jamieproctor.ca

In the night sky of the new year hung the moon, and in the moon there was a door, and if you thought the right thing while you turned its handle the right way (there was no handle) you could step through the door into the other sky, the sky behind, and in that terrible and vast place there was a hall that kept the endless rain from dripping out of the sky and into your ears and your thoughts and your socks, and in that hall – the First and Final House – there were many voices, and those many voices belonged to wizards, thousands of wizards, wizards that were and wizards that was and wizards that would be, all hurrying, all abuzz with gossip and muttering of secrets and minding their own business by sticking their noses in each other’s. They moved keenly and sharply. A wizard didn’t rush or fuss, but they only had one night apiece, so they made it work. A bazaar had sprung into being, formed entirely of dimly-lit corners and hooded proprietors; the vast and shaded balcony was filled to overflowing with telescopes and auguries; in the attics dangled dozens by their heels, their arms, their throats, eyes flickering shut in blood-strangled concentration as they groped for secrets just beyond mortal reach.

Everywhere wizards, all the wizards. A willow wizard creaked and groaned under the ever—growing weight of its moss familiar, feeding it a little more of its soul to stay quiet and ppolite in mixed company. A lizard wizard squawked and shed its tome in self-defence as a careless passerby trod on its tail. Wizards that sang songs and wizards that rang gongs; wizards that raised the dead and wizards that sent them abed; wizards that ruled through fear and wizards that were perfect dears; wizards tall and wizards small.

“I’m bored beyond tears,” said Lyle. “Why did you drag us to this heap of nonsense’s nonsense?”

“Because it was your birthday and you wanted to do something fun,” said Howard with great earnestness.

“And you let me do THIS? You are the worst brother I’ve ever had, Howard, except for all the others whom I’ve forgotten on account of their worstness. Look at this garbage – what is this even?”

“That’s a genuine crystal ball, Lyle. You can stare into its depths and see your deepest desires!”
“Peernography and worse!” Lyle’s gnarled palm slammed the ball back into its display pedestal with as much force as he could muster. “Honestly, I can’t take you anywhere! I let you come with me to this place and you remain preoccupied with… that sort of thing.”

“I swear to you on our mother’s own sweet little grave that the thought never crossed my mind, Lyle,” said Howard, face filled with determination and filial love. “And it’s ‘pornography.’”

“Of course it isn’t, it’s meant to be peered at. Learn Enochian, Howard!”
“We’re speaking English, Lyle.”
“I should think full well that I know what I say when I say how I say it, you sloppy joe you! Now let’s get out of this hellhole and look at something interesting. Where’s the pub?”
“We left the pub because you complained about the smell.”

“It was full worth complaining about. Why’d they let the ant wizards run it I can’t possibly understand; they coated half the bar in their sordid musk-trails – if I wanted that sort of thing I’d have a picnic and save myself the pricing.”
“Lyle, that was the menu; you know the ants do like to write their sigils and such in scents.”
“Not where I’m drinking my coffee! Something interesting, Howard – and make it snappy! I feel my lunch getting at my guts. Why’d you put chilies in my lunch? You know turnips is all a body needs to stay regular.”
“I didn’t put chilies in your lunch, I put them in my lunch.”
“Why’d you put chilies in your lunch?”
“I like ‘em.”
“Selfish old coot. Repent and find us something worth seeing.”

***

Past the loud central halls, things got stranger. The air thickened of its own accord, weighed down by the density of secrets. The shadows lengthened and grew restless, playing here and there and elsewhere. The wind leaked through the walls, sending scurrying draughts that slid across the floorboards and whispered unspeakable things. The doors creaked. The air crackled.

In the nether wings of the First and Final House things happened that couldn’t happen anywhere else, even by wizards. Necromancy could travel hand-in-hand with the power of friendship true; a potion could be brewed from a prophecy and a pangolin; a prophecy’d destiny could be rolled up and rearranged like an uncooperative scrap of toilet paper; a dragon could glean the secret wisdom of how to overcome a brave hero and a magic sword. Dark collaborations bespawned things unthought of; broke open hidden organs of the world to reveal glistening secrets; raised merry hells and cast down screaming heavens; split the spectrum and dissected the rainbow.

And, in the very most hidden hollows of the highest spires and lowest pits of that place, the greatest and most dangerous of deeds was committed: the open and equal sharing of secret knowledge – profane, sacred, and universal. The ultimate and truest exchange: something for nothing.

