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A cliff, a crag, a corrugated hut.

A scientist, a sleep, a snore. 

And a delicate little cough on a seismograph that sent Dr. Clauseway from dead asleep to live-wire-waking all in an instant, hacking and sputtering and fingers already twitching for a keypad. 

There – there they were.  Little tremors getting stronger by the second.  Too specific and too straightforward for an earthquake; too firm and decisive and steady for a bit of the headland falling apart into the ocean. 

“Grads!” shouted Dr. Clauseway, voice scraping into a shriek from disuse and over-muttering in their day-to-day life.  “Where are my grads?!  Lazy gadabouts!  Putrid gits!  Get recording!  Get sourcing!  Acquire equipment!  Locate transport!  Do everything we ever planned, and do it five minutes ago!”

From couches and bunks and alcoves the grads leapt, shambling creatures with hazy eyes and heavy lids and strong backs broken in half from labour. 

There was no time at all and everything to do.  The moment had arrived.  The time had come.  The furious scree of angry lariforms filled the air as much as their white wings did; nests disturbed and displaced and thrown into the sea by the growing force beneath them. 

Big Louise was waking up.  And only a few decades later than expected. 

***

The topsoil was the first to go; centuries of accumulation being shaken straight into dust.  Only the hardiest and most deeply-rooted patches of scrubs and shrubs held out more than an instant; the rest billowed into the air and the sky and the sea itself in boiling dust clouds, shrouding the entire peninsula in red and brown and grey grit that sparkled in the rising sunlight as last night’s stormclouds peeled away from the horizon to let in fresh light. 

From the edge of the cloud movement came, so big and so fast that it seemed slow as continental drift.  The land was moving.  The land was falling.  The land was gone. 

And from the land emerged Big Louise, seven miles across and twelve legs slowly flexing, carapace breathing free again for the first time in what Dr. Clauseway had estimated to be a thousand years.  Spiracles sucking in gases; tastebuds registering molecules; brain bigger than the scientific observation post warming up to thinking speed again. 

Ready or not!

***

Hillary Wake was on her fifth dose of pills and eighteenth cup of coffee and her eyes were starting to vibrate in their sockets but fuck, fuck, double-fuck her to her grave if she was going to take them back into port with this pitiful snippet of a catch.  Her children would starve, her wife wouldn’t look her in the eye, and her grandmother would oscillate in her grave. 

So fuck last night’s storm, fuck the fish that were hiding like cowards from her nets, and fuck the sky for daring to shine at her with six overlapping suns that were buzzing at her in waspish harmony. 

Also fuck that wave coming at her. 

“Grab onto something,” she said, or tried to say.  Maybe she just croaked.  Anyways she yanked the helm nine or ten ways and got lucky and they didn’t capsize, just barely crested the top of the murderous thing and came eye to eye-cavity with Big Louise as she waded ponderously, thighs-deep as she began to step off the continental shelf. 

Hillary’s crew was making noises, but they were talking too fast to be understood.

“Yah,” she told them, eyes on the water.  Eyes on the frothing, churned water.  Silver scales shining as they rose up; the still-living in a frenzy tearing at the flesh of the deceased and ruptured, or scavenging at tidbits stirred up from the bottom.  “Yah.  Okay.  Yah.  Hey, shut up?  We’re following the big girl now.  Get the nets out.  Are they broken?  Get more nets out.  Are we out?  Weave some using the industrial loom and your spare shirts and blankets.  And stop shaking at me!  It’s hard enough to keep my hands steady.”

There was only one other boat out there at the moment – some kind of ugly corrugated thing covered in satellite dishes? – but there’d be more soon.  A second wasted was a catch missed. 

***

Water surged up Big Louise’s sides as she took the plunge into something that could actually hold her body up; her limbs barely used and already aching from the combined stress of keeping her upright and mobile in the thin liquid of an atmosphere.  Dirt and stone and crushed flora and fauna alike streamed in ribbons from every claw as she kicked off gently, annihilating half an ecosystem in the force of her launch. 

She’d stumbled, she’d lurched, but now she moved in earnest.  Her bow wave smoothed into a ripple that could eat rip tides for breakfast; her bulk slid into a softer realm; and soon all there was to be seen of Big Louise above the surface was her wake and her scavenger cohorts – winged and afloat – and the slight buzz in the air that was her call, somewhere below the hearing range of every animal on the planet that wasn’t her. 

***

The pebble fell off the ledge and into the cup that yanked the cord that pulled the trigger that fired the pellet into the dartboard that shook the ball free that slid down the ramp that launched it through the net that dropped it onto the lever that tapped Eustace’s favourite mug’s handle and knocked it to the floor of the cabin, smashing it into a hundred pieces. 

“It’s afoot!” shouted Eustace, leaping upright from his bunk and slamming his head directly into his brother’s mattress. 

“Ow.  Fuck.”
“She’s risen up at last, brother!  The game’s come!  The time is now!  We’re going to get ‘err done at last!  Finally we can put the harpoon to use, and the cabling, and the barbs, and the weights, and the thermal lances, and the railgun!  Oh my GOD the railgun!  Have you calibrated it?  Calibrate it!  And we need to do something else we need to uhhhh…”
“Sail to her,” said Eustace’s other brother, at the helm. 

