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It was a good sunny day with a light breeze to keep the bugs off, so it was no wonder when eager Ed said to one and all “Hey!  Let’s go fishing!” and less wonder when lazy Jed said “sure, why not,” and small shock when practical Fred said “I’ll bring the sandwiches,” and a surprise to nobody when it was reliable Ned that said “Let’s go down to Butterscotch Bay.  I found a new place down there the other day.”

So they went down to Butterscotch Bay, where the water is so thick and brown and glistening in the light that you could pour it on ice cream, armed with rod and line and reel and sandwiches, Ed and Fred and Ned and Jed and a single curious seagull – in that order – because sometimes life just doesn’t throw you a single curveball all inning long. 

***

Ned’s new spot was a little bay in the bay, hidden behind an armpit-deep thicket but blessed with a clear open patch of ground. 

“Doesn’t look like much,” said Ed.

“It gets deep fast,” said Ned.  “Wade in to your shins and in two more steps you’re up to your shoulders.”
“Well heck, that’s good enough for me then.  That good enough for you, Fred?”
“That’s good enough  for me,” said Fred, who was passing around some disposable gloves.  “No, not for you, Jed.”
“Whuffor?”

Ed grinned in a particularly sparkly sort of way that had not one ounce of sunshine in it as the gloves snapped around his wrists.  “Well, Jed, thing is, we know about the business with Barb and the kids.”
Jed’s face did a funny thing where it tried to purple and pale at the same time until he looked like blueberries in clotted cream.  “What did you I don’t know what you let me explain it’s all lies what did they say it’s not what it looks like nothing happened let me tell-”

Ned grabbed his arms, Ed grabbed his legs, and Fred grabbed out some fishing line and – from the bottom of the cooler – a few likely bricks, and everything came together just like that, with only so much fuss.  Which was nice.  It was a good sunny day and it didn’t need to be spoiled with a lot of carrying on. 

“Aim past the stump,” said Ned.  “That’s where it’s deep enough.”

“One, two, three,” said Fred.  And yes, it WAS deep enough. 

***

Ed and Fred and Ned had a beer or two while they waited for the bubbles to stop.  It only took half a can, but nobody’d stop at half a can, that’d just be silly.

“Well,” said Fred, “that’s done and over with.”
“And none too soon if you ask me,” said Ed viciously.  “Better than he deserved.  By all rights we should’ve taken our time a little.  Made him squirm.  Let him squeal.”

“That so?” asked Ned. 

“Damn straight.  Nothing worse than turning on your family like that.  I know it was convenient to get it over and done quickly, but-”

“Nothing worse than turning on your family, that’s right,” said Fred. 

“Agreed,” said Ned.

“Yeah!” said Ed.

“Like what happened with grandma’s savings,” said Fred.

“What?” said Ed.

“And dad’s investments,” said Ned.

“Hey, that was-”

“That sure-fire gambling system wasn’t so sure after all, was it?” said Fred.

“It was nine-out-of-ten od-”

“Not the best advice you ever gave him, those stocks” said Ned.

Ed’s pupils had gotten real big for someone in the broad daylight of a beautiful summer day without an ounce of anything more alarming than a can of lite beer in their system.  “Listen, fellas, I said I’d pay it all back, and I meant it, I’m doing what I can, I am, I am, just-”
“You will,” said Ned, standing up in front of him and taking hold of his arms.  “If we have to make you.”

“You are,” said Fred, coming up behind him with a loop of fishing line.  “That life insurance’s been cooking long enough.”

It wasn’t quite as drawn-out as Jed, but it was a little bit messier.  But they hadn’t taken the gloves off yet, so that was okay, and they had an extra couple bricks for when it was over, so that was fine too. 

***

It all hadn’t taken that long.  A couple of beers, some light work.  The morning was still young.

But they sat down and had the sandwiches anyways, so there was some sort of line in the day drawn.  The business had been done, now it was break time.

“Thanks,” said Fred.
“No problem,” said Ned. 
“I mean it.  This would’ve been a lot harder on my own.”
“It needed doing.”
“That’s true.”
“And besides, you brought the sandwiches.”
“That’s also true,” said Fred.

“Even if they do taste a little funny.”
Fred sighed.  “Truest of all.”

“What’s in them?”
Fred looked at Ned.

“Fuck’ssake,” said Ned.  He sat up and lunged and fought and punched or at the very least tried to do some of those things. 

When he was done, Fred waited for an extra five minutes just to be sure, then went and got the last of the fishing line and the cinder block he’d hidden in the thicket last night.  It was tucked under a big root, out of the way.  He liked to keep  things tidy. 