“This isn’t worth the spit it took to say it.”
“Lyle!”
“What? It’s true, for Frog’s sake, it’s absolutely true, Howard – do you want your own brother to sit up straight and lie in front of strangers? Shame! Shame on you! Shame on you for asking that of me, and shame on you for bringing me to this chamber of folderollery and nonsense! ‘Secrets of the Archosaurs’ my least favourite foot (which is my left)! You call these secrets? This is nothing but base saurcery, the like of which any moron knows isn’t worth the stomach-swirling shame and lack of spine it demands to practice! Imagine, a whole branch of knowledge based upon calling your dear old dead grandparents for help! Imagine being the sort of cretinous clod that learns that and then wants to HONE it, Howard, hone it like it were a fine knife given to you at Christmas by your uncle Beaumont (bless his brows) – then seek out others to collaborate on that with you! Can you imagine being that lacking in skill, spine, spit, and wit, Howard? And then ADVERTISING IT OPENLY? To those you CONSIDER YOUR PEERS? The very notion of entering this moron’s-cabal of fourth-rate cauldron-droolers was an obscene insult to me, you, and our mother! You only brought me in here to try and give me apoplexy, didn’t you? You’re after the house again you slinking fink!”

“Excuse me,” said the lecturer, a gaunt pale ostrich with no eyes and two mouths, “but you must raise your hand when you ask a question.”
“And none of that was a question,” added his second mouth.

“Sorry about that,” said Howard.

“Bug off and go bury your head,” said Lyle. “I paused for my wind, not for your input, and I’ll thank you for noticing that.”

“Lecture ours,” rumbled the co-presenter, a saltwizard crocodile of forty feet and forty thousand years. “Disrespect yours. Apology.”

“Geez I’m sorry,” said Howard.
“You can’t dis what you never respected in the first place,” said Lyle, “and if I wanted to hear what sixteen sets of mismatched luggage said I’d call my aunt.”

“Then I am afraid,” said the ostrich, who did not look afraid, “that we must challenge you to a wizard’s duel.”
“I’m real sorry, but neither of us are wizards,” explained Howard helpfully.

“That is acceptable,” said the ostrich. “The duel will simply be very short.”

***

A suitable location had to be found for the wizard’s duel, of course. The lecturing chamber was a place of intimate knowledge, where one could cluster shoulder to shoulder and a whisper could travel all the way around the world from wall to wall. A duel was also intimate, but in a manner more deeply personal, and so – as with all wizardly personal affairs – should take place somewhere that both parties could scream as loudly as they liked.

As the challenged parties, Lyle and Howard had pick of locale.

“Up your rotten and creased backside with a stick,” said Lyle.

“Oh, anywhere’s fine, no need to make a fuss on our behalf or anything like that,” said Howard.

The ostrich had conferred with his scaled colleague and together they had chosen the roof of the First and Final House, in the lee of the titanic chimney (whose scalding breath cleared the air of some of its moisture, though not all). The rain thundered around the four combatants and their assembled audience of blast-casters, protagonist-mancers, devil summoners and sum devillers, conjurers and tricksters with a sound not heard since the days of brontosaurus feet.

Lyle sat in his chair and glowered like a cat watching Lassie reruns.

“An apology costs nothing, you know,” said Howard, as he adjusted the earflaps on his hat.

“You already tried to sneak that past me when we were six and you know it, you chiseling quisling,” said Lyle indistinctly, his jaw working furiously at a mashed-up Werther’s. “It was lies then and it’s a lie now and it never won’t be a lie. An apology costs your DIGNITY, and without that, you haven’t got anything. Are you done messing around with that stupid hat yet?”
“Yep!”
“Then you can give me my earmuffs. And upon my word Howard, if one speck of their fluffy has gone missing in your pocket, there will be bloodshed not shed nor seen since the Silurian.”
“I am taking that and you seriously Lyle, I promise you truly. Want your mittens too?”
“No way in hell or beyond. Now bugger off and play with the crocodile; I’ve got a bird to pluck.”
“Darn tootin’.”
“Watch your mouth or I’ll watch it for you!”
“Duly warned, Lyle, and thank you kindly. Good luck!”
“I never touch the stuff.”

So they took their places. The saltwizard crocodile, Great Old Craw, coughed up his finest orb from his belly-ballast and into the tip of his mouth, where it gleamed like a sour diamond.

The ostrich-saurceror, Ostimandias, bit his two grandest plumes in half with each of his mouths and feasted greatly on their hidden contents, opening the third eye in his throat.

Howard blew on his hands and shook out his fingers. Lyle glared at a stray raindrop that alit on his arm like it were a barbed mosquito.

“This will conclude the disagreement in total,” wheezed the adjudicant, a coelacanth. “None may object to this duel’s occurrence nor its outcome, after I wiggle my fin.”
Silence.

