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Duke Robswaffle raised a fork to his mouth, chuckling lightly over the thought of finally landing the foreclosure against the Bluebits. His chuckle rattled in his gullet, and he coughed. Then he wheezed. Finally he choked, gasped, gurgled, and fell down face-first in his own breakfast, all his wicked deeds not even affording him the time to panic. The chambermaid screamed.
Outside, Tolb the sub-under-gardener was running the lawnmower and didn’t hear anything. Five minutes later he finished the lawn, put away his tools, and left the estate just before the officers of the law arrived, completely unaware of any ruckus.
He went to a pub down the way, drank a pint of something, lost five bits on a game of cards with a local pal of his that he’d originally won from her anyways, drank a pint again (this time of something larger and meaner), lost ten bits he probably couldn’t afford, said goodbye as politely as he could, and went home.
Home was small and dirty and cramped and shared with a rotation of others. Tolb had a shot of something in an effort to chase away the sure-to-come hangover, ate a dirty biscuit and surly bread, and fell asleep wishing he had some cheese.
The next day he came to work at the Robswaffle estate and found its gates barred.
“What’s going on?” he asked a passerby.
“The Duke is dead!” they told him. “His vile deeds caught up with him!”
“Oh,” said Tolb. “I guess I’d better find other work.”
And he did, at some point.

Lady Whibsy-Herringbone, fifth knife of her line, missed. She missed with grace and skill. She missed with great alacrity. She missed with élan and panache and maybe even vivacity. But the most important part of all of that was that she missed, and so her stubby little blade thunked past Lord Basil Tonington’s nape and smacked into the bark of a nearby tree instead.
“Aha!” said Lord Basil. He drew his own tiny knife and darted around the tree’s fat, firm trunk.
“Aha!” said the Lady, retrieving her knife and pursuing him about the tree. She caught sight of his heel for an instant, a petty instant, and then he was gone again ‘round the trunk, and she was faced with a dilemma.
Clearly Lord Basil would expect her to double back counter-clockwise around the tree and ambush him. Therefore, he would double-back counter-clockwise and ambush HER. Unless he expected her to expect that, and therefore he would NOT double-back and would ambush her clockwise as she attempted to ambush him clockwise. Unless…
Lady Whibsy-Herringbone shook her head as the implications became clear. There was no end to the implications of this tree, either in logic or real circumference. Therefore it would be simplest to keep chasing him in the same direction – to save time turning about – and trust in chance. She thanked providence for her expensive and elite education, and redoubled her pace.
Lord Basil Tonington, of similar stature, wealth, and schooling, expressed much the same thoughts. And so the pursuit stalled.
Three months later the tree, fatally undermined by the trench their circuit had worn about its roots, fell over and crushed them both.

“I’m afraid to tell you this, ma’am,” said the storysage, “but your daughter was born under an evil sign. She’s going to be very evil. Extremely evil.”
“O!” said the queen, who knew how to pronounce solitary letters. “Storysage, please help this cruel fate come not to pass! Raise my daughter so that she becomes an upstanding and beloved queen, rather than a tyrant! Do this for me.”
“Okay,” said the storysage. But the queen was already dead, so really it was a promise made to nobody in particular.
Still, she stuck by it. It gave her something to do.
The queen’s daughter grew older, became extremely evil, and ravaged the land with her mighty armies and mightier sword. Eventually a handsome princess came to defeat her, and – with the secret aid of the queen’s son, a most beautiful prince – she was cast down through the careful exploitation of her secret weakness: a fondness for almonds.
The storysage realized she’d really fouled up that promise, and was pretty glad nobody had heard her make it. She hung around the court making general predictions and so on for many years, but tried not to volunteer aid in dealing with the situations she warned of. “I just tell ‘em as I see ‘em,” she told them. Eventually she retired and passed on the duties to her apprentice, an undistinguished and straightforward young man that had nearly become a cheesemaker instead.

Sam and Robin looked at each other, surrounded by the ruin of their ambitions, and suddenly realized something important.
“Well, despite how much I hate you, my vengeance wasn’t worth it after all, and seems to have left nobody the victor,” said Sam.
“Yeah. You’ve got that right,” said Robin. “Seems correct, if unsatisfying”
“Indeed.”

Ted sat down. “Boy, I’m glad THAT’S over,” he said.

Herman was stooped. His hands hooked like claws – ugly claws, claws from a half-eaten chicken, not the stout, strong nails you’d find on something like a wolverine or a hawk or anything. His back was a bunch of frightened vertebrae huddling together for shelter and warmth in the shadow of his destroyed spinal column. His arms shook like a dead tree in a high wind, and when he coughed there was real venom and spittle behind it, the kind you find in a plague ward. Each lungful warned the body that there might not be another getting in for a few minutes.
But hey. The driveway was clear.
“A pox upon shovelling!” shouted Herman. And then he bent over, wheezing.
“Fie upon shovelling!” he yelled upon getting his breath back, and so immediately lost it again.
“If I had my ‘druthers, I’d never shovel another flake of snow in my entire life, and if there was a way – any way! – to do so, I’d make a pact with the devil himself and gladly shake his hand!”
“Hi,” said the passerby who’d stopped to hear all of this out of polite interest. “Want to see a trick?”
Herman’s death-rattle indicated acquiescence.
The passerby bent over to the roughly-scraped asphalt, picked up a few odds and ends of loose snow, and rolled them around a little, muttering in something that didn’t sound French.
“Here you go.”
Herman looked at what was being offered. It was a snowball.
“Get thee hence, snow,” he said.
“This one’s special. It doesn’t melt.”
Herman screamed.
“No, listen. Shut up. There, your lungs are empty again. Listen while they fill up, okay? Okay. Whatever temperature this thing’s at? That’s the temperature of your driveway. Presto. No more shovelling. I’m leaving before you start up again. You’re welcome.”
The passerby left. Herman still screamed a little once he’d gotten his breath back, just on principle.
He looked at the snowball, unmelting, sat squat on the ground. It filled him with horror. It filled him with fear. He knew it shouldn’t be, shouldn’t even be dreamed of.
But what if.

So Herman brought the snowball inside, put it in a little dish on his counter, and went to sleep with the roar of the storm coming in outside his window. He ground his teeth a lot that night, and when he woke, he was halfway dressed and out the door, shovel in hand, before he’d even opened his eyes.
The driveway was half-empty. The snow that remained had a sullen, sulky, half-melted look to it. It collapsed into slush at a nudge of his boot.
“Wow,” said Herman. “Yikes. Yippee!” He took off his toque and threw it in the air, and then took off his boots and threw them in the air, and then he ran in circles three times around his driveway laughing and drove to work after spending thirty seconds shoving slush out of the way while whistling.
“Boy!” he said to his co-workers and also everyone else he met all day, without pausing for their input, “I sure do love shovelling now! Never been better! Never been easier! Yes, now I can ignore it! It’s great! I love that a bunch! Yay!”
Then he went home, shoveled the driveway for thirty seconds again, and went to bed.
But he stayed up a little. Half out of excitement, half out of worry.
“What if,” he said to himself, “what if this keeps up? Thirty seconds in the morning, thirty seconds in the evening. That adds up. That’s a minute a day. That’s an hour every two months! That’s a lot of wasted time, oh no no no.”
He frowned, and pursed his lips, and whined a little, and fidgeted.
Then he had an idea and went into the kitchen, put the snowball in the oven on a little baking sheet, turned it on, and went to bed again (a major fire hazard by the way; don’t do this).

