jamieproctor.ca

Teresa Aoki leaving the bonsai to her estranged daughter was no surprise, not even the bit in her will where its delivery was to take priority over checking her pulse or contacting her other, less isolated relatives. It had been her most prized possession, and her mother’s, and her great-uncle’s before her.
It wasn’t the most elegant bonsai (a bit too squat, a bit too unkempt – several of its largest branches had sprouted in odd directions centuries before pruning for beauty had been suggested), but it gave whatever home it sat in an air of quiet, pine-scented authority that was most pleasant. Particularly on the southern wall. Teresa’s great-grandfather had raised it from seed himself using a small packet he’d brought with him to America (and then later brought it to Canada), and in the good old days before Mary shaved her head (well, good old days for Teresa; Mary didn’t miss them much), she’d told her daughter long stories about how hard he’d had to work, teaching himself bonsai as he went out of half-memories from his grandmother and careful, nervous application of shears. Mary had enjoyed those stories, and Teresa had enjoyed telling them.
It was just such a pity that she’d gone and died (a quick aneurysm, not at all unpleasant as deaths go, if a bit of a shock) before she’d told her the ones that weren’t lies.

And so it was that on the twenty-third birthday of Mary Aoki, daughter of Teresa Aoki, daughter of so-on-and-so-forth, she received a Fedex box slathered with more DELICATE PARCEL and THIS SIDE UP labels than its surface could support before she was even through putting down the phone from Uncle Jerry’s call wishing her happy birthday oh and your mother, my sister, is dead. Sorry.
Mary opened the box, stared at the heavily-wrapped contents like some people stare at live snakes, tore it open, put it on the table against the north wall of her apartment, and stared at it for five minutes with indecisive and angry eyebrows.
It was then that the bonsai stretched itself and sighed.
Mary was a sensible woman. She checked to see if she’d left a window open for a breeze, and she examined the doors for any trace of a draft. She put her ears to the walls and listened for any hint of her next-door neighbours having inconspicuous, quasi-muffled sex.
The tree interrupted this by coughing politely.
Mary was a sensible woman. She pulled up a chair opposite the table, leaned forwards, counted to ten, and asked: “What the fuck is going on here?”
And so the pine tree, who had a voice that strongly reminded Mary of a stuffy grandmother despite being gender-neutral, began to tell her what her mother hadn’t had a chance to.

“This is not an old story,” said the pine tree. “But it has an old start.”
A man stood near a riverbank one day, watching the very last bits of heat escape a little firepit he’d dug. A short distance from the shack-thing that was his home, there was clay.
There was less of it than there had been five minutes ago.
The man brushed away the cooled ashes from the pit-kiln, stomping briskly on a few dejected coals, and looked at the thing that he’d made. It was just a little bit too big to be a proper bowl for a human, but just right for a spirit of the powerful sort, and he left it in front of the big pine tree where it lived a little ways up the forest trails on the hillside slopes, and said some very respectful things with care.
“A bowl, your wish delivered,” he said. And other pretty things. “Your protection, please grant it,” he said. And other polite things.
The pine sighed in the wind, grudgingly satisfied. It considered its options, then decided. A seed dropped into the bowl.
The man bowed at the pine’s feet, retreated with his gift, and had a long discussion with his wife that night about what he was meant to do with this. She took some dirt, he took some water, and together they planted that seed right where it fell. The next day, a freak wildfire burned down the big pine tree, the forest, and everything else that wasn’t within a perfect circle centered on the seed in its clay-baked bowl, which just barely contained the couple’s hovel.
They took very good care of it after that; and so it grew up, but not far. And then, one year after the fire, it started talking. The words were slow and grinding at first, the struggle of adapting a tree’s perspective to a human’s noises, but it pulled through, and it made its point: I will protect you.

A small tree in a pot was odder than it seemed, in those days, to say nothing of one that could speak. The couple kept it hidden away, and when they died, so did their children. And so did their children. One thousand years later, contemporaries started to appear, and the family could relax and put it on a nice shelf somewhere where it looked pretty. It wasn’t the most elegant bonsai (a bit too squat, a bit too unkempt – several of its largest branches had sprouted in odd directions centuries before pruning for beauty had been suggested), but it gave whatever home it sat in an air of quiet, pine-scented authority that was most pleasant. Particularly on the southern wall.
And of course, there were the adventures…

“I’m sorry,” said Mary at this point, “the what?”
The adventures, said the pine tree, rattling its needles irritably.

For instance, the great-grandchildren of that first couple had been harassed somewhat thoroughly by an ogre. It could smell the delicious spirit-smell in the air around their house, and first it ate their dog, then their home, and finally it was about to eat them before it realized the smell was coming from the pine tree.
Luckily enough, the pine tree had given them some advice after their dog went missing. As it raised the pine tree to its lips, they
“Stabbed it in the back while it was busy?”
No, they
“Why not? It makes sense.”
They were less than peasants. Where would they get a blade sharp enough to kill an ogre?
“A pointy stick would’ve done it – hell, you can kill elephants with pointy sticks if you hit the right spot. Besides, they’d had enough time to hatch a plan, they had enough time to find a pointy stick.”
They didn’t find a pointy stick. They called its mother many insulting names, and when it turned around to kill them the pine tree dropped itself on its skull and killed it.
“That’s weirdly sensible. How did you do that?”
The pine tree was a spirit’s-scion wrapped in a blanket of clay passed down a family line for generations; it had opportunity to soak up plenty of power.

“How vague. If you’re so powerful why do you need me?”
I was getting to that.

Anyways, that sort of thing was always happening to the family, and not always just because the tree was there, either. In the 700s, one of the tree’s possessors
“‘Owners’ would be too touchy?”
One of the tree’s possessors had come into contact with an extremely angry and volatile young warlord in a way that had caused offence, leading to a long journey to retrieve his archenemy’s sword from a locked vault, during which the tree had provided counsel each night as he slept. The theft was successful; accomplished by dint of looking so much like an ordinary peasant that there was no possible chance of anyone suspecting him of burglary of the most secure estate in the land.
And a small, perfectly alert, unnoticeable lookout temporarily embedded in a garden. Though there had been a hairy moment or three when one of the gardeners grew suspicious, and it had to persuade him that he was imagining things from too much drink.
There were many others, of course. The defeat in a duel of an angry dragon in front of a whole city of witnesses, the burning of the most wicked castle in the world to avenge a murdered wife, the flight across the ocean from an angry magician…
“Does a single one of these ‘adventures’ have a basis that isn’t horribly stressful and nerve-wracking? If you’re such a good-luck-charm, I’m not sure why Grandma didn’t just chuck you in a dumpster. She was a practical lady.”
… the destruction of a witch that had been riding ghosts and chaining souls since longer than the span of a man’s life added to all his grandmothers’, the freeing of the lost little boy who lived up in their attic, and the weeding-out of the flood of spirits that had infested their lawn.
“Hang on, was that the time Mom said she used pesticides and the grass smelled like sauerkraut and firecrackers for a month?”
Yes.
“I should’ve known something was up.”
And so down on and down on the line went, without much change, until it reached Teresa Aoki and her daughter; Mary.

Who hadn’t been let in on this, apparently.

“There are so many ways this is stupid that I can’t even begin to count them all,” she said. “I’m going to take you to a greenhouse or a garden care professional or someone else who can prune you into a reasonable shape and not forget to water you, and who can tolerate all the stupid adventures they can handle until their arms get chopped off and eaten by a demon or something.”
“You can not do that,” said the tree.
“Yes I can. Watch.”
“No, I mean you can not. This bowl is a heirloom of your family, and it is filled with two thousand years of memories of being nothing but that. If you give me away in it, it will return to you as sure as your wandering mind does. And I have been in it since the day it was molded; it is mine as much as yours, and will not be parted from my person. I am as much a part of your family as your mother; as it lives, so do I.”
“Shit,” said Mary sullenly. She drummed her fingers on the table in syncopation, thinking various ugly thoughts.
“You should answer that,” said the tree.
“What?” said Mary, then heard the door. Thunk thunk thunk thunk thunk, the constant, incessant rapping of a five-year-old wanting to know if you were home, or a very excitable Jehovah’s Witness.
“Don’t you say a word,” she told the pine as she rattled at the needlessly elaborate lock on her door. “The baldness is enough of a conversation starter; I don’t need anyone talking to my trees too.”
The tree said nothing. Satisfied by this, Mary opened the door and was face to face with someone’s belt buckle. It had a skull on it, she noticed. Then a hand closed gently around her head and lifted her into the air, and she corrected herself: it was a skull. It and its accompanying belt were also the only clothing her visitor was wearing.
The face that invaded her personal space was strange: flat as a board except for a very protruding nose and two extremely large things that were either fangs or tusks or maybe both good lord that was bad breath he (definitely he) smelled like rotting meat and
Crunch.
The thing’s eyes went unfocused and Mary was dropped to the floor, where she immediately rolled out of the way of a quarter-ton of tumbling…
“That is an ogre,” said the pine. It was sitting on the floor from where it had tumbled, from atop the ogre’s skull. Much of which was now a reddened crater.
“Wonderful,” she said. “What did you do?”
“I came back to you.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Near you. It takes quite a lot of effort; I would rather not have to do it again anytime soon or I would not be able to talk for some days. Movement is not natural for a tree.”
“And how did you do that?” The bone that was visible through the ogre’s matted blood and hair looked to be three inches or more thick.
“I am very heavy,” it said mildly.
“Then how did I pick you up and put you on the table?”
“I let you.”
“Why didn’t the bowl break?”
“It is very old magic. The only thing that can break magic is still older magic. This ogre was not very old.”
Mary gave up and slumped in her chair, defeated. The floor was going to be a bastard to clean, she thought.
“It appears we are on another adventure,” said the pine.
“Wonderful,” said Mary. “How do I get off?”
“Ogres are simple creatures, and not at all anxious to seek out fights unless there is obvious gain for themselves,” said the pine. “You find whoever sent the ogre.”
“And ask him to stop?”
“No, you defeat him.”
“How? Call the cops? Stab him and bury him in Nevada?”
“Eternal imprisonment would also do the trick,” said the pine. “I recall an angry typhoon that was sealed in a bottle and buried in a hole in desert.”
“That’s not eternal, that’s one idiot and his shovel shy of a disaster.”
“There are many deserts, and many holes.”
“I don’t know how much TV mom let you watch, but there are many idiots. And many shovels too, probably.” Mary sighed. “So, how do we find this guy?”
“I suggest a walk,” said the pine.

They went on a walk. Well, Mary walked. The pine rode in an old baby-carrier that her mother had fobbed off on her ‘just in case.’
“Take a deep breath,” said the pine, “and let it out.”
Mary took a deep breath, let it out, and rolled her eyes.
“Shake your head three times and roll your eyes twice more.”
Mary shook her head three times and rolled her eyes twice more. And once again, for good measure.
“Now sneeze,” said the pine, and Mary sneezed involuntarily. And yelped, because it felt like someone had stuffed her nose with peppers.
“Too many rollings,” said the pine. “Still, the extra potency is appreciated. Can you smell that?”
Mary could smell that. Although maybe ‘smell’ wasn’t the right word. It was more like hearing with a bit of taste, transmitted through her nose. It made the hair on her spine tingle.
“That is magic,” said the pine. “A broad trail, left by an over-eager amateur at most, I suspect. Follow the spell of the one who sent the ogre.”

Mary hiked through parking lots and up hills and down long, stupid streets with barely any sidewalk and too many idiots driving on them. She walked past fast food that she couldn’t begin to imagine qualify as half its name, and by restaurants where she would’ve had to forfeit her month’s rent to afford an appetizer. She was walking in an underpass when her cellphone rang.
“Hello?” she said. She stopped walking and used the opportunity to adjust the tree’s weight a little; it and the pot were surprisingly light, but their combined bulk stretched the straps of the baby carrier uncomfortably against her.
“Mary Aoki?” said a carefully, professionally calming and neutral voice.
“Yes?” She started walking again.
“This is the Toronto police department.”
Mary glared at her phone. “I told you before, that was self-defense. And I had a witness. And he dared me to do it.”
“It’s not about that. Your sister is missing.”
The rest of the conversation floated by in a haze. Jennifer Aoki (age nineteen), better known as Jenny to her sister, as well as Jenners, Stupid, and Jen-Jenners, was gone. She’d come home, said goodnight to her roommate, gone into her room, and vanished into thin air. No, there were no leads yet, no, no suspects had been determined so far, no, no one else had heard from her, no, no, no, no, no.
If she found any evidence she was to phone and so on.
Click.

