jamieproctor.ca

Juan was a young boy when he first saw the bird.  Not the most observant age, but certainly the most restless, and it was those restless, fidgeting, bored eyes of his that corkscrewed their way across the sky that day on his father’s rusty fishing boat and saw the big, white wings holding still and flat in the sea breeze, feathers ruffling gently. 
“What is that?” he’d asked his father.  The old man – well, looking back on it, not so old, but then he was his father, so of course he was an old man – glanced up from the jury-work and profanity he was repairing the creaky motor with. 
“Albatross,” he grunted, turning his attention back just in time to stop a spring from snapping shut on his thumb. 
“Yes, but father –”
“You’ve seen them before, boy.”  Unfortunately, stopping the spring had entailed hastily wedging two other fingers into a very small space, whose precise contents Juan’s father was trying to recall.  
“But it’s –“
“Shit!  Juan, pass me the hammer and a rag.”  Apparently the compartment’s contents were both sharp and moving, very vigorously so. 
And so Juan passed his father his tool and makeshift bandage and talked no more about the bird for the rest of the day, though it weighed heavily enough on his mind that the old man had to whack him on the head a couple times to make sure he was paying attention while they started to let out their lines. 
He hadn’t mentioned the odd thing he’d noticed about the bird, as he saw it swoop over the boat, before his father looked up.  The odd thing was that its wingspan had been twice the length of their boat’s hull. 

Juan grew up strong, like his father had and his mother had.  Particularly his mother, who knew much more about engines than either her husband or son and never failed to berate them on the many occasions they replaced using a specific repair tool with a hammer, which was often. 
Unfortunately, as will occur in people his age, Juan’s brain grew a bit slower than his body, and so one morning after an argument with his father the night before over laziness (the old man thought he was stricken with it, Juan insisted that he was a slave driver) he snuck down to the dock and took out their boat alone.  He’d prove he wasn’t lazy.  An early-early-morning catch he’d find, and a big one.  That would show his father properly. 
The water looked good to Juan as he coaxed the boat into what he judged a proper place.  Plenty of fish in there, just waiting to bounce themselves onto the tip of his hooks, flying into the boat to prove the old man wrong. 
“You’re in my spot,” said a voice.
It was not a very nice voice; not cruel, heavily accented in some way Juan didn’t recognize, but possessed of that raspy, disinterested grumpiness that was most easily summed up as “grizzled.” 
“I don’t know you,” said Juan to the voice, and that was more puzzling still, as the one thing he knew better than the waters around home was the people.  And he was certain that even if by some miracle from above he didn’t know one of the other local fishermen, he would remember this one.  He was old, sun-burnt so deeply his skin was near to charred black, and more wrinkled and scarred than an elderly sea sponge.  His boat was wooden, battered, and as sun-scorched as her owner, with a tattered sail that couldn’t have let any more light through if it were glass.
“No,” the sun-cooked man said, “you wouldn’t.  Push off my spot.”
Juan’s mother had made very sure that he respected his elders, but there were limits.  And most of them freshly broken as of last night. 
“You aren’t from around here,” he said, “and that makes this my spot.  I’ve fished here before and I’ll fish here for years yet.  So why don’t you push off, you miserable old thief?”
The old man’s frown deepened, and then he burst into a deep chuckling guffaw that splish-splashed off the waves for miles.  The wrinkles and scars on his face jumped and jerked in ways that made Juan’s stomach roll
“Ha!  Good offer.  No fun though.  Want to hear a deal?”
Juan thought.  If Juan hadn’t argued with his father, hadn’t snuck out early, he would’ve been more clearheaded and not as hasty.  On the other hand, if Juan hadn’t argued with his father and snuck out early, his father would be here with him and his father would’ve turned the old man down.  Which was exactly why what Juan said next was: “What kind of deal?”
“A bet.  We fish with handlines, stop when one quits, winner is the biggest catch.  That simple enough, boy?”
Juan thought a bit more.  The old man was old, which meant he would be weaker and tire easier.  On the other hand, he was an old fisherman, so not so much in either case, and he must know quite a lot of the sea to sail that relic around without so much as a backup motor.  On the third hand, Juan knew the water.  But what decided it, again, was none of these things: it was because Juan’s father had spoken to him in just that tone of voice last night, that “boy.”
“Bet made,” said Juan. 
The old man’s grin went thin and bloodless.  “Deal struck,” he replied, and with one creaky swoop of his arm he produced an old driftwood rod, knobbly old bones unfolding in a perfect cast.  Juan’s own bobber hit the water what felt like long seconds afterward, and by the time it had the old man was already reeling in his line, hauling back with gritted teeth.  A fat flapping mackerel struggled through to the surface, which he seized, unhooked, and tossed back one-handed. 
Juan was shaken, but stubborn.  He fished with every trick he knew, and he reeled in his line heavy.  He fished as the old man pulled in catch after catch, first twice what he brought in, then thrice, then four times as much.  The driftwood pole and line didn’t place itself in wait for the fish, it seemed to land on top of them and seize them bodily, hauling them up by jaws that hadn’t even intended to seize the bait.  And each fish that he caught, the old man let fall back into the water. 
“Give?” asked the old man at noon, dragging an exhausted shark’s head half out of the water to eye critically.  The sun was high and hot, the waves growing boisterous. 
Juan looked at the shark – which was weightier than he and his father put together – and then at the coolers, filled snugly with fish.  Almost more than he’d hoped when he set out, but useless to him now.  Nothing he’d caught matched that shark, and he wouldn’t lose that bet. 
“No,” said Juan.  And he cast again.  The old man cackled and released the shark.  Juan thought it looked puzzled, as far as sharks could. 
The afternoon wore on, as did Juan’s sunburn.  The old man remained unaltered, although Juan thought that if he was capable of burning any farther it would only be into charcoal. 
Finally, just as Juan was about to give up, his rod nearly tore itself out of his hands, wrenching wildly in his grasp.  The water blasted itself apart as a (relatively small) swordfish launched itself into the air.  It brandished its beak at him, thrashed madly, and then was back in the water with force that nearly disjointed both his arms.
“Hah,” said the old man, and he put his rod down and picked up a small pack of rancid tobacco, which he began to carve at.  “Should be good.”
Juan mustered the breath to wheeze a profane sentence at him before the swordfish dived. 
On the many later occasions Juan looked back on the battle, whether that evening as his father shouted at him or years later with fond regret, he found himself equally unable to remember details.  Only a seemingly unending torrent of the same muscles in his body being jerked new ways every five seconds for what seemed like five years.  As to its actual length, he never knew, but for the sun dropping down to near-horizon by the time that swordfish made its final lunge, gasping its way up besides the hull.  Its eye stared into Juan’s, expressionless and wide, yet somehow capable of conveying loathing.  Then it jerked its head once, twice, three times and Juan’s line gave up the ghost in a quiet, cynical snap.  The fish dropped firmly out of sight and into mind. 
Juan collapsed back in his seat, realizing to his surprise that someone had replaced his lungs with burlap sacks.  His hands hurt, and he wasn’t quite willing to look at them yet. 
“Not bad,” said the old man.  “Give?”
Nodding took all the energy in the world.
“Not bad,” repeated the old man.  He spat a small stream of tobacco juice.  “Spot’s yours.  Good luck.”
He rowed very quickly, thought Juan.  That strange mist that had come out of nowhere swallowed him so fast.  He’d better lie here on the comfortable floor until it passed.  Good idea. 
White wings were overhead, but he was too tired to see them. 

Juan’s father was terrified when he went out looking with half the village that evening, standing in the forefront of the largest boat, his own father’s binoculars set to eyes, peering through cracked lenses for a darker blot on the horizon.  He never would’ve seen the boat if not for the swooping of the seabird over it, a great white thing that had him squinting and readjusting the ancient device to check its scale, only to miss it entirely.
As he found his son at last, adrift and asleep, it was only the sight of the snapped line and bruising on his arms and hands that brought him back to calmness, then more worry.  As it was, Juan spent a few days laid up in bed being yelled at by his father, calmly remonstrated by his mother, and hallucinating that an albatross was trying to shove him into an egg. 

Juan’s father forgave him, of course, after a time.  And Juan got on better with him, since after the bet and the swordfish ordinary work was a welcome relief.  And surprisingly easy to boot – in no more than a few years, Juan was the best fisherman in the village after his father.  And one more year after that, he was the best fisherman in the village.
All things must end, of course.  Juan moved out of the house soon after, found a new home, a small home, and bought a very small boat.  He knew where to fish though, and soon neither boat nor home was as small.  A time after that, a woman who was much too good to be with him walked in the door and the home felt small again, good small. 
But again, all things must end, and after some time ordinary work itself ended for Juan as he was trawling through an anchovy school.  He was just beginning to winch up the net when his boat’s hull shook, shuddered, and clanged, squealing against immovable matter.  Juan was halfway to grabbing a patch and two-thirds of the way through a curse when he remembered that the nearest thing shallow enough for him to ground on it was the village dock. 
It was at this moment that the boat was surrounded in a popping, swirling circuit of bubbles.  Scrambling to the side and gazing down, Juan saw a shadow as big as the world underneath him, so large that at first he mistook it for the bottom.  It was getting bigger. 
“You again,” said the voice. 
Juan was in two minds at seeing the old man again – who didn’t appear any different.  Seeing him was a surprise, yes, but his apparent ability to pop up alongside him without so much as an oar-splash was somehow unshocking. 
“You too,” said Juan.  “No more bets.  I already have a full net, and I don’t think my father will come to help this time if you leave me adrift again.”
“Fair,” said the old man.  He pointed one sun-bleached oar at Juan’s net.  “Look out.”
Juan spun around just in time to see a mouth the size of his house breach the water’s surface in the midst of the bubbles, closing neatly around both the panicked anchovy swarm trapped inside them and Juan’s net, missing Juan’s boat itself by a couple of inches.  His knife was in his hand before he knew it, slashing at the strands ever as the whale – god, what a whale, the sheer size of it, was it a blue? – began to sink again, the winch creaking and whining as it was stretched, the boat’s stern depressing down and down only to rocket up again as the last fibres parted, spilling Juan on his rear and the last fibres of his trawling net across the ocean.
“Hmm,” said the old man, carving a plug of chewing tobacco from his ancient wad.  “Want to hear a deal?”
Juan realized his knuckles were too white to be healthy as he stared at them, and unclenching them from the knife took a more serious effort than he would’ve assumed. 
“I guess so,” he said. 
“Same as before?” asked the old man, tucking the tobacco between cheek and gum, a tight fit if there ever was one. 
“Yes,” said Juan. 
“Good,” said the old man, and just like magic there was that rod out of nowhere, bobber in the water a hairs-breadth in front of Juan’s, already jumping as soon as it touched the water. 
“Do you know what that thing down there is?” asked Juan.  The old man was reeling in whatever it was he’d caught with that same eerie ease Juan was suddenly recalling from all those years ago. 
“Yes,” he said.  “Don’t mind it.  Won’t scare the fish away.”
It certainly wasn’t.  The bubbles continued to rise, and the fish churned upwards towards them both in a panic.  Amidst the shimmering silver streams of the little ones darker grey shadows bite and ate; there were more than just anchovies down there.  And if Juan needed more proof, the old man was laughing and wrestling with the rod as a full-sized tuna thrashed at the other end.  As Juan’s bobber took its first hit the old man wrestled it out of the water and held it close, eye-to-eye, before releasing it.
Juan was too busy after that to pay attention to the other boat, having time for about one spare thought every few minutes, most of which he devoted to quickly massaging his limbs, looking for the next spot, or silently, eternally thanking his long-held-by-now obsession with ensuring he kept extremely strong line on hand at all times.  And good strong gloves, which were getting awfully thin in the palms as his cooler filled up with more and more fish.  Just the good ones, the strong, healthy thrashers, the fighters, the tough men of the sea who were surprised and shocked as he deftly circumvented their best tricks and ran rings around them right up to his waiting hands. 
Juan did things he’d never thought possible, at least deliberately.  He tricked a small shortfin mako into breaching directly into the boat.  He caught a small fish, which was swallowed by a tuna, which a shark consumed, then hooked the lot.  He hooked a tuna by its tail.  All in the space of an hour, surrounded by more of their kind. 
The contest was ended by neither Juan nor the old man, but the whale surfacing to breathe.  The bubbles ceased as it rose for air, and whatever fish that remained as the rest fled followed in the thunderous discharge of its blowholes, spout jutting dozens of feet from twin openings as big as manholes.   The wave of its flukes washed the air as it dove, sending waves at both boats that nearly tipped them.
The old man glared at the vast, dark shape beneath them, almost identical to the ocean floor.  “Bastard.”  He met Juan’s questioning gaze.  “It’s over.  Best was three tuna on one hook.  Yours?”
“Something close.  Shark, tuna, something small that the tuna ate too fast to see.”
The old man nodded, frowning.  “Hmm.  Draw?”
Juan returned the nod.  “Yes.”
“Good.  Say hello to the wife.  Goodbye.”
Juan didn’t bother trying to keep up with his rowing.  He suspected it wouldn’t do any good. 

Juan’s wife had a great deal of difficulty understanding why he stayed out there so long, with no warning.  But she couldn’t argue with the catch, and accepted his explanation, which consisted entirely of the truth.  He’d told her the story of his youth years ago, so she couldn’t say she didn’t know he was crazy.  She nodded, clucked her tongue at the rudeness of the old man up and leaving like that, then told him she was pregnant.  Juan didn’t think about the old man then for quite some time. 

Juan fished, and Juan’s daughter grew up.  He took her out there many, many times, and she took to it well, something her mother approved of even if she didn’t claim to understand, and they never ran hungry or scant of money.  Juan could practically hear the fish now, feel them swimming through the hull of his boat, something that he explained carefully to the girl that he was never sure if she quite understood.  They pulled nets and hauled lines together, father and daughter, some of the time watched from below by a strange-large shadow Juan thought he recalled, and in the evening mother and daughter would berate Juan over his amazing inability to cook. 
“She has the best of both of us,” Juan’s wife told him, and he could only agree.  And years later, when Juan’s daughter got married and left town, she had the best of someone else too. 
Fishing trips were lonelier then, and with both smaller reason to stay out and fewer mouths to feed Juan took less.  He felt a tired and elderly spider of fantastic size, sitting quietly above a gathering of prey with a single strand of web that moved as one with his thoughts, darting among the small and slow to find the large and strong.  One bait, one cast, one catch.  Economy over excess. 

