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Doubter and Doer are walking along just talking about things, along the borders of a swift little stream. Well, Doer’s talking. Doubter’s just nodding her head. Like she does.
Then Doer sees something, points out her finger. “Hey, ya’see that?” she asks.
Doubter shrugs.
“Look! It’s some humans! Let’s fuck with ‘em.”
“Why?” asks Doubter. It’s one of her favourite questions.
“Because why not? They’re humans, it’s so easy it’d be a crime not to. Let’s seriously screw with their heads. Let’s mess ‘em up.”
“Eh, sounds like a lot of work,” says Doubter.
“A lot of work – a LOT of WORK? To get humans to do crazy shit? Sister of mine, I bet you I can drive these humans crazy just by doing one little thing to one little thing. Bet you.”
“How much?”
“Bet you big time. Bet you huge. Bet you plenty.”
Doubter scratches her nose. Agreeing flat out to something just isn’t how she works, but she’s bored of walking. Probably. “Eh….maybe? I guess so.”
“Great,” says Doer. “Now check this out.” And Doer reaches right out and whacks a good chunk of rock off one of the hills that borders the stream, kerplunk splosh it goes and it rolls down and on and on for days until at last it comes to a stop right in the middle.
“I don’t see anything happening,” says Doubter. “I’m not sure you’re winning this bet.”
“Give it a minute, impatient child,” says Doer. “Just a minute. Ya’see, sister of mine, this river has two banks, and each bank has a farm, and each farmer belongs to a country. Human stuff. Just you wait a minute.”
So they wait about six years and then one summer in the middle of a bad harvest for one farmer his kids are getting hooted at by the kids from the other side of the stream. Nothing new, nothing new.
What is new is that they’re standing on the rock to do it, and they’re throwing mudballs.
So kids being kids they fire right back and whish swing sling it’s a war on.
“Lookit that right there, lookit that good shit, huh?” says Doer. “Barely past toddlers and they’re thirsting for blood. Innocence of children my left nip – even little big-eyed baby seals’ve got mouths like a needle factory, don’t we know that, huh?”
“This doesn’t look like too big a deal,” says Doubter. “I’m not sure you’re winning this bet.”
“Oh yeh? Lookit right there, little Billy-Bob JoJo McFuckhead just skipped a pebble off’ve his neighbour’s eyelid. Oooh, bet that smarts. Now the dads get a turn.”
And they do, and it’s a proper row. Shouting, yelling, stomping, waving.
“Wah wah wah. This is MY rock this is MY rock. Wah wah wah, this is YOUR fault this is YOUR fault. Sweet tune right?”
“I guess.”
“See, it’s that first argument that’s the big one. This is what’s gonna pay off big, just you watch. Get bigger than king and country and apple pie and really dirty sex, just watch. Nothing humans love more than this. Watch it.”
So the two farmers whine and whine and their neighbours whine and whine and eventually surveyors come down but it’s one from each country and they start getting in spats too. Nasty stuff and someone almost goes home with calipers stuck up each nostril. The surveys are concluded under sullen silence and armed guard. Armed, bored guards. The kind that spend their time talking shit at each other and eyeing up each other’s killing tools to see whose is bigger.
“Awww yeah. You watching this? You watching you lose? I hope you’re watching you lose ‘cause I don’t want any take-backs on this.”
“Doesn’t look like such a big deal to me,” says Doubter. “I’m not sure you’re winning this bet.”
“Oh really? Look again, fishlips.”
So now both surveyors do what they were going to do and blame each other. This, says they, is clearly the rock of my fatherland, my people, my one-and-onlies. The other guy is clearly an asshole.
And after four years that’s how you get an army sitting in a cornfield staring at its mirror image forty yards off. Which is what’s going on right now.
“Wait for it.”
A man arises. His jaw is set with purpose. History weighs on him and he can tell.
“Wait for it…”
He strides, and there is will and intent in every footfall. At this moment he is fully conscious of himself and the universe around him. The water splashes under his feet.
“I’m not sure you’re-”
“SHADDUP AND WAIT FOR IT.”
He stands at the stone. He places one foot on the stone.
He makes eye contact with a man on the other side at random, a man who is all men in a crowd, who is exactly as important as he is at this moment. In that flash of an instant, they both understand one another deeper than any other ever will.

He chucks a pebble right at that man’s forehead.

“Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww yeeeeaaaahhhh,” sighs Doer as the scrimmage obscures the stream. “Bet’s over, you’re done like din-din. Fork it over. C’mon, fork it. Stick the tines in deep and hunch those shoulders and fill the plate.”
“If you say so,” said Doubter. “But I’m not sure you’ve won this bet.”
“After all that? After all that? Why you saying stupider things than usual, sister of mine?”
“Well,” says Doubter. She’s always a little uncomfortable giving suggestions. “Well. Y’know. Maybe…”
“Yeah?”
“…You could’ve used a smaller rock.”

The Gdappi Coast is older than eyes, older than sin, older than hearts. Cities line it, ruins encrust it, fishermen ply it up and down past the long, stone beaches, hauling the little nets for the big fat Tzab fish that move slowly through the warm currents. They drift for days on the current, the whole time without a single word leaving their lips – all communication is by hand and eyes. It’s bad luck to speak aloud on a fishing trip, though no-one remembers why. The one exception is when one of the big merchant ships bulls through the path of the fishers; then the dried and gummy lips unseal themselves to vent a torrent of abuse upon the likes of those who would so cruelly run them down.
The merchants don’t care, of course. They’ve got bigger problems of their own. The Gdappi Coast is old, and its trade routes not much younger, but age has not softened the sharp teeth that lie just below the waterline over so much of its length. Where there are no stones, there are reefs; where there are no reefs, there are stones. And as the years and decades and centuries roll by, one constant remains: the petitions and the complaints and the long, long pleas to the kings and queens of the Gdappi for lighthouses and lighthouse-keepers, for lonely men and women to tend farfires that could light the cruel barbs of the sea and steer them well away.
Most came to nothing. A few unlucky ones caught rulers in bad moods and were punished. A handful persuaded a ruler (begrudgingly), and a shoddy little tower of cheap cement and cracked stone would be erected, to stand for a little less than a half-century before a storm roiled up from the deep and spat upon it.
And one day, one petition in the court of Queen Ktami came to her in a capricious and sour mood, and received an unusual response.
“Half,” she said, from her throne of wrought iron and blackened wood. “I will pay for half of the costs of construction. The rest will be paid by the petitioners. And if the cost exceeds eight thousand ba, they will pay two-thirds the cost. And if this complaint comes again in my hearing, they will pay all the costs and all of their property and also their tongues, so that I do not have to hear it again.”
Obviously this did not sit well with the merchants, but equally obviously they did not protest. And so they grumbled and whinged their way around a map of the most dangerous shoals of Gdappi, the spots marked with dozens of little grey scratches of ship names and dates and cargos lost. And so they found, to their dismay if not their surprise, that the most dangerous places of all were remote and difficult to reach, and so construction would be expensive and lengthy.
“One-eighth of the cost shall be paid by all,” said the youngest merchant.
“One-eighth would bankrupt me,” said the poorest merchant. “I should pay less.”
“Your ships use this route more than any other,” said the cruelest merchant. “You should pay more.”
“And you use this route less than any other, and I suppose you’ll say to pay less then?” asked the sharpest merchant. “No, no, no. Enough arguing, brothers and sisters. I have a plan.”
And the sharpest merchant cast out her finger and pointed at a single lump on a single hump on a single point on the coast line, nestled amidst so many wrecks that it was hard to see at all.
“Here there is an old building. Next to it is an old, old hill. And atop that hill is an old, old, old stone that spirals like a corkscrew until it near to brushes the roof of the sky. We shall make this our lighthouse, and all of us shall pay one-eighth the cost of a small shack and a bright torch. Will this please?”
It did.
“Then it is done,” said the sharpest merchant. And shortly thereafter, it was.

The stone did not brush the roof of the sky. It did not even come near. But it looked like, and with a fire atop its brow it looked moreso still.
And so the keeper of the lighthouse was hired for little payment; a young man who could afford to lose a few years tending a fire and losing his mind. He was given a garden on the old, old hill and a crude house on top of the old, old, old stone, overlooking the old ruins. And next to the house was a squat bonfire, whose fuel stole most of his house’s living-space.
He was a lazy man, if still strong, and he put off his labor for some time. Instead he drank. Now and then he threw some on the fire to ‘liven it up,’ and for the most part the fire did not object. Soon the sun went down hard and his little light was all alone but for the stars and the wink of a full moon.
Then, in the deep old heart of the night, the lighthouse keeper heard a noise. It was this noise: thump.
The lighthouse-keeper cocked his head and listened. Was it just the rum in his blood?
Thump. Thump.
Where was it coming from? He wandered to the edge of the trail that led down from his stony perch to the ruins down the hill, and listened harder.
Thump, thump, thump. Thump-thump. Louder and nearer.
The lighthouse-keeper was a lazy man, but not a foolish man, and his mother had been no fool either. And her stories told him what to do when he heard things like that in the night: he ran into his house and barred the door with his own bed, and he did not come out ‘till morning, when he ran far, far, far away. Which was none too soon, since within the week the merchant-men came nosing about with angry questions and angrier clubs, demanding to know why their fire had gone out and taken a good ship to a cold place.

“Too lazy,” said the richest merchant.
“Too greedy,” said the meanest merchant.
“Vices of the young,” said the oldest merchant. “We should get someone with experience.”
And so a second keeper of the lighthouse was hired for a larger payment; an older woman with decades of lonely fires and lonelier vigils underneath her belt. On her very first day she sowed and weeded the garden, began a shack for the fuel, and dug a small hole for her pet she-neg, who was nearing deafness in her old age but still a happy companion with teeth that would shame a hippopotamus. By dusk’s end the fire was neatly stacked and kindled fit to put a gleam in the eye of the world that could be seen from heaven, and only then did she permit herself a small smile and a sip from the special bottle she carried everywhere.
She poured out a measure for the she-neg too. Only fair.
And just then, as she was providing fairness, she heard a noise like this: thump.
A frown filled her face, and she and her old neg listened.
Thump-thump. Thump.
Down from below, from beyond the cliff, from the shoals.
The lighthouse-keeper’s mother was long gone and little-known to her, so she’d had to make her own advice. But it was good advice, and right now it told her what to do when she heard things like that in the night: she took herself into the cabin and locked herself in and sat at the window, she-neg at her feet, eyes on the fire.
She sat there ‘till dawn, and she only blinked twice. The neg didn’t growl, but it shook a lot. And come dawn she walked out to her cold, dead fire and wrote a note with charcoal on its stones, then turned heel and left forever.
DON’T LIGHT IT AGAIN. LOOK TO THE SEA.

“Too cowardly,” said the cruelest merchant.
“Too old and slow,” said the youngest merchant.
“Still too young,” said the oldest merchant. “We should’ve hired older.”
“Hire nothing,” said the poorest merchant. “We’re already paying too much, and our help is unreliable and untrustworthy.”
“Then we will rely upon ourselves,” said the sharpest merchant. “Listen to me, brothers and sisters. I have a plan.”