Mary stared at an ancient, broken car with an ancient, bitter man in it, who was shouting something profane and inaudible at her past his windshield. At some point she’d stopped walking again, and she noticed that she was in the middle of a road she didn’t recognize.
“Did they get her?” she asked.
“They?”
“Him. Her. Whoever. The ones who sent that thing at me.” She wasn’t ready to start saying the names of these things aloud; that made them too real.
“Probably. Your police are not especially good at magic. They have one man, underpaid, who only half-believes half of the things that he finds. Which he misses half the time.”
“An eighth of a clue,” said Mary. “Should we ask him for help?”
“No. He would slow us down, and probably ask all sorts of questions about me, or try to confiscate me as a dangerous illegal possession.”
“Are you?” asked Mary. The old man was pressing hard on his horn, producing a tremulous, dying wheeze from thousands of his car’s orifices.
“By his laws, yes.”
“Comforting. More or less illegal than my pot?”
“Pot?”
“Marijuana.”
“Ah. Less.”
“Well, then we don’t have anything to worry about,” said Mary. The car was vibrating in place now, practically panting to zip forwards and claim first blood. She pulled out her apartment keys, scraped them slowly and carefully along its hood as she passed, and strolled to the far side of the road.
Suddenly the smell was clean and there, fresh and new.
“He’s here,” she said. Rising up in front of her was a rather elegant condominium. The whole building smelled like roasted habaneros, and her eyes were nearly streaming from it.

The ground floor of the building was saturated with the scent, one big uniform blob with no directions or sense to it at all.
“We should at least narrow it down to a floor,” Mary said as she stood in front of the elevator and vainly tried to tell if any of the buttons was more nostril-clearing than the others.
“It will be four,” said the pine.
“Why?”
“Four is death. To send properly death-dealing foes and vicious curses to you would only be helped by working as closely with four as possible. It will be the forth floor.”
“Hmm,” said Mary. “What was the building number?”
“Four hundred and forty-four.”
She sighed, and noticed she was drumming her fingers again. No pattern this time, just aimless, breathless fluttering. She couldn’t bring herself to stop.
“My sister will be there?”
“I am sure of it.”
“Be more sure.”

The fourth floor was positively incandescent with the smell, and Mary had to plug her nose with a pair of Kleenex walrus-tusks before she could bear to leave the elevator. It left without a sound behind her as she looked around.
“Apartment four?” she asked, thickly. The tree didn’t even bother to answer; the door was making her entire head spin. She took a deep breath and raised her hand to knock.
“Stop.”
“Why?”
“Or you will be set on fire.”
“Why?”
“Because the door is sealed with a vicious curse.”
“Why?”
“Because there is a small, malignant symbol scratched inside just inside the doorframe, above your head.”
“There, was that so hard?” asked Mary. She pulled out her keys, still flaked with the paint of the old car, and swiped them back and forth through the tiny, intricate drawing until all that was left was a wooden pustule.
“It is harder. There is an ogre behind that door. And its two brothers.”
“Shit. Four, right?”
“Of course.”
Mary examined the intimidating one-and-a-half-inch blade of her keys, then pocketed them with a sigh. “Suggestions?”
“They will be extremely wary after feeling the curse dissipate. They will suspect it is either an intruder, or their brother being clumsy with anger as he is returning so much later than planned.”
Mary put one hand into her purse and began to rummage.
“What are you doing?”
“Finding my equalizer.”
“Find it quickly. They are about to open the door.”
“What?” said Mary.
The ogre opened the door.
Standing a few feet away, Mary had a much less confused view of him this time. He was a little over nine feet tall – stooped very low in the doorframe – pot-bellied, rippling with muscles, and not even bothering to wear the skull-belt his brother had, but armed with a big club made from half of a burned tree. His face was different: the squashed-face with its protruding nose were absent in favour of having just one eye planted where his left nostril should’ve been Other than that, he was almost handsome.
The ogre stared at Mary, which gave her the perfect second-and-a-half for her to overcome her shock an instant before him and pull out her can of mace. By the time he was reaching for her, it was too late.
“Up the nose and in the eyes all in one,” she muttered as she ducked away from the flailing body, trying to scream and cough at the same time. “Vicious.”
The next ogre tripped over his flailing brother and inadvertently kicked him, leading to a vicious wrestling match during which each used the other’s burnt club to poke his brother in his eye – which, in the new one’s case, he had three of.
The third grabbed Mary by the head as she was dodging hurtling limbs. He had no eyes whatsoever.
“Not twice,” she said, and grabbed him somewhere important with both hands. Very hard.

“Unusual, but effective,” commented the pine as Mary locked the apartment door behind her. She’d taken the precaution of dropping it on top of the moaning ogre after it doubled over, and it was slowing making a dent in the exquisite floorboards. “Your grandmother would be proud.”
“Nice of you to say so,” said Mary. The magic-scent-charm-thing was wearing off, letting her breath a bit easier but also drawing her attention to the unfortunate smell of the ogres again. It was something between a bull and a wet dog.
“She always feared that her daughter was too kindly to deal with these troubles, and when she was proven wrong there, she worried that you would be raised unprepared, in charitable ignorance.”
“I was. Not that I minded it.”
“It does not appear to have affected your capability.”
“Why thank you oh so much, o fuckin’ wondrous talking ornament,” said Mary. “Now tell me: where is it? Are they. Is he or her. Whatever; where is my sister, damnit?”
“In room four,” said the tree.

A fine door. Maybe even real oak all the way through. Or maple. Or not. Mary wasn’t good with plants, which was what kept sneaking back into her head every time she stopped thinking about finding Jennifer fast.
The pine’s bowl was dripping something black and sticky down the rear of her shirt as it rested in the baby carrier; the ogre’s back had been ground into something that made Mary never want to eat hamburger again.
“Strike boldly,” said the tree as she put her hand on the doorknob. It was warm.
“No ‘be careful’ this time?”
“It has served you very well so far. And I do not think your enemy will have expected you to deal with his ogres so aptly. If at all.”
“Works for me,” said Mary. She twisted the handle (unlocked) and kicked the door so hard that it nearly rebounded into her as she charged through it, nearly tripping over her own feet. Which was a good thing, because it brought her to a stumbling halt before she could run into the sofa that Jennifer was propped up on, fast asleep but not snoring.
That was wrong. Jenny snored louder than backed-up diesel trains; Jenner had driven away three boyfriends one sleepless hour at a time, Jen-Jenners had been teased by Mary for countless hours about it to the point where she’d wondered if she’d been forcing the poor girl into a habit.
In fact, a silent, sleeping Jenny was so otherworldly and bizarre that it completely distracted Mary from the quiet crackling, hissing of the only other person in the room, until it said something, which was “You.”
It was wearing a charcoal-grey suit. That was the most obvious part of its outfit, the bit that really pulled it all together. It had started with that central piece, decided it made a statement, and then repeated it several dozen times over. Its tie was charcoal-grey. Its shirt was charcoal-grey. Its socks, shoes, and buttons were charcoal-grey, and all of this was accentuated nicely by its complexion, which was charcoal-grey with reddish undertones because it was made entirely of still-burning charcoal.
Quite human, though. Apart from the absolute lack of a face. Or a proper head; just a mish-mash lopsided lump like the single shape Mary had ever managed to make at a pottery course.
Mary waited. It didn’t say anything else. She suddenly wasn’t sure whether the awkwardness was heightened or lowered by the fact that one of them wasn’t breathing.
“Yes?” she said.
“A long time,” the charcoal man said. It flickered softly as it spoke, lighting up the walls with beautiful patterns. The shadows made Mary’s eyes cross and teeth hum if she looked at them head-on.
“Never met you before,” she said. “I think I’d remember. Tree, what is this thing?”
The tree didn’t say anything.
Mary heard a hissing, wheezing whistle, so flat and dead that it took her a minute to realize it was coming from the charcoal man; a laugh like a lazy man’s bellows. “Rightfulness,” it said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” said Mary. “And what did you do to Jenny?” Any fear she’d been feeling had been left back at the moment before she’d crushed an ogre’s testicles, and this goddamned thing was too annoying for her to start worrying again. If she hadn’t been wary of burns and confused, she half-thought she’d have started punching it already.
The charcoal man stretched out its hand, a single digit extended towards the pine, and Mary felt warmth spread across her front like a summer bonfire at marshmallow range.
“Spelled the human, in the perfect moment, with no knowing eyes watching, warding. The wise one gone, her daughter gone, nothing left but ignorant you, innocent her. Innocent her: bait for you: bait for it. Its rightful death. Cheater. Coward. Refugee.”
“Life is cheating death, no death is righteous, and all of us are refugees at some time in our lives,” said the pine. “You are in error. And I do not know you.” Its needles were quivering against Mary’s back, and for a moment she had to stifle the urge to giggle.
“Liar,” breathed the charcoal man. “Hider in human shadow. Years promised as mine, years waiting for I to come to burning, scant hours for I to burn and find you gone. Gone to hide in human shadow, human blood. Chased you, haunted you, hounded you, and never you tell them what I am and that you hide. Hide from I.” It laughed again, and Mary felt herself start to sweat.
“What is it talking about, tree?” she asked.
“Nothing. It is a liar.”
“Liar, liar, liar, liarliarliar,” chanted the charcoal man. “You were mine to burn, and caught alone. You knew the rules. I strength against yours, greater. Your fear, strong-smelling, stinking. You demanded human tribute – begged. You hid in man’s vessel, formed from earth, baked with I strength, before I could arise, and stayed shrunken and small. You stole of I infant strength to avoid my doom on you. You dragged I doom with you through centuries, on the backs of men, waiting for I to die. I do not die. Not with you unburned. You are sad. You are stupid. You are the younger magic to I. You are prey. Give I yourself.”
Mary shifted uncomfortably.
“This fucker telling the truth?” she asked the pine.
It didn’t answer.
“That’s an answer,” said Mary. “Mom told me that. Answer me this now: did you piss this thing off into chasing my family for thousands of years just to kill you?”
“yes” said the tree. Very small.
“That’s a better answer,” said Mary grimly. “Not a good one. But better. Some protector.”
“Give I yourself,” repeated the charcoal man. “Give I it.”
Mary thought very hard and very fast and maybe even a bit carefully.
“Sure,” she said. And off came the baby carrier, into her arms with the pot, holding it carefully and with a wary grip. One finger stroked the tree’s base ever-so-slightly and gently.
“Go on,” she said. “Take it.” Her arms strained a little as she held it out.
Charcoal man leaned forwards, hands glowing kiln-hot now for the first time since he was born by a river thousands of years ago. He couldn’t not reach for it. No matter how loud the instincts screamed of a trap, or the mind warned itself of deception, when the reason you exist is right there in front of you, you can’t help but reach for it.
He was quick too. The melting pile of his face was only a few inches away when Mary heaved the bowl into it.
Pottery met charcoal, earth met fire, elder met eld, and the only thing that can break magic… broke magic.
Very loudly.
Shreds of charcoal-grey suit rocketed into Mary’s face in the sudden glare, a quickly blurred image of perfect fabric vaporizing in impossible heat.

When she woke up, it was because Jennifer – Jenners – was snoring again. Very loudly. She sat up, groaning at what felt like the worst sunburn she’d ever had and spitting out a few half-melted threads of silk.
The condo was a wreck. Everything inside it down to the interior walls had burnt down, leaving it a strangely smokeless husk. Not an ounce of colour was left except for the pine; ever she and Jenny were dyed grey by the ashes coating the floor. She considered the very real possibility that she was coated with a small amount of charred ogre, then immediately stopped.
The tree was a sad sight. Its bowl was cracked right down the centre, and every last one of its outermost needles was crisped to a stump, giving it a shrunken, shamed look which it might’ve managed anyways.
“Is it dead?” she asked it.
“Yes.”
“Forever?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“… yes.”
“Good.”
Mary got to her feet and dusted herself off. “First things first,” she said, “we’re getting the fuck out of here. And then we’re getting you a new bowl. One that won’t start some sort of bullshit millennium feud. But we’re waiting ten minutes first so Jenners can get a nap, got it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then we’re going home and you’re telling me everything my mother forgot, got it?”
“Yes.”
“Great.” She yawned and sat down next to her sister. “Oh, last thing…”
“…yes?”
“No more adventures?”
The tree thought.
“No more adventures,” it decided.
“Pity. We’ll just have to make our own.”

“Small Trees,” copyright 2011, Jamie Proctor.

My gramma
by, Tammy, age, seven.

