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It was a thick and hurried sort of knock at the door, thap-thap-thap.  The kind of knock that said ‘oh no oh dear oh hurry please’ but didn’t have the fear of life-and-death in it, and so old Scaa took her time getting up from her slab across from the ever-simmering warmth of the cauldron-pit.  It was midwinter, and the cold wind was bringing in fresh rain every morning.

On the other side of her door was Gruna, and inside Gruna’s face were Gruna’s eyes, and inside Gruna’s eyes were a matchless and endless anxiety that could not be stopped or impeded by anything except the flow of words coming out of Gruna’s mouth, which Scaa could roughly parse as this:

“ohnoit’searlyhe’stooearlysomething’swrongiknowit’swrongohnononopleasedoyouhaveanythingthatcan-“

Scaa nodded and hummed and made aimless shooshing sounds with her forelimbs as she hobbled back to the cauldron-pit, took up the capped ladle, got a generous helping of roiling and angry mineralized water, jammed a carefully-selected pinch of pulverized and preserved plantlife into it, and then shook it in a prescribed manner before pouring it out into a very small and very waterproof flask. 

“Make him drink this,” she said, damming the flood of words from Gruna’s mouth with as much volume as she could manage.  “And everything will be fine.”
“Are you sure?  Are you sure?  It’s our first litter and-”

Scaa put the flask in Gruna’s talons and closed the door on her foot, then limped to her slab and tried to remember what she’d been doing before she was so rudely interrupted.  Such was the brewer’s life.

Oh right.

She’d been thinking about nothing. 

***

Scaa had made a pretty good start on getting back to that when the next knock on the door came.

Well, eventually came.  It was preceded by a series of increasingly inchoate thundering footfalls, cursing, stumbling, and shouting.  The knock itself was more like a single THUD, and carried with it a heavy flavour of fist.

“Hello,” said Numn, shouldering the door open without waiting or asking for permission or giving the latch the dignity of notice as it tore free from the wall.  “Brewer.  My lesser-wife is unfaithful.  I need her brought to heel.”
Scaa shrugged at that.  “Nothing I can brew for THAT, thank you.”
“Yes there is.  Give me something that will keep those flighty feet of hers grounded.  Something to deaden her energy, slacken her spirits, curb her vigour.”

“That is against the brewer’s creed,” said Scaa.  “I am here to serve, not to scheme.”
Numn picked up the capped ladle from its perch and carefully bent its handle into a circle. 

“Fine, fine, fine” sighed Scaa.  “If you must.” 

So she took the ladle back and took another small box with different seeds and leaves and made a somewhat smaller flask.

“This will solve the problem,” she said very specifically.

“Good,” said Numn, and left. 

Scaa made an unforgivably blasphemous gesture out the door at her, then saw about repairing her latch. 

***

The latch was set, the door was closed, and just as Scaa turned back to her slab it was shaking on its hinges again, rattling under a tiny and tremulous fist. 

Scaa opened it and saw nothing.  Then she looked down and saw something.  Someone. 

“Hello,” she said. 

“’sth,” managed the chick.  It was of indeterminate gender and tiny in age, in the midst of that awkward growth spurt that would take it from the size of an adult’s skull to the size of an adult entire. 

“I don’t know you.  Are you one of Loos’s?”
“’es.”
“Ah, right.  Right.  And she wants something for the night aches?”
“’es.”

Scaa sighed, long and rattly, then she took her (bent) capped ladle and put in a tiny sprig of  something here and a dab of something there and a long slow stir and gave it over. 

“Tell her to drink this,” she said.  “And then stay quiet for the next few days.  It works best when no loud noises interrupt it.”
“’es.”
“What do you say?”
“’anks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Scaa closed the door.  The pepperwort wouldn’t do much more than give Loos some nice flavours, but the multiple days of quiet children might give her some relief from the nightly pains in her skull.  She’d TOLD her she was too old for one more brood, but oh no, never listen to your big sister.  Ugh.

***

This time the THUD came without preceding noise: just a deeply hostile silence that terminated in the door popping open.  Thankfully the latch was too weakly repaired to snap off again, and merely dangled meekly. 

“Brewer.”
“Hello again, Numn,” said Scaa.  “What is it?”
“You lied to me.”
“I did no such thing, Numn.  I am here to serve, not to scheme.”
“I forced your vial down the cringer’s throat and she belched fire into my face.  I am driven from my own home at the violence of my second-wife.”
Scaa scratched at her snout.  “I recall that being Tlii’s long before you married.”
“What’s hers is mine.  You have betrayed my faith.”
“I solved the problem, and I said as much,” said Scaa. 

