Saul finds Vladimir crying on a bench.

The hunger for human flesh is there. It is tugging on Saul’s sleeve. It is asking for his attention. Saul considers it. But since Vladimir controls swarms of Lethal robot bees he is not the most edible man on campus.

Saul sits down.

“Hey,” he says. “What is it?”

Vladimir looks up. “You will kill me,” he says.

“No,” says Saul. He shakes his head. “I’m not going to kill you. I’m here to give you a shoulder to cry on.”

Vladimir laughs.

“No. Not now,” he says. “You will not kill me now. That is essentially impossible in the scenario as I understand it. But later. You will kill me later.”

“Oh,” says Saul. “That. Well—well, yeah.”

Saul grins a little.

“But we’ve got time,” Saul says. “There’s no hurry, now. No one’s joining the House of Hunger any more. I don’t know if the Hungry breed true, but if we don’t, and even if we do, really, we’re just a tiny handful of predators wandering an infinite world of prey.”

“It is my fault,” says Vladimir. “I have seen it. It is my ambition. It was too overweening. I weened, and then I weened more than I should have. In such a fashion did I doom us all.”

Saul pulls Vladimir over. And Vladimir rests his head on Saul’s shoulder and there he cries.

And Saul strokes Vladimir’s hair, and says, “Sh.”

“You will die too.”

“That’s all right,” says Saul.

“Hm?”

Saul gestures out at the horizon. “See,” says Saul, “I know the purpose of the world. It’s hunger. It’s the hunger that surges and falls inside me like a sea. I think we can make it grow in us. I think it can transform the world.”

Here Saul hesitates. He looks briefly confused. Then he shakes his head.

“The others are too confused to do it,” he says. “They’re pawns of the hunger. But I can teach them. I can lead them. I can make it grow. And if I succeed in this then it doesn’t matter if I die.”

“You do not know the purpose of the world,” says Vladimir.

“Pardon?” says Saul.

Vladimir withdraws. He gives Saul a corpse-grin.

“Here is what I know,” says Vladimir. “We see the purposes for others that are in our minds to see. But these are not their purposes. We are a lens that looks at one another and ourselves. But we are a flawed lens. I made a hat. It was my most brilliant creation, Saul. It was true genius. It found the potential in each person and sorted them into the House that would bring that potential out. But its world view was limited by the flaw in my personal lens, and the name of that flaw is Gotterdammerung.”

“Hats don’t lie about moral issues,” says Saul, uneasily.

Vladimir shrugs.

“I cannot say,” he says. “I am sorted. I am head boy of the House of Dreams. I am surrounded by the lightning and I cannot see the truth. I have trapped myself in the construct of my purposes. But I pray that it is wrong. I pray that someone will save us. Because I finally understand that that purpose is an evil purpose. It will crush me. It will crush you. It will take away our humanity.”

Something in this touches Saul. Perhaps it is the pitiability of meat regretting lost humanity. Perhaps it is the way that Vladimir in his edibleness nevertheless reminds Saul of his peers.

So Saul says, very gently, “We must take joy in the purposes given to us, Vladimir. They are all we have.”

The hunger is a rising storm; but Vladimir is a “sometimes” food.

Saul brushes his tears away.

Fun Fact! Some dieticians think that it’s okay to eat Vladimir all the time, but Vladimir doesn’t think it’s okay to eat him even once!

House of Saints is over. There will be one more related legend at some point in August or September. Beyond that, I make no promises, either to those who like it or those who don’t.

It is at first Sellurt’s assumption that Noah is exaggerating regarding the number of animals stored on the Ark.

He can hear them, of course. There are always sounds. There is trumpeting and barking and buzzing and keening and at night there is a thin distant wailing that merges with the creaking and shifting and croaking of the wood.

And he sees no small number of them—the zebras, the antelope, the ostriches, the platypuses, and the lions, of course, the lions, more than two of them, more than seven of them, more than he can count, their great padded feet always stalking through the decks.

There is impressive biodiversity on the Ark.

But Sellurt has studied the Earth. He knows how many species there are.

They cannot all be on the Ark.

They are too many.

They are endless.

Mehanem—or Noah, as everyone calls him—is always busy. He does not have time to meet with Sellurt and Morgan. Thus it is that the two visitors from the Galactic Confederacy are abandoned there to the depths below deck, to watch through the portholes the endless dreary rain and listen to the skittering and scratching in the walls. Sometimes Sellurt’s eyes will close and he will wake up to the feather-soft touch of a spider or mosquito crawling across his leg; and each time, he observes with interested horror, it is a different species than he has ever seen before.

“It doesn’t matter,” says Morgan, after a while.

Morgan is sitting at the window, dropping coins from the porthole, watching for and failing to see that moment when they strike the water and vanish into the immensity of the deep.

“It doesn’t matter?” Sellurt asks.

“I mean,” Morgan says, “humans can’t breathe water, right?”

In Sellurt’s mind there is a momentary fantasy of drowning one of Mehanem’s sons, the human’s arms and legs flailing, his face slowly turning blue, his animal noises grinding to a halt.

Then Sellurt shakes his head.

“No,” he agrees. “They can’t.”

“Then their civilization is dead. It doesn’t matter that we’re not able to invite them to join the Galactic Confederacy. They’re dead. It’s over.”

It has been seven days now and the rain has not ceased to fall.

“Surely it’s just this subcontinent,” says Sellurt.

Morgan looks out.

“A whole world can’t die to rain,” Sellurt says.

“It’s surprising,” says Morgan. “How many animals there are. Whether or not he really got them all. Where do you think they go, when we can’t see them?”

On the ninth day, when Sellurt goes to the hatch that leads to the upper levels, he finds two lions there. They are between him and the hatch. They have gingivitis, thanks to their poor dental hygiene, and their maws are dripping blood.

“You’ll have to let me by,” says Sellurt.

But the male lion yawns, with its great yellow teeth, and its breath is rank.

“God,” mutters Sellurt.

He backs away.

There is the sound of hooves on the deck beside him, the heat of fur in the air, the whining of a fly, but when he turns to track the beast’s location with his eyes he cannot see anything but the wooden halls.

Sellurt finds a place where he can hear human footsteps, endless human footsteps, pacing on the decks above. He hammers on the ceiling. He shouts. He is dignified at first but then he screams until he’s hoarse, until he cannot breathe, until he falls and curls upon himself below.

