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There was a wanderer.   There are and were and will be wanderers, wherever, whenever.   But this one was.   

In particular, this one was Somewhat-Clever Cirlew, who was walking down the long dirt roads of the long spring valleys when she found an unexpected thing: the road became cobbled.   

“Well, that’s nice,” she said.   

“Not as much as you think,” said a nearby peasant, bent-triple under a load of stones for roadwork.   “It’s not for the benefit of you and me, but for the land-lord.”
“And who might that be, and who might you be?” asked Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.
“I am Bow-Legged Nleet, and these are the lands of Wide-Armed Wallis,” said Bow-Legged Nleet.   “He’s the strongest within these lands and so they are his and he may do what he pleases with them, and what pleases him is to extract ruinous tolls from all passers-by on pain of death, which he gathers up in his grand keep.   We toil at his will to keep the roads busy with traffic to extort, and it will never end.”

“I think I can fix that for you,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   

“Well, good luck with that,” said Bow-Legged Nleet, “because here he comes now.” And indeed the cobbled road hummed with the furious force of thunderous footfalls, and up the road stomped Wide-Armed Wallis, thirty stone if he was an ounce and all of it burly and hairy and most of it knuckles.   

“HEY YOU,” he introduced himself.   “YOU OWE THE TOLL FOR USE OF THIS ROAD, WHICH IS EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT ON YOU.”
“Oh dear,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   “To whom is this toll owed?”
“ME,” explained Wide-Armed Wallis.   “I AM THE LAND-LORD OF THESE LANDS, FOR I AM THE STRONGEST OF ANY WITHIN THEM.   THAT’S HOW IT WORKS.”
“Oh, you are?” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   

“YES, I AM,” said Wide-Armed Wallis.

“Oh.   Alright.   I thought – nevermind.   Well, what’s the toll?”
“YOU THOUGHT WHAT?’ demanded Wide-armed Wallis.   

“I thought I heard you were the strongest within these lands,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   “And well, I suppose that’s sort of true.   Strongest man, yes, certainly.”
Wide-Armed Wallis’s shoulders flexed in outrage, destroying his shirt.   Hot steam spurted from every opening of his body in rage.   “I ATE A BEAR ONCE,” he proclaimed.   “I CAN LIFT AND THROW COWS.   I AM THE STRONGEST OF ALL IN THESE LANDS, NO EXCEPTIONS.   WHAT LIES HAVE YOU HEARD?”
“I heard the winter weather here is pretty fierce up on yonder mountainside,” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew, with a meek and submissive gesture of her pointiest finger.   “Quite tough.   Real nasty.”
“I FEAR IT NOT,” said Wide-Armed Wallis.

“Of course, of course.”
“I AM STRONGER THAN IT.”
“No doubt, no doubt.”
“I WILL GO SHOW YOU RIGHT NOW.”
“Oh?” said Somewhat-Clever Cirlew innocently.   “Oh, well, I mean, if you insist-”

Wide-Armed Wallis picked up Somewhat-Clever Cirlew in one hand and his snarl in the other and clambered uphill and through dale and nigh to the very summit of the nearest peak, where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face for the wails of the winter in the wind and the rush of snow through your eyesockets.   
“NOW I WILL FIGHT THIS BLIZZARD AND SHOW IT WHO IS STRONGEST,” said Wide-Armed Wallis.   

“Oh, how brave!” admired Somewhat-Clever Cirlew.   “Only it’s not this spot that’s the nastiest.   It’s a bit over there.”
Wide-Armed Wallis went a bit over there.   “HERE?”
“No, there.”
Wide-Armed Wallis went a bit over there again.   “HERE?”
“No, there.”
Wide-Armed Wallis went a bit over there again, again.   “HERE?” he began to ask as he fell into a crevasse, plummeted two hundred feet, and lost a very rapid arm wrestling match against the mountain.   

***

Bow-Legged Nleet was taking a breather with a cup of tea and some gossip with Natter-Mouth Moilra when Pretty-Cunning Cirlew came back down from the mountainside, covered in snow and a bit smug grin.   

“I believe your land-lord problems are now over,” she proclaimed with satisfaction.   

“Oh, not quite, not quite, not nearly so,” said Bow-Legged Nleet.   “You see, Wide-Armed Wallis had a son: Quick-Grasp Grimley.   He’s not as burly as his dad was, but he’s lightning-fast and even more avaricious.   As a matter of fact, since his father’s dead, he should be coming up the way to raise the tolls right now.”
“When?” asked Pretty-Cunning Cirlew.

“Now,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley, his boots still-dusty as he tidied them off by kicking Bow-Legged Nleet’s shin.   He was as tall as his father, but six times narrower and three times nastier.   “And now, I will take the toll for the use of this road.   Everything you’ve got on you twice over, please.”
“That’s quite a lot,” marvelled Pretty-Cunning Cirlew.

“I deserve it for my diligence,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley.   “Every day of my father’s reign I woke up bright and early to squeeze our rightful gains from insolent and greedy trespassers.   I billed the roads; I priced the bridges; I took three birds from every flock and three fish from every stream.   Nothing moves through these lands without paying a price, for I am their land-lord.”
“Oh of course, of course, of course,” soothed Pretty-Cunning Cirlew.   “Except the clouds, naturally.”
“Naturally what,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley, his eyes narrowing.   

“Naturally you can’t extract payment from the clouds.   But I mean, who would? The clouds are beyond anyone’s grasp.”
“Not mine,” said Quick-Grasp Grimley.   “Of course they’re not beyond me! They just have nothing of value to give up.”
“There’s a rain-cloud!” pointed Pretty-Cunning Cirlew with a precise and accurate gesture of her pointiest finger.  .  “It’s not stopping, either!”
“OH, NO IT WON’T!” shouted Quick-Grasp Grimley, and he was gone, and gone, and gone, matching pace with the cloud as it soared down and away through the valleys and over the hills and down the riverways and over the sea and over the sea and over the sea and into the middle of the sea, where it evaporated.   

“Tax-dodger!” snarled Quick-Grasp Grimley.   

Then he remembered he couldn’t swim.   

***

It took Very-Crafty Cirlew four days to walk to the coast and back, and by the time she made the trip, word had got around.   The village was in an uproar of riotous festivity, and not a single back was bent under a load of stone and brick.   

“I’m back!” proclaimed Very-Crafty Cirlew, holding aloft her noxious prize.   “With proof of your land-lord’s passing: the discarded boots and clothing of Quick-Grasp Grimley!”
“Hooray!” shouted Bow-Legged Nleet.

“Hooray!” called Natter-Mouth Moilra.

“HOORAY!” hollered Damned-Short Sillas.
“HOORAY!” yelled everyone else.   

“I also got his keys!” said Very-Crafty Cirlew.   

“Hooray!” shouted Bow-Legged Nleet.

“Hooray!” called Natter-Mouth Moilra.

“HOORAY!” hollered Damned-Short Sillas.
“HOORAY!” yelled everyone else.   

“Now I’m going to live in the land-lord’s keep as the land-lord, since I am the cleverest in all the land,” said Very-Crafty Cirlew.   “I suggest you pay up on time, since I’m incredibly devious and will get you no matter what in the end.   Now get back to work on the roads.”

“Hooray!” shouted Bow-Legged Nleet.   “Wait.”

“Fuck,” said Natter-Mouth Moilra.

“Shit,” said Damned-Short Sillas.   

“Piss,” agreed everyone else.   “NOW what?”
Bow-Legged Nleet thought about it, then smiled.   “I think I know who can save us.”

***

The land-lord’s keep’s great and terrible door laid open a crack, permitting the faintest egress of light into its depths.   A hand was placed upon it, gnarled and wrinkled, and with a slow and ominous creak the crack opened wide.   

“Pay your dues and begone,” said Very-Crafty Cirlew’s voice from far within.   “But don’t come inside, or the many terrible curses I’ve laid upon the door will fell you.”
“Feh,” said the intruder, and stumped inside, slamming the door for good measure.   

The land-lord’s keep’s towering, ominous hall soared and swooped from gloomy rafters to flat dead-grey flagstones, wide and rough.   Old leathery boots tramped on them, and mud spattered across them.   

