Hitherby Dragons

The steam cooker sits on the table. Everyone in the family is admiring it, except for Martin and grandfather. Martin is tinkering with a mutant Aibo. Grandfather . . . he’s just stubborn!

“Filthy bamboo,” grandfather says. “We should have destroyed it all when we had the chance.”

Jane looks up. “We had the chance to destroy bamboo, grandfather?”

“When I was just a young boy,” says grandfather. “They were at war: pandas and men. Fierce was the battle. Men had guns and brains. Pandas had spots.”

“I’d think that guns and brains would win. Like tanks against cavalry.”

“It depends,” grandfather says. “If you pit a shoddy tank against the finest cavalry of the Mongols, the tank will lose! It was like that, with the war of pandas and men. The pandas’ spots were the pinnacle of millennia of evolution. Guns were still new, and men were stuck with inferior human brains.”

Martin glances up halfway. “Thank God we have portable alien space brains now.”

“In the end,” grandfather says, caressing his Sony Lobeman, “we defeated them, and drove them back. But the namby-pamby environmentalist goons refused to let us kill them all. So the pandas survived. The bamboo survived. Everybody got to live.”

“That’s too bad,” Jane says. She pats grandfather reassuringly on the knee. “We’ll burn it all someday! You’ll see!”

“You don’t even know why we’d want to destroy it,” grandfather says, grumpily. “You’re just humoring an old man.”

“Supporting!” Jane clarifies. She mimes the word appearing in the air and underlines it with her hand.

“It’s because of its second stage,” grandfather says. “Everything has a second stage, you know. People become old people, or gods. Caterpillars become old caterpillars, or butterflies. Governments become despotisms.”

“I’m going to become a civil engineer,” Jane says. “And Martin’s going to be my assistant!”

“Am not,” Martin says. He underlines the word ‘not’ with his hand.

“He’s embarrassed about being a secretary,” Jane confides.

“I’m going to be the forge that remakes the world,” Martin says. “Also, I kind of want to work for Sony.”

“They don’t want mutant War Aibos,” Jane says.

“I just need to demonstrate that there’s a market,” Martin suaves.

Grandfather sulks. “If you’re going to ignore me,” he says, “I’m not going to tell you about the second stage of bamboo.”

“After dinner?” Martin proposes. “We should have one delicious steamed meal before you ruin our innocence forever!”

“That’s a good point,” grandfather agrees. “What are we eating?”

“Rice,” mother says. “There’s rice, which we will steam, and pickled vegetables.”

“Why is everything we eat pickled?” Martin asks.

“We’re peasants,” mother says. “We can’t afford anything that isn’t pickled.”

“We could get the vegetables,” Martin proposes, “and not pickle them.”

Grandfather snorts.

“What?”

“You’re naive, boy,” grandfather says. “Pickled vegetables, pickled meat, pickled oranges, pickled milk—if you don’t want pickled food, you need to pay protection to the pickling ninja.”

Martin raises an eyebrow.

“When they ship supplies to the outlying villages,” grandfather explains, “they can’t afford to put many guards on the caravans. So most goods, when they reach us, have been hit—at least once—by the pickling ninja. They come out of nowhere, or so it seems. The caravaneer looks up. There are pickling ninja all around. Then they strike!”

Grandfather looks down. He kicks at the table leg. “Stupid pickling ninja.”

“Why do they pickle our food?”

“To stay in practice,” grandfather says. “Pickling is the highest ninja art, also called ‘ninjutsu’. If you pickle a person, they’ll die within the day. If you pickle an army, they can’t stand against you! Pickling prickly plants provides their perfect poisons, and pickling stars creates the deadly ninja shuriken. Some say the ninja even pickle themselves, with their special pickling pressure points allowing them to survive the process—and endure, immortal, through the ages. That’s why ninjas carry so many pickles—what use is a cucumber to these immortal savants and terrors?”

“I want to be a pickling ninja!” Jane declares.

Martin looks at her.

“I could lead them back to the light,” she says. “I could be a legendary pickling ninja leader to make them an instrument of justice. We’d be Pickle Ninja Team Gatchaman! And we’d fly!”

“Pickles can’t fly,” Martin notes.

Jane opens her mouth.

“Not even pickled ducks.”

Jane closes her mouth. She hesitates. Finally, she says, “Well, maybe we’d more, you know, like, glide, really.”

“I won’t have any of my grandchildren becoming ninja!” declares grandfather. “We’re an honorable samurai family. Besides, they don’t recruit girls.”

Jane frowns. Martin brightens. “Maybe,” Martin says, “I . . .”

“Or boys!” grandfather snaps.

Jane smirks at Martin. Martin scowls. He tinkers furiously with his Aibo.

“Wait,” Jane says, after a moment. “Then who do they recruit?”

Grandfather sighs. “I’m not supposed to bring it up until after dinner,” he says.

“Oh,” Jane says. She looks at the bamboo with new respect.

“The tragedy of bamboo is this,” grandfather says. “Sometimes, bamboo loves a panda, and the panda, bamboo. But they can never consummate that love.”

“Consummate?” Jane asks.

Martin looks up. “Hoochie-coochie,” he explains, in a world-weary fashion.

“Oh.”

“Because the path to their happiness is barred,” grandfather says, “they are empty. And that emptiness makes them cold. And in the cold, the bamboo cracks like a shell, and rings like a bell, and ninja are born from that emptiness.”

“Wow,” Jane says.

“They hunger,” grandfather says. “They hunger to pickle things, from the moment they are born.”

There’s a long silence.

“Stupid ninja,” grandfather sulks.

Floor 93-AI, page 2: This was not my Hell.

Meredith’s perhaps, hanging on the wall.
Or the lion’s.
Or the Queen’s.

It was not mine.

I am still descending.

On a hill there is a house.

In the day, it is a golden house, and it gleams in the light of the sun. At night, it is a white house, pale like the moon. Its windows glimmer.

It is high on the hill, and the hill is grassy, and on that hill the wind does blow. The lights of other houses are far away.

In that house, the Professor’s house, it is kind and clean. There are many floors and many rooms. There is a palpable radiance of safety. And there is a wardrobe. Standing in that wardrobe is a twelve-year-old girl. She sweeps the coats aside. As she expected, the wardrobe has no back. It extends ever onwards into infinity.

