The Bay of Blenth was not a bad place to live altogether. The river was wide and gentle; the fields were wide and watered well by its floods; the woods were thick and shaded; the winters weren’t too much to bear; the seas were sheltered and rich.
No, the Bay of Blenth was an excellent place for a human to live. The tragedy was that it was an even BETTER place to live if you were a mosquito. The slow river and the shallow puddles in the fields were their nurseries; the shaded woods their havens; the light winters their modest off-season; the rich bounty of the bay an inducement for lovely blood-rich humans to congregate. Thus the mosquitoes of the Bay of Blenth were the largest, fattest, and smuggest to be found anywhere, and its people were accordingly blessed with a rich variety of itchy red lumps all over their exposed skin, particularly in the summer months.
The particular summer month that finally broke this age-old harmony was a notably humid and windless one, where the clouds clotted everything from horizon to horizon for weeks on end and the swarms grew so thick that the cows returned from pasture weighing less than they had going out, and anyone out for a walk had to tie a scarf over their mouth or risk inhaling an entire meal of crunchy protein. The biweekly meeting of the town hall was filled with complaints and the occasional anguished whimper.
“Mosquitoes have bitten my sheep-guard dog’s nose so thoroughly that he can no longer smell a fox from a frog!” screamed a man in a frenzy of despair.
“Peace, peace, we are all suffering,” soothed the head of the town council, a limpid man who had seen three score summers like this come and go.
“Mosquitos have barred my two-year-old triplets from leaving the house,” droned a haunted shell of a woman. “I spin wool all day while they break things and attempt to eat them. I lament life.”
“Peace, peace, let us not succumb to despair; this too shall pass,” repeated the head of the town council, exuding a calm that very nearly overpowered the thick choking smoke the building had been filled with in futile hope of keeping out the bugs.
“As of two hours ago, mosquitos have filled every outhouse across the Bay from the bottom up in a solid mass,” said a mournful-looking man. “It’s like dipping a pig trotter in a pool of sharks.”
“My good kin and neighbours, something must be done IMMEDIATELY,” said the head of the town council, voice firm with indignation and legs rigidly crossed. “The time has come for action, no matter the cost or the risk. We shall draw straws, and whosoever draws the shortest of the straws will venture to the tower of the wizard Wulwreath, and shall beseech him for aid in our darkest hour.”
So speaking, a large handful of straw was fetched, broken, shuffled, distributed, measured, and judged, and a lone luckless lumberjack named Leen was sent out in quest of the wizard Wulwreath; whose tower, she discovered after scant minutes of questioning, was most recently sighted and sited in the Bay itself, some half-mile offshore on a small shoal. He was studying sharks.
The voyage was simple, but finding someone willing to lend a boat to it was not. At length Leen resorted to the ancient technique of lying about what she was doing, and thus armed, was able to row to the squat and malformed shape of the tower unhindered by anything more than mosquitos and the rippling waves of dread spilling off the structure’s sides and gushing deep into the sea.
The door to the tower of the wizard Wulwreath opened before it could be knocked upon, recoiling from the lumberjack’s scarred knuckles like her mother-in-law from her dinner table.
“Enter!” it shouted portentously. And so she did, and found herself in a dark and troubled space. Each wall was a ceiling, and from each of them sprouted four more walls, each adroitly avoiding intersecting with each other, their parents, or themselves. There were no floors. All the stairs weren’t. The contents were scarcely less troubling than their confines: unshelved books and unbooked shelves that somehow shared space; the skeletons of giant insects; a stuffed and mounted jellyfish; and a giant set of glass jars containing miniaturized terrariums of hopes, dreams, and despairs. Through it all flowed a mighty river of time, sucking up all the spare moments and idle hours and centralizing them for recapture, reuse, and repurposing.
“Who disturbs my contemplations?” demanded an even yet more portentous voice. It was the wizard Wulwreath. He was squatted on top of a crystal orb, on top of a platinum spire, on top of a burning brazier of crackling dragon-eggs, and he was smoking an indecipherable substance from a cyclops’s skull.