“Yes!  Sail to her!”
“I already started that sixty-four minutes ago, when the seismograph tripped.  Should be in sight within the hour on current heading.”
“Good!  Do that!  And get some coffee going!”

***

A little less than full fathom five Big Louise cruised, gill-batteries chugging along at full tilt with a reckless eager love for life after spending so long buried and quiescent.  A city’s-worth of water spilled through their system with every heave of intake and outtake, nutrients sent this-way, oxygenation that-way, deoxygenated leftovers the-other-way. 

All of it burning, burning, burning in the furnaces of a metabolism that even half-awake was its own ecosystem; uncountable trillions of long-neglected bacteria waking from ancient dreams to find their home warm and quick again, filled with freshness, with hunger, with life. 

***

“Life!” shouted Janice through the megaphone.

“LIFE!” agreed her congregation, bobbing around her in their varying degrees of seaworthiness.  Everything in the mission’s harbour that could float had been put to work and then some. 

“Is come!” continued Janice. 

“PRAISE BE!” replied her congregation.

“And with it, death!” explained Janice. 

“PRAISE BE!” expounded her congregation. 

“Greet Her as She comes gracefully!”
“PRAISE BE!”

“Do not shrink or shirk from what She offers you!”
“PRAISE HER!”
“And may we find fulfillment in what She grants!”
“AYE!”
Janice put away her megaphone, took a nice big drink of scotch, then returned to examining the radar.  Big Louise had acquired some stragglers as she approached, which was to be expected – but there were others approaching her head-on, and that wasn’t. 

The universe held no mistakes, only hilarious truths.  So presumably this was one of them.  Janice ordered some of the more handy Brothers and Sisters to get out the billhooks and fire-axes, just in case they needed to supply their own punchline. 

***

Complex currents were at work around and inside Big Louise.  Hot and cold shunted through and around each other, balanced and counter-balanced and weighted and re-weighted.  Six hearts operated as much by calculated demands to the laws of physics as through any sort of muscular action. 

Some veins and arteries bulged thickly as others tapered off, rerouting a blood supply that could fill rivers and lakes.

Big Louise’s legs stilled, their claw-tipped paddles angling precisely to keep her stable and angled correctly.  And her tail began to stir. 

***

“Ten miles and closing fast.”

God, Betty was bored bored bored.  She just wanted the stupid crab or whatever it was to show up so they could shoot it or not shoot it or whatever they were told to do.  Why were they here anyways?  ‘Monitoring?’  ‘Peacekeeping?’  God, she shouldn’t have slept in, maybe some of it would have sunken in over breakfast.  Fuck fuck fuck she wished she hadn’t missed breakfast.  God damnit.  It had been a bacon day too, hadn’t it?  Crap in a crabbucket.  Yes, it was Wednesday all right.  Damnit piss shit fuck Christ NOODLES. 

The safety was off, but that was fine, she was just fidgeting with it because she was bored – not being careless, she was deliberately keeping her hands away from the trigger! – and so when her gunnery officer affectionately slapped her on the back it completely wasn’t her fault that she grabbed the handle while trying to avoid having her face mashed into the console. 

***

Big Louise had very good vision of a very specific kind.  She could see the hum and bustle of the water as vividly as anything; she could spot stagnant water miles away; she could pinpoint the exact point where depth changed miles below her down to the temperature change at the tips of her legs. 

But she was a bit fuzzy on anything half her size or smaller.  So from her perspective, the odd buzzing sensation that skipped along the water just above her back came from nowhere.  Which was peculiar, so she stopped moving. 

Her wake didn’t, so it slapped lightly against her. 

***

The torpedo slipped lightly through the oncoming wave.

“HARD STARBOARD,” shouted Eustace’s other brother, yanking the wheel with his left hand and shoving Eustace and his railgun aside with his right. 

“HARD TO PORT, DAMN YOU!” yelled Janice at her driver, buckling on her fifth lifejacket. 

“HNEEEEEEEERGH” snorted Hillary Wake, spinning the wheel both of the correct ways at once to avoid all six of the incoming explosives. 

“ABANDON SHIP,” hollered Doctor Causeway, vaulting three grads and cutting the lifeboat free alone. 

“Oh.  Shit,” said Betty.

“Eh?” asked her gunnery officer. 

And Big Louise’s backup eye broke water. 

***

It was the smallest of her visual clusters, measuring a mere six meters across, but it was suspended at the tip of a prehensile tendril instead of buried within a protective crater, and so was ideal for little passing moments of curiosity like this. 

It hung there in the sky, passing over the small and disparate fleet that surrounded her.  For a moment the air was very still and very clear.  Thoughts of violence drained away at the sheer spectacular scale of life, of the magnitude of the force beneath them all.  Why could anything be done that would cause harm?  What would the point of it all be?  As well might an ant engage in vendetta upon the doorstep of God. 

Then Eustace fired the railgun at it and missed and hit the small and corrugated research boat, and perspective was restored. 

***

Still puzzled, Big Louise sank down to where even she couldn’t see anything, over a full body-length below the dry thinness, and there she laid her first clutch.  At last she had succeeded; a long rest had given her troubled body the strength it needed to endure the turbulent incubation of thousands of tons of eggs.  With a little luck they might not inherit her small stature; the result of a hungry childhood.  Here the seas promised rich a welcome for her own children. 