The air is thick and fuzzy and he is sure he is surrounded by the beasts, but when he opens his eyes they are not there.

“Are you okay?” Morgan says, when he finds him.

“I’m fine,” Sellurt says.

“Okay.”

“I’m fine,” Sellurt repeats, and then he says: “This is intolerable.”

A koala shares their evening meal that day. It is the first time that either of the aliens have ever seen one, and the last they ever will.

When Sellurt checks the hatch again, the lions are still there.

Every time he checks the hatch, the lions are still there.

The humans are beyond Sellurt and Morgan’s reach.

“It must be Noah,” Sellurt tells Morgan. “The humans are more advanced than we believed.”

“Hm?”

“The rain. This isn’t natural rain. It’s something they’re doing. They have a machine. Noah is doing it. He has a machine.”

“Why would they kill everyone off?”

“Why aren’t there more of them on the boat?” Sellurt says. “Why were they all left to drown? There’s plenty of room. They could fit twenty, thirty more families in here. But the lions kept them away. The lions stood outside the Ark and kept them away. He wanted them to die.”

“Don’t obsess,” Morgan says.

“What?”

“We’re an advanced galactic species,” says Morgan. “I’m sure we can figure out some way to deal with lions, if we have to. We could use our stunners. Or some kind of telepathic mind control. The options,” and he gestures extravagantly, “are endless.”

Sellurt sits down heavily.

“Yes,” he says, bitterly. “I’m sure we could.”

There is a great long-legged bug probing at his hand. He’s not sure where it came from. It wasn’t there when he sat down.

He will not shudder, Sellurt decides. He is a citizen of the Galactic Confederacy. He is above such distress.

His meeting with Noah will wait.

On the eighteenth day, Morgan observes, “There are too many animals.”

There is a distant sound of slithering. It is very dark and the damp seeps in through the wood.

“Too many?”

“They are endless,” says Morgan. “Never mind what Noah claims. There are too many different animals, just the ones we’ve seen. They can’t all fit in here, not with this much free space.”

The rats stare at him from the rafters, their red eyes glowing. There is the dry scraping noise of scales on wood. There is a peculiar, choking cough.

“They have to fit,” Sellurt says. “They’re here, aren’t they?”

“There’s no room.”

Sellurt leans back. His eyes are blank and white. He is thinking. He is counting, in his head.

“There’s no room,” he agrees.

The air is hot. It is the steam of a zoo, of a kennel, of a hundred thousand bodies pumping warmth and stench into the air.

Sellurt swats at his arm.

“Why,” he asks plaintively, “did Noah save the wasps?”

There is silence for a time.

“We’ll go,” says Morgan. “We’ll go. We’ll deal with the lions. We’ll face them down.”

“Yes,” says Sellurt.

Something clammy brushes against Morgan’s face. He waves his hand at it but it is gone.

“Stupid frogs,” Morgan adds.

They rise.

They walk in the direction of the hatch.

Morgan stops.

“Don’t stop,” Sellurt says. “We have to get out of here. We have to get to the hatch. I think we will go mad, Morgan, if we stay.”

Morgan is staring at the air, with his head tilted to one side, a peculiar expression on his face.

“Morgan?”

“We have walked the length of the Ark,” Morgan says. “And more. And still there is no hatch.”

“Ridiculous,” says Sellurt.

And there in the dimness and in no specific direction: not east, not north, not south, not west, Sellurt can make out a shaft that rises through the levels of the ship, above and below, through more floors and spaces than he can count.

“Don’t you see?” Morgan says, his voice immensely small and tiny in the emptiness of the Ark.

“No,” protests Sellurt. “No. I don’t.”

“It’s endless.”

Sellurt can feel the breath of the lions at his back, and there is everywhere to run.

It is time to expound upon the duties of the wheel-turning monarch.

So once upon a time a family of traveling entertainers presented their act before a King.

“Oh, no!” says the family father. “My sacred wheel treasure has slipped from its position.”

His eyes are closed. He fumbles with his hands, looking for his sacred wheel treasure.

“If you wish to take up the wheel,” says the mother, illustrating, “you must depend on the Dharma. Honor it. Revere it. Cherish it. Do homage to it. Venerate it.”

She honors and cherishes and does homage to the dharma.

“Then you should establish guard, ward, and protection,” adds their son. “For your household, your troops, your nobles, and your vassals.”

He establishes guard, ward, and protection on his sister and their dog.

“Woof!” says the dog.

The Brahmins of the King’s court recoil, shocked.

“Also,” asides the son, “for Brahmins and householders, town and country folk, ascetics, beasts, and birds.”

“Woof!” says the dog, again, thumping its foot on the floor.

“And to those in need,” says the daughter, in her high clear voice, “give property. And let no crime prevail in your kingdom. But most of all, give wise consel on the matter of what is good and what is bad, what will lead to harm and what will lead to sorrow, and in all things.”

One of the nearby ascetics examines her philosophy. She gives him wise counsel on the matter of what is good and what is bad.

“But what do you call this act?” says the King, somewhat disoriented.

“The Cakkavattisihananda Sutta!” declares the family together.

Exhausted by all this enlightenment, the son falls over dead.

So. Anyway.

This is a history of Round Man.

It is, like all the histories of Round Man, set in the very beginning. It’s a time when each pig is worth a hundred oxen. Thunder is almost as scared of people as people are of thunder. And the sun keeps shining well into the night.

Now Round Man is called Round Man because of his invention of the wheel. He’s doing that inventing right now, in fact—not because he needs to roll something, because he doesn’t, but because he wants something to serve as the symbol of dharma. So he makes a wheel out of stone. That’ll do the trick!

The wheel has spokes and a rim and he hangs it around his neck on a cord.

“It has a jolly good felloe,” he says to the toad.

That’s why toads don’t like people. Sometimes they’ll pretend they do, but they don’t, and that joke is pretty much why.

“It symbolizes appropriateness,” he says to the moss.

“Don’t like it none,” says the moss.

Moss doesn’t like wheels. It never will.

Then Round Man and his wheel go home.

“Chaos Woman,” he says to his wife. “I’ve decided that things should happen in an appropriate fashion.”

He takes off the cord and hands her the wheel.