My gramma is my momma’s oldest relative, and, she is a Good Lady. She is nine, hundred years old and she has long grey hair and is bald on top like daddy’s grampa was before he caught the cancer and went away to live in a box. She is very tall and very wide and she can pick me in one hand and my sister who is six in the other and take us out riding on Sammie, who is her Bird.
Sammie is a big big bigger crow, who is bigger than my momma’s car. He can fly very reelly fast, and he says his name is Sawmeall, but gramma says to just call him Sammie because it irritatitatites bugs him a lots. He says his momma was a dark cave and his daddy was a dank wind and he helps gramma ever since she beat him with a riddle he couldn’t solve so now he had to promise to help her wich seems very silly but we don’t tell him because it would hurt his feelings.
Sometimes Sammie flies us to gramma’s house far, far, far, far, far away, but we’re always back in time for dinner because gramma won’t feed us dinner because she says we’d get sick. Gramma’s dinner is made from things that she won’t tell us but most of them are red and slimy and gross. She says if you eat them raw it’s not so bad but we think it’s disjusting. Gramma’s house has no doors and you have to come in through the chimney because all the windows hide when you look at them from outdoors. Gramma says they do that because they are shy but they are not good people and you should never try to feed them anything or they will bite your fingers rite off to the nuckles.
Gramma’s house has good books. Some are bigger than you are and some have, teeth, and some are both and gramma says to stay away from those but we already do because they growl at you and have meen eyes. Some of them are cookbooks and some of them are dictonairys and some of them are Very Special and gramma says we can reed them onse we are older.
In the attik of gramma’s house there is an old chest. We cannot open the old chest because it is lokked, and gramma doesn’t have the key because she gave it to an old, old, old, dragon to look after as a favour after she put an terribul curs on a sword that somebody said was going to kill him one day. We have never met the old, old, old, dragon, because, gramma says he is her x-husband, and he would be, cross to meet us and maybe eat us or breath poyson all ovver us. I told gramma that dragons breath fire but she says no, this one doesn’t, he breaths horribul poyson and you drown in it there is so much. It sounds gross and bad and I am glad we did never meet him but my gross little brother thinks he sounds cool because he is stupid and four. Gramma says he’s not as special as me and my sister because he is a boy and that meens he is stupid about this stuff.
Gramma takes us swimming sometimes in the lake that her house is nex to. It is big and misty and the misty trys to talk to you so you have to ignor it and, keep your eers underwater or it gets loud and angry. If the misty gets too angry gramma chases it away and says she’ll give it the back of her hand but not the whole hand because I guess it would be too much. The lake is full of ded fish but they are still moving, so, they are not reely ded fish just pretending like my sister pretends to cry, they like to nibbl your tos and it tickles. Gramma never swims with us because the water makes her teeth ake so she stays on the shore, and, tells us stories. One story gramma told us was about how she married a handsum prins one day and then she had children and lived happy ever after, but then the prins got jelus and had her loked up and she had to lern lots of magic to get away. Then she loked the prins up insted, in an, iron box, and she keeps it in her cupbard. The box is very small and has a little hole in front and she let us feed him bredcrums. He says bad words.
My favvorite thing that my gramma ever did was when we were visiting her and we got lost in the woods. I met a man who was like a doggy and had big teeth and he tried to grab me but I bit him first and ran away when he chased me. Then I hid in a big tree that gramma showed me because it was her friend, and it wouldn’t let, the doggy man inside no matter how many meen things he said to it. I hid in the tree for hours and hours and then gramma came walking down the path. I new it was gramma because I can see her no matter what, but she looked like an old little lady. The doggy-man tried to jump on her and she picked him up by his scruff and yelled bad words into his face and his face ran away. Then she threw him into the big tree and gave me a hug and spanking for going missing because she told us how bad the woods are. It hurt a lot but then she took us to a place with ice creem made from reel ice and it tasted like sweet snowflakes.
The other favvorite thing that my gramma ever did was when she was visiting us and it started raining so she had to take us home. It was a lot of rain and Sammie was flying fast but not fast enough because there was a thunderstorm, so, my little sister started crying because she is only six and that makes her cry a lot. I didn’t cry at all a bit. Gramma gave us hugs and told us to shush-shush and then she shook her fist up at the clouds and told them to Nock It Off. And they did not nock it off. So she stood up on Sammie’s back and told him to fly strait and then she reeched up reely high and she punched the stormclowds rite in there faces. And she punched them three more times and said something Very Special in between eech punch and then she pulled all the litning rite out like a string and she put it in her hair and all her hair went all sparky and sparkly and pretty so she started laughing and so did my sister and me. That was very nice and there was no more thunderstorm and my sister stopped crying but I didn’t because I wasn’t.

I love my gramma a lot and she is the best gramma in the world. Sumday she says I can tell mummy and daddy about her.

Tammy.

“My Gramma,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

What?
No, what’s with that face you’re making? Don’t give me the silent treatment here, I don’t take passive-aggressiveness well at all, young lady. I’ve been waiting tables in holes like this part-time on and off for years, and you lose patience with bull pretty damned fast.
Really? Oh for goodness’s sake, you need an explanation for THAT?
Well, if you insist… what the hell do they teach you people in schools nowadays. Here, budge up and let me take a sit-down.

So, the issue started when I woke up five minutes early today. I shut off my loud-ass alarm before it could go, and unbeknownst to me, my upstairs neighbour sort of relied on that to wake her up for work in time – I think her name is Stephanie or something. Anyways, she slept in for two hours and only woke up when her cat bit her arm so he could get some breakfast, and didn’t check the clock until she was done waking up, kicking him, and feeding him.
So Stephanie went in to work – hours late – and when her boss saw the scratch marks all over her arm and heard her half-assed excuses for the time she thought that Stephanie was the burglar she’d had to chase out of the store after-hours last night – landed a good buncha punches on the intruder’s arm with a stapler. Boss-lady’s a bit paranoid and jumpy and living on more caffeine than sleep (comes with running a coffee shop, I guess), so she just freaks out in Stephanie’s face, Steph yells at her, and then before anyone really knew what was going on half the office was fighting the other half. Total sum of injuries was in double digits.
Well, one of the secretaries there – Charlotte, I think – was just about due for lunch break, so she takes advantage of a built-in excuse to leave and heads out for her bagel early. But the morning rush hasn’t really died down yet and she gets stuck in a crowd, where some crazy dick steals her purse. That’s even worse than it sounds because she was planning to pay her sister back that big loan she took out before she had to have Charlotte’s kneecaps snapped later in the evening.
Hey, you got a light? Thanks.
So, Charlotte needed ten thousand dollars, and she needed it fast. So she went to her bank, tearfully pleaded with them, was redirected to the ATM, and, well, went a little postal. Ripped off the closest cashier’s stocking, threw it over her head, and held her hostage with one of those horrible little pens they make you write with in there until they opened up the vault. The whole thing was over pretty fast, except for the car chase. Charlotte doesn’t have a license – she’s environmentally conscious and uses public transportation – so it started off a little rocky, but by the ending nobody’s speedometer was in double digits anymore and the highways were being cordoned. Pretty satisfying all around, I say, especially for the officer that finally took her down – Margaret, that was her. Never “Marge,” was real firm about that – “sounds like margarine or the Simpsons character, or maybe a withered little ninety-year-old lady with prune breath.” Yeah, Margaret shot out her tire, let her skid into a barricade, and then handcuffed the arm that was still working. Poor Charlotte. At least her sister took pity on the whole thing and decided she’d learned her lesson enough – and I think she hired a lawyer for her free of charge. Said she’d make a good getaway driver once she figured out braking.
Margaret didn’t take the whole thing that well at all; she went straight to the bars after work, got real maudlin, and ended up going home late with three other women. One of them – Candice? – got up at five in the morning to take a piss and tripped over…uh… was it Margaret’s cat, her own feet, or both? Both. Yeah, both. Anyways, she tripped on them and managed to set off the fire alarm, which put me (this was my apartment building, didn’t I say?) and about a hundred other people out on the streets a bit early and pretty damned surly. And to make matters worse, one of the girls with Margaret ran into her friend-with-benefits in the crowd – Tammy, yeah – and Tammy got all snide and snippy. Bit of a prude, she always was. A very good hypocrite though, as the girl pointed out. Well, that turned out a mite uglier than it might’ve, but Margaret still had a pair or two of cuffs lying around (can’t imagine why, can you?) and the whole thing was smoothed over fast enough.
Tammy wasn’t a fan of her jail much, and she used her call for a lawyer. Of course. Problem was, her lawyer was busy with Charlotte. And when she told Tammy so, well, Tammy broke the phone. And guess who got called in to fix it the next morning, huh? My sister, Antoinette. And guess who found her ex-girlfriend in a cell for punching up half a bar? Antoinette. Hey, while you’re at it, guess who hadn’t told her ex-girlfriend yet about the ex-girlfriend part? Antoinette.
Got a smoke to go with this light? Aw, thanks, you’re a sweetheart.
So they started fighting. A few snide remarks, a few hurtful comments, and by the time half an hour had gone by the phone was half-fixed and ignored and they were screaming – Antoinette about how she’d never called her back after she let the iguana starve to death, and Mary about how Antoinette had always been too fat.
And after that Antoinette felt so betrayed and used that she just snapped out the first thing that popped into her head, which was that Mary’s quasi-incestuous relationship with her step-brother that she’d confided in her was in fact non-incestuous because she knew for a fact that he was adopted, which just about completely ruined the whole thing for Mary on the spot. Poor kinky thing crumpled like cardboard and started crying, and that got Antoinette booted out.
Now, since she was tired and cranky, she phoned me up to whinge about it. Only now I was busy working my other job, which involved driving, and I ended up rear-ending some SUV-driving twit who decided that slowing before braking was for the little, insignificant people. Put my fist in her teeth and cracked a knuckle, so me and the car both had to go separate ways for repairs.
While I was at the hospital, the doctor received a phone call from Stephanie – her best friend – about how she’d just been fired, got depressed, and perked herself up before the surgery with a hit of something she’d written her own prescription for. She must’ve slipped a bit too much, because she sort of confused me for someone else, put me under anesthetic before you could say kiss-my-ass, and I woke up with my wisdom teeth removed and my knuckle still swollen, but with a bandaid on it. The doctor was sorry, and gave me some meds to kill the swollen mouth and stop the drooling a little. So that was THAT problem solved, only my goddamned shiftless coworker needed a pick-me-up and swiped ‘em while I was in the bathroom five minutes ago. Not a problem, I think, sure I can cope. Except on the trip between the kitchen and your booth here I think I gained five pounds in pure saliva, and it was either drop it in front of me or spray it in your face.

And that’s why I spat in your eggs just now. Christ, why’s it so hard to get young people to understand something so simple.