There were odd plinking sensations against her carapace as she laid; the fragmented remains of some sort of hard rain from above, but Big Louise was too large to notice it so she didn’t. 

There was a sort of nasty iron taste in the water for a few miles though. 

“She’s up!”

Beth finished her coffee and promised herself there’d be another one.  Then she stood up, sighed, adjusted her belt, rubbed her face, ran out of simple ways to stall and walked the seventy thousand miles to the county jail cell one room away. 

Inside it was Hannah Thorne, who was currently wearing nothing but blood and a patchy woolly blanket. 

Again. 

“Whoops,” she said, a little sheepishly. 

“No, Hannah,” said Beth. 

“I’m sorry?” she tried. 

“No, Hannah.”
“I’m REALLY sorry?”
“No, Hannah.”
“I apologize for saying last time was the last time?”

“No, Hannah.”
The embarrassment was starting to fade into annoyance.  “What is it then?”
“It’s ‘I’ll cooperate with the murder investigation, Officer Gubbin,’” said Beth. 

Hannah’s entire face froze while her brain rebooted.  Except for her mouth, which reflexively said “murder?”

“You had someone’s leg in your mouth, Hannah.  Mostly down to the gristle, but pretty fresh.  Now we have to go find out who didn’t come back home last night, which means I’m spending all morning driving.  With you.  Put some pants on, we’re going for the long walk of shame here.”

Beth Gubbin didn’t consider herself prejudiced, and in fact prided herself on personally getting her last co-worker fired for being two hundred pounds of bigotry with a badge.  But some days she was pretty sick and tired of the mayor’s daughter being a werewolf. 

***

They did town first.  That took about six minutes.  Nobody was missing, which Beth had more or less figured.  Hannah was an outdoorsy sort of girl, no matter which skin she was wearing, and the last six (six?  How had it turned into six?) times Beth had done this dance with her she’d been off frolicking in the countryside, turning someone’s livestock or pet into hamburger.

“I’m sorry,” Hannah mumbled. 

“Mmm?”
“I’m sorry for-”

“It wasn’t you.”
“It WAS, I was just-”

“No, I’m blaming Bart for this.  I’ve told him over and over he needs to invest in a proper silver chain, but your idiot father thinks you’re still six and a little cast iron necklace can hold you in your room all night.  The chump.  The dolt.  The absolute imbecile.”
“Hey, he-”

“Next time eat HIM, okay?  I’ve never voted for him anyways.”
“Uh,” said Hannah.  And that was that until they pulled up to the Mason farm, knocked on the door, and were immediately led round the back to the fields, where a tractor sat lonely under a big blue sky. 

Next to the tractor was about half a woman. 

“Urgh.”

“Yep.  Need a moment?”
“I did that?”

“Possibly.”
“Possibly?”
“Look closer here, at the edge?”
“Hurrrklh!”
“Okay, step back again, never mind, breathe, breathe.  Point is-”

“Bluuugh.”
“-point is that there aren’t any teeth marks.”

“Maybe I…used my… claws?”
“No.  I’ve seen carcasses left by your little adventures half a hundred times: you’re a gnawer, Hannah.  And besides, no scratches either.  This looks like a Fargoing.”
“A what?”
“You ever seen the movie Fargo?”
“The WHAT?”
Beth sighed.  “Before your time.  Okay, look, I think what happened here is Peggy finally lost her shit at May’s drinking and clocked her one, then fed the body through the rotary tiller a bit.  The blood doesn’t look fresh, so she probably hung onto it until full moon rolled around and she could plausibly blame it on you.”
“We’re standing on a murderer’s farm?”
“Yeah, pretty much.  I’m going to phone in Danny to come around and do the legwork; you can go sit in the car if you’d like.”

Hannah did that, which meant Beth could swear as much as she liked when Danny gave her the news. 

“Something wrong?” asked Peggy, trailing after her. 

“Bad news is all.  You’re a murder suspect, by the way.  Danny’ll be by; don’t try to run off or anything because I know for a fact that hunk of junk you own wouldn’t last four minutes on the highway.  Thanks for having us.  C’mon, Hannah.”
“We’re going back?”

Beth peeled out of the driveway slowly and begrudgingly as Peggy shouted something unintelligible at them.  “Nope.  Going down to the Harner place.”
“Why?”
“Dead guy in their driveway.”

***

A very, very dead guy in the Harner driveway.  Unlike May Mason, most of him was still there.  But it had been considerably rearranged. 

“Horlph!”
“Breathe, breathe, breathe.  And point over there, away from the crime scene.  You okay?”
“No.”
“That’s alright.  Now, this one pretty obviously isn’t your fault.”
“No… teeth…marks?”
“Yep.  And also buddy here still has both legs.  You’re cleared.  Now, what’s the first thing you noticed about this body, Hannah?”
Hannah turned even paler.  “Well… the purple bit.  I think it’s the liver?”
“Yep.  Pretty striking.  But let me be more specific: what’s the first thing you noticed about this body besides its physical… state, Hannah?”