Juan’s wife’s funeral was nothing extravagant. The family was there, grandchildren and her brothers and sisters and their children and grandchildren.  Juan’s wife had been loved quite fully, and by more than he.  He thanked them all, gave them food to take home (fish – which he assured them they could prepare much more deftly than he), and stayed up late that night finishing his will and a few notes, which he addressed and mailed in the early morning on his way down to the docks. 
The boat’s motor was modern, smooth and quiet and strong.  Juan was proud of it, and proud that he hadn’t once had to take a hammer to its insides.  His mother would’ve risen from the grave solely to yell at him.  It took him a long way out before he shut it off, far, far offshore, land away, just him and the sea.  And the old man, who he felt arriving before he heard his voice. 
“Hello,” he said.  “You’re in my spot.”
The old man showed as much surprise as he did increased wear, but his face looked a bit softer than usual.  “Same to you.”
Juan watched the sky, searching for a hint of white wings.  “My wife is dead.”
“Sorry.”
He looked to the sea, for quiet bulk and hints of bubbles.  “My daughter is alive and happy.”
“Good for her.”
Juan stretched; his arms got stiff nowadays if he didn’t take care to keep moving.  “I believe I have a bet to make.”
“Good.”
“An old one, with one slight modifications.”
The old man said nothing. 
“Handlines.  Stop where one quits.  Smallest catch.”
The old man laughed.  “Very good!”  He leaned over the side of his boat.  “Hear that?!” he shouted to the sea at large.  “Very good!”
“One question, before we begin.”
“Yes?”
“Are they both here?”
The old man wrinkled his brow – even farther, if possible – and then held up three fingers.  “One below,” he clarified. 
“Then I will have to meet her,” said Juan.

The rods were raised, the hooks flew, the bobbers splashed.  Juan’s slightly ahead. 
He let the line run, feeling it fall, guided by something more than gravity and the currents, slipping down away from the budding morninglight into the places where there never was any.  Eddies murmured at it, fish watched and swam by, mouths clamped tightly shut. 
Down fell the hook, softly, slowly, in the cold abyss, so far down that each twitch Juan made in the boat took nearly twenty minutes to tip-toe down to it.  Luckily, he was making them ahead of time.  He wouldn’t keep her waiting. 
Strangeness flowed up from below, on the tinsel-thread of the fishing line, which was far too short to reach the hook now. 
There she was.  A grandness, an otherness, a quiet observer who never slept, seldom moved, always dreamed.   She was all tethers, all hooks and lines, arms stretching for miles farther than they really did. 
As politely as possible, the hook moved to the vents she rested about and around.  She made no objection, content to watch with the largest eyes ever created as it drifted towards the black-gushing water, hotter than hell, warmer than heaven. 
The hook stopped moving an inch from water at a temperature that would boil it into nothing in a second, jerked upwards less than a micrometer, and then respectfully withdrew, prize secured.  The squid watched patiently as he left. 
Juan grew tired as the hook rose, but it mattered little.  He would have time to rest.  Inch by inch, reel by reel, the line returned to him, impossibly long, impeccably careful, precious cargo undisturbed. 
The hook slipped into his hand.  “I am ready,” he announced. 
The old man shrugged.  Juan realized he’d finished fishing long ago, and their boats stood side by side.  “A single plankton particle,” he announced, indicating a tiny speck on the tip of his hook.  “Crab larvae.  Don’t know which kind.”
Juan nodded, and held up his own.  “Microbe, likes hot temperatures.  Just in the cradle of the hook.”
The old man leaned over and examined it closely, turning it this way and that.  “Hmm.”  He sat back, watching Juan curiously. 
Juan dropped the rod and reel into the water, feeling a strange current take them and their cargo.  Somehow, he knew they would reach the bottom safely.  
Now the old man smiled, wide and warm.  “You win.”
“Thank you,” said Juan.  “I’m going to go swimming now.”
The old man shook his head.  “Not yet.  You were in my spot, now I’m in yours, and you’ve got to take it.  Here.”  He handed the driftwood rod to Juan.  A long, long series of small scratches adorned the handle, each carefully crossed out but the last.  Most were alphabets or symbols Juan didn’t recognize. 
“You’re the best now,” the old man said.  “They need the best.  A go-between.  Look out for them.”
Juan didn’t have to look for the wings now, or listen for the bubbles, or even feel the hair on his neck prickle at the eyes.  For the same reason that he’d never had to look for his arm. 
“All three?” he asked.
“More,” said the old man.  He took up the oars again, sitting taller in his seat than Juan remembered. 
“How many?”
The oars were moving, and already he was almost out of sight.  Still, his answer was clear enough to sound perfectly in Juan’s ear, combined with the careful swipe of one oar to beckon at all that surrounded their two tiny boats. 
“All of them.”

Juan thought about that, as the splash of oars faded away.  Strange things were filling his senses now, songs he’d never heard, sights never seen, thoughts carried on secret breezes and deep currents. 
There was something he needed to look at out there, a job he needed to do.  A thousand somethings, many lifetimes of jobs, of work.  He’d best get going. 
Juan turned on the motor.  Smooth, quiet, and strong.  His mother would’ve liked it. 
“Still not lazy, father,” he said. 
He didn’t need to say anything else for a long time. 

“Fishing Trip” Copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

Life is a funny thing, and it can happen in funny places.  The inside of dark, quiet caves hundreds of metres under the ground, giant planktonic masses off the coast of Antarctica, sterilized clinics, and sewer systems are all places where life frequently, constantly, doggedly makes itself known.  In this particular case, the seed of it began about seventy feet off the ground, alongside some six hundred thousand of its siblings.  As with most living things it was jaded enough by birth to accept this as normal, although it was aided by not having a brain or any central nervous system whatsoever available to express disbelief. 
The list of things that it knew was very short: it was dangling from something, there was something else (let’s call it a wind) that was very big and all-encompassing causing it to bounce wildly and shudder – more so today than any other it could remember – and… whoops, now it wasn’t dangling from anything at all and was free-falling through it, bouncing against something quite a lot like itself, and another, then another, and soon it had ricocheted off its siblings times innumerable as it spun like a top, little wings on either side of the package that was itself whirling. So it went, typical enough for a maple seed, only really becoming aware of its family just too late to say goodbye to them. 
What was atypical was the distance traveled.  The windstorm, the storm of the century the seed rode upon, was exactly strong enough to knock down full-grown trees, up to and including its parent, which it had departed less than ten minutes before it finally started to sway its way down past the point of no return.  Not a long time, for a tree, and its final relatively-brief moments were spent wishing a vague sort of goodwill to its descendants and relations, marred only by a very, very brief bit of worriment concerning beetles.  Sap isn’t the best conductor of thought, but roots reach surprisingly deep.  
Just not deep enough this time. 

Crash. 

The same wind that orphaned the seed and six hundred thousand of its siblings was gentle with it, relatively speaking.  Pieces of its wings went spinning away as it hurtled through the night, but the seed itself stayed snug, if damp, as the leaves down below it whistled and rumbled through the night, broken occasionally by the scream-and-thud of a creaky old trunk giving up the ghost.  A very puzzling experience for the seed to be sure, one that ended as the gale turned to a wind to a breeze, riding its way down from the dizzying heights as the sun started to plod its way upwards. 
Down it came, graceful as a one-winged eagle.  The seed touched down in a fine layer of leaf litter and checked its deepest plant instincts.  This took about a week.   After that, a single, hesitant, somewhat nervous and embarrassed tendril poked its way into the outside world, touched dirt, and liked what it found. 
It wanted more.  It got it, but cautiously, and therefore slowly.  And slow for a tree is slow.  That first quiet, secretive root sprouted and crept.  A crude semblance of a stem was erected and hastily be-leaved – and just before the last drops of energy and nutrition were milked out of the seedling’s original home.  No sooner was it out than something small, long, and tubular with far too many legs (by the seedling’s standards, any legs at all) tried to munch on it.  And no sooner had it taken four mouthfuls than something else with far fewer legs (but still too many) fell down out of the sky, plucked it up in a sharp, horny thing sticking out of its face, ate it, and flew away. 
The seedling wasn’t quite sure if it wanted to sprout anymore after that, but realized it would make no difference.  Stoicism is considered a strong point among trees, but fatalism is an acceptable second-best. 

Time passed at the usual rate, but as is also usual, perceptions argued differently.  Summer sauntered by at an easy pace for the deer, crept forwards for approximately one-sixth of the entirety of the shrews’ lifespans, and was here-and-there by the time the seedling was just getting the hang of this leaf thing.  Before it knew what was going on, half the chlorophyll had been blocked out of its hard-grown leaves and they’d turned into morbid reddish things that fell off and withered up right in front of it.  It was so horrified that it barely noticed the dropping temperature until it was buried under two and a half feet of snow.  The less said about that the better.  Something small and furry rushed past it at blurring speed, tunnelling a hole to the surface that iced over, thawed, and caved in as the snow was reduced to puddles where the sapling half-drowned even as new leaves sprang up. 
That was definitely the worst year, the first one, when every single surprise was a nasty one that would lay low dozens of the seedling’s peers all around it as pointed examples.  And the second wasn’t much better, especially when a passing deer casually nibbled away half of it before strolling off to clear-cut its neighbour, munching to herself.  Or when the seedling played host to three caterpillars at one time, and came out of it with maybe three leaves left.  Or the unusually sharp and cold autumn that turned into a prolonged winter. 
So, maybe the second year was actually the worst one and the first was just the most shocking.  But in any case, it was a grimly determined little seedling that shook off the meltwater and dug its roots in deeper come springtime. 

At least there was plenty of room for the seedling; even as its roots spread and its height grew, its space grew no more cramped.  A creaky old ash tree had succumbed to the storm that brought it here, and it had left a nice clear space in the canopy that the seedling and something like ten compatriots of similar size inhabited.  As of yet, none of them had come close enough to do anything more than eye each other distrustfully and boldly rustle their leaves.  It was a silent time, even for vegetation, and the seedling resigned itself to another competitive spring as it revved up its chlorophyll again. 
Excuse me, said a very small and excessively polite voice, but I don’t believe you’re using this particular patch of topsoil at the moment, are you?
The seedling nearly shed its freshly-budding leaves in surprise.  A very small and very colourful little plant was unfolding itself at its base. 
No, not at all, it replied, after quickly checking its roots, which the stranger didn’t appear to be intruding on.  What are you?  How did you get there?  What are you doing?
I think, said the very small plant, as it sprouted a little higher and brightened its little white decorations, that I am a daisy.  I believe a seed was dropped here somehow and I sprouted, much like you.  And I’m trying to grow just a bit higher so I can duck out of your shadow here and get a little more sunlight.  You’re awfully shady. 
How are you doing that? Asked the seedling.
Doing what? Replied the daisy, sprouting further and further. 
Growing so fast.  You’re already almost as tall as I am.  The seedling was very poor at hiding its annoyance, it had been quite proud that it’d managed to grow at all last year, and now some uppity little white-and-yellow thing had popped up and done two year’s work in the span of a single springtime. 
I’m not sure.  Maybe my sibling knows. 
The tree politely tried to figure out which of the several hundred nearby daisies it had only just realized were surrounding it had been indicated, which took just long enough to be uncomfortable.  Then become more uncomfortable as the numbers sank in. 
So, how are you growing so fast? The seedling inquired of what it hoped was the correct daisy, as the first heat wave of the fresh summer came along. 
About done, really, it said, petals drooping in the warmth.  Spring’s the big season for that.  Now we just relax. 
A dreary, miserably damp weekend passed overhead, leaving the seedling gleaming with delicious moisture.  Why stop? It asked. 
No real point.  If it were a bit warmer around here maybe, but as it is, we’re just about finished. 
There was a pause in the conversation as the seedling watched four deer meander through the grove, clear-cutting two of its rivals on the clearing’s opposite side down to nothing in a single terrifyingly grisly afternoon. 
With what? It asked, trying to take its mind off what it’d just seen. 
Eh?
Finished with what?
Life.  Sprouted, bloomed, blossomed, pollinated, seeded.  What else is there to do?
Grow, said the seedling. 
For you, maybe, said the daisy’s sibling.  We don’t work that way.  At least, not around here.  It fell into drowsy silence then, and the seedling was left in confusion and embarrassment for the rest of July and all of August.  Then came September and the first real overnight frost with it.  No sooner had it melted off with the morning sun than the seedling saw the daisy, the daisy’s sibling, and all the others drooping mournfully. 
What is it?  The seedling asked.
Oh, just about that time, said the daisy, sleepiness clogging its voice.  Thank goodness.  Staying upright was getting to be quite the chore.
Time for what?
The daisy looked like it was about to say something, but then the second, much sharper frost hit.  And when the sun rose after that, none of the daisies looked like they were going to say anything. 
When spring came again, so did the daisies, and their polite voices.  But none of them were the same, and after a few halting attempts at conversation, the seedling gave up and consigned them to their own conversations and itself to trying to keep up with that one other maple across the clearing, which had already managed to overshade its smaller neighbour and was currently in the lead.  So the seedling brushed away thoughts of daisies, though it made the innermost layers of its phloem twitch, and tried to focus on the things that would still be around next year.  Thankfully, there were plenty of them.    

The hole that led to the precious, light-giving sky above began to shrink as the trees surrounding the clearing slowly caught on.  The seedling became a sapling, as did its competitors, who were now beginning to blot one another out in earnest.  It was lucky, and still had no immediate neighbours, no one to taunt or debate or trade or semi-amicably exchange threatening banter with.  Except for the daisies, which seemed to trouble it now and then. 
This did not go unnoticed by the middle-aged ash nearby, child of the ancient tree that had graciously collapsed to give birth to the sapling’s clearing. 
What’s wrong? it inquired one day.
Why do we grow? asked the sapling. 
If you don’t, you’ll drown in shade beneath your neighbours, said the ash. 
No, I mean, why do we grow and other things don’t?
The ash considered this.  Like what?
Daisies.  Deer.  Caterpillars.  They all grow up and stop, and then they die.  We just grow.  Why do they stop and die and we don’t?
They just don’t, said the ash.  You can’t fix it, you can’t help it.  Grow and be happy you don’t have to do it, and they’ll do the same. 