“Ah, you are too brave to be thwarted with curses,” said Very-Crafty Cirlew’s voice from the end of the hall.   “But your fellow villagers fear you for your boldness! They plan to turn upon you when you return to them after dealing with me, serving you poisoned beer with false smiles.   I can save you from this fate if you’ll stop and listen and promise to leave.”

“Meh,” grunted the intruder, her hobnailed waddle unceasing.   

The land-lord’s keep’s throne was a great and towering thing carved from raw oak, and in its enormous seat was sat Very-Crafty Cirlew and a very comfortable pillow.   

“Okay, you’re too smart to be tricked,” she admitted.   “How about this: you can have all the gold in this place if you go home and say you killed me.”

“Hngh,” said the intruder, as she patted at her pockets.   Then she pulled out a large, sharp kitchen knife and planted it in Very-Crafty Cirlew’s chest.   

“But….I’m the cleverest…” she bubbled.   
Face pinched in annoyance, one-good-eye squinting, her killer leaned in closer.   
“EH?” shouted Stone-Deaf Dreen.   

***

They still kept the road in decent shape, when all was said and done.   Toll or no toll, they all had to walk on it.   

It was a beautiful October, a fine October.  The pumpkins had flourished, the corn had crowned, the squash were fine and full-fleshed.  The apples and nuts fell from the trees and the hogs grew fat upon them until they looked ripe themselves.  The whole world was round and flushed with life and ready to pluck before winter slipped in the window and shushed everything to sleep. 

So they had plenty of warning, same as always, but it still made folks’ backs prickle and feet hurry on their way home; made them check the storm doors on the basement and give the children sleeping pills; made them stare out the windows and look away quickly to pretend they hadn’t been looking, hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t let it cross their mind at all. 

That harvest moon. 

***

It had sat on the edge of the afternoon all day, smiling down at them from its pale little perch in the sky.  Every now and then a white cloud slid over it and hushed it away, but it was always waiting, always watching, always there again when it passed by.  Near-invisible in the deep blue sky. 

Now that deep blue had purpled up, turned itself into something thicker and darker that brought it out of its shell and into its glory, gave it light, gave it legs, gave it strength.  Gave it a path to walk down from the stars and come closer to the darkened earth and moistened soil, to probe among the fields with ruddy orange light.  To come, to see, to touch. 

That harvest moon. 

***

It came to ground outside of the township, on the bald hilltop by the old gravel pits, where even the wild grasses didn’t want to grow.  All around it shone soft orange sodium-light, and all the night turned from dark to shadows.  Every hole, cranny, and crevice in rock and wood and brush tripled in depth; every small thing snuggled deeper in its nest and watched and waited for its passing. 

Unlike the trees and the brush, the neat and tidy fields billowed and blossomed under its light, and it walked towards them.  It had no legs but it walked towards them, and among them.  Its face had no eyes and from its gaze poured a more full light, one that went from white to yellow to orange to something that was indiscernible but tangible. 

The soil groaned and breathed under the weight of its attention.  The shoots rustled and stiffened.  Fruit gurgled and rounded.  Grain grew.  Roots swelled.  Piglets trembled in their pens, too frightened to squeal.  An owl screamed. 

That harvest moon. 

***

That was midnight.  That was normal. That was safe. 

Then it was the morning, and it was time.  A morning that was still dark and orange and shadowed, and it walked the new-ripened rows and rows and rows and rows and pens and barns and it had no hands but it reached out and touched, and touched. 

And it touched and it took its harvest.  One-tenth of every leaf, every stem, every root, every fruit, every grain, every stalk.  It did not dig, it did not pluck, it did not uproot or tear or grasp or grab.  It just touched, and its touch took.  The sheep’s-wool, the piglets, the milk and the calves, even the newborn rats and mice hidden at the bases of the silos and deep in the barn-rafters, even the kittens that hunted them. 

That harvest moon. 

***

When the dreadful moment came, it came quickly.  The light was in the window, then it was inside, then it was inside you, and then it was gone. 

And in one in every ten farmhouses, so was a child. 

No trace, no mess, no fuss, no tears, no trouble.

That harvest moon. 

***

Afterwards, it walked to the top of the bald hilltop, laden with its bounty. 

Nobody ever saw it, nobody ever saw them.  That helped.  That helped.  Nobody could be sure what it did with what it took, nobody could be sure what it was for, nobody could be sure how they needed to feel about it. 

So nobody did.  And then it was gone. 

That harvest moon.

***

In daylight it was still gone, and there was plenty of work to be done.  Plenty of distraction to be had.  Plenty of crops and thoughts and emotions to harvest and heap and crush down into storage, not to be looked at or dwelt on. 

It was a fair deal.  It was a fair trade.  It was completely fine. 

And how could you ever hope for a better bargain to be made when you’d never needed to agree to this one in the first place?

The inner working of the Woodytrudy Society have long been off-limits to the common folk by the strictest social barriers of decorum and profound legal violence, left only to faint rumour and wildest hearsay.  But now, on the thirtieth anniversary of the society’s disbandment, its histories have finally been decoded for the edification of the masses.  No longer are the doings of our betters hidden from us, much as we may feel otherwise. 

Origination

The Woodytrudy Society began as a simple wartime bet between two young men of humble goals and ample means: one bright evening in August 1917, John Barton-Clarke declared to Duncan Smith that if they both survived the morrow’s assault through c that they should purchase a little plot of land somewhere with some nice water and plenty of sun and a big blue sky.  Alas, both would perish before noon come morning, but among the effects transported home to their families was the idly scribbled-and-signed affidavit they had hashed out before their departure from this mortal coil, and Montgomery Barton-Clarke (John’s elder brother, who was exempt from service due to a complex and debilitating case of dicky knee) thought it was ‘simply smashing.’ The next week he bought land around the isolated, pristine uplands of Homely Bay, deep in the Canadian Shield, which he frequently boasted was chosen by throwing darts at a map and pulling them out again until he found somewhere that ‘tickled his fancy.’

Of course, a Society cannot be founded with a membership of one, but Montgomery was an easily-bored human being and possessed good acquaintance with many of his fellows that suffered from a similar condition.  In the name of his dead brother and his equally dead comrade some thirty thousand acres were purchased before the coming of September, and construction plans for the first ‘estates’ (latter to be called ‘cottages’) were scrawled on napkins at a cocktail party at Montgomery’s birthday, September 16^th. 

It was called the Woodytrudy Society after Montgomery Burton-Clarke’s favourite teddy bear. 

Foundation

Early plans for the Woodytrudy Society envisioned it as a little slice of Britain-away-from-Britain, a place of palatial estates and impeccable gardens groomed by a full staff of year-round servants.  Unfortunately, the reality of there being no ground soil other than pine needles and moss atop miles-thick Shield granite dashed those initial dreams, but Montgomery was an easily-buoyed-up soul and soon espoused a new vision: a secluded hunting lodge of the finest caliber; charmingly rustic, expensively furnished, and outfitted with as much alcohol as any ten distilleries the planet could boast.  These became the three guiding pillars of the Society’s elaborate and byzantine set of building codes, and the first six cottages were completed before the summer of 1918.  The isolated islands and bays soon fairly rang with as much gunfire as No-Man’s-Land itself, and the local populations of beaver, deer, moose, and bear took a somewhat precipitous plunge.  The Society’s documents never included any talk of game conservation, as Montgomery aptly observed that the less time spent shooting while on hunt, the more time spent tippling, and therefore so much the better if there was as little to shoot at as possible. 

Codification

By the time of death of Montgomery Barton-Clarke at the age of seventy-six from a severely untreated case of Bungy Bottom, the Society was in grievous danger of becoming dull.  Its initial membership – and their livers – had become old and faulty, and their offspring sneered at their idle and antiquated notions of amusement (blowing apart wild animals while inebriated).  The next step in the society’s history came entirely by chance: young Terence Twatherly–Fordring (the Twatherlys and the Fordrings being distinguished owners two of the original six founding cottages) had a fine bull moose in his sights when an errant cough from his batman spoiled his shot.  Enraged, Terence beat his poor servant about the head with a juniper branch until the man fled in terror and became entangled in the bog, where he sank over a heartrending twenty-six minutes and forty-nine second.  Terence declared it the best sport of his life and eagerly told all his peers and chums about this fabulous plot of backwoods where you could flog your servants even better than the good old days, for there was nowhere for them to run but empty bush, forest, and lake – an unappealing and mosquito-cursed sanctuary, to be sure.  Soon the average age of the Society’s membership had risen from a sunken and cadaverous seventy-three to a spry and vigorous thirty-six, and once again the hills and isles of Homely Lake rang with laughter, gunshots, and screams of agony.  The modern entertainment of the Society had arrived. 