“That’s why I made this.”

“It’s round,” says Chaos Woman. She’s just kind of rolling with it.

“It has a jolly good felloe.”

That’s why people don’t always like people that much.

“And it fixed that problem with the cows,” adds Round Man.

Then he sighs.

“But it’s also why my dead dog’s left. He’s gone away to the other side.”

“Just because he’s dead?”

Round Man nods.

“That’s the problem with dogs,” concludes Chaos Woman. “They aren’t loyal enough. Not like karma beetles.”

In the distance, the dog howls mournfully.

“That’s right,” says Round Man, trying to ignore the distant sound. “Dangle a sprawling land of the dead with squirrels to chase and lots of fresh air and water and the dogs’ll take any excuse to leave.”

Chaos Woman turns the wheel in her hands for a while.

After a while, the howling quiets.

Then Chaos Woman frowns.

“It’s nice, and all,” says Chaos Woman, “but lots of inappropriate things are still happening.”

In the north there’s a man with an eel for a head. That’s not appropriate!

What a bad man!

Also in the south there’s somebody getting rich by selling bad quartz veins to mountains. That’s even worse.

And in the west the moon’s bobbing up and down. It’s trying to set but it’s too drunk on moonshine. It can’t find the horizon!

That’s the kind of inappropriateness a polite society just can’t stand.

“Huh,” says Round Man. “Maybe they didn’t hear my decision.”

And Chaos Woman sees the path she has to take. So she says, “Well, no. They won’t until you make them.”

Now Round Man’s a little nervous. “What, everybody?”

“Everybody,” Chaos Woman confirms.

“But I’ll be embarrassed,” says Round Man.

“Why?”

And Round Man doesn’t want to admit why he’d be embarrassed. So he shakes his head. He mumbles, “‘S nothing.”

And he clears his throat. And he says, in the really loud voice, “Everybody look here.”

And everybody does.

And Round Man blushes a brighter and brighter scarlet, because now that everyone’s looking at him he’s pretty sure he’s naked.

He grabs the first thing he can find to hide his shame and he says, in a blushing broken little voice, “Things should happen in the most appropriate fashion.”

Now there are a lot of things you can say about this and most of them are true.

Like, Round Man saved the world. Or Round Man broke the world. Or Round Man was a hero-figure. Or maybe he was a devil.

It’s all true. One way or another, everything that’s happened since then happened at least in part because of what Round Man said while everyone and everything in all the world was looking at him.

But that wasn’t what he cared about.

What he cared about was a little bit of a wardrobe accident, because a fig leaf would have been much smarter than a wheel when it came to hiding his shame.

And while everyone was staring at him, Round Man grew smaller and smaller and his blush grew hotter and hotter until he burst into very small flames.

Only the wheel was left!

Then, rising from his seat, covering one shoulder with his robe, the King took a gold vessel in his left hand, sprinkled the Wheel with his right hand, and said: “May the noble Wheel Treasure turn, may the noble Wheel Treasure conquer!” The Wheel Turned to the east, and the King followed it with his fourfold army. And in whatever country the Wheel stopped, the King took up residence with his fourfold army. And those who opposed him in the eastern region came and said: “Come, Your Majesty, Welcome! We are yours, Your Majesty. Rule us, your Majesty.” And the King said: “Do not take life. Do not take what is not given. Do not commit sexual misconduct. Do not tell lies.”
– The Cakkavattisihananda Sutta

“Nothing is growing,” says Persephone.

There is a note of pain in her voice that reaches Hades’ heart. So he knocks the seeds of his pomegranate into his hand. He lets them fall onto the earth.

He says, “Seeds.”

Persephone looks.

Persephone laughs, the sound like the sound that sunlight makes.

“Why, so they are.”

She steps down from his chariot, hesitating briefly to see if he will stop her. He makes no move to do so, so she descends to the seeds, and kneels beside them. She pokes them with a finger. They are lifeless and unresponsive, even for seeds.

“Poor things,” Persephone says. “Won’t you never learn to grow?”

“If I order it,” says Hades.

She looks at him.

“When I came to the Underworld,” he says, “there was nothing but the gates. Beyond them was tangled darkness. There was no air. There was no soil. There was no place. Simply the gates. And I have made this.”

She looks around.

“I have taken this place from the emptiness,” he says. “Seized it back and filled it with the substance of my will.”

He gestures with an opening hand and dead black shrubs sprout from the seeds. They dig their roots into the dust and bring forth shriveled yellow fruit.

Persephone startles back.

The plants are in the fullness of their living death in moments. They develop a thick and musty fragrance and somehow insects crawl among their leaves.

“That’s pretty good,” says Persephone. “I mean, I’d need to add water.”

“There is growth here,” says Hades. “And light. Even joy, if I wish it.”

“I see,” says Persephone, because she does.

Hades is looking at the plants. His eyes are full of them; he is pleased with what he has wrought. But after a moment, he shakes it off.

“They are dead, of course. I cannot change that. Their story is over before it has begun.”

“Oh.”

“That is why you are here,” Hades says. “In this place you will bring forth hope.”

And Persephone is crying now.

Her tears are stolen girl tears. They are asked-too-much tears. They’re the tears of someone expected to bear the moral burden of her own abduction.

They twist knives in Hades’ heart, but they do not weaken him. They bring him more strength. His eyes grow more distant. His face grows colder. Her tears hurt, but they affirm his power over her. Where there is power, there is authority. Where there is authority, there is righteousness. So in that moment, torn by her pain, he becomes more certain of his course.

Her tears are not a problem for him.

But her question is.

She asks him, in the voice of someone who thinks it’s possible, “So will you wrench this hope from me like you wrenched the plants to bloom?”

And because he can’t, but doesn’t want to answer ‘no’, his affect goes flat and he bites into a fruit and he says, with great forced savor, “You really should try one of these delicious pomegranates.”

Flagging this as something I’m totally going to let myself change later. I’m not at home and have a real time deadline. I’ll remove the flag if I’ve edited to taste. For example, I’m currently uncertain of the closing line, and might not actually edit. ^_^

Update, 5 years later: I’ve never been totally happy with this series, but I won’t be fixing it until the archives are working at least up to Island of the Centipede.

The Underworld is full of things.