Numn picked her up by her scruff and gently but firmly took her head in her jaws. 

“Fine.  Fine.  Fine.”

So Scaa took her capped ladle and her uncomfortably damp face and her mutterings of “eighth of this’ and ‘fifth of that’ and she picked up the flask and dropped it seven times one after another before handing it over to Numn. 

“That,” she said, will work.”
“So you say,” said Numn.  “If it doesn’t, I will be back.”
Scaa nodded and sighed and made a doubly blasphemous gesture with both hands as she left and then went back to reaffixing the latch.

***

This time she made it all the way back to her slab, shut her eyes, and was beginning to slip into a warm and toasty torpor when there came a firm and controlled bap-bap-bap at the door. 

“Oh well,” she said, and wrenched herself back to whatever it was that she did with whoever its problems that she’d found. 

It was Vrral, and it was…

“My toes,” said Vrral. 

“What about them?”
“They’re coming off.”
Scaa looked at them.  “Where?”
“Right there – see?”
“That’s a hangnail.”
“It’s not.  It’s curling under, into the flesh.  See?”
“That’s a hangnail.”
“It’s going to cut off my toe.”
Scaa brewed, and as she brewed she explained to Vrral four more times about hangnails. 

“Here,” she said, as she handed over the flask.  “Soak your feet in that.”
“And my toes won’t come off?”
“No, but your toenails will.”
“Bless you, brewer!” sobbed Vrral.  “Bless bless and bless again!”
“Sure,” said Scaa.  And she would have felt guilty about this sixty years ago, but not now.  Not with her slab calling, and Vrral already the worst small-game picker in the parliament.  One set of talons more or less wouldn’t change that.

***

There was no knock, but someone was shaking Scaa by her scruff.  So she opened her eyes again – oh my, was that dawn in the distance through her windows?  So she HAD slept after all – and looked into Numn’s. 

“Brewer, you are vexing me,” she said. 

“Howso?”
“I drank your brew.”
“Oh?”
“And it kept me up all night with the shits in the bushes.”
“Well.  I gave it to you to fix your second-wife.  Why’d YOU drink it?”
“So you wouldn’t fool me like you did last time.”
“I think,” said Scaa, “that you very much accomplished that.”

Numn moved her arm a little and Scaa felt the warmth of the cauldron-pit grow just a bit stronger. 

“What do you need?” she asked. 

“Something to deal with my miserable fire-belching second-wife.  Something permanent.  Something better than anything you’ve brewed before.  And I’ll tear your legs off and leave you for the rats if you try to be clever again.”
“Well,’ said Scaa.  “If you say, that it will be so.”
So she used this and that and them and those and the other and the self and the whole and the sum and the parts all in many forms and variations and when she was done brewing the flask hissed long after the cork went in it.
“Here,” she said as she handed it to Numn. 

“Wonderful,” said Numn.  “You drink it first.”
“All right,” said Scaa amiably. 
“On second thought,” said Numn, her eyes narrowing, “I’ll drink it first.”
“Sure,” agreed Scaa.
Numn’s teeth were all showing.  They all looked very strong, straight, and serrated.  “On third thought, we’ll BOTH drink it.  Together.”

Scaa pulled out two little stone cups, poured half in each, and offered one. 

“I’ll take the other one.”
“Fine by me. 
“I’ll take the first one.
“If you’d like.”
“I’ll drink from the flask.”
“By all means.”
So they drank the same brew at the same pace and finished together with the same dose. 

“I can feel it working,” said Numn.  “If you’ve poisoned me, brewer, then you will die as I do.”
“I haven’t poisoned you,” said Scaa.  “I have given you something to deal with your second-wife.  And I’ve given myself something to deal with you.  And trust me on this: it’s DEFINITELY not clever.”
“Whhat do you mean?” asked Numn, and pawed at the side of her snout.

“See you when the rushh is over,” said Scaa.  The colours were already creeping in through the sides of her vision.  “Oh, thhere it isssss,” she realized, and fell over on her slab. 

Numn had not positioned herself as carefully, and so rammed her face directly into the floor. 

***

The first petitioner of the day found them both there just before noon.  Scaa had almost sobered up by then, but Numn remained out cold until she was tried and exiled four days later. 

“It’s the tolerance,” she said.  “You build it up with exposure.”
“From handling our medicines and cures so often?” asked Loos. 
“Sure,” said Scaa.  “Yes, let’s say that.”