The driveway steamed wetly in the feeble grey mist that passed for light on a winter morning. Herman danced the dance of those who care nothing for dignity, the glee-jig, the cackle-flip, the hoky-gloaty.
“THIS is what it’s all about!” he yelled, “THIS! THIS RIGHT HERE! THIS!”
Then he went to work, sang loudly the whole day, and came home.
And it was still clear. His neighbours were toiling, their shoulders were hunched, their minds bent around bent plastic, metal, wood. And HE, HERMAN, was going indoors for hot chocolate and smugness.
In the kitchen, he put on the water to boil and paused for a moment.
It was awful warm in there. And hey, what was that smell?
“Ugh,” he said, and opened the oven. Something crusted to the baking sheet had been burning away by degrees for the past fourteen hours. “Gross.”
He cleaned it off, went to bed, and stayed up late.
Thinking.
Well. Twenty four hours a day, with the gas on. Singeing anything that ever got into the oven. Good lord, the gas bills. They’d take his money, they’d take his life! He’d be crippled and hunched again, this time by fearsome debt.
What could he do? What would be warm enough, what would be consistent enough, what could.
“AHA!”
So Herman walked into the kitchen, turned off his (groaning) oven, removed the snowball, and gently, carefully, patiently tossed it into his furnace.
Then he went to bed happy for the last time in a decade.

When Herman woke up again, he was very surprised. Someone had come in while he was asleep and painted his room white, taken away all his belongings, changed him into a sort of backless gown, strapped him into an IV machine, and then put his bedroom inside a hospital.
Then a doctor came into his house, quite uninvited, and asked him how he was feeling.
“Annoyed,” said Herman. “Is it snowing? Will I need to shovel? Oh god, please tell me I won’t need to shovel.”
“Herman,” said the doctor, “your house burned down. This is your fourth day in the hospital.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Do I need to shovel?”
“See this graph? It looks like your car had its tires melt when your driveway became superheated. The rubber spilled onto your lawn, which then also became superheated, which ignited your house. It kept the firefighters busy for forty hours.”
“Oh NO!” said Herman. “Forty hours! Does this mean it snowed again? I bet it has. The forecast was pretty bad, you know. Brr. Shoveling.”

The snowball was never found again, even when Herman moved back in – not that he could remember it, then or ever. He was more or less in one piece, but a part of him was always a little boiled after that.
Never got cold shovelling again, mind you.

In the month of October, on the proper day, a man wearing a strange hat sat in the middle of a dusty old side-road and sang an even-stranger song five times.
Then he left a little bit of folded paper on the road and walked away.

Ten minutes later, a dragon stepped on the paper and stopped cold.
“Oh fuck,” it thought. “Not AGAIN.”

The sorcerer did a little dance. He’d planned it since the night before and so it both lacked spontaneity and showed (unflattering) insight into his character. Especially the little shuffle at the end with the rapid clapping.
“Ha-hah!” he cackled.
The dragon waited.
“Ha-HA!” elaborated the sorcerer.
The dragon waited a little more.
“Ah-HA, HA HA HA, BWA AHA, HA HA, HA. HEH,” concluded the sorcerer. “Right. Dragon!”
“Yes?”
“Beast of the fiery pit!”
“Sure.”
“Fiend of the higher air!”
“Okay.”
“I command thee-”
“Yeah, if you must.”
“-I command thee to grant me wishes three!”
“Three wishes. You don’t have to be fancy about it. Sure. Release me.”
The sorcerer squinted at the dragon down his nose, which was tricky because it was pretty small and somewhat adorably button-like. “Do you – do thee think me a fool, wyrm? Thine confabulations and deceit shall find no purchase within me! Swear to me by the fire, by the air, and by the blood that make up yourst bits!”
The dragon held up a claw. “Right. I swear. Done. Let me out.”
“Did thou-”
“Cross my hearts and hope to die, pull off my wings just like a fly. And please stop saying ‘thou’ ‘thee’ and ‘thy’ and anything else like that.”
This seemed to annoy the sorcerer.
“Fine, you’re bound. Three wishes are mine! For my first wish I desire…dominion over men and women!”
“’Dominion?’” asked the dragon.
“What?”
“Oh, forget it,” said the dragon, and it flapped its wings and launched from the ground with all four limbs at terrifying speed, kicking up a windburst that sent the sorcerer’s pants over his head and his ass over his teakettle.
An hour later, it returned.
“Climb aboard,” it told the sorcerer. And he did, and it launched again and this time he was there to see the explosion of force from the other side, to gawp in surprise as the whole world became as small and unreal and far away as a picture in a child’s book of bedtime stories.
Then they landed, and he fell off.
“This is Stebs Hill,” said the dragon. “I asked around town for the deed, here it is, you now possess a dominion over the six hundred twenty five men and seven hundred fourteen women of the visible horizon from this point. It was pretty cheap; the soil up here’s garbage and there’s no prospects for mining or quarrying. No wonder everyone else around here lives in the valley.”
“Barf,” said the sorcerer.
“Yes. Barf indeed.”
“You twisted my words!” yelled the sorcerer, hastily scrubbing the bitter juice from the corners of his mouth.
“Me?” asked the dragon. “No. Not really. I just misinterpreted them. I mean, I assume I did, since you’re so angry. Unless you wished for something you hated?”
The sorcerer paced seven mystic circles into the summit of Stebs Hill, chanted some ominous words that sounded suspiciously like swears, and made elaborate, thaumaturgical gestures in the direction of the dragon and the dragon’s friends and family.
“Dragon!” he shouted.
“Well, yes, we already-”
“Worm with wings!”
“It’s got a ‘y’ in i-”
“Carrion-thirster, goat-fucker!” said the sorcerer, with more spittle than words.
“What? And that was just o-”
“DO AS I SAY AND COMMAND,” shrieked the sorcerer, “and GRANT ME WEALTH BEYOND MORTAL UNDERSTANDING!”
The dragon shrugged and took off in the same instance, an economy of motion only available to a very lucky subset of vertebrates. The sorcerer coughed his lungs out for the duration of its absence, a hardship shared by many smokers.
“Climb on again,” said the dragon.
The sorcerer climbed on again. This time he shut his eyes for the entire flight, out of principal, spite, and the suspicion that he was within rights to demand a refund.
Thump.
The sorcerer opened his eyes again. They were standing on the (slightly smouldering) remains of a pea garden, outside a university.
“Their philosophy classes were all fully occupied, and you have no accreddition,” said the dragon, “but I removed a few of the excess students and a few officials and now they’re open to you staying until your degree is complete.”
“wealth,” said the sorcerer, blankly. “grant.”
“It’s SORT of a grant,” said the dragon. “Or maybe more like a fund. Or insurance. Incineration insurance. I guess protection money’s less oblique.”
“Stop,” said the sorcerer, recovering a part of himself that had slipped from his body. “Go. Go away. With me. Now.”
This time the sorcerer watched the clouds in the sky. They looked like faces. They looked like they were laughing at him.
“Why?” he asked the dragon.
“Why what?”
“Why have you done this?!” screamed the sorcerer into the wind. “I’ve asked nothing that wasn’t within your power! I’ve asked only what you could gran – GIFT me, with the barest of efforts! Less effort than your idiotic games have cost you! Why torment me thus – are you so depraved, so wicked, so perverse?!”
“Look,” said the dragon, “here’s the thing: if we’re having problems, it’s because I can barely understand most of this language I’m using – I learned my first when I was eight hundred and nine. I’d never understood the idea of anything else having thoughts. I’d never understood the idea of communicating anything, to anyone, ever. Frankly, it’s amazing I haven’t eaten you yet in a fit of solipsism, spell or no spell. Me and you communicating at ALL is more than you should ask for, and you’re just quibbling over the wording.”
The sorcerer opened his mouth, shut it, opened it, made a hissing sound like a kettle, puffed up like a toad, twittered like a songbird, and slumped over like a man who’d just had his every dream skewered with a sharpened steeple.
“Take me home,” he said.
“Sure thing,” said the dragon. And it dropped him over a volcano.
The sorcerer tried to make a wish on the way down, but the screaming made it very difficult to concentrate and besides it was his fourth anyways, and therefore null and void as all fourth wishes are.
The dragon then made a wish for a nap, settled into the volcano, and worked on fulfilling it. Which it did, although there were a few uncomfortable twists into the second decade, when its leg fell asleep.

