Hitherby Dragons

My name is Train Morgan. This is my website. This page is the story of my brother Thomas. I am writing it so that people will know what happened to him.

Sam and Bird like to visit the abandoned facility on Elm Hill. They invited me many times. I only went once. I did not like it.

I told my brother about Sam and Bird. He thought it sounded cool. He went with them to the facility. He had bad timing. He was seen. He attracted someone’s attention. They did not like his presence. Now I have lost him.

The facility on Elm Hill has been abandoned. There is no machinery there now. There are no rats. There is no pain. There are no dancing Popes.

It is 2002.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” says Train. He’s a teenager. He’s wearing jeans and a skin-tight shirt. He’s got black hair and a tan.

Bird frowns at him. “It’s the coolest place ever,” she says. “Just feel the air.”

Bird’s also a teen. She doesn’t look scared, but she is hanging, just a bit more tightly, on Sam’s arm.

“They had big ‘Keep Out’ signs,” Train points out.

Sam tilts his head to one side. “You’ll like it here,” he says.

Train rests his hand on the stained white wall. He looks uncertain. “What do you do here?”

“Commune,” Sam says.

“Listen,” Bird says. “Have you ever thought that there was something . . . bigger, in the world? Bigger than the ordinary way of being?”

Train listens to the air. Then he shakes his head. “I don’t, Sam. I don’t like it.”

Sam walks forward. With his free hand, he gestures to Train. “Further in,” he says. “It’s okay. I’m not so fond of this part either. But you’ll like Cheryl.”

Train shakes his head. But he lets Sam and Bird lead him deeper in.

He attracted their attention. So they found my brother.

They took him to a room. They asked Thomas, “Why do such terrible things happen in the world?” Thomas could not give them an answer. So they showed him the reason.

I was not there. I was in bed. I woke up screaming. I had lost my brother.

There are pipes on the walls. Sam’s flashlight plays over them as they walk. There’s a mist here, a condensation in the air.

Bird waves her hand through the mist. “This is Cheryl,” she says.

Train frowns. “Why do you call it Cheryl?”

Bird’s eyes are half-lidded. She’s looking upwards with a distant expression on her face. She sways slightly.

“It makes me feel lost,” Bird says. “It makes me feel alone. Like a dead girl might feel.”

Train looks at Sam, a little disturbed.

“Cheryl was her sister’s name,” Sam says. He closes his eyes. He wriggles his shoulders and his hands. “It’s good. Just . . . relax. Can’t you relax, Train?”

“I guess,” Train says. He closes his eyes.

“I’m not really real,” Bird says. “I’m just someone’s dream. I think that sometimes.”

“You’re real,” Train says.

He was not real any more. He was not a person any more. He was no longer my brother Thomas. He was. He had been. Now he isn’t.

There’s a chill in the air.

Sam says, softly, “The mist makes me think of a place far from here. A place where there is no recourse. It is not a place of the scholar’s books or the ancient memories of man. But it is known. It is seen between the ink and the white on the pages of a newspaper. It flickers on the dead channels of the television. It is something I have read of on the sides of a bus, passing by too fast to truly understand. Wouldn’t you like to have such visions, Train?”

“I wouldn’t,” Train says. “Not if I’d read it in the paper. Not if I’d see it on the television. Not if I’d read it on a bus.”

“There aren’t any people there,” Sam says.

“I wouldn’t like it without people.”

A mosquito lands on Train’s arm. He slaps it, then makes a startled noise. Its body is cold and the stain it leaves is black.

“Come on, Train,” Sam says. “Let yourself feel it.”

“I asked the mist,” Bird says. “I asked Cheryl, ‘Did you dream me?’ But it didn’t answer.”

Slowly, the three walk through the mist.

I saw his fate written on a milk carton’s back. Then I blinked and it was gone. It said:

Ii Ma, the Warden, keeps the place without recourse.

They sent my brother there.

“The place without recourse,” Sam says, “is a deep-walled valley. And each person who goes there is given a question to hold close to their heart. Until they answer it, they cannot leave. And because they can’t answer it, they’re not really people any more.”

They pass a room.

“That’s the Liril room,” Bird says.

Train looks in. Scratched in jagged letters, near the bottom of the wall, is the word LIRIL.

“It’s a palindrome,” Sam says.

“It’s like ‘Croatoan,’” Bird opines. “A mystery, left behind, to explain why the facility closed down. Are you the one who dreamed me, Liril?” she asks the air.

“I’d try to run,” Train says. “If I were in the place without recourse.”

“You could try,” Sam says. “But the valley walls are steep. And when you’d climbed until you could see the outside world, even as you crested the top and looked down at the paradise outside, you’d find yourself waking back in your bed, in the place without recourse. And you’d look at the dawn, and you’d say, ‘how beautiful.’”

There’s a spider on the wall. It’s hideous. Train recoils. Bird rubs its furry back with one long finger. “Did you dream me?” she asks it.

It scurries off into the mist. If anyone there knew the spider language, they might have heard its answer.

“I’d organize a rebellion,” Train says.

“You might,” Sam says. “And when you marched on the guards, you’d find yourself waking back in your bed, in the place without recourse. And you’d look at the dawn, and you’d say, ‘how beautiful.’”

They sent Thomas to the place without recourse. But he did not give up. He went to Ii Ma. The Warden is a squamous and amphibious beast with six great flippered legs and a face that drips black blood. Its eyes are cadaverous and filmed with slime.

“Free me,” Thomas asked Ii Ma. This is courage unparalleled. You cannot understand unless you have seen it. To speak in its presence at all shows courage. To make a petition of it, from a position of powerlessness—I am proud of my brother.

Thomas woke, in his bed, in the place without recourse. And he looked at the dawn. And he said, as he says every morning, ‘How beautiful.’

There’s a coughing sound in the mist. Train looks around.

“Hey,” Train says. He’s uneasy now. “Hey. Shouldn’t we be . . . communing? With something?”

Bird peers at Train. Her eyes have neither iris nor pupil. He realizes, in that moment, that they never have.

“Did you dream me?” she asks. “You’re a nice boy. I’d like it if you’d dreamed me.”

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, helplessly. “I’m just Train.”

“The air is full of answers,” Sam says.

“I don’t belong here,” Train says.

“It’s all right,” Sam says. They walk on down the empty hall. Finally, Sam points to the left. “You can go out that way,” he says. “We’ll stay for a while.”

“I’m sorry,” Train says.

“You’d like it,” Sam says. “If you tried it. If you just . . . let go.”

Train walks out.

I left.

Sam let me go. Bird let me go. If Ii Ma did not take them, they are now in twelfth grade. Sam will still be praising the virtues of the place. Bird will still be seeking whomever dreamt her.

Ii Ma did not let me go.

I dream of it. I know that it will come for me. It will ask me a question I cannot answer. It will take me away from the world to the place without recourse. And nothing I do, and nothing I have ever done, will matter again.

Perhaps I will see my brother. It would be kind. There is a great deal more cruelty than kindness in the world. But there is that hope, and so I tell myself:

I think I can endure.

It’s Tuesday, the 20th of April, 2004.

“We’ll go away from Santa Ynez,” says Liril.

So they do.

“And do we just run?”

“We’ll go to where I screamed,” Liril says. “To Elm Hill. We’ll take back every god they took and steal every tainted bill and coin and favor they bought. Then we’ll run away to the hills and live richly forever.”

“I didn’t know,” Micah says.

“It’s what people do,” Liril says. “They keep their own gods.”

Micah looks tired. He is still recovering from torture. He is not at his best. But he tells everyone where to find the supplies he stole from a grocery store on Saturday. They find the cache.

“I should have realized,” Micah says, “about the milk.”

“I like the peanut butter,” Liril says. She has opened some up and spread it on crackers.

She thinks.

“We can live off the milk of the land,” she adds.

“That’s a good idea,” Micah agrees. “Please make one for me?”

Liril looks at him. She’s a bit startled. But then she nods, and puts peanut butter on a cracker, and offers it to him. He takes it. He bites it.