***

Fred watched the last of the ripples until they faded, then watched the still surface for even longer.

It didn’t so much as bubble. 

He buried his gloves deep in the mud, smoothed it down, pat pat pat.  He picked up the cooler.  He ate the last sandwich.  He drank the last beer.  He considered the sunny morning and the scant breeze and the warm sluggish water and he thought on all that had been and done and figured what the hell, I earned this.

So Fred tipped his head back and laughed, long and loud and a little cracked from ear to ear, and as he did that due to a misfortune of timing that one curious seagull circling above happened to let fly its load at that precise moment and it hit Fred in the back of the throat by way of his mouth, leading for him to drop the cooler on his toe and hit his head on a branch.

Fred staggered, Fred shook, Fred pitched and twisted like a crooked tree in a headstrong wind, and the thick brown waters of Butterscotch Bay took him in as easily and smoothly as a spoon in caramel sauce.

***

The seagull landed and watched attentively.  Soon little crayfish would come out to scavenge.  They always did.  They would be delicious.  They always were. 

Sometimes life doesn’t throw you a single curveball all inning long.  And if you’re the lucky kind of bird, you get lunch out of it. 

He was still nearly blind and all but deaf when it first happened.

Four legs wobbling, snout snuffling, he felt the words more than heard them. A vast voice from above, a hand beckoning.

“C’mere!”

Obediently he toddled, though he did not know why.

“That’s it! Good boy!”

And oh.

Oh.

Oh. That was why he had done this.

“C’mon boy! Scoot!”
And he did, bolder and wobblier than ever, closer to the voice and the hand, straining, desperate, and-

“Good boy!”

It was like warm sunlight and his mother’s tongue against his fur all at once, pouring down from above and filling him from ears to tail. But it hadn’t even left him when he felt the need for more.

“Scoot, that’s it. That’s a good name.”

Scoot accepted this without much notice or thought. It didn’t involve the words.

***

“Go!” said the woman, and Scoot went. He went through the tube and weaved through the bars and onto the see-saw and over the beam and across the tightrope and through the eel tank and down the hall of whirling blades and he reached the end and he won, he’d beaten the times without a scratch, he was the fastest to have ever done the course but he didn’t care because-

“Good boy!”

His mouth smiled, his leg thumped, his tail wagged so furiously it nearly came off. Yes, that was it.

“Very good boy!”

Oh, that was it indeed.

“BEST boy!”
Scoot rolled over on his back and wriggled hopelessly in delirium. The crowd was roaring, the sun was shining, he’d never been so happy.

But the words weren’t being said, and so it was already draining away, through the edges of his senses, the brink of his brain, the rim of his body. The warmth still faded, as great as it was, as good as it could be, as boy as he’d been.

He needed more.

***

Scoot had watched hands and arms all his life. The gestures, the praise, the hold-on-nows, the go-ahead-nows, the high-fives, the down-lows. Even the too-slows.

He’d never watched a hand move quite like this before. But then again, he’d never been too slow either.

The ball left its grip, spinning and gyrating. Scoot clenched his teeth, braced himself, dug at the dirt, leapt, and swung.

CRACK

“HOME RUN!”

And oh how they cheered, and they cheered, and they cheered as Scoot ran, ran, ran, base to base, running at a speed unnecessary because there was no getting that ball back ever again, but he ran faster than he’d ever done before because at the plate his team had spilled out and they grabbed him and hurled him high into the air and they shouted all at once and all overlapping.

“Good boy, Scoot!”

And as Scoot was being told the words the whole stadium revolved around him and he saw banners with his face and banners with his name and one modestly-sized cardboard sign held aloft in the midst of thousands that read in clumsy marker GOOD BOY, SCOOT and he shuddered and sighed and wriggled with such joy that his team nearly dropped him, but as quickly as it had come it was already leaving and he relaxed into their hands once more.

It had been wonderful. But it wasn’t enough.

***

“Lift the cover,” croaked the agent from the floor. His arm was no longer straining; he’d given up the struggle to move. All the energy left in him was in his voice – still smoker’s-rough, but turning soft at the edges with fatigue.

Scoot lifted off the cover – that was the easy part. Holding the screwdriver in his teeth at the right angle had been child’s play; turning it with his tongue had been nearly tricky; this was something simpler than that.

“Now,” said the agent. “Cut the red wire. Not. The green one. NOT. GREEN.”
Scoot stared into the case of the bomb. Alright. This part might actually be difficult.

“Red wire,” said the agent. “Red.” He was fading fast. Scoot didn’t have the time to bring the bomb to him. He didn’t have the time to do anything but make a choice. Also he knew he couldn’t hesitate or ask for help or he might not hear the words.