“I’m uhm.  Not sure I got past that.”
“That’s fair.  Well, I noticed that I have no idea who this is.”
“Should you?”
“I’m half of the full-time police force of this county, Hannah.  I know everybody.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.  You’ve got a pretty good excuse for not getting out much.  Anyways, this guy’s wearing pretty beat-to-shit clothing and besides the mangling – which I think was done with a kitchen knife – the actual death itself probably came from the bullet through the chest, which I’d wager will match to Mickey Harner’s favourite shotgun.  Paranoid old bastard probably blew away a tramp asking to stay the night or trying to sleep in his garage, then tried to pin it on you.”

“So.  Uhm.  What do we do?”
“I phone Danny, you get back in the car and start brainstorming where we have lunch.”

***

It was McDonalds. 

“Really?”
“Dad never lets me come here.”
“Bart’s a damned health nut.”
“No, he just doesn’t like Mr. Durham much.”

“Oh.  He’s still holding a grudge over that?”
“Over what?  He just complains about him a lot.”
“Yeah, he would.  Tim Durham slept with Tracy Gilmore back in ’85.”
“Mrs. Gilmore dated my dad?”
“No, but he really wished she did.”
“Oh.”
Beth sighed.  “Sorry, Hannah.  I wish there were a more delicate way to put it, but your dad’s sort of a shithead.”

“Yeah,” she said, head bowed. 

“Have the rest of my fries.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank YOU.  I can’t afford the cholesterol.  Sit tight, I’m going to the restroom.  If I’m not back in six minutes here’s my phone, call Danny.”

Eight minutes later Hannah knocked on the bathroom door. 

“C’mon in.  Did you call Danny?”
“No.”
“Teenager.  Mind your step.”
Hannah walked in, minded her step, stepped in someone’s kidney, and threw up in the sink.
“The toilet was RIGHT THERE, Hannah.”
“Eurururublugough.”
“Fine, fine.  Jesus what a mess, there must be like six people in here.  In and around.”
Hannah raised her head for breath and was eye to eye with one eye on the sink counter. 

“Haaaaglorf!”
“Maybe just don’t look at anything for a little while.  Shut your eyes, okay?”
“The… smell.”
“Oh yeah.  Okay, maybe plug your nose too.  Yeah, this is real fresh.  I’d say it happened in the last hour or so so you’re clear again, no worries.  I’d say the new shift manager did it; he looked awful nervous when we walked in the door and this looks like Jason Mayhew’s torso over here – got that missing nipple. He must’ve come in early for his shift and found him chopping up the other five.”
Hannah threw up again.

“As for motive…mmm.  Not sure.  Sometimes people just have one little thing too many happen, and god knows fast food gives you enough of those.  I’ll phone Danny and then I’ll get out there and cuff the guy to something, you can just-”
“YORKGH!”
“-not move for a few minutes.”

***

Later, in the car, Beth saw something other than nausea on Hannah’s face. 

“Something on your mind?”
She shook her head.

“Like hell.  Come on, spit it out.”
“How did you know Jason Mayhew had a missing nipple?”
Beth shrugged.  “There’s only one beach in town.  You notice things.”
“Oh.”
“That, and I slept with him in ’88.”
“OH.”
“He’d just lost it that year; his ex bit it off.”
“Why?”
“Throes of passion, I think.  Nobody you know; she got picked up for car theft after that and moved out of town.”
“Sorry.”
“About what?”
“Him.  Jason.   Dying.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it.  Stuff happens around here.  And just between you and me?  He was a pretty lousy boyfriend.  He earned that missing nipple fair and square.”

Beth rounded a curve in the road and slammed on the brakes so hard Hannah almost threw up again. 

“Sorry about that.  Road’s blocked.”
Very, very blocked.   The car was upside down and backwards and in the wrong lane and its windshield had been turned into a fine glittery shrapnel that coated the asphalt for a hundred feet. 

“Come on, let’s check it out.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yep.  Your stomach’s been getting a good toughening-up this morning, a little more won’t hurt.  And you can pace out the skidmarks for me.”
Hannah paced out the skidmarks for her while Beth poked around the car. 

“Wow. You don’t see this every day.  Hey!  Hannah!  Come and take a look at this.”
Hannah didn’t come and take a look at that.

“Oh come on.  It’s not that bad.  Besides, you don’t get to see something like this every day.”
“I just saw six disassembled bodies in a fast food bathroom.”
“Yeah and I found you with someone’s leg in your mouth, it’s been a busy morning for everybody.  Now C’MERE.”

Hannah c’mered.  The woman inside the car was more or less in one piece and had both legs, which was a relief, and had a ribcage that had been nearly reduced to a flat surface, which was less of a relief.

“UGH.”
“Hey, no vomit!  Good going, you can take over for me in ten years.”
“No thanks.  Isn’t Dan going to do that?”
“I wouldn’t let him take over the coffee maker.  Now, what do you think happened here?”
“Car crash?”
“Yep, but that happened post-mortem.  See this fur?”
“She has both legs!”
“Well, you could have killed more than one person, but that’s not what I was getting at – ease up.  This isn’t from a wolf anyways.  Moose!  Betty here ran into a moose and it went right through her windshield and into her chest.  Instantly fatal – not for the moose, mind you; poor bastard probably wobbled off into the woods to die.”

“Is that what left the blood on the road?”
“Probably.  Unless it came from the passenger.”