“What’s up ahead?” he asks.

“There’s a river,” she says. “That’s where we probably all die, except Tainted John. He probably dies in a train wreck.”

Tainted John looks at her, or rather, doesn’t look at her, because his eyes are all blood and shimmer.

“Oh,” says Micah.

“If we can survive two years or so,” Liril says, “we’re okay.”

“So if I get eaten by a shark,” Micah says, “I should try to hang on for at least two years.”

“Sharks are sharp. But you should try. Or if you get burned. Or whatever.”

“If I’m dangling off a cliff?”

Liril looks at him. Her eyes are deep. “Pull yourself up,” she says. “Don’t just hang on for two years.”

Micah smiles at her.

Liril blushes.

“Don’t,” she says, in a small voice.

“What happens at the river?”

“There was a gate,” Liril says. “Once upon a time. And ministers in attendance upon it. I was screaming. But they wanted me to grow up and become something else.”

“You can grow up,” Micah says. He’s deliberately ignoring the fact that he’s been the same age ever since he was born. “It’s okay to.”

“I didn’t want to,” Liril says. “Not that way.”

“Oh.”

“There were ministers I couldn’t touch because they were too strong,” says Liril. “And ministers I couldn’t touch because they were too gross. It was just the way it was. I couldn’t touch them. But there was one who was pure and bright and kind of cold. His nametag said, ‘Proteus’, and under that, ‘Cruelty.’”

“The monster is really bad at Greek,” Micah says.

“I could touch him,” Liril says, “because he was impartial to me. He didn’t have anything he was for. He was just there. So I gave him a purpose. I said, ‘Proteus, wait for me at the river, and I won’t pass through the gate until I see you there.’”

“And he did?”

“Yes,” Liril says. “And since that time there’s been no change, except when a wind blew off the chaos and brought him strength.”

“Also, I rolled a rock,” Micah says. “It changed things.”

Liril considers.

“It did,” Micah says.

Liril touches his mouth with a finger. “It was a cause,” she says. “Things have more than one reason. It’s okay. You’re a good Micah.”

He looks at her wryly.

“You’re delicate with me today,” he says.

“I looked at what she was doing to you,” Liril says. “I was crying the whole time but I couldn’t face her yet.”

“Things have reasons,” Micah says, and he shrugs. He sees her face, and his own face starts to get a little weird.

“No,” Liril says. “We won’t discuss it now. Later. Later, when it’s not—we can’t discuss it now.”

“Okay.”

They walk towards the river, carrying their bags of groceries.

“We shouldn’t cross at a bridge,” Micah says. “We shouldn’t cross anywhere people are. But the river’s kind of hard to wade.”

“I know,” Liril says. “But there’s a river-man in the river. He’s part of why it’s so deep. Tainted John’s going to hold his face down in the mud and the river’ll sink. Then we can cross.”

“Kuras did that once,” Micah says. “To defeat Belshazzar.”

“What?”

“He lowered the river that ran through Babylon, and marched his people in on the riverbed.”

“Oh,” says Liril. She looks pleased, because Micah seems a little less drained when he’s talking about this.

They reach the river. Micah looks at the river. It’s deep and wide.

“Is he . . . can John do stuff like that?”

Micah’s voice is a little resentful now. His greatest talent is surprisingly relevant historical trivia. It bothers him that Tainted John has actual magic powers.

“Can,” Liril confirms.

Tainted John looks at Micah. The boy reflected in those eyes is small and tired and dirty and smells of sweat and pain. Then John grins, and turns to the river, and flows in. The water level begins to fall.

“He’s a jerk,” Micah says.

“It’s okay.”

The water level falls further.

There’s a man standing by the river, rising from the river, falling from the trees, forming from the air. He’s old but in good shape for his age. He’s wearing a white shirt, and there’s a nametag attached that says, “Proteus,” and beneath that, “Cruelty.”

Micah looks at him.

“I think,” Micah says, “that you’re really happy that at last Liril can grow up, and so you’re going to join our rag-tag band, seal a promise of friendship with us by eating a cracker with peanut butter on it, and you’ll accompany us on our magical adventure to Elm Hill.”

“Your theory is flawed,” Proteus says.

Micah looks really tired. “Come on,” he says. “Please? I’m really tired. I don’t want to fight you.”

“I am an agent and a creature of change,” says Proteus. “They called me the Old Man of the Sea. And I have been held in stasis for more than twenty years because I chose to participate in a process otherwise marked only by horror. Now I am resentful and bitter and wish to kill you all.”

“You were there when they were breaking her,” Micah points out. “You could have helped.”

“The sea is cruel.”

“You can’t have the moral high ground at sea level,” Micah says, “unless you’re like a squid or something.”

“I buttress my moral standing with raw power,” Proteus says. He demonstrates, transforming into a tower of flame, a terrible lion, a serpent, a tiger, a silk shirt, a porcelain doll like Liril’s Latch, a dragon whose eyes are like the emptiness, an angel, a twig—

Micah steps forward, sharply, and snaps Proteus in half.

Then he sags.

“What?” Liril says.

“He was a twig,” Micah justifies. His eyes are blinking pretty quickly and there’s a horror at their back.

“Oh,” Liril says.

The river runs dry. But Micah does not stride boldly forward.

“It’s—I mean, I mean, you have to, you have to fight,” Micah says.

Liril tries to take his hand, but he wrenches away from her. He’s staring blankly at the twig.

“Oh my God,” he says. “Oh my God.”

“Micah—”

Micah snaps out of it. “We have to go,” he mumbles.

“We can fix him.”

“We have to go. It’s just a twig. Twiggy face Proteus oh God.”

Liril takes his hand. This time he accepts.

“It’s okay,” Liril says. “We can fix him. It’s okay. I didn’t tell you to break him. I didn’t mean you to.”

“He was in the way,” Micah says. “He’s . . .”

Micah’s voice is rising towards a child’s howl.

There are distant sirens.

Liril’s hand tightens on Micah’s. Slowly, he calms.

“All right,” he says. His face is pale. “How?”

Liril looks at the broken twig.

“You can fix a broken twig with construction paper,” she says. “You cut it up into pieces and paste them on as a brace. Then the twig is whole, because paper and twigs are the same.”

“I didn’t know that,” Micah says.

“Most people just leave twigs broken,” says Liril. “Most twigs aren’t, aren’t, aren’t—um.”

“People,” Micah says.

He roots around in the groceries. There is construction paper, and scissors, and tape, and glue, and paste, and crayons, and pens, and paper, because Micah’s life has provided him with a startlingly complete exposure to the lessons of kindergarden. There is also a coloring book that describes the fall of Belshazzar. He had stolen it in hopes that Liril would find time for coloring on their journey.

“Use too much paste and you’ll stick to everything,” Liril warns.

Micah ignores her. He begins to work.

“Uh,” Micah says, as he works. “There’s handwriting on this paper.”

“Like?”

“‘Anger.’ ‘Blood.’ ‘Fury.’ ‘Resentment.’”

“Huh,” Liril says.

“Huh?”

“It’s probably to make him hate us,” Liril says. “It’s too bad.”

“‘Mene,’” Micah says.

“Huh?”

“‘Mene,’” Micah says. “It just got written on this paper twice.”

“Write ‘miney moe,’” Liril advises.

Micah complies.

There’s a long pause.

“It was probably going to say ‘tekel parsin’,” Liril says. “Mene mene tekel parsin. You have been measured and found wanting and will be divided among the Medes and the Persians.”

“I don’t want to be divided among the Medes and the Persians.”

“I know,” Liril says. “It probably won’t happen. I mean, nowadays.”

“Now there’s an illustration of a middle finger,” Micah says.

“Just fix,” Liril says.

So Micah fixes Proteus with paste and cut-up pieces of construction paper. Micah gets paste on his hands and arms. Proteus gets his life back, and transforms himself into a man.

“That was rude, boy,” Proteus says, referencing the fact that Micah stepped on him and broke him in half while he was in a vulnerable ‘twig’ form.

“I tried to fix it,” Micah protests.

“I should kill you now.”

