A Suggested Campaign Speech for the Conservative Party of Canada

An election will come eventually. As such, I have generously provided the Conservative Party with some rhetoric to use on the campaign trail. I expect a cheque in the mail.

My people! A storm gathers! Yea, I tell you all to heed my words and learn what will transpire should you fail in your moral duty come the Day of Decision that looms larger with every passing hour and colourful pamphlet.

That filthy, socialist organisation that deigns to call itself the ‘Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’ will convert your children – the fruit of your very loins! – to the false religions of communism and talking back to authorities.

The Americans will descend upon us from the South, the Chinese from the East, the East Indians from West. All these interlopers will gaze upon our natural bounty in a way that makes us extremely uncomfortable.

All your muskets, passed down from father to son for untold generations, will be swiped from your very hands, so that you shall no longer be able to hunt man nor beast in the manner which OUR LORD has intended.

A plague of locusts and terrorists will sweep o’er the land, bombing and devouring all in their path. Nothing shall stop them, for airport security checks will be swept away by socialists and perverts and pesticides will have been banned.

Yea, the corpse of Macdonald shall rise from his grave and none shall tell whether he is a drunkard or undead until his maw rends flesh from vulnerable necks. Thereupon, his strength renewed, he shall chide us all for the grievous error we have committed that has doomed our fair and fragile. But his instruments of speech will have rotted away and none will understand him.

Department stores will post confusing and contradictory hours and none shall tell when it is the appropriate time of day or night to purchase toilet paper or Triscuits.

All these and occurrences too dark and foul to speak of on this sanctified ground will come to pass if you do not deliver unto Harper his majority. Amen.

The Goose Girl, Part II

You thought I forgot to finish this one, didn't you? You were wrong. Donate, if you're inclined.

Where was I? Oh yes.

~

The journey to Isolder was peaceable enough. The roads were well-maintained and it was a pretty sort of scenery of the type birds and other forest creatures frolic in and in which the sort of soul who was inclined to such frippery might burst into song. ‘Velda’, so I had dubbed her, sulked in silence, too overcome with this inexplicable turn of events to say anything. Were it anyone else, I would say that she was too smart to attract any attention from me unless it were part of a plan. But had she had any brains at all, she wouldn’t have allowed me to trick her so easily in the first place.

The only trouble came from Falada. I counted myself as respectably skilled at the art of horsemanship, but the beast troubled itself to move roughly with every step and motion of its back. Neither carrot nor stick would cure it; soon I was sore enough as if I had travelled an entire day on the camp trail. Even focusing on the silence of it all did not alleviate my discomfort, for just on the edge of hearing, I could hear those damnable words.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

Was it directed to Velda or myself? I wondered.

~

Prince Belder of Isolder was more a boy than man – less coddled than Narthena, but with still many years of growing ahead of him. Given what our relationship was to be, though, I made the effort to discern his better qualities. A pleasant smile, a strong jaw. A frame that was just the right height, for his eyes could meet my own on the same level.

“And your handmaiden? How shall we accommodate her?”

I considered. The continued fact of her meant the possibility that she might find her courage or her pride and tell someone, anyone of the deception. Concocting some flimsy excuse for her execution, however, would arouse suspicion. Keeping her by my side would allow me to keep an eye on her, but increased the number of people of actual importance she might inform.

“She is a peasant that was hired to accompany in my journey; she is no longer needed. Please find a purpose for her elsewhere.” That was promptly agreed to. “But as for my steed... She has been a most unruly beast throughout the journey and I am afraid she is fit for nothing more than to be put down. Please see to it in the most swift and merciful manner possible.”

Velda was placed with a goose herder. I thought it appropriate.

~

Belder and I wed immediately. We enjoyed the wedding night, even though both of us were nervous despite ourselves. I shivered at his touch, he shivered at mine, and I whispered in his ear. After many long hours, he collapsed upon the mattress, exhausted. I followed not long afterwards. I am still human.

~

That night, I dreamed of my mother.

She was a handsome woman, strongly built but with the most beautiful eyes imaginable. (I had not inherited them.) She was a weaver by trade and all through the day and into the night, she would sit at her loom, weaving, weaving.

“I always knew, my daughter, that you would be strong,” she said, weaving a tapestry of fabulous patterns such as that the blessed king of Gamelin would not be ashamed to wear. I, sitting at her feet, nodded eagerly, beaming at her praise.

“That you would be strong enough to challenge princes, nations, gods, whatever your heart might set upon. And you would come out stronger still because you were my daughter and my daughter could do no less.”

Her tapestry grew ever more complex, with fields and forests and battles, moreso than any human could possibly create in reality. But this was a dream and dreams were not beholden to reality. “But this?” she asked.

My heart fell.

“Isn’t this beneath you?”

~

The days passed banally enough, the nights kindly. I allowed my brain to drown out the nonsense of the Isoldian court, it possessing no heart nor interest for me. But the nights? I allowed myself to see more than the strong jaw, but the way his breath pulsed and his lungs breathed in the whole of me. I grew to enjoy my prince’s company. I whispered in his ear every night, as per my duty, about the wicked ways of Cordelon and Tanefor and all the enemies of Gamelin and he dutifully repeated my suspicions to the High Council and to his lord father, the king.

Velda the goose girl did whatever a goose girl did during her days. I kept watch over her, because I refuse to be stupid, but she did nothing but drive the geese out every day with Conrad the herder.

I heard troubling rumours, though.

Of a horse head, hung over the gate where the goose herder and his girl passed through every morning and every night, that constantly spoke these words: “If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.” I went to this gate many times, but the horse’s head was always gone by the time I arrived.

Of a girl who charms the wind so as to blow the loose strands of her hair away, so that the herder may not claim them. But when I went to see in secret, she was attending to her duties as suitable and the wind behaved as normal.

Of a herder who refused to work with the girl any longer and a king who grew suspicious and a girl who overcame her fear enough to tell her troubles to an iron stove. I whispered and whispered into the prince’s ear, but it was not enough.

~

I dreamed of my mother, night after night after night, always fluctuating between shame and pride and fear. I did not know what this constant dream meant, only that it was likely I was never to see her again.

~

Everything had gone wrong.

The prince – technically my husband, although I should not think he was of the same mind any longer – clutched the hilt of his sheathed sword as though it were a neck. The number of guards in the dining hall was just ever so slightly higher than normal and no longer kept to the perimeter. And in front of me was the one person in all the world I least wanted to see. Why did I not find some way of offing her instead of shoving her into honest labour? Ah, hindsight!

She looked very fine and composed, which was such a rare thing for her that I had to stop myself from marvelling at it and giving the game away. Not that, I suspected, that such efforts would last much longer.