“A Simple Explanation” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

My suit is itchy, scratchy, and new. It squeaks when I walk, like a rat in a trap. The bundle of crudely-printed pamphlets is a comforting weight in my left hand, slightly sticky with low-quality ink in the aimless humidity of summer.
The house is slovenly, ill-kept. Its lawn lies in ruins, of the two cars in the driveway, one is missing all its tires, half its hood, and its engine has been stripped bare three times over. The other doesn’t appear to have benefited much from its brother’s donations.
I knock on the door, and a dog barks, sound muffled by its flapping lips and drool.
A creak, a crack, and a suspicious, pudgy face with too much stubble and too little beard.
“Greetings this day, sir or potentially madam! Have you heard the –”
The door slams shut with an indecipherable curse and a lot of creaking. I bow politely to it and place a single loose-leafed pamphlet on the misspelt-by-wear “welco” mat. Perhaps it will be enough, perhaps not.
This home stands firm. It has been tended to – with care, if not obsession – and someone has even put in the effort to do some halfhearted weeding in the flowerbeds, where overstuffed bumblebees are even now ambling. The face that opens the door is puzzled, not wary, and I don’t smell the aroma of an interrupted meal. Perfect opportunity.
“Hello there,” the owner says. It’s scrawny and leathery but not particularly tough-looking, like an old shoe.
“Greetings this day, human,” I say politely, taking care not to appear over-eager. “Have you heard the soundless word?”
The expression is probably puzzled – the eyebrows are doing that thing again, where one of them twitches a lot. “I’m sorry?”
“The scream that speaks! The wailing and gnashing of teeth delivered by the prophets, who speak the word of the one-who-begins!”
The owner scratches himself in an idle, indolent sort of way. “Sorry…which prophets? I’m not sure I’ve heard of much of this before.”
“The Worm of Terror and the Unending Maw, mostly,” I say. “Mostly the Maw. It’s still proselytizing, I believe, in the temple-without-bottom-or-depth. You can travel there when it speaks on the eighth Tuesday of every month.”
“Uh-huh. Listen, sorry, I’m, uh, catholic. Good luck.” This door clicks when it closes, but is no less final than its neighbour’s thud-whack.
I fantasize about tearing it into millions of pieces smaller than a spider’s breakfast, then control myself with an effort. I represent something greater than myself here, and to look poorly is to make it appear so. I’d have to eat the whole block to cover it up, and I’m sure that Father Breath would know somehow, no matter what I did. He just does, and then he gives you that very sad, drawn, disappointed look with all five of his eyes.
Courage and persistence in the face of it all, I remind myself, and leave a pamphlet, faintly oozing blue-ringed octopus ink and venom. The last page said something about how the faithful would be rendered immune to its effects, and it would be a good idea to convert now, which was probably true or at least close enough.
“May your agony be holy,” I say politely to the closed door, and with a heavy heart I turn towards the final home of the street, the last of many. It is small and poorly-painted and there is a fat, monstrous cat on its stoop, sunning himself indolently. It hisses at me, as they tend to do.
Knock, knock, knock. A proper old-fashioned doorknocker. None of this electric buzzer claptrap, or a bare, bald-faced door. Maybe this one will be different.
The face that answers it is wrinkled and pale, with many spots. Peculiar little metal and glass things are cupping its eyes and possibly restraining them from toppling out of their sockets thanks to the permanent forty-five-degree hunch their owner possesses.
“Hello?” it asks. Its voice is thin and wavery, like an elder forced to speak above the waterline, but slightly more comprehensible without the bass hissing underlying every other syllable.
“Greetings this day, heir of decay and slave of reason,” I say. “Tell me, have you put any thought into the state of your impending demise at the hands of your flesh-shell?”
It blinks at me, so very slowly that the gesture doesn’t seem to merit its connotations of quickness. “Are you the postal man?” it asks.
I decide to employ strict truth. “I am a messenger of sorts.”
“Well that’s just peachy then. Come on in, you’ll catch your death of cold.”
I step inside the house – which is notably cooler than the outside – and am confronted with forty-five tonnes and sixty-year’s worth of bric-a-brac and trinkets. I am vividly reminded of my father-spawner’s mindhoard, if it contained less cursed idols and more chintz.
“Would you like a drink or something mister…”
To claim a name at my slender age would be most presumptuous, but I have permission granted for short-term pseudonyms, provided I express proper horror and self-disgust after the affair is through.
“Walk,” I say. “Brother Walk.” A small, tiny, miniscule title, but still outside my reach. “Water would be appreciated if gifted freely.”
“Wong? Funny, you don’t look it.” On a less shrivelled face, that look might have passed for critical, but here it looks entirely lost. “But I suppose you do look a bit foreign. You speak English so well though, mister Wang.”
I casually check my face as it busies itself at the kitchen. No wonder the last few houses had gone sour so quickly – my left cheekbone had sunk out of sight. I gingerly pop it back into place with only a slight sucking sound, easily masked by the nattering of the human.
“… lovely to get a visitor. And how’s Sherry?”
“I do not know a Sherry,” I respond, truthful.
“Well, I always knew she’d up and do that sort of thing. Dreadful tramp, if you’ll pardon my saying so, and you’re all the better for it. Plenty more fish in the pond and all that.” A half-glued mug of some manner of fruit juice is thrust onto me. “There you are, mister Walker. And the children?”
I am a child myself, and would not dream of bifurcating this century, let alone actual spawning. But my younger brothers and sisters provide an easy way out of once again speaking nothing but truth, and I can echo “they’re fine and growing,” with nothing but a light and free hearts.
It nods aimlessly and produces another mug for itself.
“Miss resident of Oakview two-hundred-forty-three,” I say, deciding it is time to get down to business, “have you heard the soundless word?”
“Every night, mister Wally,” she says firmly. “Every night. They simply can’t keep it down next door. I know, I know, I was up to some pretty fishy things at that age too, but I was quiet and discreet, no matter what. Self-restraint is simply too rare in this day and age…”
I think of how many of my younger brothers and sisters I’ve had to consume after they’d eaten themselves into torpors, becoming comatose, useless lumps of nothing. “Indeed.”
“And they’re at it every night! They’ll wear all the fun out of it, they will – without novelty, nothing’s enjoyable! Why, me and Herbert only did it maybe three times a month. And we planned ahead; none of this willy-nilly stuff and nonsense.” It snorts into its mug.
“Hominid,” I say, attempting to return to the topic at hand, “when I speak of the soundless word, I refer to that which is spoken by the one-who-begins, the great consumer, who swims in the center and feasts. Do you know anything about that?”
“Can’t say I do,” it says brightly. Then it frowns. “Unless you mean your uncle Eddie. He just wouldn’t stop eating, you know. And he never did wait half an hour before swimming afterwards. Poor man. At least the shark choked on him, so they got it too.”
“It is scribed in the fortieth tablet of the ninth verses of the tales of the lost starfisher that the shark is the ruin of all hope of life,” I say helpfully, in an attempt to keep the conversation on track.
“Do tell!”
“Yes. You see, mister resident, we are all as larvae, adrift on the empty waves and battling the zooplankton of doubt, hope, and remorse. We distract ourselves in our efforts to gorge upon our younger, less-apt siblings, while ever trying to ignore the gaping maw that lurks beneath.”
“Yes?” It appears to be paying attention for the first time, and I feel my ichor begin to pump a little faster as I got into the sermon.
“And the thing about this, resident, that must be understood: that maw does not care about you. You are incidental to its purposes, and it is only going about its business – seizing a nearby fish, perhaps, which itself is an entity that is barely within your tiny perspective. The shark is the ruin of all hope of life, and this can only be a good thing, for without hope, understanding may be found, and only those who understand can begin to thrive. Though, of course, not survive.”
I watch as she thought this over, feeling rather pleased with myself. Stirring stuff, even if I had borrowed some of the broader metaphor and a few of the specific lines from Father Breath. It was only tribute to him, really.
“Tell me, mister Wilbur,” she says at last.
I wait. For quite some time.
“Yes?” I ask after about thirty cycles of my digestive tract, once it has become apparent that it is asleep.
“I’m sorry, young man?”
“You were about to tell me something,” I clarify.
“Oh yes! Tell me, mister Wallace… you see, that’s all very fascinating, but I just have one little question about your church.”
I’m willingly to ignore its inaccurate terminology for the sake of expedience. I’ve seen several human churches in the past few days, and comparing the widetombs where the low sermons are held to them is like comparing a decaying whale to a healthy human.
“Tell me… do you have Sunday school?”
“Every day is a learning experience for elder and young, resident,” I say. “From when to hide when the ur-beetles shriek and when they are merely sporting, to the correct suns to curse and pray to when the moons lie a-synch.”
“Yes, but do you have Sunday school?”
“We teach our children on every day of any week, every lesson they must learn. Except the ones they need to learn themselves on pain of purge.”
“Yes, that’s quite lovely, but do you have Sunday school?”
“Yes. We have schooling on Sundays.”
“How lovely. I know a few of my great-grandchildren would simply adore the chance. And your church, is it near?”
“Wherever futility is made idol, sapient.”
“That’s just lovely,” it says. “Do you have the address?”
I hand over a pamphlet, taking care not to touch its skin directly. I know that you can’t CATCH mortality, but superstition runs in my family. Knock on iron.
“Everything you need to know,” I say with absolute truth, “is in there. And now I am afraid that I must be off. I have spread the soundless word to this road, and my task is done.”
“Oh, aren’t you a good boy,” it says fondly. “Here, have a cookie for the road.”
I accept the small, nutritionally dead bit of charred grains and eat it through one of the orifices in my face. I’m in a hurry now, and just guess at which one is socially acceptable.
“Now, you stay safe out there,” it calls after me as I walk down the sidewalk, innards grating away the baked layers of its gift. “There’s all manner of nasty things that can happen after dark, and I’d hate to hear of a nice young man like yourself coming to harm!”
“The scream that speaks will mask me,” I reply to it, “and concern is the great lie that voids the unending pain.”
“Be sure to wear bright colours on the road at night!”
“Thank you, anthropomorph!”

I count my pamphlets as I walk off the edge of the street and into the empty that wraps around it, out of sight and mind and soul’s understanding of its residents. I started with… I struggle to remember my training in numbers… four…ty. Then I put (hmmm) thirtish on doorsteps. Then I gave one away.
Still, one convert is a gateway to dozens more. And the spawn would be intrigued to meet young of another species. Perhaps humans would be more intellectually and spiritually sensible at a younger age. What was that line of Father Breath’s? Ah, yes.
“’Give me a pupae before it reaches full bloat and bursts,’” I quote, in humanese, “’and it will belong to the broken dreams of the one-who-begins until it is drained away into the meme-pools of its far-descendants.”
Really, it lost a lot in the translation.

“Door to Door” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

Once upon a time, there was a lonely boy. His father was dead, his grandparents were dead, he had no brothers or sisters or aunts or uncles, and one day, his mother (who was a very powerful and much respected witch) died too.
Now, this boy was lonely, but he did not live alone. In his mother’s village, there were many who mourned for her, and who would have taken him in if he’d asked. But when he looked at the villagers, all he saw were the angry faces of the other little boys, the ones who made fun of him because they were jealous of his mother, who fought with him when the grown-ups weren’t looking.
So the lonely boy turned his back on his home, and he went travelling.
He walked to the far east, where he cut his way into the heart of a baobab tree and slept for three nights in it, drinking up its sap and its secrets in exchange for three headfulls of his dreams.
He walked to the far west, where he showed a hairy wild man how to shape blades to kill his kin, and learned the names and powers of every animal in the world.
He walked to the far north, where the world turned into sand and the air screamed insults that gnawed on his skin, and he learned the fiercest and most fiery curses in all the lands.
He walked to the far south, where the ocean slept in its bed, and after throwing three of his most favourite teeth into it he listened to all the whispers that came out of the oceans, and earned his new teeth from a shark.
He traveled, and he traded, and when he grew strong enough he simply took, seizing and grasping. He fought with a demon in the night in a wildfire and they each tore out the other’s eye – he put it in his socket and forced it to serve him. He stayed in a village and disrespected the chief, and when the people grew angry with him he ate their shadows and left them to wither away for years, ignoring their pleas. He forced spirits and ghosts to do as he pleased, and he hurt them when they begged to be let free.
By the time he came back to his home the lonely boy was an evil man, and a strong one, with arms that could uproot small trees and magic so strong that the air around him tasted like honey and iron. He walked into the center of town and he cursed the well dry, and he told them all that from that day on, they would do as he said.

Now. That was the end of that boy’s story – in a way, it wasn’t a boy’s story at all, not from the moment his mother died and he left home. But another one starts right here, right there.

This little boy had friends. Not many, but good enough. He had a family, a small one, but a pretty good one. Sure, his mama and his papa fought, but only with words and they never for keeps. He knew how people could be cruel, but also how they could be kind. Which was why it made him angry to see the magician as he hurt them; cursing anyone who dared to step across his shadow (which was three times as long as it should be) beating children who made fun of him behind his back (not that you could, with his stolen, blood-glowing eye watching all the time); and taking food and property from people without asking or bargaining, or drinking up their water in the middle of the driest time of the year. It made the little boy so mad that he mumbled words that his father used, and got smacked by his mother.
“Mind your tongue, little boy,” said his mother.
“She’s right,” said the little boy’s uncle, when he complained to him about it. They were outside the little boy’s house – uncle’s sister’s house – throwing small sharp wooden darts at a tree trunk, aiming for the knothole. Uncle was losing, as usual. “You’ve got to mind your tongue. You speak too fast and too free.”
“But it’s true,” said the little boy. “The magician really is an evil old” so and so.
The uncle bopped him, but lightly. “You listening? That sort of thing doesn’t help you any and it might hurt you. You really want to do something about this man?”
The little boy nodded so hard that his neck wobbled three ways.
The uncle gave him a thoughtful, feelful look. “That’s good. That’s right. You just need a plan then. You make the right plan, you can do anything. You got a plan?”
“I will kill him and throw him in the river,” said the little boy. Fwwt, his last dart sank into the knothole’s center.
The uncle sighed, and tossed aside his final dart carelessly. “That’s a goal. You want a plan. How you going to do this?”
The little boy thought. “I will fight him,” he said.
“Remember the last man that fought him? What happened to him?”
“Oh,” said the little boy.
“Look,” said the uncle, “he’s got magic, you’ll need magic. Here, I got a little bit left over from years back before, when his mother gave me a hand with something.” Uncle gave the little boy a smooth, shiny rock. It was a nice rock.
“This is a nice rock,” said the little boy, who could be polite when he tried.
“That it is,” said uncle. “Magic too. What you do with this is you take it in your hand – like so – and you hold it real tight – like so – and then you walk four times around your house thinking real hard – like so. Then you’ll have a plan. Got it?”
The little boy nodded, held the stone in his hand real tight, and walked around his house four times thinking real hard, then four times more, then four times more.
“I have a plan,” he told his uncle.
“That’s good,” said uncle. “What is it?”
“I will steal his eye,” said the little boy.