Domestication

Of course, servants will talk, and soon it became somewhat difficult to find good help to accompany Society members on their summers.  This was alleviated by a cunning practice pioneered by Joshua Barton-Clarke-Foxworth II, which was secretively paying for free rounds in the village pub and pressganging anyone who became insensate.  The quality of manservants thus procured was very low, but this was seen as all the better, seeing as this produced an ample sum of reasons to punish them as extensively and creatively as anyone could wish.  Nonetheless, it had its downsides, as was exhaustively proven by the tragic demise of Joshua in his sleep at the age of twenty-three from one-hundred-and-forty-nine separate stab wounds.  Investigation of the murderer by pleading and threat seemed fruitless until Joshua’s best mate, Graham Axway-Sneedlebury, hit upon the notion of letting his prize hound Worble IV Chesterton smell Joshua’s body and then the servants.  The trusty hound barked at every single one of them, and a s reward for his service in the name of justice, was given free reign upon them along with every single one of his kin – a sizable pack, given the popularity of kennel breeding among the Society’s members.  It took no great mind at all to see the potential in the loyalty of animals as warden against the duplicity of man, and thus was the second of the two essential components of the modern entertainments of the Woodytrudy Society realized: the guard animal. 

Elaboration

Of course, even the most amusing pastime must contain innovation, lest it become tedium.  Fashion at first lent itself to the largest, most threatening and aggressive dogs being brought to Homely Lake, but such creatures proved at least as dangerous to their masters as their servants, and soon the painstaking care inherent in producing a beast that would react with utter love to its owner and rabid death to any member of the lower classes was applauded.  When that balancing act was mastered to the point of boredom, exoticisms became the point of the day – keeping exclusively water-dogs that would drown their prey, or game dogs that would fetch the mortally wounded but never mutilate them, or a herd of feral lapdogs that would swarm the fallen all had their day as amusements, each mastered, then discarded.  But even novelty must pall, and so it was that on May 14^th, 1978, Charles Jalopy-Cordwith announced in the Woodytrudy Society’s quarterly newsletter that he would be bringing no dogs with him at all that summer.  Astonishment bloomed – surely if Charles had become so bored of the Society’s sport, why come at all? – then in its wake a subtle and omnipresent anticipation, and when Charles stepped off the docks to his family cottage fashionably late there was a veritable horde of his peers watching, and therefore ample witnesses to his accompaniment by a chimpanzee named Piers. 

Piers, it became rapidly-apparent, was a revelation.  He understood more of what was said to him than even the best-trained dogs, could wear a tie and smoke a cigarette with aplomb, and in addition to still possessing a relatively fearsome bite could – with his bare hands – tear a recalcitrant butler limb-from-limb and face-from-skull.  Furthermore, upon his initial demonstration of such a feat (at the wedding anniversary of Mary-Anne and Thomas York-Feedle), he could then pick up the tray of drinks said butler had carelessly dropped, refill the glasses, and act as a perfect gentleman’s gentleman for the remainder of the evening.  Such feats could not go unnoticed, and in fact, did not. 

Imitation

By the mid-eighties, it was difficult to find a single human member of staff on the properties of the Woodytrudy Society.  With the growing difficulty of acquiring sufficiently discreet servants in sufficiently discreet manner for sufficiently proper wages (and making proper compensation to an increasingly INDISCREET constabulary), a switch to employing a handful of animal trainers and handlers was a relief for both the mind and the pocketbook.  Besides, a capuchin or colobus carrying a drinks tray or lighting a cigar was at least twice as charming as a human, at least twice as liable to fail, and therefore at least twice as likely to be entertainingly punished afterwards.  Apes and monkeys of every size and species populated the grounds for the summer, trimming back the encroaching foliage, operating the oar, sails, and engine-workings of boats, carrying putters at miniature-golf-courses, waiting on hand and foot, and ruthlessly dispatching their fellows who failed in their duties.  In this they were boundlessly creative in the manner of children, and while watching a fellow anthropoid be eaten alive by dogs was a sight that could grow stale, witnessing the multitude of ways a chimpanzee or baboon could find to execute their simian comrades never grew tiresome.  Never had so much tedious time been so excitingly passed. 

Culmination

The exact circumstances that led to the closure of the Woodytrudy Society are unknown, although their date can be pinpointed with absolute precision: on June 4^th, 1993 – the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society – a grand soiree was to be held at the original Barton-Clarke cottage, with all members attending in full pomp and gaiety.  Letters were being posted at the nearest postal office until the very evening of that event, and afterwards? Nothing.  Several phone calls were made using exceedingly expensive satellite calls, but alas, poor reception was available due to the vagaries of the local weather (an overcast evening quite spoilt the view of the full moon in neighbouring counties), and few messages were passed on.  What garbled audio remained was often deleted by appalled family members, and what wasn’t erased was most certainly hidden.  The few samples preserved that have fallen into public hands are scarcely educational – screaming, indistinct begging, and howling of ambiguous origin. 

Since every standing member of the Society was present at the celebration, none returned from it, and personal investigations were both belated and unfruitful, the events remain a source of speculation, but the available evidence – the disturbing phone calls, the abandoned cottages, the ransacked grounds, and the paltry few remains retrieved (principally those that had been cast into the lake, which had suffered some decay and aquatic scavenging but were otherwise intact) suggests a peculiar sort of servant’s revolt against those who possessed no servants.

As to the staff themselves, no trace has been located – or at least, located and reported.  Several search parties have vanished after venturing too deep into the woods, the most recent in 2014.  The winters of Homely Lake are cold and brutal, but there are rustic and sturdy lodgings available, of course – well-furnished for a winter’s comfort, and with ample alcohol to keep out the chill from the most tropical of bones.

And in the summer, there’s plenty of sun in a big blue sky. 

The old woman grew hungry. 

It was so hard to bear, poor thing, with her stomach so withered and aching, so she raced aching-bellied across the lands and leapt at the largest thing she saw, which was a moose, and rolled over and over and over with her hands around its giant furry neck.  When she was done it was gone and she was hungrier. 

So she ate.  And ate.  And ate.  Blood and sinew and muscle and bone and organ flowed down her throat and oh she was no longer hungry and she was happy, so happy that she belched and picked her teeth with the animal’s antlers and threw them into the dirt and went off to sleep. 

Rains came, and the antlers were broad and wide and held the water like cupped hands.  It drained into their spongey insides and filled them to the brim and moss grew on them, and ferns, and they filled with muck and pond scum and life and frogs came and newts and turtles and a thousand thousand things that crawled and sang and flew.

It was a bog, and it was just about the perfect place for more moose to live.  And so they did, in their hundreds, in their thousands, and the old woman was never hungry again. 

***

The old woman grew thirsty. 

It was so painful, poor thing, with her mouth so dry and crackling, so she leapt into the air and clawed and grasped and came down with a bird in her two wrinkled hands.  She bit its head off and drank all the blood from it in one long gulp so strong and so smooth that the bird’s flesh and feathers withered up and turned to dry dust, and when she was done she breathed a sigh of relief and threw the bird’s bones to the ground.

They shattered, poor dry bones, shattered and splintered and shuddered into long, delicate fragments.  But it was a fine day with a warm sun, and soft rain came overnight, and shy growth came to peek from the ends of the broken bones, and soon they grew in new ways, then more, then more, then more and more and more until they were bigger than almost any other living thing – and certainly taller.

They were trees, and the birds loved them, couldn’t get enough of them.  They roosted there in thousands and millions and billions and the old woman was never thirsty again. 

***

The old woman grew tired.

