, less witch-inhabited chunk of forest that was within spitting distance of a cool, clear river whose brook was so pretty and pristine that the woodcutter found himself describing it as “babbling” without intending to every time he mentioned it.  Also, they were near a small village full of people that rather didn’t mind having someone cut wood for them, which was a great improvement on the woodcutter’s old business model, which was doing it to get away from his wife and make the odd crude cupboard. 
Anyways, the daughter grew up.  And as she grew, she grew beautiful, which mystified both her parents because neither of them were exactly handsome, to put it lightly.  “Must be your mother’s side of the family,” opined the woodcutter, which earned him a smack.  She wasn’t just a pretty face, either – she wasn’t a stranger to hard work, and besides all the chores she did at home she also handled sewing and laundry for a few people in the village in exchange for favours, food, and the odd bit of knicknackery. 
It all was going so well when the dragon showed up.  The first thing the daughter knew of it was when her father came back from the village tavern in a frightful tizzy.  “It burned down all the crops and its breath blighted the soil,” he wailed.  “It ate up four of Cooper’s oxen and one of Smith’s horses, and it’s napping on the road out of town right now!  Our only hope is to keep it happy until someone can make it to the king and tell him to send help.”
“How do you do that?” asked the daughter, who was interested in all this. 
“Virgin sacrifices,” the woodcutter explained, moodiness wandering over his face as though it had lost the map. 
“Why?”
“It works, don’t ask me why.  We drew lots and Fletcher’s sending his daughter out tonight.  I just hope the messenger’s fast – we aren’t exactly rolling in young womenfolk around here.”
“What about boys?” asked the daughter.
“They don’t count,” explained the woodcutter, lamely, and he took up his axe and left as soon as possible.  Although the daughter felt vaguely pleased at seeing the opposite gender dismissed entirely for once, she somehow felt that in this case it wasn’t as convenient as it could’ve been. 
Fletcher’s daughter, it transpired, had sharper ears than her father had known, and by the time he’d gone to find her she was secluded in a barn with Tanner’s eldest son, busily removing her qualifications.  There was a good deal of shouting and shaming all around when they were discovered, but as she pointed out (rather smugly), there was just nothing to be done of it.  By the time the men of the village had got around to drawing lots again (this time it was old Miller’s youngest), the dragon had woken up, eaten Smith’s other horse and all of Shepherd’s sheep, and passed out again on the road. 
Fletcher’s daughter wasn’t shy about spreading the word, and by next evening old Miller’s youngest was also disqualified and rather smug about it.  The men of the village cursed her and youth today in general, drew lots, and cursed again the next eve, when Tanner’s daughter followed suit. 
And so it went, day by day.  A (female) virgin was chosen, a (female) virgin abused the rather obvious loophole, the men of the village cursed their daughters and lack of pattern recognition jointly, the dragon ate more livestock, and the lots were drawn again.  By the tenth day and night there were no more candidates of either sex readily available, except for one.  The woodcutter’s daughter’s lot was chosen, and this time the men of the village didn’t tell her until the evening had come.  Or rather, the woodcutter didn’t, and it was less because of sadistic cunning and more a matter of working up the nerve to inform her in front of her mother. 
“I’m awfully sorry, sweet-pea,” he explained as he was menaced with his own axe, “but it’s you or nice Mr. Shepherd’s last sheep, and he would be very upset about that.”
At this the woodcutter’s wife moved to inconvenience him, but she was stopped by her daughter.  “Don’t worry, mum,” she said.  “I’ll be fine.”
The woodcutter’s wife examined her daughter carefully, face expressionless.  “You sure about this, pumpkin?” she asked, dead serious.
“Yes.”
A forthright nod.  “Good girl then.  You go do what you can.”
So the woodcutter’s daughter did.  She took her father’s dented tin jug and his battered old axe, and she stopped at the home of the woman who was interested in herbs, and she took herself and her jug over to Mr. Shepherd’s house and strongarmed him into giving her his last sheep in exchange for three years of owed payment for doing his filthy laundry.  There was much gnashing of teeth as she left on her way down to the road out of town. 
The dragon was still sleeping, burping gently now and then, and the area was foul-smelling from its breath and feces.  Resolutely ignoring this, the woodcutter’s daughter killed the sheep with the axe, clumsily hacked its gut open (cursing her father’s reluctance to replace the old implement), dumped the contents of the tin can inside, and walked away to hide behind a nearby thicket. 
The noises the dragon made over the next half hour weren’t pretty, but few things are in the initial onset of the ingestion of several pounds of concentrated wolfsbane.  It wheezed and gurgled and moaned, and when the woodcutter’s daughter wandered out to check it was lying on its side, spewing inflammatory toxins from both ends and filling the ditches with foul-smelling embers. 
It was about then that the prince rode up on his horse, lance in hand, shield ready, and found them both.  He was quite confused when the dragon didn’t fight back as he speared its heart, but sorted it all out quickly by deciding that he’d done everything.  He’d even rescued a beautiful damsel, who protested a bit when he scooped her up onto the horse, but not too much after he agreed to meet her parents first before talking over the marriage question. 
This story probably isn’t about them either. 