“Good day, my lord,” I said, curtsying with my knees bent low and my skirts dressing the floors. “How might I serve you?”

But the king spoke first. “I have a query for you, my daughter. And I require you to answer truthfully.”

I nodded, knees still bent.

He related to me the situation of the Narthena, Velda, whomever, leaving out no detail whatsoever save for that of the name of the personages involved. I listened, nodding. Then he asked me, upon finishing, “What should be the punishment of such a blackguard?”

“Tear the clothes from her back,” I said without hesitation. “Shove her in a barrel lined with nails, and drag her throughout the city until she breathes no more.”
“So shall it be done,” said the king, as the guards rushed forward and seized my arms. I did not fight them. What was the point?

~

And yet, not long afterwards, the clothes stripped from my back – they were of the mind that the nakedness would shame me, little considering that the lack of warmth would pain me more – I was shoved in a windowless cell. Dark and bare. A cot would have been a luxury. Food and water? Ha!

I sat in the black for a long, long time. Doing nothing. Saying nothing.

But I was not Narthena. Torture? Certainly, they would like to drive my secrets and orders from my flesh with all the devices their mind could devise, whether true or false. But I refused to let that happen.

The punishment I described? A shameful thing, not fit for beasts! Certainly it would meet the needs of the bloodthirsty weaklings of Isolder and Cordelon, but they needed to create strength where they could.

But they would try and I was not certain that my strength as a soldier of Gamelin would sustain me. So I slept instead and thought.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there as light at all – they took me by the arms and carried me bodily to another dark chamber. They had many fine instruments there and they introduced me to every one of them, explaining their purpose in great detail. Then, they proceed to use them. I screamed. I refused to yield. And I tried my very level best to...

~

My vision faded. All turned black.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

I know not what I told them.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there was light at all – they dragged me out of the cell, pushing and shoving, hungry and thirsty, cold but still strong. They shoved me out into sun’s glare, crowds at my feet with an insatiable hunger ill-disguised.

The king stood before us all, explaining to the peasant and merchant and noble my ‘crimes’ in the name of my own king and country and nation, even though he knew nothing, really, as my once husband and his soon to be bride stood to the side in their grief and satisfaction. Could I detect a hint of grief on Belder’s face? Remembrances of private jests and kisses stolen when we were certain that most of the court had their gazes turned away?

Could that have been the product of my fevered imaginings as I faced my death?

It mattered not. Into the barrel they shoved me, nails all around. My breath shallowed and I am ashamed to say, I cried. But there was still more to be done.

The bottom was not lined with nails, nor the top. I braced myself against either end, allowing my breath to become ever the more shallow, lest they be pierced with the nails all around. I heard them as they tied the top of the barrel to the horses and braced myself against the top and the bottom, as they urged the horses along and the barrel tilted until it was sideways.

Hours passed. I refused to give up. Bled and scratched and pierced though I was, I did not allow myself to be driven through with every bump and turn, with every passing whimsy of an animal. I cried with the pain and I remembered my mother, at her spinning wheel, at her loom, shaking her head with every deviation from what she thought I ought to be.

The pain did not depart. But the minding of the pain! Ah, that did depart.

Hours passed. I kept my strength. I kept it until I was certain the ravenous crowds would become bored and depart and the streets would empty of all but their refuse. My arms felt like jelly, and still I held firm. As did my legs, but still I held firm. As did my will, but as an agent of Gamelin, I held firm.

It stopped. Horses could only go on forever. The good soldiers of Isolder broke the top of the barrel open again and dragged me out. They considered me. Give the public a show and admit defeat with the first go around or dispatch me then and there?

~

Which would you choose? They chose as I would have done.

Things in History You Should Know: Hal Kolger

Along the lines of the Queen Crisantha piece, here's another 'Things in History You Should Know' article set in the same world as 'Strike in the Shining City' and the upcoming Nanowrimo work, 'The Spell of Vesperia.' Incidentally, if you wish to sponsor me for that, please regard the Paypal button on the right of the page.

If there’s one thing anyone has noticed about a map of Norland, it’s that it’s big. Really big. ‘Very nearly the largest country in the whole damned world’ big. The thing one must remember, though, is that the map didn’t get so large by itself, nor did all the fiddly little lines and other bits get in there by themselves either. Someone had to explore about, armed with sophisticated instruments, amenable guides, and stuff to write it all down with. One of these someones was Hal Kolger, gentleman of fortune.

‘Twas the year 1117. The mother country of Spira was off warring the other mother country of Langpald (again; it was kind of their thing.) As such, the colonies were warring with each other too, because as much as they would’ve like to keep their noses out of it, the powers that were wouldn’t let them. Ursalia was no exception, for it was a Shulmanian and Shulmania was allied with Spira, QED. Enter Kolger.

We don’t know much about Kolger’s early years. Tradition has it that he was born in the coastal township of Blauenburg in 1086, the son of mariner parents, although there are some tasty indications that by ‘mariner’, they meant ‘pirates of a most criminal and bloodthirsty bent.’ Young Hal grew up all right, though, and by the time 1117 rolled around, he is not on record as having keelhauled anyone.

Nevertheless, he was disinclined towards soldiering on sea or on land so the man described as a ‘giant with a bonfire for a beard’ sought other opportunities to assist the war effort. Such as filling in those tantalizingly blank portions of the map. Find a place, claim it and its resources for your lords and masters, profit as a proud patriot. So he set out into the wilderness, accompanied by a Dakala woman known to posterity as Benathidt.

He kept a journal throughout the journey, writing in it every day and so well that it is known as one of the classics of Shulmanian literature – odd when you consider that none of his previous writings, if they existed, were considered important enough to preserve. He wrote of canoeing to the very source of the Maximilien River, traversing the Giant’s Spine Mountains, legging it across the seemingly endless prairies of Mesopelagia – all and a thousand more feats before finally setting his eyes on the Eila Ocean, near the site of modern day Arms of Gold. When he did so, he writes, he fell to his knees and wept, overcome by it all.

The Nelurians who had set up shop nearby sheltered and fed him, Benathidt, and their three month old son Willem before allowing them to hitch a ship ride in the general direction of home. They were cool like that.

By the time Hal and Benathidt stepped foot in Blauenburg again, it was four years since their initial departure. The war had ended. Hochelaga was now a Spiran colony, along with their original set of Rochilda and Cabotia, leaving Laurentia the sole remaining Langrish colony in Deralea. Hal was hailed as a hero, his journals immediately published for a most respectable sum and financial awards and medals showered upon him by Governor Brauer. As witnessed by the journals which he continued to maintain, Kolger revelled in it. Another son, Erich, arrived in 1123. He and Benathidt wed in the Shulmanian fashion shortly thereafter.