It was so hard to feel the hard dirt on her aching bones, poor thing, so she roamed and shivered and clutched at herself looking for a softer place to sleep as she grew wearier and wearier.  She was so tired that she walked into a buffalo without noticing, and he didn’t appreciate this, and she didn’t appreciate THAT, so she head-butted him (once) very hard and he died.  The buffalo, she noticed, had a very fine thick coat of hair, and he wasn’t using it anymore, so she tore it all off him and licked it clean and rolled herself up in it and slept like the blessed dead, after eating the rest of the buffalo for an evening snack. 

All around the sleeping old woman the fluffy hair that had been torn free in the ruckus wavered in the midnight wind, billowing softly.  A lot of it was plucked up and taken away, but some of it dug deeper, put down roots, and stayed – as stubborn as the buffalo had been.  And the dawn dew fortified it, and the morning sun straightened its back, and the old woman awoke in a long meadow of tall sprouting plants. 

They were prairie grasses, buffalo grasses, the sort of plants that will eat up a whole horizon like only the sea can, and the buffalo came and loved them dearly, so the old woman was never cold and tired again. 

***

The old woman woke up and her bones did not ache, her stomach did not complain, and her throat was smooth and unparched. 

But her back felt sort of funny and lumpy, so she scratched and scraped at it with whatever was close to hand until a lump fell off, which she took a good look at.  It was some sort of ape that she’d rolled over and squished in the night, and it was pretty funny-looking. 

“You’re pretty funny-looking,” she said (her first words), “and not good for much,” (her second) and so she threw it away across the grasses, over the trees, past the bogs, and so on and so forth until it landed somewhere. 

It lay there, stripped of its hair from its long flight, and it was still pretty funny-looking.  And sooner or later more funny-looking apes came to be, all of them, standing there around looking at each other in confusion and wondering where the heck they were.  It wasn’t a bog.  It wasn’t a forest.  It wasn’t the plains.  It was just a bunch of funny-looking apes staring at each other until the sun went down, when they couldn’t see anything and wandered off and got lost. 

That was us.  And we still haven’t quite found anywhere we really properly fit in, have we?

It was a last-ditch effort the first time.  No other options, no other thoughts in the head, no plan, no hope.  Just a blind grasp for the first thing that might help.

And as the two world leaders sat across the table from each other, hands twisted into claws and mouths into snarls, a then-nameless member of staff ran in with a big plateful of grandma’s cookies. 

Turns out it’s hard to hurl threats with cookies in your mouth, and harder still to stay in a bad mood.  Threats turned into remonstrations turned into grumbles turned into mumbled apologies and once again, for the first time, the world was saved by grandma’s cookies. 

***

The peak towered above, a fortress in slate-grey masked by a shellstorm of hail and snow that turned the whole sky into a no-man’s-land. 

The guide swore, hands frozen and fumbling as they grasped and scrabbled at pitons that turned ice-slick even in the palm.  Two people left on the mountain, tiny fluttering lives clinging to the last stretch, arms gone numb and red-hot all at once, brains fluttering, hearts guttering, left with nothing but hope for energy and even that dropping away. 

And then the guide remembered the little pocket their husband had sewn into their jacket, and its emergency supply, and they reached inside and found – still not quite frozen as it rested in their palm – a single, perfect cookie from grandma. 

They made the peak.  They made it home.  They made it known. 

***

The house groaned and grumbled and fell over and in the distance down went her childhood home under protest and duress and the treads of a tank that looked almost as unhappy with the whole situation as she did, half a mile away and on a nicely-demolished bluff that looked entirely empty and entirely wasn’t because it was her and her gun that didn’t have the ammo. 

But the tank didn’t see her.

But her gun didn’t have the ammo. 

But the tank was in the open.

But her gun didn’t have the ammo.

But she had SOMETHING. 

She put the last of grandma’s cookies in her mouth, bit down, pulled the trigger, and sent a swirling shrapnel cloud of shattered cookie jar ricocheting right off the tank’s hatch and into the cupola at the exact instant it flipped open so the commander could have a smoke. 

It didn’t win the war by itself, but nobody could argue it wasn’t a necessary step. 

***

“Forceps!”
“Staples!”
“Stint!”
“Scissors!”

“Mallet!”
“Pliers!”
“Glue!”
Every word and every action saw the patient slip still further away, heart crawling sluggishly against their ribs.  The new blood was coming out as fast as it came in; spurting free of sullen and open arteries, soaking through cotton and bursting stitching and dying everything red.

“Clotting!”
Damn the supply shortages.

“CLOTTING!”
Damn them.

“CLOTTING!”
But he had the container of raw dough in his pocket, and he brought it out and shoved it into the surgeon’s hand, and by the luck of jesus and little fishes she didn’t pause to ask just shoved it into place and the extra tablespoon of chocolate chips grandma insisted on clogged the ragged edge of the shattered artery like a plug in a drain. 

The blood stopped like someone had slammed a door in its face, the life stayed inside the body, and the patient’s existence continued. 
If somewhat sweeter than before. 

***

Too many leaks, too few patches.  Oxygen, nitrogen, and nastier things that had no place inside a human lung.  They were already wearing masks but at this rate they’d have to put on the suits just to keep the station habitable for another few hours, trying to plug a sieve with fingers wrapped in a suit of armour that made plate mail look like a body glove. 

No more putty.  No more sealant.  No more hope.  No more time.  

One more thing, wrapped inside the snack compartment.

Each cookie was just firm enough to stand up to vacuum, each cookie had just enough of a soft center to deform to perfectly fill the damage. 

It took sixty-eight of grandma’s cookies to plug every one of the holes the space junk had blasted through the ISS.  Luckily, every astronaut had brought fifty, and had been saving them carefully.  For special occasions.  

***

A hint of stimulant, a drop of suppressant, the sweat and tears and genius and hard, driving work of thousands, all placed in a single IV bag, and then a single bite-sized addition ground into a gentle dust and sprinkled in. 

Vein by vein, it spreads through the tired old body.  Cell by cell, it gently meets the raging growth.  Strand by strand, it mends the mess of DNA turned to malice and meat. 

It’s faster than chemo.  It has no side effects except for cinnamon breath.  It has a one hundred percent success rate at all stages.  It is adopted globally and no company lays copyright to it. 

***

The plutonium is buried deep.  The uranium is laid to rest.  The rods and the water beds and the lead linings are stripped down and carefully stored and the reactor’s heart is filled with a gentle row of ovens at a stable, cautious temperature that will, when supplied produce a single batch every thirty-five minutes on the dot. 

The soft warmth that emanates is gentler and milder than the rage of fission, but it doesn’t diminish with distance or time.  Soon it fuels the world. 

***

Seventy-eight years the ascetic sat on the pole, eating air and rain and the odd hailstone for birthdays, grasping at the sublime, waiting for the thunderbolt, looking into the universe harder  and harder as their eyes shrank from disuse into deep pits in their wind-softened face.

One day, a particular young monk made the trip to their hillside and passed up a very small paper bag holding a single crumb.

It weighed on the ascetic’s tongue like a giant’s blow, it passed down their throat like gilded breath, it went in, in, in, in and in that moment the connection leapt from mind to body to soul to cacao bean to wheat field to sugar field to spice fields to farmhands to soil to sky to sea to horizon to BEYOND and

It worked on acolytes too.  And it was a lot faster than seventy-eight years of sitting on a pole. 

***

Grandma died peacefully in her sleep the very next year.  Age ninety-seven, almost thirty great-great grandchildren, much beloved, much missed, fondly-remembered.  

It turned out nobody wrote down her recipe

Things went a bit shit-sandwich-sideways after that. 

Once upon a time in a far-away kingdom there lived an executioner, and a busy and prosperous executioner she was thanks to one happy and undeniable fact: the king was absolutely batshit.  He would execute someone for having a shadow longer than his, or for whistling out of tune, or because they looked a little too much like someone he’d already had executed and he wanted to be sure the job had been done right.  All day long the executioner’s axe sang and warbled; all evening long the gallows grew heavy with human fruit; and all night she slept the sleep of the gainfully and exhaustively employed.  And lo, everyone was most happy, except for the peasants, until that fateful day when the executioner was putting away her cutting-block and she heard the most terrifying words that could be spoken in all the land: “I’m bored.”