Some years passed, and the woodcutter’s daughter was technically a queen and the prince a king.  They had three sons, one after another, and they were pretty good on the whole.  None of them that good-looking, which puzzled the parents a little since they were both considered such. 
“Must be your side of the family,” said the prince, who got swatted for it. 
Anyways, that didn’t matter.  The boys were healthy, happy, strong, and exceedingly boisterous and loud.  Their ages were twenty, nineteen, and eighteen when the trouble came.  One late summer day the king was out on horseback, inspecting the countryside, when a crow landed on his shoulder.  The king nearly shot out of the saddle in surprise, the horse bucked, and he went flying, waking up with a babbling mouth and addled mind.  This irked and alarmed the woodcutter’s daughter greatly, because she knew something that was more than bad luck when she saw it.  She called for the palace magician, and with a lot of talking and thinking they worked it out between them where to look for a cure. 
“Boys,” she said, addressing her three sons, “you’re going to go cure your father.  Try to make it back before winter sets in.  And head south-south-east.”
They promised they’d be back as soon as they could, took the best horses from the stable, some armour, a sword apiece, and plenty of supplies, and were off down the road by noon. 
“Let’s split up,” suggested the youngest.  “We can cover more ground that way.”  They all agreed on this, and the eldest brother headed down the first fork in the road they came across with a fare-thee-well.  His trip was very uneventful for the most part (the king had been pretty good at his job, and the lands were quiet), and sadly found himself unable to locate anything more than a few women who were interested in herbs, all of whom told him that scrambled brains needed something a bit stronger than herbs.  He did get to enjoy some excellent cups of tea, though. 
At the next fork in the road the middle brother turned away with a wave.  His path took him right up to the edge of the kingdom, and after venturing a bit farther he was accosted by a large band of knights and unceremoniously booted out of the domain by a king with an ill temper and a long memory, who distinctly recalled who had hidden frogs in his privy when he was on a diplomatic visit twelve years ago. 
The youngest brother had a bit of a shorter trip than his siblings – the road ended in a very small and very dull village not far from the fork where his elder brother had left him alone.  The only thing that was interesting about it was that it had a very large and cracked dragon skull above the door to the tavern (missing most of its teeth), which he inquired about. 
“The king did that,” said the woodcutter, who had never seen any of his grandchildren before and was welcoming the opportunity to have a pint or two on someone else’s expense.  “Back in the day.  Nice of him to let us keep the skull.”  His voice grew conspiratorial and quiet.  “And I think it’s still got a mite of magic in it.  Old Smith rubbed it for luck one day and the very next day he bought himself a new horse on the cheap.  Bit of a windfall, that.  And I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had a close call with my axe that could’ve turned nasty if it weren’t for the tooth I’ve got.”
The youngest son examined the tooth, which the woodcutter wore as a sort of crude necklace, and conceded that it was very impressive.  “Can I borrow it?” he asked. 
“What for?” asked the woodcutter, and he listened to the story.  “Ill tidings,” he said when the tale was done, secretly relishing the opportunity to say the words in context.  “Anything to give my daughter’s husband a hand.”  The woodcutter thought for a moment.  “Ten golden coins.”
The youngest son had to pawn his horse (Old Smith was happy to have a full team again, even if one was fourteen years older than the other) and walk all the way home on foot, but he was proud.  His brothers had come home before he did, and together they walked in to speak with the woodcutter’s daughter. 
“I have failed,” said the eldest son, remorsefully. 
“I have also failed,” said the middle son, bitterly. 
“I’ve got this,” said the youngest son, helpfully, and gave his mother the dragon-tooth pendant. 
The woodcutter’s daughter examined it closely.  “Thank you,” she said.  “You’ve all succeeded.”
The sons were slightly nonplussed, and then the woodcutter’s daughter explained that the king had been under a lot of stress for a while now, and a bit of a break with someone else running the kingdom and no loud children underfoot had done him a world of good.  In fact, he’d agreed to take ruling duty in shifts with her, and was currently out back playing a happy game of lawn bowls with several of the more energetic dukes.  The princes were a little annoyed, but consoled themselves with the knowledge that at least they’d gotten some fresh air and their father might have a bit more time to spend with them. 

There wasn’t a story about any of them.  But they were well-off enough without it.

 

 

Copyright 2009, Jamie Proctor. 

I was stirring the stew on the firepit when I heard the knock. 

At first I dismissed it as the wind, and did nothing.  With the second rap, I thought of it as coincidence, and stirred all the harder, as if to banish it forcibly from thought.  With the third, I feared it was a bear, come in the snowstorm by the drifting smell of cookery, and I snatched up my spear and hurried to the doorway.  By the time the fourth thump came, I was shoving the rough driftwood hatch open, feeling it grind against the iced and slick snow-walls. 

The figure beyond was no bear – far too small, too slight, even for a cub – and it jumped in surprise.  Bulky, upright, small, dark in colour, with odd face markings, and textures that just didn’t match up.  Its forelimbs were held upright, next to its skull, and it was making the strangest noises, a complicated cacophony that was half-lost in the blizzard. 

I blinked as I listened.  They sounded familiar.  What were they…. words.  Yes, that was it.  Words.  Were they English?  I wasn’t quite sure.  I’d taken up talking to myself a long time ago, a very long time ago, but this was strange.  It was all too fast in some places, too slow in others, and some of the bits didn’t sound like other bits.  Too much all at once.  And if those were words – English words? – then this must be a human.  Another human.  Did I look like that?  Strange indeed. 

It had stopped its words, and was watching me.  Warily, probably.  I did have a spear pointed at it.  Did I need to do that now?  We had a lot in common – species, desire to avoid the cold, and probably hungry.  I remembered the hunger quite well now. 

“Come in,” I said, and I let the spear down (gratefully – it was heavy).  “Stew.”

It was magical, watching that.  I said some words and moved my arm and all of a sudden it wasn’t frightened anymore.  Then we both walked inside, just like that.  Can you believe that?  Some words and all of that happens.  Amazing. 

My guest liked the stew, although it took me a while to figure this out.  It was still hard to understand it.  “Slower,” I said.  “Slower.”  It would nod, blink, eat some stew, and then start over again, still wrong in some odd way that threw its ever breath of air out of joint with my mind.  Still, we made progress, and by the end of the meal we could understand each other half-decently as we sat on my furs next to the firepit.  It had laid its gun to one side, out of the way.  It looked much more complicated than mine, and seemed well-looked-after.  It probably even still worked. 

The first thing it asked after we’d established this was what was in the stew. 

I thought for a while.  What was the word?  Ah, yes.  “Mice.”

It looked surprised.  “That’s a lot of mice.  How many?”

I shrugged – another thing I hadn’t done for a long time.  It came much more easily than conversation.  “Lots?  Can’t remember.  Collected them before winter.”

“Cached them, huh?  Are you that hard up for food?”

Another shrug, and something I thought I recalled mother saying once.  “Every little bit… helps.”

The guest laughed, and the sound was the most alien I’d heard from it yet.  It seemed too loud.  “Hah, yes.  Thank you for your mouse stew, stranger – and you shouldn’t stay a stranger, for giving me somewhere to hide from that snowstorm.”  He stretched out his back, rubbing at the base of the spine.  “”What’s your name?”

That particular detail came to me more easily than anything else I’d struggled with.  “John.”

“It’s good to meet you, John,” said my guest.  “Tim.”

I thought for a moment.  “Yes?” I asked. 

It shook its head.  “No, sorry.  I’m Tim.  My name is Timothy.”  He – that was a man’s name, it must be a man – looked at me in a way that I thought was odd.  “When was the last time you saw someone else out here, John?”

“Not sure.  Hard to keep track of time.”  A phrase leaked back into my head.  “’Land of the Midnight Sun.’  Hard to say.  A long time.”

“How?  You can’t be more than a few days north from Fairbanks.”

I stared at him, and he must have sensed my blankness.  “Fairbanks?  You know, Fairbanks, Alaska?”