Now, the magician was standoffish by nature and necessity, and his home lay apart from the rest of the people, in the middle of a bare and burnt clearing. Four withered trees with four withered branches each were his guards, on each side of his home, and he slept with his demon eye open and awake, ready for intruders. Nobody ever went near that place.
“That’s a big job,” said uncle. “You got a plan for that too?”
“Yes,” said the little boy.
“That’s fine,” said the uncle. “You need help?”
The little boy thought it over. “Yes.”
“I’ll help then,” said the uncle.
“Thank you. The first thing we need, we need a dead cow.”
“Don’t think your papa would like us doing that.”
The little boy thought it over some more. “Then we need a dead antelope.”
So they went out there and got themselves a dead antelope. Uncle was a good hunter.
“The second thing we need,” said the little boy, “we need to lure out a lioness.”
So they went further out there and tied up the antelope and shooed off jackals and birds and all other pests, and then a lioness showed up.
“The third thing we need,” said the little boy, “we ask her for her lullaby.”
“This is some plan you’ve got here,” said uncle. “You sure it makes sense?”
“Yes,” said the little boy, so uncle nodded and asked the lioness, who was a bit surprised to see uncle pop up out of the grass like that. But they’d given her some food, so it was a fair trade, and she taught them all ten verses of her lullaby to her kittens, which was full of deep, throaty purring and blood and bones.
“Strong stuff,” said uncle. “I think I know what you’re up to. What’s next?”
“I don’t know,” said the little boy. “I can’t count past three yet.”
“Four’s next,” said uncle.
“Oh. Then fourth, we’re going to need a bone.” So they took one of the split leg bones of the antelope once the lioness had sucked out the marrow, and the little boy said they were ready.
“Now we just wait for sundown,” said the little boy. “And then I will go to the magician’s home alone.”
“You be careful, got it?” said uncle. “Your parents would skin me four times over if anything happened to you because of this.”
“I’ll be careful,” said the little boy. He walked all the way to the magician’s home, and by the time he got there it was pitch dark, too dark to see or do much but sleep. He took out that cracked, split marrow-bone and he squeezed and wiggled and snuck himself inside it – tight, but he managed. Then he started creeping up along the ground, inch inch inch, towards the magician’s door.
“Psst,” said the first, burnt tree. “Who’s that at my master’s door?”
“I’m just a bone,” said the little boy. “I’m doing no harm, I have no arms and legs to harm with.”
“That’s true,” said the first tree, “but if you want to come by, you’d better pay me a gift of some of your bonemeal. No free passage,” it said firmly, and scraped the dirt viciously with its four withered, charred branches.
The little boy didn’t have much choice, so he scratched and scraped away a bit of the bone with his knife until the tree was happy, then crept closer.
“Psst,” said the second, burnt tree. “What are you doing there?”
“Just a poor old bone, wanting to pass through, with no arms and legs to hurt anyone at all” said the little boy.
“I heard that,” said the tree, crossly. “But I want a gift too. If the others get bonemeal and I don’t, I’ll be smaller and weaker, and they’ll make fun of me.”
The little boy couldn’t refuse any of the trees, so he shaved and scraped and gnawed at the bone with his knife until there was almost no room for him to hide in it, and all four trees had been satisfied.
“Hang on,” said the fourth tree. “Did you say you have no arms and legs to harm with?”
“Yes,” said the little boy.
“Then what are those things peeping out from under your sides?”
The little boy rubbed his stone and imagined walking around his house four times.
“You’re seeing things,” he told the tree.
“I have no eyes,” it said.
“Then something must be really wrong,” he told it. “You should ask a doctor.”
“Oh no!” said the tree, and it was so busy wailing and mumbling to its friends while they cursed its noisiness that it didn’t notice the little boy sneak inside.
There, on his big bed that was as tall as the little boy standing, was the magician. He was sleeping cross-armed, legs straight, his one demon eye open and watching. Now and then he cursed in his sleep and the air in front of him burnt up and vanished.
The little boy crept up closer, right under his bed – he kept having to hold still and press himself into the cracks in the walls when the eye glared near him – and started to hum, then whistle, then sing the lioness’s lullaby. Bones and blood and sinew, crackling marrow, long dark nights and the smell of prey, all wrapped up in a big grumbling purr that tied a hug around your heart eight times over.
The demon eye blinked, yawned, and napped, lulled off to dreams of its hunting days, and then it started snoring. The little boy counted one, two, three, four snores, and then he leapt up, plucked it out, and ran out the door with his stone in one fist and the eye in another, too surprised for it to even yell. The trees were still arguing, and their four sets of four branches didn’t so much as pause from their slapping and punching at one another even as the little boy ran past right under their trunks.

“I have it, I have it!” called the little boy as he ran into his home, interrupting mama and papa from their talk with uncle about the sort of relative who let little boys run away in the night.
“Have what?” asked papa.
“The magician’s eyeball,” said the little boy. “Didn’t uncle say? Here, look.”
“No!” said uncle. “Don’t look! If it sees us, he sees us. Can’t let that thing take so much as a peek at anyone here.”
The eyeball was struggling pretty hard by now, so this was more difficult for the little boy than he thought it’d be at first.
“Here,” said mama, and she pulled out a big jug and they put the eye in there and shoved in a stopper, leaving it to curse and rattle and rail at them all it liked. None of it mattered; the eye couldn’t see them and they were safe.
“So, now what?” asked uncle.
“You don’t even have a plan?” asked mama.
“It’s not mine,” said uncle
The little boy took out his rock and walked around the house four times, then came back in.
“We need some salt,” he said.
They didn’t have much, but they had enough. A few handfuls. Papa opened the jar – pointed away from everyone’s faces, to be safe – and before the eye could start up its cursing again, the little boy asked it “how can we kill the magician?”
The eye said words that the little boy would’ve been thumped for. Mama dropped a pinch of salt into the jar.
“Aiieee!” said the eye.
“How can we kill the magician?” repeated the little boy. “You should know how, and you have no reason to help him.”
“I am his most faithful servant,” hissed the eye, with a voice like a snake caught between two sticks. “I am the only thing that lives that he very nearly trusts, and in return he does not harm me! There is not a single thing you can do that would hurt me as much as he could.”
Mama’s lips pursed a little at that, and she dropped in another bit of salt. The eye wailed like a lost hyena.
“Maybe we could put in ants next,” said the little boy.
“No!” shouted the eye.
“Or maybe a hungry spider,” said papa.
“Not that!”
Uncle scratched his beard. “Could try giving it to the dog, see what he makes it,” he said. “Been a good boy too, he deserves it.”
“Mercy!” begged the eye.
“Then tell us how to kill the magician,” said the little boy.
“You can’t,” said the eye.
“We could stab him with weapons,” said papa, “or hang him.”
“He knows the secrets of the plants and the stones and everything underroot,” the eye said. “They cannot harm him.”
“We could tie him up and leave him out on the plains at night,” said mama.
“He knows the names of every animal that lives there,” said the eye. “They will not harm him.”
“We could throw him in the river, like you said,” said uncle to the little boy.
“He has council of the oceans,” said the eye. “A little river shall not harm him.”
“What about fire?” said the little boy.
The eye thought. “Hah,” it said. “A good try, but that will fail too. At a single flick of his eye – his other, lesser eye – his shadow will wrap him up in its cold dark-bitten self. Not even the sun could scald him through that!”
For a moment there, no one knew what to say. So the little boy took his stone and walked around the house four times.
“Tell us how to stop the magician’s shadow,” he asked the eye.
“It is made from many, many, many shadows,” said the eye. “You must split it into pieces; how, I do not know. I have told you everything: now leave me be!”
“Right,” said uncle. He put the stopper back in the jar and gave it to the little boy. “Now what?”
The little boy took up his stone again, and started to walk around the house. One, two, three times, and then he had to hide behind a tree before he was finished, because the magician was walking up to the house, taller than papa and wider than uncle, single eye glaring and teeth showing in an angry snarl. His shadow was stretched out long, long, long behind him, and its hands were clenched into fists. The magician struck the house with the flat of his hand, and he yelled “Open up!”
The little boy heard nothing. Mama and papa were pretending they weren’t home.
“Come out now!” yelled the magician. “I know my eye was here – the thief’s tracks led this far. Come out now and bring me back my eye or I’ll eat all your shadows and curse your land into burnt crumbs! Open up!”
About then, uncle came back. He saw the magician up there in front of his sister’s house, and he knew what was going on.
“That’s my cousin’s cousin’s house,” said uncle. “What are you doing?”
The magician stomped over to uncle and glared down at him. “Your cousin’s cousin is a thief, and a scoundrel, and a leech, and I am going to sear him down to the spirit and then mangle it for my dinner. Where is he?”
“Gone hunting down by the river,” said uncle. “Been gone a week or more, the lazy man. A thief he is, and trouble for me and more than me. I’ll help you find where he is.”
“Good,” said the magician. “Show me where this lazy man is, and maybe I will let you live.”
So uncle walked off with the magician.
“He’s crazy,” said papa.
“Always,” said mama. “What are we going to do now?”
The little boy finished walking around the house once more, and even though his thoughts were a bit of a jumble, he made something up that seemed good to him.
“I know what to do,” he said. And he chased down the trail left by uncle, who had made a point of walking through mudpits and other damp places to leave good clear tracks.
The magician left no footprints, but here and there plants had been crushed and small things eaten by his shadow.

Down at the river – a good river, still flowing, even in the driest time of the year – uncle was leading the magician from fishing hole to fishing hole. “Not here. Not there. Not near, but where?”
The little boy watched and waited. He had a plan, and he hoped uncle did too. He hummed a bit of the lioness’s lullaby, as loud as he dared, and saw the magician look up and around with a start.
“Did you hear something?” he said.
“Just a lion,” uncle said casually. He looked very closely across the river and winked at the little boy, who was peering at him from between the rushes.
“I know every lion and lioness’s name,” said the magician. “And I do not know that lioness. Not properly. She sounds…muffled.”
“Maybe she’s sick,” said uncle. He was looking in the water, then back at the little boy, then waggling his eyebrows.
The little boy uncorked the jar with the eyeball in it and threw it into the water before it could scream. As it sank, fish swam to it, churning about the water.
“Look! See down there, in the water!” called uncle, pointing frantically at the swirl. “There, there, there! It’s my cousin’s cousin!”
“At the bottom of the stream?” asked the magician.
“One knows he’s a lazy, lazy man,” said uncle, raising an eyebrow across the river to no one in particular. “He only catches the fish that are two tired and old to bite bait, and just scoops them off the bottom of the pond three at a time. Laziness! Look, see here, you can see him in the water.”
The magician bent over to look into the pond, uncle yelled “FOUR!”, and the little boy threw his stone at the magician’s head. It bounced off with a clang, without so much as a dent, and vanished into the river, but it did what it had to do, which was put him off balance. The magician’s shadow lunged up into the air, peeling itself off the ground and ready to jump across the water, and then uncle shoved the wobbling magician off his feet and into the stream.

The eye had been right, of course. The waters parted around his lips and gave him breathing room, and he was swimming back to the surface with murder in his face quick as a blink. But his shadow could not swim, and it was dragged down after the magician and torn to pieces in the swift-shining currents, sending peels and dashes of smaller shadows everywhere that flittered away on the wind.
“RUN!” yelled uncle, and he and the little boy were off like shots, out into the dry long grasses by the time the magician had stepped onto the riverbank. But the magician was tall and strong and fast, and each of his steps was three of theirs, and he was driven on by mad hate now. There was no way they could outpace him.
“Hide,’ whispered the little boy, and they ducked into the grasses without a sound.
The magician came stomping up seconds later. His shadow was the size of a big man’s, and his one eye shone with nothing but sweat. He was tired and angry and he’d lost the trail of his prey, without his eye to watch and his shadows to lead, and he was furious.
Such a mood leads a man who was raised without attentive, admonishing relatives to words. Bad ones that made the air curl bright red and spark apart.
“Don’t say that,” said a voice to his right.
The magician whirled around and snarled at the bushes that had made the noise. They smoked.
“That either,” said something to his left. “Mind your tongue.”
The magician turned around again and yelled something that shredded apart half a grove of young acacias. A gazelle sprinted for cover.
“Don’t say that!” repeated the first voice, and a little wooden dart came zipping out of some grass that he was sure he’d cursed just a moment ago. It bounced off his head and made him wince. He screeched at the grass and it collapsed into hissing ashes.
“Carelessness!” said the second voice. “That isn’t helping and it might hurt someone!” Another dart, this one poking him in his good eye, setting him blinking and making his vision run watery. He yelled something really nasty at whatever he could see, and a shower of embers fell apart where stalks had sprouted.
“Stop it!” said the first voice, and it launched a dart right up the magician’s nose.
He swore and he stamped and he screamed and he bellowed and he let out a curse that caught the air on fire, fwoosh, and up went half the plains around him in flame. All around him, at the driest time of the year.
The magician ran, but you can’t outrun the wind. The magician roared, but you can’t outroar a fire. And the magician, and all his secrets, and all his bargains and threats and power all went up in a great sour cloud of smoke that hung low and sullen over the plains for four days before the rains came and washed it away.
Uncle and the little boy were all right. They’d run back to the stream, where they’d hidden beneath the surface as the smoke ran wild. And when they’d been nearly too weak to swim, who had held their heads above the water but the little shadows – their trips back home to their bodies delayed by the blaze, and thankful for deliverance? Mama and papa came down to the stream when the fire passed by, and dragged them home the rest of the way, where they forced them to eat until they left to go play darts again.
“That was a pretty good plan,” said uncle to the little boy.
“I thought it was yours,” he said.
Uncle shrugged. “Makes no difference. Want me to find you another rock?”
“No thank you,” said the little boy. “I don’t think I need it.”
“Good for you,” said uncle. “Now, beat that,” he said, and he threw a dart straight into the knothole.
The little boy said something and something else, and uncle smacked him on the ear.