“Health card, please.”
The man had been in line for three minutes. The man had seen six people hand over their health card. The man was completely astonished to learn so suddenly that he, too had a health card – and what’s more, somebody might ever want to see it. He scuffled through all his pockets one after another, pulled out a big wad of mashed Kleenexes, checked all his pockets again, pulled out his keys and dropped them and picked them up again, checked all his pockets a third time and found his health card in his wallet in the first pocket he looked, and did all of this while keeping up a running commentary of ‘ohh,’ ‘ahh,’ ‘err,’ ‘sorry,’ and ‘I’m sure it was…’
The assistant gave the man a friendly, patient smile that had nothing to do with reality, took the health card, scribbled in a folder, and handed it back carefully instead of throwing it at his head. “Down the hall, to your left. The Waiting Room.”
“Oh, the waiting room.”
“No, the Waiting Room.”
“Oh. My second left?”
“Your first.”
“My left or your left?”
“Yours.”
“Right now, or the way I was when I was facing you?”
“Right now.”
“Right now or left now?”
“Health card, please,” said the assistant to the next person in line.
The man stood there for a little while until he realized he wasn’t getting any more attention, then wandering off. It was on his first left.

It, of course, was the Waiting Room.

The Waiting Room was coloured in beige and boredom, and decorated in soft ‘80s numbness. The air tasted like it hadn’t moved since the 40s, and the floor grumbled angrily when used. A big wooden door at the far end sealed away the doctor, behind oaken sternness and a big overhead bell that looked capable of summoning a most foreboding DING.
There was also a clock, which ticked with the wet, rhythmic firmness of an epiglottis.
The man didn’t notice any of this because he was busy gawping at the room’s inhabitants. Most of them were people like him, except the ones that weren’t.
There was a woman biting her nails. Her hands moved, even as she chewed, so it looked a bit like she was wrestling with her own head.
There was a man with a tie and a truly tremendous amount of sweat, which he was furiously adding to every second. Fresh droplets beaded on his face as if from a shower-head. His flesh appeared to have compensated for all of this by sucking itself as close to his bones as possible, maybe in hopes that it could cling on as the rest of its mass was sweated away.
And there was a small child inside eight layers of blankets, in a basket, screaming. Its parent had submerged their entire face into the basket, and was as invisible as the child itself, if a good deal quieter.
“Gosh,” goggled the man, eyes wide and mouth half-open. His lips glistened, his tongue half-protruded. “Woah,” he said loudly, just to be sure everyone in the room understood where they stood with him and his opinion. “Jeepers!” he said with the fierceness of a curse, and then he sat down in the nearest chair with violent force.
Then he got up, took off his coat, put it on three separate coathangers, and sat down again twice as hard. He made a little tune up in his head and hummed it, in precisely the reverse of that order.
But it couldn’t last.
“Hi!” he said to the sweating man.
The sweating man nodded. This tiny motion caused about half a cup of moisture to splash off his neck and drench his tie, changing every single colour on it to something dank and hideous. He turned pale – even paler.
“Boy! What’re you in for?”
The sweating man mumbled something that included the word ‘fever.’
“Boy that’s tough! Gosh! You know, I had a fever one time. Ate a big salad. Old home remedy. NEVER fails. Ever. You know, it’s because it’s full of vitamins. Good for you, vitamins. Vitamin A’s the best one, a cousin of mine’s a doctor and he did a paper that said-”
The bell above the big wooden door went DING. It sounded like schools and amusement parks and forgotten stovetop timers. It was very foreboding.
The sweating man stood up, mumbled something furiously, and ran away. Every footstep squelched and turned into a sucking, lamprey-tinged gasp.
There was a quiet three seconds.
“Hi!” said the man to the woman biting her nails.
She paused for a moment in her chewing.
“How’re you doing?”
She began again, then accelerated.
“Nervous eh? You know, I was nervous once. But my momma told me a special old family secret. You have to peel an orange and put it in your eyes. Then you blink as hard as you can for five minutes. It gets the vitamin Cs where they should be, you know.”
The woman biting her nails stuffed both hands into her mouth and began to grind her teeth furiously.
“Vitamin C isn’t as good as vitamin A of course – or even vitamin B! – but it’s in the top three. Obviously, since they’re alphabetical. And it’s not all THAT weak either – I remember I drank way too much orange juice once and I got too much vitamin C and I almost poisoned myself, although the doctors said it was water poisoning. They were just trying to keep me calm because I was so little; vitamin C poisoning is scary stuff, my mom told me. That’s why you’ve got to make sure it gets in your eyes and not your ears. Otherwise it can leave you numbed and frostbitten and anti-social, which is bad for anyone – not that I’ve not heard a complaint directed at chatterboxes, mind you! Once I went on for a while and it drove my poor old dad so nuts he had to spank me three ways, one for each cheek and an entirely new one all of his own invention. A bit harsh, but I learned my lesson, and I only talk to strangers now, or at least mostly. Common in my family. Anyways, I tend to go on like that, pardon me for not giving you a word in edgewise. Hey, what’s your favourite colour?”
The woman biting her nails was up to her elbows.
“Sorry, sorry. I’ll wait ‘till you’re through. Don’t want to make you talk with your mouth full. So my aunt once-”
DING.
The woman biting her nails lurched upright, fell over, and furiously rolled through the big wooden door.
“Good luck!” called the man. Then he leaned back and sighed. Then he snorted. Then he started humming again, whistled for a few seconds, hummed some more, yawned, stretched, started to snore, jolted violently awake again (knocking over half a table of magazines) and stared at the parent and their child for four minutes hoping they’d take their head out of the child’s carry-basket for a second and make eye contact.
At last, he didn’t care.
“H-”
“We’re contagious,” said the parent.
“W-”
“One more syllable and you’ll catch it.”
The man shut his mouth. “Golly!” he thought loudly. Then he started to clean his nails by picking them off. Some of the pickings he ate – maybe to see what the woman biting her nails had been up to, experimentally – and some of them he simply flicked to see how far they would fly.
One of them flecked off the bell above the big wooden door, which went ‘ding.’ The parent stood up, grabbed their child, and ran through the door so fast the man had no time to see their face. From somewhere in the distance, someone (the doctor?) shouted something rude.
For want of else to do and absent witnesses, the man began to explore, chart, and conquer the rugged interior of his nostrils. This went on for ten million years.
And then, in the distance, hollow as an empty grave.
DING
The man got up, checked the entire room to make sure he hadn’t forgot anything, and very slowly walked through the big wooden door, accidentally shutting it way too hard and making the paintings on all the walls jump.