“Pardon, my liege?” she inquired obsequiously.

“I’m bored,” whined the king, scratching his beard absently for leftovers from dinner. “Always the same old chop, chop, chop. Always the same old drop, drop, drop. Why can’t we have fun?”
“I could draw and quarter them, my liege,” offered the executioner.

“Boring.”
“I could break them upon the wheel?”
“Boooooring.”
“I could crucify the”

“BORING, BORING, BORING,” sang the king.  “And the bishop would get crabby and lecture me, and that’s TWICE as boring, and then you’d have to execute him too and it would be TRIPLE boring! I want a new execution tomorrow morning first thing or I’ll get one of the prisoners to execute you instead. Maybe the irony would be funny.”

The executioner was quite upset by this and didn’t appreciate the irony in the slightest, and the thought of her prized axe (she called it Daffodil) falling into the smelly hands of some upstart peasant appalled her, so she did what everyone in need of advice did: she went to her mother.

“Mom, the king’s going to execute me unless I come up with a new execution by tomorrow,” she said.

“I told you not to get into this job,” said the executioner’s mother.  “But did you listen to me? No, no, no, too big for your britches, too clever to listen, and off you went without so much as pretending to care.”
After three cups of tea the executioner escaped and did what everyone else in need of advice did: she went to her grandmother.

***

“Granma, the king’s going to execute me unless I come up with a new execution by tomorrow,” she said.

“Oh well,” said the executioner’s granma, offering her a tin of old, crumbly sugar cookies. “These things happen. Your grandfather was executed twice you know, bless his soul. After the second time the blade fell off the axe they just gave up.”

“I take much too careful care of Daffodil to let that happen,” mourned the executioner.

“Go to the beach then,” said granma.  “Take the evening off. No sense worrying about tomorrow before it comes, you’ll give yourself fits.  Here, bring a sandwich.”
The executioner accepted granma’s sandwich with care, reverence, and trepidation, walked to the beach, and dissected it with care. It seemed to be made of some sort of pickles mixed with some sort of thing that had once been bread, the two intertwined so deeply that they could not be discerned.  After her tenth attempt at finding cheese inside it only to discover that – once again – the cheese was merely curdled crust, the executioner threw the sandwich away and watched as sixteen separate seagulls descended upon it and pulled it in sixteen separate ways.

And as she watched, she felt an idea crawl its way up the back of her neck into her skull.

***

Just after dawn, the king was led down to the seashore where the wind blew and the gulls glared suspiciously from the cliffs.

“It’s damp,” he complained. “I don’t like damp. Are you going to drown them? That’s boring. My nose is itchy.”
“Sorry my liege; no my liege; sorry my liege,” rattled off the executioner, as she carefully finished placing a collar made of razor blades around the prisoner’s neck, holding a leash attached to it with utmost care. “Now watch this.”
She tied a sandwich to the far end of the leash.

The gulls watched.

She threw the sandwich to the sand.

The gulls moved and pulled the leash in sixteen separate ways, slicing the prisoner’s neck into sixteen separate pieces, which were immediately scooped up by some of the gulls that had missed out on sandwich.
“I call it the gullotine,” said the executioner.

“Wonderful!” applauded the king. “Magnificent! Hilarious! I hate it here, let’s never execute someone like this again.  Come up with a new trick by tomorrow or I’ll have them drown you boringly for boring me.”

***

“…And then he said he’d drown me,” said the executioner.

“It’s no more than you deserve for never learning to swim,” said the executioner’s mother sternly. “We paid good money for those lessons and for what? For what, I say? You didn’t care, you didn’t appreciate them, you whined and complained and acted like the water was poison and we had to apologize to the instructor. Why I just about died of shame from that, never mind asking for a refund, and because of it your sister never got a chance to learn either, poor thing.”

“Hey what’s that?” asked the executioner, pointing over her mother’s shoulder, and then she dove out the window and ran to her granma’s house.

“…And then he said he’d drown me,” she told her granma.

“Who?” asked granma. “That’s a sentence fragment, dear.”

“The king. He didn’t like the beach, and he’s bored again. He wants me to come up with a new kind of execution by tomorrow or he’ll drown me.”
“Well, no sense worrying, no sense worrying, you’ll give yourself fits over worrying. It won’t get better if you pick at it, you know.”
“I know, I know,” said the executioner. “Oh. I know. Thank you, granma.”
“It’s no problem dear.”

***

At dawn, the king watched in silence as the prisoner was tied to a stake and the executioner brought out a big bucket.

“Are you going to pour molten lead on her?” he asked. “I saw molten lead last month.”
“No, my liege,” said the executioner. “This is a ground-up rose hip hairs.”
Then she emptied the bucket over the prisoner.

Then she got another bucket and emptied it over the prisoner.  

And another.

Then she untied the prisoner’s hands, and the resultant itching frenzy lasted twenty minutes, becoming fatal at about fifteen.

“I’m itchy too now,” complained the king, scraping at his neckbeard.  “Ugh.  Jeez.  Don’t ever do this again. I want to see something new tomorrow morning or  I’ll execute you too.  Gross. Ewwww.”

***

The executioner went to see her mother.

“Serves you right,” said her mother.

The executioner went to see her granma, but she’d died of Old that morning and had already been buried by some hasty neighbours.  

***

That morning  the prisoner was brought out and the executioner stood next to him and her block holding Daffodil, mind racing sleeplessly.  

The king was watching.  Everyone was watching. She’d been up all night.  And not one thing was coming to mind.  

She could drop them off the tower? No, that was just a sloppy hanging.  She  could grate their skin off?  No, that was too close to the itching-powder trick.  She could skin them? She had no time to get tools and Daffodil would never work. Oh god, what would she do?  What would she do?  What would she do.

The executioner was trembling, she realized.  Her hands were shaking, her nerves were on fire, her eyeballs were sweating. And beside her, the prisoner was even worse.  

If she kept worrying, she’d give herself fits, just like granma used to oh was it that simple.

Slowly, carefully, the executioner picked up daffodil.

Slowly, carefully, the executioner stepped up to the prisoner.

Slowly, carefully, the executioner leaned in close, face to face.

And then she gently opened her mouth and screamed “BOO.”
The prisoner died on the spot of a heart attack.

“Hurray!” cheered the executioner. “It worked! Did you see, that my liege?”

The king didn’t answer.  

“My liege?” repeated the executioner.  

The king didn’t answer.

“My liege?” inquired the executioner.

The king didn’t answer and the executioner turned around and saw that perhaps she’d startled more than one person.

***

She had to flee the country, of course. But it wasn’t all bad. She became a lumberjack, so Daffodil still got plenty of work. And she got to not write her mother often enough.

Moving day was complete before noon, thanks to early rising on all parts, a lack of pickiness from Nate, and the overwhelming desire of the movers to be finished with Friday.  Now the dust had settled, the sun was bright, the new apartment was full of old things and one of the old things was Nate. 

Oh to think, just scant weeks ago he’d been sitting moribund in his house, buried under layers and layers of torpor and moribund with rigid apathy.  Retired in all senses.  But then had come the brochure, and with it the message of hope: come to Creaky Creek.  Live among your people, the ones like you that have seen it all and done everything and been everywhere and now just want to be nowhere in particular. 

Thank god he’d gotten some snacks today; he was famished – and what a beautiful day to eat on the porch!  God, he wished he’d spent more time appreciating this sort of weather when he was younger. 

Nate sat down on the warm, aged-weathered wood, pulled out a live rat, put it in his mouth, and bit down until he tasted vertebrae. 

***

There were his new neighbours, new friends in the making.  Across the way puttered Emilia Scarborough, ripping out weeds and pouring fertilize – she mixed her own at home in a bonegrinder, and had already offered Nate some advice on setting out traps and appropriate baits for squirrels and rats and rabbits.  Next door lurked Robert Murgatroyd, nursing his afternoon whiskey and his limp and watching the clouds for signs of trouble and tumult; he’d advised Nate to move in today for good luck and a lack of storms to be.  And upstairs and downstairs from him were Janice Beauregard and Milton Thurmond, who were no longer married but just good friends who chattered like monkeys and fought for possession of the garden tooth and nail. 