The eight merchants trampled the garden in their clumsiness. They nearly knocked over the shack as they argued over who should complete it. They almost forgot to light the fire.
But in the end they did light it, and they even managed to keep it lit. And in the calm of the wide long night, alone with the flames, they managed to feel just a little bit proud.
“It is good,” said the meanest merchant.
“It is good,” agreed the youngest merchant.
“My rheumatism nags me and my back hurts,” said the oldest merchant. “But I agree that this is good.”
“Shush,” said the sharpest merchant. “Do you hear that?”
Thump.
Just a little bump on the edge of the eardrum.
“I don’t hear anything,” said the richest merchant. “You’re making that up.”
“I heard something,” said the poorest merchant.
Thump. Thump.
“There, you hear that?” said the cruelest merchant. “Where is it coming from?”
Thump, thump. Thump-thump.
“Down below,” said the sharpest merchant. “Thieves and trespassers, come to steal from us! Quick, quick, into the hut – gird your knives and sharpen your eyes!”
And so they piled into the house and waited as the sounds grew louder, and their eyes fixed like diamond drills on the mouth of the little path that led up the hill from the mainland, knife-hilts growing damp with sweat in their hands, their backs to the wide and empty sea. So fierce was their focus that they didn’t see what was happening until the fire winked out.
“Thieves!” shrieked the meanest merchant.
“Saboteurs!” hissed the cruelest merchant.
“Impediments to enterprise!” shouted the richest merchant.
“Wait,” said the sharpest merchant, who was nearest to the window and had half-thought she’d seen something quite wrong. “Perhaps we should-“
“AT THEM!” roared the oldest merchant, and the door was flung wide for an army of gold and shining steel knives, which stampeded out the door so quickly that the sharpest merchant was knocked aside and rolled underneath the bed.
She listened, and she heard the shouts and yells of her fellows.
She listened, and she heard the calls grow quieter.
And she listened and heard the screams, and she tucked herself into the very farthest corner of the room under the bed, and she did not sleep until the sun rose over a cold, cold, cold fire.
Only then did she search the hill-top, and she was not altogether surprised to see no signs of her fellows beyond excited footprints. Most of these had been erased; obliterated by strange tracks that still smelt of seawater and brine. They had too few toes, and might not have been made by something as straightforward as feet at all.
The sharpest merchant walked the long roads home alone, and counted herself lucky.
But she never did sleep well again without a light.

The Gdappi Coast is old, older than eyes, older than sin, older than hearts, older than humans. And some places on it were never made for their hands and feet to touch.

There are old stones and there are young stones, and the city of Tal made the former look like the latter times three. Empires have been born, grown, spawned, and crumpled like cheap hats in the time it takes Tal to settle another inch in its sun-warmed cradle of hills.
Less than a month ago, they found something new and old both. A book buried in a drawer in a desk in a storeroom behind a boarded-up basement wall in a tower that had been paved over and used as a street support longer ago than anyone would care to guess.
The book’s script is Thymatic Pyuun, a language deader than the realm of Demmer-Don-Dimmer. Its author is Slenn, equally so, and an expert at making others much the same.

Slenn the Infinite, Lord of a Hundred Cities, Slenn Eyetaker, Slenn the Talon, Slashbones, the Deathmaker that old mothers tell little children will eat them if they don’t listen. Clutched in the fingers of a hand that had set in motion the end of countless lives, a pen had carefully written out the events of a long life of butcher-work.
Naturally, the book was highly publishable, although perhaps few if any of its readers had quite anticipated the exact… tone… of its contents.

359.238 – Stuck feeding the birds again because father’s drunk a lake’s-worth and can’t be arsed to move. Old prick’s like to drink himself to death, but GARR forbid he make it easy on us and do it quickly.
359.238B – Gald is on my ass again. “Hey Slenn, c’mon, fuck birds, let’s go to town and get drunk.” “Gald, my father drinks enough for all three of us, screw that, I want to feed my damned birds.” “Aww c’mon maaaaaannnn c’mooooonnnn….” Finally told him I would just to shut him up, as soon as I was done with the Sperrows. Little buggers get pecky when they’re hungry.

359.239 – GARR why do I listen to him?! I killed a cop! We go out, HE gets drunk (spends all of BOTH our money on it to boot), I get to pull his dumb ass out of a fight, and then HE mouths off to a cop, and then I end up in a wrestling match with him, and when the knives come out look who’s standing. I don’t think self-defense covers this as an excuse, Gald! I don’t think it does at all!
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck me. I’m going to go home and get the birds. If I don’t take them with me, they’ll starve to death before old lakeliver thinks of doing anything about it.

359.240 – So it turns out I missed a couple of the Sperrows yesterday – probably because Gald was nagging me and jostled my arm. It turns out hungry Sperrows’s first choice of pecking target is eyeball. It turns out they’re highly protective of me, probably because I’m the only reason they’ve been fed for the past twelve years.
Anyways, now I’ve killed four cops. Had-killed-for-me. Whatever. I was hoping we could hide out in the hills until this blows over, but fat chance of that now. It’s me, the birds, and Gald. And Gald can carry the damned birdtower until the end of time. A decent start on paying me back for this.
359.240B – I guess we’ll make a break for Nep down south. The birds’ll like the warm, and there’ll be more for them to scrounge up. Which we’ll need because SOMEBODY got ‘tired’ and threw away four bags of feed to salve his poor little achy-wachy back. GARR protect him from me, really do, because if I have to lug the birdtower AND hunt for myself AND talk to myself I think I’ll go crazy and who’ll feed the Drowls then, huh? They’re so fat and stupid they’d be dead in days on their own. You want that on your conscience, GARR?
I hear somethi

360.002 – Well, that was a bit of a break. Long story short, I’m now a bandit chief. It turns out that’s the natural consequence of having the previous chief disembowled by angry Drowls when he’s trying to slit your throat. I always told Gald not to interrupt me when I’m feeding them, and I think ever since that practical example he’s actually paid a little more attention to me. Less to me than to the old chief’s daughter, mind you. Smart lady, and she keeps the others busy so they don’t bug me when I’m trying to feed the birds.
Feed the birds and think, mind you. I don’t think this is the sort of job where you just get to call it quits and leave with a happy goodbye. I figure if we pull in one good haul we can all split with the loot and live happy without worrying about anyone siccing the cops on us for cash.
I’ve had the Marlwings on long patrol for a while. They’ll let us know if anything worth having shows up. A lot better listeners nowadays too – like most of the birds. Getting rid of father’s bad influence might have helped.

360.138 – Busy, busy, busy, but at least now I can delegate a little. To summarize what’s been happening:
-We were late to a good fat caravan, but not too late to plunder its plunderers.
-Who we recruited.
-Who told us about another gang who got a good haul.
-Who led us to their fence.
-Who’s got us a mercenary contract.
-So now we’re working for Nep and we’re going out to hunt bandits in the jungle.
-Had to leave a lot of the birds behind. They’ve been breeding their little tails off. I’ve got three towers now, and a drumful of messenger-Geons for each sergeant. Learned that trick a few whiles ago, good for keeping in touch when you’re spread out.
360.138B – Oh, and I’m still in charge. I think the Drowl story might have had legs. I can thank Gald for that one, or I WOULD if he didn’t keep embellishing it. Nobody looks me in the eye anymore, just the toes. You ever tried talking to someone, eye-to-forehead? It’s uncomfortable.
GARR save me from friends, my enemies don’t need the help.

360.201 – We got back home and didn’t get paid. I’m suspecting that Nep might have hoped us and the bandits would sort each other out. I guess we did since we recruited most of them, but the prospect of paying an extra four-hundred men seems to have tightened up the city purses.
They don’t seem to have touched my birds yet. Time to start getting some whistles carved.

360.210 – Christ that was messy. The Drowls took out the sentries just fine, the Sperrows got peevish at being woken up past sundown and caused a proper ruckus, but still, there’s nothing quite like a proper city-sack once you’re past the front gate for going absolutely batshit. Less a sack and more a subdual, I guess – not as messy as some of the stories I’ve heard. Halla’s still the biggest boss besides me and GARR bless her she can make anybody listen. Except Gald, but I don’t expect miracles, just competence. Going to go see the Sovereign Council and the Laird right now. Demand tribute, extract vows, get some fealty, etc.
360.210B – Well now I’m the Laird of Nep I guess. I didn’t ENJOY having him disembowled by Drowls, but when the man lunges at me with a sword right when we’re negotiating terms what the hell am I supposed to do? I didn’t even want to do it – this Drowl thing is really getting old. Nice birds, friendly as puppies, but damnit people shake around me now when I’ve got them. And I suppose I’m stuck with them, since Halla says I need bodyguards and these are harder to bribe. The shoulder-perches are never coming off. My back aches at the thought of it.

365.987 – First time to sit down and really write for a while. I’d forgotten the last time I’d done this, and looking back, I think this might have gotten out of hand. I’m the Laird of Nep, Count of Mezto, and Duke of Cammerad (it turns out you usually have to deal with a city-state’s neighbours right after you deal with the city-state), and I’m currently locked in a joint struggle against Tresh with Bizto. Whom I’m going to have to backstab later before they stab me. No details, no details, I’ve gone mad with details. I’ll just write down the plain important bits.
-Sperrows absolutely wreck archers as far as skirmisher’s weapons goes, and are very hard to hit when properly trained.
-Marlwings are practically invisible in a night sky, and they can see farther at night than a man can at day. And they’re smart enough to learn signals. I like those birds.
-A Nawk colliding with a horse’s skull wins, provided it hits feet-first.
-A small drum of messenger-Geons for a sergeant, and a heavy cask of Sperrows for a birder. One birder per squad minimum. I miss knowing all my birds by name, but it’s been a long while since that was true.
-Drowls: six. Assassins: a single nasty scrape along my left ribs.
365.987B – Gald still won’t listen to me. GARR, how’d I think having a kid would ever make him grow up? It just gives him another thing to ignore me for. At least he pays more attention to Halla now.

366.486 – Why can’t he pay more attention to Halla? ‘Be quiet,’ we told him. ‘Be calm,’ we told him. ‘Don’t do anything goddamned crazy and weird,’ we told him. Well look what he went and did. Now we have to fight half of Tresh AND Bizto, which has carefully occupied that half of Tresh. All he had to do was smile and nod and look wise and instead he goes “HE’S LYING, LOOK OUT!” and that gives the ambassador an excuse to pull out the knife and now I’m one Drowl short and there’s nothing for it but war.
366.486B – His suggestion of letting my surviving Drowl brood inside the ambassador’s ribcage, however, was inspired.

367.371 – A decisive win at Treshledown. The idiot thought he could flank me at night. Me. Me with the Marlwings. Even though he must’ve had at least six spies in my camp who would’ve told him about them, like I was planning for them to do.
Sometimes this all seems far too easy.

367.372 – Tresh’s Royal Armourer must’ve seen the way the wind was blowing; he already had twelve suits of armour ready to go as tribute when we knocked the palace doors down. Armour for birds, mind you. You know, the things that have to fly. Still, his heart was in the right place, so I guess I’ll do him a solid and leave it there. Besides, his nose makes little Masha giggle.

368.843 – Gald’s dead.
I don’t know what to say. To Halla or Masha.
368.843B – Scratch that, he was just stuck under a dead horse and then he took a nap because he was tired and it was warm. Because.
GARR save him. Mostly from Halla. But don’t save him too much.

372.673 – Bizto, Bizto, Bizto. I’m not sure what your leaders were thinking.
“Here is a valley,” they said. “Surrounded by hills,” they said. “Let’s put our city right at the bottom, surrounded by hills, so Slenn can someday stick siege catapults up in them and chuck enough mortar to build an entirely new city at us until our walls are dust and gravel.”
Well, I’m not going to complain. I’ll marvel, but I won’t complain.
Also, Masha was playing with some of my Nawks today (damned things are still too finicky for anyone but me to rear them; makes breeding more a pain) trying to dress them in that silly armour from ages ago. Gave me an idea.

372.675 – Two new things learned: a Nawk with steel gauntlets on its talons can impact a steel helmet at full force without harm to itself, and an army with a decapitated general is as much use as you’d expect.
I’m out of enemies for now, finally. Maybe I can retire for five minutes with a nice prince who doesn’t talk too much and actually pays attention to me when I tell him not to pet my Drowls. Hell of a way to lose a finger, Gald.
372.675B – The Biztahn counsellor just told me that they were getting their west front pushed in by Nerontingsahn when I came in through their front door. Some days this just doesn’t seem worth it.

372.678 –Gald tells me they’re rebuilding the city around my base camp. Says they’re calling it ‘Talon’ in honor of me. What a cheesy suck-up of a name. GARR why do I listen to him?