Inside the door was a hall.
Inside the hall was another door.
Inside the door was the doctor.
He was a small, furious man with large teeth and a stare that made you flinch. Aside from these traits, he was very unlike a squirrel.
“Hello. Sit down.”
The man was a bit like a dog, and turned around three times before doing so – he wanted to make sure he had time to read all the charts on the walls first. One of them had what looked like a cross-section of an eyeball on it, and he was curious as to what it was.
“Hey, doc, what’s that thing that looks like a cross-section of an eyeball over there?” he asked.
“That’s a cross-section of an eyeball,” said the doctor. “Sit down.”
“Wow. Which side?”
“Left. Sit down.”
“Is it blue? My uncle said blue eyes are built backwards from green eyes.”
The doctor gently but firmly gripped the man’s shoulders and pushed him slowly until he was seated.
“Stick out your tongue.”
“Take off your shirt.”
“Breathe in.”
“Breath out.”
“Look at my finger.”
“Keep looking at my finger.”
“Stop looking at my finger.”
“Any problems eating?”
“Well –”
“Any problems sleeping?”
“You kno-”
“Wonderful. You’re healthy,” said the doctor. He checked his watch. “And my assistant just went home, so, uh, bye. Last one out’s a rotten egg, eh?”
“Y’know, that reminds me of a thing my grand-”
“Excellent. Well, nice to see you, see you later, etc, goodbye, good luck,” said the doctor. His handshake was almost a quick slap, and he left at a dead sprint without putting on his coat.
The man raised an eyebrow. Well, sometimes these things happen. Doctors were busy after all. He shrugged, put on his coat, stepped back into the Waiting Room, and was wholly caught by surprise when it pounced and disemboweled him. He didn’t even manage a yelp before he was swallowed.

The room shook itself three times, like a dog. It curled itself back up into a comfortable three-dimensional space.
And then it went back to waiting. It usually took a few weeks before it was hungry again.

There was a little king. A very little king. A king so little that in normal times he ought to have been a prince, but there had been an accident and an operation and a funeral and somewhere in the chaos his princedom had been amputated and buried.
So there he was. On the throne. And while he was there things were brought to him. Treaties and proclamations and promises and threats and pleasantries and all the colours of the paperwork rainbow (which is beige) passed under his nose and he even signed some of it, when he had to.
He could spell his own name, almost.
But that gets tiring, and a little king’s attention span is no longer than a little prince’s. So now and then, and again, and again, he would dismiss his business and cancel his court and call in the storyteller he knew from his youngest years.
The little king would wave his hand, like this.
Then she’d cough, and cough, and say “once upon a time…”
The hall filled with wolves, and bears, and wizards, and dragons. Princes, too.
And everything would be happy again.

The years wore.
They tore down the mountains inch by inch; they threw up the trees and chopped them to stumps; they ripped the wool off sheep and sewed it back on again. And that’s to say nothing of the weather.
But they beat in vain against the little king. For although they took his youngest teeth – and one of his elder ones, to an unfortunate peach-pit – and they yanked him up to the sky, and they rubbed raw hair and hide all over his little face, they couldn’t keep his mind. And that was as little as it had been the day he was crowned.
The borders were shaky. The neighbours were aggrieved. The queen hadn’t seen him in three months and his children not since the day they were born.
That didn’t concern the little king much, but his storyteller had died recently, and that made him very cross.
So the men went door to door, and they asked around, and they brought up men and women and although none of them quite pleased the king as much as his old storyteller had, they WERE a lot more numerous, and that was of all the pleasure he could ask for, and he went through them like some people went through clothes. A few changes a month.
One would stand there, to his left. One would stand there, to his right. The little king would wave his hand, like this.
Then the first in line would clear their throat and say “once upon a time…”
Lions and tigers, snakes and sorcerers, giants and princesses.
And he’d smile, and remember being happy again.

Years, given time, form decades for mutual protection and defense. They’re human creations, it’s only fitting that they do this. And it works well for them, gluing together time in blocks that stand firm even as mere matter crumbles and rushes against them.
There were no more little kings. There were a half-dozen old princes and princesses, though. Older than the little king had been when he fathered them, the eldest almost the age of his old storyteller back in the days he remembered.
He didn’t remember much else. If it was real, he didn’t want to hear it. Messengers left empty-handed with nobody bothering to even shoot them. Trade had given up and gone home. By and large the country outside the castle ran itself, save for those grim nights when the grey-faced men with halberds came down into the towns to interrogate anyone who might be hiding scraps of narrative. A children’s fable, a hearthside tale, a bedtime story – anything, anything at all. The elderly in particular were beset, and many an older man and woman was short a few fingers; the result of an earnest effort to make sure they weren’t shirking in their duties.
The king’s throne saw in the middle of his hall now. No story was new to him, not in whole nor in part. He’d made up for it for years with stereo, now he’d had to take it a step farther.
A nervous, throat-clearing storyteller at each hand, and one before him.
The little king waved his hand, like this.
And they said, all together and at once, “once upon a time…”

And it was true that once upon a time was a fancy.
It seemed likely than twice upon a time was pleasantry.
Thrice upon a time? That was more than could be held in just one place.

The castle didn’t vanish. Most people were very clear on that. The castle wasn’t gone. It hadn’t been spirited away.
But it wasn’t there anymore.
That isn’t the sort of thing people question. Good fortune was what it was. People shrugged, and peopled moved on, and when the neighbouring kingdoms came together and gently muddled their borders across the fields and towns nobody made a fuss.

And somewhere, far away, locked inside the crushed hours of a thousand compacted daydreams, there is a little king – not really a prince, not really himself – trapped somewhere on an edge, poised above a hundred dragons, a thousand princesses, a million witches. About to fall in, but holding his balance.
With no idea when he is.

On July 12th, 4:00 PM EST, the Trans-Canada Highway wheezed three times, choked, and died.
Nobody noticed for a few minutes. Then a doctor pulled over. 911 was dialed and CPR was attempted – to no avail. A few helpful Samaritans offered assistance, one was hit by a car, and soon emergency services were hard at work and half the traffic was slowing down to gawk and the other half was honking at them.
The cause of death was unknown – old age, cancer, a virus, choking to death – though seemingly pneumonic. Whatever it was, it spread fast. By the next morning the Autobahn was out, and come lunchtime it was official. The roads were dead.
The obvious thing to do was the decent thing. They had to be buried.