“What?”

“The side door’s open and it wasn’t wrenched; someone got out of here.  I’m guessing there was no phone or it was broken, since there were no emergency calls.  You know what road we’re on here, Hannah?”
“No.  Dad doesn’t let me out much.”
Beth patted her arm.  “Sort of a shithead.  Don’t worry about it.  But you SHOULD worry about where we are, because we’re on Hillmoore’s Line.  I think the poor bastard limped out of the wreckage, went looking for help, and stumbled right into one of the Hillmoore boys that had spotted the lights and was looking for a midnight snack.  Not much we can do about that but get a search warrant going and hope they got sloppy this time.  Usually they’re pretty careful about hiding the bodies – the fuckers own their own pig farm.”

“What if I got him instead of them?”
“You’re a strong girl, Hannah.  I read the paper, I know about the school track team.  But even gone full-moon-furry you aren’t going to pick a fight for a corpse on Hillmoore’s Line without starting something you couldn’t handle.  Those kids are maniacs.  More pertinently they’re well-armed maniacs.”
Hannah muttered something. 

“No.  And besides, there’d be more blood anyways.  You’re a messy eater, and I’m not talking about the French fries.”

***

Danny called on the way back into town. 

“Shit,” said Beth as she hung up.

“You aren’t supposed to use a phone when you’re driving.”
“It was just a call; it’s texting that kills people.”
“Distracted driving is –”

“We’re going back into town; someone’s left your P.E. teacher’s head on the school roof.”
“Oh no!”
“You liked Jim-Bob?”
“No!  Nobody did!”
“Yep.  Going to be a lot of suspects.  Mind you, fewer of them could get onto the roof.”

“Was it me?”
“Who knows?  We’re dropping you off at home first anyways; there’s going to be reporters there already and your dad’ll never stop bugging me if I drag you near a camera like this.”
“What?”
“You’re wearing my old work clothes, you smell like vomit, and you broke out of your house and removed someone’s leg last night.  Some of those things are more obvious than others.”

“Oh.”
“Yep.”
Bart’s car was still in the driveway, meaning he’d probably been too angry to go to work.  Beth was going to owe Danny a few more donuts this week if he’d been dealing with the mayor in between calls all morning. 

“Right, we’re here.  I’ll come inside and talk him down before I go, okay?”
“…thanks.”
“No problem.”
Two minutes of waiting at the door disproved Beth’s statement. 

“Oh come on,” said Hannah, and she shook the handle a particular way three times and it popped open like old Tupperware. 

“Surprised he hasn’t fixed that.”
“He doesn’t know about it.  You won’t tell him, will-”

Beth gave it a moment, then stepped inside a room that had been turned inside out twice over, except for Bart Thorne, who had been turned inside out four times and then put back together for good measure. 

Exactly one of his legs was missing. 

“Hmm,” said Beth.  “I’ll phone Danny.  You want to come with me to the school?  Don’t see why not at this point.”

On Saturday morning, while sitting (slightly hunched) at her desk, Sharon suddenly became powerfully and immediately aware that the floor was lava.

It was a good thing she was slouched over with her feet propped up on the corner of her desk, or it could have been very ugly indeed.  As it was she just had enough time to smell the hairs on her dangling left arm burning before she had to yank it away from a surface that was now considerably hotter than even the stuffiest days of summer had ever rendered it. 

“Fuck,” she swore.  This would have been much easier if she’d been in her bedroom, or the kitchen.  Now she was surrounded by molten magma with nothing but a chair and a desk separating her from it.  Wonderful.  Just wonderful. 

The chair had wheels. 

It took Sharon five minutes of very patient pushing and prodding at the walls to get her into a position adjacent to the kitchen, whereupon her chair finally hit a ruck in the carpet and tipped over, forcing her to make a dive for safety atop the stove, which turned on.  After she’d extinguished the fire she used the fridge as a recon point to cautiously hop into the hallway and cling to the bookcase for dear life.  The laminated plywood creaked under her hands and the top shelf spilled its guts; an entire five years of National Geographic showered past her head and bobbed cheerily on top of molten rock; untouched by the sulphurous heat. 

Sharon’s obsessive-compulsive disorder tingled at her, unsatisfied and unfulfilled.  So she said “fuck,” instead, scrabbled over to the far side of the bookcase, and launched herself face-first into her bedroom, where she hit the bed with her face, rolled over six times, and wrapped herself up in her blankets. 

Far, far away she heard the faint sound of her cat bitching at her as he stood crabby-faced and entirely untouched in the midst of searing temperatures. 

“No,” she told him.  And then she went to bed at ten-thirty AM. 

***

On Sunday morning Sharon awoke with the cat’s anus four inches away from her face, as usual. 

She fed him.  It shut him up.  She drank coffee.  It shut the voices in her head up. 

Ah, normal. 

Almost normal. 

She frowned as wakefulness crept in from the periphery of her brain to colonize the cerebellum’s highlands.  Something was wrong.  Something wasn’t usual.  Something was different. 

No, the floor wasn’t lava anymore.  Good thing too, since she hadn’t checked until just now. 

No, the air wasn’t lava either. 

No, she’d just fed the cat. 

Oh right, she was out of milk. 