“Ha,” she says. “That’s fishy!”

Her name is Ink Catherly. She has been in the Professor’s house for all of thirteen hours and seventeen minutes. It took her thirteen hours and ten minutes to recover her nerve. It took her three minutes to pack her backpack full of odds and ends and a delicious lunch. It took her four minutes to go straight to where the trouble was.

Ink’s short for Incorrigible, or so she’d like you to believe.

Floor 93-AB: There are monks here, standing on a deep deep stair. “You cannot descend,” they said, “without embracing our doctrine.”

“What must I do?” I asked.

“At the first landing,” they said, “we sorrow for ten years.”

“I’m twelve,” I pointed out.

“You may continue.”

So I went down.

“At the second landing,” the monks said, “we must laugh until we understand that we know nothing.” They giggled as they said it. It was a harsh and artificial sound. Their voices pained them, but they did not stop laughing.

“I’m an explorer,” I said. And they gestured me down, and down I went.

“On the third landing,” the monks said, “we spend ten years feeling mildly nostalgic for the previous two landings.”

“Good times,” I said. “Good times.”

Then I bolted, cheating! past them and away.

Ink peers dubiously at the wardrobe. “This looks like something that needs a hero,” she says. “And that’s not my job.”

She takes off her backpack. She sorts through it. She doesn’t have a hero. So she goes to the Professor.

“Excuse me, sir,” she says. “But do you happen to have a hero? Or a heroine? I’m not picky.”

He gives her a sharp man’s look. “Dear me,” he says. “Dear me. Child, there’s no man or woman born who can’t be a hero. You just have to find your courage.”

Ink looks down. She gathers her thoughts. She looks up. She tries again. “Professor, you’ve been very kind. But there’s a magic kingdom in your wardrobe. I know how this works. If I go in there I’ll wind up saving it. And then I’ll be a magical queen. And then I’ll have so much red tape I’ll never have a chance to explore.”

“. . . that might be true,” the Professor allows.

“So I would prefer,” she says, “if there were another little girl or boy around, so I could use them as a dupe. I am happy to dispense any gnomic advice you want me to give them, and even help out if I must. But I don’t want to do it myself.”

The Professor hesitates. “This place is very close to the Underworld,” he says. “That’s why I can afford this house on a Professor’s salary. But it means that children are in short supply.”

Ink looks at him severely.

“There’s Meredith,” he offers. “She was the girl who helped you put away your things.”

“She’ll do!” Ink declares.

Ink leads Meredith to the wardrobe. “Hm,” Ink says. “This wardrobe seems oddly deep.”

“Oh!” says Meredith. “We could go on an adventure!”

“Do you think so?” Ink asks.

“We simply must,” Meredith declares.

Floor 93-AC: This was written on the wall:

We have amended our laws of physics.
Between the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force,
we have added a law of universal fairness.
The strong nuclear force can still, of course, override justice.
But it apologizes, when it does so.

It is only natural that we should reap what we have sown.

If you should read these words,
Oh, remember us!

Meredith proceeds inwards. Then she pauses. “Wait,” she says. “We’re in a wardrobe! We should play dress-up!”

“I reserve judgment,” Ink says.

Meredith looks around. She takes a crown from a dusty shelf and puts it on. She hangs beads of lapis lazuli around her neck. She pins sparkling rhinestones to her teddy-bear top. She winds a gold ring around her waist. She puts on a rich ermine coat and takes a measuring rod in her hand. Then she feels around in her pockets.

“Oh, cool,” she says. “An ancient Babylonian clay tablet!”

She reads it.

“It says: ‘on this tablet are fourteen me, great blessings of power. They are truth, the descent into the underworld, the ascent back, the art of lovema—’”

Meredith covers her mouth with one hand and giggles. She also blushes. “Oh my God.”

“Let me see that,” Ink says.

Meredith clutches the tablet close to her chest. Ink rolls her eyes. After twelve seconds, Meredith shows it to Ink. Ink skims down. She grits her teeth. There’s a pause.

“Um,” Ink says. “Well, the ‘making of decisions’ bit is probably good.”

Meredith giggles. Ink stomps her foot.

“This is a serious journey!” she says. “If you make me start giggling, I’ll be very vexed.”

Meredith puts the tablet back in her pocket. She walks onwards. Occasionally, she giggles again. Finally, Ink giggles too; and, horrified, fishes her cynicism goggles out of her backpack and puts them on.

“The Professor’s intentions are not so pure as I’d imagined,” Ink cynically concludes.

“Or the ancient Babylonians’ weren’t!”

“What?”

“They might have had impure intentions!”

Meredith thinks.

“But besides,” Meredith says, “the tablet isn’t his. Didn’t you see, at the bottom? It’s signed with a pawprint! So I know it belongs to the lion of the wardrobe.”

“Oh.” They walk along for a bit. Then Ink frowns. “Wait, what?”

Meredith beams at Ink. “He is the great wise one,” she says. “He is the son of the king of the universe. He has been gone from us for some time, no doubt drinking again, but when he sets foot in the world, he brings the secrets of lore and wisdom. When he shakes his mane, civilization grows and spreads. When he roars, it means the end to ignorance! Even his pawprint brings wisdom.”

“Oh.”

And at the end of the wardrobe, there is a gate, and outside it, pacing, there is a lion. And while Ink stares at the lion in dismay, Meredith runs forward and casts her arms around his neck, saying, “Oh! Isn’t he beautiful?” And the lion rumbles, deep in his chest.

“I suppose,” Ink says.

“Child,” the lion says, “I have ordained a difficult duty for you, who carries my sacred me.”

“Anything,” Meredith says.

“You must descend into the Underworld,” the lion says. He licks Meredith’s ears with his great raspy tongue. “Lo! I have opened your ears. You may hear the wailing of the Queen.”

“Oh!” Meredith says. “It’s so . . . it wrenches my heart.”

“Then listen well,” the lion says, “for I shall give you gifts.”

Shaking Meredith gently off his neck, he stalks to a sack of gifts and opens it with a paw. He struggles somewhat with the sack, and Ink senses that at times even the lion of the wardrobe would appreciate opposable thumbs.