There are the little roly-poly round things. They’re like pillbugs. If you poke them, they’ll curl up tight. Then they’ll curl you up with them.

“Help!” you might cry. “I’m stuck!”

But nobody will hear you except the bug-eating giants, and so that’s hardly a win for you.

If Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the roly-poly round things will be gone. Maybe they’ll blow up. Maybe they’ll scurry down. Maybe they’ll just vanish. But they’ll be gone.

No more stories of great heroes descending into the Underworld and getting rolled up by little bugs before they return.

Legends, maybe, but not stories, because those bugs will be lost.

There are shark-human hybrids in the Underworld. Everyone knows that. If there weren’t then who would swim up just when you thought you could relax and do horrible human things to you with their horrible human teeth?

Down in the Underworld they swim.

There are little fish that live near their teeth, little Crest-brand fish that live near the teeth of the shark-human hybrids and dart in between meals to gnaw the scraps from the horrors’ mouths. You can find them in the Underworld, and in Greece, and, really, everywhere where Crest’s ancient inhuman power isn’t bound by the sevenfold law of the FDA.

And if Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the fish will die.

And the shark-human hybrids will die.

And there will be a silence in the deep.

Perhaps they will go on in some form, of course. It’s hard to say. Where is a soul after a soul-eater’s eaten it? Where is a light after the candle is snuffed? Where will be the noble shark-human hybrids and their terrible blunt teeth?

But we can call it “dead.”

Also in the Underworld there are the streaks. They’re colored red, yellow, and green. They’re in the air, like a classical painter got really tired after painting the Underworld and went suddenly modernist in frustration. They jangle and twist when you look at them. The souls in the Elysian fields can’t see them. The souls in torment in Tartarus try to ignore them. One day Tantalus will eat one and find that it tastes just exactly like artificial pudding, which in turn tastes more or less like his son Pelops. That’s why he will always look so funny when he eats a delicious vanilla Jell-O pudding cup. It’s not the flavor. It’s the nostalgia!

And if Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the streaks will be gone, and any purpose they might have to their long and colorful deaths will pass. And perhaps there will be a few lingerers, one or two stragglers, a few bright streaks of red and chartreuse hanging on the surface of the void, but they will go away and the ones who stay will die.

There are the burrs in the Underworld. They live under things. That’s why you don’t want to poke too much at things under other things in the Underworld. There could be burrs. The Underworld is already under other things, so it makes sense that going too much further under would be spiky. But they’re not spiky because it makes sense. They’re spiky as a natural evolved defense mechanism. It protects them from predators!

There are echoes. They’re not actually Echo, who didn’t die precisely but who made the wrong promise and couldn’t be human any more.(1)

(1) For reference, if Zeus ever asks you to make a promise pursuant to one of his pursuits, consider carefully the consequences. They’re not always as nice as you might imagine, and sometimes they involve having pampered tourists at the Grand Canyon shouting at you all day.

The echoes in the Underworld are not actually Echo, but they are the echoes of distant footsteps, and you can hear them if you try.

If Persephone destroys the Underworld, then the burrs will be gone. The echoes will be gone. There will be nothing but the emptiness where once there stood the cathedrals of Hades and the legions of the dead.

No more will trails of blood call the unliving back.

No more the Elysian fields; no more Tartarus; no more Hades; no more Persephone.

She can do this. It’s in her history, if you read back far enough. That’s what a Persephone does. She ends everything. She takes it away.

So as she stands there, with Hades holding out the pomegranate, Persephone licks her lips nervously and then she bows her head.

“Whatever,” she says. “You can do what you want, I guess. I won’t kill all this stuff you made.”

This is a pretty common decision for someone in her position to make, even though everyone always criticizes them for it later.

And she finds firmness in it and a sense of strength, so she lifts her head.

“I’m letting you live.”

And Hades says, “But that’s not what I want.”

“Huh?”

“End it,” says Hades. “Reach down to the nature of this place and make it an undiscovered land.”

Persephone blinks.

“Let it be a mystery,” he says. His face is avid. “Let no one know what happens here. Let them hope or imagine that it is a place of joy. Let them dream with bloodlust of their enemies suffering here in torment. Ease this from the world. Make it not known. That is what I have brought you here to do. That is what I have chosen.”

And she looks at him. And he looks back.

And she says, “You can’t make that choice for me.”

“I can,” he says.

“You can’t!”

And they’re both right, of course. They think they’re disagreeing, but they’re not. They’re just in the grip of Semantics, that bleak god, cousin to Ananke, from whom alone of all the gods and men great Zeus is free.

The gem is the ultimate distillation of faith.

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

Samuel is staring at it.

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

Slowly, he stands up, brushing out his jacket.

“That’s it?” Clyde asks.

“Figure so,” Samuel says.

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

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

“The jewel of the Anabaptists,” sighs Samuel.

Samuel starts forward towards the pedestal.

“Wait!”

Clyde flings up a hand.

“What?”

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

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

Samuel’s eyes narrow.

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

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

“Now, Samuel,” says Clyde.

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

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

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

“You earned those bees,” hisses Clyde.

Samuel takes off his jacket. He sets it aside.

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

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

“Darn it!” says Samuel.

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

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

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

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

Samuel hesitates.

Then, curtly, he nods.

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

“That there is,” says Samuel.

“Sin music,” says Clyde.

“That’s so.”

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

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

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

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

“Then why’d you come here, Samuel?”

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

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

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

“It’s a bad habit,” says Clyde.

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

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

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

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

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

“Not even those sins,” says Samuel.

Clyde lowers his head.

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

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

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

Samuel and Clyde freeze.

Then, slowly, they relax.

“Just a buggy backfiring,” says Samuel.

“Zombie popping,” says Clyde.

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

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

“Hm?”

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

Samuel shrugs.

“Tradition.”

On the occasion of Francescu’s tenth birthday, thirteen days after that night, Gargamel found Francescu hidden in an unused servant’s room. Francescu looked pale and wan and like he hadn’t eaten or slept for about two weeks, which was correct.

Gargamel knelt down by him creakily.

“If it helps,” Gargamel said, “there are no bees in the cake this year.”

Francescu shook his head.

Gargamel waited.

“Did Violet die?” Francescu asked.

Gargamel reflected. “Not that I’ve noticed.”

Francescu hesitated.

“Did it eat her skin and bones and send her back to us as an unliving shade?”