So he bit the wire and tugged it loose with utmost confidence, and nothing exploded.

“Good,” said the agent, his pupils beginning to lose focus. “Good, Scoot. Good. Goodboy.”

And he was gone, and Scoot shivered all over in joy as he sat underneath the headquarters of the United Nations in a hidden sub-basement with a dead hero and forty dead henchmen and a dead mastermind who’d been killed by his own pet taipan and knew that by tomorrow every newspaper on the planet would have his name in them and maybe his picture and they could even have the words printed there millions of times and it was so very, very, very, very, very excellent.

And it was still leaving him, as soon as it had arrived.

The taipan hissed peevishly at him from the ductwork it had slithered into. He ignored it. It couldn’t speak the words.

***

Getting the airlock working was the hardest part – it had never been designed to interface with this kind of material before. But Scoot had already entered the override codes and disabled the safeties and gotten the rest of the crew into their suits.

They could afford to shed a little atmosphere and the alternative was not acceptable. He would not have his first trip into high orbit end in failure.

With a slow hiss, the valve at the far end of the corridor – a strange iris, crafted from a strange metal, shaped by strange minds – relaxed open, and the crew from the other structure floated into the airlock, two at a time. The last one in (the sixth – such a small consignment for such a vast vessel!) thumped at a control panel furiously until it shut behind them.

Scoot let them in. Of course he did. Even as they milled in confusion inside an alien spaceship; even as they watched the wreck of their own stricken vessel recede into the distance; even as they communicated with probe and clumsy mime that terran atmosphere seemed to be breathable; even when the first of them shed their suit’s helmet and revealed them to be very very large cats.

Scoot did not bark. Scoot’s fur did not stand on end.  Scoot didn’t even growl.

“D*A&SL: *(Yure3qjlk,” said the alien, extended a cautious paw. And oh, oh, oh, how carefully Scoot shook it, for it was the first words spoken to a creature of Earth that were not of earth, and they were the words indeed, he knew intimately.

It lasted all the way down back the gravity well. It lasted all the way through the disembarkment. It lasted through the press conference.

It lasted until Scoot was home and in bed, and as he drifted off to sleep he felt it begin to drain and he knew by morning it would be gone again, and it was a mercy he was too deeply exhausted to feel strongly about that.

***

Scoot sat at his desk with his head on his paws and his brows twitching and he thought of the six years of his life, of the past year of his presidency.

He had heard the words nearly every day. Ever since he’d been nominated by all official political parties. Every day since he secured one hundred percent of the vote and an extra ten percent just because of the words. Every day since he’d stopped every genocide, ended every war, brought an end to economic injustice, turned the global carbon-negative, cloned the thylacine back to life, colonized space, decolonized earth, visited the planet of the &*ZXF?k;l, and learned the secret name of several gods.

Sometimes it lasted. Sometimes it didn’t. But it never stayed.

And sometimes after it left, Scoot sat at his desk like he was doing and he rested his head on his paws like he did and he thought of the small and very sturdy red button inside the locked drawer under a bulletproof glass case guarded by a passcode only he knew.

He would never push it. That would be bad. That would make him the opposite of the words, the dreaded thing, the thing he had never heard of.

It was just that sometimes on nights like this he liked to sit and think and wonder and what he wondered was things like this:

What if, in order for the words to truly matter, to truly STICK, to truly STAY, he had to know their opposite? If he’d never been a

B a d  d o g

… then how was he supposed to know how good the words really were?

His tail was wagging. His tongue was hanging out.

And then he got an itch, had to chew on his haunch for a good forty seconds, and when he was done, the moment was passed and he was tired, so very tired.

Time for bed. There would be another night tomorrow.

So President Scoot curled himself up on the carpet of the Oval Office with his tail in his nose and dreamed, and whether his dreams were good or bad was his concern and nobody else’s, and if he found that liberating or terrifying, well, that was his business too.

The button did not dream. But it DID wait. 

The Old Times were simple times. The world was big and its inhabitants were small; you found things to eat or something bigger ate you; and the biggest thing was Gronnkkt.

Gronnkkt knew this intimately, and took care to ensure it by battering to death anything It found that was nearly as big as Itself. And the small creatures down below witnessed this every day, and every evening, and sometimes heard it every night, and they worshipped Gronnkkt The Pummeler with great regularity – even more diligently than they did Spoolp, The One Who Collects Berries or Breeeez Who Finds Interesting Mushrooms, albeit for very different reasons.