The sapling grew, made a game effort at being happy, and kept thinking about it.  Some of its thoughts centered on the other maple, which had eclipsed its closest three neighbours and was approximately the sapling’s own height despite having had to fight for its light.  They never spoke, but they watched each other constantly, two very large bears browsing opposite ends of the same berry patch.   
What it finally took for them to make contact was the summer, the hottest one yet in the sapling’s two decades or so of life.  The heat waves rolled over and on top of one another, building themselves into a blistering beachhead of oven-baked air and scorching surfaces.  Small things expired in open ground, bodies steaming as the water baked out of them.  The entire forest was parched and bleached, and the sapling (barely even still a sapling) had to delve deep and long for moisture, roots questing fervently.  Maybe it would have to stop growing, it thought, and lurking behind that were other, more unpleasant ideas connected with small polite colourful things and its own mortality.  Luckily enough it was just as those images were becoming uncomfortably clearer that its questing tendril dug into damp soil.  Unluckily enough, it also almost dug into the other maple’s taproot. 
Pardon me, it said, but I believe that I was here first. 
The not-quite-a-sapling thought about the daisies. 
Just for the drought, it said.  Just for the drought.  I’ll withdraw after that.  As it spoke, it wormed the root in deeper, surreptitiously securing anchorage.
Before it could so much as realize what was happening, its root was in an iron vice, sap slowly oozing out as it was cut off by pressure. 
I don’t think you will, said the other maple. 
What followed was very slow, quite awkward, and fuelled by the sort of slow-boiling inexplicable angry, paranoid fear that can’t be found in anything that doesn’t live for over a century.  At first the sapling liked to think it sought only defence, but as it sank more and more tendrils into the seething, wrestling mass that both their root systems were rapidly being diverted into, it admitted it was pushing the definition.  Nearly all of the precious water they found was put straight to work in their roots, surging forth new laterals, deepening their taproots, hunting and battling downward farther still.  The drought ended, but their feud did not, not during the discarding of their leaves, not during the first sharp frosts, not until the full strength of winter brought a forced cease-fire through cold so fierce that the sap froze in their minds and ice coated them like a caterpillar infestation. 
As the thaws came in that spring, the two involuntarily relaxed, roots feeling new life begin to flow again, leaves budding gingerly into the cool reception of the sun. 
Perhaps, said the sapling, it has been long enough. 
The other maple considered its competitors, who had quietly taken advantage of its distraction to gain some precious, desperately-needed height in late summer and early autumn. 
Agreed, it said. 
It was around then when they discovered that neither of them could extract their roots from the tangled ball they’d become, or even recall how in earth they’d even managed to do it in the first place.  That was an unpleasant spring, although it did introduce the sapling to the novel problem of having too much to talk about.  The other maple had an expansive vocabulary, and employed enough of it that the sapling almost wished it could go back to the less painful battle of wrestling for the groundwater. 

More and more generations of the daisies sprung up around the sapling – the tree’s – roots, but they grew fewer and sparser each spring, shrinking as the maple tree and its compatriots ate up the hole to the sky, branches poking up into the wide world of the canopy, where echoes of conversations held miles away were many and the mood was more amiable, the competition less ferocious. 
The canopy wasn’t the only place to speak.  The ash, withdrawn though it was, often had an amiable word, and the other maple spoke often now, even if much of it was pointed requests to relocate a root that was delving somewhere personal. 
The tree distracted itself in routine, and was surprised at how easily it was drawn in now that it had sufficient size to render most deer and insect predations moot.  Spring comes, bud leaves, grow roots, dig deep, breathe hard, fill all gaps with somnolent conversation over the canopy’s leaves, decay, sleep, repeat.  Beyond storms and several prolonged scratching session by an idle grizzly the routine was ironclad and immutable.  This was interrupted by the sudden arrival of small, colourful blossoms along its branches late one spring.  They reminded it of the daisies, except brighter.  Similar blooms sprouted along the branches of the other maple and its shrunken vassals, peeking out between the leaves. 
Wonderful, the other maple remarked.  A chance to do something other than sprout; and the tree had to agree with it.  By spring’s end the entire forest was a haze of pollination, and somewhere in the midst of summer the flowers dropped and hundreds of thousands of slender, winged seeds dangled from the grove’s inhabitants.  It was a disconcerting sensation, particularly whenever they started dreaming particularly loud and the sound made the tree’s xylem rattle.  Still, if it was uncomfortable, it was the kind of discomfort the tree welcomed. 
When they began to blow away in clumps during a mild midday breeze, the tree found itself uncomfortably barren of things to tell them, wherever they might land and start their struggle. 
Goodbye, it said.  It searched for more.  Don’t get in trouble.  I hope you’re lucky. 
The other maple chuckled.  The tree devoted a few days to growing an extra tendril and poked it in the taproot. 

Years were kinder at maturity, thought the tree.  The leaves came easier, and came down easier.  The pollen and seeding woke you up very nicely for a few months (it still couldn’t think of anything more profound to tell its seeds), and the hum and bustle of the canopy lulled it peacefully as it swayed its way through breeze and storm.  Nothing tried to eat it that it couldn’t ignore and outlive.  Even the other maple was friendlier, seeing as they were probably exchanging half the pollen each of them received each spring.  Altogether, things were quite ideal. 
The ash died one quiet autumn, to a bolt of lightning from a just-clearing sky after a mild storm.  Half of it was seared away instantly and it crumpled to the forest floor without fuss, dignity, or regrets.  The tree didn’t quite know what to make of that – and especially not of the daisies that it barely-saw sprouting from around the topped trunk – but it heard sorrowful whisperings across the canopy for months afterwards.  Bad luck, they said. 
Didn’t have long to go as it was, said the other maple.  It was starting to creak loud enough in those high winds to deafen an oak. 
That was just its way, said the tree.  It could’ve stood strong for another six decades. 
The other maple laughed again, the force of it sending the pair of withered little near-saplings that were its vassals shuddering, seeming to be supported as much by the thickets of brush that had sprung up around them as holding on their own.  Maybe you, definitely me, but that old thing? It said.  You are too much of an optimist.  Perhaps if you’d ended up on this side of the glade, you’d be more realistic. 
If I’d ended up on that side of the glade, said the tree, I’d be hiding underneath you desperate for sunlight and you’d have half your root system tangled up in my leftovers. 
This time, the near-saplings were almost toppled. 

Other trees fell, of course, though none as much in close proximity as the ash.  Over the seasons and the grand circles of the decades, they tipped over near and far, and though it seemed more the latter than the former, it was an odd thing when one day the tree noticed that it was the tallest of its kind for as far as its canopy could touch.  Except for the other maple. 
I am taller by a foot, it stated, smugness pervading the air about it nearly as headily as its pollen.  In the midst of its canopy, a family of squirrels bickered noisily and scattered to the four corners of the woods. 
Nonsense, said the tree.  It’s nothing but the angle of your leaf-growth.  Once autumn comes you’ll be the same as I, or even shorter. 
The other maple rustled indignantly.  The same?  Unlikely.  Shorter?  Impossible.  I may have had to fight for what is mine, but it was worth it.  What has held you back over there?  Sloth!
The tree rumbled a day-long laugh at that.  Silly things.  I can’t believe that this is what the ones around us did while we worked our way up to the canopy.  Speaking of silly things all day long, comparing branch length, life colour.  Isn’t having a place in the sunlight enough?
It’s never enough, the other maple stated. 
The youngest squirrel returned and built a nest in the other maple’s crown next spring, snapping off enough branches to bring their height neck and neck.  There was much arguing over whether or not this was considered fair.    

It was some time before the first and last blow was struck, but when it came, it was as quick as it was quiet.  The spring surge had only just begun to ripen when the tree saw the lithe little ropes wrapped tight around the other maple’s trunk and branches, weaving through the treetops with lazy, effortless speed. 
Hello? It inquired.  The other maple trembled, but made no response.  Its roots squirmed, wandering wildly from their usual placement. 
A very small sound on the edge of the tree’s hearing drew its attention: the laughter of the vassals down below.  For the first time in years it looked on them, and it could barely see them through the tangle of vines and creepers that ensnared them.  One was already rotting upright, the other half-sagging into the embrace of its woody cocoon. 
It was worth it, it cackled, in such a tiny voice that the tree was barely sure it was there.  Every moment of it.  It still is.  Had to talk to them for days to persuade them, had to promise them we’d let them use us, but now they’re there.  It’s all over.  For all three of us. 
By the time the tree managed to unstick the words from its mind, it was too late to ask any more. 
That summer was the longest one the tree had ever lived through.  The vines slipped through the other maple’s canopy like snakes into mouse burrows, delicately but firmly throttling it alive from the treetops down.  The most the tree could do for it was adjust the other maple’s roots as they struggled, guiding them to its own deposits of nutrients and down to groundwater.  Its own growth suffered, but it seemed to calm the other maple, though it still struggled, shaking its root network free of many of the ancient knots they’d tied themselves together with, blind fumbling doing what deliberate movement hadn’t so many years ago.  . 
As fall passed on and their leaves changed – not that the other maple had many left to change – the vines dried and shed their own, drawing themselves into dormancy, toughening but slumbering. 
The other maple had a little time to speak and act before the winter sleep came, and did so on a perfectly windless day. 
A pity, it said.  No anger, just irritation.  But that was near enough to six decades.  I suppose most don’t get as far.
It will be allright, said the tree. 
I should very well expect so, said the other maple.  This would be easier if you hadn’t tried to stop me from pulling loose, you know, but I expect I can still aim properly.  Still, if you fall over too, it’s your own silly fault.
Pardon? said the tree.  The other maple was tipping back and forth, swaying of its own accord, aiming, judging distances.
Goodbye, it said.  Don’t get in trouble.  I hope you’re lucky. 

By spring, all four of them were a formless mass.  The vines and the vassal near-saplings were half-rotted underneath the other maple’s trunk, but the other maple itself was largely pristine in the warming sun.    
The maple decided that it would’ve liked that. 

The summer of the vines had been long and painful, but the years after it seemed to vanish as quickly as the maple could comprehend them, as if in a hurry to distance it. 
The maple was alone, and stranger yet, alone in a crowd of trees that were suddenly and strangely younger and smaller than it.  Where had all the old growth gone, the towering green spires that rose alongside it? 
Where are you? it asked the canopy.  Which, it was alarmed to notice, lay beneath its crown.  Puzzled, polite rustlings were its only reply. 
Exactly one decade from the summer of the vines, the maple’s seeds were near-ripe.  It hadn’t felt right releasing them since the other maple fell; there was no one to laugh at it. 
The maple looked out over the forest, at all that life-given shadow, and it felt the slight breeze brush against its creaking trunk. 
No, not yet, it said.  And so it wasn’t. 
Holding in seeds that were demanding to be released was difficult, but the maple was determined, firm in that it was not yet, and such an attitude often trumps reasonableness.  Three months wandered by, three aching, swollen months as ironwood-strength stubbornness crept through its sap and performed heroic tasks in its phloem, all based on guesses and stubbornness to shut in its seeds and stall their launching.  Not yet.
It was September when the wind changed, when the storm came roiling down from the north, a blustering, howling gale that came roaring in through the forest, scattering deer and making wolves howl. 
The storm of the century was very nearly late, but it was still on the cusp of punctuality as it came back to greet the maple for the second time, on behalf of its illustrious predecessor. 
The maple had run out of thoughts and words both, it decided as the seeds spilled out eagerly, overdue, cramped, and impatient, vanishing into the teeth of the wind to sprout and grow.  But then again, it still had the core of hope that had hidden at the bottom of its message all those years.
Find somewhere not like this, and keep it like that.  Don’t steal the sun.  Please be kind to each other.  Two hundred years isn’t long enough to justify cruelty. 
And don’t be afraid to argue over silly things.

The thought struck it on the way down, inexplicably, was that it had never had trouble with beetles.  That was good, for some reason.  Maybe it all hadn’t been so bad. 

“A New Leaf and Old Growth,” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor.

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a knight named Phillip.  Sir Phillip, of course.  He was brave, strong, among the best of the king’s guard, and handsome enough that the queen paid more attention to him than was strictly necessary, which was why when that strange old seer came bursting in the door at midnight screaming of the prophecy that foretold the doom of the kingdom, the strange and twisted thing that would come rumbling down from the north to set it ablaze, the king turned to him immediately.  Before Sir Phillip could so much as say farewell he was given a company of followers and a smiling farewell with many gritted teeth, then booted out the door on his…
Wait….  I’m sorry.  Wrong character.  I’d forgotten how this one starts.  It’s all clear now; my apologies. 

Anyways, so Lieutenant Commander Phillip, the best the United Earth’s navy had to offer, was shipped out in command of the Marie, a light cruiser with a twenty-man crew, before the heat exhaust on that strange half-garbled distress beacon had even grown cold.  Phillip’s mission was non-specific, being basically “head to the colony that was screaming for help and see what ate them” only with much fancier wording, but for such a vague goal he was firmly prepared as best as could be.  His crew were loyal, tough, and well-trained.  His weaponry was very impressive and he treated it as life-saving, hazardous tools to be respected rather than genital enhancement. 
Unfortunately, his ship was a bit finicky from its recent overhaul, and a rather important part of the engine coughed politely and exploded just as they were performing the manoeuvres to settle nicely into orbit above the colony.  After an emergency landing (and an emergency exit, since the ship was calmly blowing itself apart around him), the Lieutenant Commander and the scant armful or so of supplies he’d managed to drag out found themselves face to face with…
…Hmm.  That isn’t right either.  Ah yes, I recall it now. 

So then, there Captain Phillip was: broken and battered ship behind him and already sinking on the rocks of the reef, crew drowned, map to a supposed great secret lost, armed with nothing but a snapped cutlass and a waterlogged, useless pistol, and stuck in a staring competition with a very, very large and mildly surprised crocodile.  He was just starting to feel his eyes water when the crocodile forfeited the contest, because it becomes very hard not to blink when someone shoves a harpoon through the back of your skull. 
The harpoon belonged to an elderly man who belonged to a name that Phillip found completely unpronounceable because he was missing several well-placed piercings inside his mouth that let him do strange things with his tongue.  For his part, Phillip’s name was just about all he could manage in English, but he seemed happy just to see another human.  Rudimentary exchanges about sums of fingers and setting suns sketched in the dirt put him at being stuck on the island for something like seven years.  And he wasn’t alone, from what he could get across in their sand-scrawlings. 
See, it wasn’t that there were no people.  Just no humans. 
The Captain wasn’t about to buy that on the poorly illustrated say-so of a lonely, very possibly crazy man who’d been stuck on the same island for over half a decade eating unwary crocodiles and very interesting herbs.  Luckily, the islander was also a very firm believer in “seeing is believing,” which was why the next thing he did to prove his point was…
Damnit.  I was sure I had it that time.  Oh yeah – now I remember.