He was happy, wealthy, and honoured. And as everyone with a sense of dramatic narrative knows, that’s when everything went to hell.

First came the death of Erich when he was but two years old. The reason why is uncertain – Kolger’s journals stop at this time. Then Benathidt, the love of his life and without whom his journey west would not have been possible, was found washed up on the shore after a stormy night. Whether her death was an accident or purposeful is, again, uncertain.

The journals never resume, although written accounts of Kolger do. Town records report him stumbling through the streets at all hours of the day, mumbling and sometimes sobbing, drunk to a sickening degree. The situation deteriorated to the extent that Benathidt’s sister was given custody of Willem and leave to spirit him off to her own people, never to see his father again.

Hal Kolger eventually became a ward of the state and he didn’t last long afterwards. He hanged himself in his room (or rather, cell) one morning in 1130, a letter addressed to the long-dead Benathidt the only thing he left behind to explain himself. It didn’t explain much, except how much he wished she would visit him again.

The consequences of his journey outlived the man, the first of these being that the Dakala Tribe became very rich off of his still respectable estate and the sales of his journals. The second of these was tied into the fact that he was Ursalian, or rather, Shulmanian.

Shulmania, after founding Ursalia, had little interest in branching out on the Deralean continent. Nevertheless, by the ‘laws’ of exploration so far as Estelians were concerned, most of it had been claimed by Kolger on their behalf. Neither Langpald nor Nelura were in a position to commandeer this territory and Spira had no desire to piss off a long-standing ally. Thus the hundreds of tribes in between the two coasts went virtually unmolested until Norrish Confederation (with added Ursalia!) in 1245. The individual treaties took decades to hammer out, including those allowing the Great Railway to be built, outlining the conditions for Estelian settlement, and ‘requiring’ assistance in hunting wendigos. This did not stop the occasional armed scuffle, but nothing ever does.

Prime Minister Lark downed several bottles of whiskey and acquired most of her grey hairs because of this Kolger. He likely wouldn’t have felt that much pity, though.

50-Word Short Story #4

Only fascists wouldn't consider participating in this clash of carefully chosen words in the comments, because fascists don't know how to have fun.

There were things lurking underneath the bed. Dark things. Terrible things. Maggie tried the old ‘put the sheets over your head’ trick, but she knew it only delayed the inevitable crunch of her bones.

This is where axes come in handy. She had much to explain to her parents, though.

Ogre

Another story set in the same universe as Strike. Please you enjoy. If you do, consider regarding the 'donate' button to the side or telling your likeminded friends about this site.

There was an ogre underneath the bridge.

This wasn't a normal concern for Losa. All the children in the mining village whispered about it, true, but the bridge in question was so out of the way from any place anyone would want to go that she little feared it gnawing on her young bones.

That was how the case remained until she fell in love with a handsome boy of the advanced age of fourteen. All that he required to prove her love was the steal a rock from underneath the bridge, where the ogre dwelled.

She agreed. Infatuation had that effect.

The next morning, during the false dawn while her mother and father still slept, Losa crept out of the cabin. Over her shoulders, she slung her pack, filled with sensible things such as an extra set of clothes, a firestarter, and two days' worth of meals, should matters get chancy for her. Attached to her belt was a sheath and in the sheath was her knife. She did not think it would do much against an ogre, but then she was not at all sure that the ogre even existed.

The children of the village had a rhyme: "Follow the spine up the mountain tall / There the ogre your bones will maul." There were other verses, each progressively nastier, but they were not much use so far as directions were concerned. So Losa cast them from her mind, or at least tried to.

The journey did indeed devour most of the day, with the sun rising – up, up, up, until it was directly overhead, before taking a decided westward direction. A hungry journey, it was too. She ate her ‘rations’ of biscuits and jerky with an unseemly relish and wondered whether she would have enough should her journey was an extended one after all.

The wonderings ceased when the river bended, revealing a bridge so ancient it must have been built by the grandparents of the grandparents of the grandparents of the three tribes that sometimes ventured up the mountain in alternating years. Underneath it, the bank dipped precipitously down to the water, although the bridge must have been flush with the river when the snow melted.

Losa relaxed and smiled. No ogre, no problems. Her scepticism had been proven correct and now the only dilemma that existed for her was whether to tell the truth of the matter to the other youth. So it was that she strode confidently up to the bridge, knelt down to pick out the handsomest and most distinguished of the pebbles she could find, and nearly dropped dead with fear when a leathery hand five times the size of a man’s fell upon her shoulder. That hand lifted her up, turned her about, and tossed her bodily into the weeds. Her feet scrambled for purchase and failed and she fell onto her ass. She ignored the pain from the burrs’ scratches and her bleeding calves and looked up.

The ogre was a hairy, overgrown creature that looked much like the tales she had heard from the more well-travelled adults in the village of 'apes' and 'gorillas' and 'chimpanzees' dwelling on the impossibly far-off continent of Kiloses. Its fur was damp and matted, twigs and leaves and mud generously coating much of it. Perhaps 'it' was the wrong term - the maleness of the creature was much in evidence. He had very large teeth and a smile that looked like a bear's. The knife remained in its sheath. It was unlikely that it could even penetrate his fur.

Losa did not think he could read minds, but he must have been able to tell plainly what was going on in hers by reading every bit of her body’s language. "I do not eat children," said the ogre. "The forest and river provide enough food for me; why should I bother with humans and their spawn and bring down their wrath? Answer me that, child."

Losa confessed that she did not know.

“Now what have you come to steal from my humble home?”

“A pebble… sir. From underneath your bridge. Someone asked for one as a gift.” As calm as she tried to keep herself, she could not keep the tremble from her voice or the increase from her heartbeat. “I won’t ask for your food or anything else. Just a pebble. Then I’ll go. I won’t even come back.”

The ogre put his head back and laughed, a booming, gravelly sort of laugh. “Oh, I haven’t any doubt of that! Ha! Every generation or so, one of your kind comes along to bother me about pebbles or somesuch. Proving yourself for the one you lust! So romantic! So mundane, to brave an ogre over the leavings of the mountain! Don’t you want something more exciting than that? Something more worth wasting your day over?”

Losa considered this. She did not think now that the ogre thought to consume her, unless his character was akin to a cat’s. But even still, even still…

"If you come closer, I can show you your future. And I shall give to you your pebble." He leaned in close to her face and opened his mouth with all its fine, large teeth. Before Losa could even think of backing away, even in instinct, he breathed in. He breathed out. It smelled of rot and she blacked out.

But did she?

