Hitherby Dragons

In January, 1974, the Pandora Squad began putting things of great value in the tunnels. Gold. Jewels. Subway trains. Ruby-studded jet zeppelins. Rare and collectible giant spiders. Promises, hopes, dreams, and silver. No one ever found out why, because the Pandora Squad promptly exceeded its budget and went defunct.

Three months passed.

Jenna has an immortal soul and a mortal nature. She demonstrates them while talking to the hero. He makes a point. Jenna dies. There’s an awkward silence.

“Clearly,” says the hero, “you’re a mortal creature, bound by time.”

Jenna slumps on the floor.

“I shouldn’t make my points so forcefully,” the hero says. It’s gallows humor. On a dead audience, it falls flat. Jenna doesn’t giggle. She just grows colder.

“. . . I should probably cremate you.”

Jenna is mortal. But she also has an immortal soul. She demonstrates that too! She reanimates her body and hops to her feet. “You don’t have to cremate me. I can be a zombie!”

He’s the hero. He’s suave. He can handle this. But it disturbs him. “Zombies rot and their body parts fall off. Maybe you could be a vampire? Then you’d be my arch-nemesis.”

“I could be an anentropic zombie,” Jenna proposes. “Instead of rotting, I’d grow ever more beautiful! And I could be a mime!”

“I don’t want you to be a mime.”

Jenna pretends to be an anentropic zombie trapped in an invisible box. “Look! I’m inside an invisible box! It’s a sealed system, so the order constantly increases. That’s my noncompliance with the principle of entropy at work!”

“I appreciate the explanation,” the hero says, “as I would not readily have derived that from your visual cues. Mimes don’t usually narrate, though.”

Jenna ignores him and pretends to be an anentropic zombie struggling against the wind. “Oh no! Bits of fashionable clothing are blowing onto me from all over and replacing my dreary cerements! But my umbrella—it’s inverted!”

The hero sighs, leans back, and closes his eyes. Once he has his equilibrium, he says, “I love you.” It’s true, but it’s also the only way to stop the narrated miming.

“You shouldn’t cremate people you love. I mean, not when they’re still moving around.”

“That’s true. I try to live my life by this rule.”

“We all should!” Jenna declares. “We could achieve a perfect world.”

“But an anentropic zombie can’t live in our house,” the hero points out. “People would talk.”

Jenna snorts. “People.”

“And I’m not sure I’m ready for it.” The hero thinks. “You could live in the tunnels.”

“Is an anentropic zombie very valuable?”

“Rarity would seem to suggest it.”

Jenna shakes her head. Her hair grows shorter but ever more beautiful. “Nope. Scarcity is an entropic measure of value. For anentropic objects, commonality would have to determine value—the arrow of time points the other way!”

The hero sighs. “You could be a ghost,” he offers. “Ghosts are rare but subject to entropy.”

“I want to exist,” Jenna says. “I want to be me. When I heard that I was dead, that was all I could think. I’m not done being me. I like myself. I’m cool. So I dragged myself back from the grave.”

The hero smiles. “Narcissist.”

“Narcissism is important,” Jenna says, firmly. “The first thing the universe said to me after I was born was, ‘love yourself.’”

“Oh?”

“Yup. ‘Love yourself. Trust yourself. Be true to yourself. Oh, and, by the way, you can no longer absorb nutrients through your belly button.’”

The hero smiles. “I’m glad you came back.”

“I can’t live with you?”

“You’re dead.”

Jenna closes her eyes for a moment, and then opens them. “Depreciation is a function of entropy,” she says. “So I’m a good investment, at least.”

“I’m sure that’ll do.”

“Yay!” Jenna says. “I get to live in tunnels!”

See also
Genealogy: the People of Salt and
Genealogy: the Monster

Lia and Amiel were sisters who survived the destruction of Sodom.

Amiel swore to protect Lia’s family forever.

Lia had children, and they had children, and eventually you wound up with Aerope of Crete. Aerope had children by Atreus and Thyestes, including Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Pelopia. Her line zigzagged off in a couple of directions: for instance, to Priyanka, by way of Menelaus and Helen of Troy, and to the first hero Ella, probably by way of Agamemnon. That’s where we think the ancestry of Liril and Jenna diverged, by the way: Liril inheriting from Helen of Troy and Jenna not so much. That said, there’s plenty of genes in the pool, and certain disreputable scholars claim that just about all the people of salt have a common ancestor in Helen’s daughter Hermione.