“This key,” the lion says, “will give you entrance. With this dagger and this sword, you shall know the arts of war. Drape this standard about you, and understand the arts of the sacred prostitutes. Take this holy miniature shrine and learn the arts of song, and wisdom, and power, and treachery, and the plundering of cities, and lamentations, and joy, and deceit, and kindness. Take this certificate of training and learn the arts of copper and writing and wood. At that,” he says, “take it all, save this.”

He noses a small stuffed lion. “This is for Ink,” he says. “Because I did not know what else to get her.”

So Meredith takes the sacred objects and adorns herself further; and she walks to the gate, and she turns the key.

“Stay here,” she says to Ink. “If I’m not back in a few hours, I’m probably in trouble!”

The lion lays himself down, gently, in the sun. Meredith is gone.

Floor 93-AG: There was a spider here, or perhaps it was an angel. It was a thing of aurora borealis, a glittering and beauty hanging in the air. It shimmered. It shone. As it crawled upon its web, the strands played symphonies.

There were people in its web. Mummified people. Soldiers. Drummers. Generals. It seemed like some great army had marched this way; and stopped; and tried to parlay with a thing that does not understand either mercy or fear.

I picked up a gun from the ground. It had been loaded but not fired. I checked, afterwards. None of them had been.

It only took one shot.

“I don’t want a stuffed lion,” Ink says.

The lion of the wardrobe stands. He pads over to her. Ink shrinks back. With his terrible mouth, he bites her cynicism goggles and lifts them off her head.

“Oh, it’s cute!” Ink says.

“But ultimately hopeless,” the lion admits.

He drops the cynicism goggles on the ground and returns to his spot of sun.

“Why do you say that? I mean, besides cynicism?”

“I have given her everything,” the lion says, “but there is a deeper magic than the magic of the me.”

“Of the I,” Ink corrects.

“. . . there’s really no proper grammar for this situation,” the lion concludes.

“A deeper magic?” Ink asks.

“The gateway to the Underworld is but a crack,” the lion says. “Thin, like a knife. So even now Meredith sets aside her key, for she needs it not. And her sword. And her dagger. Her shrine. Her certificate. Her standard. Now she sheds the coat, and the ruler, and the crown, and the jewels. She must enter the Underworld naked, like a child, and thus, you see, I have played her false. That is the deeper magic.”

Ink waits.

“And Meredith says,” the lion rumbles, “‘Oh pale Queen of bone and death, I come to bring you surcease.’

“And the Queen touches her with the wand of death, and Meredith becomes a rotten corpse, and the Queen hangs her on the wall.”

The lion rises. He pads away. “We are done,” he says. “You may proceed to the next floor; the exit is in the Professor’s study.”

“Wait,” Ink says, in confusion.

“What?”

“She was nice.”

“Without the symbols of adulthood,” the lion says, softly, “she is just a dead girl, of no particular import, hanging on a wall. Move on.”

The lion pads away.

Ink looks down. She hesitates. Then she picks up the small stuffed lion. She hugs it close. She touches her free hand to one of the lion’s pawprints. She pushes her hand around in the dirt, trying to find magical inspiration. Her fingernails get dirty. She scratches behind her ear. Now the spot behind her ear is dirty too. She won’t wash it any time soon. She’s twelve!

Ink walks to the gate. She walks inwards. She walks deep. She’s thinner than Meredith, so she can just squeeze through while dressed, with her backpack and the lion held by her side.

In the caverns of the Underworld, there dwells a Queen. She is in agony. As Ink draws closer, Ink can hear the wailing and the gnashing of teeth. But she cannot quite make out words until she enters the room; and there is the pale Queen, naked and unkempt, upon the floor.

“Oh!” screams the Queen. “My inside!”

At a loss, Ink takes a note.

“Oh!” she screamed. “My inside!”

“Oh!” screams the Queen. “My outside!”

“Oh!” she screamed. “My outside!”

And the long litany of pain continues.

“Oh!” screams the Queen. “My gallbladder!”

“Oh!” she screamed. “My gallbladder!”

Ink hesitates. “Where is that?” she asks. “I mean, I’ve always wondered.”

The Queen looks up.

“I’ve been taking notes,” Ink says. “It was all I could think to do.”

The Queen rises and looks at Ink through narrowed eyes. “All this time?”

“Pain matters,” Ink says.

“Ah,” says the Queen. Then she tilts her head to one side. “It pleases me,” she says, “to be heard.”

Ink nods mutely.

“But—you are here to challenge me?”

“I can’t,” Ink says, uncomfortably. “I . . . just wanted to say something gnomic to Meredith. You know. ‘Buck up!’ or something. It’s not much, since she’s dead, but . . .”

Ink smiles crookedly. She looks a bit overwhelmed.

“Ah,” says the Queen. Then she smiles. “You are a gracious creature. Tell her the words of life; and she shall be restored; and you may take her from this place.”

“The words of life?”

“It is a secret of the Underworld,” the Queen says. “Whisper to a corpse’s ear, ‘Be not ashamed to live.’ And it shall rise.”

Ink is silent for a time. Then, hesitantly, with one eye always on the murderous wand of the Queen, she walks to the wall, and whispers in Meredith’s ear.

“This is the deepest magic,” says the Queen, “from before the dawn of time.”

The halls are filled with a sound like the roaring of lions, or the wakening of the world.

The trees make the helicopter look small. They rise to immeasurable heights. They are hundreds of feet across, crusted with ancient moss. There are miles between them. The helicopter floats past a great gnarled trunk, and the people inside try not to think about squirrels.

“There,” says Stacy. She points.

“Finally,” Edward answers.

Something on the ground ahead of them is glowing. The helicopter moves closer.

“I still think,” Stacy says, “that we neglected basic tracking procedures.”

“God doesn’t leave droppings,” Edward says. He maneuvers the helicopter in towards a landing.

Stacy makes a face at him. “I’m thinking more like bent grass. Broken twigs. Footprints, and such.”

“Useless,” Edward says.

“There were some weird marks in the grass,” she says, “back by the wristwatch. It could have been God tracks. We could have followed them.”

“They weren’t numinous enough,” he says. “I have great confidence that if God did leave tracks, they’d be numinous.”

The helicopter lands. Its rotor spins to a stop. They get out. The glowing thing is a spherical jewel. It’s about a foot in diameter. Edward taps it.