“Leen, the lumberjack. From town.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
“You get a lot of trees that need cutting?”
“What are trees?”
“Then there you go.”
The wizard Wulwreath nodded solemnly, causing plumes of smoke to erupt from his eyeballs and shatter. “So it does go. And what do you seek me for?”
“The Bay of Blenth is under mosquito siege, worse than anyone can ever remember happening before. Can you help us?”
“Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps,” muttered the wizard, sucking down another lungful of materials. “Sure. Yes. Absolutely. Of course!”
“One last thing. Aren’t you studying sharks?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then where are they?”
“What a silly question,” said the wizard. He opened the skull’s jaws, and lo, inside it, there was a shark.
“Oh,” said Leen. And she departed fully informed and told the town council that there would be help, and everyone rejoiced.
***
One day later, a great smoke and fire rose from the peak of the tower of the wizard Wulwreath and vanished.
One week later, the dragonflies hatched. They were bigger than before, and in greater numbers, and with greater appetite, speed, and ferocity. Each of them had a tiny dragon’s head in place of their own head, and a tiny dragon’s head in place of each of their own legs, and a tiny dragon’s head in place of their own tails. Each of those heads could eject poisonous acid when it breathed, and each of those heads wanted to eat mosquitoes, and each of those dragonflies wanted all the mosquitoes to be eaten.
At first the people rejoiced – finally you could breathe freely again; could see across a field in broad daylight; could expose skin for longer than a second without it being perforated – but then the first tiny poisonous fires began to catch in the hay and the wheat and the grass and matters became somewhat more tense.
“It isn’t TERRIBLY poisonous acid,” pondered the head of the town council wisely, “since it only gives you a rash. So the problem is solved.”
“The rash takes all your skin with it when it comes off,” said a half-exsanguinated fisherman, whose entire body was swaddled in smelly bandages.
“Well, we’re already used to bundling up a bit to avoid the mosquitoes, so this is nothing but an improvement, and the problem is solved,” asserted the head of the town council regally.
“The flames grow and threaten despite the dampness and the lack of sunlight for the past month and more,” said Leen, who was coated with soot and marginally scalded around the gills.
“The rains shall arrive any day now, so the problem is solved,” explained the head of the town council fondly.
“The dragonflies have learned to fear not humanity, and they find our livestock toothsome,” said a rancher. “I lost six head of cattle this morning.”
“My good kin and neighbours, this crisis shall be averted at ONCE,” shouted the head of the town council with the absolute conviction of one who owned a small herd of prized dairy cows. “As we are beset by the foul and unjust magicks of the wicked wizard Wulwreath, we must reach out to the one force that can counterbalance and counteract his sorceries: we shall draw straws, and whosoever draws the shortest of the straws will venture deep into the woods and find and secure the aid of the witch Wezelynn.”
This time the lucky winner was a cooper called Colm, who was in a bad mood to begin with and was not best pleased by being told to venture deep into the shaded woods while his livelihood burned down behind him. But there was no putting it off, and so with a walking stick and a bellyful of bellyaching and a head full of thunder he stomped off through the smoke and the fire and the (still present!) mosquitoes and spent a day hiking and a night hiding in a tree and a day walking and stumbled and tripped and when he got up he was face to face with the cottage of the witch Wezelynn, tucked under a tree root.
Colm knocked on the door with his pinky finger’s knuckle.
“Enter,” it croaked in the voice of a mummified toad. So he pushed it open, and pushed his pinky finger inside, and the rest of him followed into a dank and rotted pit, like the heart of a peach gone rancid and prised open by little clicking chitin jaws. Splinters and ashes and tatters abounded. In the center of the clutter and the rot was the firepit, in which burned the indescribable, and atop that was the cauldron, in which simmered the unthinkable, and within that curdled the witch Wezelynn.
“What do you want,” she said, eyes shut. “And make it quick. I’m bathing.”
Colm found that the roof of his mouth was trying to stick to his tongue was trying to stick to his teeth which were trying to stick to each other.
“I don’t bite,” said the witch Wezelynn. “Slice and stew and slurp, yes. But I don’t bite. Now open that fly-trap before I seal it shut proper for wasting my bathtime.”