Gargamel studied Francescu for a bit.

“I take it,” Gargamel said somberly, “that something happened recently to disturb you, child. But I am a keen judge of character, and my daughter seems to have all of her skin and bones.”

Suddenly, Gargamel sensed a cunning intellectual trap. He squinched his eyes. He drew back suspiciously. He counted to nine on his long thin fingers. He looked at Francescu. He counted to nine again.

“The same,” he added, “does not appear quite true for you.”

“Oh,” said Francescu. “Yeah.”

He looked down at his left hand. The little finger was just a stub, cut off at the handwards knuckle.

“I cut off my finger,” Francescu said. “‘Cause it’s my birthday.”

Gargamel squinted. “Eh?”

“I figured out that goodness and light and truth were helpless,” said Francescu. “So I wanted to make darkness and evil helpless too. I thought, maybe if I were immortal, that’d do the trick.”

“Ha,” laughed Gargamel. “Ha ha ha.”

Francescu squinted. “Eh?”

“You make it sound so easy,” Gargamel said.

“It’s easy to laugh when you can tie up the Devil and make butterfly trees!” Francescu protested, although in fact making butterfly trees is an ineffectual weapon against the darkness.

Gargamel scratched at his face, getting a few little flecks of dead skin on his fingers. “Such little things,” he said. He shook his head tiredly and straightened. “If you want such power as that, Francescu, you need only ask.”

We do not know how Montechristien Gargamel came into his power. His origins are a mystery. How such an ungainly, strange, and immoral man could rise so swiftly to prominence puzzles even the greatest scholars of our time. Of his life once established in Castle Gargamel, however, certain facts are known.

He took to wife the Lady Yseult Gargamel, one of the great beauties of his day; and though many a rival pressed for evidence that he’d bewitched or stolen her, none was ever found. They had and loved six children of their flesh, until the seventh, Elisabet, killed Yseult with the complications of her birth. Each of these children was a prodigy, possessed of astonishing talents. When at last Montechristien stumbled towards the grave, the talents of his children turned against their siblings, every hand against the other, until at last they could dispose of the matter of their legacy.

This is the eleventh installment of the story of that time.

Francescu gropes his way to his feet. He turns. He looks at Tomas.

Tomas is holding a fingerbone in his hand.

“Do you recognize it?” Tomas asks.

Francescu holds up his hand, as if to suggest that Tomas should toss it to him for closer examination. Tomas does not, and after a moment, Francescu shrugs.

“I don’t know how to recognize fingerbones,” Francescu admits.

Tomas frowns severely at him.

Francescu shakes his head sadly. He slumps. “What do you want, Tomas?”

“I gave up the unsainly ways of our childhood,” Tomas says. “You never did. And if you won’t commit yourself to the white and holy path, then I can’t let you inherit Gargamel’s power.”

“God is an illusion, Tomas.”

“I will hear such things from Violet,” Tomas says. “Who has, in our life, served nothing but the good. I will not hear them from you.”

“I can’t help it if you’re blind, Tomas.”

Tomas grits his teeth.

Francescu sighs. He turns around. Carefully skirting the tree that felled him, he begins to walk towards Castle Gargamel—now visible through the forest.

“It’s futile,” he says.

“Futile?”

“You can’t stop me from doing anything I choose to do. That’s what it means, that you gave up the ways of our childhood and I did not.”

“I’m holding your life!”

Francescu shrugs. “Break it, then.”

An Unclean Legacy

Tomas snarls. Then he tilts his head to one side. He looks cunning.

“You’re planning to stop me,” he declares.

Francescu stops in his path. There is a bit of animation in his face now. His teeth are clenching. He says, quietly, “Tomas, you are interrupting the comfortable manner in which I live my life. If you are not going to kill me in the next few seconds, I heavily recommend that you put the bone away and walk.”

“Who gave you the right to be comfortable when everyone else must suffer?”

Violet is visible on the path from Castle Gargamel now. She is wearing a dress the color of her name and she is moving all-out because she can guess what it is in Tomas’ hand.

And Francescu turns. His face is redder now. “Who gave you the right to ask?”

Tomas puts his hands on the ends of the bone. He flexes the muscles of his arms.

The wind surges. It slams Tomas back against a tree. His breath whuffs out of him. The wind pins him there. Tomas looks dazed; but he does not release the bone. After a moment’s recovery, he begins again to pull.

Seven great gold bells, larger and thicker than barrels, appear at even intervals along a semicircle in the air behind Francescu. Behind them in a world leached of its normal color there is a thing twisting and indescribable, with the head of a rooster, a body like coiled intestines or endlessly interweaving ropes, and a gopher’s feet. As Francescu gestures towards Tomas, the creature screams; the bells ring; the ground of the forest bucks and twists for miles, and a vision of emptiness sears itself into Tomas’ brain.

But Tomas does not stop. His muscles continue to contract as he exerts force against the bone.

This causes Francescu to blink. He had been planning to fill Tomas’ lungs with insects, but now he’s too curious.

“Pardon,” Francescu says, “but that stops people.”

The wind ceases. Tomas slumps to the ground. Equally puzzled by Francescu’s behavior, he too suspends his efforts.

“What,” he asks, “that false vision?”

“It’s not false,” Francescu says. “It’s the actual purposelessness of the universe. I mean, you have to do different magic to summon up a lie.”

“Oh,” Tomas says. Then he crooks a little grin. It has a lot of emotions in it but none of them are anger or despair. He adds, almost gently, “I’m sorry, brother.”

He holds up the bone in his two hands. He exerts his utmost effort.

“You idiot!” Violet is shouting.

Tomas is only listening to her with one ear. The substance of the bone is bending, ever so slightly. There are little tiny popping sounds.

“There’s more than one bone in somebody’s little finger!” Violet shouts.

Tomas stops.

“. . . Oh.”

Now we have seen something about Francescu and Tomas, and also learned an important fact about the little finger!

Tune in next time for the next breathtaking chapter of An Unclean Legacy: “The Shadow on the Road!”

It was in Manfred’s home, laying on his couch as he carved apples at his table, that Sophie first realized that her father was damned.

“His soul’s already in Hell,” she said.

“Eh?”