One sunny afternoon, a priest came to Dan Cesco.
He walked up the roaming turnpike, passed between the twinned monuments, and stood a while in the peaceful shade of a shrine to Mil, contemplating the sun through its elegantly branch-woven roof. When the day drew longer, he paced down the market of the town, and admired greatly the airy, light buildings that the vendors roared and boasted from – they were hardly there at all, yet no wind and no rain could possibly make it past the cunning shapes of their many-angled eaves. And finally, as the evening began to draw down night’s curtains, he paced past the homes at the skirt-end of the town, the old ones, and found himself at a building that was neither old nor young but possessed the best qualities of both: a timeless carewornness.
He knocked, and two men answered.
“Are you the Brothers Meer?” he asked.
“BROTHER Meer,” said the elder. “As for the other, he may have been adopted.”
“Brother Meer indeed,” answered the younger. “I believe my father disowned him on his deathbed, but this lout sabotaged the will afore I saw it.”
“Peace, peace,” soothed the priest. “I have come with a task for you. I heard that you were the greatest of all architects in this land, and as I walked the road to your homes I saw proof of this. A market with no walls that no weather could touch, a shrine knit from trees that served stronger than any stones, and a house that could have been built a thousand years ago, yesterday.”
“Father’s work,” sighed the elder.
“Some of his best,” agreed the younger.
“I have seen these proofs, and I would ask you to undertake a grand labor. I have found a new godlette, hiding under a wide leaf in a chance puddle in a glade deep in a wood I shall not name. If this godlette is to feast on prayer and grow fat and proud enough to aid us, it shall need a place to call home, that its worship may throng.”
“A church,” said the elder. “Easy.”
“A church,” said the younger. “Easy… for me.”
“Precisely,” said the priest. “I would entrust no others with this task. The land is purchased, surveyed by a man as sound of eye as he is holy. I leave the rest to you, Brothers Meer.”
“When you witness my creation,” vowed the elder, “you’ll be shocked like a toad on a stump in a storm.”
“I will outdo this laggard, just you see,” swore the younger, “though he’ll say anything to tell you otherwise.”

On the first day, the brothers gathered in the tiny, cramped leather tent that the architect’s table was cradled within, and drew up their plans on old vellum sheets. Each brother took his own.
“A great strength is what is required here,” said the elder. “A godlette will never grow mighty without inspiration.”
“A soaring height is far more important,” scoffed the younger. “A godlette given naught but bulk and mortar will grow nowhere but horizontally. Let his appetite for beauty be sated, and I tell you that he will become a god to remember!”
“Needling pissant,” fumed the elder. “Go back to the cradle and smother yourself.”
“Blundering clodhead,” hissed the younger. “Do the world a favor; strike your face, and do not stop.”
So the brothers sat at opposite ends of the tent and drew and snipped and cast their spells, and when the time came for the men to labour at the site they stood at opposite ends of that too, calling out orders that clashed so badly that no man could heed them both, and instead gave up entirely and sided with one or the other. And when the day was done, the main body of the church lay complete. The front hall was a towering monument of solid granite, the chapel a spiralling beauty of limestone. They were each lovely, but they clashed greater than two bulls in a half-size paddock.

“Not quite what I’d had in mind when I hired you,” said the priest as politely as he could.
“I had it well in hand,” informed the elder in a wounded tone, “before this lump stuck his great gummy fingers in everything.”
“The wisest of the workers heeded my words above the lout’s,” sighed the younger, “but alas, some of the more impressionable youths fell under his spell of deceit. I pray, do not punish them. It is but innocent inexperience rather than malice that would allow any man to listen to my brother.”
“Upstart serpent!”
“Fool twice!”
“Peace, peace, peace,” shushed the priest. “For shame, to squabble on ground so newly holy! Now, do to the two of you really disagree so firmly?”
“Utterly,” said the elder.
“Without a single doubt,” said the younger.
“So be it,” said the priest. “But the bell-tower must be built and the bell housed and rung before your contract is fulfilled and the godlette may move in to grown old and happy. You must cooperate! Look here, look at what your callous clashes have created! Why not both work together on the tower? Surely you wish to avoid disharmony in your work, if not in your words?”
“It could use some work,” admitted the elder. “But I will kill the idiot if he touches my brushes.”
“Very well,” said the younger, “and it is worth recording that I would rather choke myself than use the twit’s substandard tools.”
So the second day the Brothers Meer walked to the site, and they drew as one, on the same sheet.
“It needs more height here,” said the elder.
“Rubbish, it needs more light here,” said the younger.
“Soar, soar, soar until it gets to the tallest steeple of the building?” asked the elder incredulously. “You are madder than a hare in March, May, and August all at once.”
“And YOU are madder than a mosquito in any season whatsoever, if you think to give size without contrast. It will be darker than a pit in there without proper windows.”
“Those aren’t windows, they’re canyons! Structural weaknesses abound!”
“Your foolishness abounds!”
“Yours!”
And they snipped and fought and on at least two occasions they wrestled for the brush (with biting) but at last they pulled through and the workers began to haul the bricks and mortar as they cast their spells and yelled their orders.
“No, not THAT mix!” called the elder. “Use the grey fine crisp mortar!”
“No no no no,” screamed the younger. “Use the heavy thick brow mortar!”
“The dark bricks from Bormbarr Quarry!”
“The light bricks from Teeland!”
“Left more!”
“Right more!”
“NO!”
“YES!”
By the day’s end the belltower was complete and all the men had crossed eyes, except for the brothers, who were being held back from each other by the two largest of the stone-haulers. The belltower itself, alas, looked as piecemeal as a puzzle put together by an infant; its pieces all at odds with their neighbours and often themselves. It was a kaleidoscope of a building.

“This is his fault!” roared the elder brother.
“His!” shrieked the younger.
“Peace, peace, peace, PEACE!” shouted the priest, and so loud was his voice that dust shook from the roof of the architect’s tent and the brothers were cowed in spite of their spite. “Is there no end to your turbulence?! The belltower is a patchwork folly at your hands! The church greater is bifurcated! Surely you know of the poor influence this can be on an unguided godlette’s mind? Surely you know that your pettiness has harmed more than you can know? All our hopes rest in the bell now; the godlette will arrive the very next morn and there is no time to mend the sorrows of your squabbles. This must be perfect, and since the two of you have proven as soluble as water and oil, there will be two separate plans. Only one shall be used, chosen by myself, for though I am no architect, my father was a great blacksmith. Now work – and work quickly!”
He left them there, the two of them, and they glared at one another with venom no serpent could brew.
“When my bell rings,” swore the elder, as he dipped his pen, “it will sound sweeter than a thousand doves.”
“When my bells ring,” said the younger, sliding a fresh sheet of vellum across his lap-bench, “I will laugh until you strike yourself stone deaf to escape them.”
“Ant,” mused the elder, beginning his work with a vicious stroke.
“Flea,” pondered the younger, jamming pencils behind his ears and between his teeth.
They sketched the morn over with the speed of demons, and as they wandered to the forge where the priest would meet them, they eyed each other’s plans.
“Bells? BELLS? This is a BELLtower, not a BELLStower,” sneered the elder. “Your tinny little things will lead the godlette astray into thinking it is a leader of posies rather than men.”
“You grasp grammar as readily as you grasp your genitals,” spat the younger. “And your bellmaking skill is every bit as poor – a single great clanger, a loudmouthed yawper! Great minds think alike, but fat minds design themselves! Why don’t you name the bell after yourself, too?”
“At least I designed a bell,” said the elder. “And you know it is your better. You always sneer this loud when you are wrong, brother.”
“And you always enrobe yourself in smugness when you are out of arguments, brother.”
“And it is deserved,” agreed the elder. “My bell is the greater. You know it. I know it. The priest will soon know it. And brother, if father were here, you know he would say so.”
The younger brother went white at the lips. “You shouldn’t say that,” he whispered.
“Then silence me, or stick your fingers in your ears,” retorted the elder. But he’d stepped too far, and as he turned his back, the younger leapt atop him, and with a pencil, slit his throat open into the boiling cauldrons of metal that would be used for bellmaking.
“Here,” he said as he cut out his brother’s tongue. “Let no-one say that I let you do nothing.” And he cast it into the molten vats, and spat after it, and threw the body in to keep it company. Last of all, for good measure, he cast in his brother’s plans, and the great bell’s patterns flared prettily and were gone forever.
Soon the priest was there, and surprised he was to see but one architect. “Where is your brother?” he asked.
“Gone, gone, and gone for good, if I’m any judge of the blowhard’s pride,” said the younger. “My design wounded him sore, and he left from shame – gone from our home at last! Now, look at this, and look at art!”
The priest cast his eyes over the scribblings. “These are beautiful work,” he said. “Call the men!”
And so the third day went by, and if started late, it moved fast. The men were almost done and they knew it, and more importantly they were not being used as checker-pieces by competing managers. The sun was only just touching the trees when the rope was attached to the bells; a beautiful set of fraternal twins that shone with soft red light underneath the sunset.
“They are the finest I have ever seen,” said the priest, “and I have walked this world for half a century and more. But a bell is its voice, and its voice is all. Pray, would you care to be the first to ring?”
“I would relish it,” said the younger, “and may my brother hear it wherever he scurries now, and know his better!”
And he eagerly reached up to the rope and tugged it once, twice, thrice, and the bells burst into a song so beautiful that tears nearly came to the priest’s eyes. But the younger brother’s face remained as dry as a desert bone, though he smiled as he watched the bells swing and clang.
Then the sounds changed, and the smile began to drain from his face.
“Killed-me, killed-me, killed-me, killed-me,” mourned the bells in tongues of brass and velvet.
“Hold, what was that?” asked the priest. “Surely even your skill, great as it was, did not give these bells human voices?”
“I hear nothing,” said the younger. “It has been a long day – perhaps your mind plays tricks?”
“Not since I was a boy,” said the priest. “Listen close; ring it again.”
The younger reached up again – with less zeal this time – and hauled on the rope again. And the bells swayed in their cradles, calling out a new song in their long sad voices.
“He-stabbed-me, he-stabbed-me, he-stabbed-me, he-stabbed-me.”
“Your bells sing with human voice,” said the priest. “But tell me, do they tell the truth as well?”
“This is some devilry of my brother,” quavered the younger brother. “He sabotaged my plans before he left! This is no working of mine!”
“Perhaps,” said the priest. “But I would hear what they have to say. Ring again.”
Slowly, unsteadily, with the shaking hands of an old man, the younger hauled at the rope. And for a third time the bells tolled.
“Check-the-clapper, check-the-clapper, check-the-clapper, check-the-clapper.”
The priest walked up the spiralling steps of the belltower and looked. And there, embedded tightly in the clapper’s surface of the larger of the two bells, was the elder brother’s tongue.

The younger brother was hanged at midnight, and buried before one o’clock. It is bad luck for such things to come to the eye of an impressionable godlette, even in cold justice.
And that was the end of the Brothers Meer – and the beginning of the end for more than their bodies. Their church stood for no more than a decade before it was a ruin; the stones seemed to tear themselves apart at the seams, as if brick could not bear to stack atop brick.
The new church was designed by the priest, who’d gone grey at the edges, and was smaller. The tower did not soar as readily. The bells were quieter.
But it was peaceful there, and the god that came from it was a peaceful one. And that was all that was required.