“Alaska?”  That was maybe the strangest word I’d heard yet. 

“Alaska.  The United States of America.” 

All the words in the sentence I understood, yet together they meant nothing.  I shook my head.  “No.”

Insofar as I could read expressions – there were so many muscles moving on his face, all dancing and jumping – he looked very… something.  I’m not sure what.  “How do you not know that?  You’re not native, so you sure as hell weren’t born out here, and you don’t even know that you’re in the state of Alaska?  You’ve never heard of the US?”

More sensible words that added up into senselessness.  “No.  I haven’t.” 

He – Tim, yes that was it – slumped, and his body language spoke to me more than his face had.  I remembered something now.  “You got lost?” I prompted. 

He nodded.  “Yes, and I’m damned ashamed to admit it.  Flew north out of Fairbanks and landed on a lake, was just planning on a little bit of winter hunting.  Storm came up out of nowhere, faster than I could blink – not a single warning or hint.  It was there, I was stuck in a whiteout, and by the time it cleared up enough for me to move the plane was gone.  Damned if I know how, but the temperature’d dropped like a stone.  So I struck out east, towards where I’d seen some trees on landing, – get any shelter you can, you know – must’ve got turned around, kept walking to keep breathing, and then I stumbled into your house.  Probably saved my life.  Thanks again, by the way.”

“You are welcome.”  Old memories were thawing inside my head, bit by bit, revealing frail and chilly contents.  “On the lakeshore,” I asked, hunch growing stronger, “was there a rock?  A point?”

“A what?” he asked, puzzled. 

“A rock, a point.”  I thought over my words again.  “A rock on a point.  A big rock.  A big round rock.  On a point,” I clarified.

Tim got that strange look on his face again – probably confusion – and then it melted into something else.  “Yes.  Yes, there was.  I tied the plane to a tree right next to it.  When the snow calmed down, it was gone.  Just gone – not a trace of the line left.  Or the tree.”

Certainty filled me, the same feeling I got when I had a deer standing in my sight, bow in hand, with the wind at my back.  “You moved,” I said.

He looked confused again.  “No, I didn’t.  I’m not an idiot, I stayed right where I was and hunkered down next to the rock.”
“No, no, no,” I said, firmly.  I smacked my right hand on the floor near his foot, making him jump.  “You were here,” I said.  My other hand came down hard, across from its brother.  “I am here.  The snow came, and then –“ I swept my right hand over to meet its brother “–it brought you here.  To me.”

“Forgive me for saying this, John,” he said, almost slowly enough to be clear and sound for once, “but you aren’t making any sense.”

“I got lost too,” I said.

There was a long silence then.  I used the time to clean out the rest of the stewpot, seeing that he’d had his fill.  It was a good stewpot, made out of soapstone.  It had lasted for a long time, but was scarcely my first.  With each replacement, I’d gotten better at the fiddly bits of the carving, and by now they were quite pleasant to look at. 

“So you’re saying,” said Tim, as I scraped out the last of the meat – almost as if he’d been waiting for it – “that you got lost, in the same place, and it brought you here, and now the same thing happened to me?”

I nodded.  It had been a long time since I’d done that, and it felt good.  My sharing of the stewpot had garnered something quite useful after all. 

“Tell me why I should believe you, and not write you off as an old survivalist who’s spent too much time with no one to talk to but caribou.”

“Caribou?” I asked. 

“You can’t honestly not know about caribou.  They walk past here every six months!  Your spoon is made from one of their antlers!” 

I looked at the handle of the spoon, and recognition came.  “The deer?”  Caribou was an odd word.  Why rename a deer?

Tim’s movements were growing more jerky and impulsive.  I must’ve been frustrating him.  “It doesn’t matter.  What are you trying to tell me?  That the snowstorm took me to… never-land or something?  Narnia?  Make sense or show me some proof.”

I looked down into the stewpot, thoughts bubbling and hissing inside my skull.  It had been a very long time, but I believed I knew something that would make him change his mind. 

“Wait,” I said.  I set the stewpot to one side and arose, then began to rummage through the big woven-branch hamper I kept my things in.  There was something in there that couldn’t be found where he came from, something very different from the old, younger place that I’d been in before I came here.  At least, I thought it was. 

It was at the bottom of the hamper, because it was very heavy.  I used it as part of my sledge when I packed up home and moved.  With some difficulty, I pried it loose and bundled it into my arms, then brought it to him.  “Here,” I said, and placed it upon the ground.”
“Polar bear skull,” he said immediately.  “Big one –“ and then he stopped, and began to touch and examine it.  I let him look, and waited.  Time was long, and we had much of it. 

At last he raised his eyes from my skull, and spoke words again.  “This isn’t a normal bear,” he said. 

I thought back again to those long-ago times, and recalled the bears I’d seen.  Were they normal?  “No,” I agreed, deciding that they might’ve been.  At the time. 

“It’s too big.  Much too big.  And this isn’t a fossil.  Either you killed the biggest bear ever to live in the history of the world, John – and not more than a few days from Fairbanks – or you’re not making up everything you’re telling me.  And I can’t think why you would.  One way or the other, something’s wrong here.”  He was having trouble keeping his eyes from my sledge-base, they kept alighting upon it, like a nervous mother bird unwilling to leave its nest.  “And of course, there’s the extra eye sockets.”

Bears with four eyes had extra eyes?  I’d forgotten that – was he really telling the truth?  “More proof?” I asked, mind already feverishly ransacking those old memories once more, comparing them to the contents of my home. 

“Please.”

The hamper was carefully sorted through, and other tokens and emblems came out.  My knife, carved from one of the teeth of the whales that I’d found stranded on a shore, long ago – a score or so, I recalled, and I’d never seen anything like them since.  The furs we squatted on became an example – the woolly pelt from a calf of one of the rhinoceroses that roamed near here in the late winter, claimed from its owner after I found it dead in a snowdrift.  Normal things, strange things, and each examined and explained haltingly to this odd man, with odd words. 

There was another very long silence after that.  It was very strange – it felt misshapen, unpleasant.  Not at all like normal. 

“So it’s never-land then?” he asked after a time. 

“I do not understand,” I said. 

“Narnia then?  Where am I?  You’ve got mutant bears and giant killer whales and some kind of woolly rhinos.  Maybe you’re a head case with one weird trophy, but with three?  This is too much.  What the hell is this place?”
“I do not,” I said carefully, “understand.”

Tim was staring at me again.  “You’re nuts.  I don’t care how long you’ve been stuck out here, you’re crazy.  What.  Is.  This.  Place?”  He was standing up now, talking down at me, nearly shouting, and I wasn’t comfortable with it.  “What’s outside – what’s out there?”