“The wizard Wulwreath has covered us with dragonflies after we begged him to save us from mosquitos,” said Colm. “We are poisoned and singed and bitten, and beg you to drive away his pests.”
The witch laughed at that, which sounded like a mudslide drowning a rabbit burrow. “Oh! Oh I see how it is! You tried to solve all your problems with a wizard, and now that THAT’S backfired on you – unexpected, I’m sure! – you finally have it in you to come beg aid from the wicked, cruel, capricious witch Wezelynn. Such a brave boy you are! I bet you’re only here because you picked the short straw.”
“Please,” begged Colm. “I had half my boots burned off walking here.”
“Hah! I bet you did. Well, I can fix that. I can fix the mosquitoes too. I can fix it all up so well you’ll never dare bother me during bathtime again!” And the laugh came again, but longer, and thicker, and it wouldn’t end, wouldn’t end, wouldn’t end, wouldn’t end, wouldn’t end, wouldn’t ever ever ever end until Colm shut his eyes to escape it and when he opened them again he was on the edge of the forest.
***
The next day the rains didn’t come. Indeed, the clouds finally vanished and the sun shone brightly, so although the fires continued, the mosquitoes at least suffered another blow.
The next day the rains didn’t come, and it was spotlessly blue from east to west. The air felt thin and glassy, like a lens.
The day after that the rains didn’t come.
And the day after.
And the day.
And the
And
Until the standing water evaporated and the river shrivelled and the fields crumpled and the world itself felt crisped and the dragonflies all died and the mosquitoes all died and there was no place for their eggs to brew and simmer and the who world seemed to be curling up into a desiccated husk, and still the sun shone and the air was clear even as people dug wells deeper, resorted to complicated schemes with panes of glass and trays of saltwater from the bay, ate their meat near-raw for the juices.
So it was explained why the mood at the next meeting in the town hall was somewhat less than ideal.
“We roast!”
“We burn!”
“We wither!”
“We thirst!”
“Your concerns are well-founded and urgent and we should not waste our time asking why they may or may not have arisen and who may or may not have caused them,” decreed the head of the town council with immaculate decorum. “But we have one last play to make, one last hope for salvation, though perilous it be! Once more, the straws! And once more, draw! And behold, the short straw is oh dear.”
So the head of the town council took himself – reluctantly – to his feet and walked up the winding road – slowly – to the keep where he – begrudgingly – requested audience – humbly – with the Prince of the Bay of Blenth, whereupon he was taken to the court and placed on his hands and knees while the prince finished watching his jester.
“Excellent,” said the prince. “Now more wine. Oh, who’s that?”
“I am a humble and unnoteworthy messenger,” said the head of the town council, “who has but come to beseech thee, milord, on behalf of the people of your fair lands, who are suffering most terribly through no fault of anyone at all besides the mosquitoes, milord, and the dragonflies sent by the wizard Wulwreath, milord, and the drought plaguing the land which has eradicated the mosquitoes and the dragonflies that is believed to have been sent out by the wicked witch Wezelynn, milord. Please, milord, may you spare us and succour us, your undeserving and everloyal and unquestioning subjects?”
The prince stood up. Grave was his face and keen were his eyes. “Your pleas move me, oh lowly creature,” he spake solemnly. “Lo! I shall make ever permitting stagnant or standing water on your property or your fields (such as might permit the breeding of dragonflies or mosquitoes) an offence punishable by death!”
“And the drought, milord?” ventured the head of the town council.
“Oh, yes, right,” said the prince. “Double the tributary requirements: I will need to make a second, larger keep to show the other princes that these hardships haven’t shrunken my sword. Someone execute this man for interrupting me.”
The head of the town council would have protested, but was interrupted and foreshortened to merely the * of the town council, and so missed his chance.
***
The next summer the mosquitoes were thick and furious as usual across the Bay of Blenth.
Everybody suffered, but nobody complained. They knew better.
And besides, it wasn’t as if NOTHING good had come of it. Town council meetings were much faster now.