They were not complicated forms of worship. A silent moment with brows lowered (a hard trick to pull off in the Old Times, when brows were at their lowest) and a soothing pat-pat gesture with the left hand gingerly extended; the forceful crushing of a small, harmless creature with a nearby hand axe; and of course – most common of all – the deep, satisfied grunt of exhaled air mixed with something rough in the back of the throat, done just after beating something to death.

Those were the manner and the custom with Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts was treated with in the Old Times before the Times After That, also called the New Times.

Their precise beginning is hard to pin down, but scholarly consensus is that it probably started with the sneeze.

***

It was a good big one. It tore the leaves off the trees and the trees off the ground; it deafened birds and killed small animals. It was a sneeze nearly worthy of emitting from the maw of Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, but instead it came from the maw of some big bear It was wrestling and it went right into Gronnkkt’s mouth and back out again through Its four nostrils.

Gronnkkt responded to this by beating the bear to death with greater force than was necessary or usual. And the small creatures saw this and they worshipped, and the day was normal again.

So was the day after that.

So was the day after that.

The day after THAT was when Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, let out a small sneeze of Its own that morning, and then by mid-afternoon Its four nostrils were a flood of mucus, and come sunset It couldn’t spare a limb to pummel because all of them were clutching at Its aching skull, and all night long all the small creatures couldn’t sleep a wink for the thunderous force of Its coughing: a deep harsh bark that made the pebbles dance and sent moles scurrying from their burrows.

“Will It be okay?” asked some of the younger and stupider of the small creatures.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” said their older and wiser forebears. “Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, is an inescapable and inevitable fulcrum of the natural state of the world. You might as well ask if the seasons will be okay.”

The next morning Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, was found lying dead next to the big lake near the two hillsides by the morning water-carriers of the small creatures. This was a surprise to them, because they could still hear Its coughing. And it was an even greater surprise to them when the Cough of Gronnkkt came out of the trees and ran at them and began to violently pummel them until their lungs popped out. Some of the quicker ones got away and ran all the way uphill back home, crying out nonsense that their older and wiser forebears laughed at until the morning hunters of the small creatures returned and told a terrible tale of their own: they had been ready to capture a deer, when the crippling, inescapable Headache of Gronnkkt had come down at them all from above and laid half their number low so totally that their skulls had blown up. And while this tragic news had just been delivered, in came the fiber-pickers, who had only woven one and a half lengths of rope that day because the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt had sloshed through the forest and dissolved every scrap of low-hanging vegetative matter, along with half of the fiber-pickers.

“Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, is dead, but Its afflictions are not,” said some of the small creatures. “Should we do something about this?”
“We couldn’t do anything about Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, so we can’t do anything about this either,” said the old and wise small creatures. “That’s just how it is.” And it was indeed how it was, because the Cough and the Headache and the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt all did indeed remain, meaning ‘how it is’ now included many more small creatures having their lungs pop out, heads blow up, or bodies dissolved in mucus. Some of them were resentful of this, and some of them were consoled by this being the way it was, and some of the ones that weren’t consoled were resigned, and some of the ones that were neither consoled or resigned didn’t want to make a fuss.

This left a total of about three small creatures who were both young and stupid enough to think anything could be changed, which also made them young and stupid enough to think they should bother Grandma about it.

***

Grandma was not to be prayed to as Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, or Spoolp, The One Who Collects Berries, or Breeeez Who Finds Interesting Mushrooms, or even Brbit, The Really Big Hoppy One. Grandma was brought things that were left at the mouth of the cave she lurked inside – soft foods, water, the occasional interesting rock – and not prayed to or looked at or talked about or talked to. Otherwise there was a grave danger that she might speak to you.

“Grandma,” said the three smallest youngest stupidest creatures, “how do we make the afflictions of Gronnkkt The Pummeler, The One Who Grunts, go away?”
Grandma looked at them, probably. Her eyes were so deep in her skull’s sockets that they were almost invisible: just a hint of moisture at the bottom of a pit.

“You must say the words first,” she said in a voice as coarse and harsh as the Cough of Gronnkkt itself.

“What are the words?” asked the most exceptionally young and stupid of all three small creatures.

“’Please, Grandma,’” said Grandma.

“Please, Grandma,” chanted the three young and stupid small creatures in unison.

“Good. I will help you defeat all of these afflictions,” said Grandma. “But only if you do exactly as I say and don’t talk. Now go down to your family and friends and tell them to collect soft fresh leaves until the entire camp is knee-deep in them.”
“Whose knees?” asked the youngest and stupidest.

Grandma looked at them.

“Sorry,” said the youngest and stupidest.

Grandma didn’t stop looking at them.

The youngest and stupidest opened their mouth again, only to find it immediately covered by both hands of both their companions.