“This,” he says. “This, for example, is numinous. It’s probably part of God.”

“Luminous,” Stacy corrects.

Edward looks uncomfortable. “Well, yes,” he says. “But it’s the manner of its luminosity that’s numinous. Wherefore should it glow?”

“It could be radioactive.”

“Radioactive things glow green,” he points out. “This is too full-spectrum to be radioactivity.”

“That’s true.” Stacy reaches out a hand and rests her palm on its surface. “It’s not radioactive, so it could be God. How do we tell?”

Edward thinks. “We need to compare it to a piece of a false God,” he says, “and see if it demonstrates metaphysical primacy.”

Stacy begins searching through her purse.

“Look for drugs or booze,” he says.

Stacy gives him a withering glance.

“Oh,” he says. “I . . . I didn’t mean to imply that you carry them around. Just, you know, that they’d be good false Gods. Do you have a pagan idol?”

“I have a Thor minicomic from Marvel that came with my hairdryer,” she says. “It shows the proper uses for all three settings.”

Edward brightens. “Quickly,” he says. “Get it out! Hold it next to the sphere!”

Stacy holds the comic next to the sphere. There’s a long pause.

“I’m not sure which has metaphysical primacy,” Edward says. He thinks. “Can you consider the comic more of a false idol, and see if it smites you?”

“No,” Stacy says.

“Hm,” Edward says. “Well, read some, and see if its words pale beside the sphere’s transcendent glow.”

“By thunder!” Stacy exclaims. “The first setting is LOW. Use this setting for delicate or color-treated hair.”

Edward hesitates. Then his shoulders slump.

“The second setting is HIGH. Truly it burns with the terrible heat of Muspellheim!”

Edward shakes his head. “It’s no good.”

“The third setting is DIVINE HEAT. Such power! This setting is meant for the golden locks of the Mighty Thor!”

Edward looks at her.

Stacy shrugs, placidly, and puts the comic away. She goes back to searching her purse.

“The problem is, it’s not really a genuine pagan work,” Edward theorizes. “It’s more of a fictional bastardization of the original myths.”

“I have a Goddess-brand vibrator,” Stacy says.

Edward is awkwardly silent.

Stacy fishes it out of her purse. She turns it on. After a moment, uncertain as to how to proceed, she touches it against the sphere. With her free hand, she scratches behind her ear. She frowns thoughtfully. She rubs the tip of the vibrator against the sphere. Then she shrugs, turns it off, and puts it back in her purse.

Edward is awkwardly silent.

“Granted, the branding is more intended to imply that I’m a Goddess than that it is in itself a manifestation of the divine.”

“Stop that!” Edward says.

Stacy frowns at him.

“I mean,” he says, “a few minutes ago. Stop what you were doing then. Don’t be doing that. Stop. I mean, it’s God.“

Parvati is fifty years old.

She is an American citizen, of Indian descent, but she does not live in America now.

She lives in the temple.

She has lived there for almost two years. She has eaten nothing but leaves and air. She is very thin.

It is 1997. It is autumn. She lights a candle.

The halls are empty. The temple is a gaping void. Its walls are ruins. No one comes here any more. It has too many ants, too many spiders, too many ghosts. Once upon a time, it was a temple of Babylon.

“This is the myth,” she says.

She is speaking to the emptiness all around her. It presses in close.

“We are a civilized people now,” she says. “We are better than those who came before us. This is the Age of Truth, not the Kali Yuga.”

The candle flickers.

Parvati’s First Myth

A child lives in the land of childhood. This is a magical land full of blankets, candy, and naked greed. Eventually, children tire of that land. They move next door to teenland. Like L. Frank Baum’s Jinxland, this is an equally magical yet somehow second-rate fairy kingdom. It is full of soda, angst, and defiance.

There are seven gates from teenland to adulthood. Each has a monarch, and each its attendants. The third gate is sexuality. Attending its monarch are ministers of love, choice, happiness, maturity, and gentleness. When a girl or boy wishes to pass through that gate, each minister blesses them in turn.

Then they move on, to a wider and greater world.

“I expected those ministers,” Parvati says. “Dimly, dimly, but I expected them. I understood that innocence transforms into a deeper strength. I knew that creatures such as they were the mechanism for it. I could see it written on every adult face.”

A leaf skitters across the floor. She catches it. She chews on its edge.

“May a thousand people know such blessings; may ten thousand; may ten thousand thousand,” she says.

The candle fire rises. There is also a heat pouring from Parvati, generated by her spiritual strength and her austerities.

The dust of the temple floor ignites.

Parvati’s Second Myth

Some girls and boys, when they reach the gate, are singled out. “I’m sorry,” says the monarch. Its grey cloak is filled with darkness and the endless fluttering of black and orange wings. “Your course,” it says, “shall have no such blessings.”

“But why?” the child says.

“It is not a thing of reasons,” the monarch says.

Children have no power to decide who shall be their ministers at that gate. In that moment, the child understands this. The child watches as others go by and receive their blessings. And the myth is a dagger in the child’s heart.

There was no beauty or gentleness when Parvati passed through the gate. Nor, it should be said, is this uncommon.

“I have chosen a new myth,” Parvati says.

She is sweating in the fire. It is uncomfortable. But she makes no move to leave.

“I have chosen a new myth because I have that right,” she says.

The air is full of smoke. Her eyes sting. Her lungs hurt.

She sings her myth into the air.

Parvati’s Third Myth

“Perfection is virtuous,” says the monarch to the child. “To choose perfection, one must strive, and one must also hope that circumstances and others’ will will prove conducive to one’s aim. For example, to achieve the perfection of this gate, one must come here with a clear and virtuous mind. Then the ministers must decide to bless you. That is the way of perfection.”

“I have striven,” says the child, dirty and ragged from many trips through the gate. “But circumstances have not favored me.”

“Sometimes they do not,” the monarch agrees. “If you wish certainty in life, you cannot also have perfection. You must choose instead a hard and fallow path.”

Parvati goes to the center of the fire. She sits. And this is the story she has chosen:

She will sit.

She will wait.

And a foreigner will come to the temple and buy her with a silver coin.

It is a certain path. It is a hard and fallow one.