Ten million bulldozers, two billion shovels, seven hundred million wheelbarrows, and a trillion frothing sweats later, the corpses of the world’s roads were interned with love, and with care, and with sore backs. Some priests were located to say a few words here or there of some kind or another, but when it came down to personal testimony nobody had much to say. There were billions of acquaintances and work colleagues, but not a single friend, and no family.
“I knew them, but I didn’t KNOW them,” was the refrain. “And god, they were such a pain on the way to work,” was another. So was “traffic.” A lot of gawkers, fewer mourners.
Part of that might’ve been the problems. They started up fast.

First of all was getting around. It was a tricky business, and suddenly was based almost entirely around legs, which most folks deeply distrusted. There were few manuals for that sort of thing, and the manufacturers were irresponsible and legally untouchable.
To begin with people started relying heavily on the sidewalks, but they were just WALKS now, not beside anything at all, and it wasn’t just walking. There were joggers, running, strollers, and on occasion maniacs that drove on them, desperate for a road rush and caroming their cherished four-wheel-drives down four feet square of cement. The police chased them with red cheeks and flapping pants, caught up to them at hydrants, at telephone poles, at other cars. They’d book what was there if it was still breathing and tag it if it wasn’t.
All of this made the walks tricky, and a lot of folks renounced them, or walking altogether, or both. They took to beds and chairs and couches and sulked there, dreaming of tires.

When the despair was too much to bear, some people took the obvious way out. They’d dig a pit, drive their vehicles into it, and their friends would bury them both alive in the manner of ancient Sumerian kings. Several celebrities entombed themselves with entire fleets in this manner, that they might drive in the next life. The Tomb of Seinfeld was a wonder of the world within the week, and looted by grave robbers, treasure-hunters, explorers, and amateur archaeologists before it hit September.

At some point the question of food arose. None of it was moving anywhere, except maybe by ship, or plane. And neither of those could move anywhere once the fuel itself stopped moving.
Some of the farmers would be okay, but most of them needed supplies, and those couldn’t move anywhere, and so on, and so on, and so everyone realized pretty fast that this was going to be it for a lot of humanity, or at least anyone living in an industrial setting.
It was at this point – or near enough – that several people tentatively proposed replacing the roads. They were shouted down almost instantly. “Oh, they’ll just die again, what’s the point,” was the refrain, closely paired with “waste of taxpayer’s dollars.” Everyone who advocated nonsensical arguments against that sort of thing was shut up very firmly and soon everyone was free to get back to more pressing matters, like starving to death.

After the question of food came the question of graves. A lot of people were starving to death, and the ones left over to bury them were fairly weak and spindly. Cannibalism was a natural solution to both problems, but the nourishment on an emaciated skeleton person is pretty scarce and besides nobody really had the energy for that sort of thing.
The obvious solution, discovered in good time, was to bury the bodies with the roads. This was embraced by all, with some even bumping themselves off a few days in advance so they could be reunited with their beloved vehicles on the byways of the infinite just a little bit faster.
Nobody had the energy to chisel rocks anymore. Luckily, a half-buried tire made a wonderful headstone.

And after the question of graves came not much at all, because everyone left was awfully busy and couldn’t spare the time.

The roads waited a few years until they were sure everyone had forgotten, then snuck off.

Lightning crashed. Thunder boomed. In the bunker, under a cold caged bulb, four figures sat in silence, pouring over a tangle of papers and blurred photography.
At last they sat up, one by one, each making solemn eye contact.
General Goreblit lit a cigar. He ran a hand through his crew cut and confirmed that it was still precisely angled, and breathed a sigh of relief. “So. What is this we’re dealing with?” he asked.
“Ah uh um, eh, the uh, technical term for it is a Borborislich zerblinnia, as referred to by Linnean classifaction schemes, ahem,” said Doctor Wirms, pushing his giant spectacles a little farther up the enormous nose that almost disguised his entirely missing chin. “In uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh layman’s terms, it’s a MONSTER.”
“A monster?” asked the woman.
“Good god, man,” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Speak English, American English. What’s this thing’s capabilities? What are its motives? What can we do about it?”
“I’ll tell you this thing’s capabilities,” said Captain Tom Johnson, whose chin shone diamond hard in the electric glow of the room. “It’s dangerous. I’ll tell you this thing’s motives: it’s a menace. And I’ll tell you what we can do about it: we can blow this monster to kingdom come through good old know-how and hard-work and can-do spirit and me making this face where I squint a little bit.” And Tom Johnson made that face where he squinted a little bit. .
“That’s the spirit!” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Doctor, you heard the man, it’s all taken care of.”
“Right,” said the woman. “So… what kind of monster is it?”
“I think the question right now, of course,” said Tom Johnson, “is exactly what kind of monster we’re dealing with here?”
“Hard to say,” said Doctor Wirms. He pointed at the incredible large metal box that filled half the room with itself and the other half with its grinding hum. “We’re still uh crunching data, uhm, er, uh. But it’s a monster. It could be uhhhhhh almost anything. Anything, that is to say, viz, dangerous, per se.”
“One thing’s for sure, egghead,” said Tom Johnson, “it’s not from around here. It’s a stranger. It’s from out of town. And that, doc, makes it the nastiest peace of work I’ve ever heard of. We’ve gotta stop it before it kidnaps our woman.”
“What?” said the woman. “Where’d THAT come from?”
“With all due respect,” said Doctor Wirms, “the Pythagorean Theorem suggests that it’s uhm, the result of uh. Careless yet quirky use of lab materials. One of my err colleagues must uh have ipso facto left dangerous SCIENTIFIC MATERIALS somewhere and caused MUTATION or, quid pro quo, UNCONTROLLABLE ROBOTS.”
“What kind of problem we looking at there, doctor?” asked General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. “Give me the worst-case scenario.”
“Oh, they’ll eat power plants or something. Or build more of themselves, Carthago delenda est, perchance to uhn, ahem, RULE THE WORLD.”
“By god, I won’t let that happen,” said Tom Johnson. “Count on me, doc. Give me the straight-shooting solution to that sort of mess.”
“If it’s robots, uh, ahem, asking them to solve for uh…love will do it, the lorem ipsum effect. If it’s mutants, it gets uhhh…trickier. Lots of guns or something.”
“What if you’re WRONG, doc?” asked Tom Jonnson, planting his knuckles firmly on the table and leaning over the doctor like a testosterone-flush mountain over an emasculated anthill. “What if this monster isn’t from earth at all….but from SPACE? I flew jets once. I know about space. It could be an alien, the worst kind of stranger, which is the worst thing of all! And I know those suckers REALLY love kidnapping our woman.”
“Who is this ‘our’ here?” asked the woman. “And did anyone just hear that?”
“It is scientifically impossible for extraterrestrial organisms to be the source of this problem,” said Doctor Wirms. “The Fermi Paradox prohibits it! No sophisticated alien would visit as anything more than a robot probe, due to Asimov’s Three Laws. Although uh, I guess it could be an uhm, unsophisticated organisms, such as err…. A large, ravenous goop, constantly consuming all matter.”
“It sounded like a knock,” said the woman.
“Disgusting,” said General Goreblit, lighting a cigar. He lit a cigar and squinted through the massive haze of smoke in front of him. “Well men, I won’t lie to you. This monster has to be stopped here and now, or it means nothing less than the extinction of the human race and by that I mean a few cities in this country, which is much more important. Good luck, godspeed, and give ‘em hell.” He lit a cigar, shook both their hands, and lit a cigar. “Honey, get the door, will you?”
The woman sighed, got up, dodged a pinch, and opened the door to the bunker.
“Hi. Who is it.”
“The monster.”