“That’s what it means,” she said. “To be a twin. Baltasar had their soul. He made a mistake. The demons took him down to Hell, and their soul with him. So he’s already suffering the torments of the damned, and when he dies, they’ll get worse. That’s why Daddy had to tie up the Devil, I think.”

Manfred pondered that.

“He should tie up the Devil again,” Manfred said. “And also wrench his soul back from Hell, cleanse it with the power of the little gold men, and send it up to Heaven.”

“Huh,” said Sophie, thinking about that. “. . . Yes. I wish he would.”

We do not know how Montechristien Gargamel came into his power. His origins are a mystery. How such an ungainly, strange, and immoral man could rise so swiftly to prominence puzzles even the greatest scholars of our time. Of his life once established in Castle Gargamel, however, certain facts are known.

He took to wife the Lady Yseult Gargamel, one of the great beauties of his day; and though many a rival pressed for evidence that he’d bewitched or stolen her, none was ever found. They had and loved six children of their flesh, until the seventh, Elisabet, killed Yseult with the complications of her birth. Each of these children was a prodigy, possessed of astonishing talents. When at last Montechristien stumbled towards the grave, the talents of his children turned against their siblings, every hand against the other, until at last they could dispose of the matter of their legacy.

This is the fifteenth installment of the story of that time.

Sophie runs.

She has left Manfred’s cottage for the night. It is after dark. The shadow is on the road. It is heading in her direction, blindly questing towards Manfred’s home.

In a blur of bounding shapes Sophie darts into the trees. When she passes the shadow she is barely hitting her stride. She lands beside the road as a greyhound, lean and long, and she runs.

It does not see her. She is silent as she passes. But it smells her. And it turns.

Sophie, it says.

The shadow is in the shape of Baltasar Gargamel, her uncle, but it moves unnaturally and its eyes are red and black.

“No time,” mutters Sophie, in moments of human shape between each bound.

You are beautiful, says the shadow. You will serve me.

The voice is like honey and ice cream to her. It is beautiful and it is sweet. And the shadow reaches its claw after her, stretching across the yards between them.

Sophie is a gnat. She whirls between its fingers and away.

Dead Baltasar lifts his arms against the moonlight and eight shadow-limbs weave a web to catch the gnat.

Sophie is a hare. She tears through the web and runs, her back legs pounding.

Dead Baltasar drops to his hands and knees. He takes on the aspect of the hound. He is chasing her, his fingers clawed, his head extended, baying in the fashion that the Devil bays.

“You should stay,” Manfred said. He looked out at the setting sun. “If you head home now, you’ll meet the shadow on the road.

“No worries,” Sophie said.

Sophie is a horse; a stag; a gazelle; an antelope; a tiger. She shifts with each footstep, finding the shape best suited to that moment of the road. She is gaining on the shadow.

Then the aspect of the Devil burns around dead Baltasar, and he grows great and fiery, and he tromps after her on great elephantine legs, and the forest shakes and shudders with the pounding of his feet.

Sophie, you have no soul, but I can see your heart, and it is worthy of me.

“You won’t catch me tonight,” Sophie says.

She is the lightning, arcing madly forward from tree to tree.

“What if you meet the shadow?” Manfred asked.

“Then I will run and run and run,” Sophie said, “until the dawn.”

To take form as lightning is tiring and dizzying, so she does not move forward quite so quickly or for quite so long as she would like. She falls from that shape and rises again and she is a hummingbird, an eagle, a falcon, flying upwards towards the clouds and the moon.

Behind her there is the terrible swarming sound of bees.

“I do not like you taking such a risk,” Manfred said.

“I am used to it,” Sophie said.

“But if it should catch you—” Manfred said.

“Yes?”

“Then it would taint you,” Manfred said. “It would work its miasma into your flesh and bone. You’d be lost to us.”

Sophie is a thrashing cloud-runner. She is a winged unicorn, its skin as black as pitch. She is a spreading murder of crows.

Dead Baltasar, mounted on an iron pestle, is gaining on her.

“Damn it,” Sophie mutters. “I’m distracted tonight.”

“I could resist,” Sophie protested. “I could stay clean.”

But Manfred thought back to the night of the shadow, and the temptations that he has overcome only by virtue of the shackles on his arms, and he shook his head. “No. You couldn’t. No one could.”

Then Sophie is tumbling down as a spear of sunlight to the earth. She realizes her mistake too late. The bracken below her is Devil-twisted. It is raising its claws as she falls to snatch her. She changes into an owl and tries to pull herself up but she is falling far too fast.

This will be one of those nights, Sophie realizes bleakly, when she is caught before the dawn.

An Unclean Legacy

Manfred’s dreams are tormented by lust and confusion and the desire for Rachel Saraman. He wakes convulsively, in the middle of the night, sweating, tired, and hot.

In his mind an intention forms.

So he puts on his armor, clean and white. He looks back at Santrieste’s stable, but he does not wake the unicorn.

He walks out onto the road.

The sin of Gargamel is moving on the road that night, as every night. It is painting the sky red and black with the light of it.

And Manfred walks.

“Where do you go, this night, with your armor and your binding?” Manfred’s devil asks.

And Manfred walks.

“Turn back,” says Manfred’s devil.

But he does not.

“I need to talk to Sophie,” he says. “I need her advice.”

And on the road he meets dead Baltasar, and Sophie whimpering quietly amidst the heath. And Manfred looks slowly from one to the other, processing what he sees.

“Where do you go this night,” he asks the shadow, “with your corpse-like flesh and the evil in your eyes? Why do you walk these roads and bring trouble to my family and to me?”

I hunt her, says the Devil. From the sunset to the dawn.

And Manfred looks at Sophie. And suddenly his eyes blur with tears.

“Is that why you are about?” he asks.

And, hoarsely, “For how long?”

Each night, the shadow says, For seven years and seven days.

“Not tonight,” says Manfred.

And he steps forward and seizes dead Baltasar in his arms. And as the Devil struggles Manfred drags him down onto the road and holds him fast.

And fingers of shadow wrap around Manfred’s throat. They are cold. They are choking the life from him.

With every strength that Manfred possesses he squeezes Baltasar’s corpse. The bones of it crack. The flesh of it turns pustulent and black. In the hollow eyes of it Manfred sees the shadow’s rage, and fire burns him.

But he does not let go.