We call this family the Nephilim.

Meanwhile, Amiel’s line became the House of Atreus, which hooked together with the people of salt up at that mention of Atreus above. The two bloodlines didn’t become one people, though; genealogy or no genealogy, Amiel’s heirs fissioned off and stayed fissioned off as the line of monsters.

By the time you had Nabonidus in Babylon, the House of Atreus was a pretty serious threat to just about everything. Its branch in India was mysteriously culled back around 583, and the American House had problems of its own, but the Middle Eastern lineage was going strong and educing all kinds of domesticated gods from the Nephilim there.

They were a threat even to the throne of the world!

So everyone breathed a sigh of relief, more or less, when Mylitta was born.

At last! the world thought.

At last, the world thought, somebody would do something!

Because heroes can kill monsters. That’s in the rule book. Heroes can kill monsters. All Mylitta had to do was kill off Nabonidus and cut a swathe of blood through his family and Babylon’s aristocracy, burn the ground and salt the earth, and maybe spend a few decades wandering the earth murdering whatever representatives of her ancestor’s sister’s family she could find, and then everything would be all right forever.

And that’s exactly what she did!

Except for the part where she didn’t do any of it, at all, causing no end of historians who were not there and don’t know what it was like and never had to do anything hard in their entire lives to look down on her.

But it’s OK.

It’s OK.

She won!

It’s like we said a long time ago.

Strength was set 556 years before the common era.

17 years later, in 539 BCE, the hero Mylitta would make an answer to monsters forever and ever;

and they would deliver the world from sorrow.

“Did you fetch the morning eggs, Danielle?”

Danielle holds her hands over the breakfast table. They are cupped together. She separates them. Rubies fall. Sapphires too, and emeralds. Seven gems, and an egg.

“I see.” Her wicked stepmother narrows her eyes. “The hens have not lain eggs properly in several days.”

“I feed them the normal feed, mother.”

Danielle’s wicked stepmother is named Glory. She clicks her sharp fingernails on the table.

“Danielle,” Glory says, “these gems are very fine, but what may I eat for breakfast?”

“Perhaps they are edible,” says Danielle. She taps a ruby. It rings, lightly, like a bell.

“I should have the wealthiest chamberpot in the world,” Glory says, “and not be full from it.”

“Mother?”

Glory shakes her head. “It is no matter. I shall have bread and cheese. Clean the cinders, Danielle. They are a disgrace.”

Danielle curtsies. She goes to the closet. She takes out a broom and a pan. She holds the broom at her left side like a sword. She leaves the room and goes to the fireplace. The room is full of cinders and ash. They are being fanned onto every surface and every wall by seven cinder pixies. In the center of the room stands the cinder troll.

“I’ve been sent to clean this up,” she says.

The troll looks her up and down. He snorts. “You’re not much,” he says.

Her right hand crosses her body and takes the broom’s hilt. In a long circular motion, she brings the broom up and around until its bristles face the troll. Her left hand joins her right at the broom’s base. The broom is heavy, held in this fashion, but her arms do not tremble. “I am whom my mother sent.”

The cinder pixies go still. The troll looks her up and down.

“It’s my right,” says the troll, “as a cinder troll, to push the cinders out into the room.”

“And mine, to sweep them back.”

The troll hesitates. “Perhaps,” he says, “one quarter of the room in soot, and three parts clean.”

Danielle closes her eyes. She thinks. Then she opens them. “They say that every one of us lives seven lives,” she says.

“Aye.”

“And that we should be kind to those we meet. For anyone may have been one’s mother, in another life, or one’s father, or one’s child. One’s lover, or one’s friend.”

“That’s wise,” says the cinder troll.

“In another life,” says Danielle, “I believe that we were friends. For there is a light in your eyes that my soul knows. But in this life, I have a duty, and I must drive you back.”

She steps forward. The troll steps back.

She steps forward. The troll is still. Then he reaches behind him to the fireplace and draws forth a poker, and takes it in his great strong hands.