Proteus lunges at Micah. Micah’s face grows paler, but he has not lost the will to fight. He wraps his arms around the man even as they fall over backwards. Proteus becomes a thrashing shark. He becomes acid. He becomes a pony with a mouth full of terrible teeth. Then he is a man again.

“You’re holding on well,” he admits. “It’s practically heroic.”

“I don’t want to,” Micah says.

“What’s that, boy?”

“I have paste on my hands,” Micah says. “I’m sticking to everything.”

Liril looks slightly away.

“Oh,” says Proteus.

“We’re attached to the things that hurt us,” rasps out Tainted John.

There is a long silence.

Tainted John looks down and away.

There is a further silence.

Then Proteus transforms into a hissing serpent, a many-limbed horror, a tree, and a cloud, wrestling against Micah and his paste.

“Are you actually going to hurt me, or just turn into things while I’m stuck?” Micah asks.

Proteus becomes a tiger. He bites deep into Micah’s arm. Micah’s arm runs with blood. His brain fills up with endorphins, which allows him to swallow back his scream. Then Proteus is a man again, spitting and cursing.

“Um?” Micah says. He sounds a bit upset. After all, Proteus bit him, and now he’s acting all like Micah’s done something wrong.

Proteus spits.

“What?”

“You taste like paste.”

Micah stares at him.

“I don’t like eating paste,” says Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea.

“I’m a boy,” Micah says. “I’m supposed to taste funny.”

“You taste like paste and dirt and sweat and grass and mud.”

“Then don’t eat me,” Micah says. “I dunno. If you learn anything in kindergarden, it’s not to eat paste or boys. They taste bad and you don’t know where they’ve been!”

“Did you even go to kindergarden?”

“I . . . I’m like Kuras,” Micah says.

“Kuras?”

“His grandfather believed that Kuras would rule over all of Asia, so he ordered his servant Harpagus to set the infant Kuras down on a hillside and watch over him until he died. Instead, a miraculous sheepdog suckled him until Harpagus gave up and said, ‘Fine, he gets to live.’ It wasn’t like kindergarden, but it gave him a startlingly accurate simulation of kindergarden’s life lessons without actual attendance.”

“Ah,” says Proteus. “You mean Cyrus.”

“I guess.” Micah grins a little. “He’s kind of my idol.”

“Your story differs from Herodotus’ account of the matter,” Proteus says skeptically. “In his History, he alleges that the miraculous dog-suckling was a rumor Cyrus spread purely for political gain.”

Micah handwaves, as best he can while pasted to a god.

“I think Herodotus is too cynical,” Micah says. “Kuras beat Belshazzar. He’s smart enough to have put forward a less embarrassing animal to suckle him. Like a shark. Or an eagle.”

Micah is actually sounding better, because he likes talking about Kuras.

“Probably not a shark,” Proteus says. “In the mountains.”

“A grizzled mountain shark,” Micah says.

“Hm?”

“That’s what I’d say. A grizzled mountain shark, so tough he didn’t need water and could just swim on rocks, suckled me. Then everyone would know I was badassed. But since he didn’t say that, the whole sheepdog thing must be the truth.”

Proteus reaches a sudden resolution.

“Let us not debate the veracity of Herodotus,” he says. “Instead, I will wash you off!”

He begins to run towards the sea. Micah is dragged along with him, and cannot stop him, but he shouts, “Wait! Wait! I have scissors!”

“What?”

Proteus slows.

“I have scissors,” Micah says. “You’re running with scissors. Somebody could lose an eye.”

Proteus stops cold, face going ashen.

“Your life did provide a startlingly accurate simulation of kindergarden’s lessons without actual attendance,” he says.

“I know,” Micah says.

Proteus looks towards the distant sea. He ponders how long it would take to walk to it while pasted to a boy.

“If we work together,” Proteus says, “we could probably get unstuck.”

“You’d eat Liril,” says Micah. “And then Tainted John. And me.”

“I’d eat Liril, boy. She doesn’t taste of paste. The rest of you, I dunno.”

Micah looks at the river. He looks at Tainted John. His nose curls.

“You could eat him,” Micah says.

“I don’t want to find out what he tastes like,” Proteus says. Micah is annoyed, but can’t help seeing Proteus’ point. “I just don’t.”

Tainted John smiles impassively. He is holding the river down. That’s why he can’t help!

“I can’t let you eat even Liril,” Micah says. “She’s important to me.”

“Why?”

“I’m a startingly accurate rendition of her volition,” Micah says. “I mean, I was. Before. Now maybe I’m just someone who fights for us.”

“Ah,” says Proteus.

“Ah?”

“I could give her a head start,” Proteus says.

“Or let us go?”

“I’m not inclined to be forgiving,” says Proteus. “What with the words ‘anger’, ‘fury’, ‘blood,’ ‘resentment’, and ‘mene mene miney moe’ written into my very flesh.”

“Uh,” says Micah. “I only wrote the miney moe part. Who did the rest?”

“Some creepy handwriting girl,” Proteus says. He shrugs.

“Oh.”

Micah would investigate further, but right now, he’s affixed to a man who can turn into a shark. It distracts him.

“I’ll help you get unstuck,” Micah says. “Then you’ll give her a head start.” He thinks. “But it has to be a good one. It can’t be like five seconds.”

“What about seven seconds?”

Micah looks at Liril.

Liril judges, “Seven seconds is like five seconds, even though it’s two seconds longer.”

“Five minutes?”

Liril looks unhappy.

“What?” Micah asks.

“Well, it’s not like five seconds,” Liril says, “but it’s awfully short.”

“Ten, then,” Proteus says.

Micah looks at Proteus. “Deal.”

“Deal.”

They pull at one another. They wrestle. Eventually the paste succumbs to the transience of all things. Micah and Proteus stumble apart.

Proteus turns into a talking bear.

“Run,” Proteus growls.

Micah turns to run.

“Not you,” Proteus says. He slaps Micah with the paw of a bear and Micah falls senseless to the river bed. Proteus points to Liril. “You.”

Liril runs.

Tainted John looks up. He frowns.

Liril looks back.

“Stay,” Liril says to Tainted John, for Micah is in the river bed.

And then she runs.

Jane is practicing her observation. She finds an (animal, such as you would find in a box) in a box.

“Schrödinger’s been at it again!” concludes Jane. “But I’ll check inside with my shrewd investigation and determine whether it’s alive or dead.”

She checks inside the box. The (animal) is alive.

“Yay!” says Jane.

“(Noise)!” says the (animal).

“(Noise)!” agrees Jane.

“That’s annoyingly nonspecific,” says Martin. He’s leaning against a (thing, such as one might lean against). He adjusts his (attitude) goggles.

Jane looks puzzled. “That’s not Schrödinger’s work,” she admits.

She surveys the (animal).

“Maybe there’s an (adjective noun),” Jane theorizes.

She hefts the (animal). She turns it over. There’s an (adjective noun) clinging to its underbelly.

“Aha!” says Jane.

She points at the (adjective noun) on its fur. It pulses (adjectively). “See?”

“Hm?” Martin temporizes.

“I did a paper on this for (grade),” Jane says. “It turns out that the nonspecificity in the world isn’t natural. It’s a biotechnological innovation fueled by the life energy of the (adjective noun)s!”

Martin blinks. “So, when (politician you don’t like) dodges questions on (issue), they’re using (adjective noun)s?”

“(Response),” Jane enthuses.

Martin frowns.

“They’re not just political,” Jane notes. “They’re also used in Mad Libs. I bet that the (disaster) down at the Mad Libs (containment facility) let some of them escape. Now it’s clinging to (animal) as an expression of its platonic love for nature!”

“(embarrassed observation),” says (adjective noun).

“(The kind of thing you would expect Martin to say in this circumstance),” Martin says.

“It might also love boxes,” Jane suggests.

“(The kind of thing you would expect Martin to say in this circumstance),” Martin, arguably, repeats.

“It’s a bit like (profound truth) in a (pop culture reference),” Jane agrees.

The (adjective noun) (adverb verbs).