Spider-arms wrap around Manfred. They draw tight. They convulse, as if to break a lesser man’s back. But Manfred only says, “Uff!” and still he holds.

Sophie is unconscious now. She lays there sprawled with drool dangling from her mouth.

And Manfred frees one arm with his weight upon the body of dead Baltasar and he uses his fingers to burst its carbuncle eyes. And he tears from the Devil’s shoulders the spider-limbs of shadow that Baltasar’s arms cast forth. And there in the twisted flesh of dead Baltasar Manfred can see at last the Devil’s heart, that even the magic of Montechristien Gargamel was not strong enough to crush; and he reaches his hand into the hollow of the creature’s chest and lays his fingers upon it.

But there is a magic binding upon him, and even the Devil is not without his innocence.

So Manfred does not kill.

He holds the Devil there instead, bloody and tired and short of breath, until the dawn.

Will the shadow succeed in tainting Sophie?

Will Manfred marry Rachel?

Manfred’s history approaches its terrible conclusion tomorrow in “Abandoned!”

Once upon a time, a terrible spinach-spider troubled the forest near Manfred’s cottage.

Rachel went out to gather water. This was a mistake. The spinach-spider leapt out from the shadows. It knocked her down. It loomed over her, its fangs dripping a peculiar assortment of vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates against her face.

“I’ve eaten tougher things than you,” Rachel said, bravely.

She waited for the Saraman destiny to kick in. She waited for it to kneel before her. But the spinach-spider was not truly evil, and so it saw her as its prey.

It chittered a horrible chitter and leaned down over her face.

There was the clattering of hooves.

Rachel turned her head to one side. The spinach-spider looked as well.

“Manfred!” Rachel said.

“Charge!” cried Manfred, to Santrieste.

But Santrieste, having cantered into the clearing where Rachel and the spinach-spider were, stopped in his advance.

He shook his head. He whinnied.

This is the natural order of life, Manfred, said Santrieste. It is bloody and cruel. But let it be.

“Charge, fuck it,” repeated Manfred.

But Santrieste stood still.

Rachel cast her eyes around frantically. She found an evil bee. She seized it from the flowers and flung it at the spinach-spider’s face. It buzzed about. It stung the spinach-spider once and then died. This is actually a pretty heroic accounting for an evil bee.

Manfred, still cursing, flung himself down from the saddle. He charged the beast himself. Its fangs came down at Rachel. Manfred caught one fang in his hand. He squeezed it until the juice of the spinach gurgled back into the spider’s stomach and the spider squealed and danced in pain. Its stinger stabbed down at Rachel’s unprotected leg; Manfred caught it in his other hand.

“Well,” said Manfred.

The spinach-spider chittered horribly. You will regret this indignity! is how Manfred interpreted its intention.

“You underestimate me, monster of the woods,” said Manfred.

With a great heave, he lifted the spider into the air and flung it sideways fifteen feet. It landed with a startled squelch and rose to its eight feet.

It danced one, two, three steps in anger.

Then it scurried into the forest and was gone.

Manfred reached down a hand for Rachel, who blushed prettily as she took it and rose to stand.

“I do not think it will trouble humankind again,” said Manfred.

If you sleep with her, said Santrieste, I will leave you.

Manfred looked over his shoulder at the unicorn.

He squinted.

“You do understand, Santrieste,” he said, “that I am not a virgin?”

This startled a giggle from Rachel, in turn causing Manfred to blush.

The unicorn spoke only with its eyes: Nevertheless.

“Well . . . well, fine,” said Manfred.

He stared at the unicorn.

“Is he criticizing your sexual prowess?” Rachel asks.

Santrieste colored.

“I understand that it’s a big thing with stallions.”

Not unicorn stallions, said Santrieste, looking away. Also, you are an evil thing and will destroy my Manfred, so please, next time this happens, die.

“Aww,” said Rachel. “He’s blushing.”

After a moment, Manfred forces out a, “Yes. Yes, he is.”

We do not know how Montechristien Gargamel came into his power. His origins are a mystery. How such an ungainly, strange, and immoral man could rise so swiftly to prominence puzzles even the greatest scholars of our time. Of his life once established in Castle Gargamel, however, certain facts are known.

He took to wife the Lady Yseult Gargamel, one of the great beauties of his day; and though many a rival pressed for evidence that he’d bewitched or stolen her, none was ever found. They had and loved six children of their flesh, until the seventh, Elisabet, killed Yseult with the complications of her birth. Each of these children was a prodigy, possessed of astonishing talents. When at last Montechristien stumbled towards the grave, the talents of his children turned against their siblings, every hand against the other, until at last they could dispose of the matter of their legacy.

This is the sixteenth installment of the story of that time.

Sophie wakes. It is the morning after Manfred’s encounter with the Devil on the road.

Manfred is sitting, half-asleep, by a dying campfire.

For a long moment, Sophie just stays there, smiling, staring at her brother Manfred who has wrestled the Devil to the ground.

“Hi,” she says.

And Manfred looks up, and says, hesitant and scared, “Was I in time?”

Sophie stares at him.

Slowly, the smile fades from her face. It is replaced by a lonely mouth and bitter eyes.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, you were in time.”

“Good,” Manfred says, and the fear flows out of him with those words and he smiles at her and he does not seem to see what’s in her face.

He stirs the fire.

“It is no wonder,” he says, “that you have become so swift. I am in awe.”

“Yes,” Sophie says.

Then she shrugs.

“The shadow gets stronger as the years go by. At first it was just Uncle Baltasar’s bumbling corpse chasing me around the halls.”

She mimes a staggering corpse with one hand and a running girl with the other. Manfred laughs.

“Hey,” Manfred says.

“Hey?”

“Dad won’t even talk me about Rachel,” Manfred says. “And Santrieste will leave me if we . . . if we . . .”

Manfred shrugs.

“I wanted your advice,” he says.

“Don’t care,” says Sophie.

“Huh?”

“Listen,” says Sophie, and her face grows hot as she speaks. “You don’t have to care what they think. You don’t have to care what anybody thinks. If you can find some shelter in her arms, Manfred, then you should take it and shout praise for that opportunity to Heaven. If you can find real love with her that isn’t a sorcerous binding, then I say, do it now and don’t count the consequences. Find something that is yours and real and take it and never let it go. Do you think Montechristien and Santrieste are your friends?”