“Eyes,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

It began when a crow grew tired, and had a rest on a very strange stone building. It was full of the bustle and hum of voices, and seemed very old and tired-worn among its big steel nestmates. Now and again silence flourished, broken only by the quaver of one human speaking.
“Strange,” said the crow to herself. “What’s all this then?”
“It is a church,” said a deep-voiced alleycat beneath her, uninvited (which, of course, to cats is as good as any invitation).
“Oh? And what are they doing?” she asked.
“Praying,” said the cat with perfect disdain. “That’s what a church is for. You don’t know anything.”
“Oh I do so know, I do!” said the crow, annoyance filling her from beak to tail. “And what does this praying do?”
“They pray to god,” said the cat, “to give them mercy. And favours. And that sort of thing.” He yawned, flashing her every one of his teeth in what she thought was a needlessly showy manner. “I don’t see much point in it.”
“Well, I’ll bet you wouldn’t,” she said. “Gales, it’s not like you’ve ever needed or wanted help, not even when you got your tail broken, or your ear chewed off, or starved yourself half-thin like you are right now. Not at all.”
The cat looked unconcerned, but his ears twitched. “Insults won’t help your ignorance. Besides, that sort of thing’s for humans, not nosy little featherbags.”
“Oh how would you know,” she said. “And I’m sure you’re right disdainful of ignorance, being nothing but an overbearing old furball who’s never had the curiosity to get past bone idle stupidity. Fie on you and your kittens too! Your mother was an alley rat, your father was a mongrel mutt, and you were born in a cut-rate mouse-nest!”
The cat proceeded away nonchalantly, his tail giving him the lie with every vicious lash.
“Tramp!” she called after him, his pace quickening with each word. “Fleahouse! Dirty scallawag!” The last she’d heard a wrinkled old human use to cow a younger, and she fancied anything that lived that long must know what it was doing when it came to insults.
That should’ve been it. It could’ve been it. It might’ve been it. For any bird of smaller thoughts – one of the thousands of pigeons that littered the city – it would’ve been it.
But something had been touched there in the crow’s vain, too-big-for-its-own-good brain. A desire half-contrary, half-curious, and all-mad in its quiet little way.
“Just for humans,” she muttered and grumped. “Anything humans can do, a crow can do twice over or it doesn’t need to be done! What does an old rat-catcher know? Nothing!”
And with that she set out on her way to find a god for crows. And other birds too, of course, because admitting humans to be better than any relative of a crow’s (even….pigeons) was simply not to be borne.

There were complications to be overcome, of course.
“What is god?” said the big, scraped-up seagull the crow asked. “What is why do I care? I don’t. Pfaaark!” he spat, and went back to eating a bag of chips.
“What is god?” the sparrow chirped. It flittered to its fellows and exchanged some sharp words, then flapped back. “Nobody knows. Can’t be too important then.”
“What is god?” said a pigeon. It stared. “What is god?” it repeated.
The crow waited.

“Yes?” she said.
“What?” said the pigeon.
“Never mind.”

“What is god?” the dog said. She wagged her tail slow as she considered, idly chewing her way up the length of its leash towards the limp hand of its gently snoring, bench-bound owner. “What a strange question. Well, as far as she says” – a sideways shake of the head here indicated the comatose human – “it’s a really big, really perfect human. Lives somewhere called heaven, which is also perfect.” She chewed more intensely for a moment as she considered something. “Maybe it’s in the clouds? I’m not sure.”
“I think I would’ve heard about that by now,” said the crow firmly. “It’s all nothing and hot air, just like all the other human things. I bet they just made it up because they’re jealous of us, as usual.”
“Of course, of course,” said the dog carelessly. A finger, innocent and carefree in its slumber, brushed her lip, making her twitch.
“Besides, everybody knows you can’t make a nest in the clouds. You just fall right through them. Though I suppose they wouldn’t know, being so stubby-legged.”
“Right.”
The crow dipped her wings in thanks and fluttered away. Behind her, a small chomp and a sharp scream echoed in farewell.

“So,” she told herself. “God is a perfect thing. Well, obviously then it must be a bird. God is a bird, therefore god has a nest. God would have a splendidly big and perfect nest, where nothing would try to rob its eggs or eat it. Also, since humans think so highly of it, I’m sure they would help it somehow. Maybe it just tells them it’s a human. That’s what I’d do.”
That was what a crow would do, of course.
“So,” the crow went on, landing by a delicious pack of half-eaten potato chips and inspecting them vigorously, “god is in its nest, on the ground somewhere, with lots of humans looking after it, in a safe place. Outdoors. In the city.” She swallowed chip fragments (talking with your beak full, among corvids, is not considered rude). “That can’t be too hard to find.”
It wasn’t.

“That sounds like a zoo,” opined the grizzled little starling she’d cornered in a tree. “You’re sure you’re not gonna eat me?”
“Positive,” said the crow. “What’s a zoo?”
“A sort of human place where they have all sorts of animals in little nests they can’t leave and bring them food. Then they look at them. Don’t ask me why. Listen, I’m mostly feathers and bones this year, I’ve had bad luck scavenging.”
“Hmm,” said the crow, who wasn’t listening. “That sounds promising.”
“What? No, no, not at all. I’m gamey too. Had too many lean years when I was nearing maturity, warped up all my tender young flesh. Not that any of my mates ever understood that, oh no no, why they’re always on and on about how I’m-”
“Where can I find a zoo?”
“Uh, there’s a big one over on the east side of town. Just look for it near the park. Not that I ever spent much time in there, not with all of the big pushy shots taking up space like they were eight-pounds each and-”
“Thank you,” said the crow, and took off. The starling felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.

The zoo was easy to find, but god was trickier. There were a lot more animals there than the crow had guessed there’d be, and fewer birds.
“Well,” said the crow to herself, “if god were easy to find, I suppose it wouldn’t be very special.” But she was getting awfully tired of looking. Half a day gone already, and most of it on the fuel of one half-eaten bag of chips. A brightly coloured and only partially nibbled strawberry caught her eye with avid glee, and she swooped down to take it in all haste.
An extremely large tuft of hairy feathers stirred next to her, and a head poked out that was nearly half the size of her body.
“That’s mine,” said god.

God, according to the limited ability of the crow to read the sign outside heaven, was named “Cassowary.” She seemed ambivalent towards both names, and friendly enough once the crow apologized for the strawberry. Or at least, not hostile. Well, she didn’t mind the crow staring, even if it was a little impolite. But how could she not?
God stood taller than a human, and walked instead of flew. God’s feathers were long and slim and almost like hair. God’s head was bright blue and her neck was bright red and she had a strange crest on her head and oh my goodness and breezes she had such large claws on her feet. The crow realized she was staring again, and felt ashamed. Which is not a thing that crows do.
“So,” said the crow. “What’s it like?”
God looked at her.
“Being god, that is,” the crow clarified. “I mean, since you’re perfect.”
God considered this.
“Dull,” she said. “Sometimes cramped. Too many watchers. Too few trees.” Her voice was deep, very deep, so deep that the crow could barely hear her. It made her feathers hum, and her own caws sound tinny and chick-like to her ears.
The crow looked around heaven. There seemed to be a good number of trees to her, but she supposed that if god wanted privacy, there wasn’t much to be had.
“They could certainly do with a bit more respect,” she said censoriously, watching a chubby human chick burble and babble over the edge of the railing. “Honestly, if they’re going to smack up a big silly stone building because of you, you’d think they’d be willing to at least make sure to give you some space. And maybe someone to share it with.”
“The other one? He died. Choked on garbage.”
“Oh dear. Well, I’m sure he was very nice, whoever he was. What kind of mate do they give to a god anyways?”
God poked at her feathers. “Like me. Smaller.”
The crow hopped a little in surprise. “He was a god too?” Then the second thought hit her: “gods can die?”
God shrugged.
“Well,” said the crow. “Well. Well then.” The word “blasphemous” was new to her vocabulary, but she already had an inkling that saying some of the thoughts going through her head – such as how being able to die didn’t seem very perfect at all – would somehow be very rude. Which was strange, for a crow.
“What happens when you die?” she asked, shifting the conversation to a safer and less offensive topic.
God tilted her head to one side and examined the crow thoughtfully. She suddenly felt much smaller. “If,” she corrected herself, a little too quickly. “If you die, what happens? I mean, I heard that god gives birds mercy, whatever that is. And favours, which are nice. You can’t do that if you’re dead, can you?” Maybe that was what the being perfect solved.
“Can’t give anyone anything here,” said god, pointing idly at the fencing that blocked the small, leering crowd at a distance.
The crow gave the humans an unfriendlier-than-usual glare. “Can’t you just command them to let you out? You’re god, humans listen to god, it seems sensibly straightforward.”
“No,” said god.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said the crow, feeling more than a little let down, “heaven seems less perfect than I’d heard about. They won’t listen to you, they let your mate die after letting garbage get in (and they can’t have given you a very good mate if he choked on garbage, honestly, who makes that mistake who’s made it out of their nest), and they won’t give you enough space to get away from all that peeping and peering. They stare worse than hawks.”
God nodded mildly.
“And,” said the crow, “to top it all off, they won’t let you do any favours. Or mercy, I guess. Maybe they know you’ll just give it all to proper birds, and they’re just jealous. I bet they are.”
“True,’ said god. “Get me out.”

The crow didn’t take much convincing in the first place, and only offered up the smallest of objections, that being “but it’s heaven. Where else could you go?”
“Not proper perfect,” said god, not unreasonably. “So can’t be heaven.”
This argument made a lot of sense, especially as to how a perfect bird could die. No matter how perfect you were, if you weren’t in a perfect place, too, you could still get in trouble.
“How nasty of them to trap you away in a nasty little imitation!” said the crow. “If there’s a way, I’ll get you out of here. Besides, I know a few birds who could use some favours. A few at least. Well, none as much as me.”
“Of course,” said god. “Little man feeds at eight. Watch keypad.”
The crow waited and watched. In a suitably reverent manner, of course. God generously gave her the gift of a single strawberry, half-nibbled. The crow passed the remainder of the day humming crude approximations of some of the verses she’d heard in the church.
The human that came in with the food – he left it at a respectful distance – didn’t seem very little to the crow, especially around his belly. Nevertheless, her eyes were keen and his fumbling at the lock was slow, and the combination was securely tucked away in her mind soon enough: 8-6-3-5. He left one of his gloves tucked under the dish, she noticed with disdain. Honestly, wasn’t it enough for them to kill one god with garbage?
“Good,” said god. “Put it in.”
The crow put it in, god nudged the gate wide, and that would’ve been it if the human hadn’t just chosen that moment to remember his glove.
They stood there for a moment, god-to-ape, eye-above-eye (god was taller than him by maybe a foot, the crow judged).
Then god stuck out one foot with gentle force and shoved the human head over heels, then legged it.

She really could go at a tremendous clip, the crow marvelled. By the time she thought to follow, god had ducked away through the park and out of sight – and at night, too, with scarcely a friendly eye around to tell the crow when and where she’d gone.
“You’re crazy,” said the seagull.
“Not a sign,” said the sparrow, after a quick chat.
“What?” said the pigeon.
“Might have been, might have been,” said the starling. “I thought I heard something last night, but that could’ve just been my hearing playing up on me, what with the problems I’ve been having since my last mate pecked me in the head until I started bleeding everywhere. Now, that was a –”

When at last every trail had been proven cold as a corbie’s heart, the crow took her dashed hopes back to the church’s eves, where she’d found a nice sort of nook of miscellaneous twigs that she suspected had been a forgetful pigeon’s attempt at nestbuilding. It saved effort.
“Come crawling back with more questions?” asked a sardonic voice, and she knew the cat was beneath her again.
“Not at all,” she said, turning up her beak in disdain. His voice didn’t even sound particularly deep to her anymore.
“Oh really?” he said. “I don’t hear any more insults. You’re awfully thin on your bragging, little mouthful. What’s wrong, did your bird-god fly away?”
“She ran,” said the crow, with perfect dignity. “I let her out, and she ran. And soon she’ll be back in heaven any day now, and the very first favour I’m asking for is for you to lose all your fur to mange and fleas. So there.”
The cat chuckled, but his tail twitched alarmingly as he walked away. That was good enough for the crow, who was too busy consoling herself to trouble much over whatever he was up to.
“Of course she’ll get back eventually,” she said. “It’ll just take a little bit of time. Heaven’s a long way away or everybody would know where it was, and she does have to walk all the way – not that walking makes her less perfect, of course. Of course it’ll take a while. Of course”
She listened to the singing in the building underfoot, and began to hum along to the fancier, more interesting tunes.
“Well,” she said, after a minute, “maybe she could just spare a few little favours on the way. One at least. Surely.”
So she cawed along to improve some of the songs, and she prayed a bit. Because anything a human could do, a crow could do twice over.