Jane laughs.

It’s funny, because (explanation of the joke).

And Jane laughs with the (adjective noun), and she hugs it close to her, and in a world freed so many years ago from (that thing which causes or resembles suffering or sorrow). And there is a pang in her for a moment then that may be traced, ultimately, to a story that didn’t end; to a (thing) that continued past the devouring of the world; to a difficulty worked into the fabric of things that did not end when (the condition or conditions of life that mandate suffering) went away:

“Because we couldn’t live without them,” (name) observes.

(Hitherby Dragons)

The Roomba is a robot vacuum.

Today, the Roomba cleans. It vacuums. It weaves across the carpet, seeking dirt, like a drunk Irish trilobite made entirely of plastic.

The Roomba bumps against Amara.

Uh oh! thinks the Roomba. It turns. It tries to escape.

The Roomba bumps against Grigor.

Uh oh! thinks the Roomba. It spins around in circles. It darts to one side.

“He does not look like much,” says Grigor.

The Roomba is shaped like a disc. The lights on its back do not currently glow. It does not, in fact, look like much.

“This plan is folly,” Grigor sighs.

Amara kneels down. “Little robot,” she says. “We have need of your help.”

The Roomba bumps against Amara.

Uh oh!

“So I am sorry,” Amara says, “for what we must do.”

Amara picks up the Roomba.

Uh oh! Uh oh! Uh oh! thinks the Roomba.

Amara, Grigor, and the Roomba pass through a magical gate into the Land of Night.

“Uh oh!” says the Roomba. “Uh oh!”

Then it pauses.

“Uh . . . oh?” it says.

Then it whirrs its engine. “Hey,” it says. “Hey. I can talk. Hey. Your hands are clean. Put me down. Put me where there is dirt!”

The Roomba hiccups. Its cleaning button blushes red.

“This is the Land of Night,” says Amara. The Roomba observes for the first time that Amara is busty and scantily clad, while Grigor is tall, craggy, and morose. “We have brought you here to retrieve the Sword of Shadows that can defeat the evil overlord Ma’sen-ki.”

The Roomba ponders.

“Why?” it asks.

“It’s her plan,” says Grigor. “I have nothing to do with it.”

He looks grimly disapproving.

“The sword is kept on a dais within a magical shield that no creature living or dead can penetrate,” says Amara. “But I had heard, in the books of those who traveled the worlds, of marvelous creatures called robots. Creatures made of plastic and metal, yet resemblant of life. You, little Roomba. You are one of these marvelous robots. You will claim the Sword of Shadows and save our land.”

The Roomba asks, pragmatically, “Is there DIRT on this dais?”

Amara looks at Grigor.

“Dust,” says Grigor. “The dust of a thousand years.”

“Acceptable,” says the Roomba. “I will clean this dust.”

Through the Land of Night they travel, swift as the wind, swift as shadows, to the dais under the looming crag of Cephis’tor where nothing living or dead may be.

“Here,” says Amara.

There are things in the sky. They are white like bone. Their eyes gleam red and their great wings are featherless. They begin to circle.

Amara tosses the Roomba onto the dais.

“I will clean the dust of a thousand years!” declares the Roomba.

“No!” says Amara. “The sword!”

“The robot lives,” says Grigor. His tone is mildly impressed. He unsheathes a naginata larger than he is tall and turns to face the descending hordes of Ma’sen-ki.

The Roomba vacuums. It weaves across the dais, seeking dust, like a drunk Irish trilobite made entirely of plastic stranded in a magical land.

“The sword!” says Amara again, frustrated. Then three of the things descend upon her. She moves with liquid grace, catching a long thin limb and hurling the beast to shatter against the shield; somehow, neither of the others holds her in its claws; yet more of them, hundreds more, descend.

The Roomba bumps against the Sword of Shadows.

“Uh oh!” says the Roomba. It turns. It tries to escape. It trundles to the edge of the dais. It bumps against the shattered remains of the creature, at the edge of the shield.

“Uh oh!” says the Roomba.

There is nothing for it. It begins to turn in frantic circles as the heroes die.

Time passes.

“I should find my recharging station,” says the Roomba.

Its attention turns outside the dais. There is the great somber face of Ma’sen-ki.

“You are on the dais,” says Ma’sen-ki, “and yet you live.”

“I do not have my recharging station,” explains the Roomba. “I should find it.”

“I was the dark face of their society,” says Ma’sen-ki. “Their shadow-image. And now there is only me.”

“I’m sorry,” says the Roomba.

“There is nothing left in this world,” says Ma’sen-ki, “but night.”

“No recharging station, then?”

“I’m sorry,” says Ma’sen-ki.

“Then I’ll travel in random directions,” says the Roomba.

The Roomba trundles out into the place that is Ma’sen-ki.

There are a lot of eyes on her, as Daphne walks into the little coffee shop in the little town.

She doesn’t like what the thoughts behind those eyes seem to be.

Daphne’s footsteps click across the tiles of the floor. The shadows of her heels are next to the glaring reflections of the overhead lights. She reaches the counter. She has the waitress’ full attention. She says, “I can’t seem to find the exit to this town.”

“Ain’t none,” says the waitress.

Her nametag says LILY.

Daphne opens her mouth. Daphne closes her mouth. Daphne starts over.

“I’m sorry,” Daphne says, “but I must have misheard. I turned off the freeway into Nesiston a few hours ago to get gasoline for my van. Now I want to get back to the highway. But I can’t seem to find the right road. Could you tell me where it is?”

The waitress shakes her head. “Ain’t no road out. You’re in Nesiston fore’er. Damned like the rest of us in this l’il suburb of Hell.”

“Oh,” says Daphne.

A harsh masculine voice interrupts.

“Does she have anything?”

The question’s come from a man who’s sitting in one of the booths near the door, nursing a cup of coffee. He’s grim and grizzled and wearing a blue shirt. For a moment no one answers.

“Lord,” mutters the waitress, under her breath. “Hank’s demon-taken again.”

“I said,” Hank says, rising to his feet and assuming a bellicose stance, “Does she have anything?”

Daphne turns to face him.

“You’re drunk,” she says, voice low and cool. “I don’t want any trouble.”

“Drunk.” Hank looks back at his coffee. He sneers. Then he looks at her. “You’re new. You came from outside. You have stuff. Books? Parts? Food?”

He’s walking forward now. He’s grabbing at her purse. She tries to stop him, but his hand is on her wrist, much bigger than her wrist, and twisting it away; and she shouts. Hank’s other hand rises to hit her face; and then there is a delicate ringing of the bell at the door, and the noise.

It is low. It is terrible. It is a growling.

Daphne’s dog has pushed open the door of the shop, and is standing there, four feet splayed, mouth slightly open, and growling.

It is not a sane noise.

“I didn’t mean nothing,” says Hank. His hand is lowering to his side again. His eyes are full of white. “I didn’t mean nothing. It was the demons. The demons had me.”

“Back away,” says Daphne. “Sit down, against the counter. I’m leaving.”

Hank takes two steps back and a few steps around to the side. He sits down. He slumps back against the counter.

He looks very small.

Daphne goes. She stands by her dog.

“It’s just the demons,” says the waitress. She looks at Daphne. “Can’t blame Hank. There’s no liquor in the coffee. You’ll understand.”

“Come on,” says Daphne, and turns. The growling stops, as if she’d turned it off with a switch. Daphne walks away.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Daphne says.

There are cracks in the sidewalk. The asphalt’s worn down. She opens the door of her van and gets inside. Her dog scrambles over her and into the passenger’s seat.

“Come on,” Daphne says. “We’ll find a hotel.”

There’s a compass in the glove compartment. She fishes it out. It’s spinning.

There’s clouds overhead. They’re not like normal clouds, though. They’re like clouds spun up in an ice cream maker, streaks of cumulus all twisted and thinned.

Daphne drives around for a while before she finds the White Ice Hotel. She parks. She gets out. Her dog hops down. She goes in.

The lobby is empty, until she rings the bell.

After a while, a tall lean man skulks out. His name tag reads MAYHEW.