The old man walked into the smithy.
It was a short sentence, but one that took a lot of background work to make it happen: managing his knees alone these days took at least half of Araim’s concentration. He’d given up on his hips a decade ago.
He looked at the blacksmith, saw that grin, and felt the old, familiar bile bubble up in his gut. Screw them. It didn’t matter.
“Nails?” asked the blacksmith as he opened his mouth.
Araim nodded his head. See if he’d give the little bastard the satisfaction of a clean reply, if he was going to be that way today.
“Two buckets?”
A second nod.
“Right. Fork it over.”
Nod. Money. Nod.
“Pleasure doing business.”
Nod.
Araim took a bucket in each hand, straightened up as much as he could (about an 82-degree angle, as far as his curiosity and tools combined had told him a few years ago), and headed for the door. Wonderful.
“Congratulations.”
Araim paused, one foot over the doorstep.
“That’s your thousandth bucket right there,” said the blacksmith. “I looked over da’s receipts, double-checked and everything.” He smiled; the big, beaming happy smile of a man who loves his job and life in general. “Look, they’re free from now on, eh? Only fair.”
Araim didn’t know what to say. He tried nodding again.
“One question, though…”
oh no here it came again.
“…you really think you’ll ever need it?”
Araim nodded one last time because it was either that or throw the bucket at the boy’s face. Then he walked up the mountain with legs like hairy ramrods and a spine stiffened by pure fury.

Araim was four years old, and riding six feet off the ground on his father’s shoulders. He’d been crying two minutes ago, but the wind in his face and the sudden surge of height had thrown all that away into the rusty old past, something that didn’t matter anymore. He could see over people’s heads. He could see through windows. He could see all the main street of the town from here, from the road’s birth at the first foothill to the Squeezer, where the valley walls shrunk down together and opened up to the banks of the big wide Serenna river, idling along past them all with no cares and no worries.
“Stupid,” said Araim’s father. His name was Jerub, though the boy wouldn’t know that for almost a decade yet. What else was he but his father? “Stupid, stupid, stupid. You know why that’s stupid, boy?”
“N-“
“I’ll tell you why it’s stupid. Look down there – see? See where the river’s banks slope?”
“Y-“
“Oh, it looks steep enough, doesn’t it? Well maybe the first five feet, sure. But after that it barely rises another two ‘till you’re halfway to the road. One day there’s going to be a flood – a real flood, not this penny-dropping pissflow we get every spring – and then we’re going to watch a lot of damned fools drowning, you can bet your dinner on it. You hungry?”
“Ye-“
“Right. Time to go in.”

Araim came home just as the sun was starting to dip low in the cloud-bruised sky, his feet touching the closest thing to level ground since he’d left the village behind.
They looked so small from up here on the mountain. They were all so small. He’d held up his hands as a child, erased the lot of them with one palm held at the right angle. But sooner or later his arms would get tired, and the hand would waver and drop, and there they were again. Behold Araim, he taketh away, but he also returneth.
God his knees must be hurting if he was willing to distract himself with those memories. There were better ways to keep himself occupied. It was late in the day, this was really more time for dinner than for work, but it had to be done and it might as well be done now.
He picked up the buckets of nails – one in each hand again, the handles cutting into the grooves that had etched themselves into his palms over the years and years – and trudged out back.
Araim’s father had chosen his land carefully. The ground was rocky, but at least here it was flat, and there was some semblance of soil that was clinging grimly to the little plateau that hung off the mountain’s sides like a piglet from a sow. Enough to grow a few measly crops to feed a family of eleven, plus the odd wandering cousin that came back from strange parts with a funny accent and funny gifts.
Nowadays it fed one: Araim. But that was all right. He’d put the rest of the space to right good use.

Araim was eight years old, and sitting on a dusty bench in a dusty house as his grandmother read to him and his four elder sisters and his five elder brothers.
“…and the turtle,” his grandmother said, her voice as droning as a fat bumblebee, “who was the largest and widest and best of swimmers, carried up the whole of the good people on his back. And they floated there for a year and three days.”
“Did the turtle get tired?” asked Araim’s brother Isak.
“No,” said grandmother.
“How did the turtle get that big?” asked Araim’s sister Klass. “All our turtles are tiny. I’ve caught loads of turtles and they’re all-“
“It was the first turtle,” said grandmother. “He was the biggest.”
“What happened to all the other people?” asked Araim.
His grandmother looked at him, and it was Araim’s bad luck to be the third question in as many seconds, because he got the full brunt of a tired old glare, the kind that hardens with age into something like a diamond and cuts like a dull knife.
“They were the loafers, the schemers, the witless and the wretches and the murderers and the thieves,” she said, and each word made him shrink a little more. “While the good people escaped on Turtle’s back and lived together, they fought each other, and they drowned. You understand that?”
Araim nodded.
“Good. No more questions.”

Araim’s back wasn’t feeling any better once he’d scaled the fourth of his ladders, but it wasn’t feeling any worse either. It had passed through sensations altogether and entered a strange realm where the only thing that existed was tingling numbness that seemed to want to spread from your vertebrae through to your brain and blot out vision forever.
He ignored it. The view was worth it from the upper bridge, even if he couldn’t explain it. All the way up a mountain, you wouldn’t think the extra forty foot of height you saw from the deck would make a difference. But it did, and he could never tell why. From this height the clouds of far away looked like plums, curdled by sunset and by guts full of thunder both. Maybe the rain would come soon, give him a shower as he worked, soak him down so far his bones would cool and his heart would slow back to its normal crawling pump.
Well, pleasure later. He’d come up here to at least pretend to do business.
Araim fumbled one-handed and took out his hammer from his belt, where it always hung. The nails were new, but this was an old tool: it had been old when his father kept it tucked away with his saws and mallets. It had been dusty then, and cobwebbed. But half a century had gone by without it sitting idle for more than a day, usually when Araim had to make supply runs into town and the journey back took more wind out of his sails than he’d supposed.
Well, today he’d got a spring in his step. And dinner could wait.
Araim knelt down, took a plank in one hand and the hammer in the other. Nails protruding from his mouth, he began to lay down another piece of his ship.

Araim was sixteen years old, and burying his father.
It was hard. Real hard. Much harder than burying his mother had been. For one thing, there had been two of them to do the job. Even if his father had stopped every few minutes to walk off and cry where Araim couldn’t see him.
But now it was just Araim. Just Araim the baby, the little one who’d never grown up and moved out. Never had a chance to grow up and move out, never had the time to go down to the village and make friends and fall in love. Just Araim, all by himself, taking care of an old man whose shoulders he used to ride.
He paused with a shovelful of dirt – the last? Second last? Did it matter? – and looked down in the evening cool, sweat prickling on his shoulders. The last of the little lights in town were just twinkling out. Early nights, early quiet. Peaceful. Tomorrow morning he’d make the long, hot trudge down there and let them know, and they would all be sad, and maybe they’d even come back up to pay their respects at the grave he’d dug.
And that, more or less, was when he knew what he was going to do. His eyes alit on the river some seconds later, and that was when the word ‘boat’ first crossed his brain, but it had all already been decided.

The lights were going out.
That’s what drew Araim’s eye from his carpentry, that and that alone. It was too early for bed even for townfolk; this was suppertime, dinnertime. There was still daylight left, even if it was fading. Something was going on. People were in the streets now, no, people were running through the streets. Something was moving behind them, pouring through the Squeezer, shining like red fire in the sunset’s death.
Water from the Serenna, bubbling up and over earth and onto cobble and stone, churning and eating at itself with fury. If he squinted hard enough, he could almost see the flecks of black on the waves that could’ve been trees tossed aside in the fury of the storm-fed flood.
Araim stared. Then Araim snorted. Then Araim laughed and laughed and laughed, almost choking on his tongue as his head shook and his knees knocked and his hammer flew from his wide-spread fingers, arms waving as he danced and stomped and roared with glee atop the bridge atop his ship atop the mountain so high, high above the flood. He’d waited and worked and waited and here it was, here it finally was!
Now he just had to move fast enough.
Packing up the house was done in seconds. It was finally happening. The hold was already full. The ladders – those long, rickety ladders that were the bane of his back – were scampered up and down in seconds by a body filled with a glee that cut its years in half and more. It was finally happening.
It was finally happening!
Everything was done. He’d gotten it all packed. He’d even almost finished the bridge – just a few planks left out of place in the cabin floor. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. He had time now, he did; he could wait and watch and stare as the lights winked out one by one until the water lapped at the keel and he took float.
The turtle had made the new land after a year and three days, he recalled. Perhaps he’d do that too. Or maybe he’d just sail and watch the fishes flow by. Who knew? He had time. He had time.
But still… there was no reason not to do this right. It was just three floorboards. He could bend his knee once more.
Three floorboards, twelve nails. Four nails for each board, two nails for each end, one nail for each corner. Bang. Bang. Bang and bang and bang and bang twice over, and the last nail of the last bucket was gone.
Finished. It was finally happening.
Araim picked up the nail bucket, felt the weight in his hands. It would never be heavier than this again. He’d never need nails again. He’d never get those free nails or hear those stupid questions ever again.
He looked out the window, down at all the lights. There weren’t as many now as there’d been a few minutes ago.
Just Araim, all by himself. Araim the ancient, on the water, with an empty bucket that held the weight of a world in it that would drag him down like an anchor.
He ought to just chuck it overboard.
It was finally happening.

How much the ship weighed, Araim couldn’t have told anyone. It was too big to fit on any scale, and the calculations on its size and mass had been done fifty years ago by a different person.
But all the same, it didn’t matter. All you had to do was push just hard enough in just the right spot.
And as Araim felt the dirt and stone begin to slide by under the keel, as he laid his course and set his sights on the flood, as the wind rose into his face and the world shrank small beneath him, he felt the last seventy-five years fall away into the past.

Araim was seventy-nine years old, and he was being buried.
It was hard going, hard soil up where he’d made his plot. But there were many people to do the job – forty grand-nieces and thirty-six grand-nephews and two dozen nephews and nieces and even the four brothers and sisters who were still around. Many hands didn’t make the work light, but they sure as hell broke dirt fast.
Ress the littlest one was free of her father’s hand for a time – a blacksmith’s muscles were in fair demand right then – and she was using it to explore. The world was so small from here, everything she’d ever seen was so small. The village was a half-drowned ant, drying fitfully in the mid-day sun; the river a shining snake, sulking resentfully on the other side of its bank. Even the giant boat, lodged tight in the Squeezer like the world’s biggest cork, was a blurred beetle of a thing. If she held up her hand just right, her palm covered it, and it was gone.
But not really. The village was still there, wasn’t it?

It was a nice day for Sukie, right from the moment she woke up and saw the sun just blushing over a warm sky, to the very second she gripped her net with both hands and felt the good, heaving weight of a swarm of little fat wrigglers, that wonderful burn against your shoulders that came from heaving in enough food to keep you going for weeks and knowing that there was still more to be had.
They were little domeheads, the stubby-armed bodies resembling mushrooms with angry wills of their own, but out of water the fury and spite drained away and left them as sad little sacks, limp and forlorn. But they still packed a nasty bite on their skin, in their slime, and Sukie felt glad for her woven-grass gloves as she emptied the net into the bin at the belly of the boat.
One net. Two nets. Three nets. Oh, this was fine, this would keep everyone happy as they waited for the lot to dry out and stop stinging. The bin was crammed near-brimful, and greed was so enveloping at this point that it was impossible for it not to be good. The sea was smooth and friendly, the trip to shore was not so long, there was no danger and there was no rush.
Why not one more? Just one more?
So Sukie set her net, let it drift, let it idle, waited for those dozens of little squishy bodies to pack into it, soft and silent as ghosts. Not even a full net, really. Just a bit would do. A little bit. She’d yank it up in a moment. And it was just Sukie’s good fortune that she tensed up to lift when she did, because an instant later something slammed into her little net with what felt like a punch in the gut.
“Woof!” said Sukie – all instinct and vowels – and she almost let go. But this was a good net, a net made of the old plastic, a net that time and tide and however many years had left unbroken. Its form had been painstakingly crafted by Sukie’s grandpa from hundreds of little loops he’d found buried near the bottom of a Dump by chance, all arranged in little packs of two-by-three, which he’d stitched together with homemade twine, hope, and the best knots he could possibly imagine. It had been lovingly maintained by all three generations ever since; each winter, the knots retied, the weak links removed, the net shrunk by necessity.
It had been bigger, once, but it was still loved. And Sukie would rather lose her limb than her grandpa’s net.
“Wup!” she shouted – accent on UP, for up! – and hauled as hard as she could, a little thing in the back of her mind wondering what on earth had she caught on, what on earth had she done? The water here was deep, so deep you’d drown trying to find bottom; surely she couldn’t have caught on anything?
And as Sukie’s net breached the surface, she saw that she’d caught on nothing. Rather, she’d caught a monster. She didn’t even have time to scream before it and the net landed on her chest (a shockingly light monster, its snaring had been all out of proportion to its weight) and she was eye to eye with it.
Eyes. Good lord and leavings, those eyes! Those terrible, wide eyes!
“GERROFF!” she shrieked, and shoved, and down went the monster and the net, straight safe into the bin with her catch, which she slammed the rust-lid on so hard that she half thought the boat’s bottom might fall out. Then she heard the thump and thud, and sat on it for good measure.
What in all Earth’s big blue seas had she just seen, what was slapping and kicking and knocking on her cargo lid right at this second? Something she’d never imagined, that’s for sure. No bluey. No roundtop. No domehead. It was small and thick and it had more energy than a toddle, although the shrinking echoes from under her rear seemed to show that being trapped in a bin full of domehead stings was taking its toll.
What was she supposed to do with this? What if it was dangerous? Well, not THAT dangerous – it hadn’t even left tentacles on her shirt, and her gloves were clean of slime from where they’d brushed its body.
She sniffed them. Strange smell though. Nothing quite like it. Maybe Emma would know. She knew things, when she was awake. Maybe she could share them if she promised her an extra bag or two of food. Yeah. That was a good plan. Show the weird thing to Emma, ask her about it. That way what we do with it is her problem, unless she wants to admit she doesn’t know anything, and how likely is THAT?
Sukie cocked her head and listened. Dead silent.
Yeah, domehead stings, that was it. No sound now.