Someone will come for her. Someone will remember the old ways, and pay for her after the traditional fashion. She will sleep with them, and it will not bring her happiness, or choice, or love, or gentleness. But it will be hers, and sacred, and better than the beginning that she had before. Afterwards, she will find the first myth a thing to envy rather than to scorn.

And in Babylon, this thing is sacred.

In this temple, in Babylon, this thing she does is sacred, but even still it is a hard and fallow path, and even still it would be difficult under the best of circumstances.

These are not the best of circumstances.

The temple where she waits is abandoned, shunned, priestless, in ruins, and, at the moment, it is on fire.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who wished, more than anything, that she could shake Marie Curie’s hand.

She wanted many things. She wanted to rule the Ottoman Empire. She wanted an ice cream cake three thousand miles tall. She wanted a doe-eyed white dwarf star to attend to her every whim. She even wanted respite for all the hurt souls in the world. But mostly, she wanted to shake Marie Curie’s hand.

She wished on a star.
She wished on a pony.
She wished on the train.
She even wished in the shower.

But it didn’t happen.
It didn’t happen.

Not for a long, long time.

One day, the girl goes to her mailbox. She opens her mailbox and finds a letter. Inside the letter is Marie Curie’s hand. It’s miraculously preserved—probably, by radiation!

“Wow,” she says. She shakes Marie Curie’s hand. “This is like a dream come true!”

Then she begins to scream. She shakes off the hand. She runs into the house. She slams the screen door behind her. She runs to the phone. She calls the police.

“I just got a severed hand in the mail!” she babbles.

Then she screams.

“It’s followed me in!”

There’s a pause. The policeman on the other end tries to reassure her.

“It’s trying to use the Yellow Pages!” she cries.

The police mobilize their anti-hand unit. It’s full of special gloves and mitts and harsh detergents. Pretty soon the hand is just plain soaking in trouble. Her bittersweet fantasy has come to an end.

Autumn turns to winter. Winter turns to spring.

“I wish I ruled the Ottoman Empire,” remembers the girl.

This is a truth that must be remembered.

The people remember.

The struggle of Mylitta was not in vain. The monster was strong, and much was lost. But much was bought in turn.

The people remember.

They began to come to her and ask her aid.

The people remember.

With blood on their brow they came. And blood on their hands. And pain in their eyes. The people came to her.

The people remember.

And to lighten the pain of the monster’s thrall, the gods of Babylon came to her.

The people remember.

And in the name of the people and the gods, she made argument with him, and often he bent. His heart bent to her. So he said. So he believed.

The people remember.

He held her in thrall to every person’s hopes.

We begged her to buy from him
what he could have freely given.

And the question Mylitta asked of him
remains unanswered still.

The people remember.
The people mourn.

It is 550 years before the common era.

The temple at Harran holds no one prisoner, and many of Nabonidus’ victims have fled. Many others have chosen to stay. They are as caged tigers, who, freed into the wild, still pace out the length of their prison cages. There is a bond between monster and victim that is difficult to break.

In the sacred precinct of Babylon, the monster keeps Mylitta, behind gates of solid brass.

The center of the precinct is a tower two hundred feet in height, and the path of its ascent winds all around. There is a place, halfway up, where one may stop and rest, and stare out over all of Babylon. People who seek her are prone to stopping there, and sitting for a time, and resting.

At the top of the tower, there is a temple. Inside the temple, there is a great couch, richly adorned, with a golden table beside it. And there Mylitta sits.

A woman climbs the stairs. It takes her a full hour. She reaches Mylitta’s door and stops, looking inwards. When Mylitta stands, the woman genuflects.

“Please,” she says. “My husband is dying of his wounds.”

Mylitta takes the woman’s head between her hands, and kisses the woman’s forehead. “I will speak to the gods,” she says.

The woman goes down the stairs.

On another day, there is a man. He is young. He is strong. He is pretty, though not so pretty as Nabonidus. He reaches the door and stares uncertainly at Mylitta.

“Come in,” she says.

“I need strength,” he says. “I am not strong.”

She studies him for a long time. He shifts from foot to foot.

“Why?” she asks him.

“I work hard,” he says. “Every day. But the animals are sick. And the rain leaks in. And the taxes are harsh, and I have not pleased the officials of this realm. Nothing I do seems to work.”

She nods to him, and he enters the room, and when he leaves, he is stronger.

“I will speak to Nabonidus,” she says, to his fading shadow. “About the taxes.”

Nabonidus comes to the temple one day. He brings with him six priests and a sacrifice. At the midpoint of the path, the sacrifice is cut to pieces. In the temple, Mylitta hears his screams, and winces softly. The flesh is boiled, and cut into pieces, and lain out on the tower’s stairs. The sound of prayers and hymns rises to her ears. Then comes a priest.

“Mylitta,” he says. “Give me your grace.”

She shakes her head. She stares at him.

“Mylitta,” he says. “King Istumegu has marched against Kuras, to meet him in battle; but his army turned against him and has delivered him to Kuras in chains. Ah! Kuras rises. He will not stop with Istumegu’s kingdom; he will claim our own.”

“You are a murderer,” she says. “Why do you come to me?”

“Goddess,” he says. “Please. You must help the people of Babylon.”

She stands. She goes to the door and looks out on the city.

“Why?” she says. “Why do you ask me?”

“Because if you do not, Kuras will come to Babylon, and he will kill our men, and our women will know sorrow, and the gate of Nitocris will fall, and all our joys come tumbling down.”

“I will speak to the gods,” she says, blankly.

The priest leaves, and Nabonidus comes in the door, and she hugs him tightly and leans against him for support.

“This is a hard thing,” she says.

“It is,” he says.

She sits on the couch, and he sits beside her.

“What have you done, since last we met?” he asks.

She shrugs, and begins to cry. He holds her. After a moment, she composes herself, and says, “Life for one man. Strength for another. And others, in similar fashion. I said that I would speak to you about the taxes.”

“It’s part of the process of governance,” he says.

“There is nothing that you can do?”

He shrugs. “If taxes are high, people starve. If taxes are low, people starve.”

“I see.”

She looks at him. “There are no gods you have that can defeat Kuras.”

“I know,” he says.

“That is why the sacrifice,” she says, “isn’t it? To make this hurt me more.”