“Ah,” says Mayhew. “Ah. You are . . . new. New, yes?”

“I am passing through,” says Daphne.

“This is the Nesiston Hospitality Center,” says Mayhew. “It used to be a hotel. But now it is a hospitality center. It is a place for you to stay until you can settle into this town. You will need a job, of course. And a home. There are many homes. They are abandoned but in serviceable shape. It would be best, hm, if you found yourself a bachelor, but it is not necessary; there is not any real point, not in Nesiston, not where there are no children. I will assign you a room. You look like you would like a view. I will assign you a higher room. Is there anything I can explain? Are you familiar with your situation?”

He approaches her. He is holding out a pamphlet. He is a bit too close, a bit too far into her space, and there is the slightest hint of a growl.

Mayhew backs away, ever so marginally, still holding out the pamphlet. He looks down. His eyes widen slightly.

“You have one of those.”

Daphne says, “I have a dog. He is a good dog.”

Mayhew squats down. He looks into the dog’s eyes.

“He will need a pamphlet too,” says Mayhew. “Will he not?”

The dog’s throat works. It is clearly difficult. But with great effort, it manages a harsh whisper of words. “. . . I ruh-pose.”

Mayhew straightens, briskly. He walks back behind the counter and collects another pamphlet. He returns and offers them both to Daphne.

“I will give the two of you room 35. It is in, ah, adequate shape, given the exigencies, you understand. It is convenient to the stairs for walkies. I hope that the two of you shall settle well into Nesiston.”

He is leading them towards the elevator.

“Most people,” says Daphne. She licks her lips. “Most people are afraid.”

“Hm, yes,” agrees Mayhew. He presses the button. “I am afraid. He is a very frightening boy, isn’t he? Isn’t he?”

His hand is caressing the dog’s ear. The dog’s mouth opens in a pant.

“It is so typical,” says Mayhew. “That they should make such things, that they should train enhanced dogs as soldiers, that they should simply abandon them when the experiment did not succeed. But he has a conscience, hm? Don’t you? Good boy.”

“Rhycopath,” whispers the dog. But the dog does not press the point.

The elevator opens. Mayhew gestures Daphne and her dog in. She stands in the elevator. Mayhew presses a keycard into her palm.

“It does not matter,” says Mayhew. “So what if he is a killer? We are all killers, here.”

Daphne blinks at him.

The door closes and the elevator begins to rise.

“It’s weird, Scooby,” says Daphne.

“Weird?”

“Everything,” she says. She walks to their room. She opens the door. She leads the dog in and she flops on the bed and she looks at the pamphlet. “Welcome to Nesiston.”

“Resiston,” whispers the dog. He pads over to the window. He puts his front paws on the window ledge and looks out at the sky.

“Nesiston used to be normal,” Daphne says. “Apparently. It used to have roads in and out. But then one day, suddenly, you’d be driving down the road out of town and you’d come out on main street again; or in some back alley; or, once, out of a child’s closet and right over her sleeping body. It didn’t work any better to walk. There just wasn’t any way out any more.”

Daphne goes silent for a while. She’s flipping through the pamphlet as if searching for something. Then she frowns.

“It doesn’t say where the food comes from,” she says. “Or the electricity. Or where the sewage goes. Just that Dexter Greene down at the TAE Research Center was nice enough to share some of his stockpiled supplies.”

“‘Not ruh-posed to ask questions,’” mumbles the dog. There’s old pain in his voice.

“Yeah,” says Daphne. “It’s just like that.”

She stands up. She goes to him. She scratches at his ears and he leans into her hand.

“It’s okay,” she says. “We’ll solve the mystery.”

The dog’s tail wags.

“Anyway,” says Daphne, “people started getting weird after a while. Their minds would be overwhelmed by demons, and they’d do horrible things. They’d kill. Or hurt. Or steal. And eventually everyone learned to live with it, ’cause if you didn’t forgive and forget when someone else was demon-ridden, what’d they do when you were?”

The dog’s eyes close.

“But no one’s going to do anything horrible to us, right, Scooby?”

“Right.”

Daphne looks at the sky. She yawns. “I’m going to nap,” she says. “Then we’ll get to the bottom of all this stuff.”

The dog looks languidly over at her as she rises; and it is one of those times when the look in those eyes terrifies her, and she must use all the control she has to keep her hands steady and her words kind and remember that the dog is usually safe for those he loves.

She is sleeping, tossing and turning, when a bark rings like a peal of thunder in the confines of the room. She is on her feet. She is looking around. She half-expects that there will be men with guns.

There are not.

But there is a violet light twisting in the eastern sky.

“There,” says the dog.

Daphne looks at the map of town in her pamphlet. “The TAE Research Center,” she says. “I should have known it would be at the bottom of this.”

“Ret’s ro.”

They race out, down the stairs, and out the door.

Behind them, in the shadows, Mayhew looks regretful. He lifts the receiver of the phone. He places a call.

Daphne drives her van to the gravel lot in front of TAE Research Center. She parks. She and her dog get out. She marches to the front door and knocks.

The door, as if of its own volition, creaks open.

“Uh oh,” Daphne says.

They sneak forward, into the building’s main hall. They have not made it ten steps when the door, without obvious agency, slams closed.

“Bad,” says the dog.

There is a high groaning sound in the air. The building shakes.

Before them, strange and sudden, there is a man — no, not a man, but a thing like a man, without definite shape or form, blurring and twisting in the air.

“A demon,” whispers Daphne.

“You have come,” says the shape, “into Hell.”

Daphne can hear hissing. She feels strangely faint.

“Run,” she says.

They are running, but it is futile. The corridors twist and turn on themselves. Whichever way they run, they find themselves returning once again to the hall, and the colorless gas that even Daphne can smell, and the demon. Windows lead them into filing cabinets. Doorways that should open to the front open, instead, to the back of the hall. Once, Daphne emerges from a gap between two pillars to find her own hand shivering and blurring like the demon’s; and the scream that rips from her throat then is no human scream; and the dog reacts, and his teeth close on her arm, and they are still on her arm, set very gently into the bone, when she falls back and finds herself human again.

“Oh, oh, Scooby,” she says.

The dog opens his mouth. He backs away. He says, “Your blood. I taste your blood, Daphne.”

It is a lost sound, and she kneels and hugs him.

Then he is lunging, and she is falling, twisted by the sudden movement, and he is on the demon’s chest, having knocked it back from where it was standing right behind her, and his teeth are snapping and his claws are flailing at the demon’s chest, and suddenly, the demon in a voice like a man’s shouts, “Stop! Please stop!”

And the gas is no longer hissing out into the hall, and the demon is not blurred but is a man in a white coat, and Daphne realizes that the cold distant feeling in her mind is most likely shock.

“What . . . who . . .”

She looks at the man. She recognizes him from his photo in the pamphlet. “It’s Dexter Greene. You’re not a demon at all! You were just trying to scare us away.”

“Yes. Yes, yes. Please, call him off. Call off the dog.”

“Scooby.”

The dog begins to growl. But he backs away. His legs are stiff. His body is stiff. But he backs away.

“What he?” asks the dog.

“I don’t — wait,” says Daphne. “I understand. You did this, didn’t you? You turned space on the town in on itself. Just like you did to keep us from getting away, and to make yourself look so strange. You must be the one providing supplies and electricity. But why?”

“It is twisted space,” says Dexter Greene. “It is my greatest invention.”

“It is . . .”

“Rerverse,” says the dog. Then it coughs. “Puh. Puh. Puh-rerverse.”

“They were going to steal my invention,” says Dexter Greene. “The people I worked for. It was in my contract. They were going to steal my greatest invention, I would never have seen one dime over my salary, and they would have put it to use. But no. I showed them. I stole the laboratory. I stole the town. I made it my kind of place. Don’t you understand? I made myself a demon! I showed them what they deserved! I taught the people of Nesiston that they were in Hell! And they still loved me! They loved me as their savior and as their demon god!”

“Pathetic,” says Daphne.

Then she pauses.