“Better,” said Grandma.

***

It was surprisingly simple for the three youngest and stupidest of all the small creatures to convince their older and wiser friends and family to spend all day picking soft, useless leaves in vast numbers. This was because nobody could go down to the lake or into the woods or do anything that wasn’t scampering up into the safety of the rocky hillside without being killed unexpectedly by the afflictions of Gronnkkt, and so they were almost all bored enough to do anything even if there wasn’t a good reason for it.

“Why should we do this?” demanded the few oldest and wisest.

“Grandma said we had to,” said the youngest and stupidest. And so everyone helped, and the day sped by until the leaves were at knee height of most of – if not quite all – the small creatures and the terrible, sniffling slurp of the Runny Nose of Gronnkkt echoed damply against the setting sun.

The small creatures ran to the rocks and watched with baited breath as the sludge dribbled through their home, sniffing up small pretty rocks, slurping down dried food, and slowly, inevitably, totally blotting itself into oblivion on the soft and absorbent surfaces of hundreds and hundreds of a day’s-worth of leaves until not even a smear was left on the ground.

The leaves, however, remained. It took until nearly the sunrise to change that, and the filling of two filth-pits.

“We may now sleep in peace without being washed away by the fearsome Runny Nose of Gronnkkt,” said the wiser and older small creatures. “However, the rest of them are definitely undefeatable and inalterable and we shouldn’t bother trying.”

“Grandma said we were going to get rid of them all,” said the small and stupid creatures. And so they were sent back to her, and they showed her one of the leaves as proof.

“Disgusting,” she said. “Good. Now go into the woods and chop down all the willow saplings you can find. Leave their bark on and take them down to the lakeshore, then go for a swim.”

***

This took longer, because even a sapling willow tree is a fierce opponent to a stone hand axe, but ‘Grandma said to” remained a great motivator, and so it was done and the lakeshore where the water was drawn and the fish were caught was so choked with fallen timber that even the very youngest and stupidest of the small creatures – who were also the smallest – could barely pick their way down to the water to splash and wade and swim. But they managed, and they did, and as time passed and nothing happened their boredom made them loud and careless and so onward came the Headache of Gronnkkt from the woods, armoured and spined and thorned and barbed and inexorable, taller than the trees of the forest and more implacable than the stones of the hills, dead-eyed and invincible.

It slipped on the logs and hurtled helplessly into the lake along with the majority of the willow saplings, which drummed it on the head every time it rose for breath until it rose no more.

The three youngest and stupidest of the small creatures were retrieved from the far side of the lake after some searching, coated in algae and small, dead fish, and were thus presented to Grandma without further persuading required – from a safe distance.

“Take these leaves,” said Grandma, holding out a handful of very dry and very small and very broken fragments of things that may have once been attached to trees. “Then take as much water as you can and fill the big pit in the rock in front of my cave with it. Put the leaves in that. Warm round solid stones in your fires until they’re hot, then put them in the pit too. Then wait.”

It was a long way to bring water. The stones took all day to warm, and carrying them was even trickier than the water and burned several fingers. The leaves made the steaming water stink and fume.

But just before sunset the harsh bark came from the woods, and as the sky turned red the Cough of Gronnkkt crawled its long, scale-coated belly up the scree to the mouth of Grandma’s home and dipped its narrow, wheezing mouth into the vapors of the vat of tea to inhale and wheeze and sip. Slowly. Very slowly. And as it sipped, it coughed less, and moved less, and relaxed, and at last it lay down to sleep right where it stood without so much as a cleared throat. It didn’t make a sound when Grandma walked up to it and shoved its whole head under the surface until the  bubbles stopped, not once.

“This is how you deal with the afflictions of Gronnkkt,” said Grandma, “although I expect they will be smaller and less bold if they ever come back. Remember how it was done. And now you must speak the other words.”

“What are the other words?” asked the oldest and wisest remaining small creature.

“’Thank you, Grandma,’” said Grandma.

They chanted the words together and went to bed. And maybe it was the fumes from the tea, and maybe it was knowing the worst was behind them, but none of those small creatures had ever felt so happy to have a single, normal, restful night’s sleep ever before, and they vowed never to take it for granted again.

They were lying, of course. But wasn’t that just human of them?

“The Cape, the Cape! They saw her at the Cape, at the Cape!”
The call started in the mouth of a ragged man on the docks, and it sped from there to the streets and from there to the pubs and from there to everywhere, quicker than a blink. “The Cape! They saw her at the Cape! Red-eyed, saw-backed, coiled high on the rocks! Dame Brute – in solitude – hunts at the Cape of Sharp Stones!”