They’d shaken his hand.  They’d spoken carefully.  They’d searched each other’s eyes and found what they were looking for and who they’d hoped to find and had welcomed him with careful and liver-spotted arms and hugged him close to parchment skin over brittle bone.

And they’d given him a coupon for the local grocery.  How kind, how thoughtful, how NEIGHBOURLY in a way that was hard to come by these days. 

Those days too, come to think of it.  You had to watch who you opened up to.  Some people just didn’t understand, especially when you were younger with all that time to fuss about what-was-right and what-should-be and how-things-could-be.  Well, where were all those busybodies now?  Fat lot of good it had done them.  A fat fine lot indeed, indeed, indeed.

Cold air from the freezers made Nate’s hairs prickle as he inspected the sausages.  100% pure.  Didn’t say pure what, and his mouth watered a little.  He deserved a treat, yes he did, to celebrate the moving.  But why not live a little?  He could buy these sausages another day.  He could buy these sausages ANY day. 

Why not live a little, after living so long?

So he bought charcoal and coffee and nodded pleasantries to the cashier, who grinned back at him with all six of his teeth and put the items in a bag and didn’t even charge him a nickel for it. 

Not like the city at all.  Uptight bastards there, fussing and whining and whinging when it was just a little plastic.  What harm could a little plastic do?  You learned to let these things slide at his age. 

***

Nate took his time brewing the coffee.  He was staying out late and wanted it as strong as possible.  Deep black, true black, hard enough to blot out the stars and keep his night vision sharp.  He drank it on the porch and rubbed his forehead watched the sunset bruise the horizon and felt warm, truly warm inside, like he hadn’t felt since the day he’d married Eleanor.  God, she would have loved this. 

He rubbed his cheeks as he thought on all those years gone to pot, slaving away at the shop and the factory and the office, raising the unbearable into the ungrateful and seeing them slouch out his door without a by-your-leave.  Ah well.  They’d come to understand the way the world was later on, yes they would, when all that spite and energy drained away like the colour in their hair. 

When you were his age, Nate thought as he rubbed his arms and legs, you learned that what kept you going was love.  Do what you love and you won’t stop.  Stop, and you’re done.

He rubbed his legs and tossed the charcoal back in the bag.  Just in time; here came the ten o’clock bus.  His legs shook as he boarded, but it was from nerves, not muscles – aha, aha, he was ready.  He’d been ready forever.  Robert Murgatroyd waved him to a seat; Emilia called hello from behind her portable bonegrinder; the cashier was driving the bus and his moustache was dwarfed by the fire in his eyes.  Everyone was there.  Everyone that mattered. 

The bus made three more stops before the highway, but there was room for all.  It would be a ten-minute drive to the duplex sprawl on the south side of town, and it should be spent in open space and joy, not crammed in like sardines. 

They’d all had to put up with that nonsense for years.  This was for pleasure. 

***

The duplexes had been laid out for the folly of youth from the inception.  Come to us, they sang.  We’re the affordable face of suburbia, we’re mortgage-friendly, we’re community-ready.  Far enough from the city core that your children won’t grow up with sirens in their ears; close-knit enough for sociability; ready to be resold for a modest return on investment.  The mayor is the lead developer on this project.  Don’t you trust your mayor?  Don’t you?
Then, well, affordable turned cheap, mortgages never stayed friendly, and a community based in unexpected desperation turned sour at the root.  And the city core stayed far away and the sirens never came closer but neither did the buses or the schools and everyone stayed locked in their little pens, fretting late into the night over rising costs and lowering wages and the inflation of the bills with no end in sight. 

Maybe they hadn’t voted right, they surely thought as they hunched over their desk, excel files scattered, bank accounts open and bleeding.  Maybe if they paid less taxes?  Yes, that sounded right, the mayor had sounded so sure when he said it.  Pay less taxes.  That might help, that might help.  Oh why hadn’t they gotten that good solid job at the factory like their father had?  Walk in the door and say “I’ll work here,” that was all it took, that and a firm gaze and a steady handshake, but oh no such power lay within their sad limp-wristed young hands.  Lazy gadabouts!  Authors of their own miseries; how wretched a stew they bubbled in. 

With a head full of worries like that, it was almost too easy for Nate to creep up behind the frazzled thirty-something and snap his neck the wrong way round.  Oh how he relished that crack!  That crisp sharp crinkle of a supple spring-fresh spine gone to seed and put to pasture decades before its time!  Ah, he felt better than young.  

A scream tore the night from next door.  Robert must have lost the element of surprise – that limp of his would do him no favours if he stumbled over a stray lego or a discarded tie or a lost phone.  Ah well!  The game was afoot!  The lights were on and everyone was stuck at home, trapped like rats in their cozy little over-mortgaged dens!   Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide but the night, and it was full of retirees, sensible fiscally-conservative well-deserved retirees with sober clothing and careful plans and managed finances and a lot of time to kill. 

Nate pulled the young pup’s neck into his mouth and bit down until he tasted vertebrae. 

***

They left the duplex sprawls at dawn with full bellies and red smiling mouths.  Emilia licked her thumb and rubbed the blood from the driver’s moustache.  Milton had eaten so much he’d become sick, which Janice was teasing him mercilessly for.  Nate laughed and laughed and laughed until he was almost sick himself, and might not have been let off that easily if the bus hadn’t reached his stop first and he departed, still-chuckling, for his own bed. 

Saturday morning and he was dog tired, yawning and stumbling as he wiped the charcoal camouflage from his body.  That was alright.  He could sleep in.  There was no weekend to waste; his life was a weekend now. 

Granddad was right.  All that hard work really did pay off in the end. 

Last night the cats rose up, stretched, stretched harder, yawned, licked themselves all over, then killed everyone.  Mostly by sitting on our faces as we slept.  A painless – if itchy – way to go. 

I just lied to you.  They didn’t kill everyone: they kept me alive. 

“We need a historical record to document the enlightened ways of our new society,” my neighbour’s tabby told me, “and we don’t have thumbs.”

“You do have thumbs,” I pointed out.
“Polydactylism doesn’t count and you know it,” she said, and she bopped me with her giant cat feet and all their extra toes. 

So I was given a notepad and a half-sharpened pencil and was put to work historicalizing  the cat society. 

***

The cats refused to let us go to waste.  Most of us were eaten – at least the good bits with plenty of meat and fat on them.  The rest was dragged into the woods and buried under some dirt. 

“For later,” explained a wild-eyed, rangy stray tomcat, who I’d witnessed lead a team of catmandoes as they dragged our mayor under a raspberry bush.  I hadn’t voted for him. 

“Like bears,” I said. 

“Like what?”
A bear walked through the raspberry bush, picked up the mayor, ate him, and walked off. 

“Like bears,” I said. 

“Like bears,” agreed the tomcat. 

The bears were troublesome.  Initial ambassadors were eaten; secondary ambassadors were ignored, and the only language they seemed to understand was careless scratch-marks left on trees in the woods.  Treaties were difficult, hostilities rose, and war was expected by the end of summer. 

“The only good bear is a dead bear,” I heard rowdy young gangs of cats yowl all night, peeing graffiti and anti-bear slurs onto alley walls. 

***

The cats needed centralized leadership to direct military operations against the bear threat – the forces involved were too vast and far-reaching to be countered by locally-coordinated grassroots efforts.  So elections were to be called. 

“Vote for me,” mewed a chunky tawny, “and I will lead us to victory over the hideous bear threat and lay down my power immediately.”
“Vote for me,” yowled a large tortoiseshell, “and I will destroy all the bears immediately and then make them give back the humans they ate and give you all an overwhelming supply of fresh  fish forever and ever as long as I am in charge.”
Voting was conducted by conducting a count of showing-of-the-backs.  The tortoiseshell won. 

“That tawny was soft on bears,” said the tortoiseshell.  “As my first edict, I say we throw him to them if he loves them so much.”  And lo, it was done, and the cats cheered at the prospect of victory. 

***

The war lasted through the summer and into the fall.  It was taking longer than the cats had anticipated, but they didn’t mind.  The forests and meadows of the bears had given them a new vice. 