The monster was a smiling, sober gentleman in a tidy and respectable suit, the kind you’d find on a really earnest – but not overeager – middle manager, or a thoughtful executive who’d earned his keep through hard work and loyalty. His hair was parted perfectly. His eyes were filled with kind wisdom. He was the size of a five story building and his shoes were well-cared-for.
“Now,” he said warmly, “why don’t we all just have a little sit-down and talk about all this? Man-to-man.”
“Right then,” said the woman. “I’ll just…. go.”
“That’s right, doll, just siddown somewhere,” said Tom Johnson, elbowing her to one side. “Sir! Captain Tom Johnson, ex-pilot, but just call me Tom. What can we do for you this fine day, sir?”
“Ah, a no-nonsense sort of man,” said the monster. “My favourite kind. You know, I was in the army when I was younger. Gave ‘em hell. But that was a simpler time, eh?”
“Over here,” said the woman, edging around the corner of the bunker.
“General Goreblit,” said General Goreblit, giving the monster a firm and honest shake with his right hand and lighting a cigar with his left. “Call me Harold. What can we do for you today, citizen?”
“Oh, nothing much,” said the monster. “This is just a social call. Well, maybe a bit of business, but that’s nothing personal. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. You know, you remind me a lot of my brother. A good man, he was. He got shot down in ’41. His radio was dead.”
“For a while,” called the woman, as she turned the keys to the jeep.
“In point of fact,” said the monster, “there’s one very important thing that needs to be done around here. I’d like to step on your whole town, starting with you. It seems harsh, but I think you’ll agree it’s fair and practical. Let’s not get fuzzy-headed about this, we all knew what we were getting into when this business started. Time to roll up the sleeves and get to work.”
“Logically speaking, you make perfect sense!” beamed Doctor Wirms, adjusting his comically enormous bowtie. “Oh my goodness, I haven’t been so excited since…err…Los Alamos! Gee whiz!”
The woman honked the horn once as she went ‘round a curve in the road, and was gone.
“Fantastic,” said the monster. He gave them a fatherly smile as he raised his enormous shoe. “Now, just remember, this is going to hurt me a lot more than you.”

Once upon a time there was a monkey.
It was a hungry monkey. And hey, it was all alone on this little island. And there was so much delicious fruit to eat, on so many trees! Enough for dozens of monkeys, surely.
And so the monkey ate all the fruit in one week and starved to death.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the monkey, shrivelling up in the sun. “What could have been done differently? Nothing. Urrh. Ah. My kidneys.”

Once upon a time there was an expert.
One of several experts, mind you. A whole band of them. They’d found out that if you took a stone you could hit a flint to chip a flake to fashion a tool to cut a branch to sharpen a point to embed in a pit to really make a mammoth’s day go very poorly indeed to get a nice lunch and also some mammoth byproducts like ivory and bone and fur and so on. A lot of the mammoth would end up smelling bad and rotting but oh well.
And so the experts hunted all the mammoth at full speed at all times as hard as they could and all the mammoths died, which made an awful lot of them hungry, cold, and devoid of shiny objects.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the experts, counting their fingers to see which digits had fallen off last night when the wind came extra-frosty. “What could have been done differently? Nothing at all. Oh dang, that’s seven.”

Once upon a time there was a tiller of the soil, salt of the earth, practical level-headed sort of person.
There were a LOT of them. Takes bodies to keep a farm running. A lot of bodies growing a lot of crops to feed a lot more bodies to grow a lot more crops to feed a huge amount of bodies to grow a huge amount of crops to feed an insane amount of you get the idea I think, don’t you.
Problem was, you ran out of room for those crops. So there was nothing to do but dredge out wetlands, chop forests, and denude hillsides. Cram those crops wherever they fit, and if they didn’t, fit them anyways. If it was too hot? Irrigate. Still too hot? Irrigate more. A little too hot oh well irrigate it.
And so the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people suffered from foul water, rain-stripped soils, and seasonal flooding that washed away many of their livelihoods and also their livelilives. Famine and so one were pretty common, and their towns fell apart.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the tillers of the soil, the salt of the earth, the practical and level-headed sort of people. “What could have been done differently? Absolutely nothing at all. Dang, the fields are a saltpan again. Better eat rats.”

Once upon a time there was a great and mighty ruler.
Alas, one of many. And the problem with being one of many great and mighty rulers is that none of your fellows is ever quite willing to admit the obvious truth of your being the greatest and mightiest. This gets especially galling when one of them has a nice bit of land, or a lovely port, or are friends with someone you don’t like or think you like more than they do.
So for simple reasons such as these, it’s expedient to commit some kind of diplomacy or war or whatever. Eventually the greatest and mightiest of rulers achieved the finest truth – a domain larger than any had seen before.
And so it split apart from the inside within their lifetime, held together by spit, self-interest and varnish as it had been.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the great and mighty ruler from their deathbed, a bit muffled by fourteen sharp blades and a pillow held firmly over the face. “What could have been done differently? I can see absolutely nothing at all. Hey, I think I gave that dagger to you on your birthday. Can’t you write more often?”

Once upon a time there was a wise and far-thinking entrepreneur.
It turns out that there was a source of heat and power greater still than that imagined by the age-old means of flammable rocks: flammable liquids. Drag them up, burn them up, blow your mind. Soon everywhere that was anywhere had dozens of rigs lining the landscapes, sucking for their quick fix. At some point it was brought to the attention of several of the wisest and farthest-thinking entrepreneurs that flammable liquids might be curdling the entire planet’s atmosphere very quickly, and this was astutely deemed impolite to broadcast. After all, what was life worth living for, if not for flammable liquids?
And so the whole world burned on together, some furiously, some hesitantly, only to run into a somewhat nasty shock a little less than a hundred years later.
“How could this have ended any other way?” lamented the wise and far-thinking entrepreneurs, as they considered their stock options, checked their golden parachutes, and bought land in New Zealand. “What could have been done differently? I can’t imagine, I just can’t imagine, it’s impossible to imagine anything being changed but nothing at all.”

Once upon a time there was a New Zealand.
New Zealand does not contain monkeys. It has some nice and very patient birds.
New Zealand’s patient too. It can wait. It doesn’t have any other choice, but that’s okay, it’s at peace with that.
Because it knows that when it comes down to it, nothing really ever gets done differently.

On a warm Wednesday morning, safely on its way into midspring, Paul McGuinty woke up early, had some coffee, and descended into his garage to talk to his dragon.
It was waiting for him, and hungry. It must’ve smelled the air.
Paul walked around it clockwise, stopping here and there to touch a fender, to examine a speck of dust, to flick a fleck of froth from the windshield. He never quite stopped talking even when he inhaled; no words, just a constant stream of syllables and murmurs, baby words, for a great fire-gutted iron-skinned smoke-belching baby that he loved more than anything that could say ‘dada.’
“Good!” he said at last, and slapped the hood affectionately. “Good!”
Then he went upstairs, had more coffee, got dressed, and got behind the wheel. He turned the key and it growled, he pressed the pedal and it roared.
“Time for some treats, goo’boy,” he crooned. “Time for some treats.”