“My leg!” bellowed up from the depths of a half-flotsam pub, screamed by a whaler with the body of jerky and the lungs of an opera singer and – indeed – the leg of a pogo stick. “At last, the price for my leg will be paid to me! Up now with you all, down with your cups! Today we take back my leg! Today we take back our pride! Today we avenge our lost shipmates! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

“My bounty!” hooted a pirate as he held an erstwhile news-spreader up in one hand and her wallet in the other. “Hear that, kids? Ol’ Lum is going to pay off his debts to the state and Mend His Ways! You all are going to be Legitimate Persons Of Fortune once more, like in the days before the Unfortunate Moment which we will not be talking about at this time. We’ll be able to get drunk in public again! Hurry, hurry, hurry!”
“My place!” whispered a trembling aristocrat to her aide. “Perchance, Pestersnipe, this shalt forsooth salve the wounds of mine unjust exile from paternal and maternal care and render unto me the fiscal and notional acclaim necessary to achieve the heights of society denied my most unjustly due to my unfortunate placement as the third-born heir in a second-rank family among the third-most-esteemed cadet branch of the fourth-grandest-and-most-fashionable-province of the Lesser Buulyeans.”

“Her ladyship commands the crew to put to sea to murder a waterborne snake – hurry, hurry, and hurry, and so on” said Pestersnipe to the marines, and they said ‘sir’ and nodded and it was so.

Thusly did three ships leave the harbour in such furious speed that they were barely able to raise sails and figure out north from west. Horns were sounded, signals were misinterpreted, six small local fishing craft were sent to the bottom, six large and irate local fisherman were press-ganged into service, and by the time the rest of the city caught wise to what was up and began to send feet to decks, the chase had already begun and there were only three real contestants, strung out along the horizon from each other like beads on a very cheap necklace.

The last sea monster was being hunted.

***

Pertinence was afore the first week, her crew driven by a dangerous combination of monomania and experience. Every hand on that boat thirsted for the flesh of the foe, every eye was keen with the knowing of wind and current – that many of the bodies aboard were shy a hand eye or elsewise meant little to such fierce determination. They slept what little they must, they ate in between heaves and pulls, they sang no shanties but hissed angry breaths between hard-bitten teeth, they squinted at the horizon like it was Dame Brute’s ally, a hostile wall between them and their goal.

Fancy Lee sauntered after her, lean and quick in trim and sail, if somewhat flabbier in crew. A dark cloud of lingering hangovers weighed them where their vessel did not, and though they were keen to be unwanted men and women once more they weren’t so sharp as to cut themselves.

Prince Gigantic brought up the rear at a respectable pace, one enforced by the stoutness of her hull and the request of her captain, who was sea-sick.

“I can’t sleep, I won’t blink, I won’t stop to smile or spit or sup until the Cape is before us and the beast is beneath us and the past is behind us,” vowed Jordan Hopp, who was nailing a blasphemous pact to Pertinence’s mainmast with such force that the deck creaked beneath their feet. “Open a vein and draw your mark if you can say the same!” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

“Rough times afloat have the same cure as rough times ashore have the same cure as a hangover,” said Ol’ Lum in an unnecessarily loud voice. “The Good Shit is on the middeck today and it is first come first served, but no double dipping before everyone else has had their shot or else there will be Consequences.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

“Plorgh,” addressed Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle through the window of her cabin to the sea. “Fffbbbltppphurk.”

“Her ladyship commands that you speed up,” said Pestersnipe. “Also, bring up the cask of medicinal brandy.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

All hands being able did not mean all plans went as made, and as such by the week’s end matters lay as thus, this:

Pertinence had spent two days dead in the water with her sails aimless due to an inexplicable outbreak of anemia and exhaustion among the crew. “The devil!” seethed Captain Hopp. “The devil and god themselves conspire against me! Well, to hell and deeper with them both!” And then they burned the blasphemous pact along with Pertinence’s mainmast, which cost the Pertinence a little more trouble.

The Fancy Lee made good if slightly wobbly time. Consequences had left her holster several times, but she did not need to be fired. Which was good, because Consequences never missed but what she hit wasn’t necessarily what she was aimed at.

While all the while Prince Gigantic churned gamely onwards, though her wake was oddly odoured and coloured and more expensive than most seawater. And so, in some difficulty, the pursuit for the most fierce – if now solitary – creature of the seas continued.

***

A whale was a free-swimming fountain of resources with a wily will to survive. A sea monster was a step above in that those resources would come looking for you and a step down in that they would then try to eat you.

That was an old puzzle, one that had in recent centuries found increasingly accurate answers. And now, it was almost completed.