Not that she’d be doing that anytime soon.  The thirsty bastard had chugged down half of her best stuff. 

“Rock, paper scissors.  Rock, paper scissors.  Rock, paper scissors.  Rock, paper scissors.  Shit.”
“Your turn.”
“Best two out of three?”
“It took us four tries to get one out of one done.  Your turn.”
I glared at Mark and was filled with a powerful hatred for how totally correct he was.  “Fine,” I said.  “But if you start the movie before I get back, you’re getting the one I licked.”
His head bobbed absently as he fiddled with the cords on the old DVD player.  I wanted to kick him and knew that he knew that I knew that I wouldn’t do it. 

God, the things you learn about each other when you’re locked in a tiny base for months.  And more importantly, the things you learn to put up with. 

The outer hatch squeaked open with enough violence, and I almost fell face-first into the blizzard. 

Lovely, fresh Antarctic weather.  The sort of air you could skip pebbles off of.  And hanging off the roof a foot from my head, some daisy-fresh ice clumps, just ripe and perfect. 

I snapped three little fistfuls off, one at a time, and this behaviour was so reflexive and so automatic that my mind wandered and I didn’t realize I was making eye contact with the penguin until I was ready to go back inside. 

“Hi,” I said. 

Well, that was stupid. 

The penguin didn’t say anything.  The penguin just stared at me with that little penguin face.  It was a fat little Adelaide; black-headed with white circles around its dark eyeballs.

“Hi,” I said again. 

Well, that was stupider. 

The penguin still didn’t say anything.  Just stared with that little penguin face.  Then it softly bulged at the edges, swelled up like a balloon, and made a low throbbing sound that sprinkled dark spots against the edge of my vision. 

***

I licked all three of the ice clumps on the way back in.  Mark was still fiddling with the DVD player as I poured the vodka. 

“Pick your poison.”
“No thanks; you’ve licked all of them.  What’s up?”
“Saw a penguin.”
“Weird.”

“I don’t think it was a penguin.”
“Weirder.”
“Either some kind of weird mutant or an alien.”
“Weirdest.  So, Doctor Doolittle tonight?”
“Men In Black.”
“Fair.”

We watched the movie for the sixteenth time before breaking for maple syrup candies. 

“Rock, paper scissors.  Rock, paper scissors.  Rock, paper scissors.  Rock, paper scissors.  Shit.”

There’s this trick where you drizzle the heated syrup on the snow.  Turns into good-as taffy. 

The penguin was still there.  It was still partially inflated. 

It had stopped making the sound, though.  That was nice.  It hadn’t been pleasant for my brain. 

“Hi,” I said again, again. 

It stared at me with that little penguin face. 

“Want some candy?”
It stared at me with that little penguin face.  Then it rotated its head seven hundred and twenty degrees and it popped off and fell into the snow so it could stare at me with its eyes in the back of its little penguin head and also the smaller penguin head that was sticking out of its neck stump. 

***

“You’re five seconds late.”
“Penguin was still there.  Its head fell off and now it has two.”
“Huh,” said Mark.  “Well, it’s the middle of winter.”
“Yeah.”

“’Nother movie?”
“Nah.”
“Knew you’d say that.”
Mark and I have been doing this for a while.  I know he knows that I’d say that.  He knew that too.  We both know that.  He’s just the only one that feels the need to reaffirm his knowledge, because he’s an insecure little jackass.
“Am not.”
See?

“I’m going to bed,” I said.
“Knew you’d say that.”

The sounds of the snow were too ordinary and everyday to lull me to sleep. 

But they were nice.

**

When I woke up the penguin was sitting in the corner of the room and it was surrounded by sixteen of its heads and all of them were staring at me and singing.  My eyes were flickering on and off like I’d turned the shower too high; and there was a sluggish sensation on my lip that I suspected was trickling blood.

“Fuck off,” I said, and I threw my boot at it.  It vanished inside its chest without a trace. 

“Little shithead.”
I got dressed and took twice my usual dose of coffee. 

“That’s twice your usual dose of coffee.”
“Thank you, commodore obvious.”

“Penguin?”
“Corner of the room, sixteen heads, unearthly wailing.”
“Rough.”

“Nah.  But it ate my boot.”
“You threw it at it, didn’t you?”
“No call for it to eat it.”
“I’d eat something if you threw it at me.”
I threw a mug at him.  He ducked. 

“Liar.”