“Birds,” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2011.

Herman was diagnosed at birth.  The nurse was the one that drew the short straw and had to tell his parents the bad news.
“I’m sorry,” she told them.  “It looks like he tests positive.”
Their faces drained away like spilled ice cream, and the father began to cry in that very tiny and sad way that extremely manly men do, much like babies.
“It can’t be!” said the mother.  Normally she wouldn’t say things like that, but in her drained state she’d completely lost the will to put the effort into forming original sentences and had fallen back on quoting her favourite shows.
“I’m afraid so,” said the nurse.  “Your son has contacted Life.”

The media got a good half-week of story out of the news, all told.  A big article with a bigger headline, a followup, an interview, and then some petty debates in the reader’s letters column that devolved into ad hominem arguments and bickering.  Several papers saw a slightly increase in readership and at least one intern was promoted.
Sometimes, when a very bad thing has happened, to know that it has helped someone else, somewhere, is not at all comforting in the slightest.

As Herman grew, his parents began to hope.  He played listlessly with his toys, he cried monotonously through his nights, he stared blankly at anyone who spoke to him.
“Maybe they were wrong,” said his father hopefully.
“Maybe!” said the mother, something extremely deep-rooted within her cultural, social, and mental context suggesting that agreeing with an idea may very well make it true.
And then, right in front of their eyes, Herman reached out to fumble aimlessly with his blocks, made them into a neat little tower, and knocked it over.  He laughed.
His father’s face crumpled up like thrice-used tinfoil, and his mother’s lip trembled.
“It’s all right, dear,” she said, patting him soothingly.  “It’ll be okay.”

Herman was sent off to school with big smiles on faces and tiny worries scurrying under skins.  He took a lunch, took a seat, got told off, and came back home.
“How was your day?” asked his father.
Herman told him that he’d made lots of friends and felt that he’d learned and experienced something in a manner that had made him alter and change as a person.  Not exactly in those words.
His father gave him a hug and told him he loved him, then went away to drink beer until he could forget the awful things he’d just heard.
Herman’s school year was one big warning sign after another.  He came home with new knowledge, he constructed and dismantled opinions, many times he was proven wrong and several more he was shown to be right.
“We think it would be best for everyone involved if he were to be homeschooled,” said the principal to his parents, listlessly.
“He’s a good boy,” said his mother defensively.  “He can’t help his condition. We’ve told him to stop dozens of times, he’s very ashamed of it and tries his best.”
The principal shrugged with one-half of one shoulder.  “He’s a possible health hazard for the other children.  I know the stuff’s not supposed to be anywhere close to contagious in carriers, but he can definitely weaken their resistance to it if they’re exposed later on.  I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to ask you to withdraw him.”
Herman’s parents did so – with tears, with bluster, with legal threats, but in the end they gave in.  The boy was withdrawn (protesting) from his classes, books were purchased, and effort was made to transfer something from one to the other.
Herman used the spare time he’d acquired to go out and learn to play hockey.  His parents despaired.

At last Herman was sent away to university.  There, his parents hoped, he would learn to throttle back his condition.  Despite an alarming tendency to have wild parties every few weeks and frantically finish projects at the absolute last-minute, he was as good as could be for his stay.  He entered into the medical sciences, and graduated with extremely high marks, two majors, and at least one major disease cured (if in a somewhat costly manner) after a fit of inspiration and the shredding of more than two dozen cocktail napkins.  His parents put on brave faces about it, but he knew they were disappointed with him.  He didn’t want that, and so he crafted a small side-point in his valedictorian’s speech specifically to appease them.
Herman was a passionate speaker, but his audience suffered willingly through it.  He spoke of the past, and the present, and the various futures to which he and his classmates were aiming for.
“It is my dream,” said Herman to a crowded auditorium, “to see no child live with what I have had to.  I am going to cure Life.”
And, to the deep shame of all involved, the crowd erupted in genuinely enthusiastic applause.

Herman made good on his word.  His marks were impressive, and soon his resume was too.  A lab was formed, and staffed, and filled with hundreds of impractically devious projects, mounded upon mounding, funded upon funding.  He slept seldom and worked as hard as he could, and some people began to say that maybe he’d found a cure after all – he was pale and haggard all day, and spoke curtly and incoherently when he could be bothered to open his mouth for anything beyond basic nourishment.  His parents, now retired, felt a faint budding of hope.
Then a major source of Herman’s sleeplessness was discovered to be his embroilment in a somewhat scandalous and quite passionate affair with one of his assistants.
“Life, it seems,” he said ruefully to an interviewer, “is not so easily extinguished.”  The reporter nodded solemnly and scribbled notes on the office’s wallpaper, for later use in working into a ham-handed metaphor.

The years went by.  Herman grew greyer and wrinkled, and occasionally forgetful, yet always brilliant.  He developed strange habits ranging from endearing to vexing to simply inexplicable.  He theorized and recanted and reiterated and he produced great reams and wads of data.
Society wasn’t quite sure what to do with him.  Herman, at least, still had his purpose in his mind.
“I’m close!” he said happily.  “Close to the cure any week now!”  The same thing he’d said for sixteen years, yet still optimistic.  If anything was needed as proof of his syndrome, this was it.  He had to pay his assistants double, then triple.  His associates distanced themselves.  Even the papers began to see him as more harm than help, and tried to muffle any news that came leaking out of his laboratory.  Herman became a name-you-knew, not a name-you-heard.  Not that he seemed to mind.  He was far too busy.

And then it happened.

On one bright midday in midweek around the middle of the year, in his late middle ages, Herman was in the middle of a brief lecture on theory when he clutched his chest, turned grey and rather pleased, and fell over, stiff as a board and full of ten times as much cholesterol as was strictly necessary for anyone.
They waited for him to get up.
They waited a bit longer.
They waited a whole hour before someone – Clarence, his oldest and most unimaginatively loyal research assistant – worked up the nerve to touch him, and found no pulse.
“By god,” he said in awe.  “He’s done it.  He’s finally done it.”

Word spread across the nation.  Herman had cured Life.  The slapdash adventurism, the collection and discarding of identities and concepts like last-week’s fish, the remorseless onset of time shredding away at his facial features, all washed away in a flash with a simple imbalance of his body’s chemical content.  It was so simple that it had to be genius, agreed everyone.  One-of-a-kind, that’s for sure.
“Only imagine,” pontificated one of his old professors, now famous by correlation, “what he could have done if he were not preoccupied by his condition.”

“Life,” copyright 2011, Jamie Proctor.

Careful where you step there, mind the tall grass.  Hear that buzz?  Feel that hum?  That’s a warning, and that’s from a rattlesnake.
Why do they rattle?  Well, rattlesnakes don’t like being stepped on, and humans don’t like being bitten.  It’s real nice this way, it keeps everybody happy.
How did they get rattles?
Huh.
That’s a fair question.  Tell you what, I’ll let you know what the humans say about it.

So, once upon a time (the really old time, you know the one – no, no, it was before last March), there was a human walking through the woods.  A hunter human, a brave one, because that wasn’t a very safe place for humans back in the day.  Too much magic, too many animals.  But he was quick and quiet and his bow was fast and sharp to shoot, so he was safe enough.  More importantly, he loved the woods, and he’d have gone back there even if it would’ve meant him getting eaten by a bear or something before you could say massasauga, which he said means “really big river mouth,” so that’s all right then.
Anyways, the hunter was out doing hunter things.  Setting traps, collecting traps, shooting at game and stalking prey, checking for footprints.  Stuff like that.  And then while he was looking at some deer tracks and thinking about how he was going to find those deer, why, something grabbed ahold of his foot.  And before he could even look twice – not even once – he was swept up and he was being hugged the hug of a big old rattlesnake.  It’s not a kindly hug, like your grandma might give you, and it hurts a lot more.  Real tight to breathe in.
“What do you think you’re doing in my forest?” demanded the rattlesnake haughtily, speaking through its hollow fangs like snakes do (snakes without hollow fangs can’t do this, and have to talk by humming).
The hunter thought to tell the rattlesnake that it was anyone’s forest, really, and he didn’t think he was being greedy or anything, but he was a bit short on air and it was hard for him to make his point.
“Speak up, or I’ll crack your ribs and crush your head,” threatened the rattlesnake, loosening itself a bit.  The hunter was a bit out of breath, but he cleared up his head and made his point right there.  The rattlesnake wasn’t impressed by it.
“It may be anyone’s forest,” it said, “but it’s more some people’s forest than others.  You’ve got no business putting yours in mine, and I’m thinking I might eat you.”  It smelled the hunter’s face with its tongue, eye-to-eye.
Well, a lot of people would’ve panicked right then and there.  Just lost it plain and simple, started gibbering and teeth-chattering and done nothing useful.  But the hunter was a brave man, and when brave men get scared (they do get scared, of course), they think through it.  So he thought fierce and fast and he said, “What about my traps?”
“Your what?” said the rattlesnake.
“My traps.  I’ve only just picked up the close little piddly ones for squirrels and such.  What about all my deep-woods traps, the ones that catch tasty rabbits and sweet deer meet and maybe more?  I’m the only person that knows where they all are, and my family needs the food that’s in them.”
The rattlesnake listened to the hunter lament all this, and its big cold mind chuckled in its icy thoughts.  It was hungry, yes, but one human – gamey at that, the hunter was all muscle and sinew – was nothing compared to the tasty rabbits and tender deer floating in its head.  It was autumn too, and the deer were looking pretty plump.
“I will give you your life,” said the rattlesnake grandly, “if you take me to these traps and let me eat.”
The hunter could’ve said that those were definitely his traps and his only, not these traps, but he was far too sensible for that.  So because he was sensible he nodded and promised to take the rattlesnake to each and every one of his traps before the sun set.
“Lead me,” said the rattlesnake.  The sun was just at noon.
The hunter led it to his rabbit traps, and it ate all the birds and bulged.  He led it to his rabbit traps, and it ate all the rabbits and grew plump.  He led it to the big, big deadfalls three that he’d set out in the woods so carefully, and it ate all the deer they’d caught, and everything it ate it ate without chewing, just gulp gulp gulp with no manners at all or even a thank-you.
“More!” demanded the rattlesnake.  It was fat and thick as a barrel around now, and if it ate much more it’d be wider than it was long.
Now, the hunter could’ve just run away by then.  The rattlesnake was too slow to move quickly anymore, and he was very very quick.  But he was a fair man and the unfairness he’d seen today ate at him.  He wanted more than just a way out.  Besides, if he left he knew the rattlesnake would say he’d wronged it, and lied to it, and tricked it, and then it’d try to eat him again anyways and he’d never get anything done.
So he thought fierce and fast again, and he had more time, so he thought more.  And what he thought of was what seemed to be a good plan.
“More!” said the rattlesnake.  “More!”
There wasn’t any more because it had eaten all the game in his traps (and the traps too).  But the hunter had a plan, so he said, “I will give you more, maybe.  There is one last trap, real deep in the woods.  I catch moose in it.”
The rattlesnake just about died on the spot it was so happy at the thought of eating a moose.  It stuck to the hunter’s side like glue, and its big cold mind was running awful hot, too hot to see the little things that it should’ve seen.  Like that big fat smile that the hunter kept having to wrestle away from his lips before it gave him away.  It should’ve seen that.
So they came at last to a big pit in the ground, just before sunset.  It was deep and dark and it led all the way down so far that light couldn’t really reach.  And the hunter pointed at it and said, “aha, that’s my moose trap all right!  And the cover’s been broken, so there’s a moose in it!”
“Is that so?” asked the rattlesnake.  It couldn’t smell moose, and it was starting to get just enough suspicions that they were starting to pipe up over its greed.
“Definitely,” said the hunter.  “Here, listen, and you can hear it!”  And he pulled out his moose call and leaned over the pit and called down it, and sure enough, up called a moose, twice as big as his.
“More!” called the rattlesnake gleefully, and it hurled itself right down the pit, teeth-first, like an arrow.
Now, do you know what an echo is?  That’s good, that’s smart.  See, the rattlesnake didn’t.
So down it went and down it went, and by now it was thinking that this pit was a lot deeper than it thought it looked and where was that moose hiding?  And finally the shaft got so narrow and so deep that the big fat rattlesnake wedged itself right there, in midair, and it was stuck and man and there was still no moose.
Now, the rattlesnake was stuck there for a long time.  Days and days and days.  And it lost that bulk, and it was still stuck, and then it lost a little more, and it was stuck fast, and it shrank and withered and shrivelled right up ‘till it had shed out of its own skin over and over and over again, and finally it slipped free and fell out into a little cave next to a riverbank.  And down there on the riverbank, sitting in the sunshine, cooking a meal and laughing his behind off, was the hunter.
“Feeling a bit thin?” he asked, and then he laughed some more.  The rattlesnake tried to glare him in the eye, and then it saw that it was much too small for that anymore; it was almost too small to glare at his knees.
“You tricked me and lied!” hissed the snake furiously.  “That was no trap of yours!  There wasn’t even a covering on it!”
“I promised I’d take you to every trap around before sunset,” said the hunter.  “And it looks like it was a pretty good trap to me.  Now let’s see you try to push around people trying to get an honest meal,” said the hunter, still grinning a big old grin.
The rattlesnake hissed and tried to bite him and he just pulled out something from his pocket and pinned it down with one hand, no problem.
“I brought this for you,” he said.  “It’s my son’s old rattle.  He’s a big boy now and he doesn’t need it any more, but since you’re so small and weak all of a sudden, maybe you’d better take it.  If I hear you ring it loud and clear, maybe I won’t step on you next time our paths get to crossing.”  And then he dropped the rattle there and walked away, still laughing all the way home.
The rattlesnake fumed, and the rattlesnake cursed, and the rattlesnake wished a thousand very uncomfortable things upon the hunter and his son and his rattle all together until the world cracked in half and blew away like ashes, but in the end he had to swallow his pride and his curses both and take up that rattle.  And ever since that hunter played that trick, all rattlesnakes have to shed their skins (other snakes do it out of sympathy, they say, but I think they’re just poking fun), and all rattlesnakes rattle their little tails off when humans come near.  Because they’re still scared, and still hoping for that promise.