“If we do this thing,” he says, “you will envy that man.”

“And if we do not?”

He shrugs.

“Nabonidus,” she asks, “we could leave. We could abandon this place. You could be Elli. We could go to a place far away and have babies, and I could end the monster’s line and replace it with my own.”

He smiles at her. “But I like who I am,” he says.

“Why can’t I fix you?” she asks.

He takes her hand. “In two days,” he says. “We shall ride a chimera to the temple of Sin, and there I will show you the why of the world.”

“I hear my people screaming,” she says, “sometimes. From far away. And I ask, why can’t I fix you?”

“Aren’t there questions without answers?” he says.

And there is much of the monster in Nabonidus’ eyes.

Two girls meet at the gates of the dead. They’re mirrored, those gates. One girl steps into the mirrors. The other steps through the gates.

Mr. Schiff is on a plane. He’s going to go skydiving.

Jane and Martin are on a green, green hill. They’re eating a picnic. It involves bread, pickles, and cheese. There’s a girl sitting with them. She’s quiet, since she’s dead, but she still munches on bread and cheese when Jane offers.

“Her name’s Iffy,” Jane says.

“Where’d you meet her?” Martin asks.

“She was over there,” Jane says. Jane points at the grass. “She was eating ice cream. So I invited her to a picnic.”

“Hi,” Iffy says.

Martin smiles a little. “Hey.”

“Your turn!” Jane says. “Tell me a story.”

Martin ponders. “A scary story? It’s almost Halloween.”

“Okay,” Jane agrees.

“A long time ago,” Martin says, “the luminiferous ether and the atmosphere were sisters, and best of friends.”

Iffy frowns at Martin.

“They did everything together,” Martin says. “They played. They worked. They laughed. But sometimes things go bad.”

“Like mayonnaise!” Jane suggests.

“Mistakes were made,” Martin says. “Recriminations issued. Regrettable events were insufficiently regretted. And one day, while they were arguing with one another in the shape of two little girls, the atmosphere stabbed the luminiferous ether right through the heart, and through both eyes, and she was dead.”

“With a pickle?” Jane asks.

“With a knife,” Martin says.

Jane frowns at him severely. At first Martin looks suave. Then he caves.

“Fine,” he says. “With a knife carved from the deadliest of Vlassic pickles, dripping with its horrid brine.”

“Yay!” Jane says. She takes a pickle out of the picnic pickle jar and bites it happily.

“Which of them do you identify with?” Martin asks, curiously.

“I’m the horrified onlooker,” Jane says. “Gasp! This one little girl has killed the other! We must fetch a doctor immediately!”

“It wasn’t like that,” Iffy says. Jane hands her a bit of bread and cheese. “It was more about how scientific concepts evolve.”

“I’ve always thought,” Martin says, “that if scientists could establish their theories by stabbing one another with pickles, they probably would.”

“Some kind of peer review thing?” Iffy asks.

“Yah.”

Iffy considers.

Martin shrugs.

“They did fetch a doctor,” Martin says. “But it didn’t help, because, you know, the luminiferous ether was dead. And the atmosphere wasn’t even one little bit sorry, either.”

Jane frowns. “Not even a little?”

“Well,” Martin confesses, “maybe a little.”

“Just a little?” Jane says.

“Well,” Martin admits, “after a while, the atmosphere felt really bad about it. But what could she do? The luminiferous ether was already dead.”

“She could go to the other side,” Jane says. “And bring her sister back!”

“It’s not that easy,” Iffy says.

“It’s hard to revive someone killed with a pickle,” Martin agrees. “You have to make an especial appeal to the King of the Dead.”

Jane waves a hand airily. “Being the atmosphere opens a lot of doors.”

“That’s true,” Martin admits. “But it closes others.”

Jane thinks. “I’ve seen that happen,” she concedes.

“So what would the King of the Dead do?”

Jane frowns. “You’re telling this story,” she says, severely. “But I guess that he’d probably make some kind of deal with her. Like, maybe, she has to do three incredible tasks to get her sister back.”

“Or maybe,” Martin says, “she can get her back, but not all the way.”

Suddenly, Iffy frowns. “Ack,” she says. She pushes upwards at the air as if trying to hold something up.

“You okay?” Jane asks.

Iffy shakes her head. “It’s too hard!” she says. “I can’t provide enough friction!”

“See,” Martin says, gesturing around broadly, “the King of the Dead was willing to let the luminiferous ether back. It can play. It can touch the world. It can run in the grass and eat ice cream. But it can never see its sister again. Because when the luminiferous ether is here, conducting light and providing a breathable environment, the atmosphere must hide from the world, behind mirrors and under the glass. That’s the bargain that the King of the Dead made. And today, just a few weeks from Halloween, is one of the days when the luminiferous ether is here, and the atmosphere is gone.”

Mr. Schiff hits the ground, hard, next to them.

“It makes it a bad day to sky dive,” Martin admits. “The ether has low resistance and doesn’t hold parachutes up very well.”

Iffy sags. “I did my best,” she says.

Jane stares at Mr. Schiff in horror. “Is he dead?”

Martin takes a pickle from the jar. He pokes Mr. Schiff with it. “Dunno,” he says.

Jane straightens her spine. She looks firm. “I don’t believe in dead people,” she says.

“What?” Martin asks.

“I’m hoping he’ll hear me,” Jane says.

“Why?”

“Every time a child says that,” Jane says, “a dead person comes back to life.”

“Just like that?”

Jane nods. “It used to be that there was one dead person for every living person. But children stopped believing in death, and dead people started coming back to life, and now the world’s all overpopulated. I don’t believe in dead people.”

Martin frowns. “He’s not responding,” he says.

“I don’t believe in dead people! I don’t! I don’t!” Jane shouts.

There’s a pause.

Martin sighs.

“I don’t believe in dead people,” he whispers.

“I don’t believe in dead people,” Jane says.

“I don’t believe in dead people,” Iffy concedes.

“I don’t believe in dead people,” Jane demands.

There’s a silence. Slowly, Mr. Schiff drags himself upright.

“I don’t believe in dead people,” Jane says, again.

“I can fly,” Mr. Schiff says, “you know.”

“That’s good!” Jane says encouragingly. “I don’t believe in dead people.”