***

When I went into my room again the penguin was gone, and things went back to normal for exactly eighty hours.

***

It was a movie night again, and Mark was taking longer than usual at the DVD player because the penguin had incorporated him into its torso. 

“Just let me do it,” I told him. 
“No.  This is my job.”
“You’ve got flippers, Mark.  Fuck off and let me help.”
“No!” he honked agitatedly, and I knew my nose was going to be bleeding again soon.

“Don’t do that shit.  You know I hate it when you do that shit.”
“Then don’t try and take my job!”
I threw my other boot at him.  It vanished inside his mouth. 

“Don’t throw things at me.”
“Don’t see why not.  It stopped you from being a liar again, didn’t it?”
He tried to ignore me.  Honestly, he’d been an even bigger asshole than usual ever since the penguin got him.  I hoped that didn’t happen to me whenever it got around to it.

“I can’t believe this sort of shit keeps happening,” he sighed.  “Every damned winter.”

“It’s a good place for it,” I said.  “Isolated.  Good preservation.  Easily spotted from orbit”

Mark burped and swallowed the DVD player. 
And of course, after a while, you learn to put up with just about anything.  

It was a dark and stormy morning.  Rain pitter-pattered down the windows and off the leather trenchcoat of the mysterious and shadowy figure who’d barged into my office, eyes glittering beneath a crooked, battered fedora. 

“Whozhat?” I mumbled, alertly. 

“The most important and dramatic case of your career,” he intoned in a voice like funeral bells filled with grinding tombstones falling into an ocean trench full of bass drums.

“Whuzzat?” I questioned him, eagerly. 

“I need you to find the identity of… THE MURDERKILLER.”
“Ugh,” I said, pulling myself fully halfway upright.  “Really?  Do I have to?”
“He’s your nemesis!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t catch him last time.  I don’t wanna.”
“I DEMAND you unmask your nemesis!”
“Fiiiiiiine,” I sighed.

“Good,” said the mysterious stranger.  Then he gurgled and fell over, an enormous knife sticking out of his back.  ‘Johnny’ Doesmurders, my trusty sidekick and sidey trustkick, had helpfully already seized hold of it and tugged it free smoothly. 

“Looks like the Murderkiller did this, boss,” he said helpfully. 

“How can you tell?”

“Has his name engraved on the side in neon.”
“Wow.  Sounds like evidence.  You mind holding onto that for me, ‘Johnny’?”
“Sure thing,” he said, slipping into the very conveniently empty leather knife sheath on his belt.  That was ‘Johnny’ for you.  Always prepared for anything.  “Where we headed?”
“To the first place any private eye goes on a case, dumbass,” I politely informed him.  “To the bar.”

***

“I need another clue I mean drink I mean clue please, shithead,” I told the bartender. 

“He’s emotionally distraught, see,” ‘Johnny’ told him.  “His dear old mother died recently or his favourite aunt or his beloved nephew.”

“Uh,” said the bartender, and he served me another glass of warm milk.

“Thanks,” I said, and downed it, washing away all my innumerable troubles in a soft tide of lactose.  Like the time I’d gotten bad takeout and suffered gastrointestinal distress in front of the court; or the time I falsely accused my good friend ‘Johnny’ Doesmurders of being the Murderkiller; or the time I forgot my own birthday; or the time the bartender had collapsed on the counter in front of me and spilled my warm milk all down my pants. 

“Hey, watch it!” I snapped at him.

“Here’s the problem, boss,” said ‘Johnny’, flipping him over expertly.  “Someone’s gone and shot him in the forehead.”

“Another clue, or an evidence, or whatever,” I said as I rifled through his pocket.  “Looks like he only had fifty clues in his wallet though, damnit.  Any witnesses?” 

“He shot him!” screamed a man cowering in the corner, pointing at ‘Johnny’. 

“No I didn’t,” said ‘Johnny’.

“Well, I’m out of ideas,” I said, scratching my brow and furrowing my brow and wincing at the sudden pain in my brow.  “Any thoughts on what we do next?”

BANG.

“Pardon?” I asked, looking up. 

“Let’s go to the hardware store for supplies,” suggested ‘Johnny’.  “Here, hold onto this gun and rub your fingerprints all over it; seems like a clue to me.”
I caught it and burnt my palm rubbing my fingers all over the barrel.  This job was hell. 

***

“Shovels,” said ‘Johnny’.

“Check.”
“Tarps.”
“Check.”
“Gallons and gallons and gallons of acid.”
I sneezed violently and dropped everything. 