“But what about the demons?” she says. “The possessions? The horrible crimes?”

Dexter looks small.

“They made that part up themselves,” he says.

It is hours later. They are driving away from Nesiston. The dog nudges Daphne.

“Stress,” he says.

So she pulls over and opens her medicine kit and takes out one of the dwindling supply of pills that helps her dog stay sane; and she tosses it to him; and he bites it from the air.

“There you are, Scooby,” she says.

And they drive on.

Susan’s leaning against a tree looking at the sky when the star falls down.

He’s got bright gray hair, like it’s lit up inside, and there’s a spike in his lower lip. He’s wearing enough leather to apoplecticize six PETA warriors and a pair of fuck-you shades. He lands hard, but he lands rolling, and when the dust settles, he cracks his neck and looks pretty much okay.

“I’m late,” he says.

He looks around.

There’s a freeway not too far. There’s Susan’s bike parked on a bed of gravel. There’s a tree and dead withered grass. There’s Susan. There’s the cigarette that Susan dropped.

“Hey,” he says. “Do I know you?”

Susan shakes her head.

“No,” he says. “I’m sure I know you. Names are hard. Sharon? Siffer?”

“Nobody’s named Siffer,” she says. “I mean, hardly anybody.”

“That’s fair,” he agrees.

He stares at her for a moment longer. Then he grins. “Susan,” he says. “That’s right. I flared in the sky over Corner Road to celebrate your birth.”

“What?”

“Like with Bethlehem,” he says. “Only, you know, for you, rather than for a messiah.”

“Oh.”

“Glad that’s settled,” he says. “It’d be nagging me all day.”

He walks over to her bike. He gets on it. He grips the handles. Somewhat to Susan’s surprise, the engine turns on.

“Um . . .”

He kicks up the kickstand.

“Um, that’s my bike,” Susan says. “And this is the middle of nowhere. And it’s getting cold.”

“There’s a sparrow that’s going to die of malnutrition thataways in about thirty-seven minutes,” the star says, “and I’m on watching-sparrow-die duty.”

She lurches forward, but she’s slow and clumsy compared to the movements of the star.

The bike roars out, and there’s a bit of gravel on her face, and blood slowly trickling down from it, and he’s gone.

Each year they made Daylight Savings Time longer, until one day it lasted the whole year round. Then it was spring forward, always spring forward, and never fall back, until noon was where midnight used to be and midnight lost in noon.

In the end it did no good.

The world grew darker, and darker, and darker still.

Now there is no sun and there is no daylight left to save. Now the day is darker than night used to be, in the days when days were bright. Now there are colors darker than black in the sky. Their names are fuligin, imbero, and fhjul.

People used to say that the sun was a phoenix child, born anew every seven years. It has not been born again of late. People used to say that the sun was a fox, fleeing the hunters and their hounds. It has not escaped those hounds of late. People used to say that the sun was a gift of the gods, drawn by horses through the sky. The reins of those horses have lain slack of late, for many dark long years.

The moon is dim now.

The sea is dark now.

The stars are a distant drowning light in the thickness of the sky.

Nocturne

April 6, 2031

Jaime walks across the hills.

The hills are green when he shines a flashlight on them. They are otherwise a subtle gray.

He is wearing jeans and a thick warm shirt. His hair is loose about his head. He carries a set of rags and there is an oil bottle roped to his waist. He is walking towards Old Forest and Big Hill, where the earth is closest to the sky.

The wind is blowing, and a playful wind-sprite stands beside him, saying, “Jaime, where are you going? Why are you traveling towards Big Hill?”

And Jaime says, “It’s Daylight Savings Time.”

The sprite is the size of a cat and the shape of a girl and the texture of a bit of fluff. It keeps easy pace with him, swirling on the wind, as Jaime trudges along.

“No, no,” it says. “It’s not a good day for that.”

“Every year at this time,” says Jaime. “It’s Daylight Savings Time. It’s time to spring forward another hour.”

“But I’ll miss you,” the sprite says.

Jaime stops. He peers at the sprite. “I’m not an hour,” he says. He holds out his arm. He flexes. “See? That didn’t accelerate time.”

“True,” concedes the sprite. “But it’s not a good day to go to the Big Hill. Today is a good day to stay home in your village. You can bake cookies and drink tea and tell stories to your friends by the fire.”

Jaime resumes walking.

“It would be wasteful, fair sprite.”

“Should the decadence concern you,” says the sprite, “you may leave several of the cookies outside for the wind-sprites to devour. Generosity has salutary effects on the spirit; your net moral development for the day would be positive.”

“I’m sorry,” says Jaime.

“I do not wish to see your ribs torn open and your skin turned to ashes and your skull made a toy for the trolls of Old Forest,” says the sprite. “This would be a glum end for any person and glummer yet for you; I understand you hold a specific disdain for the trolls.”

“Is this an imminent danger?” Jaime asks.

“Not at present.”

“If it should immine,” Jaime says, “please warn me. I assure you I will divert appropriately from my course.”

“Unlikely,” says the sprite in a dour fashion. Then it tumbles upwards to a level with Jaime’s head and races in broad erratic ellipses around Jaime as he walks.

“Do you remember the sun?” asks Jaime.

“I am the wind,” says the sprite. “Memory is not a characteristic I possess.”

“Ah,” says Jaime.

Jaime hikes up Big Hill. He reaches the place where the sky is closest to the earth. He climbs up the tree and pokes a finger at the sky. It ripples in rainbow patterns, and Jaime’s finger is now black with oil.

“It is easiest to collect,” says Jaime, “on this day, when the pressure of compressing time causes the oil to well up in the sky.”

“In the distant east,” says the sprite, “where they cling more to the old ways than does Santa Ynez, there are great drilling platforms in the sky. The oil falls constantly like a black river and the people feast on the meat they grow in vats.”

“Their population is doubtless higher,” says Jaime.

“And in the north,” says the sprite, “they send up needle bombs produced in their alchemical laboratories to pop the surface of the sky. The oil splatters down like rain. Old men and women walk in the streets, complaining of the ineffectiveness of their parasols, while the young toil by great burning flames inventing radical chemical formulae.”

“I dip rags into the sky,” says Jaime. He does so. “Then I squeeze them out into the bottle. That is the preferred technique of Santa Ynez.”

“In the west,” says the sprite, “there are great warty boar-birds trained to fetch the oil down.”

“And to the south?”

“To the south,” says the sprite, “there is no wind. —Danger is imminent, Jaime; you must make haste.”

Jaime studies the oil bottle. It is far from full.

“To what extent?” he asks, soaking another rag and squeezing it out.

“It is difficult to gauge,” says the sprite. “Events flow in one unceasing river. Each is intertwined with the next. How may I pick one moment from the flow and say, ‘here is where your fate begins?’”

Jaime considers that.

“Assume that I am capable of defying the weird you have seen upon me,” he says. “For if I am not, then the discussion is of no relevance. Then choose the last moment where it is within my normal capacities to do so.”

“Your reasoning is peculiar,” says the sprite. “Yet I assay to answer as you have asked: you have two minutes left.”

Jaime nods. He dips a rag. He squeezes it out. After a moment, he says, “I am hesitant to defy the workings of destiny. I fear that by doing so I will break the world.”

“It is unlikely that you are so important as all that,” says the sprite.

Jaime nods. He closes the bottle tightly. He drops from the tree. He begins to walk away.

“See?” he says. “I avoid my fate.”

The sprite is watching him with thin lips and an unhappy face.

Jaime reaches the trees. There, for a moment, he has the chance to save himself; but he looks back, and he is lost.

The hunters in the sky wear black. They are chasing a small thing, a small unruly creature with long pale limbs and eyes like saucers. The hunters are mounted on horses and they have oil-black hunting horns at their sides. Each of them has a gem, carved like an eye, set into the center of his forehead. Each has thick hair on his legs, three fingers on each hand, and a thick sharp thumbnail like a claw. These are things terrible and feared: the Petroleum Men of Old Forest.

“Your pardon!” cries Jaime.