Right.  Phil had seen a lot of weird stuff in his years – as a PI, you tended to – but he figured the thing that the mute old homeless man handed him then was the strangest yet.  Now, he’d raised a few dogs, shot a few dogs, booted a few alley cats (the nastier ones that spat and hissed and clawed at him), and he figured that pretty much completed his knowledge of animal anatomy.  But still, he was pretty sure that no creature he knew of on earth had teeth like the one that lay in the palm of his hand.  For one thing, it took the entire palm and part of its brother to hold it comfortably. 
It was at this point that Phil decided that his client was not paying him enough for this. 
Phil looked at the tooth, looked at the abandoned tenement in front of him, then glanced back over his shoulder at his totalled car.  What a lovely place to be stranded in.  Even the junkies had abandoned it.  He sighed, fruitlessly tried to unjam his pistol, then walked towards the askew doors behind the soft footfalls of the homeless man, patting his pocket for the reassuring prod of his switchblade as he did so. 
The lights weren’t working, of course.  And his flashlight barely was.  Still, it could’ve been worse; the structure itself was reasonably sound.  Just empty, creaky, filled with the faint and ever-present drip drop drip of water leaking from ruined pipes.  Phil could feel the sweat prickling on his skin, clinging to his neck’s rising hairs in a hapless plea for reassurance.  It dripped, crawled, skittered, and then it licked him and he realized it was in fact a cockroach clinging to the back of his head, which he missed, with great force. 
By the time Phil had picked himself up from that, the homeless man was nothing more than an invisible set of shuffling feet somewhere down the hall, one that he hurried after as thoughts of that tooth in his pocket danced merrily through his skull.  His eyes darted from wall to wall like indecisive houseflies, the floor loomed grossly under his feet, and every one of the thousand cracks in the ceiling promised to contain something unspeakable.  Phil was so distracted that he walked straight into the homeless man’s back, almost turning a surprised grunt into a yell while he was at it. 
The man shushed him silently, hand across Phil’s mouth, and pointed forwards about two inches past his toes, where the floor ceased to exist.  His free hand bumped Phil’s light gently towards the hole, offering vision. 
Cautiously, inchingly, Phil crept forwards.  He peered down into that dank pit, that yawning, strangely moist void beneath him, as the warm air tumbled by his face, looked by the feeble glow of the flashlight, and saw something that was physically incapable of looking back at him, yet somehow knew he was there.  It stood on two stocky stumps that might’ve once been legs, a mass of breathing sores in a tattered ruin that could’ve once been a shirt and jacket. 
Phil’s hand slipped to his tiny, insignificant switchbla…
No, no, NO.  That wasn’t it at all.  What happened was…hmm… wait, did I have it right in the first place? 

Well, as Sir Phillip looked down that blackened canyon and drew his sword, the lurking reptile at the bottom raised that lidless skull of its – you couldn’t call it a head – and gave a creaking, croaking cry that made the distant birds grow silent. Bile flowed from its throat and spilled onto the rocks, burning where it touched, and the slushy, haggard beat of its heart made the knight’s skin crawl.  At his side, the silent lantern maiden stepped back, even her calmness rebuked by its presence.  He really wished his horse hadn’t thrown a shoe.  And that his followers hadn’t been killed by brigands.  And that the king hadn’t been quite so stingy and selfish about his wife’s affections. 
The dragon lurched to its paws, tail dripping over softening stone, and began to stumble drunkenly towards Sir Phillip.  He raised his…..argh, damnit!

Lieutenant Commander Phillip raised his broken, beaten rifle to chest-height, cradling it against the bulky and dented chestplate of his environmental suit.  At its tip, the tungsten bayonet hovered, barely giving so much as a twitch as his nerves locked down in a harmonious blend of discipline and heart-wriggling fear. 
The emaciated, coral-bodied thing at his side crept backwards, buzzing warnings to escape, to leave well enough alone.  He ignored it.  Deranged or not, an overgrown, mentally handicapped offspring of it or not, the shale-sided monster in front of him had killed and consumed an entire colony.  Maybe it had been because it was provoked, maybe it hadn’t, but it was definitely not something he could leave lying around. 
Besides, there was no way in hell that he was going to try and hole up in the colony’s ruins and wait for rescue with that thing still walking around out here. 
The alien loomed overhead, five tons of surly, ambient cliffside on a spider’s legs with a wasp’s instinct for mindless anger, and then….all wrong!

And then Captain Phillip darted backwards as the not-quite-an-ape came crashing down, hot breath wheezing in his face, angry eyes burning a trail through his heart, hands big enough to crush his limbs like stalks of wheat groping where he’d just stood.  He came back in fast and cursing, half-cutlass striking, being seized and oh damnit the thing was right in his face, meaty grips encasing his sides and preparing to crush ribs.  The man with the incredible piercings swore something impossible for any other man to say and spun to the beast’s other side, harpoon darting out like a serpent oh not at all!

Phillip watched as the homeless man’s crude shank buried itself in the shuffling, stumbling thing’s side, heard the dull scream that sounded all-too-human, felt the floor shudder under its weight as it fell to its knees, arm’s flailing, and sent him careening off into its depths.  Too slow to be real, too fast to stop, even as his own arms continued on their inevitable course.  Not inevitable, not at all, ARGH!

So the lantern maiden fell as the bile seared her face, without a sound, as Sir Phillip’s blade – no!
Lieutenant Commander Phillip’s bayonet – not at all!
Captain Phillip’s snapped cutlass – definitely not!
Phillip Macguire, freelance PI’s switchblade – of course not!
Damnit, what WAS it?  This is the important bit too.  Was it Sheriff Phillip?  Private Phil?  Maybe it was a murder mystery, was that it?  No, no, no….oh. 
Oh dear.
Erm, ah, my mistake.  Obvious in hindsight, just rather, uh, embarrassingly so.  Right then. 

So, Captain Phoebe Macquire’s combat knife reached down through the gigantic, rubbery mantle and deep into the braincase of the squid.  It spasmed and thrashed in midwater, beak gnashing and biting in a cloud of its own leaking vital fluids and ink, but she had other things on her mind as she rushed to the side of the old pearl-diver, bobbing limply in the red-and-black current. 
She checked his pulse as she pumped them both towards the surface of the Pacific, lungs starting to burn in a fiery deep red ache as the aqualung dribbled away its final dregs of air.  There was something there, but whether or not it was his stubborn refusal to die or her own reluctance to accept that the thing had managed to send one more person to join the rest of her submersible’s crew at the bottom of the sea she wasn’t quite sure yet.  The sunlight grew brighter as the slime and blood streamed down and away from her, a small streak still delicately trickling from the blade of her knife. 
The beach was very warm under her feet as she staggered onto it, wrenching the scuba gear from her back.  The old man was deposited somewhat more gently, and this time her anxious finger felt something move that was definitely more than just hope as it lay against his neck. 
As Phoebe began CPR, she stared out past the old man’s body and over the waves of the South Pacific.  They were once again serenely blue. 

…Wait, come to think of it, was that supposed to be the Pacific or the Atlantic?  Oh, damnit. 

“Or Was It?” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010. 

It was a fine, ripe, mellow sunset that slid down past the horizon that summer eve, bloated and content in the knowledge that all had enjoyed its ruddy sheen and would be eager to attend its next showing the following morning. 
There, were, however, those who were glad to see it go.  It meant they could finally go get some clean, simple, dishonest work done, and the burglar was one of them.  He was so filled with impatience he half-thought he’d burst into a sopping puddle of it.  All his plans had been made, the ground scouted and prepared, the estate mapped, the guard routes memorized, the night when the homeowner would be out on extremely discrete business awaited with eager anticipation.  In fact, the burglar had prepared so carefully and so well that he’d been ready for the past eight hours with nothing to do and his brain was starting to bore its way out of his earhole in sheer mind-numbingly tense boredom. 
He’d brought a book with him to settle his nerves while he waited, a terrible potboiler that an idle housewife would’ve deemed not worth more than tinder.  It sat, prematurely dog-eared and page-marked without respite, on page one.  As the sun went down he let it slip from his hand and nimbly kicked it out of the window, where it nearly clipped a stray cat. 

The night was a fine, crisp one by city standards, with wholesome air that seemed to be worth a full meal per inhalation.  Given the particle density it’d acquired inside the city’s chimneys, slaughterhouses, tanneries, and other such places, it may even have been true, although the resultant meal wasn’t exactly one you’d tip your waiter for.  As he gingerly tossed his grappling hook over the high (and unguarded for another thirty seconds) east wall of the estate, the burglar decided the first thing he’d spend his money on would be a good dinner.  In a nice restaurant somewhere upscale, the best he could find, with a big steak and a particularly lovely dessert.  After this job, he could afford it. 
He swung himself over the wall on the line, huffing and puffing and cursing his inattention to fitness.  Well, if he had more of a work ethic, he supposed he might not be robbing a mansion at the moment.  Of course, he’d be doing some ghastly long-houred sort of labour and the mere thought of it gave him the creeping shivers.  No, this was a much better way to go about it, he decided as he gracelessly tumbled down the other side of the wall and nearly landed on the murderer. 
“Watch out!” snapped the murderer, slapping a hand across the burglar’s mouth and a knife to his throat.  He was skulking low and cautious against the wall, as inconspicuous as a six-foot-three man could be wearing his filthy, tattered, tawny suit and outstandingly bushy red beard.  “Keep it quiet, you lummox!  The guards’ll hear, and where’ll we be then?  Eh?  Eh?”
“Mmrrrph,” opined the burglar.
“Eh?  Speak up!  Don’t whisper!  Oh, yes.”  The murderer snatched his hand away and glared at it as though it had made an impolite gesture of its own will.  “Right.  Right!  What are you doing here, eh?”
The burglar looked at his soft, dark clothes and his soundless slippers and covered face and thin, strong rope, and then looked at the murderer.  There were no apparent signs of sarcasm on his face. 
“Thieving,” he said, using every ounce of will in his body to maintain a moderate, pleasant tone.
The murderer gawped, eyes popping slightly farther (if that were possible).  “You don’t say!  Hah!  Don’t that take the biscuit, eh?  What a luck, a lark!  Well, I’m here to murder him, so just stay out of my way and don’t try taking his watch or anything ‘till I’m through, we clear?”
“Perfectly,” said the burglar.  The knife didn’t seem very large, but the size of the fist it was clenched in might have tweaked his perspective on it. 
“Right!” said the murderer.  He got himself to his feet and brushed an imperceivable amount of dust off the arms of his tawny suit, which bore enough exquisitely-tailored scars for the burglar to suppose that he hadn’t made similar use of a rope and had simply heaved himself over the wall with fingernails and possibly teeth.  “Lord Hemmeley-Pewthrett On-The-Lake,” he said, extended the unknifed hand and seizing the burglar’s unresisting palm, which he then mangled crudely.  “Bloody good.  Bloody good, eh?!  Right then.  You take the east door and raise a ruckus, see if you can bait the bugger thataways, eh?  I’ll nip in through the servant’s entrance, see if I can be stealthy a mite.  See you at the bastard’s throat!”  He made a nasty hacking motion, then ran away chortling merrily. 

The burglar spent almost 20 seconds of his meticulously timed and planned route sitting there in the mud, mind working its way inch by inch through the shock and patiently reminding him that this opportunity wouldn’t last forever.  Besides, if the distant and strangled shriek he’d just heard was any indicator, the murderer had just barged in on the cook.  He hoped the man wasn’t far gone enough to resort to random killings just yet.  The burglar knew of his motives, of course.  The owner of the estate was a rich man, a man of high society, and riches at such heights were often most easily obtained out of the pockets of any peers you had to hand.  Hemmeley had been hard-hit, but even so he appeared to have taken it more passionately than most did. 
The east door was empty ahead of schedule, and the fading sound of a jogging guard told of Hemmeley’s unintentional if highly effective distraction.  The burglar slipped in as lightly as his rotund self allowed, squeezing his paunch uncomfortably against the doorframe. 

Inside, his task became easy, his pulse slowed again, his movements slipping into confidence and concentration out of confused anxiety.  There was little sign of the servants he’d expected to encounter, and his path was speeded greatly on its way, expensive knick-knacks sailing off shelves and into his pockets.  So greatly was he sped, in fact, that he nearly ran headfirst into the youngish and rather fetchingly dressed man waiting right outside of his lordship’s bedchamber, skidding to an arms-windmilling, desperately-balancing stop no less than an inch behind the man’s sculpted buttocks where he peered through the keyhole.  He showed no sign of awareness, peeping cautiously through the keyhole, one hand nervously fiddling with his collar and an unbecoming sheen of sweat gracing his face. 
The burglar pulled out his leather cosh cautiously, then sneezed.  The man spun about in horror, finely-combed moustache twitching hysterically. 
“What?  What what what oh my goodness, thank goodness, it’s a mere thug.”  He slumped in relief.  “Thank goodness, I thought you were Lord Dracey.”
“Yes?” inquired the burglar cautiously.  He waggled the cosh threateningly, which he was dismayed to note was completely ignored.  Indeed, the young man was perking up quite rapidly.  “Yes indeed.  Oh, pilfer what you’d like indeed, I won’t say a word.  Fat old fool deserves what’s coming to him – no offence, you are most nimble for a man of your stature, I mean no slur against you sir brigand – and more, for indeed sir, his material treasures distract him from his greatest source of light in life!”
“Being?” inquired the burglar, fascinated in spite of himself. 
“Lady Dracey, sir!  A more precious jewel you could not find in all the lands, in India, Tibet, or China!  She is filled with goodness, too good for the likes of that fat dotard of a husband!  Twice her age, oh pilferous sir!  Pshaw!  Such a man knows not how to treat a woman of her fabulous wonderousness, and so I have taken it upon myself to woo her gently, to treat her as he shall not.  And I shall woo her most well.  I have, thieving sir” – and here he preened his moustache in a manner so smug that the burglar nearly fell over –“a certain degree of experience with these matters.”
“So it seems.  Why then the key-hole peeping?”
The adulterer looked embarrassed for the first time.  “Ah, well, you see… the lady, I confess, is not within the bedchambers for the moment, and it was her location I was attempting to discern.  It appears she may not have received my note, which I did not wish her dullard of a husband to receive.  I was very discrete with it.  Possibly too much so – I handed it to her chamber maid’s uncle’s sister-in-law, with instructions to pass it on.”
“Ah.”
The adulterer shifted from one foot to the other.  “So as not to be indiscrete, you see.”
“Ah.”
“Yes.  Well, as I said, it is possible I was too discrete.”
“It very well may have been so.”
“Indeed.”  He cleared his throat.  “Tell me sir…know you where the lady might reside?”
The burglar thought.  “I haven’t the faintest idea, truth me told.  She putters around the estate quite a bit.  You might try for the flower beds.  West side of the house, to your right.  Can’t miss them.”
“I thank you greatly, kind sir of quick fingers.  Away I shall be, and trouble you no more!”  With a bow and a tip of his hat he was away and scampering down the hall, keyhole left gaping and forlorn.