“Aw no, boss.”
“Sorry,” I said.  “I’m allergic to acid.  That’s why I never clean the office.”
“Tactical thinking,” said ‘Johnny’ thoughtfully.  “Boss, do you have your card on you?  I’m temporarily unflush with cash.”
“No.”
“Cash?”

“No.”
“Boss, you got your wallet on you at all?”
“I left it behind when I was investigating at the bar, ‘Johnny’,” I said severely.  “Stop questioning my methods.  I definitely did that on purpose for good reasons which I’ll make up later when I’ve got more time to think and aren’t as sloshed on milk.”
“Ah,” said ‘Johnny’.  “Good thinkin’, boss.”
“I think he bought it,” I said.  “Listen, you’re a pretty convincing guy.  Can you ask the cashier to give us a loan?”
“Sure thing, boss,” said ‘Johnny’, straightening his shirt and unsheathing the evidence knife.  “I’ll be right back.  In the meantime, take all this stuff to the car: it’s vitally important to finding our next clue out in the middle of the desert, miles away from the nearest road.”

“Sure thing,” I said. “Just give me a minute to pick up all these gallons and gallons and gallons of acid.”

“They got carts, boss.”
“Shut up, ‘Johnny’.”

***

It was a beautiful night.  With my neck craned back I could count every star in the sky as they sprinkled cold light down on me like a thousand demon’s blessings, embraced in the grip of the eternal darkness that we all come from and all go back to.

“Boss?”
“Sorry, ‘Johnny’,” I said.  “I was busy with my neck craned back so I could count every star in the sky as they sprinkled cold light down on me like a thousand demon’s blessings, embraced in the grip of the eternal darkness that we all come from and all go back to.”
“Seems a bit trite, boss,” said ‘Johnny’.

“Go fuck yourself Doesmurders, what the hell you know about literature?”
“Not much,” ‘Johnny’ admitted.  “I’m more of a visual arts guy.  But speaking of, mind watching the road a little more closely?”

“Oh yeah,” I said.  Christ almighty, where WAS the road?  “Christ almighty, where IS the road?  I didn’t mean to say that, ignore it, ignore it, ignore it.  Shit.  Damn.  Shoot.”
“It’s near the pillar of smoke back thataways, boss,” said ‘Johnny’.  “Or you can just follow the trail of dismembered cacti and flattened roadrunners.”

“I used to love that cartoon,” I said wistfully.  “It reminds me of the old times, when I was youthful and innocent.”
“I know what you mean,” said ‘Johnny’.  “Actually, don’t bother going back to the road, boss.  I know where the crime scene is.”
“Wow,” I said, impressed.  “And we weren’t even looking for it!”
“Yeah!  It’ll be up ahead behind that big rock in about thirty minutes.”

***

“Is it here yet?”
“No,” said ‘Johnny’.

“Is it here yet?”
“No.”
“Is it here yet?”
“No.”

I pouted.  I was really tired; digging holes is a lot of work.  You have to bend your back over and over and over and hold a shovel right way up and everything.

“Okay, that’s probably deep enough,” said ‘Johnny’, measuring the pit with a squinted eyeball and some ambiguous hand movements.  “I reckon we’re ready for the crime now.”

“Great,” I said.  “Good thing we brought all these gallons and gallons and gallons of acid to tidy it up.  Help me out of this pit?”
“Nah, just wait in there for a second.  It’s the perfect spot.”

“Does fit me real well, doesn’t it?” I marvelled. 

“There is something I gotta tell you though, boss,” said ‘Johnny’, carefully unsheathing his knife, unholstering his gun, unholstering his other gun, and clutching all of them in both hands and his teeth. 

“‘Johnny’,” I said, wiping my brow with one hand, “we’re true pals.  You can tell me anything at all.  Get a load off your chest.”
“I, ‘Johnny’ Doesmurders am secretly, unbelievably, mind-bogglingly, unexpectedly… THE MURDERKILLER!”

Thunder rolled dramatically through my mind. 

“Oh,” I said.  “Wow.  Woah.  Gosh.  Gee.  Golly.  Damn.  Shit.  Shoot.  Gosh.”
“You said ‘gosh’ already, boss,” said ‘Johnny.’

“Thanks a ton.  Well, that explains more than it don’t.  Whaddaya want for dinner?”

‘Johnny’ gaped at me like a failed flounder.  “But… but… I’m the Murderkiller!” he sputtered.  “I’ve lied to you and systemically deceived you for years, boss!  I’ve murdered and killed everyone and everything that ever came close to you!  I’ve played you like a fiddle, a violin, a viola, and a cello all at once!  Don’t you CARE?”