“You can stop now,” Martin says.

“Oh,” Jane says.

“You know,” Martin says, “we should go to the graveyard on Halloween, and do that.”

“That would be mean,” Jane says. “Most of those people are done.”

It is the end of that day. One girl waits behind the mirrors for her freedom. The other walks down to the gates of the dead.

“You can’t go through,” says the King. “Not today.”

Iffy pauses. “Why not?”

“You can’t be dead,” says the King, “if people don’t believe in it.”

I.

Little Susie proves that 0=1.

“Nonsense,” says Mr. Gibbles, her elementary school mathematics teacher. “If that were true, then there would be no truth.”

Susie gestures impassively at her composition book and the equations written within.

“The truth demonstrates itself,” she says.

“I’ll send this to the institute for higher mathematics,” her teacher says. “They’ll tell you where you’re wrong.”

Little Susie’s face is a study in dispassion. And freckles. It is a study in freckles and dispassion.

II.

Little Susie is wakened by a rapping, rapping, rapping on her window from outside. She walks over to her window. She looks out the window at the face of Professor Harold Moyes.

“Yes?” she asks.

“Could you please open the window, little girl?” he asks. He is dangling precariously from the roof on a rope.

“I am curious if you will fall,” she says.

“I see.” Professor Moyes clears his throat. “Er. In any case.”

“Also, it is cold out.”

“Understood. I will make this brief,” he says, cold white knuckles clinging tightly to the rope. “I wish to know if you are in fact the girl responsible for the extraordinary proof submitted by Mr. Gibbles; and, should this be so, how you came by it.”

“I dreamt it,” she says. “Bit by bit from the well of dream.”

“That’s very good, Susie,” he says. The wind blows. The rope shakes. Professor Moyes suppresses a yelp. “But surely you realize that if 0=1, then all numbers are the same, and all Gödel numbers are the same, and all things are the same, and all equally nonexistent?”

“I recognize that,” Susie says in a nihilistic tone.

“Yet I am here, and you are there. Inside. Where it is warm.” Professor Moyes’ voice is longing. “That is also truth.”

“It is.”

“How does your dream account for that?” he asks.

Little Susie yawns sleepily. Then she blinks. But her tone is clear. “I argue that the act of analysis changes the world,” she says. “Computation on data changes the underlying substance. The 0 is the 0 predating my computation; the 1 is what it has become afterwards. A single contradiction does not unravel the world; rather it proceeds through examined truths and evaluated truths like a tsunami, altering everything that it passes.”

“I see,” says Professor Moyes.

“Does this surprise you?” asks Susie.

“No,” he says. “It is the nature of woglies; it is the cycle of the world.”

III.

Susie does not grow old. She is like an insect preserved in amber. In five years’ time, she is still little Susie, clutching her teddy bear.

“It worries me,” says little Susie’s mommy. “You’re still so young.”

“I would not worry about it, mommy,” Susie says.

“And you never play in the sun.”

Susie looks up at Mommy. There is a mix of disdain and fondness on her cute little face.

“I am an ageless child of the night,” she says.

“Yes, well,” says her mommy. “Well.”

Susie goes up to her room. She looks in the mirror. Then she sighs. There is a terrible rending of the world, and she becomes a swirling indefinable shape. She eddies through the window glass and is gone.

IV.

Professor Moyes stands on a balcony overlooking the main floor of the institute of higher mathematics. His hands grasp its rail.

“Mathematicians may never enter a place without invitation,” he says.

Little Susie eddies and swirls in the air behind the balcony. Her pigtails perform slow orbits. She looks frustrated.

“But please,” says Professor Moyes, “come in.”

Susie flows forward and coalesces into a girl.

“Why should mathematicians be limited in such a fashion?” she says.

“To be human is to be a zero-size point, scattered infinitely far from all others in a measureless space,” says Professor Moyes.

“. . . Oh.”

“This is also why running water is such a trouble.”

“Mommy says I can take baths if I wait until the water is still,” says little Susie.

“I just use deodorant,” says Professor Moyes.

They watch the work of the institute below.

V.

“I don’t think she’s normal,” says Mr. Gibbles. He’s still an elementary school mathematics teacher.

“Oh?” asks the principal expansively.

The principal is a giant of a man. He wears a white suit. When he laughs, he puts his hands to his stomach and rolls out with, “Ho ho ho!”

“She proved that 0=1,” says Mr. Gibbles, “and then didn’t get any older. I would almost think that she was exploiting a contradiction to prolong her childhood, except that the institute for higher mathematics said that her argument did not withstand a double-blind trial.”

“Ho ho ho!” laughs the principal. “Little girls are so earnest when they do math!”

“It’s not natural,” insists Mr. Gibbles.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” says the principal. “I can’t kick her out of your class until she grows older. It’s a strict school rule.”

Mr. Gibbles looks frustrated. “Then I’ll have to deal with her myself.”

VI.

Mr. Gibbles and little Susie sit together on the lunchground.

“I’ve invited you to have lunch with me this recess,” says Mr. Gibbles, “because I believe that you’re a blasphemous abomination.”

“Girls can be mathematicians like anyone else,” says little Susie.

“Well, yes,” says Mr. Gibbles. “But not blasphemous abominatory ones.”

Little Susie sighs. She looks longingly at the people playing hopscotch. Her thoughts are written on her face. How come they don’t have to have lunch with the math teacher?

“The other teachers are afraid of you,” says Mr. Gibbles. “Even the principal! Someone has to take a stand.”

Mr. Gibbles sets out beside him a wooden stake.

“So you will . . . stake me through the heart?” little Susie asks.

“No,” says Mr. Gibbles. “I am not just an elementary school teacher. I am also a vampire. If all is lost, this is for me.”

“Vampires and mathematicians are not so very different,” says little Susie sadly.

It does not change Mr. Gibbles’ resolve.

“We will have a math-off,” says Mr. Gibbles. “To the death.”

Little Susie is silent.

“There is no other way,” Mr. Gibbles says, and his fangs are very white.

VII.

Little Susie’s mommy washes the dishes. She looks outside. Little Susie is trudging home. A small cloud hovering directly over her head shelters her from the sun.

Little Susie enters the house.

“Hi, honey,” Mommy says.