The monster was quiet now, resting in an antique bucket that still possessed fully half of its formerly impressive height, breathing seawater. It hardly moved at all; if it weren’t for the pulsing of its odd gill-like sides she’d have thought it dead. You certainly couldn’t tell from its eyes, those horrible human-like eyes. They wouldn’t blink, stare as she might. Did it even have eyelids?
Best not to think on it.
It was still a nice day, monster in a bucket or no. The sky was clear, empty for once of the long, dreary storms of summer, the waves were calm and tame underneath it and blue as a baby’s eyes. Sukie paused in her paddling every now and then to give her back a rest and to look at the water. Sunlight smiled back at her from below, reflected in glittering sparkles off thousands of tiny plastic shards as a marine blizzard slid by underneath her keel. They seemed to chase her home; the current was her friend, bearing her and all those miniature specks miles in minutes.
She wondered why people had filled the water with them, once upon a time. They must’ve been awfully important, for them to make so many.
“Suuuuukieeeeeee!” a call came from the shore. Tiny figures were dancing on the dock, squawking and waving their arms in the air. A rock was thrown. “Row faster, slowboat! Row row row!”
Sukie paused in her rowing to make a rude gesture and had it copied back at her tenfold. She smiled; it was always nice to teach the younger generation something. “G’wan, help or scrammit!” she called merrily to her audience of cousins. “Helpers get domeheads, scrammers get smacks! Pick it now and get a head start!”
Nobody wanted to be the first to run, everybody wanted to be the first to dip their bag. The mob of hecklers became the crew of dockworkers; the concrete slabs of the dock were aflow with helpers grasping for ropes, fighting over knots, pushing and shoving to prevent the old rust of the boat from grinding itself into red dust against its moorings.
Finally, against all odds and rules of nature, Sukie was ashore with her cargo, which was busily being hauled uphill to the shelters in family-sized bags. The children were careless – barely half a glove between them as they manhandled patchwork sacks of domeheads twice their size – but they were sure they were invincible, and were about due for another rude disabusal of that soon. How soon they’d forgotten what happened to Timm. Well, his arm hadn’t come off after all. Perhaps that was all they needed.
Sukie was travelling light by contrast and by choice; just a single sack of domeheads was hers, clasped one-handed on her shoulder. But at her side came the bucket with its monstrous cargo, and between the two of them she was half-put to a foul mood by the time her footsteps took her all the way up to the edge of the shelter, way up high, under the farthest nook of stone where old, old Emma kept out of the way with her daughter’s daughter.
“’Hoy Sukie-sue,” said the descendant in question, and Sukie swallowed her annoyance. Mary deserved none of it, and she wouldn’t get answers by being grumpish.
“’Hoy Mary-lou. Gramma here?” Mary-lou was Emma’s only family, but she was everyone’s Gramma.
Mary cocked her head. “She’s here, mostly. Had a good nap. What is it?”
“Found a monster. It’s in the pail. G’won, let’s have her take a peek.”
Mary peeked, then shrieked.
“See?”
“The EYES!”
“I know. I’m half put off the sea now, thinking of things like that out there, leering up at me whenever I dip my toes. C’mon, get Gramma. We’ve gotta assuage these fears or you’ll have nobody doing the fishing.”
“Gramma’s got,” said a voice at Sukie’s side, and now it was her turn to jump. “So, what is it?” Emma’s eyes were bad but her footsteps were nigh-inaudible; Sukie’s own theory was that she was too light to make a noise. She’d gone past skin and bone to mostly bone, and the hair had left years ago.
“In the pail. C’mon, look at it in the light.”
Noon was here. The sun puddled at the top of the sky and dozed as the old, old woman looked into the pail at something that looked back. The noon blaze had improved its looks – still that flat blank face where a face had no business being, but now the light glared off its sides, as shining and bright as the plastic snow that had guided Sukie’s trek home.
How was it doing that? How could something alive sparkle like that?
Emma pursed her lips around what was left of her gums and made a funny noise, a cuh-cuh-huh-huh-huh sound like a baby blubbering.
“She okay?” Sukie asked Mary. Mary shrugged.
Cuh-huh-huh-huh-heh. “I’m laughing, that’s all,” said Emma, pausing for breath and starting over. Cuh-huh-huh. “Oh, I’m laughing! I never thought I’d see one! Oh, that’s a sight!”
“Name names, or I’ll say you’re making it up,” threatened Sukie.
Cuh-huh-huh, huh. Huh. And it was all under control, bar the leak of musty old dust-tears from ancient eyes. “Oh. Oh me. Sorry, but it’s been so long. I haven’t seen one of these since my own great-great-grandmother told me. She had a picture, you know, one of those real old ones – it fell overboard with her when she drowned, which was real appropriate and all because of-“
“I don’t hear names.”
Emma punched Sukie, but in a friendly way, and only in the stomach. “It’s a fish,” she said. “A real fish. A real live fish. Oh my. What kind I don’t know, but it’s a fish.”
Sukie felt her forehead wrinkle, and consciously chose to stop that before it got out of hand. “Fish? Fishing?”
“Yes, like fishing. It’s what people netted a long time ago, a long, long time ago. Instead of roundheads and roundtops, folks pulled up big bags of these little charmers. There were hundreds of thousands of them, you know. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Enough to feed more people that you can imagine.” She stared at the fish again and chuckled. “Look at that stare – isn’t that a treat?”
“I hate it. It’s like it’s watching me.”
“Oh come off, rats have faces too.”
“Yeah, but they’re land-food. Land-food has faces. Sea-food doesn’t. This is…weird.”
“Isn’t it JUST? Imagine all those folk long ago, eating these right up. Yum-yum-yum!”
“Gramma, don’t make me smack you, because I will do it.”
“Bullshit,” said Emma sweetly. “Utter bullshit. Besides, if you do that I won’t tell you how to cook this.”
“How to what?”
“What, were you going to dry it out just like the rest of your haul, my baby-sweet? Oh no, they have faces like land-food, you eat ‘em like land-food. We’re going to cook tonight.”
Sukie looked at the fish again. It wasn’t what she’d have called fat, but there was weight on those…bones. Sea-food that had bones. Good lord, if there was real meat in there instead of jelly, what a meal this thing was. It’d top the biggest rat she’d ever heard tale of that wasn’t one of Tomm’s stories. “Reckon I could find more?”
“Convinced already?”
“Argument’s sake, ‘s’all.”
Emma sighed. “Sukie, Sukie, Sukie-sue. How long have you fished here?”
“Since eight.”
“And how long did your mommy fish before that?”
“From seven to thirty.” Sukie could tell what was coming next.
“And in all those years, Sukie-sue, did you ever hear anyone tell of a fish until I just now did so?” asked Emma. “It’s finished. It’s all alone now, and there’s no going back.”
Sukie sighed. “How do you cut it?”
The old woman waved a hand. “Oh, it’s like a rat, or a person, or anything else that’s land-food. There’s bones in there and they’re all the same, from skull to tail. Just pull off the head and cut it in half along the back, you’ll work it out.”
“Right.”
Sukie looked in the bucket. The fish looked back. The sun had scooted behind the clouds of the late day, and in the dimness its sides were less brilliant, dull enough for her to see the batterings, the missing scales, the welts and the sores. There were cataracts across its pupils, milkiness clouding the keen black smoothness.
Maybe the eyes weren’t as human as she’d thought at first. Just panic, that’s all. A shock to see eyes on sea-food.
No, not human at all.
“Hey Emma,” she said, and she couldn’t quite tell why. “Sure there aren’t any more?”

“I said, sure there aren’t any more?”
The old woman wasn’t looking at her. Sukie put her hand on her shoulder, checking for that gentle buzz of breath that signalled a mid-conversation nap, but felt nothing but the regular wheeze of life.
“Oh Sukie-sue,” she said, and her voice was so tired now that Sukie could feel the dust on its edges as it rattled up her windpipe. “Oh my baby-sweet. Do you think I can’t recognize my own kind?”