“Well, it hurts a bit I figure,” I said.  “But you’re my pal, so I’ll overlook that.  And besides, that just explains why you’re always doing murdering and killing, and I like those things.  Hell, you sure have given me a lot of excuses to get some of my own done!  Now I can get some hot tips from the best.”
‘Johnny’ Doesmurders stared down at me with something bigger than awe.  “Gosh, boss,” he said.  “I thought it was me playing you for a sap, when all along it was the other way ‘round.”
“It’s no problem at all, ‘Johnny,’” I said.  “Now pull me outta this hole and let’s go home and order in!  You can murderkill the delivery guy after if you’d like.  I’d love to watch.”

A cliff, a crag, a corrugated hut.

A scientist, a sleep, a snore. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

Ready or not!

***

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

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

Also fuck that wave coming at her. 

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

“Life!” shouted Janice through the megaphone.

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

“Is come!” continued Janice. 

“PRAISE BE!” replied her congregation.

“And with it, death!” explained Janice. 

“PRAISE BE!” expounded her congregation. 

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

“Ten miles and closing fast.”

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

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

***

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

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

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

***

The torpedo slipped lightly through the oncoming wave.

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

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

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

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

“Oh.  Shit,” said Betty.

“Eh?” asked her gunnery officer. 

And Big Louise’s backup eye broke water. 

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

“She’s up!”

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

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

Again. 

“Whoops,” she said, a little sheepishly. 

“No, Hannah,” said Beth. 

“I’m sorry?” she tried. 

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

“I’m sorry,” Hannah mumbled. 

“Mmm?”
“I’m sorry for-”

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

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

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

Next to the tractor was about half a woman. 

“Urgh.”

“Yep.  Need a moment?”
“I did that?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

***

It was McDonalds. 

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

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

“Yeah,” she said, head bowed. 

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

Eight minutes later Hannah knocked on the bathroom door. 

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?”

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

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

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

***

Danny called on the way back into town. 

“Shit,” said Beth as she hung up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exactly one of his legs was missing. 

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

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

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

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

The chair had wheels. 

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

Ah, normal. 

Almost normal. 

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

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

No, the air wasn’t lava either. 

No, she’d just fed the cat. 

Oh right, she was out of milk. 

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

Nope, still there. 

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” she said.  “I’m It.”

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

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

***

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

“Oh,” she said. 

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

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

No ANYBODY at all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

On Tuesday morning Sharon slept in. 

***

On Wednesday morning Sharon stayed at home. 

***

On Thursday morning she turned off her phone.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh BEANS,” they said. 

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

***

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

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

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

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

Beeeep.

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

***

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

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

Beeeep.

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

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

“Bobby?  Come on, can’t you hear m”

Beeeep.

***

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

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

Beeeep.

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

***

Ring

Ring

Ring

Click.

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

Beeeep.

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

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

Beeeep.

It’s a beautiful, beautiful day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then both legs. 

Then his body. 

Then his wings. 

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

The fish was gone. 

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

It was a beautiful, beautiful, day. 

That never matters, does it?

***

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

So he told the foreman. 

And the foreman told the quarry’s owner. 

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

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

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

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

The bird did not. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Were those teeth?

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

She was also a little bit near-sighted.

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

Oh. 

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

Oh. 

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

Poor thing.  Poor little bird. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And very, very quickly Baron Menzen knew that too. 

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once upon a very long time ago and far nearby, someone was on the beach. 

The air was still.  The sky was clear.  The sand hurt their feet.  The heat soaked through the skin and bone and straight into the soul. 

And they closed their eyes and said “that feels nice,” and that’s exactly where all the trouble began. 

***

As a result of this, Steve shouldn’t have been surprised when he was arrested. 

His neighbour was the snitch, they told him.  It didn’t need to be said but Steve wouldn’t be able to ruin her good name or anything where he was going, so why the hell shouldn’t he know about it. 

“Your neighbour was the snitch,” they told him. 

“Well, I won’t be able to ruin her good name or anything where I’m going,” he concluded. 

“Yes.”
So they took Steve out to the Everbeach, where the shore shone brighter and clearer than any of the others that blanketed the city, and they strapped him into the many beautiful and sparkling-clear mirrors, and they left him there at midnight, where he would have many hours yet to contemplate his impious lack of skin lesions and tumours before the holy orb cleared the lip of the horizon to sear away his sins.