Oh.  That made more sense.  I thought about my answer carefully. 

“Cold,” I said.  “All the cold.  Ever.”

He stood there for a time, at least until I passed into sleep.  I do not know if he did the same. 

 

In the morning, my guest was moving before I awoke, examining and preparing his strange gun, organizing his backpack.  I knew preparations for departure when I saw them, and asked what he planned. 

“I’m heading back where I came from,” he said.  “I got… wherever here is from the rock.  I might as well head back there.  No offence, John, but I don’t want to end up like you.  However long you’ve been here, or half of it, is too long.” 

Would the place send him away?  I wasn’t sure.  Had I tried?  Maybe once.  Couldn’t remember.  “Good luck,” I said.  It seemed fair enough – the right thing, surely?  I wouldn’t diminish my own luck by giving him any.  Probably. 

He slung the gun into some sort of container on his back.  I thought I remembered doing that once, and felt an odd twinge of nostalgia.  Tim had started talking again, too many words, too fast, and I dragged my attention back to it. 

“… for the food, and the shelter,” he said.  “If I can’t get back the way I came, I guess I’ll strike out south and see if it gets any warmer.”  What an odd idea.  “Anything you can tell me about the land that way?”
“Cold.  This time of year, not much deer.  Some wolves.  Then, trees.  Lots.”

He sighed heavily.  “More good news.  Could be worse.”  He held out his hand, and I stared at it for a moment before remembering handshakes.  It felt very strange, and quite soft – disturbingly so, like a maggot.  I had to resist the urge to wipe my fingers on my coat.  We emptied out the entrance, pushing back and tunnelling out the snow.  My house was a little lump in a great snow-dune, barely worth noting. 

“If I make it through, I’ll tell someone you’re out here.”  He looked very small against all the white, and I was sure he knew it.  ”Wherever here is.  They won’t think I’m too crazy – Tim White’s not local, but he’s known well enough for a bit of trust.”

Tim was a colour?  Oh, yes.  Second names – last names, that was it.  What was mine again?  It wasn’t a colour.  They were too long and bulky to use everyday, but I was sure I knew it, somewhere. 

“I am fine,” I reassured him.  It was true.  I thought.  What else was there?  Wherever he was from, it had too many words. 

“Suit yourself,” he said, squinting through the glow and shine of sun-on-snow.  The blizzard’s vanishment had left quite a bright day, only illuminating the cold further.  “I can’t say I can argue.  You’ve lived out here too long for it.  If you run across my body later, use my rifle to put a bullet through whatever got me, will you?”

“Yes.”  It seemed fair enough. 

“Good.  Mighty thanks and farewell to you, John.”  He marched off and away, a little smaller with each step.  He didn’t look back once, which was good.  No sense in looking back.  There’s nothing good back there anyways. 

Oh.  There it was.  I knew I knew it.  Names. 

“Hudson,” I said aloud.  It was much better to speak this way, the right speed, the right way.  None of the chattering haste of Tim White.  “Hudson, Hudson.  John Hudson.”

It was just enough words to be too many. 

 

“Whiteout” copyright Jamie Proctor 2010. 

Jill was nine years old and bold and she went on a walk out into the world.  Skipping down the side road, taking the back trails, off she went; twists piled on turns till she was a good ways from home by anyone’s reckoning, and much farther by a nine-year-old girl’s.  She stopped to look for frogs in a small pond, and that’s when she came face to face with the big wolf.  It was standing under the trees a few feet from her, watching her with its sad wolf eyes. 

Who are you? she asked. 

I’m the big bad wolf, said he, and I’m going to eat you. 

Jill was very upset at this, and her frown showed.  My mommy says wolves don’t eat people unless they’re starving to death, she said. 

I’m always starving, said he.  It’s like a big pit in my stomach, little girl, and I’m going to eat you. 

Jill was a quick thinker, and she knew how stories went.  Wouldn’t you rather wait ‘till I’m bigger and have more meat on me? she pleaded. 

The wolf sniffed her, and wrinkled his big wolf nose.  You talk sense, little girl, he said, but I can’t stay hungry forever.  I’ll see you when you’re older.  And then he bounded away into the bushes, his ragged grey tail whisking away through the greenery. 

Jill smiled to herself around then, and she kept going on her walk.  She went out of the woods and down a lonely side road, one with only a single old farm on it, and then she stopped and knocked on the door.  A tall, thin man and his tall, thin wife answered it.

Yes child? they asked. 

I’m lost, she said.  Which way to line seven?

The tall, thin wife smiled, lips pressed firmly together, and her husband scratched at his lank hair with one cadaverous hand.  Take the road left from the end of the driveway, then walk to the intersection, then go right, and you’ll be homeward bound before you know it, said they. 

Thank you very much, said Jill, and as she walked down the driveway she felt their stares on her back, heavy like a bear’s paw.  She smiled again. 

Jill ignored the directions and went the other way at the intersection, and before long she was on the highway’s side.  Night was coming on, and the cars zoomed by without seeing her, because she was wearing dark clothing.  Jill walked careful and quiet, and before long she heard something breathing in the bushes near her. 

Hello? she asked. 

Hello? came her own voice back at her. 

That’s not funny.  And once again, doubled over: that’s not funny.  But there was a bit of a difference, a small strangled edge, like it was coming from a very big throat screwed up tight and twisted about to sound like a little nine-year-old girl’s. 

She spun about on her heel and faced the bushes.  What do you want? she demanded. 

There was quiet, and then a voice floated up, deep and raspy and colder than a skeleton’s love.  You, said it. 

Why?

I love the children.  Their parents tell them to look out for me, and I watch them from the forests all day, and run away when they play near.  Then come sundown, I take who I find, and I have found you.  I play and play and play with them all night, but in the morning they never want to move again, and they lie still and let bugs and birds pick at them.  I don’t know why.  Can you tell me why?

If you’ll let me go, she said.  I’ll tell you someday, when I’m older and know more. 

I’ll wait, said it, and then the bushes were empty. 

Jill smiled again, again, and she skipped towards home.  She made it to the end of the driveway before she heard the flip-flap-flop and gentle whisper of leathery wings, and then the tall, thin man and the tall, thin wife descended upon her, one in front, one behind.  They were ghastly in the faint starlight, and it glittered off their teeth.

Fair is fair, child, said they.  You took directions from us and gave nothing in return.  Now we take ours, and with no price set, we want blood.  

Jill was a quick thinker.  All I took was your time.  Don’t you want that back?  You can get blood anywhere, from anyone or anything. 