Ever slowly, her vision cleared, as though she were waking up after a nap in the noon sun. Spots danced across and coloured her sight; she blinked rapidly to banish them. And then she saw.

Not herself. It quickly became evident that her own body was not in the picture, as she could not see her hands or feet or arms or torso, or even the tops of her cheeks and sides of her nose like she would normally. She could not feel her limbs at all, no matter how much she tried to move them about, and it was not as though they were numb. Rather, it felt like they did not exist, like the only things to her name were her mind and eyes and… ears and nose. She could hear the call of birds in the distance and the buzzing and chirps of summer insects. She could smell the fir and wildgrass and crisp mountain air, so much fresher than that of the town’s and with less of the underlying aroma of horse apples.

She could see the graveyard, but it was wrong. There should only have been five markers, for the stillborn Fonger twins, for her elder sister, for Mr. Ephraim and Ms. Challenger, as it was preferred to lay the dead to rest down in town in almost every circumstance. But here there were three dozen wooden markers, spaced at regular intervals in an overgrown clearing, rectangular patches of grass slightly elevated directly in front of each.

Losa read the names and dates etched on every single marker. All but the original five proclaimed the same year of death. The year was not far. Not far at all. And she knew that they could not have represented all of the dead, for surely the town’s graveyard grew more crowded that same year.

The graveyard faded, to be replaced by ogre. That was enough; Losa wept.

"What becomes of me?" she asked when she grew tired of the ogre’s smug countenance, enough so that it slowed her sobs and brought her back to coherence.

"Sweet child, that has always been up to you." He stalked back to the bridge and bent double over the bank. He hemmed and hawed for half an eternity before picking a lumpy grey pebble of no particular distinction and he forced it into Losa’s shaking hand. “There you are. Off with you. I’ve had enough entertainment for one day.” The ogre did not have to repeat the request. Losa turned and ran in the space of a breath, never looking back in case he had been fibbing about not eating humans.

Night fell over the village before Losa returned. No one was out; the glow of lamps flickered in the cracks of the cabins’ shutters. But before she crossed the threshold of her own home and endured her inevitable punishment, there was another home to which she had to call on first. She went and knocked quietly on one of its shutters, the one above the boy’s bed. Then she stood by it and waited.

He appeared soon afterwards, slipping out through the doorway and tiptoeing over to her. “You’ve come back,” he said. Losa pulled his hand over to her and forced the pebble into it.

He regarded the pebble with a speculative expression, rubbing it between his fingers and catching the available light off of it in all different directions. "This is it?" he said. "You're not kidding me, are you? It'd be a bit of poor play for you to get the whole village up in an uproar over a fake." The boy must have caught her own expression and adjusted his. “It is it, isn’t it?”

He smiled at her and she smiled back and forced herself to blush. The only thing she could think of when he kissed that pebble and placed it with exaggerated care into his leather pouch was the wooden marker in the lonely clearing, with its name clear as the ogre's river. And then she thought, if her own destiny was up to her, surely it was so with others? Surely the vision could not have been set?

"Have you ever thought of going to the coast? To Englin?" she blurted.

The boy looked at her crossways. Not even a word - just a furrowed brow and a corner of a mouth that could not decide whether to go up or down.

“There’s work there,” she continued, even though she knew that her cause became more hopeless by the second. “Moreso than here or in town. We wouldn’t have to be trappers like our mothers and fathers. Wouldn’t that be good?”

But the boy shook his head. “You can do what you want, but I like it here. Thanks for the gift, Losa. I’ve got to go back in now, so goodnight.” He ruffled her hair like her elder sister did and departed back into the cabin, shutting the door behind him.

Her destiny was up to her and so it was with others, but she could never force their minds.

And then she left.

It does not matter how or when she did so, just that happened before that year came bearing down upon her. She kissed her mother and father goodbye, invited them to come and see her once she was settled, and set her feet down and down the mountain. Whether she would see them again, she did not know yet. With any luck, they would take her hint.

50-Word Short Story #3

Aw yeah, everyone. It's Go Time. Everyone is welcome to make their own contributions in the comments and I shall respond in kind!

There were fast times at Fort Whoop-up and the American purveyors of illegal spirits were in a fine mood. They were well on their way to meeting their unofficial corporate goal of having the entire population of the prairies stinking drunk.

Until the Mounties spoiled everything. Just like the Man.

Exhumed

Brief, silly thing I wrote a bit ago. The concept could probably make a decent novella if I worked at it.

Ten years ago, a man died. They placed his body in a coffin, they buried his coffin in the soil. A lovely, shady spot that overlooked the river, to the right of a child that had succumbed to any one of a number of diseases back in 1896. Over the course of this decade, bugs and maggots made their way into the coffin, stripping the man of his clothes and flesh and guts. Except the brain. The brain was still there.

The reason I knew this was simple: we were drunk, it was grad, and there was nothing to do in town except drink more and egg cows. Someone in the group - I forget who now, it might have been Jesse - suggested we go boo around at the cemetery with our booze. We all agreed. Someone else dared Rick to pee on a headstone. That, of course, was done. And it just kept going and going, until...

"Dare you to dig up Principal Baker," said Heather. Okay, maybe a bit more slurred than that. Naturally, we all agreed. We scrounged some shovels from the groundskeeper's shed and went to work. I can't tell you how long it took, because the work was constantly interrupted by giggling, laughing, shushing, beer breaks, pee breaks, and general horsing around. Someone dug their shovel into my foot. It hurt.

Finally - it had to have been past midnight, maybe even closer to two - we uncovered the coffin. This was a ritual accompanied by many cries of, "Aw, dude, wicked!" and similar. Principal Baker lay there in all his glory, illuminated by flashlight. He was pretty much just a pile of bones by this point, except...

"Guys, look at this," I said, pointing my flashlight right where his eyes ought to be. They looked. They recoiled. A greyish-pink mound could be seen inside the cavities and it pulsed.

A strange, wheezing sort of sound came from the open jaw. It sounded something like this: "Oh, hello. Have the Canucks won yet?"

~

Naturally, having made such a miraculous discovery, we decided to bury Principal Baker right back up again and never speak of it ever again. We did have a good conversation with the poor man first. We weren't monsters, after all.

Grad finished. Summer happened. Half of our ten were leaving come September, so we decided to make the most of it. By 'most of it', I mean dirt biking, drinking beers on a mountainside, and tubing down one of the rivers. It was good times. Except until July 30th.

That was the day Rick drowned. We'd been tubing. And kissing. He and I were lounging on two inner tubes and he leaned over to either do more kissing or to grope me or both and... he slipped. And got sucked underneath. We couldn't save him. We just weren't good enough.