It was a better fate than a suntan-lotion-smuggler deserved.

***

It was a big job to do, but it had to be done. 

The brightsiders had come up with it, from their holy jets that chased the golden glow, never letting the sun set on their brilliant brains. 

Impiety, it was clear, came from the shady.  Why, therefore, to suffer shade?

Yes yes yes it was a lot of labour and toil,  yes yes yes it was a project on a scale no human brain could admit, yes yes yes it had already claimed seven yillion lives and escalating. 

But wasn’t anything worth doing difficult?  The most sparkling achievements glittered in the sweat of the accomplished. 

This was a great comfort to Beatrice Hogg, as she lay entombed underneath the seventeen killion tons of concrete she’d helped use to fill up Mammoth Cave entirely.  At least her skeleton would clog the hole it was left in, so as to prevent an unsightly pocket of darkness. 

It was a pity she’d never have a chance to sip the sacred margarita again before she passed, mind you. 

***

The earth was undimmed; the people well-burned.  A brighter time had never existed. 

But did that mean it could not be imagined?
“NO!” shouted Her Sunniness, Brenda III.  “There can always be better, always warmer!  Shade has been driven out from underfoot, every crevice closed and yet it lurks among us even now!  Mountains!  Hills!  Riverbanks!  Everywhere the landscape bucks and rolls its shoulders, shadows form and mock our efforts.  The world must be made beachly, and no beach worth its salt possesses an unevenness – only the purity of flatness can save us now!  ROUND THE EARTH!”
The following heresy of the Sand Duners led to a great crusader, counter-crusader, counter-counter crusader, and ten thousand years of internecine strife before it ended in victory for the flatteners.  Then came the simple task of removing all shade from the earth’s surface. 

***

The last cloud died easily. 

The vapourpoon lodged in its flank, its thin and mild mildew of a body drained away readily, the venting-nozzle smoothly siphoned it up into the rarest of atmospheres where it could be trusted to escape into space and trouble the ground no more with its noxious looming over the very holy and very high-albedo and very sparkling world. 

The crew who killed it  – all veteran self-mummies, every one – were immediately given the glory of ascending to the sun on the True Beach, where many satellites diligent reflected light so that their ashes might never languish in that blackest crime: the night. 

No statues were ever commissioned.  Statues cast shade. 

But there were plans for the night.

***

It took a long time to find all the relics of the Old Wars and take them apart and put them back together and copy them and fail to set them off and succeed to set them off and make ninety dillion of them and ship them and aim them and do all the fiddly math and do it again and again and again to be sure and execute the project manager before she could sabotage it and get the word out. 

But it was all worth it for that glorious sixty seconds, where the missiles launched and soared and swooped around the planet into that eternal foe and vanquished it for, as far as the population of the earth was concerned, all time. 

They stood there on their beaches, sun behind them, sun in front of them.  The air was still.  The sky was clear.  The sand hurt their feet.  The heat soaked through the skin and bone and straight into the soul and out the other side and back again. 

And they closed their eyes and said “that feels nice,” and that’s exactly where all the trouble ended. 

It was not the finest city.  That was the Windmerre, where you could see through the translucent ice under your feet to the city’s twin underneath, a perfect mirror hanging underneath in the freezing sea and every bit as beautiful. 

It was not the grandest city. That was Arktar Tiir, atop the pole, thick-spired and aglow at all hours of dark and light. 

It was not the oldest city.  That was Riir, nestled in the heart of the big bay and shielded by craggy hills, like it was afraid to leave the grasp of the land too far behind. 

Dirredew was none of those cities.  It was barely a city at all. 

But it was the only city they had left. 

***

Several hundred years ago, someone had found a lovely wide crevasse in the ice.  Then they’d told their friends, who’d told their friends, who’d told their friends, and so on. 

Now instead of a lovely wide crevasse in the ice there was Dirredew, which was a lovely wide crevasse in the ice that was filled with pockets holding families, storage-halls, freezing-galleries, carverooms, meltchambers, and so on and so forth. 

It also held all that was left of them after the funny little warm people had come with their machines.  Machinery was not a common thing, since it needed walking on the land and ripping of the dirt and the stone.  But the funny little warm people had loved the land, and so had all kinds of ingenious machines like the little tubular ones that they would stick into you and warm you from the inside out until you collapsed into dead grey slush, or the huge war-radiators that would shred a city’s walls in a few days, or the cunning sorter-sluices that would sift through the melt and rubble for whatever it was they were killing everybody for. 