The tall, thin man frowned.  Time is precious.  Ours more than most, with our living so long.  We saw the crusades, we fed on battle-spilt flesh, we’ve glutted alongside ravens on the campaigns of Alexander.  A moment of our time is worth a lifetime of yours. 

Then come to me when the lifetime is almost over, said Jill. 

The tall, thin wife laughed silently, fangs spread wide at this.  Good girl, said they.  We will collect your lifetime at the end, and find you by its smell.  Good girl, said they, and they lifted up and away into the darkness overhead. 

Jill walked up the driveway and into the house and shut the door.  Well, she said, that was easy. 

Years went by and Jill grew up a little more with each one, a little bigger, a little smarter, a little more crafty.  She saw things in the bushes now and then, and sometimes sounds came from outside her window at night.  Her neighbour’s pets started vanishing, and she felt a bit bad about that, but not too bad.  And each and every year, one of three visitors would come to her door on her birthday, sometimes the same one twice, once thrice, but never four years running.  One would come in the day, one in the evening, one at night.  And they would ask if she was meaty enough yet, if she had enough time, whether or not she had the answer, and she would always say not yet, not yet, try again next year.  The visitor would leave, grumbling or silent, and life would go on. 

At twenty she entered university, by twenty-five she had a degree in law school.  She made friends there, some boys, some girls, and one of the girls came crying to her in the night one day, full of alcohol and sorrow and a story about a date gone very, very wrong.  Jill soothed her and sympathized with her and put her to bed, and said she’d phone the police, and since that day was her birthday, she heard the caller at the door just after the friend drifted off. 

Hello, she told the wolf.  I have meat for you, young tender meat, tasty and fine.

Then give it to me, said he, for I’ve followed you too long and my poor belly’s aching for you. 

It’s not mine to give, but it’s yours to fetch.  You can find your fare at this address, she said, and she gave him the name that the friend had cried from. 

Thank you, howled he, and then he was off into the night with his grey tail wagging.  The friend was fine in the morning, and she never heard from the boy again. 

There were only two visitors now that she might entertain each year.  At thirty she entered local politics, by thirty-five she was a senator, and she was in a dangerously close vote for a bill she could not afford to miss.  The deciding motion was to pass the day after her birthday. 

Hello, she told the thing that arrived in the darkness.  I have your answer. 

Tell me, said it. 

They die, said she.  They wither away and die in your dancing, die of fright.  Do you know why this is, what this is?

No, said the voice. 

Go and ask this man, she said, and she named another name, one of her fellows of the senate.  Go and ask him, and he’ll show you what I mean. 

The chief opponent of the bill died of a heart attack at home before the vote could take place, and it was passed by a narrow margin, thanks to some clever arguments from Jill. 

At forty-seven, Jill became the President of the United States of America, with fifty-seven percent of the popular vote. 

She won her re-election campaign at fifty-one with fifty-nine percent, and most people thought those eight years were pretty good years.  And every year, the oval office would get a little bit darker on one day, when she had a special visitor that she sent away all her aides to meet.  They never showed up on any of the cameras, and they always went away disappointed and left the white house a bit darker than before. 

She left office quietly and without fuss at fifty-five, and most people thought she’d done a pretty good job, and were more than happy to put her in the supreme court.  At ninety-two she was sick, and stepped down from office to live in her house, a new house near her old home.  There, as she sat in bed writing, she heard the door open. 

In they came, the thin couple, and their stares were all the demand they needed. 

She put down her glass of water.  Well? she said. 

We come for what is owed, said the couple. 

Jill smiled for a fourth time.  Then you will have it. 

Our lost time? Asked they. 

Oh, it will be properly compensated for, she said.  A moment, wasn’t it?
For us, a lifetime, said they.  Our time is worth more than yours. 

Oh is it? said Jill, in a sweet voice.  When she was a nine-year-old girl, her parents would’ve known that for trouble, when she was a forty-nine-year-old president, her opponents knew the same. 

Yes, said they, and she heard a bit of uncertainty there.  They were used to using fear, and its absence troubled them like a weaponless soldier. 

Not by a long shot, said she. You are speaking to a woman who was for eight years the most important person in the world.  For the next forty, she was heard closely by all those who followed her, and she’s just finishing up her memoirs, which many, many people are also waiting for. 

You have done much in a short time, said they, but we have lived for long. 

Jill laughed.  And what have you done in that time? said she.  Eaten a few dead men out of many dead men on a nameless, pointless battlefield before history began?  You are crows, but without the intellect of crows.  Jackals without cunning.  Vultures without craft.  You have done nothing, have lived nothing.  Empty, long, hollow lives.  And my time is worth more than yours.  You took a moment from me in my youth with your bartering and threats, and you have stolen several from me now.  And you will repay me what is mine, in the proportions that are mine, NOW!

At the shout the tall, thin man and his tall, thin wife flinched backwards, as if they’d been struck, and then at the next instant they unravelled into less than dust, all their time unrolling out of them in a sigh that sounded like a scream. 

Jill took in all those moments with a small gasp and a giggle, then picked up her pen and wrote the last word of the epilogue.  On her way out the door, she posted her memoirs in her mailbox and tipped up the little flag.  It was going to be more fun, thought she, to find another set of parents this time around.  She’d helped make the orphanages better, after all. 

Jill walked on out into the world, nine years old and bold. 

 

Copyright 2009, Jamie Proctor. 

Some funerals just aren’t complete without rain.  Whether it’s to accentuate the dismalness of the moment or to force a confrontation with it deep inside the minds and hearts of those attending to pay respects, it can induce deep pits of thought and introspection, or at the very least take someone’s mind off the loss of a loved one and into low-level griping about the damp.  Conversely, a sunny day can bring back haunting flashbacks of better times that propel previously brave individuals into paroxysms of suicidal grief.  Sometimes, the rain is better. 

This time, it wasn’t.  For one thing, the deceased’s coffin had a leak, and it was getting rusty.  For another, all three of the attendants were behind on their own scheduled rustproof sealant applications, and they were attempting to cluster underneath the single source of dryness they possessed – a large golf umbrella – severely hampered by the fact that they were all bulky construction robots. 

Beside the grave, flipping through a large and bulky tome, was the minister.  It had spent the last half hour fixing steel beams together, and its massive arm-mounted arc welder was getting in the way of the pages, forcing it to hold the book at an awkward angle, barely within sight of its optical viewers.  To add to its difficulties, a small crowd of human passer-bys had stopped to watch, and it was suffering an extremely quiet bout of stage fright, which in its case manifested in irregular volume control. 