They duel.

“I had not thought,” says the troll, “that Glory would have a loyal servant.” He is breathing lightly though Danielle’s lungs burn. Each clash of poker and broom makes her arms ache.

“She is my mother,” Danielle says.

“That,” says the troll, “cannot be so.”

Cinders in the air swirl into Danielle’s mouth, and she chokes. Her eyes water. The troll strikes, the poker winging her shoulder, and her left arm goes numb. She falls backwards. The troll does not advance. After a moment, he holds out his hand to help her up. She takes it. She backs away. She reassumes her stance.

“She has taken me in,” Danielle admits. “The mother of my birth is gone.”

“Ah, so.”

“My true mother went adventuring,” Danielle says. “To find a lost prince, they sent out seven maidens; to find each lost maiden, they sent out seven princes; and for seven princes lost, seven maidens each; and so in progression were all the heroes lost, and my mother among them. And I was left behind.”

The troll feints, then brings the poker around hard. The broom cracks, though it does not break. The poker lunges for Danielle’s face, and she steps back.

“And why have you not gone?” asks the troll.

She looks at him. She does not answer, for she does not know. Slowly, she brings the broom back to her side. She sets her feet. Her eyes burn.

“Are you surrendering?” the troll asks.

Danielle shakes her head.

“Then we will end this now,” says the troll.

“May we be friends again,” says Danielle, “when next we meet.”

The troll steps forward. There is tension in the great muscles of his arm.

Danielle’s shout splits the air and makes the cinder pixies flutter. She strikes. There is a crack like the breaking of the world. She is past the troll in a single motion, stumbling to a stop, kneeling in the ashes, and her broom is nothing but splinters.

The troll falls, and the room is clean.

This story begins here.

“It’s getting harder,” says Emily.

She’s hanging out in a booth in a coffee shop talking on her cell phone to Bertram. Using the phone is pretty much habit. Since they’re not talking aloud, neither of them has actually bothered to turn their phone on.

“Totally,” says Bertram.

There’s a woman at one of the tables. She looks at Emily. She’s generically irritated that Emily is on the cell phone even though she can’t actually hear anything that Emily is saying. But before the woman can comment Emily looks at her with empty, hollow eyes and mouths the woman’s name. That’s so horrifying that the woman shudders and hurries from the shop.

“It’s Hunger,” says Emily. “The House of Torment is still pretty well-behaved. Dreams is Dreams, and I’m not even sure there are any saints left. But Hunger . . .”

“It’s like they’re encouraging it,” Bertram says.

“They can’t do that, can they?” interjects Fred.

Emily hesitates.

“Fred,” she says, “I am trying to impose the context of a phone call on this conversation.”

“It’s a conference call,” says Fred.

“Oh,” says Emily.

Emily shivers away her confusion.

“I think they are encouraging it,” Emily concludes. “I think they are actively cultivating the hunger within them.”

“But it’ll get out,” says Fred. “We won’t be able to keep it.”

“Yes,” says Emily. “But it’s okay, if we tried? I mean, failure’s okay?”

But before Fred answers, Emily suffers a distraction.

“You are a difficult person to eavesdrop on,” says the Saul-beast.

It should never have happened.

The sorting hat was not the first crack in the armor of the world. Through cracks of just such a kind came Fenris Wolf into the world, and other things. It was not the first and it was not the last.

But it should never have been at all.

At the Lethal Magnet School for Wayward Youth, the only British boarding school that doubles as a secret weapon against giant wolves, the sorting hat came into the world. It changed people—into saints, into mad scientists, into tormented souls, into beasts. It sorted them into new destinies. It perverted them to new forms.

One man was sorted twice. He is the head boy of the House of Beasts. He is its visionary. His name is Saul.

The call is like elevator music, like Barry Manilow ballading on the sitar, like a cheerful twanging distant and strange. It is a ballad heard not with the ears but with the heart.

It is how the Keepers know that Gotterdammerung nears.

Emily looks up.

Bertram is there. Fred is there. Morgan is there. All of the others are there. They have drifted into the scene from unknown places. They are standing in the entrances to the coffee shop, outside the glass wall, against the bar. They are watching events unfold.