The burglar stood there a while, thinking quietly but not without internal turmoil.  At last he cautiously poked his head into the room, glanced about, then looted freely and with little care weighing down his heart.  The jewellery box in particular was a fine haul, and surprisingly easy to open, thanks to a specialized little tool he’d brought along. 
As he turned to leave, a hulking presence barged in the door, breath reeking of whiskey and fire, soot-covered and with a knife in each hand. 
“Hello!” exclaimed the murderer cheerily, teeth surprisingly yellow against his dark red (and black now) beard.  “These chaps” (and here he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the burly, glowering chef and two under-chefs behind him, nearly taking off his ear in the process) “have a bit of a beef with the bloody little pillock themselves, eh?  So I’ve brought ‘em along and we can all have a lovely piece of his hide each.”
“I get th’ scalp,” said the head chef, testing the edge of his abnormally large cleaver with unsavoury anticipation.  The two underchefs nodded and hefted their meat tenderizers with appropriate menacing grunts, muscles squirming like meerkats in a sack. 
“My,” said the burglar, with even more care than was usual.
“Cheap bastard,” the chef elaborated.  “Under-pays, an’ too rarely.  Slice ‘is head off, I reckon, grab our wages from the safe and scarper.  ‘E here?”
“No,” said the burglar.  A small plan was forming behind his eyeballs.  “But try the west garden.  If he isn’t there, a man is who’d be happy to join you.”
“You heard the rascal!” boomed the murderer, waving his weapons most alarmingly (one was still bloody, noted the burglar – hopefully from a pot-roast rather than a guard).  “Let’s move out!”
The burglar waited some seconds for the sound of the stampede to fade, which he spent slowly letting his grin grow wider and wider before erasing it with a serious effort.  Then the bedchamber was behind him and he was off upstairs, humming a reckless little tune. 

Upstairs, he nearly tripped over Lady Darcey as she left the reading room, too distracted for her to hear even his creaking, clanking, overburdened footsteps. 
“Goodness,” she cried, eyelashes a-flutter, “are you here to ravish me?”
“Never, lady,” he replied. 
“Oh pooh,” she grumped.  “I need someone to do it, because my husband surely won’t.  That impotent old toad – I knew I shouldn’t have married for money.”  She moved into the burglar’s personal space and sighed extremely gustily.  “And he keeps such a greedy eye on me that I’ll simply never get a chance to have some fun.”
“West gardens, follow the rummaging, talk to the big fellow with the red beard,” said the burglar, as quickly as he could.  “I believe they have a solution to end all your problems for good.”
“Oh, it’s to be a lynch mob then?” she inquired.  The Lady laughed.  “Goodness me, what a lark!  Thank you, mysterious man of my dreams.  Care for a little moment of celebration?”
“No thank you,” said the burglar, backing away from her grasp.  “Must move on!”  Her laughter trailed him, and he smiled where she couldn’t see it. 

By the time the burglar was through hurriedly pillaging the upper floor, the mob had re-assembled itself at the staircase below, and it now contained practically all the estate guards, who seemed to be something of the same mind as the chefs. 
“No trace,” said the murderer.
“Nary a sign, alas,” sighed the adulterer.
“’ide nor ‘air” hissed the cook between his teeth, as the underchefs rumbled their disapproval. 
“I’ve not seen him since this afternoon,” sighed the lady.  “Where on earth could he be?”
“There is a wine cellar, is there not?” inquired the burglar.  “Mayhap he’s been drinking.”
“But he has the key,” she complained.  “And he won’t tell me where he keeps it!”
The burglar fished an object from around his neck, where he’d stored it for safekeeping.  “This?”
The cook snatched it from his fist with the speed of a snapping adder.  “’at’s it,” he agreed.  “Where you find it?”
“Underneath his third-best hat,” said the burglar, which was an utter lie.  “Shall we?”
There was a general roar of approval and many a sharp object was brandished in the milling midst of the parade the burglar led down to the darkest and coolest corner of the cellars, where the great winery door stood foursquare and tall, fastened with a padlock that would make a sledgehammer blanch in stark existential terror.  The burglar fancied he could feel it glaring at him as it thumped neatly into his palm, flapping open.
“AT HIM, LADS!” he called, and charged beyond the darkened door, where he flattened himself to the wall and allowed the rest of the hooting, hollering bunch to stream past.  He then darted back outside, slapped the padlock on, allowed himself five seconds of maniacal laughter, then ran for it. 

Lord Darcey’s estate was the centre of a great scandal, to be sure.  For the whole staff to run riot with the aid of so many nefarious plotters of murder was one thing, but the wholesale pillaging of valuables was quite another.  Thankfully, the vast majority were insured, and Lord Darcey himself reaped a tidy profit, which, combined with the sale of the old manor (“Bad memories,” he claimed), led to his acquiring a tidy and sprawling new home in the country, one nearly beyond even his reputedly vast amassment of fortune, which showed no sign of shrinking. Even more thankfully, much of his property was seized by the police and returned to him from several fences after a flurry of anonymous tips. 
The murderous instigators were for the most part free to go under little more than stern warnings, but Lord Hemmeley-Pewthrett On-The-Lake and the dashing young Sir Albert Lawrence were examined more seriously, the former on grounds of mental health and the latter on the producing of an extremely passionate letter from Lady Darcey’s own chambermaid’s uncle’s sister-in-law, which Lord Darcey had fortunately discovered by sheer luck.  The Lady was placed under scandalous regard and they soon separated. 

The steak dinner had to be put off until after the legal business had been settled.  It would’ve ruined his appetite. 

“A Night on the Town” copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010.

The cards were oak.  The four chairs were maple.  The table was from something that no one could remember, because it and all its relatives had been extinct for at least three hundred million years. 
As always, Spring shuffled and dealt the first hand, flipping each card out with happy carefreeness that never failed to send them spinning across the table and into laps.   The other three took it with varying degrees of grace: Summer smiled politely, Winter’s lips pursed, and Autumn…well, autumn glowered, but he did that at anything.  The sight of a chipmunk consuming an acorn under an apple tree on a sunny day would’ve merely deepened his scowl. 
“So!” said Spring brightly as she laid the deck down on the table.  “Who cuts?”
“It’s always Summer,” said Winter, clutching his robe around himself so the drafts clung to him like children.  “It was Summer last time and all the times before, and it will be Summer next time and all the times after.”
“But what about this time?” asked Spring, as Summer gently plucked the deck from her fingers. 
“That too,” Summer said as she cut the deck.  Warmth spread across the age-smoothed surface of the cards as her wooden hands touched them. 
“And might I add,” said Winter, “that it is customary to cut the deck before you deal.”
“Oh,” said Spring, crestfallen.  The flowers in her hair brightened a little in an attempt to cheer her up. 
“Leave off her,” snapped Summer, surreptitiously sliding a few extra cards off the deck and passing them around to even out the hands.  “Right then, game’s open.  I’ll ante in a warm afternoon.  Autumn?”
He sneezed sulphuously, spreading patches of mould across his end of the table like slimy spiderwebs and making the great wheezing root-filled gape in his chest yawn like a second mouth.  “I’ll raise you ten acres of rotting hardwoods,” he declared, and slapped the shoulder of the frozen man next to him.  “Winter, hurry up.”
Winter raised one stiff corpse’s eyebrow in distaste at the gnarled paw on his shoulder until it was removed nonchalantly.  “Six hours of light snow,” he said, testily.  “Spring, your turn.”
She jumped.  “Oh!  Already?  Ummm….. let me see.”  She chewed her lip as she examined the old, old, old playing cards clutched in her bright green fingers.  “Ummm…  Umm.. Um.  Uh, I’ll raise it,” she declared. 
There was a pause. 
“By what, dear?” asked Summer, as gently as possible. 
“Oh!  Umm, a blooming cherry tree!” she said. 
“Marvellous.  Right then, time to draw.”
Summer took two cards.  Autumn took none.  Winter took one.  Spring chewed a nail, hesitated, then replaced all five.
“Don’t do that dear, it’s a nasty habit,” said Summer.  “I’ll put in a sunny weekend; Autumn, your go.”
“A foggy fortnight,” he wheezed, then banged his twisted walking stick.  “Winter!  Hurry up you miserable old coot!”
“Be quiet,” said Winter.  “I’ll wager… a storm of sleet.  Spring, it’s your bet.”
“Ummmmmmmmmmmm….”  Spring looked at the small glowing flickers of something-or-other that had congealed in the center of the table.  They weren’t quite all not there, and were shaded various colours of imagination.  “Did you say a whole sleet storm?”
“Yes,” said Winter.
“Not just a shower?”
“No,” said Winter.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Winter, something in the hiss of the syllable trailing off into hints of unspeakable deeds. 
“Um.  I fold,” she said. 
Summer sighed.  “Spring, honey, let me look at your cards for a moment.”
“Here now!  That’s cheating!” snapped Winter.
“Stuff your miserable lungs,” said Summer, examining Spring’s reluctantly proffered cards with a critical eye.  “The girl’s still learning, and there’s no shame in getting a little help.  Dear, this is an excellent hand.  I’d keep a tight grip on this one.”
“She’s always learning – that’s the entire point of Spring.  You’re being absurd and unbalancing the game,” said Winter.
“Act your age.”
“Insufferable,” whined Autumn.
“Quiet!” said Winter and Summer.  He gurgled grumpily at them.
“Okay,” said Spring.  “I’ll put in… a rainy week.”
“A whole week!  See what happens when you indulge them?” said Winter.
“Shut up and show the cards,” said Autumn, dumping his hand unceremoniously on the table, where it sprawled like an infestation of toadstools.  “I’ve got three-of-a-kind tree stumps, and the lumberjack’s axe.”
“A pair of ewes and a pair of rams, shepherd-high,” said Summer, over Winter’s attempts at protest.
“Jack Frost and thirty-four snowflakes,” he said, putting as much bitter venom into his voice as he could.  It was surprisingly little – frozen vocal chords are even less expressive than they sound. 
“Um,” said Spring as she laid down her hand.  “Here’s my cards.  I’ve got a budding forest, a flowery meadow, green grass, a blooming rose, and a freshly-laid robin’s egg.  What is this called again, Summer?”
“A flush, dear,” said Summer.  “And the highest hand, too!  The pot’s yours – go on, take it.”
Spring hesitated for a moment under Winter’s baleful eye, then reached out and gently poked the nearest of the… things in the center of the tabletop.  They vanished into her hand with nary a whisper.
Summer accepted the cards and shuffled them with a businesslike manner.  “My turn to cut,” chuckled Autumn, moistly.  The cards nearly stuck to his palms as he separated them clumsily, turning over and over with gross slurping sounds.  He handed them back, and Summer wiped off each one she dealt without really noticing. 
“A midafternoon chill,” Autumn said, eyes spilling over his cards.  “Winter, you’re up.”
“A blustering blizzard,” said Winter, glaring at Summer.
“I fold,” said Spring quickly, shoving her cards away as if they’d grown red hot.  She felt the urge to chew her nails again. 
“Oh, but you don’t have to, dear,” Summer told her without making eye contact and in a slightly absent tone.  She was busy glaring back at Winter. 
“No.  Um.  I’m fine.  Go on.”
“Right,” said Summer in the nastiest voice she’d used all evening.  “A blazing heat wave.  Draw, and draw well, boys.”
The cards were picked up by the three players, in one case haphazardly and in the others with a great deal of deliberate menace and enough tension to crack a wineglass from forty paces.
“Eight thousand tons of rotting leaves,” croaked Autumn.  “Go on then, Frosty.”
“An advancing glaciation,” said Winter, poker faced as only a frozen body can be.
There was a long, significant pause, in which Spring nearly bit off a finger.  No one noticed (including her) because they were all watching Summer very carefully.
“A global spike in temperature, leading to the vanishing of the polar ice caps.  A rise in sea levels.  And.  General.  Humidity,” said Summer, each word delivered as if it were a brick being bashed into the back of someone’s skull.
The cards dropped. 
“A mother grizzly, a subadult, and three cubs,” said Autumn.
“Four glaciers,” said Winter.  The hoarfrost around his eyes had thickened to the point where his face was nearly full again.
Summer’s expression was wooden, as befitted her skin, but her face had turned a deep red that typically heralded one of the more colourful skin cancers.  “Four forest fires.”
There was an even longer and more significant pause as the bets were silently whisked back to their original owners, and it ended when both Summer and Winter stood up. 
“I think,” said Summer, “that we should take this outside.”
“I concur,” said Winter, icicles now dripping from his mouth. 
The door banged shut behind them, leaving Spring and Autumn alone.  Almost immediately afterward, there was a heavy thud.
“I do hope they won’t be too hard on each other,” said Spring, still nursing her wounded finger.  She winced at the sound of ripping cloth. 
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Autumn, leering absently as he examined the bottom of the deck.  He removed the card, then replaced it, then took it out and put it back in the centre of the stack with a satisfied grunt.
“I just hate it when they fight like this,” she explained.  A sudden crash and yell made the table quiver. 
“Eh?” said Autumn as he fished in first his chest cavity, then his boot for something murky and thankfully unidentifiable.  “Oh?  Yes, fighting.  Terrible thing.  Terrible.  Awful really.  Say, you deal a lot with, heh, blooming buds and such, right?”
“Yes.”
Autumn raised his voice over the increasingly noisy sounds coming from outside.  “Birds courting, bears shambling out of dens all ready to pair off, flowers screaming to each other “Fertilize me!  FERTILIZE ME!” right?”
“Oh of course,” said Spring.
“Are you sure?” asked Autumn, stuffing the glob-shaped object he’d extracted up his sleeve.
“Pardon?”  It had gone quiet beyond the room. 
“Oh, never mind.” 
The door swung open again and both Summer and Winter reentered.  Winter was breathing unusually heavily – that is, at all – and Summer was still unusually red.
“Right,” she said, sitting down heavily.  “Whose deal was it again?”
“Mine,” breathed Autumn, a messy grin on his face.  The cards slopped heavily through his hands for a scant collection of seconds before he tossed them to Winter, nearly decking him.  “Cut them up fast then, will you?”
Winter barely had the energy to give him more than a weary look as he crisply sliced the pile into two and rearranged it, the faint traces of sludge freezing in place.  “A perfect icicle,” he said.
“Back to trinkets again, are we?” taunted Autumn. 
“Shut up,” said Winter, without much force or care behind it.
“A sprouting seedling,” said Spring, examining her finger with care.  She’d wrapped a small leaf around it as a bandage, and was watching it bloom happily. 
“A cooling midday breeze,” said Summer, slowly stretching her shoulders and working out a kink in her neck. 
“The first snow of the year,” said Autumn. 
Summer nearly sprained her neck. 
“Well,” said Winter, whose eyebrow had raised an entire inch.  “I take it you preferred the big stakes then, eh?  Fine.  A night that drops fifty degrees Celsius below zero.”
Spring was rearranging her cards frantically, looking at one, then two, then the other three, then four of the lot, as if it would change them into something she could understand.  “Uh, one second, um.  Um.  Err… I’ll put in… one moment…”
“While we’re still young, girl!” shouted Autumn, then he guffawed. 
“Hush!” said Winter and Summer simultaneously.  He merely snickered.
“Right!” said Spring, spots of tulip-red anger appearing on her cheeks.  “A whole two months of rain!  And stop laughing at me!”
“A windless three weeks with no clouds in the sky,” said Summer.  “And yes, stop that for goodness’ sake, you sound like a crow choking on a toad.”
“Every ripened nut in all of the Americas,” said Autumn.  He threw his hand down.  “Three fat squirrels and a pair of sleepy skunks!  Top that!”
“That will be rather difficult,” said Summer, “As I’m sure you know, having marked all the cards with that raw rot of yours.”
A third pause, somehow contriving to be more awkward than the other two. 
“Ah?” said Autumn, part disbelief, part question. 
“The smell,” clarified Summer.  “Of course you can’t tell, or Winter, and Spring’s a good girl – just a bit distracted.  But some of us can use our noses just fine, thank you very much.”
“Ah,” said Autumn, shrinking a little in his seat.  Winter began to stand up again, rolling up the sleeves of his robe. 
“Please don’t,” said Spring.  “Please.”
“He cheated,” said Winter, icicles beginning to form on his knuckles as he flexed them. 
“He’s old and just wanted some nice weather, I’m sure,” begged Spring.  “I can lend him some afternoon showers and a few rainbows.  Please.”
Winter looked to Autumn, cowering in his high-backed maple chair, then over to Summer.  She shrugged, then nodded very slightly.
“All right,” he said.  “Fine.  For the sake of ending the game peacefully.”  He picked up the deck and gathered his quarter of the cards from it, stuffing them into one of his pockets.  “Same time next year?”
“Of course,” said Summer.  Her cards she slipped onto her arms, where they soaked into her skin, wood on wood. 
Spring made a second garland from hers, earth tones and bright flowers mixed in green hair.  Autumn stuffed his into his chest, clutched amidst the roots, then caught the little flickering mess of complicated things that Spring tossed to him.  He nearly dropped it in surprise. 
“You don’t have to do that, you know,” he said. 
“It’s all right,” she replied.  “I’ve got plenty, and you need them more than I do.”  She hugged him on the way out.  The slime took a bit of scrubbing, but the look on his face was worth it. 