And she would be crying, if she did not shift in the instant before each tear into a shape that had no ducts.

“. . . You’re right,” Manfred says. “Thank you.”

Sophie is a lark, a raven, a jay, a robin, an eagle, and she is flying away.

An Unclean Legacy

That night, Rachel stands up to leave Manfred’s cottage as the sun nears setting.

“You don’t have to go,” Manfred says.

And there is a terrible angry thrashing from the stable near his house.

Rachel stares at Manfred for a long time.

“Truly?” she asks.

“Truly,” he says.

And she steps into his arms. And he embraces her with the warm strength of him and the cold white metal of the brassards on him. And as they fall into his bed the room seems strangely hot to him, and there is a pounding on the cottage-stable wall. And it seems to him that the cares and burdens of life as Manfred Gargamel are falling from him; that the long years of bondage to principles not his own and the ancient fear of the Devil that walked in Castle Gargamel and the roads outside his home are passing from him. And in the moment of his completion he says her name, “Rachel,” and she says, “I will free you, Manfred,” and it is as if he is at last abandoned by the nagging voices of his devil and his angel and his curses and his blessings and in her arms is shelter, warmth, and peace.

It fades to darkness.

The darkness fades to cold.

Manfred is haled away from world and sound and banished from the lands of spinach-spiders and of men.

That’s not good, is it? But we won’t have the final part of Manfred’s backstory for a little while.

Instead, it’s time for a heartwarming Unclean Legacy holiday special: “How Elisabet Saved Christmas!”

“Ho ho ho!”

The Green Giant laughs because he will not weep. He holds the ruined bodies of his clan.

“Ho ho ho! Green Giant!”

He stands in a metal house lit by smoky torches. The great wooden table is before him. All around him are dancing shadows and the bodies of the dead.

It is as if they were struck by a razor wind.

The entrance to the Clan Hall gapes open like a wound. And all around him is the blood: splashed on the walls like the gruesome work of some great mixer.

He has gathered them in his hands, his great large hands, with their dangling heads and their stiff blood-dark bodies and their staring eyes. He is putting them on the table.

They are vegetable men, compost corpses, whose bodies know the trick of taking root and stealing a tainted life force from the earth.

He is chopping them up so that they will not rise.

When he is finished he emerges from the Clan hall and he stands there, head bowed, a giant with no purpose but revenge.

“I will strike south across the lands of men,” he says. “To Greyhawk, that blighted city, whence the killer must have come.”

Ho ho ho! Green Giant!

He is alone now, the giant green survivor of a small and humanoid tribe. The ways of the samurai, that once he practiced, do no longer suit.

He hides his green face behind a mask and he practices a cowardly ninja art.

Men and women in their taverns and their castles, sitting before plates of withered grey vegetables, startle. “Ho ho ho!” booms a voice.

A green shape slides out from the shadows.

“Ho ho ho! Green Giant!”

And everywhere there is red.

The giant moves through the land called Geoff and the dukes and princes of the lands of men fall victim to his sword. Behind him there are other giants whom in his wake grow bold: Hrulgar, the hill giant, whose booming laugh signifies delicious hills. Jarl Jack Frost, the giant of winter. Even Surt, who had given for a time more attention to the preparation of delicious Muspellheim-brand chili peppers than to the destruction of the world, moves in the Green Giant’s wake.

That is why the King at Geoff calls forth the wolf.

The King is a grizzled man on a black iron throne, tired and old and wrapped in winter furs that make the King seem small. The wolf is a woman, short, lean, and intense, with blind eyes and a scar on her face.

“Did you kill the Green Giant’s clan and bring this devastation upon us?” asks the King.

Jane, the wolf, looks shiftily this way and that.

“Look at me when I’m calling you forth,” says the King.

He drums his fingers on the black iron armrest of his throne.

Jane sighs. She makes a face. She looks up at the King. “I did,” she says.

“That was bad,” chides the King.

“It was my iron raker,” says the wolf. “A powerful sword move that explodes enemies in all directions. I developed it to scatter the vegetables from my plate but it works as well on vegetable men.”

“It’s not okay to kill the Green Giant’s clan and bring devastation onto everybody just to avoid eating your vegetables,” the King argues.

Jane hangs her head.

“It was an excess of youthful exuberance,” she admits.

“Then you must clean up your own mess,” says the King.

The wolf slips out.

In the wilderness there is a fire. A caravan has stopped. Its company is eating and singing around the fire. Then a strange chill comes over them. They look around nervously. There is something in the night.

“Ho ho ho!”

The eyes of the caravan master go white with panic.

“Ho ho ho! Green Giant!”

Then what they believed was simply the trees and the night is among them. Then his teeth are grit and he is readied to make his bread from the bones of men.

Then there is Green Giant.

But there is also the wolf.

On the other side of the caravan fire, she casts aside her cloak and says: “Iron raker.”

Enemies explode in all directions, including a mosquito that had intended to bite Jane, a monstrous ogress in a distant hut who’d been planning to curse her, and an evil bee that hadn’t really intended anybody any harm. But the Green Giant does not die. He seizes a wagon from the caravan and uses that to block the force of the wolf’s blow. He skids back. The wagon explodes, showering its cargo to all sides. His chest breaks out in blood. He is alive.

“Green Giant Ninjutsu #9,” he says. “Incarnate Devastation!”

He throws a can of incarnate devastation into the air. Striking its pressure points, he bursts it, showering the wolf in devastation.

“Ow!” says Jane.

She staggers back.

“You got devastation in my hair!” she says, wildly scrubbing at it.

“Ho ho ho! Green vengeance!”

Then he has torn a tree from the ground. Then he is wielding it as a club and it is rushing down towards Jane’s head.

Jane looks up.

“I should probably take responsibility for the death of his clan,” she thinks to herself. “Just stand here and take it. Let the blow land.”

CRUNCH.

But Jane is not between the greenery and the earth. She has rolled forward and she is under the giant and she is whispering, quietly, “Iron raker.”

And it is like a Chili’s Blooming Onion only instead of fried onion curls there is the passage of her sword; it is a death blossom and it opens for the Green Giant; and his head does not stop its rolling to ask her, “Why? Why did you kill them?”

And Jane says, “The clash of vegetables and wolves is savage, on the frontier.”