It was Tony’s fault. As usual.
Yes, it may have been Vanessa’s idea to play hide and seek. Yes, it may have been Vanessa who said when asked that the attic was NOT off limits. Yes, it may have been Vanessa who took her sweet time searching the downstairs bedrooms, leaving Tony’s zero-minutes-forty-seconds attention span and him alone together for far too long.
But the wandering eye that found the old clock was Tony’s, as was the hand that reached out to poke at it. He’d never seen a clock its like before – on one hand, it was an old, old old grandfather clock, the kind whose grandchildren had all had grandchildren and then died on it; on the other hand, although it was so dusty it was hard to tell, it didn’t seem to have numbers on it.
Tony wiped aimlessly at the faceplate of the clock one-handed and stared as the world made less sense by the minute. There was a mammoth at eleven, and a person at noon, and a spider at one, and was that a DINOSAUR at nine o’clock? It was hard to see.
Two things happened, both important. First, Vanessa yelled “FOUND YOU!” at the top of her powerful lungs, making Tony jump.
(That still made it Tony’s fault, okay? Not Vanessa’s fault that he’s so high-strung)
Second, Tony’s hands hopped in place. And as they hopped they jostled the hands of the clock, which felt as though they were made of sandstone, or maybe preserved bone, and sent them lurching on their way prematurely, sinking down from half-past noon to one with a resigned, creaky sigh.
It struck one.
That may be underdescribed. Let’s try that again.
It struck one, and a sound like a thousand moaning winds brewed up inside the cabinet and spewed out with the muttering ire of a hundred over-full nursing homes, circling and sputtering about the attic with dogged determination. As the sound went on – and on, and on, and ON, it didn’t seem to want to end, not even slightly – the air was filled with the sound of awful little legs, tiny dancing bodies, and eensy weensy mashing jaws. Spiders were filling up the room, spiders were standing at attention at Tony and Vanessa’s feet, spiders were mounding themselves up into a great seething pillar of arachnid bodies, its tip narrowing and narrowing until it unfolded into a singular, brightly-coloured spider about an eighth of an inch long.
“Right!” she snapped. “That was quicker than we’d thought it’d be. Well? Clear off!”
“What?” asked Tony. (Which was a very stupid question)
“Tony, what did you break?” asked Vanessa. (Which was a very smart question, and got straight to the point).
“The clock rang, didn’t it?” said the spider, in a horrible little hissing voice that sounded like hairs rubbing together because that’s what it was. “You hard your turn, didn’t you? Come on, you know the rules. We all agreed this was much tidier than just struggling and whinging every time something big went down, so don’t go welching on your word and make this as difficult as it never had to be. Mammals! Look at you, get to run rampant for a few tens of millions of years and it goes straight to your enormous fucking heads!”
“Don’t swear,” said Vanessa, who was used to policing the language of tiny rambling people.
“I’ll swear when I fucking want to, placenta-haver,” spat the spider. “Quit wasting space with your lungbellowry, my children and their children and their children and their children have been waiting long enough already. Now hold still, you’re first on our skeletonization list.”
“Wait!” blurted out Tony. “Wait wait wait!”
“What what what?” asked the spider in a rudely sing-song tone of voice that was quite disrespectful.
“We’ve got to uh….” said Tony, who’d had no plan because he was stupid.
“…Finish the ceremony,” said Vanessa, who had one because she was clever and smart.
“The what.” said the spider. Said, not asked. There was the feeling the sentence had been just… dropped there.
“Ceremony,” said Tony unhelpfully. “We’ve got to uh, have one. Rules.”
“Transfer of power,” said Vanessa.
The spider’s mandibles did something complicated that reminded both of them of their grandmother struggling not to spit out her dentures when she was cross. “Fine,” she said. “Have your stupid ceremony. What does it entail?”
“Tea,” said Vanessa.
“Tea?”
“Boiled water and leaves.”
The spider looked as nauseated as a sixteenth-of-an-inch face with no expressions can be. “Fine. Tea. Yes, do that. I will wait here, try not to throw up, and pray that I am not expected to share.”
“Sorry,” said Vanessa sweetly.
“There are rules, but there are limits,” said the spider. “Eat them.”
“There’s cookies!” shouted Tony.
“Cookies?”
“Like flies,” he said. “But better.”
The spider scratched the tip of her left mandible thoughtfully. “Acceptable. Cookies first, eating you later. But hurry up, later’s closer nowadays.”
“Fix it,” muttered Vanessa to her brother, as she passed him on her way to the staircase. And that was a very sensible thing to say, because only the biggest idiot in the universe would expect what she’d said to mean what Tony did over the next few minutes.

They stood there, the boy and the spider, sizing one another up. Briefly. There wasn’t much spider to size, and Tony wasn’t much to look at from her point of view either. Too few legs to be worth counting.
“’Tea.’ How long does ‘tea’ take?”
“Ages,” said Tony promptly.
The spider sighed. “Ceremonies. Ceremonies, ceremonies, cere-fucking-monies. What is it with you mammals and your attaching loads of pointless bullshit to everything? You chew your food and stick it in a special pouch to digest it, you nanny your babies for ever and ever after you’ve had them, you don’t even eat your mates. Why don’t you eat your mates? Honestly, think about it: how much simpler would your life be if your mother had eaten your father at conception and left you to mature under an eave somewhere, eh?”
Tony shrugged.
“Typical mammal. At least you’ve got good taste in housing – look at all these nooks! We’ll have no shortage of places to stay.”
“The window’s real nice,” said Tony, pointing at the far end of the attic. “It’s got loads of cracks to let bugs in.”
“Where?”
And as the spider was looking, Tony did the dumbest thing. He reached up behind him and tried to fix the clock. But because he was a stupid fat baby, he did the dumbest thing: he tried to fix it without looking. Just grabbed the handle and tugged blind, like a big galoot. And then came the whirring, the whirring and the wailing and the terrible grinding, like a giant eating beef jerky.
“What was THAT?” demanded the spider.
“Nothing,” said Tony hastily.
“I know what nothing sounds like,” said the spider. “I hear it every day in my web. Lots of nothing. That wasn’t nothing. Are you lying to me, tasty boy?”
“I’m not!” protested Tony. “Neither! I’m neither! And it wasn’t me!”
“I didn’t say it was you,” said the spider. “What’re you trying to hide? Are you trying to hide something?”
WE ARE NOT SOMETHING AND WE ARE NOT HIDING.
Both Tony and the spider looked up. Hovering a discreet few millimetres above Tony’s dumb mushroom haircut that made him look like a mushroom was a squid. It was large enough to cause considerable alarm – about five foot from mantle to tentacle-tip – but what added to the impression it made was that it was glowing softly on a spectrum that didn’t quite have anything to do with visible light.
“Awwkp,” said Tony.
“Who’re YOU?” asked the spider.
WE ARE THE CEPHALITES> DESCENDANTS OF THE GENE-WARS> SPAWN OF HUMAN VANITY> DESCENDED FROM ROOKERIES. THE CLOCK HAS TOLLED> IS IT NOT OUR HOUR?
“NO!” shouted the spider. “It’s OUR turn! Our clock just rang!”
ALARMING. WE HAD ASSUMED THIS SITUATION WAS SETTLED.
Vanessa ran up the stairs, kettle in hand along with a fistful of mugs, a tablecloth in the other. She opened her mouth to say something insightful, saw the CEPHALITE, and settled for dropping a mug.
WE SHALL REASSEMBLE YOUR CONTAINER.
“No it’s fine it’s better this way thank you very much,” said Vanessa. “I thought it was spiders? Why are there squids, Tony is this your fault that there are squids?”
“No!” said Tony. “It’s because… because… because the ceremony’s not done yet!”
The spider looked agog at this, and agogness only becomes more impressive with mandibles. “What, you monkeys tied the clock to your stupid little show-plays?”
Vanessa considered the options carefully.
“Yes!” said Tony.
Vanessa sighed.
“Right! Then get a move on and get things working, before who knows what happens. Tea, right? Hop to it!”

Vanessa poured the tea. One mug for her, one for the spider, one for the CEPHALITE, and none for Tony, who was left to his own devices in front of the clock. An ancient, groaning night-stand had been converted into an over-stuffed table. The tablecloth didn’t cover it so much as enfold it, like a starfish sucking the guts out of a mussel. It had effectively become carpeting for half the attic.
“Right!” she said brightly. “Let’s get started. Take a sip.”
There was a pause.
“You know,” said the spider pointedly, “some of us don’t have lips.”
“Oh.”
“And by some of us, I mean both of us.”
“Ah.”
“In short, you can take your sipping and shove it right up your ass, primate.”
“Just a little drink?”
Vanessa noted that Tony had fumbled his way around to the clock hand again under pretense of scratching his back, but one of the CEPHALITE’S eyes was pointed in his general direction.
“No!” said the spider. “No no no!”
Vanessa shrugged. “Fine. I’ll take the mug then.” And she lashed out with her hand right-quick just as she bumped the table with her knee.

If it wasn’t quite like clockwork, it was at least like dominos. In order of events:
-the spider leapt backwards and raised her legs in threat posture
-the tea hop-skip-jumped from side to side and slid ominously towards her
-the spider bit her mug
-the mug spun gently on its access, sashayed thrice, and shattered into ten thousand nine hundred ninety eight fragments

“OAF!” shrieked the spider.
“You shouldn’t have done that!” said Vanessa. “You knocked it over!”
“You scared me!”
“You scared ME!”
WE ARE INCAPABLE OF SCARED.
“To hell with your-“ and then the spider was cut off by the screech and howl of the clock’s bell, as Tony had hastily yanked on its hands until something moved again.
There was silence then. But nobody present expected it to last for long, they were just resigned to the worst. Which it soon arrived as, in the form of small, furtive scuttling noises.
Something nudged Vanessa’s ankle.
“Beg ‘pardon,” said a small, horribly polite little voice that was far too reedy to belong to any human, “but is it our turn again? We don’t want to make any fuss, but we’ve simply been waiting for ERAS, you unnerstand.”
The spider crossed its legs over its eyes. “You,” it breathed. “You, you, you. Just YOU. You had your turn! You had nearly THREE HUNDRED MILLION YEARS of your turn! Go AWAY, grandfather!”
There was a dreadful noise like someone slapping a bag of broken potato chips with a wet towel and something like a cross between a lobster and a cockroach poked its head up onto the table.
“That’s a very rude thing to say,” said the trilobite severely. “No call for that nohow. We heard the bell, we knew our call, honest to chitin we’ve fair grounds for our supposing. Oh now, what’s all this?”
“Tea,” said Vanessa. “It’s a ceremony, and since SOMEONE jumped at their mug, it got messed up. You’re here early.”
The trilobite’s antennae twitched. “Huh. Well, suppose I might as well stick around then. What is that?”
“A mug.”
“Can I have one?”
Vanessa slid her mug over. The trilobite clasped the thing in its legs. “Huh. Warm as right. Now what?”
“Now,” said the spider, “you all go away and let us have our turn, since it’s our turn fair-and-fucking proper, THANK you very much but not really.”
“Not yet,” said Vanessa. “Cookies first.”
“Cookies? We’ve had your damned tea, we’re done. This whole ceremony’s a rolling disaster.”
“It’ll only get worse if you try and stop it.”
“Hang that hang the cookies hang you upside down and suck out your juices,” sang the spider in a happy sing-song. “We are DONE, and-“
The familiar whistle-scream began again. This time everyone screamed with it, except the trilobite, who was busy trying to figure out handles. Even it looked up as the wind faded though – there was a thud.
Preceding the thud, there was thirty-five feet of placoderm filling an awful lot of the attic.
“Hello,” it said, in a voice that had pounded its way to its throat after a ten-thousand-mile swim. “Us again?”
THERE IS CONFUSION, stated the CEPHALITE. AND TEA. AND COOKIES. TAKE SOME.
The armoured fish considered the table. The bony plates it had in place of teeth klinked softly as it thought, jaws that could sever sharks in two absently muttering.
“Nah. Not thirsty.”
“Tea isn’t really about THIRST,” said Vanessa properly. “It’s about style.”
The tiny, rhythmic plinking sound of the last fifteen seconds turned out to be the spider’s head smacking into the tablecloth. “Fine,” she said, between thuds. “Cookies.” Thud. “Get.” Thud. “Them.” Thud. Thud. Thud. “Now.”
Thud.
Vanessa flew down the stairs. The placoderm watched her movements with curiosity. “Huh. They walk?”
MOST OF THEM DID, said the CEPHALITE.
“New.”
“Oh come off it,” said the trilobite. “We were around before you lot and we’ve been walking since era one here. AND our cousins on land, the whole aunts-and-uncles of ‘em.”
The placoderm shrugged shoulderlessly, a current of muscle flowing down its body. “No bones. Different.”
“Typical vertebrate,” muttered the trilobite.
AGREED.
“Agreed doubly,” snapped the spider. “What’s keeping those cookies?”
Vanessa trudged her way up the stairs again, oreos in hand. “We should’ve had homemade,” she said, “but SOMEONE ate them all.”
All eyes turned to look at Tony for the first time in ten minutes, still leaning against the clock with one hand behind his back. He swallowed hard and tried to look nonchalant, and it wasn’t Vanessa’s fault at all that he was so bad at it. Really, if he’d been doing his job properly it’d all have been fixed by then, so he deserved to be called out.
“Sensible.”
“Haven’t we all felt that way?”
EATING IS THE PRICE OF FLESH.
“Indeed,” said the spider. “So, how’s the rest of this ceremony go?”
“Oh, you just eat a cookie each,” said Vanessa casually. “And then it’s all over and it’s your turn.”
“You eat it with your eyes closed!” added Tony. “You have to do that! If you don’t do that, it ruins everything all at once!”
“Can’t. Will look nowhere.”
“I suppose I can stick my head in the crevice of these floor-boards.”
INK WILL ISSUE FORTH FROM WITHIN MY BLADDERS> OBSCURING ALL SIGHT.
“Of course,” said the spider. “Of course of course. I’ll just cover my eyes with my legs. You two should have no trouble with that.”
“Oh, Tony doesn’t need to do any of this,” said Vanessa. “He’s not part of it.”
“But he is,” said the spider. “He has to eat my cookie for me. My jaws are too small – and this cookie has to get eaten, doesn’t it?”
“Well uh you see um there’s eh a bit of a problem if we kind of sort of look it’s just that” said Vanessa, or something really articulate and clever.
“No, no, it’s perfectly all right,” said the spider, as sweet as cyanide. “Come over here and take this cookie for me, will you Tony? There’s a good bipedal ape.”
Tony, who was obviously too stupid to realize that the jig was up, shrugged. “Sure, I guess. Whatever.”
He slouched forwards, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets (in plain sight, the spider’s gaze gloated upon), feet shuffling.
Shuffling quite heavily, maybe, but none of the participants at the meeting were land-dwelling bipeds save for himself and Vanessa. And SHE saw what he was doing straightaways, although she could’ve told him right then and there that it was completely a bad idea.
But Tony shuffled, and Tony stomped, and Tony twisted his heels, and miraculously enough he made it almost all the way to the table when the tablecloth underfoot decided that enough was enough and shucked itself clear of its burden in one smooth motion, surging gently forwards towards him along with the tea mugs, the tea kettle, and a half-box of semi-stale oreos.
Tony was already ducking. Which might have looked suspicious, if everyone hadn’t been slightly distracted.