“Guys,” silents Emily, in profound relief.

“Yo,” says Fred.

And in the silence the Saul-beast opens its mouth.

“Are you still a saint?” Emily asks him, aloud.

Saul hesitates.

“I’ll tell you what we are,” Emily says, “if you will tell me that.”

Then Saul sits opposite her. He pulls the salt and pepper shakers out and sets them on the table between them. He smiles at her.

“Hello,” he says. “My name is Saul. I was sorted into the House of Hunger, but it was my second sorting. Before that I was a saint. I am the last survivor of the House of the Saints. My brother Edmund ate the others. Who are you?”

Emily looks at him.

“Oh God Oh God Oh God,” she is saying, to the other members of the Keepers’ House, because she is terrified that Saul will eat her. But he cannot hear her. She is silent and gnomic before him.

“Saul,” she says. “You have to understand that what you are doing is not in the best interests of—”

The hunger that surges up in Saul’s eyes is like a physical blow. It silences her and pushes her back against her seat.

“Who are you?” says Saul, companionably, again.

“My name is Emily,” Emily says meekly. “I like jaguars and coffee. I am a Keeper. I contain you so that your hunger does not call the wolf.”

“Good,” says Saul.

He leans back.

“Containment,” Saul says, thoughtfully.

Emily reaches out. She touches his hand. It’s a dangerous thing to do. But she wants to tell him a confidence.

“I don’t want to be eaten by people or wolves,” says Emily. “I want to live a long time and die in a beautiful place, surrounded by something wonderful. It is like the Hunger, only it’s not.”

Saul stares at her for a while. His eyes are distant like a snake’s.

“The purpose of humanity,” says Saul, “is to transform into beasts and devour the world. You are inhibiting this purpose. You must cease.”

“That isn’t so,” says Emily.

Saul looks around.

“Why haven’t I eaten you yet?” the Saul-beast asks. It is genuinely puzzled, because it was sure it would have eaten her already.

“Damn!” swears Bertram silently. “He’s on to us!”

“Run away! Run away!”

“We can’t run,” notes Fred. “He’ll eat Emily! I like Emily.”

Fred pauses.

“Not that way,” Fred clarifies.

Emily gets to her feet. She stares down at Saul. The others swell around them, containing, keeping, holding back Saul’s hunger.

The beast in Saul can sense it.

He is catching on.

“Saul,” Emily presses, in her last few moments of safety. “You have been corrupted by the sorting hat. Your mind has been altered. You are wrong about the destiny of humanity, and you will destroy your own House.”

“Make your case,” says Saul.

“I—”

Fred is gone.

Emily looks up sharply. She looks around the shop. Her brain cannot parse what has happened.

Bertram is gone.

There is something warm and wet on Emily’s face.

Morgan is gone. Lisa is gone. Betty and Veronica are gone.

“Go!” says Emily, to the others. Her voice is audible, so shaken is she. “Go now.”

The Keepers’ House disperses, leaving only Emily, Saul, and their dead; and sitting on the floor amidst the blood, chewing happily on Bertram’s arm, is the Edmund-beast.

And there is a burgeoning breath of pain in Emily. And she says, “I—”

“Ah,” says Saul. “I have backup.”

“I—”

“It’s all right to be frightened,” Saul says. “But you’ll need to make your case.”

Emily isn’t frightened. She is staring at him. She is mouthing a single syllable blankly. But what she means by it is this:

“How dare you take them from me and this world?

“Their lives were jewels: unswerving, dauntless, loving, precious things—And they died before they knew how wonderful they were.”

Doesn’t it suck when that happens?

Anyway, now Emily’s alone with the beasts, and also, the world’s about to end. Check back tomorrow or the next day for Standing in the Storm: Calling to the Wolf!

The gem is the ultimate distillation of faith.

It sits on its pedestal in the caverns deep under Amish country. It glitters. It’s green.

Samuel is staring at it.

Clyde bursts into the room. The doors slam open and Clyde rolls in, his suit jacket smoldering. He lands hard.

Slowly, he stands up, brushing out his jacket.

“That’s it?” Clyde asks.

“Figure so,” Samuel says.

The chamber echoes oddly. It’s like their words are coming out a bit before their mouths move.