Maybe it was people’s hearts.  The funny little warm people did like shiny things, or seemed to, as long as they weren’t made of ice.  Ice they didn’t like at all.

So now there they were, all of them that were left, waiting down in Dirredew’s depths.  Barricades over the causeways; camouflage over the barricades, quiet down in the arcades.  Everyone shushing each other, nobody breathing too loudly, not even one chisel ringing down in the carvehalls where otherwise new lives would be made every day. 

But there were hot shots from funny little warm people up above anyways, and then the low great grinding sounds of the machines being pulled up.  So everyone could relax and start talking again, because their doom had come. 

***

Their doom took some time to start up.  The funny little warm people’s machines didn’t like the cold much – maybe that was why they were so effective at ruining it – and they always took a good few hours of grumbling, rumbling, crumbling, and mumbling before they would really begin to steam and hiss and growl. 

So there was time to say goodbye and so on.  Final wishes, final kisses, final tears, final plans, all the things people did with each other. 

One of the final plans was a bit of a surprise, even to the person who had it.  But it was a big surprise, so other people noticed, and it surprised them too,, and so on and so forth until at last everyone had heard it and seized it and taken it up as something to do, which is always the best and most comforting thing you can have at times of incredible and inevitable doom. 

A plan to-do is a weight of eternal suffering, but a plan enacted is friendly and cheerful and one to treasure.  And since there was no more time left for to-do, all that was left was the happy ending. 

***

The little warm people broke through the last of the barricades some time later, melt-tubes in hand, violence ready.  Dirredew’s many winding ramps were well-built; ridged for a proper grip that let even the biggest of their war-radiators roll downhill without a single slip, and their travel through the city was headlong and ferocious, each street taken at textbook speed. 

The family-pockets were empty, and that made sense because the people liked to spend their final moments in as much company as possible.  The funny little warm people ignored them save for a few cursory scouts.

The storage-halls were empty, and that was a little odd because they were some of the biggest places for public assembly, if you liked that sort of thing.  Many of the funny little warm people stayed here to plunder the vaults for valuables anyways.  They did so love things that shone. 

The freezing-galleries were empty, and that was very very puzzling because they were large and spacious AND they were the last places that would boil and fry under the weight of even the mightiest war-radiators, so carefully sculpted for chill and cold they were.  The funny little warm people set up some of them to begin the process and shuddered at the chill and pressed onwards. 

The carverooms were empty.  Half-carved people sitting there, not yet alive, abandoned by their parents.  The funny little warm people stopped for a moment to torch some of the more complete ones, but none of them were finished enough to be alive and so it wasn’t satisfying at all. 

The meltchambers were last, and here the funny little warm people were at the apex of their confusion because everywhere the people could be hiding was empty.  Was the city abandoned? 

So since they were so confused they fell back on the textbook thing to do, which was open up the meltchambers so their warmth would help their machines melt the rest of the city, and that was when all the people came pouring out at once in a great flood. 

***

The little warm people made meltwater.  It was what they did.  It was what their machines did.  Nothing made a little warm person smile like seeing blue liquid lap where ice mountains had stood. 

But they didn’t swim in it.  They especially didn’t swim in it when they were weighted down with the little grey tubes and the armoured coats and the heavy boots that they wore to go out and melt the people. 

Then the flood of the people reached the war-radiators and turned red-hot, and it also became clear that the funny little warm people, for all their use and abuse of heat, didn’t like too much of that either.  The flood steamed and hissed and roared and some of the funny little warm people tried to run but the heat outran them, raced upwards, ate the ramps and the floors of Dirredew out front underneath their feet and left them with nothing to save them but empty damp air. 

If any of the people had still been there, they would have been greatly surprised to see the funny little warm people scream for cold, for cold, for cold.  A wish for ice of all things. 

But they wouldn’t have been surprised for long, for then the machine-scalded water bored through the bottom of Dirredew’s crevasse and the little warm people found something bigger and colder than they could’ve ever imagined, but they didn’t have to worry about that for very long. 

***

Time passed.  The other armies of the funny little warm people completed their missions and returned home.  Throngs welcomed them, children worshipped them, leaders adorned them with shiny things that they loved so very much. 

No more cold, no more cold, no more cold.

And at the ends of the world where there was no more cold or ice the ocean turned and turned upon itself and the currents changed, inch by inch. 

Snow fell in odd places the next year, which puzzled the funny little warm people. 

They would be very puzzled for a very long time.