They parted ways immediately after leaving the playing room, farewells and waves slung over shoulders like old sacks.  Where they each spent the rest of the year was quite different, and not at all nice for any of them to play visitors with each other. 
Still, there was always the next game to look forward to. 

“Four-Season Five-Draw,” Copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

In the deep down stone where the darkness dwelt lived Gulp and the world.  He took up quite a lot of it. 
The world was very wet, slightly more than one Gulp-length in length, around two Gulp-lengths in width, and approximately six Gulp-lengths deep.  The population of the world consisted of Gulp, the Things That Wiggled, and the Things That Wiggled On Rocks.  They got along tolerably well with one another, though relations became strained every once in a while when Gulp had to eat, making his mealtimes something of a guilty (though thankfully rare) pleasure.  The guilt vanished with sleep, which was good because that was easily the thing Gulp did the most.  The world was small, but Gulp could imagine things much bigger, particularly when asleep.  Once he’d imagined a pool three times deeper than all the world and twice as wide, a feat he’d never replicated since.  
Most of his time that wasn’t spent dozing was spent not thinking.  It was very difficult, but he managed.  Too much time in your own head could make you go strange and odd, like the occasional one of the Things That Wiggled that would crawl right up into Gulp’s mouth as he was sleeping and cast itself inside.  He never was sure why they did that, but it troubled him a little.  They had so much that he didn’t (someone to talk to and live with, their strange business of scraping the Slimy Stuff from the rocks and eating it, their desperate avoidance of the Things That Wiggled On Rocks and their sharp needlebits), and seeing it all go to waste just didn’t seem right.  All the same, it was nice to eat a meal that didn’t require any effort on his part. 
Gulp wondered about dying sometimes, and how he would go about it.  It didn’t seem too difficult for the Things, but there was nothing big enough to eat him in all the world and try as he might he just couldn’t see any other way. 

The world was dark and cold, but Gulp didn’t really have anything to contrast those feelings against, so he didn’t mind all that much.  Not only had he never seen light, he didn’t even know what it was, until that one strange moment (no days, no nights, only a long chain of moments stretching back on and on to Gulp’s origin, so far back that he couldn’t remember it at all) when a new and odd vibration came trembling from the place outside the world. 
At first he thought it was a bit of rock falling. Sometimes that happened, outside the world.  Four times it had even fallen into the world, and the second time it had clipped his frail and translucent back, giving him a nasty jolt and leaving a bruise that had taken far too long to fade away.  But this was different; it kept going.  Scrapes, shuffles, crunches, bumps, all rippling through the stone, into the world.  All irregular, erratic, but with an underlying pattern and getting stronger by the moment.  Something was happening up there, outside the world, far above Gulp where he rested at the bottom of six Gulp-lengths of wet world.  He decided that he would have to go and investigate. 
And so Gulp rose up from the depths on the strokes of his fins, slow and sure, past the colonies of the Things That Wiggled On Rocks and their prey, the Things That Wiggled, and their prey, the Slimy Stuff, and on and on and up and up, all the way up to the edge of the world, where the wet stopped and the strange place outside the world, the “dry” began.  It made his skin prickle as he broke its surface, and he felt the unfamiliar chill of strange currents swimming across his back. 

Something was there, that was for sure.  He could feel deep, steady vibrations.  There was a thing up there where no things should ever be, beyond the world itself; a moving thing, something so large that he could feel its very insides lurching forwards with organic implacability, something that made even the very largest of the Things That Wiggled on Rocks seem small.  It moved again, and he felt the outside of the world vibrate with its motions in harmony, a presence so massive that the world itself responded to it…
…just like Gulp. 

Thinking back on it all, that was probably the moment It happened.  It was very mild at the start, of course, but there was no question needed: that was the origin, and It sprang from a very simple and startling thought that launched its way through Gulp’s man for parts unknown: there’s something else out there, outside the world, that’s like me.  The shock came over him so strongly that it nearly stopped his swimming, leaving him wallowing uncertainly in midwater.  So great was his surprise that he almost missed the next thing, as the vibrations neared and then halted, the tremors pausing as whatever-was-outside paused above the world, leaning over from who knew where. 
There was something strange up there.  Something new that Gulp…knew of, he didn’t know how.  It was like feeling without feeling, touching without touching.  It hurt a little, and made unfamiliar bits of his skull tingle and ache in strange ways, hitherto useless organs finding their footing at long last.  He needed a word for it, the strange sensation that made murky shapes appear inside his mind, a mind that didn’t know what they were. 
Light.
Yes, that would do. 
The thing outside moved closer still, and Gulp flinched as he felt something break the surface of the world.  The light was too harsh, too hard against his… eyes, and he feared that if it got any closer it would hurt.  Perhaps that was what would kill him, or could kill him.  But the pain stayed in his eyes, and the thing outside drew no closer.  There was something it was holding inside the world that wasn’t part of itself, he saw.  It didn’t feel like rock, but it definitely wasn’t flesh.  Some small odd object that filled itself up with the world and was removed, then carried away on the echoes of fading rumblings, the sounds of the departing thing from outside the world. 

No sooner had it left than Gulp broke his startled, wary inaction.  He berated himself thoroughly inside his head as he sank downwards back towards his rest, tail twitching in agitation.  For the first time in the ever-ongoing chain of moments that he was he’d met another thing like him, felt it appear on the edge of the world…and done nothing.  He should’ve done something, shown himself at least – unmoving like that, there must’ve been no way for it to feel him.  Gulp’s life had been all the same so far; the same perils, same guilt, the same pleasures, the same silence and pauses.  Now he had a brand new regret: he’d seen the first exception from normality he’d ever known, and he’d wasted it.  The despair and depression nearly overwhelmed him, and so he went to sleep, hoping that it would bring some respite. 
It didn’t.  He awoke still sorrowful and slightly hungry, and managed to eat an entire three of the Things That Wiggled without noticing before he stopped, which made him feel worse.  Altogether Gulp was wallowing as much in self-pity as the world when he heard the same traces and tremors of movement again. 
For a moment he thought it was his (very small and quiet) imagination again, but there it was: the shifting, the rumbling, the strangely predictable irregularity of the movement.  The presence.  And as he hurried to the surface, setting the world all a-froth in his churning wake, the first faint…glows… of that strange thing, light.  The thing from outside was back. 

Many things went through Gulp’s mind as he watched, all very quickly but without haste, in a sort of dreamy haze.  There was all the time he wanted somehow, as he felt the thing from outside feel about with a pair of peculiar gripping things that weren’t quite part of it and snare a couple of the Things That Wiggled On Rocks and the Things That Wiggled, as well as a sizable scraping of the Slimy Stuff.  He supposed that it was only fair to share the world with the only other thing like him, but he was a little distressed at how much it seemed to want to eat, and hoped that there would be enough left over for him to keep eating.  He wasn’t sure what would happen then, but his stomach had always felt very odd after large gaps between meals, and the thought of a long series of moments all like that stretching onwards maybe forever made him balk. 
Gulp examined his visitor more closely this time, the thing that was like him.  Well, not quite like him.  Outside the world dried his skin and when he poked his head out it made him grow dizzy and weak, and it didn’t seem to want to entire the world proper itself, only gingerly inserting its farther extremities and going about its matters businesslike.  It was indeed around his own size, or a little smaller.  The female Things That Wiggled were a little smaller than the males, did that mean it was female?  Gulp didn’t think he was female himself, but he’d never had a chance or reason to wonder, alone as he was.  Maybe it was female, maybe it was male.  Did it matter?  He didn’t think that the world had room in it for any more Gulps or things, and perhaps it was better that it was just the two of them. 
The thing took her meals and left, but this time Gulp didn’t scold himself.  She would be back, he was sure.  Of course she would.  Definitely.  She had to.  After all, how big was outside the world?  Twice as large?  Three times?  She came from far enough away that he couldn’t feel it…perhaps even ten times larger?  It must be awfully large and empty up there; Gulp felt sorry for her, and spent some whiles carefully herding Things That Wiggled upwards towards what had seemed to be the limits of her reach, bumping them with his snout.  Perhaps she wasn’t after food, just company.  She must be very lonely.  Gulp knew the feeling.  And began to again, very deeply. 

After a long pause (in which Gulp remembered very little at all), a third time she came, a third time Gulp rose from the bottom of the world to rest at its very margins, slowly and surely using his strange eyes to see the light. 
The thing from outside found his relocated Things That Wiggled very quickly, and began to pluck them from the world as surely and swiftly as before, holding them close to her bright light.  They looked very odd in its strange illumination, quite unlike they felt to Gulp’s touch, and he peered as closely as he was able, lifting his head ever so slightly clear of the world, feeling the cold dry touch of outside on his skin once more, prickling his freshly-sensitive eyes.  He twitched in discomfort, causing the world to splash around him, echoing sharply, and hr realized his mistake exactly too late. 
The light spun to glare straight at him, he flinched backwards, sloshing even more loudly, and then thing outside lurched, slipped, made a strange cry (the loudest sound he’d ever heard, he realized through the shock), and smacked backwards onto the rock, rolling down the steep slope at the world’s edge and dropping down into it with a mighty splash.  She nearly hit Gulp as she sank by him. 
The thing was not attempting to swim, he saw, preferring instead to drop straight to the bottom of the world.  He followed anxiously, questions filling his head and stumbling around in a panic, searching for any sign of movement.  Her body still seemed to be working, but she wasn’t so much as twitching.  Was she asleep?  Why would she fall asleep like that?  Little bubbles were coming out of her mouth – why were they doing that?  How could she breathe with bits of outside the world inside her like that?  Had she moved?  No, that was the current. 
The thing hit the rock at the bottom of the world, but gently.  Gulp hovered over her anxiously, mind racing against itself.  Her body was getting quieter, the bubbles were getting fewer.  Was she going to die?  If she was like him (but not quite like him at all, not at all, now that he could feel her closely – she was shaped wrong, shaped wrong in so many odd ways but she was the right size), was this how he could die?  Was it that easy? To just stop moving, stop breathing, and shut down?  Why was she doing this?
It was at that moment that Gulp’s head cleared and in a single brilliantly, harmfully bright moment realized It had happened, what It was, and what It wanted him to do. 
First, he’d fallen in love. 
Second, this was a shorter way to say that he cared about the thing from outside more than anything else he’d known about in all his chain of moments. 
Third, sometimes love demands sacrifice. 
The thoughts were discretely herded back into his mind as the revelations faded, now calm, orderly, and filled with absolute certainty.  The thing didn’t mind the cold dry of the world above, the place he couldn’t go.  The thing had never come down into the world before, and had seemed to avoid it, so maybe she couldn’t go there either.  Maybe it was killing her.  So she had to go up. 
Gulp’s teeth were large and cruel, and his thoughts were vivid with the memories of those strange sad Things That Wiggled and how they threw themselves into it to die.  He didn’t want the thing to die, so he couldn’t carry her that way.  It took some quick and vicious wriggling, and the thing from outside flopped around alarmingly against the bottom of the world, but he managed to squirm his way underneath her as she half-floated.  Gulp’s back was frail, but it was broad and flat and just large enough to hold her and all her weight as it pressed down on him, anxious to return to the bottom even as he strove to rise again, up to the edge of the world.  The Things That Wiggled On Rocks squirmed in alarm at the turbulence his ascension left, each Gulp-length gained in height a thrashing, heaving, bone-bruising motion that left his fins aching. 
Dryness prickled his back, the brightness of the fallen light filled his eyes and he knew he’d made it.  Above him, the weight of the thing nearly doubled, buckling him low into the world and nearly submerging her again as he thrashed his flukes mightily, barely holding ground.  The roar and tumult of his efforts filled his ears to bursting; it sounded as though the whole world was trying to upend itself. 
The thing wasn’t awake, he could tell.  There was no movement on his back, although he felt a jerking, heaving life within her still as she ejected bits of the world from her mouth, hacking loudly.  She couldn’t move yet, and he was running out of both strength and the body to hold it in.  Thin bones had snapped, and muscles that had never had to face strain were stretching past their limits.  If he sank, she died, but he would sink, even if only as his frame crumpled under her mass.  How could she be smaller than him and yet so heavy?  The light winked at him from the shore, adding further pain to his efforts, and it was at that precise moment that it all fell together for him.  Gulp gathered the last of his strength, turned to face the light, and shoved with all the force he could muster. 
The rock touched his chin, his jaw, scraped along his belly painfully, and lurched its way along his body down to the very tip of his tail.  The light bounced off one of his flippers, breaking it, and the thing from above rolled off alongside him, landing square on the stone outside the world.
 There was still no respite from the weight: dry was all around him, burying him, weighing him down under his own flesh.  Even his newfound vision was blurring with strain, and the sounds and feelings around him were strange, blunted by the dry, bereft of currents to carry him.  It was because of this that he didn’t feel the other things until they were standing right next to him, over him.  One came beside Gulp, light shining from its hand, and touched his side, a surprisingly light sensation amongst so much crushing pain.  Another was at the side of the thing from outside, raising her up, helping her to wake.  More of those strange loud sounds from them, from all three.  More strange sounds, but Gulp was too tired to hear them.  His eyes were wandering, and for the first time he felt and saw and heard the world from outside.  It looked very small, over rock, under rock, surrounded by rock, and he could feel so much around him, even in the small soft bundle of sensations that were all that he had the energy to perceive. 
It was then that Gulp learned his fourth and last thing about It, as he felt the thing from outside move on her own, to crouch besides him and look at him, eye to fading, half-blind eye.  In the end, it’s worth it. 