The people on the street knew something was wrong too.  Their eyes hunted Sharon, twitchy and nervous, fingers grasping at their coats and legs twitching to propel them that crucial extra ten inches away from her on the sidewalk.  She felt as if she’d been sprayed by a skunk, and checked her deodorant carefully. 

Nope, still there. 

Milk, more cereal, a bag of chips to kill herself slightly faster.  The cashier stood ramrod-stiff on her side of the counter, eyes wary. 

“Put it down,” she told Sharon, voice trying to find a place somewhere between wary and war-y. 

“Is a twenty too big to break now?”
“Put it down on the counter and step back.”
Sharon held out the bill and she shrank backwards.

Wait.  The crawling, icy feeling churning in her bones made sense.  Everything made sense.

“Oh,” she said.  “I’m It.”

The cashier said nothing, not even as Sharon leaned over very, very, very carefully and poked her arm with one finger.

“No tag-bags,” she said reflexively, and was rewarded with a surge of genuine hatred in the eyes of her customer service representative.  Shaken, she returned home and spent the day asleep in the rubble of a bag of chips. 

***

On Monday morning Sharon thought it was Sunday still or possibly Saturday and got up at eleven-thirty, had two cups of coffee, ignored the cat and fed him in that order, stared blankly into space, remembered that she probably should’ve made sure the floor wasn’t lava at some point, then also remembered it was her shift today. 

“Oh,” she said. 

Five minutes later, running down the road, she amended herself: “fuck.”

The bus wasn’t coming.  Half an hour late, no notice given, no bus.  Which would’ve been easy to see coming too, because there were no cars.  No bikes.  No pedestrians.  No traffic at all.

No ANYBODY at all.

So Sharon walked ten miles to work and arrived halfway through her shift, composing her resignation speech in her head.  She was trying to think of a good word to attach to “spittle” when she realized work was also empty.  The coffee machine was spotlessly unattended.  The barstools were cold and unwarmed by asses of any magnitude or insignificance.  The caffeinated had been left to go latte themselves. 

She signed in at seven AM because who the hell would know, got changed, and slouched at the counter for two hours before she started screaming obscenities nonstop at the top of her lungs. 

Ten minutes into THAT she stopped for breath, breathed, then heard someone else keep breathing when she was through. 

Five minutes after that she found where the sound was coming from; the balled-up, cramped, eyes-bugged, hands-clasped-over-mouth form of her manager, who’d somehow managed to cram herself into the scone cupboard.

It took her another two hours to find everyone else’s hiding spots for her shift – the broom cupboard; the out-of-service toilet; tucked into three separate parkas and wedged into the back of the freezer with an oxygen tank; hiding atop the shop’s marquee behind the logo; and at home under the bed – and by the time she was through her hours were up and frankly she would’ve preferred having to deal with customers.

She went home, thought about her pay, kicked off her shoes, and went to bed. 

Her cat bitched at her until he got within arm’s reach, where she cuddled him until he gave up. 

***

On Tuesday morning Sharon slept in. 

***

On Wednesday morning Sharon stayed at home. 

***

On Thursday morning she turned off her phone.

***

On Friday morning Sharon ignored the knocking until the door fell in. 

“C’mon,” the world told her.  “C’mooooon.”
She pulled the blankets over her head.

“C’moooooooooooon,” they said, tugging at the sheets.  “You PROMISED.  Today is I Spy.  You’ve gotta play it.”
“No.”
“You’ve GOTTA.”
“No.”
“C’mooooooooooooooon come plaaaaaay with usssssssssss,” the world said.  “C’mooooon.  Don’t be a party-pooper.  C’mooooon.”

“Fine,” said Sharon.  “I Spy something new.”

“Is it the ceiling?”
“No.”
“Is it the floor?”
“No.”

“Is it the walls?”
“No.”
“Is it the cat?”
“No.”
“Is it the bed?”
“No.”
“Is it you?”
Sharon didn’t say anything. 

“Is it you?”
Sharon didn’t say anything.

“You have to say if we got it right!”
Sharon didn’t say anything and the world pulled the sheets off the bed to find nothing there at all except a still-warm pillow, cooling rapidly in the breeze from the open window.

“Oh BEANS,” they said. 

At that moment the cat, wounded by their ignoring his bitching, clawed their leg open.   

***

Sharon was already halfway out of town by then, but the scream was plenty loud enough that there was no mistaking it. 

Still, she had a good head start.  And some motivation to make due on it. 

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

“Hi, you’ve reached Bob’s Big Guns and Bear Traps, where you come to get in touch with your wild side and blow it away.  I’m a little busy right now and can’t make it to the phone, so please leave a message on the machine after the tone and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.  Thanks for calling.”

Beeeep.

“Hi, Bob, this is Dr. Troyer; I’m just checking in on you this week since you haven’t submitted your scheduled activity logs.  If you’ve forgotten my email or need any assistance, please feel free to call this number and leave a message at any time.  Remember, your body needs time not only to heal but also to actually work: you’ve lost four fingers six toes and your entire nose.  This therapy is part of that work, and I want your recovery to be as smooth and painless as humanly possible.  Please contact me as soon as you can.”