The adjudicant’s fin wiggled.

The ostrich-saurceror raised his long neck into the sky and took of the sky unto himself and he called. Boom. Boom. Vroom. Great pulses of air, flooded and ejected through his jet-engine of a body. Boom. Boom. Vroom.

And Lyle glared grimly.

The ostrich-saurceror began to dance. Thud thud thud went his two huge two toed feet, slamming into the shingles and making the rafters rattle. Somewhere far below a rope unraveled and a dangling supplicant-mage plummeted forty feet into a big vat of vodka and lime and toad and all her friends hooted and hollered as they fished her out with a knobbled staff.

And Lyle glared grey-eyed.

The ostrich-saurceror waved his plumes; tiny wings on his big body; huge wings on any other bird short of an albatross. They snapped and whipped and rattled against one another and the air between the raindrops began to remember things that walked and breathed and killed so very long ago, when the earth’s shape was different and its inhabitants were larger and the air was sweet.

And Lyle’s brow sank an extra-beetled inch.

The ostrich-saurceror hunched, leaped, let out a singular terrible and long BOOM and struck. Foot-first, faster than a gazelle, more deadly than a lion, bringing up the force of something ancient and terrible – three-clawed, scaled, massive and mocking in the face of tiny hairy glandular creatures like humans rats and elephants, striking to kill with the force of a hurtling asteroid and the voice of an avalanche.

Lyle leaned forwards into the teeth of the roar, pursed his lips, and said something.

The ostrich-saurceror faltered, let that falter creep into his call, let his call creep into his lungs, let his lungs creep throughout his entire pneumatized skeleton, fractured, and exploded into the distant past and also pieces.

“About damned time,” said Lyle. “Ridiculous song and dance frippery – just like the time you brought me to Broadway. All that kicking and wailing and carrying on! And for what? A little bit of spittle that falls apart when I call it ‘dogshit,’ Howard, – yes, you heard me – and nothing more! Two words! In one word! And that’s all it takes? This isn’t amateur hour, this is amateur HOUSE! Why on earth did you subject me to this again, Howard? Remind me of what the thought process in your food processor of a skull used to believe this was a good thing.”

“On account of the old days,” said Howard, reattaching his earflaps with one hand and taking Lyle’s elbow with the other, steering his brother away from damp splatter-spots and the respectful distance of the crowd. “Remember when we used to come here with Edith and Iris?”

“Well.”
“Well,” agreed Howard.

“You know.”
“You know,” concurred Howard.

The silence was agreeable and truthful and broken only by the crush and creak of priceless crystalline orb fragments under their battered old snow boots.

“Yes well you know I mean really honestly if you ask me I suppose you know what it could’ve been worse.”
The creases of Howard’s face folded themselves in a very well-used smile. “Why Lyle, you really do mean that, don’t you?”

“I mean everything I say at all times and you best full well comprehend that, if for some reason you’ve avoided realizing until now. And for this now, let’s go home. All that nonsense has made me feel your lunch getting at my guts again.”

“Could we stop at the hot ichor cider stand on the way out? For the old days?”
“Only one cup each and you’re paying for your own. And they have to put a candy cane in it or we’re not getting any.”

“-and although the beast’s activity HAS ceased for now, and we are getting reports of what may be its body, it is only at this lull in the carnage that the true cost of the past two days can be tallied. Over five billion dollars of damage in infrastructure alone, dozens of civilian deaths, the loss of a major army base with all hands… this is the sort of victory that may have been claimed by Pyrrhus of Epirus. May the new year bring us all many better days, and may their steadily-accumulating weight bury deeply the pain and loss we all now feel from the toll of this terrible crisis that has claimed so many of our loved ones.”

**Thirty Minutes Earlier**

“Brad you complete moron, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Setting off the bomb.”
“You barely know how to work your phone!”
“Sweetie, the army uses them, how hard can it be?”

“Shut up! Get out of there! This door’s almost free; we can still make it out if we run for it!”

“You can. You’d better. I started this, I’m finishing it.”
“That wasn’t your fault! That was BOTH of our faults!”
“Nope. You told me so, remember?”
“I hate you!”
“Aww, I love you too, Leo. Now get out of here. I think I hear it coming and there’s going to be a reeeeaal big bang in the next few minutes.”

**One Hour Earlier**

“East side is a total loss. We’ve pulled the survivors back through the west exit and collapsed the corridors, but it’s fast and fits through spaces a human can’t. We have to assume it’ll get here shortly, and general… we’ve lost the bomb.”
“Lost it.”
“It was in the east wing. No remote detonation possible in its current state. Someone’s going to have to go in and set it up manually.”