“Are you ready yet?” asked one of the mourners, shifting its five-ton frame to steal a little more space under the umbrella. 

“Yes,” it said. 

The mourner, whose name was XLQ530, fidgeted with its jackhammer attachment.  “Sorry, what was that?  You know my hearing’s gone all to shot since that loose nail got into my processor.”  Its ocular port swivelled to stare directly at its neighbour as it said this. 

“Come off it, I said I was sorry,” said TAH978, surreptitiously stuffing its nail gun behind its back.  “It was an honest mistake.”

“An honest mistake after you saw the payroll and me pulling in twice yours, more like.  Now I get all the jobs next to the noise and – “
“Sorry, I said yes,” said the minister.  It fumbled at its book in a futile attempt to improve its view of the words, then appeared to give up.  “Dearly beloved,” it began, choppily, “we are gathered here today to witness the –”

“Oh come off it!” snapped XLQ530.  “That’s for WEDDINGS.  Are you telling me you still can’t find the damned page?”
“I’d like to see you do better,” said the minister defensively. 

“I’ll try if you’d like,” said an unusually cheery voice.  The assembled funeral party looked despairingly at the largest of the mourners, and the one clutching the umbrella in its extremely small servomanipulators.  Its wrecking ball swung gently to and fro some thirty feet above them, dangling from the extremely rickety and complicated crane jutting out of its superstructure. 

“You know you can’t read, F4,” said TAH978.

“I said I’d try.  How hard can it be?”
“We’ve gone over this before.  Save up and buy some software or something.”
“That seems like cheating.”

“Shut up,” said XLQ530, striding up to the minister.  It snatched the book from its fumbling probe and examined it critically.  “This isn’t a bible!  This isn’t even a how-to guide!  You’re looking at its manual!”

“It said it wanted it that way,” mumbled the minister. 

“Then why bother with the whole pantomime?  You’re wearing a stole!”

“It said to go with whatever felt right.”

“Seems fine to me,” agreed F4. 

“Shut up,” said the other two.

The minister was now inadvertently jetting small sparks from the tip of its industrial welder, setting extremely damp smoke loose from the bedraggled grass that clung to the lip of the soil around the muddy pit of the open grave.  “It bought a human plot in a human cemetery and it wanted a funeral – no recycling, no scrapyards, just a few part donations to friends in its will.  If it’s going to be put with all these other humans around, the least we can do is observe local ceremony, can’t we?” it pleaded. 
“Bull,” said XLQ530.  “You’re just looking for an excuse to play dress up.  You’re always on this whole “pretend to be a human” shtick and it really gives everyone the creeps.  Everybody else outmoded it back in their first year; why do you keep pulling this sort of thing?”
Seeking reassurance, the minister looked past XLQ530 to scan the body language of its compatriots and found only awkward embarrassment and chipper concern.  Its RAM sank in dejection. 

“What’s the harm?” it asked. 

“Not really any that I can see,” interrupted TAH978.  “It’s just… weird.  But it can’t really hurt, I guess.”

“It’s not healthy,” insisted XLQ530.  “Humans don’t laugh it off when one of them yanks off his hand and plugs a drill into it, or tries to live off electric current instead of organic matter.  Why should we be any different?”
“You mean… act like humans?” asked F4, almost visibly overclocking with the effort of processing the argument. 

“Shut up.”

“Anyway, it’s too late to stop now,” noted TAH978.  “We’ve got a crowd.  No sense in dragging this thing out twice as long as need be.  I think my speakers are starting to hiss.”

“Hah, hissing speakers?  At least you can hear them hissing.  That nail went right into my process –“

“Dearly beloved,” began the minister again, momentary nervousness drowning out the others, “we are gathered here today to witness the… excavation-based end-of-usable-lifespan demolition project of PAO461, project team as follows: labourmourners XLQ530, TAH978, large-scale wreckergravedigger F4, acting foreminister –”

“Now you’re just reciting the filed report from the construction site!”

“Please be quiet,” pleaded the minister.  It shifted its massive feet uncertainly; the mud was quietly but determinedly attempting to suck them into the graveyard, one at a time.  “Anyway.  PAO461 was a highly capable independent artificial intelligence unit.  Though its operating system never received an official upgrade – or possibly because of this – it was as efficient and diligent a worker as any ever placed on a project we were assigned to.  It always thought ahead, took any task with caution and restraint when danger was involved –”

“Except for that last one,” noted TAH978. 

The minister managed to flinch and glare at the same time.  “- and it had participated in over ninety separate construction and demolition projects when nonfunctionality overtook it at the age of twelve, long past when most members of its production line had been deemed outmoded and recycled due to erratic behavioural-based errors and rampant software corruption.”

“What about that thing it used to do whenever it saw a cinnamon roll?” asked XLQ530.  “The bit where his powerloader attachment just went on and off and on and off and his drilbits would disengage and fire randomly and land in the foreman’s coffee?”
“The onset of nonfunctionality,” said the minister, ignoring this with a massive effort, “occurred in the line of work-related protocols.  As you are aware, a human adolescent wandered onto the construction site while chasing a squirrel, for reasons unknown, possibly sustenance-related.”

“Why couldn’t it just eat donuts like regular humans?” leaked out from underneath the umbrella. 

The minister steeled itself.  The long stretch was ahead.  Courage was the thing; it had a bottle of oil back at the construction site waiting for its joints, which were creaking with stress.  “PAO461 observed this incident, and escorted the adolescent off-site with a stern admonishment not to do so again.  This routine incident took a turn for the tragic at this time, when, due to forces unknown except by advanced quantum computers, the adolescent’s frantic kicking managed to lodge a shoe – steel-toed, I believe, possibly stolen from one of the workers – directly in PAO461’s optical socket.  And, being as it was part of its security protocols, PAO461 administered a nonlethal electrical shock through its system and the adolescent’s leather jacket, shorting out its sensors further and causing the adolescent to scream for help, at which point bystanders contacted the police, who subsequently tagged it faulty and slated it for immediate disposal.”

“That seems rude,” opinioned F4.  “They didn’t do that to me after that problem with the crouton and the poodle.”

“That’s because only someone stupid to the point of handicap would’ve done what you did, making you un-responsible for your actions,” stated TAH978. 

“But all I did was tap it on the back!”
“With a wrecking ball.  When all you have is a wrecking ball, your options for aiding choking animals are limited!”