***

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

“Hi, you’ve reached Bob’s Big Guns and Bear Traps, where you come to get in touch with your wild side and blow it away.  I’m working on something at the moment, so I might be away from the desk frequently.  Leave a message and I’ll return your call when possible.  Thanks for calling.”

Beeeep.

“Bobby?  Are you there?  You haven’t talked to me since the attack, Bobby.  I’m worried about you, you know that, right?  Worried about you not SCARED of you, I’ll love you no matter if you have the right number of fingers and toes or an entire nose or not, you know that, right?  Right?”

“Please Bobby pick up the phone, I don’t know what you’re doing.  Are you doing your physiotherapy?  Because your doctor phoned me and told me to tell you that you should be doing that.  Dwelling on this won’t help!  Come on, phone me, I need to talk to you.  We can go out and visit that fry shack you love so much and you can order as many billberry tequilas as you’d like, just pick up the phone and talk to me!”

“Bobby?  Come on, can’t you hear m”

Beeeep.

***

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

“Hi, you’ve reached Bob’s Big Guns and Bear Traps, currently and temporarily closed while we sort out a few pest issues.  Nothing major, so don’t worry – we’ll soon be back in business of giving you the business you need to put wildlife where it belongs: six feet under or in a barbeque.  Leave a message after the tone or call back in, oh, about a week.”

Beeeep.

“Bob, this is Dr. Laurier.  You’ve persistently avoided talking to me ever since you were no longer confined to a hospital bed, and this is unacceptable.  You have a problem, Bob, on that we agree, but on the solution?  I completely dispute that you’re in fit condition mentally or physically to go hunt that bear, Bob, even if that was the sort of therapy I recommended.  Which it is not.  Leave it to the park rangers, Bob, and if you want to help?  Talk to them.  Don’t be an action hero.  Phone me.  Now.”

***

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

“Hi, you’ve reached the former location of Bob’s Big Guns and Bear Traps, which has been turned into a righteous tool for a righteous cause: vengeance.  Tonight I depart, and tomorrow I will return either with my shield or on it.  I look forward to your custom when the business reopens with my tormentor’s stuffed head mounted over the till.  Leave a message but do not expect it returned anytime soon: words mean nothing to me now, only the hunt.”

Beeeep.

“Hey Bob it’s Stan, let me get right to it: where the hell’s my giant novelty bear trap?  You said you’d just need it for one night and it’s been almost a week; what the hell man?  It’s not like I NEED the thing, since you only gave it to me as a gag gift in the first place, but it’s rude to just walk off with stuff without saying so.  Did you at least oil the springs?  I might not have told you that, but it needs those springs oiled or it sticks.  And it’s no fun trying to unstick that thing without losing your entire torso to it.  You’re down a lot of fingers, man, don’t go doing anything stupid.”

“Uh.  Bob?  You didn’t do anything stupid, ri”

Beeeep.

It’s a beautiful, beautiful day.

Big, too – the horizon has that extra width to it that can only come from last night’s storm clouds fading away on its edges, leaving the air dew-fresh and just a little thick.  The sun is strong, the breeze is gentle and insistent.  The bugs that are out are slow and unsteady, the ground is damp and the big puddles are still there and not yet starting to steam. 

On days like this, he feels good.  And when he feels good, he feels bold.  And when he feels bold, he gets himself an unusual breakfast. 

So he spreads his wings and leaves the shining shore behind and flies low, low over the perfect blue water and he keeps his bright little eyes focused on what was underneath it. 

He had always been eager for new things.  He was the first to snatch dinner from his mother’s beak; he was the first to try flapping; he was the first to topple pell-mell out of the nest altogether; the first to leave for good. 

And he’d been the first to wonder about the funny little wriggly things with no limbs but fins that muddled and fuddled their way beneath the lagoon’s surface, and the first to try to pounce at them – and then the first to discover, much to his delight, that pouncing with sufficient fierceness would carry you right through the calm flat blue and right into their soft and fine-scaled flesh, tooth and talon. 

The damp feathers afterwards were frustrating, but the meal was delicious.  And on a day like this the sun will steam him dry before he’s even finished eating. 

And that’s why he watches the water so hungrily as he goes now, beak clicking, teeth clacking.  Last night’s storm hadn’t been violent, but it had been insistent.  He’s behind on food – not by enough to hurt, but enough to vex.  And when he’s vexed he feels bolder.

The fish squirms, just at the edge of his eyes, and he thinks second and pounces first.

Water is a tricky thing.  It lets you breath, but not as well as air.  It can crush you or hold you up.  It can sweep you away or let you float. 

And it can play with light so that a big fish far away can be a little fish just below the surface, leaving him with a beakful of nothing and a sharp anger and a sudden, profound tug at one leg.

Then both legs. 

Then his body. 

Then his wings. 

Something much bigger than any fish is on him, a toothless, mouthless pull that drags him down.  He flaps and flaps and flaps like he hasn’t since he was in the nest and dreaming of the sky, but instead of too-thin air there’s the weight of the world around him, pressing on him, wearing at him, dragging him down. 

The fish was gone. 

He sank, and up around him came a blue so much more profound than the sky that his body shook with it. 

It was a beautiful, beautiful, day. 

That never matters, does it?