“What about the lab team?”
“The initial assault was too fast. They’re either dead or wish they were by now.”
“Great. Full evacuation.”
“What?”
“We already fed this thing three spec ops squads and half this base; I’m not going to send in anyone else to play hero and end up as lawn clippings. Let the goddamned airforce handle it. So what if it takes out a bit of the city, if we don’t do this they’ll all get eaten by it anyways.”
“Sir, listen-”
“Shut up and do it.”
“Sir, LISTEN, can-”

“Court-martial or silence. You pick.”
“The SOUND, sir, can you hear the-”

“The what? The whaaaAAAAAAAAAAAA-”

-army base penetrated, bomb lost

**Two Hours Earlier**

“Alpha and Bravo down. Charlie, report in.”
“FUCK YOU WHERE IS IT?”
“Charlie, report in.”

“IT’S JUST ME EVERYONE’S DEAD WHERE IS IT IS IT BEHIND ME?”

“Evac at zone two, proceed ASAP.”
“IT MOWED US DOWN LIKE GRASS, IT’LL GET YOU TOO! IT CAN HEAR ME TALKING TO YOU! IT CAN SEE THE RADIO WAVES! IT’LL FIND oh shit oh shit oh shit oh SHIIII-“”

“Charlie, report in.”

“Charlie, report in.”
“Charlie, report.”
“sssss.”

“Charlie? Charlie?”

“ssssSSSSS”

“Shit. Requesting permission to evacuate nonessential personnel?”

**Three Hours Earlier**

“Two stupid kids go missing for half the day and we have to go look in the old sewage plant?”
“Kids love doing stupid shit. Don’t you remember being a kid?”
“Yeah, but. Sewage plant.”
“They cleaned it out real nice when they were done. Know your municipal history, Les.”

“Alright, I’ll admit it looks like the set from a horror movie down here. Still not smart to do amateur-hour urban exploration inside an abandoned concrete tube sticking out of an abandoned concrete box attached to a crumbling brick shell. “
“What’d I just say about kids?”
“Fine, fine, FINE. It makes sense the kids would do this. I concede that, you win, I surrender, woo you. Why do we have to go look for them after they go missing for half a damn day?”
“Because perfectly respectable idiot university kids don’t vanish from social media unless they’re asleep, and they went missing at six AM. And, more importantly, their families have money.”
“Figures. Hey, how much money are we talking?”
“Board of Directors at the university. Gobs.”
“Like… Rolex money?”
“Easily.”
“Cool, because I just found one.”
“Just…lying there? Where’s the kid?”
“Well, his wrist is still in it.”
“Not funny, jeez, not funny at – holy FUCK.”
“I mean, it’s KIND of funny. Look at that, looks like blunt impact – no cuts. Think he got it stuck in some sort of machinery down here, or – what? What? What?!”
“I… think I found the kids. Oh god, no, that’s… that’s more than… that’s… at least three heads. Yeah, four. Five six seven oh god.”

“Seven what? Bodies? What the hell are you looking at, a morgue? Did we find the local mob dumping ground?”
“No. I think it’s….some kind of nest?”

“What kind of what?”
“It’s like a goddamned mound, fuck – all torn and pulped and…did you hear that?”
“Something slapping on concrete, yes, and I was hoping you didn’t. Let’s go. Let’s go let’s go let’s go now now NOW.”

**Twelve Hours Earlier**

“Julie, I’ve got mosquitos in my freakin’ earball.”
“C’mooon. Look at the lake, look at how preeetty it looks with the sunlight.”
“One went up my NOSE; this just isn’t romantic.”
“Awww, but you know what IS romantic? This.”
“Really? Like, REALLY? Right here, right now?”
“Nobody’s out here yet, and it’s coooool. ‘Sides, I’m friggin’ COATED in bug spray.”
“Is that like, okay?”
“I guess? Just don’t lick me or anything.”
“That sucks.”
“Don’t do that either.”
“God you are so witty you’d better shut up or my head’ll explode – hey!”

“Hey what?”
“We’ve got a peeper! No audiences, pal – get out of the bulrushes and go to the internet if you wanna see this shit that bad! You got three seconds to say you’re sorry and then I’m coming over there! One, two, threeeeeeetheFUCK? What is a”

**Twenty-Four Hours Earlier**

“Brad. The sign is right there. Can you fucking read?”

“Look, it says don’t feed the geese, and this is a singular goose. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Daryl got the coffee. Cheryl drove. Both of them knocked on their grandmother’s door.