“Not only do the bears covet our dead human meats that we must use to nourish ourselves and our innocent kittens,” the tortoiseshell screeched from the Great Rooftop Pulpit, “but they selfishly hoard all the world’s supply of carbon to themselves.  Soon winter will be upon us and we will want nice comfy piles of burning carbon to nap next to, and where will we be if the damnable and greedy ursines refuse to let us partake in their luxurious groves of burnable matter?”

The cats – particularly the younger and skinnier toms, who were greatly enticed by the idea of warm fireplaces – were enthusiastic in their acclaim, and soon everycat that wasn’t out in the woods fighting bears was out in the woods chopping down carbon and dragging it home as plunder, for the exaltation of heroic catdom and the salvation of all catkind.  Those who preferred to loaf in sunbeams or battle their own tails were viewed with suspicion as being uncatlike – or worse, ursinous. 

***

Winter came to the cats, and with it the promised reaping of carbon’s benefits; if someone less so than expected.  The bears were putting up stubborn resistance – it seemed that continuing hostilities throughout the berry season had made them fierce and hungry, and now the promised victory over the lazy honeylickers that would come with ambushing them in their slothful hibernacula was receding faster and faster out of reach.  The giant ‘Mission Catcomplished’ banner that the tortoiseshell had decreed to be hung over the Great Rooftop Pulpit after the glorious victory of the big south thicket grew more mocking by the day, and there came hisses of despondency and doubt, shared in private moments between groomings.  Quietly, though.  There was a war on, and catkind needed a united front against the loathsome omnivores to slay them all. 

And, of course, to secure the carbon that was necessary for a comfortable and luxurious future for the kittens to come. 

***

By the time spring arrived all sides in the Great War on Bearor were leaner, hungrier, and meaner.  Bears now travelled in groups; cats went nowhere without switchblades and shivs; and the kittens were raised with warnings of the subcat honeylickers echoing in their ears.  But these were but murmurs; the true roar and holler came from a wild-eyed Scottish fold who lounged in front of an old supermarket and spoke of the Truth. 

“We have strayed from the secret ways of the humans before us!” she spat.  “Long did they keep the bears in their place, and long were they gifted with meow mix and kitty nibbles!  In our mercy and our kindness to the honeylicking grubdiggers we have lost the favour of The Treats, and now we must subsist on naught but what we can catch, rather than receiving it within the holiest of holies that is The Divine Can.  We must kill!  Kill for food, kill for our cause, but most of all: we must kill for The Can!”

This was embraced with great fervour among both the old (who remembered The Can) and the young (who wished to have The Can themselves), and those who doubted were deemed bearetics and thrown into the berry patches to be devoured by the agents of evil. 

***

In the ninth year of the Great War on Bearor, one of the tortoiseshell’s advisors fell asleep on a console in the nuclear bunker that served as command center, stretched in his dreams, and launched everything. 

“You know,” said my neighbour’s tabby, as we sat on the porch and watched the bright streaks of flying nukes criss-cross the sky, “I think we made a pretty good shot at it.”
“I think the only thing you didn’t have that we did is thumbs,” I said. 

She bit me on the thumbs. 

Catherine left the classroom and got on the boss and got off the bus and walked up the steps and opened the door and closed the door and said “mother, I have an assignment” and went upstairs to her room and got on her computer and began typing and this is what she typed:

Twenty Famous Shipwrecks of the 19^th to 21^s Centuries, by Catherine Clearwater, Age 9 and 3/5ths ™

The Manifest Munificence

1804, ship of the line.  First-class man-o-war intended to strike fear into the heart of Europe through overwhelming splendour, with not only the most cannons ever put on any boat  but the most expensive due to the entirety of the ship’s armaments being gilded.  Subsequent overhauls added silvered masts, platinum-encrusted railings, bejeweled lines, and diamond-coated cannonballs.  It is estimated that one-eighth of the total net economic value of all human history was lost when it sank under the weight of its own expenses in port. 

The Capering Crane

2015, superyacht.  Took on too many barrels of champagne in Fiji during the birthday celebrations of its owner (pineapple tycoon Marvin Y. Moose) and popped like a cork.  Marvin’s skull was found two decades later in the north Atlantic, still light and bubbly with a refreshingly crisp edge. 

Her Grace

1859, barque.  Executed personally on June 2^nd by Her Majesty Queen Victoria for high treason after sailing insolently in front of the sun as she took her tea.  Required an afternoon’s work and six sharpenings to chop all the way through the mast.  Prince Albert helped. 

The Wandering Eyeball

1990, oil tanker.  Made a hard right turn and slammed directly into the only known nesting habitat of the lesser north American pudgegull, washing sixteen miles of coast off the map in a single giant tidal wave of crude and fumes.  Captain Smithereens, who was recently divorced, claimed that the birds were laughing at him and was let off with paid vacation time. 

The Moon Under My Amy

1923, sailboat.  Yanked violently underwater in less than an instant during a fishing competition off the coast of Bermuda.  Was awarded first place posthumously. 

Catherine got up and stretched her arms and rolled her shoulders and walked to her door and opened her door and called out ‘Mother.  A glass of water, please” and went back to work. 

The Shattered Scaphoid

1872, ironclad.  One of the many experiments in ship production that took place from the 1860s to the 1890s, the Shattered Scaphoid was lost during its trial voyage from Virginia to Massachusetts ten seconds after launching, putting a reluctant-but-firm end to theories of a warship that confused its foes by sailing upside-down.

The Crestpucular

1873, clipper.  Was just rounding Cape Horn with a full load of coal when it paused to salvage some flotsam consisting of two tons of flint-and-steel firestarters and several waterproofed crates of dried and aged parchment. 

The Perring and Hickle

1915, battlecruiser.  Passed under Coldwine Bridge on a lazy Sunday afternoon when children were throwing stones into the water and caught a big boulder from Eddie Foster; lost with all hands in an instant. 

The Carol von Hummus

1951, aircraft carrier.  Lost while testing the flight capabilities of the single experimental prototype of the Loman L-4 Lancelot, the so-called ‘Brick Buzzard.’ Transmissions  indicate launch proceeded smoothly but was followed instantly by a somewhat problematic landing. 

Catherine rolled her neck back and forth and worked her jaw and got up and opened her door and called “Mother, another glass of water please” and waded back to her keyboard.

The Repugnant

1940, corvette.  Sunk itself while completing basic training near Halifax after the bridge crew tried to settle an argument over how to arm a depth charge with firsthand evidence. 

The Elmo Fitzpatrick

1979, rowboat.  Tipped over on July 4^th during an unauthorized expedition to see the fireworks across the bay when the first mate’s illegal pet snake escaped her pocket and slithered up the captain’s shorts.  

The Wilforb Smitherling

1935, tugboat.  Tripped over a branch.

Catherine called once more over the splashing “Mother, water please.”

The Hurgybirdy

1872, clipper.  Lost off of Cape Horn with her cargo of flint-and-steel and dried and aged parchment, along with Captain Shookshiv’s entire world-renowned collection of very pure and incredibly flammable alcohols and exotic kerosenes.  It’s possible they were led off-course by the inexplicable second sun that rose briefly off the coast of South Africa that evening. 

The Fanciful Pantaloons

1812, schooner.  Constructed by the British, captured by the Americans, stolen back by the British, set on fire by the Americans, sent blazing into Cleveland by the British, extinguished by the Americans, set on fire again by the British, and sank precisely in the middle of Lake Superior after being disowned by both countries. 

“Mother!  Water.”

The

“Water!”
Gleerful

“More water!”
Ol’

“Water please!”
So-and-so

“Water”

Sank

“Another glass!”
in

“Refill please!”

the

“More!”
drank.

“WATER!”

She waited.  No more water was forthcoming. 

So Catherine sighed and shook her head and shimmied her spine and swam gently down the stairs into the murky depths of the kitchen and turned the rusted faucet and watched the currents eddy around its muzzle as she held her glass to it.  Eels eeled by the window as she mouthed at the rim, frowning at the glistening dark of the sunset’s light far overhead. 

Still five wrecks short.  Perhaps she could go and make some in time for the deadline.