“It’s totally separate from worldly affairs,” breathes Clyde.

“The jewel of the Anabaptists,” sighs Samuel.

Samuel starts forward towards the pedestal.

“Wait!”

Clyde flings up a hand.

“What?”

“Only hands firmly grounded in traditional values,” Clyde says, “can touch the Anabaptist jewel!”

Samuel turns towards him. “You implying something, Clyde?”

Samuel’s eyes narrow.

“Maybe I am,” Clyde says. He juts his chin forward. Then he begins walking towards the jewel.

Samuel shoves himself past Clyde. There’s an ominous click and rumble deep below. Samuel steps onto an ornate design on the floor, which sinks, ever so slightly, under his foot.

“Now, Samuel,” says Clyde.

There are little popping noises of bone, like someone cracking their fingers. A moment later, Clyde shakes out his neck and his arms.

“You know the Lord don’t approve of violence,” Clyde threatens.

Samuel turns. “Darn it, Clyde, that’s what you said right before you locked me in with the bees!”

“You earned those bees,” hisses Clyde.

Samuel takes off his jacket. He sets it aside.

“We oughtn’t better make a habit of this, Clyde,” he says.

There’s the terrible sound effect of a fist hitting someone’s chin. Both of them freeze. They don’t have very long to make the calculation: am I going to hit him, or is he going to hit me?

“Darn it!” says Samuel.

It’s Clyde. He’s the reckless one. His arm twitches into motion almost like it’s not his own. He punches Samuel.

Even before it connects, there’s another sound of pow!

Samuel’s head is knocked back. He sways. Then he comes around, eyes burning, and his fist connects squarely with the side of Clyde’s head.

“Stop it!” says Clyde. He takes a step back.

Samuel hesitates.

Then, curtly, he nods.

“There’s ominous music playing,” says Clyde.

“That there is,” says Samuel.

“Sin music,” says Clyde.

“That’s so.”

They are angry, sullen, and shamed. Their eyes lock.

“I can’t come all this way and not bring the jewel back,” says Clyde. “I can’t, Samuel.”

“It’s not meant to be brought out there in conformance with the world,” says Samuel. “It’s meant to be here, in God’s secret bunker.”

And Samuel breathes out his tension and his shoulders sink and he lowers his eyes.

“Then why’d you come here, Samuel?”

“I wanted it too,” Samuel says. There’s longing in his voice. “Want it still. With it, I could learn such adherence to traditional ways as to shake the pillars of Heaven. But …”

“But there’s the price,” Clyde says. He rubs his jaw.

“Wasn’t our fault,” says Samuel. “We’re just in the habit of following the sound effects. Moving our mouth once the words come out. Milking the cows when we hear the spurt. Entering scenes when the prompter tells us to. Stuff like that.”

“It’s a bad habit,” says Clyde.

His mouth doesn’t move at all, even though he’s said stuff. Samuel stares at him. Samuel waits. Then Samuel gets all twitchy.

“Darn it, Clyde, that’s just unnatural,” he says.

Clyde, reluctantly, moves his mouth. Samuel does the same.

After a moment, Samuel says, “You’re right, though. We can’t blame the teleprompter for our sins.”

“Sometimes,” proposes Clyde, as if looking for an exception, “when I look at Katie, and there’s that music . . .”

“Not even those sins,” says Samuel.

Clyde lowers his head.

“Come on,” he says. “I think all the zombies are on fire. Let’s go home.”

Samuel nods. He gives one last longing look at the jewel, and then he steps off of the design.

There’s a horrible noise, like the gateway to Hell itself opening. There’s the rising shriek of devils and the damned.

Samuel and Clyde freeze.

Then, slowly, they relax.

“Just a buggy backfiring,” says Samuel.

“Zombie popping,” says Clyde.

“Might’ve been that spinny door,” says Samuel. “You know, the hundred-ton one that flips end over end. They probably don’t oil that much down here.”

“Hey,” says Clyde. “I know the jewel of the teaching is fabulously valuable, but still—this seems a bit weird.”

“Hm?”

“I mean,” says Clyde, “Why does God have a bunker filled with traps and zombies, anyway?”

Samuel shrugs.

“Tradition.”