I was inconsolable for precisely one week. On the seventh day, his body was found. And here's the strange thing: the guy who found him? He said Rick tried to speak with him. "Did someone tape True Blood for me?" was Rick's plaintive cry, his skin bloated and grey.

Naturally, our town being what it is, everyone heard about it in an hour, along with some doctor confirming the brain was pink and a hundred percent intact. It also got out that he wanted to speak with me. What could I do? Of course, I went to do so.

I stood shivering in the cold, sterile room, clad in my tank top and shorts. Rick lay on the gurney, much uglier than he used to be. My feet shuffled the rest of me over to him.

"Rick?" I said, trying hard not to retch. Skeletons are easier to deal with.

In a quiet voice, he said, "Closer..." I leaned over him. "Closer..." I leaned further. "Wanna make out?" I leaned back so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.

~

He lived with his parents for many years afterward, I heard. Worked his way through a degree, distance-style, before becoming a professional spam artist. Even got himself a girlfriend. It takes all types.

~

Rick was the first - okay, maybe Principal Baker was the first - but he wasn't the last. People simply ceased to die properly. Don't mistake me, they didn't become ravenous zombies or anything like that. They just stuck around, lounging like lumps, chattering on about inanities.

It happened to the seniors. It happened to the random heart attack or cancer victim. It spread outside of town, to Kelowna and Spokane and Nelson and Trail and all the little places along the way we don't like to talk about. From there, it spread to Vancouver and Seattle, to farthest Nova Scotia and Florida. The dead lived and would not shut up about hockey.

Borders were shut down. It didn't help.

Hurricanes, earthquakes, disasters of all sorts unleashed themselves upon the world. They left behind masses of corpses, complaining about the weather. "Can someone at least bring me a cup of tea?" they cried, as the living struggled to drag them back in from the ruined streets.

The nations of the world decided, as one, to resume the space race in order to colonise a world in which they could have elbow room that was not clogged up with the dead. Our neighbours to the south got flung into a constitutional crisis when President Khan was assassinated and insisted on serving out the rest of his term.

Now there's me. I died five minutes ago, on a planet far from home. It was due to natural causes, so don't get too weepy.

My daughter certainly isn't. She held my hand during the last seconds, yes, but now she's busy with paperwork. "Mom, do you really need the deluxe holopad? Only the regular version's almost as good and half the price and we could really use the money to redo the kitchen."

"No and no," said I. "The deluxe has the Titanic adventure. The regular doesn't. End of story."

The dead must maintain some dignity.

50-word short story #2

Piper, Jimmy - it's on! Read the comments, everyone else, and post if you got 'em.

The mountains crumbled. The seas ran dry, spilling into the cracks in the earth. Volcanoes cooled. Winds stilled. Fire ceased to burn.

The survivors of humanity gazed upon their broken world as they drifted in their spaceships. Captain Rodriguez turned to his fellows and said, “Glad we left that place.”

Things in History You Should Know: Queen Crisantha

This is an attempt at writing one of my history articles about the world in which Strike takes place. It was fun times.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away – okay, Spira – us peasantry got it in the teeth a plenitude of times. And it wasn’t all that long ago, being more like a century and a half, give our take. Yet now we live in a happy fun world where the colonies are their own nations, parliaments reign supreme, and the nobility don’t have a whole mess of privileges with which to lord it over us lesser folk. And who do we have to thank for this?

That’s right. Crisantha fuckin’ Landrell. Queen Crisantha, that is.

Nevertheless, democratic reformer types don’t just magically spring fully-formed from the foreheads of the nobility. Sure, there had been revolutions, both peaceful and violent, springing up pretty much all over the Estelian continent and a suitably idealistic young noble might possibly, without further provocation, take up the cause of the downtrodden. Might, but not likely.

The key element here is the Shulmanian Revolution, in which that country, its last emperor having got himself killed through act of horse and his remaining relatives being so distant they might as well be on another hemisphere, decided that elections might be worth a try. Thus so did Abelard von Aschenheim became their first president, a couple of generations before Crisantha got started. Why is this relevant, you may ask? Well, it just so happens that Crisantha’s mother was a cousin of his. And that Crisantha was sent over to Shulmania in her youth to go get educated. And who was in charge of her education? Come on, now. You can figure this out.

So you have this young noblewoman, who’s next in line to inherit her father’s duchy of Belsworth and who also, incidentally and through the most technically correct interpretations, has more of a right to the throne than the then-queen Lucina did. And she’s off in foreign parts, getting her head stuffed full of ideas.

Now, if you’re a sensibly minded monarch, you’ll leave that branch of the family well enough alone and find some nice little cause they can distract themselves with. Queen Lucina was hardly sensible. In fact, most historians say, she was downright crazy. She had the Duke of Belsworth arrested, along with Crisantha’s younger brother Tiberian, and told the whippersnapper to stay out of the country, lest she have the two executed.

Too bad the prison conditions were so lousy that the duke died. Also too bad that rumours of torture, involving said duke and her brother reached the newly-fledged Lady Crisantha’s ears in not-far-enough-off Shulmania. (These later turned out to be true.) And you better believe that she declared it on. Or the 13th century equivalent thereof.

She got herself an army. This was easy enough, considering the Shulmanian Congress had already voted to support her and oh, incidentally, there were a lot of people down south in Spira that thought she might possibly make a better queen than Lucina. Wholesale oppression of the lower – and middle classes, who had quite the percentage of the nation’s wealth in their ample pockets – had that effect. Rebellion had begun.

It lasted an entire year, fracturing the country like a mirror that got a rock tossed at it. Brother against sister! Parent against child! Pristinian against Nelurian! (Although as those last two were foreign, no one was really paying attention to what they had to say about it.) Long story short, the ‘Belsworths’, as they were called, were victorious, despite more than their fare share of near finishes.

Crisantha celebrated her nineteenth birthday on February 29, 1211, the very day she was crowned. And your parents thought you were precocious. The former Queen Lucina was executed just afterwards and she was lucky enough to watch the whole, wonderfully choreographed coronation. Her last words were recorded for posterity; alas, they’re but a string of expletives.

Then the nobles who supported her got a nasty shock: she really meant her grand speeches of reform and democracy and egalitarianism. She stripped her former fellow dukes and duchesses of most of their privileges, particularly those of tax avoidance and their hogging of almost all of the seats in the House of Commons, not to mention all of the laws that gave them a free pass for almost any offense committed against someone of a ‘lesser’ class. Good thing the middle class supported her, then – the uppers wouldn’t lend her money anymore.