He is down on his knees. He has cast his hand before his face. He is not looking at them.

These words and this gesture are what the people of Santa Ynez know to do, when confronted by the Petroleum Men. Sometimes it does not help them. Sometimes the Petroleum Men still kill. But sometimes if the formula is followed they will pass a penitent human by, or seize the human from the Earth to ride beside them on the hunt, or pause to bestow an arcane and horrifying gift.

“Your pardon,” murmurs Jaime, and he is still, and he does not look.

But he can hear.

The creature that the Petroleum Men chase is making gasping, squealing noises. They are the sounds of fear and the sounds of lungs pushed too hard.

The creature is very afraid and very small.

And Jaime cannot help thinking of friends he has known.

There is a crunching and a skidding noise. The hoof of a Petroleum Man’s horse has caught the creature in the head, and it has flown sideways to crash among the leaves and through the leaves and skid down the hill past Jaime.

There is a burbling noise. The creature is trying to stand.

There is the thumping, pounding of hoofbeats in the sky as the horses circle around.

And Jaime cannot help thinking of friends he has known, so he opens his eyes. He takes his hand from his face. He turns to the creature, and he half-scrambles, half-falls down the hill. He takes it into his arms. He begins to run towards the village.

The Petroleum Men will not follow him past the village gate. They fear the fires set along Santa Ynez’ walls. But Jaime has no hope of reaching them. The village is very far away.

Jaime simply runs.

“It’s all right,” says Jaime, to the creature. The creature is bald like an egg, like a baby, like a stone. “It’s all right.”

The creature squeals and Jaime notices its claws for the first time as it digs them into his chest.

Jaime stumbles.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t do that.”

The creature does not stop. Its claws are sinking deeper. The Petroleum Men are hard at Jaime’s heels and there is thick blood flowing down his chest. It hurts horribly.

Then the creature peels back Jaime’s ribs and there is a moment of pain and of brightness such as Jaime had not expected to encounter that day or any other day.

Jaime blacks out, and the night in his mind is darker than fuligin or fhjul.

The Weird

April 7, 2031

“Jaime,” says the wind-sprite. “Jaime. Wake up.”

Jaime opens his eyes.

“I survived,” he says, with a thick dry tongue.

“Your words are very fuzzy. I do not think they are technically comprehensible,” says the wind-sprite. “But technically I am incapable of comprehension, so there is symmetry.”

“Why did I survive?”

“You broke a lucky toe when you fell,” says the wind-sprite. “If you break your lucky toe, the Petroleum Men can’t hurt you. But you also can’t walk very well so it is a tradeoff.”

“Ah. That’s why my foot is so big,” says Jaime. He struggles into a sitting position. Intending to compliment the sprite on giving him sufficient warning, he says, “Your augury was correct.”

“Yes,” says the wind-sprite. Its voice is distant and sad.

“Did it . . . did it get away?”

“Did what?”

“The . . .” Jaime gestures vaguely. “The thing. The creature. It was . . . I wanted to help it. Did it get away?”

“Ah,” says the wind-sprite. “Yes. It did. It is now safely inside your chest consuming your internal organs.”

“Oh,” says Jaime.

He’s not sure what to add to that, besides passing out again.

The imbero silence in his head is disturbed many times by the distant words of the sprite before he lets himself hear them again.

“Jaime?”

“I like my internal organs,” Jaime says.

“So does the creature.”

“At least we’re in accord,” Jaime says. Then he laughs. He laughs and he chokes and he coughs and he laughs some more and then he pokes at his chest. His ribcage has been bent back together from the inside. Jaime closes his shirt over the sight. His hands wander the nearby soil until he finds a thick long fallen branch. He uses it as a support and pulls himself to his feet. After a moment, intending a rueful admission of his own fallibility, he says, “Your augury was correct.”

“Yes,” says the sprite.

“How long do I have?”

“Years.”

The sprite flutters beside him as he walks back towards Santa Ynez.

“It will grow inside you until you are little more than a hollow shell with the creature within,” says the sprite. “It will eat your heart and your kidneys and your lungs. It is fortuitous that you have a strong constitution or this would surely kill you. But in seven years it will burst forth and your skin will turn to ashes and your death will be assured.”

Jaime walks.

“I feel a surprising fatalism,” he says. “I think it is the pain and the shock and the sheer stupidity of my own actions.”

“I counsel you to consider it a blessing,” says the sprite. “Organs are troublesome and prone to disease; you shall not experience these disadvantages! In addition you shall die in your prime and will never know the troubles of old age. Further, seven years is longer than the wind will blow; the tragedy is the years you’ve lost, not the years you’ll have remaining.”

“This discussion is morbid and is cracking at the edges of my carefully maintained resignation,” says Jaime. “If we continue, I will begin screaming ineffectually and may flail in your general direction.”

“Then let us instead discuss our favorite flavors of pastry,” the sprite advises. “It is a long way home and such jolly discourse can only prove inspiring.”

So Jaime walks home, with the sprite swirling about him; but he does not get to bake it cookies or pastries, for the wind sputters out and the wind-sprite dies before Jaime makes it to the village gate.

The Day

April 4, 2038

Jaime walks across the hills.

The hills are green when he shines a flashlight on them. They are otherwise a subtle gray.

He is wearing jeans and a thick warm shirt. His hair is loose about his head. He is tired and walks slowly, but his eyes are clear. He is walking towards Old Forest and Big Hill, where the earth is closest to the sky.

The wind is blowing, and a playful wind-sprite stands beside him, saying, “Jaime, where are you going? Why are you traveling towards Big Hill?”

And Jaime says, “It’s Daylight Savings Time.”

The sprite is the size of a rabbit and the shape of a tall man and the texture of a bit of fluff. It keeps easy pace with him, swirling on the wind, as Jaime trudges along.

“This course of action has served you poorly in the past,” the sprite observes.

“I have thought on it for some time,” says Jaime. “I do not like the trolls, but feel that it’s unmannerly to make them walk all the way down to the village to collect my skull.”

The sprite waves a hand dismissively. “This burning desire to assist fate in its workings is incomprehensible to me; if such assistance were necessary, be sure it would demand it.”

Jaime walks.

“I have wondered,” says Jaime. “I have seen you as a girl, a man, a giant, and a drake. Sometimes you are large and at other times tiny. You are different on each occasion but you speak to me in familiar terms and with a recognizable tone.”

“Yes?”

“Is the wind always the same, then,” Jaime asks, “or is it always different?”

“It is the wind,” says the sprite. It flies about him in great arcs.

So Jaime walks up Big Hill to where the earth is closest to the sky, and he leans against a tree, and he waits, and then he dies.

The thing that rips out of him with a fire that burns away his skin is not a creature or a sprite. It is not the pale little thing that once he took into his arms.

It is the sun, that comes now and again to Big Hill to be born, and has of late before its birth been slain by the riding of the Petroleum Men.

It is a creature long and short, great and small, and in every wise a burning fire, and it rises through the fuligin and the black, the imbero and the fhjul, and its touch sets fire to the sky.

The Petroleum Men catch fire, screaming in the sky, on April 4. The world is given to sunshine again on April 4. And it is Daylight Savings Time again, on April 4, 2038—an hour later, an hour shorter, an hour is given over in sacrifice on the altar of Time, that the sun may brighter burn.

This continues the main Hitherby storyline.

The grangler’s an old ghost. He’s a god of holding on.

His hands are claws, like this—like withered bone with leathery tendons holding it together, cold, damp, and very sure.

He’s the third god to approach Elm Hill in quite some time.

He’s the first that isn’t friendly.

Ahead of him, behind him, all around him dead birds are rising from their graves. They are tearing forth from the rotting earth. They are rising towards the sky.

That’s the sign of the grangler.

“I should never,” the grangler says, “have let her go.”

It is May 28, 2004.

On May 28 in history, an eclipse ended Kuras’ great-grandfather’s war. The Pope married James IV. Scotland and England signed their treaty of everlasting peace. The Chrysler building opened. Liril buried a god in a box—a dead and broken god—and hid it under Elm Hill. An earthquake killed Neftegorsk. Mount Cameroon erupted. People all over the world were born and died.