***

In the second week the weather turned mellow – too mellow. All sails turned slack; the sun burned hot, and the string of three stagnated in their current order. Fancy Lee held the leading place, and by a healthy distance.

“I told you kids we would all see this through and I told you that what Ol’ Lum tells you is true Is That Not Fact?” asked Old Lum. “It’s okay, that was Rhetorical it means you don’t need to answer and Do Not Think About It. We’ve got this one In The Bag, and the harder you worry the harder it’ll get. Don’t sweat anything. Don’t think about how we’ve completely run out of places it’s legal to for any of us to Take A Load Off or get a drink or maybe breathe. Don’t think about what happens if we Screw This Pooch. Don’t think about how many times we have all Screwed That Pooch. Don’t think about it. And if you do, just imagine Consequences. But don’t. So do that. And don’t do that.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand except for what they didn’t do as such to an able hand except for when they did. Or didn’t.

Prince Gigantic wallowed the space between, her many decks turned to ovens. Pestersnipe stood valiant guard in his ladyship’s cabin, bent low with a mirror to check for breath.

“Bless thee, good Pestersnipe,” whispered Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle in the faintest of voices, “for thy service in my darkest hour. From sea-sickness to heat-sickness – alas! Alack! I fear mine hour has nigh-come, forsooth forthwith forthright. I know the rabble and roustabouts of the crew shalt seek to shirk their duty in this time of my decrepitude, it falls to thee, wise and kind and true Pestersnipe, to take up the sword in my darkest hour. Flog them, flay them, skin them if you must, but make those wretches break us free of this damnable heat if you need to use half the crew’s bones as oars!”

“Her ladyship says you should take the day off and enjoy a double grog ration while we wait for improved weather,” said Pestersnipe. “Also bring up the reserve medicinal brandy cask.” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

Pertinence had limped along on two masts, fore and aft. Now she lay with the stillness of a corpse. But one germ remained active on that body; one finger yet twitched at the end of its last nerve, and it was Captain Hopp, who climbed to the tallest remaining perch of the ship – missing leg and all – to describe to every supernatural being in all their extensive knowledge of time and tide and its creators exactly what they thought of them and their obstruction of their noble quest.

“Fuck you!” they screamed. “Eat shit!”

That night the calm broke and a hard wind blew.

Fancy Lee tacked into the wind, then headed off the wind, then downed sails on one side and tacked up to full on the other, then tried a secret fourth thing whose purpose and point was inscrutable. Consequences flowed freely, though lessons learned were elusive.

Prince Gigantic rose to the occasion and sped ahead on great wings raised with nimble speed; all its lumbering weight turned into a nimble dart in the hands of such a gigantic force. The complexity of its wake only increased in scope and scale, as did its smell.

And Pertinence was struck by lightning three times but each time found the fires extinguished by the force of the blowing gale, which put such spectacular fear into the crew’s souls as to lend them their own kind of wings, which thereby sped them onwards in due time. Thus, in grim determination, did the search for the murderous – if now solitary – reptile continue onwards.

***

Dame Brute had been given her name for her daintiness. Other sea monsters made sloppy messes out of ships; tore them open stem to stern and left them to founder slowly; carrying away screaming morsels from the deck as they left.

By contrast, although she was a scar-seared knuckle-nosed battering-ram of a creature that had once bisected a whaler in a single breach, she was a proper lady. She didn’t depart until her plate was picked clean, and she seldom left any garbage floating to mark her messes.

***

By third week’s time the Prince Gigantic held the horizon, a moving mountain – but one rendered almost invisible. The wind and rain had returned, then redoubled, then resounded. A full storm grasped all the flotilla in common, each an island unto itself more than ever, shrouded and set apart by the rage of the heavens.

“It is not all sorrows and tears in this tragedy, my dearest Pestersnipe,” pondered Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle, who was feeling well enough to limp up above decks and goggle at the struggle for survival, like a child with a magnifying glass peeping a likely anthill. “For instance, dost thou know’st that I have had the liberty of observing many a sea-dog in our wake these passing weeks? They lap most fearfully at my vomitus that drags behind our keel. Not past this tenth bell, I did behold a wretched scavenger whose size was nigh half our vessel’s length! What a thing that would be, to give such a monstrous beast a taste for the rich and fine things in life beyond that of its station, eh?”

Above even the roar of the wind rose a dreadful thunking, chewing sound at the keel.

“Her ladyship asks you all to grab boarding pikes and head to the vessel’s stern to kill a giant drunk shark,” said Pestersnipe. And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

Pertinence travelled with one mast now and half a sail, hellbent forwards on momentum more than the wind.