“Oh hello!” she said, embracing them both in hugs like a day-old chick’s: firm bones easily felt through soft fuzz, as pleasantly and earnestly surprised as ever. Oh how wonderful it was, to find out she had grandchildren! Oh how nice to see them visiting her! Oh how nice that they brought her coffee! Oh how nice to go with them! All well-planned and well-anticipated yet still such an unexpected treat.

Daryl told her about the new snowblower he’d got a deal on – “nobody upsells you in May,” he explained – and Cheryl told her about how she thought she’d found a buyer for her old truck and she told them about how the squirrels were growing scarcer in her backyard but the groundhogs might have moved back in underneath the shed, and so they were at the house in not much less than four or five conversations.

Daryl opened the door for her. Cheryl put the chair on the porch. He pulled out a thermos. She offered a blanket. “Let us know if you get cold,” they said, and she laughed at them in that rude way that conveys warmth in a manner politeness is powerless to.

Then they went indoors, them and two cans in each of four hands, plus rollers.

Up and down. Up and down. Sidling side to side, slowly, imperceptibly, until a room was done and the next began.

Soft white for the bathroom.

Pale blue in the bedroom.

And on, and on, patching away all the old flaws and tears and scrapes and scratches of time and tragedy until the walls were clear and clean again and even the ceilings were beautiful.

The floor, alas, suffered. Oh well, oh well.

“All done?” she asked them when they came outside, tired and smeared and squinting into the shadows.

“’Till next time,” they told her, and they took her and the chair and the blanket and the (empty) thermos and delivered them all home before the sun finished fading.

***

The next time it rained.

Cheryl drove. Daryl got the coffee.

“Oh hello!”

Cheryl held out the umbrella. Daryl offered the raincoat.

“Oh how sweet!” said their grandmother, and she hugged them a second time each, and accepted both. There was a bit of trouble fitting the umbrella in the car, but oh well, oh well, and the heater was on, so oh well, oh well. She told them the groundhogs were gone, but she thought she’d smelled a skunk around the place recently, and oh they weren’t so bad, you know. Cheryl said her boss was a dick. Daryl said his coworker was a dick. She laughed and told them to keep their chins up.

The blanket was thicker. So were the contents of the thermos. She smiled at the rain as it streamed down in front of her and kicked her feet as they dangled and as Daryl and Cheryl started to haul the tools and the boards and the tiles, armful by armful by armful by aching armful, in and out and in and out until the corpse of the old flooring nearly overflowed Cheryl’s truck and they were hollow-eyed and dead of voice but oh, how the floor shone! Paintless, speckless, pristine, and as level as the lone sands.

“Good work today!” she told them as they dropped her off, umbrella left closed under the near-dry evening sky.

“G’welcome,” mumbled Cheryl.

“N’prbbm,” accepted Daryl.

They forgot about the umbrella.

***

The time after that, it was a beautiful sunny day. This was only spoiled a little by switching out the entire toilet (twice – it almost went wrong the first time) and lugging the new vanity in, all of which involved a full flight of stairs.

“You’ve got this!” their grandmother cheered every time they groaned past her, a flyswatter in one hand and a cold glass in the other. And she was right, and they managed to do the sink too, and for the crowning glory Cheryl got the first light fixture changed just so they wouldn’t have to set foot in the bathroom again for the foreseeable future.

“I’m so proud of you,” she told them, when they dropped her off. So they hugged her again.

***

The light fixtures took the rest of the next trip (the part that wasn’t about her grandmother discussing the absence of skunks while theorizing the possibility of raccoons). Cheryl held the ladder; Daryl screwed in the bulb, their grandmother made the jokes. This division of labour passed the chore quickly, and they weren’t insane enough to START the kitchen, but it certainly helped them plan it, make the last-minute double-checks, the just-being-sure planning, the are-we-sures turning into yes-we-are that let them sleep deeply, peacefully, and plentifully.

***

“No raccoons in days and days,” she sighed as they waited at the red light (it was always red). “But I spotted a lovely little rabbit in the hedge across the way the other day. Froze stiff and ran when I got up to see better!”
“Do you want us to get you one?” asked Cheryl.

“Oh no, no, no, don’t worry. I like them best when they’re wild.”

The kitchen was not wild. The kitchen was under complete control. The cabinets descended into place with lockstep brutality, like giant horrible legos; the countertops clunked into place like coffin lids; the cupboard doors and handles clasped in silent acceptance and slid shut without resistance.

“You’re so wonderful, you know?” she told them as she turned in her front door, hunched over her keys. “Going to all this trouble.”
“It’s not a problem,” said Daryl.

“Nah, you’re good,” said Cheryl.

So she hugged them again, and they hugged her back, oh well, oh well.

***

It was calm and cool and blue at the last. They brought drywell and more titles and the last of the paint and a coffee and a little thermos of something stronger.