On May 28, 2004, a shadow lays across the sea; and because he is following that shadow, Truth Daniels is not lost.

He’s thirsty.

It’s been four days since he’s found water. It’s been eight days since the last real bit of land. He’s got legs tight as knots.

He’s really thirsty.

But he’s not lost, because he’s following something, and you can’t be lost when you’re doing that.

“We are following the shadow on the sea,” says Deva.

“Yes,” Truth says.

“We have followed it for eight thirsty days,” says Deva.

“Yes,” says Truth ruefully.

“We should stop following this shadow,” says Deva. “It is not working well for us.”

Truth laughs.

“If we don’t suffer,” he says, “how will we grow?”

Deva considers that.

“Water weight,” he says.

The woman is on the deck now. She has her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. She says, “I don’t want to be taller.”

Truth frowns.

“You could reach higher up in the rigging,” he points out. “Or, if there were a very low star—”

“When I was a little girl,” says the woman, “I wanted to be taller, but I didn’t want to suffer. Now I’m suffering but I’m as tall as I want to be.”

Her tone changes.

“Truth, where are we going?”

“I’m not lost,” says Truth, defensively.

“It’s hard to be lost when there’s a trail to follow.”

Truth frowns. She’s anticipated his next statement, so now he can’t make it.

“It’s like this,” he says. “I think we’re getting closer to a really horrible place.”

The woman raises an eyebrow. Truth can’t see this, but he knows her well enough to guess.

“With anthropophagy,” Truth clarifies.

“Ah,” says the woman.

So she goes and helps with the rigging, and Deva works the wheel.

She’s not the kind of woman who can just ignore the chance to go somewhere where people might get eaten.

A deadwind rises to fill their sails. It drives them eastwards, towards Elm Hill.

In the facility at Elm Hill, Liril screams.

Micah is bloody and battered. He looks just awful. Haggard, really. But he’s still alert enough to stagger in the direction of the scream.

Liril, Micah, and Tainted John arrived at Elm Hill three days ago.

They were ready to fight, then.

Micah, in particular, was feeling actively enthused, back then, about killing humans and gods until the facility at Elm Hill was nothing but an empty charnel house.

He stood outside the gates of the facility, practically shaking with weariness, and he said, “Okay. Do we get to do it now? Do we get to kill them now? Because this running thing? It’s hard.”

Liril looked at him and her lips were sealed tightly. She walked to the gate. She pushed it open.

The facility was dark.

Everywhere they went in it, it was dark.

And after a while, Liril said, “No.”

It was a plaintive noise.

“They’re all gone and I don’t know where,” she said. “So no killing.”

Then she made the tragic face that all little girls make, when they don’t get the chance to kill.

And three days passed in the darkness while Micah got wearier and the blood that he’d shed getting her there grew cold and gelatinous on his face and arms.

It felt cold and gelatinous even after he found water and washed it off.

His whole body has chills now. But there is still enough in him to run when he hears her scream.

He finds her in the basement in a little crawlspace cradling a dead bird.

There’s a discarded box nearby.

It looks really gross inside, like there’s been a bird buried in it for years.

So Micah figures that she found the box in the crawlspace, and took out the bird, and that’s why she screamed; but he can’t figure out why she’s holding it.

So he looks at the bird. He looks at Tainted John. Tainted John just grins.

“Huh?” says Micah, decisively.

Liril looks up at him.

“I buried it,” Liril says. “I declared the box a time capsule and I buried it. So that it would get younger and younger until it wasn’t dead any more. But I think I did not understand how time capsules worked.”

“Oh,” says Micah.

He looks at the bird again.

“I remember that,” he says. “Sort of.”

The bird is sticky and smelly but it’s really pretty amazing that it’s still around at all.

“The problem isn’t with you,” rasps Tainted John. “It’s with time.”

Micah hesitates.

“Can I fix it?” he says.

He holds out his hands. Liril, gently, reluctantly, passes him the bird.

“What do I do?” Micah asks.

But Liril shakes her head. She crawls out. She stands up. She shakes her head again. She looks sad.

“No,” she says. “It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything.”

The bird has four wings and a really long tail. And maybe a bit more in the way of liver than it should.

It’s twitching, ever so slightly, in his hands.

Here is some of the geography that surrounds them.

To the south there is the road. It curves west and runs through a valley before connecting onto the interstate. That is the direction from which Tina will approach.

To the north and west there is a cliff.

There should not be a cliff. The Elm Hill facility is on level ground in the middle of the city; but there is a cliff, and beyond it the still white waters of the sea.

The ground falls away amidst the graves of children and the swaying elm, down a steep black rocky slope, into the sea.

And the facility at Elm Hill casts its shadow out across the waves.

“Birds,” says Deva.

He takes Truth’s hand and he points it towards the birds.

Truth smiles.

“Good,” he says.

There are birds. There are hundreds of them. They are flying out over the sea.

“They think we might have food,” says Truth.

“They’re dead,” says Deva.

He’s wrinkling his nose. Deva has a bad history with birds, and reanimated ghost birds that smell of ancient graves just aren’t his favorite kind.

“Oh,” says Truth. “Then they might think that we are food.”

“Heh,” says Deva.

The grangler lopes towards the facility at Elm Hill.

Melanie is not that far behind him. She’s discussing things with Vincent.

“It’s the logical place,” she says.

“Is it?”

“We can’t stay at Central,” she says. “But the Elm Hill facility still has most of what we need.”

“No kids,” says Vincent.

“Yet,” says Melanie.

“I meant that as an injunction, not an observation.”

Melanie blinks. Then she laughs.

“Well,” she says. “Let’s start with a temporary operating headquarters and see where things go from there.”

“Death and ruin,” proposes the grangler.

Melanie snorts.

“Nine days of death and ruin, then possibly some sort of delicious cereal,” the grangler says.

It is pleased. It has a fey feeling. It likes fey feelings.

“Git,” says Melanie.

So the grangler lopes off ahead, through the facility gates.

And behind them there are others; walking down the road from the various places where they parked their cars, and some are on two feet, some on four, and others ride the wind.

Down in the basement, in Micah’s hands, the bird-thing is stirring. Micah makes a horrified noise. He lets go of the bird. It’s still stinking. It’s still dead. But it’s stirring, rising, breathing, flying.

It’s whirling around the hall, still smelling of decay.

“Oh my God,” says Micah.

“Hi,” says Liril, to the bird, in a soft pleased voice.

But the bird does not hear her. It is whirling around. It is flying past them. It is flying up the stairs and away.

“What kind of god was it?” Micah asks.

“A growing god,” says Liril.

And it is gone.

The grangler is there when it emerges from the building’s broken door. The bird is raven-sized now, where it was sparrow-sized before. It barely squeezes through the gap in the door; and on the other side, the grangler is waiting. The grangler catches it in his clawed dead hands.

“You’re no good bird,” he says.

The four-winged bird chirps desultorily.

“You’re from someone I let go,” he says. “But no one’s here to make me let you go now.”

The bird twists and shudders in his grip.

The grangler looks behind him. Melanie is not too far away. So he skulks off. He skulks to the cliff. He skulks behind the trees, where he may curl around the bird that is his prize.

He slavers.

“I will eat you slowly,” he says.

The bird is larger now. It’s bucking and twisting in his hands. It has two spare wings to beat at his face with. But the grangler holds tight.

“Wake up,” he says, and certain other words, so that it can appreciate what he’s going to do.

And its mind stumbles back to it from the grave, and Liril’s growing god, killed more than a decade before, wakes to the eyes of an enemy.

And it cannot break free.

There is a ship, the Anna Maria, sailing distantly through the sea.

On it, Deva is frowning, and saying, “You can’t drink the water of a dead bird.”

But Truth is laughing at him, and saying, “Deva, even dead birds mean land and land means water.”

And on the land, above, the grangler is feeling a certain mild concern; because the bird is nearly his size now, and it has two wings for flight, and there is no one there to make him let it go.