***

For Gunbod, the day was neither beautiful nor ugly, just long, which was why he almost put his pick right through the thing before he saw it.  The metal tip veered at the last moment, betrayed by tired and inflexible muscles, and it sank off-base.  Then he cursed, leaned close, pulled, and as his brow furrowed and his back ached he was eye to eye with something very very old. 

So he told the foreman. 

And the foreman told the quarry’s owner. 

And the quarry’s owner sent word to a good friend of his, Baron Menzen. 

Baron Menzen came late in the evening, by carriage, and peered at the rock under lantern-light and lens. 

“A bird,” he said.  “And a very beautiful one.  Look, you can even see the feathers… oh, this is wonderful.  I will pay for this.”

And the quarry’s owner was delighted for such an opportunity to further endear himself to his good friend, Baron Menzen, and so did not charge more than a nominal price, which was exactly the sort of thing Baron Menzen had long ago learned to smile at.  It made life easier for him. 

The bird did not. 

It was so beautiful that it was the work of many days to remove the stone around it a chip at a time, with each blow of hammer or chisel sweated over for fear it would send a crack through the leaf-delicate imprint of a ghostly feather.  Baron Menzen swore and sweated all day between meals, which were delivered to his study.  He slept in his chair fitfully, and awoke with hands already clutching at his tools. 

After six days of this his eyes were full of spots and his head was full of cobwebs and his hands were shaking and his nerves were cracking and he cleared his throat and called for his maid.

“Clean up in here,” he said.  “I’m going for a walk.  Don’t touch anything important.”

Or else, he didn’t say.  And she heard it quite clearly, especially when he slapped her rear on the way out the door.  She knew his moods. 

Her name was Grasell.  She had lived at the estate her entire life, and worked there for half of it – officially for half of it, after she’d helped her mother without pay for most of the first half. 

“Busy hands can wash dishes,” she’d been told.  “Wandering eyes can look for dust.  Itchy feet can run to the woodshed.”

So she’d washed and looked and run and then she’d been a maid and had to do all of that and also have her rear slapped, and she’d done all of those things quite well.  But what made her a good maid was none of that, it was that she could do all of those things without ever once revealing to anyone how badly she wanted to break everything around her into little tiny pieces. 

Even when she was by herself, with a fragile piece of stone that her master had paid more money for than she’d made in her life. 

The desk was cleaned of crumbs; the shelves were dusted; the floor was swept; the crumbled bits of limestone had been taken away.  Everything looked so very clean and sensible now, exactly as it ought to.  The bird lay frozen on its back in the stone, on the wood, and it was as if it could never have been anything else or anywhere else at all. 

Were those teeth?

Grasell had been a very bold child, and had run her mother ragged just coming up with chores for her.  She’d hoped that she’d done well enough work tempering her to keep her impulses in check, but it was and is and will be the fate of parents to never, ever be correct. 

She was also a little bit near-sighted.

So when Grasell leaned down and close enough for her breath to fog the cool surface of the stone bird’s body, and peered carefully at what were indeed little tiny but perfect teeth, it was as much fate as chance as anything at all when her nose brushed the surface of its beak. 

Oh. 

Grasell blinked and watched the world swim back into focus in front of her eyes.  She felt as if she’d come up for air for the first time in forever. 

Oh. 

Oh.  The poor thing.  All that blue, all around it.  Then the dark and the weight. 

Poor thing.  Poor little bird. 

Her ears still felt clogged, like she was stuck underwater.  She pawed at them.  No, still ringing. 

Oh.  That wasn’t her ears.  That was the baron, shouting at her.  She’d never heard his voice go quite that loud or high before; it was like a bat, or one of the big membrane-winged flying creatures that sometimes nested on the island in the late days of spring.  Their calls had been so sad, and she felt a bite of pity inside her that none of them were there anymore to herald the lengthening days. 

What was he mad about?  She was still touching the stone with her nose, that must be why.  It had been a long time ago that she’d done that.  A long, long time underwater.  Yes, she could straighten up now, she decided.  It had been long enough.

It was also something the baron approved of, because it put her face somewhere where it was safe for him to hit it.  Right on the cheek too, a proper place for a bruise.  And again.  And again.  She was going to be purple when this was over, if she were lucky. 

The baron grabbed at her, held her by the arms, bug-eyed and furious as angry little pants steamed from his beard.  She saw that his clothes were rumpling and how would she ever get them back into shape again, much less remove the stains?  Her mother would be aghast if she was still alive. 

His hand moved against her wrist, adjusting his hairy-knuckled grip. 

That was when Grasell knew something new: the bird’s wings had claws. 

And very, very quickly Baron Menzen knew that too. 

***

Grasell stepped outside through the servant’s door through the last time and thought about names.  She’d daydreamed a few times of them, but now she’d need to pick one for later, once her head start had worn off. 

It wasn’t going to be pretty.  But there were places she could go that weren’t here, especially with some of the shinier things that had been in the estate.  Maybe an ocean away.  Yes, an ocean away would be nice.  Put all that blue water between her and here. 

She would have to be careful.  Water was tricky like that.  But she could do it.  She knew she could.  Boldness had always suited them. 

And the sky was soft and only half-clouded.  No rain to be guessed at.  It was summer.

Yes, it was a beautiful day.  It was a beautiful day for sure. 

And this time they wouldn’t take it for granted.