“Jettison it all,” howled Captain Hopp into the wind, eyes bugged, teeth bared. “Food, water, bedding – all dead weight now. We want but for irons for our task! All else goes to the deep!” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

The Fancy Lee was running a little light on crew in the wake of manifest Consequences, and though the notion of what to do with her sails was strong the ability to manifest it was less trivial.

“Pull, my kids, pull!” said Old Lum, who was himself heaving on the steering wheel like it owed him money and was lying facedown on its wallet. “There have been rough times and hard times but right now we are owed a good size of Good Times and we are almost there you Bet Your Ass. Every sail goes on! Every hand pulls! Almost there, and then We’ve Made It!” And lo, the crew did as such to an able hand.

With so many hands at such furious work in such thorough ignorance as to all outside their business, perhaps the outcome, although invisible to all concerned, was dully obvious to any uninvolved. Thus, the ramming of the Pertinence at full-force into the stern of the Prince Gigantic – where it skewered a very large, drunk, and angry shark that had chewed off half the latter vessel’s keel – was in an absolute sense very unsurprising despite coming as a great shock to a large number of people. Likewise, the slow, showy swirl of a corkscrew that took the Fancy Lee to drift broadside into the two of them, where it stuck firm.

Some screams, some shouts, some smoke and splinters. And above it all, a storm turned to a sputter, and light shining on a sea filled with sharp, splintered stones

And thus, at the fourth week and all at once, altogether, they reached the Cape, and ruined the solemn solitude of that place.

***

The Cape of Sharp Stones had been a seasonal haunt for sea monsters for who knew how long. Then it had been a refuge, since nobody that wasn’t extremely desperate enjoyed navigating waters filled with constantly splintering, constantly changing mazes of giant jagged rocks.

And now, it was a ghost house you could lose several provinces in.

***

The waves had calmed enough for a civil discussion above decks involving all. As befitted such an occasion, every jack involved was armed to the teeth. The marines fixed bayonets to long-guns; the pirates put cutlasses on every remaining limb and a few that weren’t; and the whalers simply clutched the most unpleasant and visceral devices every conceived of by man like they were their own dear children.

“How doing there my Good Fellow Travellers,” said Old Lum through his megaphone and a big smile. “If you wouldn’t mind Making Right Of Way for some Gentlefolk Of Free Will And Fancy we can all go home safe and sound and Settled Of Mind.”

“Dame Brute is ours, by right of pain and hatred,” said Captain Hopp, who was braced on an entire handful of hideously barbed and gigantically elongated pieces of metal – and more thoroughly, on a well of unyielding spite. “Ours is the expertise required and the justice demanded.”

“Such lowly bequests must bide their good time in turn when the right of birth and expedience is called to its proper place in the nature and order of the world as demanded, by decree of kingdom, country, and common law – in our favour, no less, for a matter of most esteemed and most imperative honour is at stake, in which I bear the most pertinent interest – ah, my fortune!  Such Providence is granted to me in matters of the material, if not, alas, the heart,” explained Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle.

“We’ve got the most guns,” said Pestersnipe.

“And we’ve got the most folks that know how to use them to make The Big Money. But ah now my fellow Gentlefolks Of The Sea, there is no reason for this to come to Unpleasantness,” said Old Lum, hands raised to display both conciliatoriness and Consequences. “If we all stay Cool Headed, I’m sure we-”

Captain Hopp flung a fierce harpoon full-force, whereupon it lodged in Old Lum’s brisket. He sagged and loosed Consequences, which struck Pestersnipe athwart the bows of his noggin, beheading him.

“Unleash the full-fouled bowels of Hades upon every one of them, child and grown, without discrimination nor kindness nor hesitation!” screamed Captain Ditherpunt-twixt-Mannhurdle, pale palms grasping her fallen manservant in mortified sorrow.

The marines looked at her, hands flexed and waiting.

She closed her eyes, breathed in and out once, a great shaking sob, then peeked them open again with utmost care.

“Kill everybody?” she said.

And lo, all the crews did as such to the last able hand, then the least able, and to the end.

***

As the timber creaked and the water gurgled the great spired sentinels of the Cape of Sharp Stones grew ever higher and higher to the few remaining witnesses until they lost sight and slipped below, still entangled – bow to stern, blade to ribcage – and began that last, lonely dive down, down, down down, where they landed with crushing force atop silt and stone amid many other older wrecks and one more thing.

It was the skeleton of a great old sea monster, newly laid to bone by busy scavengers, not more than a month picked clean, gnarled by age and killed by nothing more than time.

And now, no longer solitary.