“I do not understand what death is,” says little Susie.

Mommy thinks about this for a bit. “It’s like 0,” she says.

“Oh.”

Little Susie twists one foot around on its ankle. She wants to ask something else.

“What is it, honey?”

“Which kind of 0?” Susie asks.

THE END

Some people think that American cats are cats. But they’re not. They’re actually cat food, or, put another way, an extruded processed cat product made principally of partially hydrogenised soybean oil. They’re cheap and they’re easy compared to French cats, most of whom are smelly and runny and somewhat sharp. If you want a touch of class without going to France you should probably consider a real cat from a breeder or possibly some sort of German cat log.

They make American cats at cat shelters. This is called ’spaying’. They take ordinary cats into a special room. They process them. The result is five spayed partially hydrogenised American cats. This is why there are so many American cats — it’s all the spaying! Costco shelters have a more extreme version where they put claws on the cats so that they can interlock them, stack them, and sell them in bulk.

American cats never go bad. They are like yellow foam-filled snack logs in this fashion, which is not very surprising, because Hostess makes its delicious yellow foam-filled snack logs through a similar process involving spaying little yappy dogs. An American cat lasts forever. When it is past its ideal freshness date for home use, though, sometimes your cat will seem a little stale. Its posture will change and it will lose its crisp definition. Then you can wrap it in plastic and send it to a special farm where it can frolic with its Hostess-provided friends for all eternity. This is depicted on certain wonderful Sanrio products.

The world record for putting American cats in your house is 3,082. Higher numbers can only be achieved with special hypercompressible cats emerging from the FHL (feline hypercompressability laboratory) in Switzerland. The world record for putting American cats on your head without Costco stacking technology is only 7, held by the notorious liar and entertainer P.T. Barnum, and some people suspect that he might have employed chicanery to achieve it. With cat stacking larger numbers, such as 803, are possible.

Even with the cloud of suspicion that hangs over P.T. Barnum’s head, unreduced and even enhanced by his balancing of cats thereupon, one must accept that the modern American cat owes him a great debt. The first American cats were constructed in response to his discovery of the “Calico Cat,” a mysterious creature, half-cat, half-calico, that he put on display at his museum. Louis Pasteur, a famous French microbiologist, set forth to disprove the pedigree of the Calico Cat and in so doing created the first American felines.

“They are not truly cats,” Pasteur explained, demonstrating his creation in a French accent. “But rather processed cat products, as I believe the Calico Cat must be.”

In the end, Pasteur’s experiments proved his undoing. In the course of his studies, he accidentally pasteurized his own soul, and his yeastless spirit could no longer rise to Heaven. Now he is an immortal damned to an eternal life unleavened by yeast or hope, living alone and friendless in the Rockies surrounded by dozens of individually wrapped cats.

It’s really kind of sad, because he used to be a pretty cool dude. You know. With the germ theory and all.

Giraffes are animals with very long necks. They jump from tree to tree. They shout the eerie shout, “Giraffe! Giraffe!”, that makes them properly giraffes.

Giraffes do not like their long necks. At fancy restaurants, they cannot reach the table. They cannot eat their food. They can only graze the hairdos of the very tallest waiters. In a basketball-themed restaurant, they can eat most waiters’ hair. In a jockey-themed restaurant, unless the waiters are on horses, this is not as true. Because the giraffes’ necks are so long, they cannot leave a tip.

Giraffes can eat leaves from higher places in trees than other animals. They have a practical monopoly on these leaves. If these leaves tasted good, then the giraffes might be satisfied. However, the giraffes would like to eat cake and steak and shake ‘n bake, and leaves mostly taste like bitter crunchy air. Should they happen across a human or tiger enjoying cake or steak, the giraffe might look mournful. When the human or tiger observes, “You’re capable of consuming many leaves that I simply cannot reach,” it is not typical for this observation to console the giraffe.

Giraffes’ necks don’t let them ride the subway like normal people. They have to ride on top, clinging close with their necks flat against the metal. They wrap their ammo bandoliers tightly around their body, dye their head-buds colors appropriate to street warriors, and ride with the wind in their face. Then they reach their destination, and shout the eerie shout, “Giraffe!”

The eerie shout echoes through the subway. The station attendant collects their ticket. The giraffes disembark. They nibble at the popcorn ceiling with nonchalance and ascend the escalator to the street. Then they are gone.

Giraffes have trouble with phone booths. Even if their necks fit into the booth, their heads and bodies won’t. If Superman had become a giraffe, he would not have been able to change his clothes. They would have gotten very stinky from him wearing them all the time. To resolve this plotline he would have had to absorb a dying Mr. Clean’s powers and add them to his own. An early writer established that Superman’s disguise is partially maintained by Super-Hypnotism and his ability to vibrate his face so quickly that no one can make out details. This means that a giraffe Superman would probably have been able to maintain his secret identity. When disguised he would have seemed just like any other giraffe.

If Karl Rove had become a giraffe, he would tower over all the other people at the White House. He would occasionally eat the leaves of trees that not even the President could reach. It’d be leaves majeste, but who could stop him? He’d be a giraffe! They might even put shake ‘n bake in the treetops, just for him.

If the Lone Ranger had become a giraffe, there would have been much deeper problems. First, he would have been even more of a minority than Tonto. By the immutable rules of the West, Tonto would have to assume the position of white privilege. For example, Tonto might listen to the ground, and then say, “The political and military power I have inherited from the European invaders indicates to me that horses are approaching.” Or he might throw a tomahawk, but explain away his skill with, “I learned it in Detroit, yo!”

Meanwhile, because of his extremely long neck, the Lone Ranger could not use guns. Because of his four legs and heavy body, he could not ride a horse. His weapon and transportation of choice would be a mobile artillery station. For example, when the two inseparable heroes encountered entrenched corruption in a frontier town, Tonto might place a few calls to his friends in high places while the Lone Ranger bombarded the sheriff’s office from afar with heavy mortar loads. When the mysterious masked giraffe at last departed, the citizens of the town would be simultaneously confused, grateful, and relieved.

Some people think that giraffes come from baby giraffes, but they don’t. They can be born as anyone or anything. To be a giraffe is not a matter of character but of practice;

Just seven shouts of the eerie shout and you can be one too.