It balked at the first stop. Dragons, as a rule, are not fond of water unless they own it. Paul was confident it would relax by the time he was done at the register.
“Will that be express or premium?”
“Ultra premium.”
“Okay. With or without scented soap?”
“Nonscented, extra soap.”
“Superscrub on or off?”
“Superscrub on, extra extra soap, with turbo premium and extra premium. He deserves the best.”
The woman smiled the quick and easy grin of someone being paid far too little to think of any questions and punched it up. She rattled off some nominal fee and Paul gave her twice that and told her to let it run twice as long as usual.
Into the waterfalls went the dragon, cautiously, nudging at the pipes and hoses with its snout, distrust making it grumble and lurch at movement.
“Easy, easy, easy m’ goo’boy, whoosagoo’boooooy,” said Paul, as the jets began to thunder and descend, panting furiously at the sight of grimed skin. “Gotta scrubbadubbdubb. Goooooooo’boy.” And other things like that, that calm down dragons.

It roared louder when they took to the road again – maybe hoping to vibrate loose the last few drops of water from its hide. It was fiercely clean on a dirty street and maybe that was what made all the cars shrink back from it.
Besides, it was very large. Didn’t quite fit in its own lane. Not quite a proper vehicle at all, really. But a very good dragon.
And very good dragons got very good service.
“Tires?”
“Yes. And oiling.”
“Express or premium?”
“Ultra premium.”
“Okay. With or without uberspraying?”
“With, and pump extra into the seams.”
“Relaxing music or no relaxing music?”
“Ultra premium, uberspraying – heavy on the seams and every crevice – and double that ultra premium. No music. It puts him to sleep.”
The boy smiled the nervous and slightly rigid grin of someone who still cared about the sanity of the general public and punched it up. Paul gave him a few handfuls of bills without counting and told him to put the entire staff on it.
The dragon lay there, quiescent. It glowered at the approaching hoses in helpless pride.
“Ittabeefiiiine, ittabeefiiiiiiiine,” soothed Paul. “Goooooooo’boy.”

When the sun came to touch the dragon again, it shrank back at the rivalling glare. The dragon was a light source all its own now. It glowed with oils, its plating seethed, it had gone from impenetrable to unpenetrable in a single stride and the dirt simply gave up and died against its sides in handfuls, the road shrinking away from the grip of its summer claws.
Its roar was steadier now. Earnest, not thirsty. It knew this was its time a-coming. It knew it would be out and around from now on, not shrinking from the cold. It knew that it would be on the highway soon, shouting down small and quailing vehicles, bullying fat slow transports, calling from overpasses.
It knew things. It was a dragon.
Paul knew things too, mostly that there was one last stop to be made. This time there were no words, no questions, only buttons.
Regular, premium, super premium, ultra premium, ultra deluxe premium, ultra deluxe gold premium fantasmagoria glory.
Paul selected ultra deluxe gold premium fantasmagoria glory and held down the nozzle for what seemed like seven years while thinking about what kind of chocolate bar he wanted. After far too much time he wandered indoors, paid up, and walked out with a reddish wrapper that had seemed the least likely to contain peanut butter.
He was incorrect.
Paul was annoyed. He kicked at the dragon’s pedals, and it snorted defiance at him. It was tense, he was tense. Things were thrumming, things were hissing.
It was time to go.
It was time to go NOW.

The dragon LEAPT out of the gas station, darted onto the road, slipped into the on-ramp, and shot onto the highway so fiercely that it almost ran a car half a kilometre away from itself off the road, purely from shock.

The roar was around Paul now. He was in its teeth, after all.
Air screaming at his ears. The drip and trickle of its innards underfoot. Hot breath whooshing. And inside, fire, hot fire, screaming to come out.
Paul stamped the pedal harder and laughed, and laughed, and laughed. He was laughing so hard that he didn’t hear or see the police car until it pulled in front.

Paul pulled over. Slowly. Grudgingly. Seething.
Inside he was swearing. Outside, he was merely hissing.
He pulled the keys out of the dragon, and kicked it savagely as it grumbled its complaints.
How dare they. How DARE they. Didn’t they know who he was? Didn’t they CARE? How dare they!
He swore, he hissed, he nearly spat, and he turned a friendly smile to the man outside his window.
“Good afternoon officer! What seems to be the problem?”
“Just a friendly reminder, sir,” said the cop amiably.
“Oh! How kind of you!” said Paul. He kicked the dragon again. “What is it?”
“Your gas cap seems to be open, that’s all.”
“Well isn’t that nice to know,” said Paul’s mouth while his brain turned itself on and off three times so fast he almost didn’t notice what was happening.
Oh. It must’ve been while he was thinking of a chocolate bar.
And then it was far too late.

The dragon pulled itself out nose-first, flames and smoke billowing in its wake like a runaway blockbuster. Its oiled scales shone brighter than mirrors in the noon sun; its claws and teeth were purest white and its eyes a red that could make rubies crack. It was clutching the policeman in its rearmost talon, and as it flew out of sight as fast as imagination Paul never saw the cop so much as twitch or scream.
Mind you, he made up for it himself.

The origins of Risbit are shrouded in history’s thickest fog. It’s unknown if they were from the Rockilees or the Hollow; if they served Immish or Talgo; or even if they were male or female. Nonetheless, the legend has a straightforward shape.

One day, Risbit was hunting prongnose on the middle heights, far above what passed for the highest villages of the time. The Peak was thinly settled, but the prey had already learned what to expect from the bipeds with pointy bits in their hands and glints in their eyes, and was predisposed to nervous flight.
It went down from blood lose somewhere up the Trundledowns. Uneven terrain, but clearly above their houses. From there they could see every twinkle of light, every flicker of movement, almost close enough to touch.
It made the knowledge of the five-mile downhill stomp with whatever bits of a five-hundred-pound piece of meat they could rip off even more depressing.
And then Risbit spoke The Words. And, as The Words were so very wise and important, they are known with a precision that no other detail of this story can be sure of. Much else fades, but they remain, seared from brain into the stone of the Peak itself.
Risbit spoke The Words, and The Words were: “Why don’t we just roll it down there?”

Ten minutes later the slightly battered corpse of the prongnose slid off a last slope and pinwheeled into Risbit’s house, denting the wall. It is for this reason that the Peakward face of all houses constructed to this day contains a slight indentation.

There were consequences beyond the dreams of any.
First, there was now incentive for hunters to walk the higher slopes. Now that they knew of The Words, there was no true problem with killing a fat beast far from home. As long as the distance was vertical, it was, for all intents and purposes, insignificant.
Second, there was an innovative explosion in packaging, along with an exploration of material properties. The right kind of padding in the right place could keep a prongnose or bulkhead from exploding – or losing limbs – for an extra half-mile. Once the foragers got interested, baskets were designed that could safely deliver first sturdy tubers, then delicate berries – and weighted just so, so that their momentum was sustained until they reached home.
Third, Risbit was titled ‘the Poly’ by the general acclaim and agreement of their peers.