She carried along those lines for the rest of her days, fitting in a couple of scandalous affairs to spice up the quiet times. Counter-rebellions were quashed, including that headed by the late Lucina’s brother, Asher. (We don’t know what happened to him – if he died in battle or was captured, it was never reported.) Then she died in 1291, so peacefully as to annoy all of her enemies and having already declared that the monarchy was to be a strictly ceremonial position from that point onwards.

In interest of full disclosure, one of her grandchildren did have the unmitigated gall to attempt a coup, as did some other scions of the royal line over the years. And for some of the colonies, most famously Abelia, the transition towards self-government didn’t come fast enough for them, leading to their own rebellions to gain their independence. (This hasn’t prevented them from wanting to snatch independence from others for the sake of some sweet, sweet land.) And, yes, she didn’t do it alone – many of her prime ministers, including Evelyn Godsmark, did much of the grunt work in getting her reforms passed through Parliament in the first place.

It couldn’t have happened at all, though, if it wasn’t for one young woman on a revenge kick. Now that’s a moral for the ages.

It Must Be Bunnies

Another 500-word, written in an hour story. Prompt provided by Isaac.

In the hall of the High Emperor, a debate of the gravest importance was underway.

Courtiers, clad in their house colours, swarmed about the throne. They shouted and seethed. Those with an arm free were using it to either raise their fist in the air or point at others in a most unseemly fashion. Every one of them held a small, furry mammal – one of a dizzying array of species then represented in the hall.
The High Emperor held his hand aloft for silence. Immediately, the courtiers ceased their bickering, aside from the occasional dagger-like glares.

“Gentlemen and gentleladies,” said the High Emperor in his ancient, highly-enunciated way. “This matter is too great to be wasted on such common prattling. We shall go through the candidates one by one and by those means, judge their qualities. Present the first candidate!”

Nobles being nobles, they had the order of precedence sorted out centuries ago. Thus it was that the Duke of Delia stepped forward, pot-bellied piglet in hand. He bowed as he presented it to the High Emperor, who picked it up gingerly. Soon, the piglet was squirming with glee as the High Emperor scratched it behind the ears.

“Yes, yes,” said the High Emperor. “Not as fluffy as we would like, but a charming and agreeable animal all the same. Given its species, we think it would grow into an intelligent beast, but how clean would it be?” After five minutes of petting the piglet and cooing at it, he returned it to the Duke of Delia. “Present the second candidate!”

The Duchess of Arshane was next, clasping in her arms a tiger cub. She handed it over to the High Emperor, whereupon it proceeded to gnaw and slobber upon his silken robes.

“Certainly adorable,” declared the High Emperor. “And fluffy. But we are concerned about its potential for destruction as it ages into maturity and also feel that it might be happiest frolicking on a reserve. Also, we believe that it would terrify the servants.” He shook his head, almost mournfully. “We are sorry, Arshane. But it cannot be. Present the third candidate!”

The Duchess of Arshane took this rejection with the stoicism for which her line was known. She reclaimed her beast and backed away into the crowd, the cub chewing on her brocade sleeves.

On it went. The monkey, the puppy, the kitten – all were examined and found wanting. Until Sir Lockley presented to him a most floppy-eared creature.

The bunny cast a most disapproving look upon him – black, beady, and unyielding.

“Bunnies!” declared the High Emperor. “It must be bunnies!”

He let the astonished murmurs of the courtiers carry on for some time before holding his hand aloft again. “It appears we must explain our decision. Look upon the bunny. See its disapproval! Clearly, it is the most honest and forthright creature in this land! Therefore!”

The High Emperor stood, bearing the bunny on high. “The bunny shall forevermore be the symbol of this royal house!”

The Afterlife of Abraham Lincoln

Another 500-word short story, done in an hour. More or less. Stupid leaf blower. Anyway, the prompt of 'zombie Lincoln's last hour' was provided by the singular Piper.

Abraham Lincoln was unhappy.

Not long ago – he couldn’t remember how long, as everything was fuzzy – he was president of these United States. He’d won a Civil War. He’d been watching a rather funny play. Next thing he knew, some bastard shot him in the head, shouting nonsense in Latin, and then… darkness.

Then light. The doctors peered down at him, not a little disturbed. He demanded an explanation.

They exchanged nervous glances, until one of them manned up and stepped forward. A curly-haired, bearded fellow. Barnes, wasn’t it? “I am afraid, Mr. President… That you part of the walking dead now.” He told him of the assassination, the futile attempts to save him, the perpetrator of the foulest of deeds, the strange magicks of an unidentified priest, every bit. “But at your rate of decomposition, you only have so much time left to you. Choose wisely, Mr. President.”

But he’d already made up his mind.

“Laid low by an actor!” Lincoln cried. “There is nothing for it. I must hunt down this John Wilkes Booth, no matter his talents, and devour his brains. I shall leave immediately.”

~

Booth hunting proved to be more difficult than he anticipated.

The difficulties started with Virginia. Lincoln, accompanied by thirteen Union soldiers, cornered him at a farm, having been tipped off by the farm’s owner. The plan was simple. The soldiers were to shoot him, Lincoln was to rip chunks of flesh from his still-living frame. How could it go awry?

Several bullets later, the dust cleared, revealing no Booth. Inconsolable and hungry, Lincoln feasted on the thirteenth soldier as an example to the others. “It might be wise to disavow knowledge of this Adams fellow,” he told them as they backed away. My, what a delicious bicep! “The public might be disturbed.”

~

After that night, he opted to go solo. Or at least, he liked to think he did. Scuttlebutt travelled through the ranks to the point where every soldier refused to serve at the former President’s side. So he shambled alone in the wilderness. The public would scream and throw things whenever they saw him in the city.

But Lincoln’s thoughts grew dimmer as his brain matter leaked out through his nostrils and gaping maw. The name of ‘Booth’ had been writ large on what was left – and ‘actor’, too, of course. The problem was that the man had come from a whole damnable family of actors!

He found Junius in Ohio. He could still talk then, albeit poorly, and managed to groan out an, “Booooth heeeeere?” Junius, to his credit, shook his head, explained that one should be looking for John but alas, he did not know where he was to be found. Lincoln shambled away and forgot the name.

He found Edwin in New York. By then, his jaw had fallen off and he could only rattle but my, didn’t the fellow look tasty!

Edwin promptly bashed his skull in while his little daughter screamed. Afterwards, they had cake.

The Rutabaga Mafia

Another 500-word short story, written in an hour. Prompt provided by my mother. She's a strange 'un.

Tom ‘the Swede’ Rutabaga and his cousin, Benny, cornered Eric the Red in a secluded corner of the fridge. Their leafy bits loomed over tubby, ripe tomato in a most threatening fashion. What was even more threatening was their teeny, tiny knives, carved from the bones of some long dead cow, which they pointed right at Eric’s extensive midsection.