The tea mugs landed, one after another, directly on the trilobite, making a noise like a steel drum band.
The box of cookies scooped up the spider like a cowcatcher and sailed (screaming brightly) into the far corners of the room.
And the tea kettle missed the CEPHALITE by a whisker (it went on to thank precognition), bounced off the placoderm’s bony mask, and smacked square into the face of the clock with a sound like the end of the world in a trash bin.
“I’LL FIX IT!” yelled Tony. And because the others were too surprised – or too squished – to tell him to stop right there, nobody did anything as he leapt at the clock, grabbed the hands, and twisted them both the only way they could go.

When the screaming died down, the spider had new bruises, the attic had a new window, and the clock needed new innards. Unfortunately the last set had been ground down to something finer than silt, so determining replacements could be problematic.
THIS COULD BE PROBLEMATIC, said the CEPHALITE.
“No fooling,” said the trilobite with a grimace. “D’you remember who made this thing anyways? Maybe we could let them have a go at it.”
IT WON’T BE BORN FOR TEN UNTO TWENTY THOUSAND MILLENNIA.
“Shit,” said the placoderm.
“Does this mean it isn’t our turn again yet?” inquired the newest visitor to the attic from the freshly created window, speaking as crisply as one can past teeth the size of bananas. “I take it this means it isn’t our turn again yet.”
“It was going to be OUR turn!” wailed the spider. “Ours! Not yours, OURS!”
The dinosaur yawned and shook its head, nearly adding a skylight. “Oh, spare me. The thing’s obviously as wrecked as a mammal’s self-esteem. It was never your turn.”
“It was their fault!” said the spider. “Theirs! They wrecked everything! I didn’t see it, but they did it, I know it! Theirs!”
Eyes rolled in the few individuals present that were capable of such.
“Spare me,” said the placoderm.
“Too right,” said the trilobite. “Granddaughter, you’re making a nuisance of yourself. This was a bungle from the right go, and throwing blame won’t make it any better.”
“Right, yeah, absolutely, sure, totes,” said Vanessa brightly. “So I guess that was a false alarm, everyone’d better go home now, such a shame, nice to meet you all, ta-ta?”
There was an awkward moment where no-one spoke. Immediately, everyone tried to fix it at once.
“Well.”
“Not as strictly such, no…”
THAT WOULD NOT BE OPTIMAL.
“Go? GO?”
“We just got here…”
There was a pause again, during which Tony and Vanessa’s hearts hopped out of their mouths and fell into their stomachs.
“Fact of the matter is,” said the dinosaur, “the old system is broken. And we’re all here. Taking turns obviously hasn’t worked, so…”

Anyways, that’s the whole story. And that’s why there’s dinosaurs, trilobites, mammoths, spiders, giant jawed fish, and five-foot psionic squid roaming the street tonight, and why it’s NOT Vanessa’s fault.
Surely mom will believe this.

“It’s a nice day,” Alicia had said. “It’s sunny outside. There’s no school. So don’t you damned well dare turn that computer on, you hear me? Do something you can only do at your age; use your imagination.”
So Jeffrey did. And as usual, it got him straight into trouble.
First he looked outside. The birds were shining and the sun was singing. Boring.
Then he looked inside. The television had been sold last month and the computer was a forbidden zone. Besides, Saul was on it right now, doing Excel sheets. Boring.
Then he wandered around the house staring at things. Boring, boring, boring, boring.
Finally he went up to his room, took out all his clothing, and started rearranging it by colour. This was exactly how boring Jeffrey’s day was, and this was why he thought what he thought when he picked up his last set of trousers to put them away, and what he thought was this.
Hey, I wonder what it’s like to be pants?

And Jeffrey put away his pants, and he went downstairs and had some cereal, and he even washed the bowl out of sheer, unimaginable, mind-bending boredom, but as he went through all the motions the question nagged and nibbled at him. What was it like to be pants, anyways? Who could say, for who had tried? Who would try?
And why not Jeffrey?

There were things he needed to do, he knew this well. Anything worth doing had to be taken in steps, the proper steps, or else it would all fall to pieces. Willy-nilly did nobody good.
First, he had to think like pants. Jeffrey thought long and hard, long and hard, until he realized that that wasn’t working at all. Then he thought long and floppy, long and flat, he creased his brow and plaited his fingers, he filled his mind with corduroy and denim.
Second, he had to act like pants. Jeffrey let his legs hang loose and tucked his arms away into nowhere. He shrugged up his shoulders until his neck was as broad as his waist and he opened his mouth so long he could’ve swallowed a fireplace log. He shimmied until he was looser than a half-empty bag of helium.
Third, he had to be pants. Which, quite suddenly, he was. And this pleased him mightily, for in all of today so far he’d been sure he’d never get to do anything interesting.

As pants, the whole world was at Jeffrey’s disposal, if he should so choose it. He billowed and bustled himself and in the end discovered that his best bet for locomotion was a sort of sailing flap flap flap, which let him move about the house in a fashion not unlike a squid. This so pleased Jeffrey that he almost failed to notice the first great challenge of his panthood, which was that Bop heard him flailing about the kitchen floor, came to investigate, and, filled with protectiveness at the sight of the wild pants dancing about his family’s kitchen, set upon him with ferocious yapping.
This was unpleasant to Jeffrey, who’d been having a good time. He had no ears, but the sound was still offensive, and so he moved to shoosh Bop with a warning pat on the muzzle, as was common. But he’d forgotten his pantish condition and failed to analyze its likely effect on the dog, and as he drew nearer the poor animal broke into the most terrorized yelps and launched itself into an embarrassingly lousy display of canine self-defence.
It was a tragic battle fought that day beneath the kitchen lamps, one with no true cause for celebration taken by either party. For Bop, it was an endless, fruitless struggle to find a part of his foe that wasn’t denim. For Jeffrey, it was a steadily-growing realization of how pleasant it truly was to have hands by virtue of not having any whatsoever, or even any arms.
In the end, the silence of the scuffle was broken by Bop’s disheartened whimper as the confusion overwhelmed him, and he fled to his bed in the corner, tail tucked away and spirit in tatters until someone gave him a treat and told him what a good handsome boy he was. Jeffrey was not entirely pleased by this outcome, but he found it acceptable enough. Particularly as yesterday Bop had peed on his carpet. That would teach him. Nobody messed with pants.

That trial surmounted, Jeffrey began to wander about the house some more, taking stock of his home as pants. A surprising amount of it was now quite difficult to get at, it seemed. Latches were awkward, doorknobs were impossible, and even sliding under doors – which he would’ve assumed prior to his pantsing would be the optimal modus operandi of pant locomotion – was an unlikely task, due to the relative sturdiness and thickness of his pantish self. The one door ill-fitting enough to permit him access this way was the basement, and it was with great relief and anticipation that Jeffrey slipped into that place. He’d always been a little nervous to go down there alone, but as pants he felt indestructible, filled with optimism and the fire of youth in a frame much sturdier and more deftly-sewn than before.
Here Jeffery ran wild and free, cavorting amidst the cobwebs. He toyed with power tools, sashayed through scads of half-crumbled wood and metal, and wove recklessly in and out of rows of carelessly arranged bottles with interesting hazard symbols on their fronts, one of which he immediately spilled all over his pants-front.
This was the second great challenge of Jeffrey’s panthood, and a fierce one it was. This particular bottle’s little picture showed a skeleton hand on it, and at first Jeffrey was hopeful for his future as he possessed neither a skeleton nor hands. But then a strange sensation broke out across him – like an itch crossed with a witch – and he realized to his dawning horror that he was staining, staining away as if he’d been struck with ketchup.
If Bop had been a test of bodily fortitude, this was a trial of spiritual rigor. Jeffrey fought the stain on a conceptual level, controlling his breathing – well, creasing – with the utmost care and a will of iron. Go away, he told the stain, to himself. There is no place for you here, not in my body. I am me and you are you and we shall remain separate. Abandon this place, abandon these pants. Be no more here, be more elsewhere, and we shall both be happy. Go away. Go away. Go away go away go away GO AWAY.
And just then, just as Jeffrey was about to give up, the stain didn’t go away. But by then he’d tuckered himself clean out with the intensity of his thoughts, so he decided it was all right anyways. He had won the battle – not with the stain, but with his own inability to accept himself. And that was truly the lesson that needed to be learned that day.

By now Jeffrey was growing lonely, as the basement was most unsociable but for cockroaches, and he wound his way upstairs in search of companionship. But he wanted his societal introduction as pants to be spectacular, and be spectacular on his own terms. A grand surprise would do, it would, and so he prepared himself accordingly. He folded himself up at the foot his parent’s bed. He’d been quiet for some time now, and he knew that soon either Alicia or Saul would grow wary and begin a hunt for him. They would check their room last, of course, and when they’d just turned to go outside and re-check everywhere else he would spring up and surprise them. Then they would jump, and that would show them.
So Jeffrey waited. And waited.
And waited. Saul was still working on an Excel sheet, if you’ll recall, and Alicia was phoning clients. These were not things that could be rushed through without consequence, and they took themselves seriously, solemnly, and above all, very slowly. And as the sun was so awfully nice and warm through the window, and as Jeffrey was so tired from all his previous exertions, he fell quite peacefully asleep in the warm glow of noon.
He was roused from his slumber by a large hand on his neck, a most curious sensation. Saul had finished his work, the household finances lay demolished for another day, and he had finally roused himself enough to get dressed and go out for groceries. For such business as this pajamas simply would not do, and what did he have here at the end of his bed but a pair of pants such as would suit him – or rather, pant him – most well.
This was the final great challenge of Jeffrey’s panthood, a test of nerves. Specifically, reflexes. There were only a scant few seconds ‘twixt wakefulness and the very real threat of being donned and worn for Jeffrey, but he was young yet and possessed a reaction time that would put a fly to shame. Instinct was yet his ally, and at the sheer horror of the oncoming threat that was his father’s posterior he immediately let loose a most un-pantish yelp of great size and vigor, making Saul jump half a foot and put half his foot through the laundry basket, with no less noise than Jeffrey had made.