“Oh, is it the big day?” she asked them, like she didn’t know.

“Yep,” said Cheryl, handing her the thermos and a kiss on the cheek.

“Sure is,” said Daryl, passing her the coffee and a quick squeeze of the hand.

“How wonderful!” she said. And she meant it completely, oh well, oh well.

They left her on the porch. The breeze was sweet and cold, the air was mild and warm, her blanket was thin and her smile was wide, wider while she watched the birds sing. They took everything and descended low, dropped deep, down one storey and into the craggy walls and cement creak of the basement.

The pump was already good. Cheryl had made sure of that. The electrical was perfectly fine. Daryl had checked.

All they had to do was cover it up.

So they did.

They put up the drywall.

They rolled on the paint.

They laid down the tile.

They trimmed. They tweaked.

And they went upstairs, tired and smiling, and they told her “it’s time.”
“Oh my!” she said with a smile in her words on her face in her crooked back as she stood up with a crunch. “Already?” And it was like she’d never known all along, so they laughed at her and she laughed at them laughing at her, all the way down the stairs, all the way into the clean light on the sparkling floor and the shining walls, all the way to the bare-concrete crevice next to the building’s fuse box, lightless, tileless, cragged, unpainted.

“Oh, isn’t this just divine,” she told them, wriggling her shoulders against the rough surface of the cubby. Her toes curled and gripped against grit and grain. “Yes, I think this will be lovely. You’re both so sweet, you know that?”
“Yes grandma,” said Cheryl.

“So you say,” said Daryl.

She poked him in the cheek. “Oh stop it and take some credit! I love you both, you know?”

“He knows,” Cheryl said, poking his other cheek.

“I know,” Daryl sighed, cheeks forcibly puckered.

“Good! Now finish up; you’ve had a long day already and need your sleep.”

So Daryl and Cheryl gave her another two hugs and they took the last piece of drywall and a bit of soundproofing to mask the echo and they sealed up her smile behind the cubby, oh well, oh well, and while Cheryl started to drag the last of the tools away Daryl walked up to the porch to make a phone call.

“Yep,” he said. “Yep yep. Finished today; the paint’s only just dried. All cleared and ready for tenants. The sooner the better, definitely. We want bodies in this building.”

He pursed his lips at the few birds that yet sang from across the street, shrill and anxious and few.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “No question about that at all. Pets are VERY welcome.”

***

On the way home, Cheryl sat up straight and almost stamped on the brakes halfway through a green light. “Fuck!” she said.

“What? What’s wrong?” asked Daryl.

“She still had my thermos!”

The many arms heaved.  The great wheel creaked.  The iron-banded cask groaned.  The dozens and dozens of little round polished stones went clunkclunkclunk-a-clunk-clunkclunkclunk. 

Clunk.

The godmaker raised her arm and the wheel stilled in the grips of the many, panting and sweating.  The cask ceased its spin slowly, the momentum of the rocks in its gut struggling against its over-greased axle. 

A single small stone nestled in the godmaker’s hand as she withdrew it from the bowl beneath the cask.  She held it to the light and looked with great care.

“Needle is god now,” she said, with calm ceremony –

“Woo-hoo!”

– followed by “oh for fuck’s sake,” without it.

Somewhere in the huddled crowd, a space emerged by force of elbows.  Needle was dancing in it.

“It’s just for one year,” said the godmaker.  That also wasn’t part of the ceremony. 

Needle’s tempo accelerated.  There was a strangled shout as her braid whipped into someone’s face.

“It’s just for one year.”

***

Raintime was upon them.  The woods were turning green again.  The animals were stumbling bleary-eyed and hungry from the depths of the earth.  The fields were more mud and less crust.  And Needle made her first decree.

“Cattail time!” she called from the godstool, one leg dangling and swishing like a cat’s tail herself.  “They’re turning nice and green and juicy at the tips! Snip the tips, snip the roots, get ‘em in a basket and let’s all get stuffed!”

“The swamp is cold yet, god,” spoke the godmaker at her side, eyes appropriately downcast.

“Oh yeah!  That’s the best part!  The frogs’ll still be a little sluggish, so get a few of ‘em too!”

So spoke Needle, and Needle was god, so everyone took their baskets and nets and spears and waded into the still-chilled waters of the swamps where the cattails were bright green at the tips and the frogs bestirred themselves from the muck with thick, phlegmy chugga-booms only to be met with spears between the eyes.  They brought out basket upon basket of green thin cattail shoots and roots, the long-dead branches of many dead swamp-struck trees for fresh kindling, and no less than three moosefrogs, dangling from thick saplings carried by twelve hunters apiece.  Their meat sizzled over the quick-burning marshwood, and from their antlers Cricket the Crafty wove a towering crown that Needle wore for three whole weeks before hurling it atop the evening bonfire, where it popped snapped and crackled in a halo of flame. 