“Where’s the money, Rouge?” sneered Tom, twisting his knife in his hands. “You were supposed to pay us back today, Rouge.”

Benny chortled, but did not add any of his own words to this. Benny wasn’t very bright, for a vegetable.

“I… I…” Eric stammered. His belly wouldn’t stop shaking and his eyes darted left and right, looking for escape routes. None were to be found, for the fridge door was closed and thus darkness reigned save for an LED indicator for something or another on the wall. “I’ve had a tough time! Susie’s been eaten and we had to pay for the memorial service and Lucy’s had to visit the shrink ever since she was jostled in the grocery bag and… I’ll give you ten sprouts right now, okay? And the rest tomorrow.” He looked into the baleful eyes of the Rutabaga. “For god’s sake, man!”

The Swede let the tomato sweat for a good, long while, not giving the slightest of responses save for the tightening of his hand on the knife handle and inching it close enough that it scraped his skin. “All right, Rouge,” he said. “Give the tenner over to the nice Benny here, all right?”

Eric could hardly believe what he heard, but the hope had entered him and refused to relinquish its hold. “Oh, thank you, thank you!” he cried, handing over the ten sprouts to the Rutabagas. They counted them, twice, and then they did the most remarkable thing – they drew their knives back, sheathing them in their leafy greens, and nodded. He was free to go.

“Go off, then,” said the Swede. “But remember tomorrow.”

~

But Eric could not pull off miracles.

Debbie Hunter was not having a good day. Nine hours of work, along with an out of town husband and an afterschool babysitter who flaked out on her at the last minute, did not make for any sort of good day. The boys had therefore been by themselves for two hours and oh, had the damage been done.

Now she had to make dinner for the little monsters. Joy.

Tacos, she decided. Tacos would be easy enough. Just fry up the ground beef, grate some cheese, cut up some vegetables, and go. She headed to the fridge to make her dream into a reality and opened its door.

Debbie’s fists clenched. She counted to ten slowly, very slowly, breathing the deepest of breaths with each numeral. When she was done, she said, “All right, which one of you little bastards ruined all the tomatoes?”

All five lay in a red mush by the butter dish. Their juice surrounded the yogurt.

Shiyam and the Genie

Another 500 words, written in an hour. The prompt, 'a girl finds a magic lamp and the genie is contrary', is provided by Ashley C, one of the many excellent Ashleys I know.

You rub the lamp, a genie wafts out, and he grants you three wishes. That’s how it was supposed to go, as everyone agreed. Shiyam, however, was faced with the distinct possibility that ‘everyone’ was talking out of their asses.

The genie – huge, hirsute, so blue he was nigh black, and smelling faintly of something later generations would know as ‘coffee’ – bent double so that he could glare at Shiyam in her eyes. Each of his own golden eyes was larger than her head. “I do so apologise,” he said, the bass of his words so pronounced that they made Shiyam’s bones vibrate. “Perhaps my hearing is diminishing. What do you want me to do?”

Shiyam did not turn and flee, partly on account of the cave wall at her back and partly because she was as stubborn as a goat. She crossed her arms and leaned her head forward until her nose and the genie’s nose were nigh touching. “It’s the rules. Now that I’ve summoned you out of there, you’ve got to grant me the three wishes or you’re just making a mockery of the whole of tradition.”

“No soul informed myself about this so-called ‘tradition’ of yours.”

“Nevertheless, I shall humour you for a spell.” He brought himself up to his full height, which the cave somehow managed to accommodate. Or perhaps he embiggened the cave with his magic to do so? “Mortal! What is your command! I shall grant you three wishes, only the three, and you damn your soul forever if you cannot face their consequences!”

The girl took her time and considered this thoughtfully. She was a peasant, descended from a long line of goat herders, and therefore was exceptionally practical in certain respects. It got to the point where the genie would be tapping his foot on the ground if he had feet and instead settled with tapping his fingers.

Nevertheless, Shiyam came to a decision. “I wish for my sisters to all find kindly, wealthy and intelligent husbands by the time the year is out. They can’t be younger than twenty or older than thirty-five, nor can they drop dead of any injury or malady before my sisters are provided with all the children that my sisters hope for.”

The genie frowned at her. “That hardly gives me much in the way of creative interpretation, does it? Shiyam said nothing, but frowned right back. A sigh, like the voice of an earthquake, rumbled out. “Granted. Next?”

“I wish to know the languages of every land, to the point where I can speak, write, listen and read in any of them with fluency.”

“Granted…”

Shiyam felt her mind fill up with so many strange words and concepts that she felt tingly. She began to speak of her third and final wish.

“I am tired from all this wish granting,” said the genie. “I need a rest.” He retreated back into his lamp.

Shiyam waited. She eventually had to get him out with tweezers.

ESL for Everyone

Another 500-word short story, written in an hour. The prompt, 'teaching ESL', comes courtesy of Laura, who had to teach me how to teach ESL. Poor Laura!

In all the long years of her career, Candace never taught a class like this.

She’d taught at home and abroad, drowned students of all nationalities up to their eyeballs in grammar rules and exceptions to grammar rules, faced the slings and arrows of outrageous culture shock. But this was out of her world.

In most respects, this was a typical ELSA classroom: air-conditioned, whiteboard at ready, with students seated at the tables. The way those students trembled was not normal, even during exams. Nor was the way Candace trembled. The handouts in her grasp moved back and forth with a speed that made the air conditioner unnecessary.

“Gl’yerk,” she said, keeping her voice authoritative even if nothing else about her was. “Spit out a chair so Juanita has a chair to sit on.”

Gl’yerkefonynulria, Secondary Mind of the Eighth Queen of the Kil’rasdyan home world, complied with a stomach-twisting squelch. “Sorry,” she said, while Juanita hurried to the washroom for the roll of paper towel needed to clean off the stickiness.

Candace had to actively stop herself from going to the washroom for an entirely different purpose and by the looks of it, several students were having the same crisis. Nevertheless, she continued. “What did everyone do this weekend?”

Said David, a glasses-clad Chinese man, “I went to Stanley Park with my wife.”

“Oh, neat! What did you see there?”

“We saw the aquarium and…” David trailed off, due to great discomfort. The reason for this was obvious, for one of Gl’yerk’s tentacles had strayed and was caressing his glasses.

“Gl’yerk, it’s not polite to touch other people’s glasses without asking!”

The tentacle shot back to its pouch, along with several others that were straying too close to the other students, leaving only those that held her pen and pulsed coded pulses back to the primary mind. “Sorry,” said Gl’yerk sheepishly.