There was a bit of kerfuffle and a lot more confusion and consternation as Alicia came rushing into the bedroom to comfort her shouting husband and confront his agitated pants, but then Jeffrey began to make the most un-pantlike gestures, and soon they were all able to explain the whole thing out.
You know.
By pantomime.
When it was all said and done, Alicia started laughing and couldn’t stop; but Saul just sat down on the bed and cried. “I don’t want to have a son who’s pants!” he sobbed. “I was just getting used to having a son with two arms and two legs and a torso in there somewhere, and now I’ll have to get used to it all over again!”
Jeffrey was distressed to see his father so upset, and quickly attempted to unpants himself, in order to placate him. But try as he might, wriggle as he pleased, crease and plait as he would, he found to his rapidly-increasing alarm that he seemed to continue to be most panted.
“All right,” said Alicia tearily, wiping away a last few giggles with the back of her hand, “then let’s fix this. I know just the trick for getting rid of a case of pants.”
So she grabbed Jeffrey by his neck – kindly – and dragged him back down to the basement, flap flap flap. And she put him in the washing machine, added soap, flipped a dial and twiddled a button, and then she sat on the lid of the washing machine until the flaps and creaks turned into thumps and shouts, and she reached in and pulled out a very damp and agitated little boy by the scruff of his neck, like a puma with her kitten.
“Now, what have we learned today?” Alicia asked Jeffrey, as she wrapped him in a towel and hauled him off to get changed.
“Never to use my imagination for anything,” said Jeffrey.
Alicia rolled her eyes at this, but decided it was too late in the day for moralizing anyways, even on a Saturday. So she gave him a bowl of cereal for lunch and let him have a turn at the computer, because after all, hadn’t she been just the same at his age?

And that was the last time Jeffrey was pants. It had been an exciting experience at the start, but by the end he’d considered the whole project to be disarmingly pointless.
Besides, he didn’t like any playtime that ended in him getting collared. If he’d been born a decade or two earlier, his mother reminded him, he likely would’ve gotten belted.

Scal was a thousand thousand years old or maybe a lot more than that – older than dirt, at any rate, or at least the dirt that lay around her little house in the big forests. She’d been sorry for things once, but now she was old and with age had come shamelessness. Older. More shamelessness. Close enough.
Anyways, Scal was lying in her house sleeping one day when a tree fell on her – ow! – right across the middle, like that.
“Eh?” she shouted (Scal had always been a great shouter, but she shouted louder and longer these days). “Who’s up there? Who’s up with that? What’s that going on?” She kicked the tree off herself, looked around, saw a woman with a chainsaw, and put three and six together. “Nine!” she shouted.
“Pardon?” asked the woman. “Are you alright?”
“All-right? Of course I’m not all-right – because you’re WRONG, and you’re standing here being WRONG, and you’ve WRONGED a tree onto my house!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said the woman, “but I’m a forester, and I had to take that tree down before it landed on someone’s house; it was old and rotten.”
“It landed on MY house!”
“Ma’am, your house is a small dirt hillock. I don’t even know how you fit in there.”
“Well, it might be perhapsing that I took a snooze for a few longs,” said Scal. “But there’s no excuse for what you’ve gone and done, and here you are trying to make it! Nettles nip your nipples and may a rabbit nest in your ear!”
“Look,” said the forester, “there’s no call for that sort of language. Whatever language that is. Before you go criticizing people, why don’t you try and walk a mile in their shoes? Then you’ll see how it is for them.”
“I don’t have any shoes at all,” said Scal proudly, and it was true. Her feet were bare, bony, and leathery as a sea-turtle, now and ever since the day she was born, whenever that was.
“Well then you’ll never know how it is for me, or for anyone else,” said the forester.
“Oh really? Well, we’ll see about that!” snapped Scal. “Give them here!” And with a quick jump and a punch and a wrestle and a little biting (Scal was never fair in a fight, and also pinched and spat) Scal had procured herself a new pair of forester’s boots. It only took her six tries to put them on the right way round on the right feet, but she felt that they looked mightly fine.
“These boots are mightily fine and I do feel that way,” she told no-one in particular. “Now let’s walk them.”
And walk them she did, one foot in front of the other, checking step by step to see how her mile was going, tromping through the woods.
“I’m a forester,” said she, measuring the trees with a jaunty eye. “I’m monitoring and tagging and logging and learning. I know all about the spruce budworm and the Asian longhorn beetle and I even know what an Asia is, isn’t that something? Hey, you, tree! Come here and taste my saw!”
The tree tasted it, found it not to its taste, and protested by keeling over.
“That’s it for you then, you sluggard. But you were hanging over the road and that was a problem that needed to be fixed. What would we do if you fell on a car, eh? What then? I know what a car is too, mark my words.”
“What the hell’s wrong with you?!” shouted a businessman.
“Nothing,” said Scal. “I’m a forester. What’s wrong with YOU, that you’re being so rude to me?”
“You dropped that tree on my car, you crazy old coot! I have a meeting in five minutes with important people who have important money in important places, and now it’s all ruined forever because of you!”
“Well!” said Scal. “I don’t see why you’re so upset about such silly things, I truly don’t see at all. Here, give me your shoes and we’ll sort this all out then.”
The businessman blinked expansively at this, and a great sense of distress and confusion filled his life in a way he was not prepared nor equipped to express adequately. He felt a man adrift in a world that worked quite differently from how he’d come to expect it to, as a castaway upon a darkened sea. If only he had someone to ask, someone to turn to, someone to explain for him this strange new place that his comfortable life had become. Unfortunately for him the only person present was Scal, who smacked him head over heels and took his shoes without asking permission.
“Hmmm,” said Scal, wriggling her toes in them. “These are BUSINESS shoes. For business. There is no business out here, this is all wrong. I’d best go to where the business is.”
So Scal clambered into the car, smacked its wheel until it worked out of embarrassment, and scooted down the roads and the highways into town. Which wasn’t really a walk, so it didn’t count as her mile. She parked in the biggest space in the biggest lot in the biggest building and marched out into the fresh sunshine and saw profit six ways to Sundays.
“Ahh, business!” she sang. “You! What’s your name?”
The woman stared at her.
“Doesn’t matter and I don’t care anyways, you’re part of the team! Turn in tomorrow at eight so we can fire you without severance for non-compliance! Hurry up or we’ll sue you for breach of contract. That makes me thirsty – do you have a drink? Give me a drink, somebody. Hey, give me that drink, you.”
The man holding the drink indicated with two of his fingers that she should get her own drink because this drink was his.
“That’s ungrateful and unmannerly and shows a lack of appreciation for business,” said Scal most severely. “Don’t you know that I am a businessman and I make jobs for you, with my business? If you keep me happy maybe I’ll hire you and fire you tomorrow too, won’t that be nice? But not anymore. Now I’m just going to leave and it’ll serve you right. You don’t deserve to have a minimum wage anymore. I’m going to see if I can cut your welfare checks, see if I can’t. Bum.”
Scal skipped down the street merrily, then stopped to giggle. “Heh. Bum.”
“Agreed, friend,” said a man in a nice suit. “You look like a good fine businesswoman, am I right?”
“BusinessMAN,” corrected Scal. “These are businessmen shoes.”
“Errr…right,” said the man. “Well, I’m a politician and I’d love it if you gave me a lot of money. I agree with you that the man over there’s a bum, and if you give me a lot of money I’ll see that the bums are put to good use under the helm of fine upstanding citizens like yourself.”
“Hmmm,” said Scal. “That sounds like business to me, but it’s been a mile. I’m done with business now, go ask someone else.”
“Oh come on,” said the man. “Look at me, I’m standing up for the little guy here, I’m just doing what’s best for the people, come on come on. How can I do that without help from all the people, especially the good businesspeople with lots of money like you? See it from my point of view, why don’t you?”
“Good point,” said Scal. “Give me your shoes.”
“Will you make a contribution to -?” asked the man, and that was as far as he got before Scal took his shoes. Past that mostly he was unprintable, so he’s not in this story anymore.
“Hmmm,” said Scal. These shoes were different. They weren’t as comfortable as the business shoes. They weren’t as tough as the forester boots. But they were dynamic shoes, shoes that looked like they talked the talk as they walked the walk. These were shoes that promised a brighter future without neglecting the traditional values of the nation’s past and incidentally my opponent has advocated reptiles in the past next thing you’ll know he’ll want you to marry them.
“My,” said Scal. This was turning into one of the most interesting walks she’d had in decades, even if it was a bit long and rambling. But before you could walk you had to fly, as she’d heard. And she was needed elsewhere in the country, to sit in a big room somewhere and argue extensively.
She walked towards the airport, shaking hands and making promises. A television crew came by and she told them just how much she cared for the taxpayer, in the tones of a man offering sympathy to the condemned. She opened an area business and walked in a parade and got noisily drunk in public while a businessman – or maybe another politician – or maybe a businessman – or a politician – or was there a difference? – handed her a bottle of ridiculously expensive wine and told her that this was just a little gift between friends with no obligations but if she didn’t back bill C-dj8QB3RT she was a dead woman walking who’d be turfed by an opponent with stronger patriotic feelings for the Mink Milking industry.
“I am behind this country five hundred percent because it is the best country in the world,” said Scal, who threw up behind a dumpster. “We need to put those bums to work.” Then she took a rest stop for a while, because her feet were really quite sore now. She’d walked up mountains and under the oceans without a blister, but these shoes were very pinchy and they were making her head swim. Or maybe that was the smog.
“I’m just going to put this all behind me,” she told the press. “Now is not the time for blame games and partisan politics, now is the time for action and I am willing to take that action and that action is to go for a walk in the woods. Goodbye.”
“But what about your responsibilities to the taxpayers?” asked a reporter.
“Well, I’m always something little guy voters,” said Scal, but her heart wasn’t in it. She must’ve walked at least a mile and a half in these shoes already, and the novelty had worn off as much as the soles of her feet had. “But the fact of the matter is that I’m bored stiff and you lot aren’t helping. Gales gut me you’re a tedious natter of toads.”
“Look, it’s my job,” said the reporter. “Why are you blaming me for doing my job? Do yours and we’ll talk.”
“I can do both, just you watch,” said Scal. And then she beat up the reporter and took his shoes on live television. And then, because they were HER shoes now, she reported on it.
“Corrupt councilsenatorMP(P) assaults reporter, drinks in public, makes molehills from mountain,” she noted. “Defrauds electorate I guess or whatever, corruption, sure.”
She wandered in her new shoes, stretched out her muscles a bit, shook her hands loose.
“Businessman eats baby: we bring you both sides of the problem,” she sketched as she watched old people argue on a new camera in a building born of an architect’s mid-life crisis. “Here are my thoughts as expressed in this column’s headline: UNACCEPTABLE Print isn’t dead because it isn’t because. Want to read a letter? Here’s someone’s letter. Here’s my opinion: both sides are to blame. My anecdote overheard in a diner in my twenties is an analogy and I will use it. Watch me.”
Scal got stuck halfway through her column and went for a walk to clear her head, shoes dangling around her neck. She’d walked a good few miles in a good few shoes, but it felt like something was missing. Oh, yes, it was lunch. She’d go home and pack something for the next leg of the trip. There were a lot of shoes out there, surely she couldn’t have gotten them all already.
“Could I please have my boots back?” asked the forester, as she rummaged through her house.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure,” said Scal absently. “There are lots, you know. Just take some. I have.”
“Yes,” said the forester with a wince. She had been keeping an eye on the news the past few hours and was really getting quite alarmed. “Look,you need to stop.”
“But I can’t stop yet,” complained Scal. “I haven’t walked a mile in everyone’s shoes yet!”
“Ah, but I misspoke when I advised you,” said the forester. “You shouldn’t walk a mile in anyone’s shoes at all.”
“Burn down buildings and boulders!” swore Scal. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“We don’t measure in miles anymore,” said the forester. “We use kilometres. If you want to walk in everyone’s shoes properly, you’ll need to walk a kilometer.”
Scal swore a swear that tore the ground new holes and left it blushing. “And start all over?!” she shrieked. “Nonsuch and nothing doing! You and your shoes – ALL of your shoes, and all of your yous – can go dig a pit to the Pacific and fall into it! I’m leaving!”
And she kicked off her shoes and walked into the woods with her head held high.
As a matter of fact, she held her head so high that she didn’t even see the poison ivy until it was up to her ankles. That – or at least two days past that – was when Scal the sorry walked the woods again.
She simply couldn’t be anything otherwise.