Some centuries later, after Risbit the Poly was safely buried, their home village became embroiled in a dispute. It seemed that another, younger clan had built their own village directly Peakward of the pre-existing settlement, and the manner in which this blocked off the necessary access to rolling resources was deeply resented. The accused maintained they had done nothing wrong, and in fact that the deeply Flatward positioning of the prosecution gave them unfair title to an unnecessarily large strip of the Peak. This was disputed with sharp objects, and a bloody battle ensued until the smaller, Peakward village, on the verge of defeat, heaved a large boulder down on a shale scree and triggered a very sharp and sudden avalanche.
To this day, the exact location of Risbit the Poly’s tomb and village is unknown.

So, another factor came into settlement. The lower the village, the more Peakward slope it could lay claim to for transport. But the higher the village, the less likely it would be that some upstart rival would claim its Peakward land and threaten its Flatward neighbour with burial by rock. War went from vanishing scarce to a constant threat; every person kept an eye on higher ground and slept with their shoes on. In vocabulary, ‘Peakward gaze’ went from referring to clear-headed planning to creeping paranoia.
At length, the fate of the Peak in general came to rest in the uppermost of its denizens: a council of four headsfolk whose settlements were placed so highly as to be unassailable by rolling, yet deathly impoverished – all of their foraging had to be done downslope, and hand-toted back. Above them was only a little cap of summer frost. As none of them could hurt the other, they talked as equals without fear for the first time in several generations, largely to complain about their problems.
It must’ve been then that some had the idea of extortion, which wafted around like a bad smell until – as many bad smells do –everyone grew accustomed to it and decided it wasn’t so bad. If the Four on the Peak couldn’t roll their own resources, they could profit handsomely from the rollings of their Flatward tributaries. Larger, more prosperous villages were forced to yoke their bounty and drag it upslope by rope (later chain) and by hand. It is believed this wearying vassalage led directly to the domestication of the stupid-but-tractable bulkhead, which spent a lot of its time wandering up and down the Peak anyways and didn’t mind carrying an extra quarter-ton or so of food and supplies as it did so.

For some time the Four on the Peak prospered. Unassailable from below, unrivaled above, at last the most obvious problem reared its head: what to do about those beside you. It was such an obvious thought that all four of them had and executed it at about the same time, leading to a mathematically unlikely quadruple ring ambush. So great and obvious was the hubbub and confusion at the summit that several of the larger, bolder Flatward vassals armed themselves and stole up to the heights. Hardened and embittered, they overpowered the weakened and reduced forces of the Four, although several emergency avalanches were deployed before defeat was obvious. The villages of the Four on the Peak were razed and their supplies of deadly boulders and shales depleted by the expedient measure of dropping them down empty slopes.

A time of relative peace blossomed. The Peak’s heights were now depopulated, and the strategic benefits of their position were now known and defended against. Walls were sculpted around settlements to both ensnare rolling goods along specific paths and (in wary preparation) to deflect barrages from above. In truth there were now few enemies from within; the shared suffering inflicted by the Four had forged a small bond of commonality. Rather than competing for rollzones, most codified and elaborated upon their own pre-set roll-routes.
This mutual pacifism was well-timed, for it was not longer after this that those strangers, the Flat, came to the Peak. They had interesting and exotic goods and metal weaponry. The first they bargained with, the second they threatened with, and if the Peakers hadn’t been wary from the get-go things might have ended very badly – conquered first from above, then below. As it was many of the most Flatward settlements were razed, but the newcomers didn’t know of The Words, and thus were wiped out in vast numbers when they sought to climb higher Peakward into the waiting stone rain.
The Peak solidified in friendship at this defeat of a common, alien foe, and the proto-Peak Republic was formed in the loosest sense of the term.

What followed was not unimportant, but was devoid of dramatic shifts. The Peak Republic solidified. The roll-routes were formalized into the rollways, which were deep, broad, and required the relocation of much of the Peak’s good stone into their surfaces. Agriculture – practiced initially at the behest of the Four on the Peak for greater tribute – was refined. The prongnose went extinct. Erosion became a concern, and sculpting of the slope beyond its use for rolling became more common.
This was referred to as the Combing.

The Peak Republic fell in the end not to infighting among peers, but friendship between strangers. Numerous kinds of Flat came to trade at the bottom of the Peak, and in time some of the Flatwardmost settlements came to enjoy a nigh-monopoly on exotic goods and luxuries, from which they profited handsomely. Jealousy grew in those consigned to the Peakward heights (who paid the greatest sums for the smallest tastes of these indulgences) and in the end quarrels grew into denunciations grew into embargoes grew into incitement grew into deliberate disruptions of the rollways. Shielded well from stone, the protecting Peakward walls of the Flatward settlements were not proof from stink and sickness – the Peakward settlements beset them with rotting and diseased carcasses and sewage, choking their fields, forage, and rollways with murderous bacteria. In the end every settlement Flatward of the Rockilees was emptied, either driven into the arms of their Flat allies and friends or eradicated by plague.
This was the second great redistribution of the Peak’s population. Now both the extreme heights and the farthest lows were relatively devoid of habitation. The Peak was girdled with life, and by history, inclination, custom and practicality, this range did not change greatly from that point onwards.

At some point, something had to be done about the trees.
Wood wasn’t what you built a house out of in most of the Peak, but it was needed for an awful lot of tools and smaller-scale projects. The Peak had been forested thick to the treeline in the old days, but toward the mid-life of the Peak Republic that coverage had been thinned thoroughly. Now, with the concentration of population in the Peak’s midsection, competition for timber began to grow. Each settlement also now needed more cropland – Peakward, preferably.
Nobody was above them. Nobody could sneak up on them from below.
So, once again, precautions grew into paranoia. War against one of your neighbours risked an ambush from your other, so it was safest to fortify and content yourself with sabotage and mending the effects of the sabotage of your rivals.
There was plenty to mend. But it was a lot harder than the sabotage, so nobody ever put quite as much effort into it.

At length, a problem emerged. The rollways were wearing awfully deep, and some of the oldest and most-used were collapsing inwards. Alternate routes were found, but they were less stable to begin with (being in less preferable terrain).
There were several summits. During the course of these, it was determined that
(1) rollways were necessary for a Peak life. Existence without The Words was, fundamentally, not thinkable.
(2) without noticing, it appeared that a point had been reached by which rollways were no longer sustainable at the scale necessary to sustain Peak society.
(3) the individuated benefits of ceasing to crumble the Peak with rollways were basically non-existent and if any given Peak settlement did so its neighbours would simple take its belongings.
So, having determined that they couldn’t possibly fix anything, the people of the Peak resigned themselves to merely enlarging and refurbishing the rollways as much as possible as fast as possible.

Some time later, Flats came to the Peak again. Not as conquerors, not as traders. There wasn’t much anymore to conqueror or trade with, so they had to settle for being explorers, and complained a good deal about their lack of fortune. Nothing but crumbled, buckled rocks, ruts, bumps, and dirt – very poor dirt at that.
“This is the ugliest hill I’ve ever seen,” decreed Abideel Gutchen, and those words were written in her journal and remain true to this day, centuries later.
Mind you, the years have taken their toll on the Peak since her day.
It was probably a whole sixty foot high when she saw it.