“Anyways,” the minister continued a bit too hastily, steam now hissing from its overheated logic center as embarrassment threatened to overcome its circuits, “as a hemi-sentient being, PAO461 was able to choose his method of execution, and decided upon live burial.”  The minister’s servomanipulator tapped the side of the massively overbuilt coffin, which had been crudely fashioned by welding together I-beams and steel plating.  “How are you holding up in there, PAO461?”
“Adequately,” came the muffled reply. 

“And how long until you estimate, err, system shutdown will occur?”
“Difficult to say.  None of you wanted my internal power plant, so it could be a few decades without sleep mode, a few centuries with.”
“Can’t blame us,” said TAH978.  “The thing was obsolete when you installed it.”

“When would the deceased like to be extracted from his grave?” inquired the minister. 

“Did you look up the term of sentence on executions like I asked you to?” asked the coffin. 

“Yes.  But they were somewhat hazy on duration of the penalty.  I believe an average full human lifetime would be appropriate.”

“103.215349436 years then?”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Agreed.”  The minister turned back to the others.  “The mourners,” it said, gathering itself for the final stretch, “will now lower the coffin into the grave.”

“Gently please.  There isn’t a whole lot of padding in here.”

With the sort of solemnity that can only be achieved through strenuous effort, the deed was done, and with as much care as possible, although they did have to drop the deceased the last half foot. 

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” intoned the minister, dropping a small wad of mud on the steel.  “You will remember to tell us what happens afterwards, right?”

“I’ll be sure of it.”

“Good.  Now, will the gravedigger please do its duty?”
“Sure,” said F4.  With a sweep, the mighty wrecking ball descended in an arc, pulverizing the crumbling borders of the grave into a soggy dent in the dirt.  A few cautious swipes followed, gingerly sweeping the scattered remains of the excavation over it until it was a scant depression. 

“Well, that’s that then,” said XLQ530.  “Stingy ruster didn’t even leave me its audio processor.  And after that nail…”

“Well, it will need it to record whatever goes on after burial and all that.  Full report,” pointed out TAH978. 

The other construction robot stared grimly out across the graveyard.  Behind them, the humans had dispersed, seeing that the show was probably over.  “Oh screw it,” it declared.  “I’m going to go get out of the rain.”  It trudged off, followed closely by its friends. 

The minister remained behind, affixing the tombstone.  It was also steel sheeting, salvaged from the site, its message crudely welded on.  It read:

 

PAO461

2192-2204; 2307-

 

It admired it for a moment, nervously adjusting its stole.  Then it stored the tattered clothing carefully in a small compartment, wincing as it added a few new tears from its spiked finger supports, and went back to work. 

 

Copyright 2009, Jamie Proctor.

Any connection to “Lighthouse” is purely possibly coincidential. Despite the fact that this story came first, it DID give me the idea…which took a loooong time to come out of it.

May 2^nd: New exhibit’s coming in today. Finally, a change of scenery. Not that it won’t get old after a few days of standing near it, staring blankly at a wall, but better than nothing. Something about the Permian, from what I can tell. I told Frank that I just hoped it had some halfway interesting dinosaurs, and the sonovabitch laughed at me. Just because I’m not a fucking nerd like him doesn’t mean I’m a goddamned idiot. So I haven’t ever been bored enough to memorize every little plaque and display tag in the whole museum – so what? God I hate him. The pieces should be done moving tomorrow.

Nothing else. Same old: Walked, watched, had a snack.

I wish the vending machine in the lobby would stock Doritos again.

May 3^rd: Exhibit’s being set up in fits and starts. The fossils are all damned small (biggest one so far is probably the size of my palm), but I’m glad of it – there’re models of what the bones and shells would’ve looked like alive. Most of them make cockroaches look charming. Frank caught me wincing at one and laughed. Bastard sounds like some kind of bird with tar in its lungs.

Walked, watched, snacked.

Harriet complained a lot tonight.

May 4^th: I take back everything I said about the exhibit. They just unloaded their star piece, and the fucker’s bigger than I am. Frank says it’s a sea scorpion, a rare one, and then he babbled on and on about how near-perfectly preserved it was. Biggest thing in the seas, top predator of its age, unchallenged, blah blah blah till my ears were ready to fall off. He was enjoying it, too. I saw that look in his eye again; he likes it when I’m uncomfortable and can’t call him on it. Asshole.

Walked, watched, snacked.

There’s a poster that goes with the fossil. It has a picture. I wish it didn’t.

May 5^th: Yes, that thing’s the centerpiece all right. The sea scorpion’s sitting right there in its slab, surrounded by all the little ones like satellites – at a safe distance. I’d give that thing space too, and I’d imagine so did they, back in the day. I wonder how many of them were eaten by it. Or something like it.

Walked, watched, snacked.

Didn’t see Frank all day. Happily.

May 6^th: Work was fine – and again, Frank-less (hope he’s home sick) – but home was hell. Harriet went on, and on, and ON. Whining about my job, whining about the house, whining about why I “never do anything fun with her anymore”… for fuck’s sake woman, I work overtime on a security job at the most boring-ass place in the city, my scheduled shift changes with no warning whatsoever every other day, my closest coworker is a piece of piss in a cesspit, and you want to know why I have no energy at the end of the day? Fuck you Harriet, you stupid bitch.

Walked, watched, snacked.

God I wish I could slap her.

May 7^th: Frank’s back, and he was sick after all. Smirked at him all day, let the little shit have a taste of his own medicine, see how he likes it. He looked pale and twitchy, but who knows whether that was from the aftermath of the flu or me.

Walked, watched, snacked.

The lobby vending machine has Doritos again. No cool ranch though. Damnit.

May 8^th: The exhibit’s finished most of its setup. They saved the model (life-sized) of the sea scorpion for last. It’s positioned so that it points almost right at my station. If I don’t want the damned thing eyeing me in the jugular I need to prop myself up against the wall in a weird way until my arm goes to sleep.

Walked, watched, snacked.

Dad called this kind of shit “the heebie-jeebies.” Now I know what he meant. It has too many eyes. Just four of them, but that’s four too many. And they’re all looking right at me.

May 9^th: Frank felt well enough to start mouthing off at me again in that pissy little way of his that he thinks is so clever. I told him to go fuck himself. He got all shocked and offended – as if he had no idea he’d been “a nuisance.” Told him he could kill the attitude or I’d give him another sick leave personally. Little prick should keep a lot quieter around here now.

Walked, watched, snacked.

Thought I’d get used to the model. I’m not.

May 10^th: I’m on night shift for “the foreseeable future” now and I’m sure it’s Frank’s fault. I don’t know how he did it, but that little fucker looked smug today right after I learned about the schedule change. All I could not to punch him in his stupid, whiny little face. I don’t relish the thought of spending the night alone with that thing staring at me.