Cricket was annoyed by that, but distantly.  She’d long moved on; spent the whole time since then shaping the base of Needle’s godpole: the bark was bare, the trunk was clear, and from the base to a third-of-the-way-to-the-top the thick stem of the tree had been narrowed into an elegant spillage of cattails, slender stems carved so slimly that the bonfire’s light made them bob in the breeze. 

***

Suntime blazed, night nearly banished.  The heat grew fierce enough at noon to drive everyone to huddle indoors, to remove clothes, to scrape shallow patches in the dirt and press their foreheads into them, to lie moribund in the stream until a preyfish grasped an extremity.

“Let’s set the woods on fire!” decreed Needle.  “We haven’t done it in AGES, and the wind is nice and flat!  Get the  kindling going!”
And though the groaning  was of preposterous magnitude and the thought of more heat was devastating to all, thus spoke Needle, and Needle was god, so flints were struck and bark and needles (lowercase) were set aflame and fed with breath until they grew up tall and proud and ravenous for more, and they took and took and took and ate until the air was smoke and the sky was black and the world was red.

When the smoke cleared things were different.  The underbrush was gone.  The cindertrees had dropped their cones, and the grand vultures had come from afar to feed on the small things.  The deadwood was gone, and the thick ash was already sparkling with a second green, like raintime come again. 

“One way to burn off a sweat,” said Needle.  Cricket the Crafty wrought her a brilliant, fragile sceptre from an over-charred cindertree branch, white and jet black, and she used it to poke everyone for two weeks until she threw it so high in the air that nobody saw where it landed, or heard the crunch.

Cricket furrowed her brow at that, but she was too busy to dwell.  The second aspect of Needle’s godpole was of greater difficulty for her: first, due to needing taller and taller ladders; second, due to the care necessary in shaping such long and delicate licks of flame, twirling higher and higher in a leaping pyre that the tree’s own heartwood turned red all on its own. 

 ***

Closingtime began, slow but sure, a groaning door catching a breeze and tipping farther inch by inevitable inch. 

So just as everyone was busy with the harvest of the meadows and the field, in the midst of it came the loud, piercing shout of Needle’s third decree. 

“Snake hunt!” she called from the roof of her house, where she’d moved the godstool once the height of suntime had passed, to expand the reach of her gaze.  “They’re nice and fat now, and they’ve started packing into their hibernacula! I know a good spot in the hills – let’s go let’s go let’s go go go!”

And though everyone was tired and covered in dirt and berry stickers thus spoke Needle, and Needle was god, so the spears were gathered and the drying racks were hauled out and the thick stone-gripper sandals were donned and the boulders were clambered and with burning spear, stabbing spear, and slicing spear the serpents were bearded in their den and dragged out in reasonable quantities (“leave some for next year!” reminded Needle helpfully, as blood flew and screams warbled); their venom drained into vessels for fishing and healing; their flesh smoked and packed for the hungriest of cold days; their skins burnished and woven into armour and waterproof blankets; their fangs carved into daggers and knives and awls.  The greatest of these was shaped into a true sword by Cricket the Crafty, who gave it to Needle and watched as she waved it around and then accidentally dropped into the well immediately. 

Cricket didn’t say much to that, but she did stomp her wood-gripper sandals extra hard into Needle’s godpole when she was ascending to work on the last third.  The thinness of the snakes slid upwards, ever-entwined, each scale perfectly, painstakingly chipped into reality.  Birds feared to approach it now.

***

Eventime did not announce itself.  Instead it slid in through Closingtime, softly, slowly, until one day everyone knew that the water was going to freeze and there was nothing to be done. 

“Before the days get too short,” said Needle, who had moved the godstool into the godmaker’s home (“it’s warmer in here”), “let’s build a new cold-lodge.  Our old one is nice, but I bet we could make it even better.  And twice as big.”
“The days grow shorter,” said the godmaker, who had been counting them in her head very carefully as of late. 

“Well then we’d better work really fast!” said Needle with great cheer. 

And at this though everyone cursed and complained and stomped their feet thus HAD spoken Needle, and Needle was god, for now.  So they took axes into the woods and found those trees whose scorching from suntime bespoke great strength and soundness, and they felled them, and they heaved them, and they barked them, and they shaped them, and they raised them, and they had to move them again because Needle wanted it “bigger,” and they had to that again, and then once more again, and at the end of it all the cold-lodge was built and it was nearly the height of a godpole and it had an attic and two full floors and a hearth that could keep all of it as warm and sound as a suntime morning or a baby’s smile, and a terribly thick door, and snakeskin in all the places where water would otherwise insist on intruding unasked-for. 