Now, that’s a story right there, isn’t it?  But you don’t usually get stories alone; they’re sort of like wolves.  They like to come in packs.  See, that story, that’s what the humans say.  The rattlesnakes tell it differently.
Sure thing, I can tell you that one too.

So there’s this rattlesnake, back in the old days (which were back around a time, or maybe a little farther – rattlesnakes are older than humans, I’m pretty sure).  She’s just a little one, because rattlesnakes aren’t that big.  Well, at least this one wasn’t.
Now she’s just sitting by an anthill, eating ants, because that’s all she can catch; bugs and stuff like that.  Back in the old days, you see, rattlesnakes didn’t have teeth.  No teeth, no poison, and they’re very little – remember that? – and ants are about all they can handle at that size with no poison because they have no teeth.  They don’t taste so good, either.  Bees taste better, and the fuzz tickles on the way down, but the stings are dangerous and they just fly away up high so she can’t eat too many of them.
Anyways, this rattlesnake’s sitting at the anthill getting hungry (it’s a pretty slow day for ants; they’re all busy underground building tunnels and such), when a big shadow looms over her.  It’s a human, a big fierce human whose foot is bigger than the snake and her husband put together.
“Hello, snake,” said the human.  It was a warrior, and you could tell that because its face was carefully painted with some very important things and it had a big ceremonial rattle for a trophy and it was carrying a really big club that it used to kill people.  It was dangling carelessly from one of its hands, and it made the snake itch just looking at it.
“Hello, warrior,” said the rattlesnake politely.
“I’m bored, snake.  They say snakeflesh is tasty.  Is that true?”
The rattlesnake thought about this.  She didn’t have to think long.  “No.”
“Is that so?” the human leaned down really close and peered at her.  “I think you’re lying, snake,” it said.  “I think you’re telling me what you think’ll save your skin.  Well, I’m hungry and I think I’ll eat you.  Now hold still.”  The warrior slipped its club into both hands and began to take aim.
“Wait!” said the rattlesnake.  “I have a husband, and I have children on the way!  You can’t just kill a mother like that!”
The warrior shrugged.  “You’re a snake.  Snake mothers don’t count.”  You see, killing pregnant women is usually a bad thing for most warriors.  It doesn’t make them look very impressive.
“Then do I count as a warrior?” asked the rattlesnake.  “At least let me fight for my life!”
The warrior stared and stared and stared and then it let out a big booming laugh that shook the trees to their roots, and it didn’t stop for some time.
“You?” it said through the tears.  “YOU?  Hah!  Snake, you wish to duel me?!  I’ll crush your head under my heel and crack your back with a breath and a harsh word!  Your challenge is taken and met, and I’ll see you at sunset tonight.  I’ll have your flesh for dinner!”
The warrior stomped on the rattlesnake’s anthill and walked off laughing, and the rattlesnake slithered back home to her husband, whom she told about their troubles.
“Well, you should hide under a rock until it forgets, or maybe dies,” he said.
“Humans live longer than we do, and their grudges last longer,” she said sadly.  “I’d have to hide all my life, and so would my children, and children’s children.”
The rattlesnake’s husband agreed that this was not a perfect solution.
“Maybe I could fight,” she said.
“That’s crazy,” he said.  It was, a little, but he’d known she was a little crazy for years.  That’s what being married is all about.
“Maybe it is,” she agreed.
“You’ll need some weapons.  It’s going to have that big club.”
The rattlesnake hissed to herself.  “What kills humans?”
“Other humans,” said the rattlesnake’s husband.
“I don’t think they’d be much help – one human’s enough trouble for me.”
“Bears?” suggested the rattlesnake’s husband.
“Bears are greedy and lazy and cowardly,” she said.  “They’d never help me.”  But then she thought about it.  “Help me on purpose,” she corrected herself, and then she thanked her husband and went on her way through the forest with a promise that she had a plan and it was all going to be just fine.
Now, bears those days were different too.  Bears were bigger and fiercer (most things were bigger and fiercer in the old days, even things as big and fierce as bears), and they had poison in their teeth that would make anything they bit drop dead after three heartbeats.  They ate everything and they weren’t scared of anything, and that meant they had no real problems and got lazy and selfish easy.  The rattlesnake had seen a bear down by the lake days and days and days ago, and knew he was probably still there.
He was.  And he was asleep.  So the rattlesnake slithered right up to his big hairy muzzle, heartbeat steady and slow, and pecked him right on the eyelid with her smallest tooth.
He snored.
The rattlesnake pecked the bear on the eyelid with its second-biggest tooth.
The bear belched.  It smelt like fish.
The rattlesnake made a rude face and bit the bear as hard as she could with both her biggest fangs, on the nose.
The bear jumped up with a yelp and glared at her as she dangled.  “That was mean,” he grumbled.  “I should eat you.”
The rattlesnake was getting annoyed at big, nasty people threatening to eat her all day (wouldn’t you?) and had to swallow her next words and think them through twice before she spoke them.
“If you eat me,” she said, through a mouthful of bear nose, “you won’t get to eat all these delicious bees I found.”
The bear blinked at her.  “What’s a bee?”
“It’s the most delicious bug ever.  It’s tastier than a grub and finer than a fly and it’ll make your tongue dance like a spider in season,” promised the snake.  “I know where a whole hive of them is sitting, and they’re all for you because I’m so impressed with your big teeth and fierce claws.”
The bear thought this over.  It seemed like an unlikely motive, but he wasn’t that bright and a pretty girl was telling him how wonderful he was (even if she wasn’t a bear), and so he was just fine with it all.
The snake led him down to the bee hive, dead center of a meadow.  The air hummed and the flowers crawled with bees, but the rattlesnake told him not to bother with the little bunches.  “The hive is the good bit,” she said.  “There’s lots and lots in there.  Just take a really big bite and chew carefully.”
The bear eyed the hive, wedged as it was in the crook of the tree.  This all seemed a bit fishy to him, but that did look sort of tasty, and he was a bear and not scared of anything.  Didn’t he have the most poisonous bite and strongest claws in all the woods?  Of course he did.  So he opened wide and bit hard – crunch – right through the bee’s nest, and he had a thousand-and-three stingers jammed in every gum and a million-and-one in his tongue, all before you could say makwa, which means a bear.
“Oh,” said the bear.  And then, a lot quicker, “ow.”  He chewed and chewed as hard as he could, but the stinging wouldn’t stop, and although something was tasting nice in there, it was hard to tell through all the pain.  And the swelling.  His mouth was inflating like a water bladder and it didn’t feel nice at all.
“You have to chew faster,” the rattlesnake said apologetically.
The bear didn’t hear her – he’d forgotten she was there, what with the pain on his mind.  Actually, there was worse than the pain; he was in real danger of cutting his lips on his own teeth, and he spat them out in a hurry once he knew that was coming.  “Ech,” he said.  “Ich.  Pttffthuu.  Hurrh.”  He shook his head and wandered down to the lake to get a drink.
The rattlesnake watched him go, then took the teeth.  They were a bit big, but when she tucked the biggest of them back under her gums just like that then they sort of fit.  She opened and closed her mouth a few times to get used to the feel of them, tucked the other teeth away for safekeeping, and slithered away in a hurry.  The bear wasn’t going to be happy when he came back, and sunset was coming on fast.
The warrior was waiting outside the rattlesnake’s home, warclub at the ready.  Its facepaint was all red in the sunset, like something had bled all over it already.  Not that it had.  It just looked like that.  The rattlesnake thought it was being a show-off.
“Are you ready to die, snake?” said the warrior.
The rattlesnake looked at it with distaste.  “Did you follow me home?” she asked, angrily; she almost forgot the plan here she was so mad.
The warrior shrugged.  “After I kill you, I’ll need more than one snake to make a proper mouthful.”
Now the rattlesnake was so mad that she was nearly seeing double, but she gulped down that anger and saved it up and stored it in her teeth so hard that they near sparked.  “I am only a little rattlesnake,” she said, as sweetly as she could, “and I demand the right to land the first strike.”
The warrior laughed and laughed and laughed, all around the trees.  “Good one, snake!” it said.  “You will get one bite, and then I will laugh again, and then I will eat you!  My life is good!”  And with that, and another laugh, it mockingly held out its arm for the snake to bite.
So the rattlesnake opened wide, and aimed, and launched herself straight as an arrow and left two perfectly round little holes in the warrior’s arm.  They were so small that they barely bled.
“Hah!” said the warrior.  “Heh.”  “Huh.”
It fell over after three heartbeats and stopped moving very much.
The rattlesnake slithered on over to the dying warrior and up to its ear.  “As punishment for your threats and bad manners and never once calling me by my proper name,” she hissed, “I am taking your rattle-trophy.  And I will tell your family that whenever they come by one of my relations, they will sound it loud and long, and if your family does not heed the warning of my family, they will bite them, and they will die.  So.  There.”
The warrior died, the rattlesnake made her warning, and that was that.  Her family and all the others got new teeth, and a little bit of the rattle each, and they used them exactly as they promised.
(The bear never really got over his missing teeth, by the way.  He was grumpier than ever to things smaller than him, and twice as skittish whenever he met things bigger than he was, and every winter during his long nap he couldn’t dream of anything but the good old days when he had the most dangerous bite in the world and everything was scared of him.  He also really hated being woken up from those dreams, so don’t do that.  It’s a bad idea.)

So.  That’s what the rattlesnakes tell, that story was.  Pretty good, huh?  I mean, it’s okay.  Not bad.  Sure tells you how they got that rattle, and a bit different from the first one, huh?
But there’s a third answer.

So, the idea is that a long, long time ago, some of these snakes didn’t have rattles.  But a couple had little bits of loose skin on their tails, and they were loose because they didn’t get shed properly with the rest of the skin.  A bit messy, huh?
So they get a bit of an ugly bump there, and it makes noise.  Now the snakes that just let it flop around, they get heard and eaten by other stuff.  Kingsnakes and such.  But some snakes are careful, and they’re still quiet even with those big ugly bumps on their tails.  So they get to have babies.
Anyways, some of those snakes ended up figuring out that when they made that noise with their bumps a whole lot, it let big clumsy things know they were close, and then those things wouldn’t step on them.  Because stepping on snakes really hurts a lot.  You know that, I know that, everybody knows that.  And whenever that rattle sound played, nothing stepped on those snakes, so they had babies that did the same things.  Let that happen long enough, and all the best rattlers have had babies and their babies have had babies and all those snakes are real good at rattling and have some real nice rattles.
Rattlesnakes.  There you go.

We asked all the rattlesnakes and humans we could find, and they agreed that it makes pretty good sense.  But they also said that it’s not that great a story.

“Rattles,” copyright 2011, Jamie Proctor.