In the deep down stone where the darkness dwelt lived light and a very small world.  It was wet, cold, and there was no truly proper way to measure it now, but she would make her best try at it. 

“What You Are in the Dark,” Copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010. 

Once upon a time (quite an old time, at least compared to now), there was a spider.  She was not a particularly strong spider, not a particularly fast spider, not a particularly practiced weaver of webs, nor was she notably bad at any of these things either.  Still, this spider did have something special about her: she was a dreamer.  And like all small things, her dreams were very large.  She would dream for hours and sometimes days, shaking off her fantasies and fancies to find that her prey had been and gone, shaking her web half to pieces in the process.  It irritated her, but only mildly, even if it did leave her a little hungry.  Still, she disliked the work.  It took time away from her dreaming. 
It was a nice warm day when the trouble started.  The spider was waking up one sleepy summer morning when she heard the funny calls from the humans.  Most things humans did was funny, but this was funnier than most.  They were going into a strange building, almost all of them, filing in one after another.  The spider was curious, and her web had just been destroyed again, so she decided to put off her work and investigate. 
It was a long trip, for a little spider.  But not too long to make.  She got there just in time to hear the man in the special outfit talking.  He was talking an awful lot, but no one else was talking back – just listening very carefully.  The spider thought this was unusual, and so she listened too. 
He was talking an awful lot about something he called a “god.”  He thought it was very important, and so did the others humans from the look of it.  Whatever it was, it seemed to be very complicated to need so much explanation, but the spider was bored and had time and made a game try at it.  As far as she could guess, god was very big and very strong, and she wondered how it’d gotten that way.   
“Excuse me,” said the spider to the talking man, as the people filed out of the building beneath her, “what does your god eat?”
The man was a little surprised.  Most spiders don’t express any sort of theological interest, even something so relatively down-to-earth as theorizing the dietary habits of deities.  “It doesn’t need to,” he explained, “but I suspect whatever it feels like.”
“Hmm.”  The spider thought it over, legs tapping in thought (spiders have the most marvellous and complex fidgeting of any animal besides the octopus).  “But what made it get so big then?”
“Prayers,” said the man, realizing the spider’s motives and looking for a way to excuse himself so he could go have his post-ceremonial drink.  “Lots and lots of prayers.”
“What are prayers?”
“You were watching us, yes?  We were praying.”
“Oh.  Thank you.” 
The talking man left to find his drink, and the spider reeled herself back to the roof, where she thought.  Prayers must be fine food indeed, to let something grow as big as a god.  Perhaps she should try to catch some herself the next time the humans came into the prayer-building.  Best to be discreet then; she doubted they’d be happy with her taking any for herself, even if it was just a little, enough for a meal or two, or three.  She just wanted to see how good prayer tasted, that was all.  Nothing more. 
 
So she built a big fine web.  It took her days to prepare, stretching from one corner of the ceiling to another, fine and yet thorough, unseeable from below and strong enough to catch the wriggliest, canniest prayer and wrap it up tightly.  Then she waited as the humans filed in again, exhausted and filled with fierce impatience.  She watched as they listened, and watched as they murmured, and watched as they left again and her web remained empty. She was tired, she was hungry, and her spinnerets were aching and sore. 
“Hey!” she yelled at the talking man, too irritated to care if he knew her plans or not.  “Where were your prayers?  I couldn’t catch any of them!”
“Prayers are invisible, untouchable,” the talking man told her.  “Only gods can feel them, and the people who make them.” 
The spider gnashed her mandibles at this.  “That’s silly!  How do they do it?”
The talking man just laughed and walked away.  That was the moment when the spider decided she’d take more than just a few prayers.  She’d take them all, then see how much the talking man would laugh at her. 

First, though, she had to think up a new way to catch prayers.  She puzzled and thought at it for hours, but got nowhere.  Her ideas were getting too hot and thick, clouding each other out and clustering up.  So she stopped thinking and started working on her web again, doubling and redoubling its strength, mind wandering, dreaming awake.  Her ideas floated away to toy with things unconscious, bouncing away from reality…where they stuck.  Stuck fast.  And with them dangling there, potential cocooned and on display, thought hit again like a wasp-sting. 
“Dreams,” said the spider. 
It took many hours of aimless, dreaming spinning and uncoiling and repairing, but at last her web was re-completed, laced with hours of meandering daydreams.  It was exactly the wrong sort of web – it was inexact, wandering, imprecise, and would snap apart under the weight of even the least determined and most suicidally-inclined fly ever to live.  But prayers were invisible, untouchable.  How much weight could they have?

She found out when the people came back.  The talking man talked, the people murmured, and the web bulged, strained, and snapped.  The spider barely had time to catch herself before she fell, and watched helplessly from midair as her web unravelled in front of her eyes, spidery dreams sprinkling across the people below (a few of them had odd flights of fancy concerning aphids and beetles, but otherwise thought little of it). 
The spider cursed old spider curses about the big clumsy stupidness of mammals and other such things, and it took her a little while to calm down and think.  They were too big, that was the problem.  Her dreams were too small, too differently-shaped to net and snare human prayers; it was like trying to scoop up a lake using a net the size of a thimble.  She needed human dreams, and well, look who was walking right underneath her…. 
Talking man’s home was not far away, and she hid under his bed until his breathing slowed and softened.  Then she crept out, quietly as only a spider can move (eight silent little legs, quick and soft as kitten feet), and she spun nets of dreams and silk, dreams to catch dreams, silk to hold form.  By morning she was exhausted, but she also had several little silk bags hanging from her abdomen crammed full of the talking man’s nighttime visions, and she was able to hitch a ride back on talking man’s coat with him none the wiser. 

Making the new web was hard.  The human dreams were strange and complex and often blindingly obtuse.  If the spider were a human artist, she would have likened it to a potter trying to sculpt a model using limestone.  It took her more than three times as long as her first web, and by completion she was sick and tired of it all.  And very hungry.  But mostly tired; so very, very, very tired that it outweighed even her hunger and frustrated impatience.  She fell asleep while waiting for the people to finish entering the building again, before talking man could even begin his speechifying. 
The tugs and jerks of movement, of twitching prey woke her.  For a moment she thought that another lazy fly had mistakenly blundered into her web – they had delayed its construction for entire hours at a time, pesky nuisances – but it was too strange, too unfamiliar.  It was a prayer, wriggling blindly in its snare, invisible but snagged by dreams. 
Quick as lightning she dashed to it, trussed it up firmly, and set about draining it dry.  It tasted better than liquid moonlight, riper than a cut of prime aged sedimentary rock, finer than atomic dust, and the spider couldn’t drink enough of it.  She gulped it down and all her aches and pains and sore tired legs vanished.  It felt like she was strong enough to snare eagles, and that… that was just the first.  Already her web was tingling, plunking, twitching under the strain of dozens of prayers, wafting up from below, intercepted before they could reach the god. 

After that, it was as smooth as dancing (spiders are as elegant as eels on the ballroom floor).  The prayers came up fast and went down fast, and the spider grew and grew.  She was fat and happy on prayers, and she no longer wondered how the god had gotten so big – she herself was swelling up and up, to the point where she could no longer hide on the ceiling of the prayer-building any longer, not without being seen.  She specially reinforced the web, backing it with the power of her stolen prayers, and it grew strong as steel and nearly invisible.  The prayers could squirm all they liked; they would remain safe there until the last human left and she could descend from the attic to snack freely, leaving the spider happy and lazy, free to dream all day and feast all night.  Each week there were more and more prayers and the prayers themselves were more confused and easily caught, as the humans bemoaned the apparent silence of their god.  Prayers for rain for the crops, prayers for the ill to grow well, prayers that the neighbour might slip in dung and fly head over heels in front of the whole village; children’s prayers, elder’s prayers, all had their own savoury, sweet, or sour flavours to the palate spider’s mind and body. 
As for the god, it was wondering exactly why the one prayer-place was so silent.  It had always been a good village; not overflowing with prayers, but it was not a large community.  It resolved to discover this mystery for itself, and it descended down into the place of prayer quietly, without fuss.  It was not a showy god, and did not wish to cause unnecessary disturbance.  How vexed it was then, when it found itself bound in a web of prayer and dreams!

The spider knew right away, of course.  She’d drawn strings of her webs up into the attic, where she could keep a running tally of how many prayers she might expect to suck up that eve.  Such a large and strange twisting in it gave her much concern, and she skittered down immediately, a great crawling thing much bigger than any other spider that walked the earth, big as a plate and more. 
“Who are you and what are you doing on my web?” she demanded.  “You’ll rip it up if you’re not careful, blundering into it like that!”  The spider had never met a god before, and had no idea what the strange not-there-but-there thing taking up valuable prayer-space was. 
“No-one important,” said the god.  It was as curious about this strange thing as she was about it.  After all, it had never met a spider quite so large before.  “What is your web for?”
“Prayers,” boasted the spider.  “They’re invisible, and they’re untouchable, but I can touch them, touch them and eat them!  They’ve made me big, just like a god.”
“I see,” said the god, who was a little worried and wanted to keep her talking.  The web was very strong, it was rather stuck (not so much as a finger could budge), and though the spider seemed conversational, it fretted that that without distraction she might remember it had damaged her web and grow angry.  “That is very clever indeed.  How did you touch them then?”
“Dreams,” she said.  “The prayers tangle up in them, and then I can suck them dry.  They’re the most delicious thing in all the world, even better than mayflies.”
“Come now.  That’s impossible,” scoffed the god.
The spider danced a little tantrum.  “Are you calling me a liar?  I say they’re the most delicious things there ever have been or will be, and I will prove it!  Wait awhile, they’re coming in mere minutes – then I’ll show you!”  And with that she turned about, ready to skitter back upstairs in a sulk. 
“Wait,” said the god, hastily.  “Please, can you loosen my bonds?  They’re too tight, and I can’t scratch my nose.”
The spider looked doubtfully at it.  “Do you even have a nose?” she asked.  “Well, no matter.  I will loosen one thread.  That will let you scratch, and still keep you out of mischief.”  So she reached out with her sharp fangs and carefully nipped one silken thread loose, then she turned on her heels and scuttled away. 
The dangling god smiled to itself, and when the people walked in it chuckled, and it began to laugh out loud, very quietly, as the desperate, confused prayers began to bob upwards in innumerable quantities and tangled themselves in the web.  It could barely move one finger, but when you’re a god, one finger is all that’s needed.  It stretched itself as mightily as it could, and soon a prayer landed on its finger and soaked in, like water in sand.  It flexed away more strands and reached further, and they soon flocked to it, vanishing softly into its core. 
They were indeed good prayers, the finest the god had seen in many a year, and it began to sing with appreciation as it took them, a quiet, happy tune that the humans heard in the very backmost corners of their brains and fell silent at without quite knowing why, happy and at peace.  They left the church in good humour and springs in their steps, and that was when the spider came down, confused at the odd music. 
“Where are my prayers?” she demanded, staring at the empty web. 
“My prayers,” corrected the god, and the spider’s heart sank as she saw it sitting there in midair quite peacefully, free of the strands. 
“It was just a few little prayers!” she protested.  “What harm did I do?”
“Very little,” said the god.  “But a little was enough.  Why did you do this?”
“To be big,” said the spider.  “To have time to dream, to be strong and not have to fix my web every day and night.”
“You had time to dream on your web in the first place,” said the god.  “You are lazy, and I will punish you for the harm you have done, as laziness is no excuse.  But as it is small harm, and you are unhappy, I will also reward you.”
The spider did another little fidget dance at this, but before she could so much as protest, it was done.  Her webs were wiped from the ceiling, and try as she might she didn’t have the faintest idea of how to remake them; her silk yet flowed, her spinnerettes were whole, but the memories of her great elaborately woven webs were gone. 
“Now go,” said the god.  “Go and hunt for your food.  In the trees, on the ground.  Make a nest if you must, but your webs will do your work for you no more, and you will search for your prey on foot.  But I promise you this: you will be big, the biggest of them all, and you will remain strong.  You will not need your webs.”

And so the spider (who the god named Tarantula) went into the forest, as she was so large now that the humans shrieked at her and tried to strike her.  She wove nests in the trees, she wove nests in the dirt, in burrows, and she hunted (although she preferred to wait and bite things as they came near her dens, that did not always work).  She was a little sad that she had no time for dreaming.  She was a little angry that she had to spend her time hunting. 
But she was the biggest one of all the spiders, and her many children too, and for that she was very thankful. 

“On a Web and a Prayer” copyright 2010, Jamie Proctor. 

All four of the survivors entered the shelter at almost the same time, weary, scraped, battered, and bruised beyond measure.  Each instinctively grasped at his hip, shoulder, or side for a weapon that was no longer there, makeshift or finely tooled, then relaxed as they saw the others were similarly disarmed. 
There were seats, convenient yet uncomfortable, arranged around a small, generic table with some nondescript food atop it.  They used them wordlessly. 
At last, when the plate was down to the final scraps, one of them spoke through his last mouthful.  “Helluva thing out there, wasn’t it?”
There were nods, slow and solemn, weary. 
“I was in the country when it hit, missed the brunt of it.  Any of you guys from the cities?  Was it as bad as it seemed?”
“Worse,” said a second man, one hand fidgeting with his baseball cap, brim slipping side-to-side once every five seconds like clockwork.  His eyes swept around the room rapid-fire, scanning exits, entries, points of defence.  “Panic, riots, gas main explosions, power failures, traffic jams mixed with overturned trucks.  Cops vanishing, fire department in shambles.  Was a goddamned shitstorm.”
The third stared at the empty table with the blank expression of a cow regarding a barn wall.  “There were so many missing lights,” he said, voice a dreamy monotone.  “There should have been lights, and there weren’t any.  They put out all the lights.  They don’t like it when you can see them coming.  Really pisses them off.”  His gaze lifted up to the ceiling, leaving behind his voice. 
The other two looked to the last man, the biggest in the room.  He appeared to be trying to curl himself into as small a position as possible in his chair, humming a quick and nervous tune.  His eyes met theirs, and he steadied for a moment.  “They killed all the cows,” he said, then giggled and redoubled his humming. 
The first and second man looked to each other and shrugged. 
“I would like to tell a story,” announced the third man, making the others jump a little.  “It’s how I got here.” 