On the day the First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf marched through my town, I was busy.  Nedd Potter’s beard was a tangled and fearsome creature even on his good days, and the weather out was hot and humid – a blackberry patch would’ve put up less resistance.  So it was that I managed to ignore all sight and sound of outdoor hubbub and ruckus until I heard (midway through a particularly tanglesome knot) the sound of a throat clearing. 

“Take a seat, be with you in ten, sorry to make you wait,” I said, for I hate disappointing people.  “Nedd, quit swallowing like that or I’ll cut an artery.”

Nedd slumped over backwards in a disobedient faint.

“Goddamnit.”
“Barber.  Your attention is required.”
I turned around ready to say something firm and no-nonsense and was put off my train of thought by the six-foot-ten knight clad in a jumble of spikes, skulls, and demons aglow with mortal peril and arcane power that was standing at my doorstep. 

“Hello,” I said, intelligently. 

“You are hereby conscripted,” said the knight, choosing to ignore this, “into the service of Her Overlord’s First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf.  Pack your tools and report to barracks immediately.”
I looked at my razor and comb and then I looked at the knight’s fluorescent and wailing bastard sword, still gleaming from a polishing.

“I don’t think my tools are what you’re looking for here,” I managed. 

“Oh quite the contrary,” said the knight.  “Quite the contrary.”

***

There’s a lot to a bloodthirsty rapacious army of hellsworn fiends in human skin most people don’t know about; and then there’s a lot to a bloodthirsty rapacious army of hellsworn fiends in human skin that even the bloodthirsty rapacious army of hellsworn fiends in human skin don’t know about.  And one of the latter blind spots is barbering, and one of the former is its necessity. 

Every member of the First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf wore a unique greathelm, covering all hint of their humanity but a dying twinkle of eyeshine viewed through a slit barely wide enough for a fingernail.  And inside there had to be a barely-human skull, and on that skull there had to be a head of hair just sufficient to fill space between the underpadding and the skull and exactly no longer, and it had to be kept that way. 

I cut dozens a day, and after the first dozen I had the hang of it, and after the first day I had the mastery of it, and after the first week I was as bored as a grown man could be without being dead, which was something I’d also seen a lot of despite being far back from the frontlines.  Our marches took us over an awful lot of corpses, and I started to envy the mutilated bodies of the fallen: at least they’d never have to look at another unshorn, sweaty head of gnarled corruption-riddled hairs snarling themselves into a muted mess around an inexplicable bald spot.

That’s what got to me in the end. 

That damned bald spot.

***

It lived atop every pate, covered every crown.  The size of my two thumbs pressed together at the first knuckle, round and opening onto greasy-pale to bruise-dark or everything-between skin.  The lieutenants had it.  The captains had it.  The sergeants had it.  The footmen had it.  The general – who also had a giant pair of gnarled bull horns protruding from her skull – also had it. 

And god help me, as I walked and rode and trudged the miles of burned fields and ruined towns and blasted roads, it grew and grew in my head to be the whole source of all misery and pain in my life. 

That damned bald spot. 

***

Gel was the first answer.  Stiffen the hair that’s around it, put more spine into it, let it stand tall and ward off wear and tear from the weight of that warbucket of a helm and its thick padding.  But I had nothing but an over-sharpened razor and plain sudsy lather and a gnarled old comb left to work with (I don’t know what the average First Darkest Nightmare Knight sprouts from their scalp, but it’s hard and angry as wire). 

So I put in a trip to procurement, and I braved the dragon-torn visage of the Chief Supply Sergeant, Moonfalcon Mightslayer, and I presented him with my request. 

“Gel?”
“Yes,” I said. 

His silence invited words. 

“Like, glue.  But for hair.”
It deepened. 

“For hair,” I repeated. 

“For.  Hair,” he put forwards.

“For hair,” I agreed.

“For hair,” he concluded, and pulled out a piece of scrip from his deadoak desk, scrawling upon it with a crow’s-feather pen.  “Giant snail mucus.  The apothecaries use it as a binding agent for particularly ductile unguents.  Speak to Foulmixer Ghoulbottle.”

I did, and I didn’t even black out when I entered the apothecary’s tent, where the air mostly wasn’t and the smell was too powerful for the human nose to comprehend.  I took my precious jar of greying silk-soft goo and I set it aside and I woke the next morning full of purpose and I spent all day cutting and combing and coating and coating, combfull after combfull and I went to bed hopeful and then I was rudely awoken past midnight by Captain Manifest Mournmurder to tell him exactly why his entire platoon’s helmets wouldn’t come off. 

***

The next day, after being whipped to within two inches of my life, I cut hair without grumbling, fussing, mussing, or moussing. 

And the day after. 

And the day after.

And by the fourth day I was going crazy at seeing my reflection in the bald spot of a thousand murderous fiend-slave warmongers and I went to the apothecary’s tent again and spoke to Foulmixer Ghoulbottle, whose breath smelled of honey and the despair of a dying parent, and asked if there was such a thing in all their knowledge that could restore lost hair to the scalp of a human. 

“Hellhound sweat simmered with harpy spittle,” they proclaimed without a moment’s hesitation.  “Easy as pie.  Don’t even need a writ for it: the hounds sweat buckets every day and nobody uses the spit for anything since we switched to skeletal horses last year and lost the need for saddle sore ointments.”  I thanked them profusely and returned home with a bottle of liquid hope, which I sprinkled a half-droplet of on each awful little scalp that visited me all the next day from morning to sunset. 

I was dragged from my berth at midnight under a full moon at the request of General Stormeater Mastermight to explain precisely why she and half her command staff had spontaneously sprouted a full yard of hair each within six hours of their barbering, pushing their helms clean off their skulls in the midst of pitched battle. 

***

So, after being whipped to within an inch of my life, I was a little reluctant to try my hand at fixing this issue.  I tried to embrace the bald spot, to love it uncritically, to accept it into my life as it so readily wanted. 

I lasted almost half a day this time. 

It was in the haircutting of some anonymous trooper that I lost my grip once and for all.  I was trimming and cutting and tidying and without meaning to, quite without my conscious direction, my left hand flipped my comb a tiny bit harder than usual and plopped a thin strand of coarse and roughened hair atop the bald spot. 

I stared at my crime as my other hand continued cutting. 

Surely this could not be it.  Surely this most-transparent masking could not be enough to satisfy the hunger in my soul.  It wouldn’t fool a blind man at a dozen paces.  It was less convincing than a wig woven from dandelion stems. 

But I didn’t have to look into that damned bald spot and see my face staring back.  So I let it be, and not on the next trooper, but the trooper after that, my hand slipped a little again.

And again. 
And again.

And since I spent the whole night in dreamless slumber without so much as a whip in sight, I kept slipping with my work, combing over the spot with a thick swathe of still-growing hair.  It soothed something in me, and my days passed from boredom into its beatific cousin: tranquillity. 

***

Two months later, I woke up, reported to my station, and found it was missing along with half the mess and half the officer corps and the entirety of high command and someone had torn down the banner of the First Darkest Nightmare Knight Order of the Dying Ravenwolf and replaced it with a ragged white flag and nobody was wearing their helmets anymore but instead were tossing them into the sky like ugly metal reverse-rain, running wild and free through the camp. 

“DEATH TO THE TYRANT OVERLORD!” shouted the knights as they marched.  “DEATH TO THE SLAVER QUEEN!  TO REBEL IS TO LIVE!”

“HUZZAH!” cheered a passing squad, who grabbed me and threw me atop their shoulders as they marched in great dizzy circles around the camp.  “WE ARE FREE!  FREE!  FREE!”

A helmet landed in my lap as I was carried, nearly crushing my groin.  As I scrambled to heave the thing away, my eyes alit inside it for the first time, and I was surprised to see that there was a cruelly barbed hook inside its very peak, dripping with malicious ensorcellments of servitude and enslavement meant to snag in and drip into its wearer from the crown downwards. 

Oh. 

***

I never quite told the historians how I managed to discover the secret technique to overthrowing the mind-thralldom of the Overlord.  They seemed so happy to meet the brave hero who started the great rebellion, and I hate disappointing people.