“This is great,” said Needle when it was done.  “Hey, don’t I get anything?  Where’s Cricket?”
From aloft, a groan.  Cricket the Crafty was taller than the highest remaining trees of the village, swaying gently in the cold clutch of the winds and anchored only by her gripper-sandals and a sturdy snakeskin rope.  A towering blocky mass erupted from the peak of the new godpole, resting atop the very skulls of the serpents below it.  Every beam and shingle of it was represented, and if an eagle had looked between it and the new cold-lodge it would have not have been able to find a single measurable difference beyond that of scale. 

“Don’t slack off!” called Needle. 

Cricket’s mouth spoke no words.  Her limbs did not shake.  Her hands did not falter. 

But she did slam the chisel in with extra vigor. 

***

“It is turning-time,” said the godmaker, as she stepped into the weak sunlight of the shortest of all possible days.

“It is turning-time,” said the godmaker’s aunt, who heard her say that.

“It is turning-time,” said her friends, who she told that.  And after they told their friends and they told theirs, everyone knew that it was turning-time.

“It’s what now?” asked Needle.

“Turning-time is here,” said the godmaker.

“Oh!” said Needle.  “Right.  So, do I need to go?”
“Before noon.  Yes.  Now.”
“Can I bring the godstool?”
“No.”
Needle sighed tragically at this.  “Please?  I know Cricket can make a new one, a better one, and it’s so comfy, and I’ve finally got this one leg to squeak just the way I like, and-”

There was a dry, crunchy crack and the godstool lurched slightly.

“Whoops,” said Needle.

“Just take it,” said the godmaker.

So Needle stepped into the snakeskin harness clutching the godstool and was raised together with it, up past the slender and elegant cattails, up past the long and delicate flames, up past the thin and entwined snakes, lurching around the towering thick-set mass of the cold-lodge model, and finally placing her atop the plain unmarred wooden disc that marked where god, who was Needle, was to sit for the afternoon until the sky took her away and all would mark their stones for the barrel once more. 

Needle slapped the godstool down atop the disc.  The rope slithered away back down.  She waved, but all below had hurried back into the cold-lodge, for it was cold and windy.  She looked around, but all the other godpoles were empty but for bare and unconversationally inclined bones.  She tapped her foot and hummed, but the wind was too loud to hear herself. 

“Ugh,” said Needle, as she leaned back in the godstool, which cracked again and lurched, which made the wildly top-heavy godpole sway wildly, aggravated a single very-slightly-too-deep-chisel-cut within the cold-lodge, which propagated inside the thin and entwined snakes, which spiralled out of control within the long and delicate flames, and which blew the slender and elegant cattails to pieces.   

With perfect and mathematical grace, the godpole fell. 

Another godpole caught it, then also began to fall.

Things proceeded as expected from there. 

***

Everyone came out after the noise stopped – because some sounds herald things you can’t do anything about except hide and wait for the aftermath.  The cold-lodge was untouched; the rest of the dwellings less so.  The godmaker’s home in particular had been pulverized to smithereens by what appeared to have once been a lovely if antiquated carving of many fishing nets. 

They stood together and looked at the wheeled cask, crushed flat by a familiar cold-lodge model.  They stood together and looked up at the godpole grove, now holding nothing taller than a shrivelled leafless seedling or a cracked stump.  They stood together and looked down at the scattered bones that had once been gods, several of which had landed in the well.  They stood together and looked at the wooden disc that had embedded itself edge-first in the dirt right in front of the cold-lodge, like a shovel’s blade in a molehill.

“Do you think Cricket could have a look at the leg on my godstool?” asked Needle.

They stood together and looked at anything but Needle. 

“It’s just that it’s cracked a little more than I’d like.  Do you think she can fix that?  Can I make that a decree?”

They stood together and looked at nothing but Needle.

The silence was broken at last by Cricket the Crafty, who screamed “oh, you little PIECE OF SHIT” so loudly that all in the village could hear the blood ooze into her throat.

***

The bones were buried in the last of the unfrozen ground; the wheeled cask’s husk as their home.  The dwellings were left until raintime; the cold-lodge sufficed.  The pieces of the godpoles were brought inside and hung from the rafters, strung from the walls, tied to the beams. 

They’d never look good as old, but someday they’d look good as new. 

Thus spoke Needle, and Needle wasn’t god, but nobody had the energy left to argue.