“I was working,” said the third man, who was now looking directly at and through them, “at my job.  It was in a store.  A bookstore, I think.  And it was very boring, so I was on an evening smoke break.  A very long smoke break, a smoke break that would last until my manager found me, because it was so boring, you see.  And that’s why I am still alive, because they came in fast and hard through the front door.  I heard the screams, pushed the door open, and I saw what was happening.  They were all dying by then.  Lots of red, but other, funny colours too.  Like a boxful of dirty crayons.  Very ugly.”
He shrugged, the pudginess of his shoulders rippling.  “So I ran.  I am not good at running, but I forced it, and I think I overtook the worst of them.  They were fast, but they had to stop to hunt and kill and put out the lights, so they could use the dark properly.  I didn’t have to stop until I couldn’t run anymore, and that took time.  More time than I thought.  When I stopped, I was out of the city, heading off the road.  The highway was burning, full of broken cars and dead people, you see, so I could not walk on it.” 
There was a long, slow silence as he stared at his fingers, something behind that pudding-formed face thinking everything over as carefully as it could.  The slight whispery sound of the second man’s fidgeting was too loud, overlapping oddly with the fourth man’s humming, which incorporated it quickly into its own nervous leitmotif. 
“Then,” he continued, “I walked.  And after a few days, I ran out of food.  And as I was walking through the forest, I saw a barn.  I’d been avoiding buildings and roads, but I was so hungry, you see.  I went up to it, and everyone was dead, and one of them too.  The farmer had a hunting rifle, you see, and he had aimed very carefully.  But he and his family had been dead and ruined by its comrades, but it hadn’t been, and I was so hungry.  It was one of them, and they aren’t like us, so it wasn’t really cannibalism, you see.  Besides, I used their oven because it was still working, and it’s all right because I cooked it.  You see how it is.”
The silence was shorter, but quieter this time.  Even the fourth man had stopped humming and was listening with cautious care. 
“After that I walked some more.  And then I saw signs of people, so I followed them.  And they found me, and showed me to this place.  There aren’t many of them, and I am very thankful.  I was so hungry again, you see.” 
The second man spoke first.  “Hell of a story.  You got damned lucky out there.  Right near the city limits, eh?  I wasn’t so lucky.  Let me tell you what happened in there.”  He searched his pockets, then pulled a face.  “Fuck.  Outta smokes.  Had to trade my pack to the guys here for these new clothes.”  He sighed.  “Ah well, my nerves’ll just have to take it.”
“So,” he began, “I got off my shift, I get in my truck, and I pull onto the street.  There’s too much traffic, but that’s normal, and I should be used to it but I’ve just had the most miserable fucking day.  We’ve all been there, right?”  A beat, during which only the first man nodded confirmation – the fourth was back to his humming, and the third was staring at the second man’s baseball cap. 
“Yeah, we have.  So when some clown tries to cut me off almost to the exact second that it looks like we’re moving again, I didn’t take it kindly.  As a matter of fact, I jumped out of the truck, ran up to him, and started chewing the little shithead out through the window.  Well, he got out of the car and surprise, he wasn’t such a little shithead anymore.  Must’ve been six foot eight, and, well you guys can see I’m not exactly up there.  But there’s no way in hell I’m backing down.”
“So we get into a fight.  Just yelling at first, but then he tries looming over me, and I poke him in the gut, and then the shoving starts.  We’re about five seconds from a genuine goddamned fistfight in the middle of a rush hour traffic jam, and we’re yelling so loud we can’t even hear the screams from up ahead.  The first one of them I saw took the shithead from behind.  Popped his head like a cork mid-cuss.  The only reason I made it out of that was that I didn’t stick around to gawp – I was tensed for a fist fight, and I just redirected that focus a little.  Ran straight for the car, yanked my handgun out, and killed it when it couldn’t have been more than half a foot from me.  One shot, clean kill.  It was a closer talker than shithead’d been.”
“Now unlike you,” he said, grinning toothily at the third man, who remained blank, “I couldn’t run.  Bad knee, but more importantly, I had nowhere to run.  Bumper-to-bumper traffic, and just me, my Glock, and about a million fewer cartridges than I’d have liked.  Tough luck.  But I didn’t really have time to complain, and it wasn’t like it could’ve fixed anything.”
“My first thought was to get home.  I’ve got other guns there, and there was no way I was getting out of the city armed like I was, with traffic a mess and my knee.  So I headed for the subways.  There was bloody hell breaking loose everywhere on the streets, explosions, crashes, fires, and they were all over it like a dog on its own shit.  I figured so long as I was careful where I stepped and made sure to get out of the way before I heard a train coming, everything’d be fine.”
“Well, as lucky would have it, they prefer the dark – like you said pal, they keep out of the lights, and break ‘em.  But I didn’t know that until I was half a mile down the tunnel and hearing them out there, just past where I could see.  They’d taken out a subway car.  Bodies everywhere.  I hid in it while they checked around, and when they moved on, I followed real nice and slow.  Found another gun on one of the passengers too, so no big deal.  More ammo’s nice.  Then I guess they had a guy run rear guard – maybe they heard me earlier on and thought I was some sort of tail – and I almost walked into him when I pulled into the next station.  Surprised both of us, but I was more frightened than he was.  Gave me the advantage, landed him a sound pistol-whip in the teeth, and gave me the chance for a quick show of marksmanship.  Three rounds to be sure, all of ‘em dead centre.  Bastards die hard.  I didn’t care how bad my knee was then; I ran.  I only made it about a block away, but I ran, and I guess they thought I went back down the tunnel, either that or they just didn’t think I was worth following.  Sure as hell didn’t go back below, though.  Gives me the shakes just thinking about it.”
“After that?  It got blurry.  I tried sticking to the streets, keeping low in the chaos.  Didn’t work too well, almost got killed four times in as many minutes.  Tried moving inside.  They were prepared for that too; inside all the buildings, like termites invading an anthill.  Bloody slaughterhouses, every one.  Didn’t have as many near-death experiences there though – I was just one of a morass of targets.  Plus, I got smart and left right away.”
“At some point I ditched the idea of heading home.  Too far, and it was too dangerous.  I think I was probably expecting to die, I just hadn’t realized it yet.  So I started marching for the highway, taking down anything that looked at me funny.  I killed one other guy by accident – thought he was one of them.  Poor bastard.  I felt bad about it, but only for a moment, because then I’d gotten someone else’s attention with the shot.  That happened a lot.  One of them spots you?  Fire at it, maybe you get him, maybe you don’t.  But that doesn’t matter, because you’ve just alerted three or four more.  The best you can do is pray that either you move faster than they do or that they find someone else and pick on him instead.  Heard that happen a few times.  Poor bastards.  By then I didn’t feel sorry, just glad.  They were going to die anyways, might as well die saving my ass.”
“When I hit the highway?  Exactly as bad as we’ve said it was.  Nothing but hell on a neat little eight-lane asphalt line.  Swarming with them everywhere.”
“From then on, I basically did the same thing as the zen master here just told, except I had a gun.  Picked off the odd lone one of ‘em I ran into, shot game when I could find it – they don’t seem to think much of anything of most animals, weird when you think of how thorough they were on all of us, you’d think they lived for blood – and ate it raw.  No smoke that way, and no scent.  Keeping that last one made me swear off that last packet, but it kept me nicely tetchy.  Got a mite delirious a few times after drinking from a bad stream, but pulled through until I found this place.  Not too shabby, and they were happy to take me in.  Shame they wouldn’t let me bring my gun inside, but they’ve got a strongbox for it and they’ve got decent security.  Should be safe.  Probably.”
He sat back, grunting in satisfaction.  “And that’s my story told.  Who’s up next?”
Surprisingly, the fourth man uncoiled himself.  It was slow and odd, but not cumbersome – the sort of regally contorted movements that a python uses to unwrap itself from its prey. 
“Me,” he said.  “Me me me.  Definitely ME.”  His eye was odd; resting on them, then flicking wildly about, then staring flat and stable again, daring the viewer to believe that it had moved in the first place.  “Is that all right?”
“Sure,” said the second man.  “Yes,” said the first man.  The third man said nothing, but bobbed his head gently, bouncing his chin on his blubbery neck.
“Right.  Right.”  He giggled a little.  “I’m sorry.  I’m just a little on EDGE.  A little nervous.  A little.  But yes, what happened.” 

“I owned a ranch, a big ranch, a fine ranch, I made a lot of money oh a lot of lovely money.  Because I was good and my cows were good and I was good at the business it was all so GOOD.  And I’d eaten breakfast and was just going out the back door and I went out to look at the herd and the cows were all dead all my beautiful COWS.”  He broke into heaving sobs, and before the others had time to blink he was back to grinning happily.
“But anyways I saw they were dead because they had no faces anymore and I knew they were dead because they had no insides anymore they’d pulled out all the cows’ insides oh my beautiful cow INSIDES see mister sir mister you see they care about SOME animals right DON’T YOU?”  The stare that he directed at the second man was hard and flat, a near-threat backed up by clenching fists that made him reach to his side for that invisible weapon again.  And again, that smile melted back in faster than lightning. 
“And they were there, so many of them, all about the insides and I shouted at them shouldn’t have done that because they saw me and chased me and I had to run get my gun locked myself in my house fired at them stupid slow things thought I was helpless but they set FIRE to it oh my house my worn comfortable house, all gone, all the money all the wood all the books and records and beds and tables and BURNT.”  He coughed out a laughing sob.  “But it didn’t matter, got away, lost the eye to a falling timber because I had to blow out a wall with the gas main but I got away and cleaned out the socket good and I walked off because I was all that was left because the cows were all dead and the ranch was gone oh me oh my oh me.”
He curled up again, and was quiet but for the humming. 
“And what happened then?” asked the first man. 
The humming paused.  “I came here, and they put me here and now you’re here and they wanted me to meet you.  Good to see faces on faces and no insides at all, all hidden inside.  Good, oh my.”  It resumed, twice as fast and three times as heated. 

The second man turned back to the first.  “Well, you’re up, buddy.  What happened to you?”
The first man smiled bleakly.  “Nothing as exciting as any of yours, I’m afraid.  I was on a working vacation in the country.  Telecommuted; very nice, very cushy, pretty little cottage in a nice little village.  Me and my wife both.  One evening the lights started going out back in town, and before we know it something’s breaking down our back door.  They had the house almost surrounded, and barricade as fast as we could – and we, well, my wife was fast, quick on her feet and a cool head – they were coming in and we couldn’t stop them.  So we ran for the car.  And because my legs were longer, and my wife’s feet aren’t as fast as her hands, I got there first.  And because I’m not as cool a head in a crisis, I locked the doors before she got in, then panicked and didn’t unlock them.  They were too close by then, there was nothing I could’ve done, and I couldn’t have known she’d have been able to run for as far as she did after the car before they got her.  It wasn’t my fault.  Really.  Absolutely.  I was upset about it, but you get over these things.  I was suicidal and self-destructive in the car, but I think I’m over it now.  The people here have helped a lot, telling me to be calm and giving me some pills for it.  You can forgive a man a little lapse.”  He grinned, thin muscles crawling on his face.  “I mean, how often does he find himself be forced to watch his wife get killed by the walking dead?” 

The other lulls in the conversation, uncomfortable or strange as they had been, had felt natural, part of the ebb and flow of a discourse, bizarre as it was.  This one was a lurching, grinding, heaving halt.  All three of the others stared at him, even the fourth man, even the third man. 
“You’re fucking crazy,” said the second man, flatly.  “Fucking crazy.  Zombies?  You’re babbling shit about zombies?  They put me in here with a fucking headcase who believes in zombies?”
The first man’s grin had faded away into bemused umbrage.  “What?  But you said yourself – you said that –”
“Zombies?  I didn’t say shit about zombies.  Magic?  Voodoo?  None of it.  It was fuckin’ crazy for the government to declare war on its own damned citizens, but some of us saw it coming, and there weren’t any fucking living corpses involved.!”  He laughed raucously, and spat at the first man’s foot.  “Were you always nuts, or did the black ops doing in your wife do that to you?  You’re crazy.”
“What?!”  demanded the second man. “You think I’m crazy?  Listen to yourself!  How would the government convince the army to shoot up its own – no, there’s no point!  That’s crazy!  YOU’RE the crazy one!  How can you even imagine that, and how the hell did you miss seeing the damned zombies?!”
“There were no men,” interrupted the calm voice of the third man.  “There were no dead men, no living men.  They weren’t men at all; they were too tall, too thin, too lean and cold.  They had come so far to get here, spent so much effort and used so many machines.  Their machines spat beautiful red lights that stood out so nicely, with the lights they broke.  I do not think they appreciate our world’s light.  You are both crazy.”
“No no no NO!” insisted the fourth man.  “They were tall yes, but thick thick THICK with teeth and claws and blades and eyes where you can’t look and can’t unsee because they like to bite and tear, cut off the faces and yank out the INSIDES that should stay on the INSIDE don’t you UNDERSTAND are you all CRAZY?!” he screeched. 
“Nutcases,” swore the second man.  “I’m surrounded by goddamned nutcases!  Why would they put me in a room with three fucking shit-for-brains nutcases!?”  He strode to the door, slamming each step down furiously, rattled at the knob with ire, then desperation.  “Locked?  What the fucking hell?  Why’d they lock me in with two lights-in-the-sky dingalings and a nutjob who’s seen too many Romero flicks?!”
“At least aliens are scientifically plausible,” sneered the first man.  “There’s no way to prove they don’t exist.  And what about all the paranormal activity over the years that no sceptics have ever disproven?  You’re the craziest one here, crazier than these guys.  At least they aren’t pretending they’re sane.”
“I saw what I saw,” said the third man.  “And what I saw was right, even if what it was was so wrong.  You are all crazy.”
“Crazy,” giggled the fourth.  “Crazy crazy crazy CRAZY!”  All of YOU!  Because you didn’t see them properly, because you didn’t see the FACES!”  He laughed long and loud and ran to the wall, beating it with his head so hard it seemed his teeth would crack right out of his gleefully clenched jaw.  “Crazy crazy crazy on the INSIDE!”
The thuds were loud enough to echo right through the one-way mirror, and the observing medical staff found themselves wincing as the treatment session broke down.  Patient number two was yelling at the others about how they couldn’t claim going mad was an excuse for voting the apocalypse into office, patient three was trying to explain how the thin men were probably vulnerable to music because “they can’t see music either,” and patient one was repeating “oh really?” in an increasingly mocking and obnoxious voice at everything anyone else said.  Patient four’s forehead was becoming bruised. 
“Intervene now?” inquired an intern to the psychiatrist on monitor duty. 
The psychiatrist sighed, then cut himself off with a wince as the first patient said something unforgivable about the second through fourth patient’s mothers.  “I suppose so.  Send security in.  I really thought we had something there, you know, a breakthrough just around the corner, a mutual realization of shared delusions that could make all four of them wake up to reality, break that “last-sane-person” complex.  For just a few moments… oh well.  More traditional methods should see them all through this, I hope.  Send in security, and let’s get them away from each other before it gets any worse.  We don’t want this to turn violent.”

“The End of the World as They Know It,” Copyright Jamie Proctor, 2010.