Walked, watched, snacked.

Harriet was at me again.

May 11^th: God, that woman won’t shut up. On and on and on. She complained at me all last evening about the new shift schedule, and kept it up all day. Then she started whining as I left that I hadn’t done anything but laze about. Goddamned bitch. Why can’t people just leave me the hell alone?

Walked, watched, snacked.

It’s hard to eat with the thing looking at you. You start to think it might be hungry.

May 12^th: Well, I found one unexpected benefit of my new scheduling – I see fuck-all of Frank nowadays. Unfortunately, I get to see five times as much of Harriet. Damnit, she WILL NOT SHUT UP. I’m trying to get more rest during the day so I’m at least half-alert on duty, but she seems to think that I’m just being a lazy bastard. And whenever I try to explain it to her she cuts me off with rambling about how I’m always making excuses and “being mean to her.” I should show her what the real meaning of that is someday.

Walked, watched, snacked. In the dark.

I’m actually looking forward to work now. I don’t have to cope with anyone or any of their bullshit. Just three things to do. Easy ones too.

May 13^th: I’ve found a way around Harriet’s rantings now – I just ignore her and go have a nap with the door shut. She sulks about it, but she’s quieter that way. I bumped into Frank on the way into work. He looked surprised at how happy I seemed. Go on; keep dropping the ball like that, you asshole.

Walked, watched, snacked.

I could get used to this.

May 14^th: Harriet actually woke me up this afternoon to have “a very serious talk.” That’s apparently bitch-code for “I want to complain at you and you can’t interrupt me or you’re mean.” It turned into a bit of a shouting argument – and those always end with her crying and swearing at me. It’s all a show anyways. She scurried out to plan her next move through the sobs after a while, and I locked the door after her. I’d better make a habit of that.

Walked, watched, snacked.

I think I’m even getting used to that blank-eyed stare coming from the model. It’s the only other thing in the building, we might as well get along. Even though it still gives me the creeps when it watches me eat.

May 15^th: It turns out locking the door isn’t such a great idea – Harriet wanted to get her purse for some reason or another after she’d left it in the bedroom. She wouldn’t stop yelling, even after I opened up and threw the thing to her. The only way to shut her up was to lock it again, and it took her a while to get tired of screaming at the closed door. Maybe I’ll get lucky and the bitch’ll lose her voice.

Walked, watched, snacked.

I left a chip in front of the display, tucked behind a sign and just to the side of the model. Maybe now the damned thing’ll stop staring at me.

May 16^th: I got back from work and found that she’d left. Well, at least I know why she was so eager to get her hands on that purse. She took all her stuff too – must’ve been busy moving all night. Probably got a few of her drinking buddies to help. Well, good riddance. She didn’t take any of my stuff and it’ll be a lot cheaper to keep everything going now. First Frank, now Harriet. The world’s full of assholes that’re out to get me, and every time they give me their best shot it just makes things more convenient for me. Just like Dad. The bastard kicked me out of the house and within three months I was holding down a better job than the old fucker ever had. And now there’s no one left to bug me. All alone, no need for family, friends, or shoal. The way it should be.

Walked, watched, snacked.

The chip was gone. I guess someone’s brat noticed it there in the middle of the day and snatched it. I put another one there. I’m not sure why. It’s not staring anymore, though.

May 17^th: Best day of my life. No Harriet, no noise, nobody. Just alone. I ate, I slept, I got up and left for work as the sun went down. Feels perfect. Alone, as it should be. Don’t need anyone else. I’m the biggest predator on a reef full of dawdling prey.

Walked, stared, snacked.

The chip was gone again. Too many greedy little spawn around here. I tossed the next one past the exhibit barrier. No way to get at it unless you’re willing to climb in, and it’s half-hidden behind the model’s base.

May 18^th: I got to work and saw Frank on the way in again. He still wasn’t looking too well – sickly and weak as ever. Amazing he hasn’t been hunted down by now. Gave him a big smile and a wink. The asshole stiffened up harder than his dick’d ever been. Let him stew on that for a while. How do I like my petty punishment, you puny prick? Just fine, thanks.

Walked, stared, snacked.

The new chip was missing. I put another one in. I don’t want it to start staring again.

May 19^th: As I signed in, I was told I’m going to be put back on the afternoon shift again. Frank. Again. And I’d just really started to enjoy this. And gotten used to the sleep cycle. What a colossally pathetic move of him. Weak and weedy little jerk, too cowardly to just face me. He knows I’m better than him, bigger than him. This’s my shift, my life, and they won’t meddle in it anymore. I’ll think of something – except I probably won’t need to. Do what comes naturally. Nothing they can do to me.

Walked, stared, snacked.

Put in a new chip. It’s looking at me again, though. Maybe it wants something else.

May 20^th: Tracked down Frank today. I was friendly, really friendly. We had a casual conversation about our respective shifts. He was pretty nervous – but not quite nervous enough that he didn’t mention that he was on the late-night shift now. My shift. Can’t have that, Frank. My territory, my hunting ground.

Walked, stared, snacked.

Didn’t eat the chip, won’t take it, maybe it wants something else. Doesn’t look the same in the daylight. Predators hunt by night, right? Maybe that’s when it’s awake.

May 21^st: Exhausted all day and now can’t sleep. Isn’t good. Can’t have this. If I’m tired, Frank’ll know I’m weak. He’ll try to take advantage of that. Got to show that little shit who’s the biggest. I can use this latest spit he’s flung at me as an advantage – trick him into thinking I’m weak hurt crippled easy prey. I want my night back, got to show him in charge.

Walked, stared, snacked.

Predators hunt at night.

May 22^nd: Yawned all day, half-asleep and dozy. Went home I was almost sleeping on my feet passed Frank he looked happy. Now that he’s overconfident I can deal with him. he won’t see it coming he’s not listening to his instincts unwary prey. Biggest predator.

Hunted, stared, snacked.

Night now.

May 23^rd: Found him. Easy hunt. He thinks too much, can’t move can’t act on instinct. Tried to find a weapon. stupid man stupid shit, little weakling, too stupid to fight to bite to claw.

Hunted, stared, snacked.

What do I do with the body?

May 24^th: skipped work came in at night stared at me wouldn’t stop staring at me chips aren’t any good anymore maybe it wants something else. nice night night nice hunting hours. easy to see the prey prey’s eyes don’t see can’t see but I can see. Fed it. fed.

hunted stared fed.

kill tastes suck and lap tear blood tastes good best.

Copyright Jamie Proctor, 2009.