“It’s all right, it’s all right, just be more careful, okay?” Right. Five minutes into the day and she already almost made one of her students cry. This wasn’t something she’d like to make a habit of. “Anyway, we’re going to start off with a crossword puzzle. I want you to work in pairs for this, so I’ll number you off from one to seven, okay? One to seven. Pay attention to your number.”

Juanita had returned by this point and was busily mopping up her chair with Lulu’s aid. ‘One’ and ‘two’, they were.

Gl’yerk was a number seven, thus she was paired with Dmitri, who had purposefully chosen a seat as far away from her as possible to begin with. He inched towards her, face pale, teeth chattering, but the others dared not comment. Gl’yerk’s hearing frequencies were too good.

Candace handed the worksheets out. She stood back and hoped.

Gl’yerk considered the problem for a moment. Then, without further ado, she unleashed a tentacle at Dmitri’s skull, sucked out the required information, then photostatically transferred the answers onto the paper.

She beamed hugely. Dmitri fainted.

Fear and Loathing in Lethbridge

A 500-word short story, written in an hour at the prompting of Isaac.

We were somewhere around the Mac’s across the street from the schoolyard when the drugs began to take hold.

We’d graduated three months ago – Daniel, Margaret, and I – and we’d quickly come to the realisation that not only were there no incredible wow jobs waiting for us when we got our diplomas in our hot little hands, but that we were stuck. In Lethbridge. Land of a few tortured trees and weather that couldn’t stay consistent from one hour to the next. So we did what we had to do. Take some shitty ass job to pay the bills until such a time as we could escape and smoke pot. Lots of pot.

But as we meandered our way across the crosswalk, honked at by asshole drivers, a light went off in my brain.

It didn’t have to be like this.

We could go, all of us. And it wouldn’t have to be to Calgary.

I reached into my bag of chips. Good ideas required lots of sustenance.

“So hey, guys,” I said, once I had swallowed and we were safely onto the opposite sidewalk. “What if… what if… we can get out of here, y’know?”

Margaret giggled. A shrill sound, but she couldn’t help it. “Yeah, and do what? We could go to Vancouver and, I don’t know, work another shitty job. And pay twice as much for rent.” She giggled again. “Yeah, that would be awesome.”

Daniel slapped my back in sympathy. I think he meant it to be a pat, but, well, that’s Daniel for you. “We’d all like to go, man –“

“Lady. Boobs.”

“Lady, but we’re, like, adults now. We’ve got responsibilities and shit. We just can’t go flying out of here like nobody’s business.”

But I knew it didn’t have to be like this. And I would prove it to them.

The next morning, I was free of the pernicious influence of marijuana and I knew even then that this would be the right thing to do. I packed my suitcase. I figured out what necessities would fit in my truck – the rest went right down to the Sally Ann. (Okay, I left the rice cooker for Margaret.) This done, I donned my leather jacket and black sunglasses, and said my goodbyes.

Daniel and Margaret shook their heads at me. “Dude,” they said. “Don’t you think this is a bit rash? What about your job at Carlton Cards?”

“Nuts to Carlton Cards. I’m sending my own greetings from now on.”

“But why can’t you stay here until we can leave too?”

I adjusted my sunglasses. “Because this is coyote country.” And I left. My truck pointed due west and I headed, quite literally, into the sunset.

But Vancouver is a hard and huge place, not like in the movies. Employment was scarce. Rent was cruel. The hippies looked upon me with disdain.

After not long enough, I was forced to call my Lethbridge posse. “Hey, guys. Can I crash on your couch?”

I could.

50 Word Short Story #1

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived by a mountain many fine and happy people. Then they all died horribly in an avalanche. They were very upset about this, but there was nothing they could do about it because, as previously mentioned, they were dead.

THE END

Audio: The Taxman

I kept a promise, for a change!

Behold, the audio version of 'The Taxman'!

Tell me what you think and if you know of any better place to host this. Now to soothe my throat with tea.

The Goose Girl, Part I

Everything had gone wrong.

The prince – technically my husband, although I should not think he was of the same mind any longer – clutched the hilt of his sheathed sword as though it were a neck. The number of guards in the dining hall was just ever so slightly higher than normal and no longer kept to the perimeter. And in front of me was the one person in all the world I least wanted to see. Why did I not find some way of offing her instead of shoving her into honest labour? Ah, hindsight!

She looked very fine and composed, which was such a rare thing for her that I had to stop myself from marvelling at it and giving the game away. Not that, I suspected, that such efforts would last much longer.

But let me stop and go back to a beginning. That is how stories properly begin.

~

Let me be clear: I did not like her from the first.

She was the sort of layabout nobility that is despised in my country. An idle prince or princess insults the peasant who sweats for them and defames the name of their house. Such a one as Princess Narthena Eshlin would have had armour clapped on her back and her buttocks thrown onto a saddle the first time she sniffled prettily over a less than fawning remark. But I had my orders and I honour my king.

Said king ordered me to become her handmaiden. Let it not be said that Gamelin agents do not suffer in the course of carrying out their duties.
The posting was easy enough to arrange and it would be tedious to go into the details. Those ultimately responsible had no idea of their six degrees removed relationship with the kingdom of Gamelin, which is, of course, the way it should be when arranging these delicate operations. As it was, I met my charge the week before she was to set out to wed the crown prince of the neighbouring Isolder.

I bowed first thing, keeping my eyes pointing to the floor until I was spoken to. This took a bit. I could hear whispering.

“Rise,” said Narthena, in the quietest and daintiest of voices. I did as ordered and in doing so was met with a fairly standard example of the quintessential young noblewoman – chestnut curls framing a heart-shaped face, large and guileless blue eyes, small, slim figure with not a hint of muscle tone to it. Her skin was so pale that I doubted that the sun had ever faced it. “My mother informed me that I was to have a new handmaiden for my journey.” The previous incumbent of the position had met with a convenient marriage. “You must be she. Theon Bywell would be your name, is it not?”

I nodded mutely.

Those eyes of mine took in the details of her highness’ bed chamber – an easy enough feat when maintaining eye contact with one so far above one’s position is considered to be one of the defining marks of boorishness. Lace and light and flowers were the themes, which was what I expected. A decanter of water with crystal glasses arranged alongside lay on the side table. There was a bookcase, but the number of volumes resting upon it did not exceed the counting of my fingers and toes. A fat and thoroughly spoiled long-haired cat sprawled itself across the wide expanse of the princess’ bed. A quarter-finished embroidery had been cast onto another table and by the looks of it, it had not been touched in some time.

Flowers festooned the room, but I doubted she had grown them herself or could even name them. A large and robust wardrobe filled a not insignificant chunk of the sizeable chamber, but that was to be expected. There was not a sign of any true passion she might have held and it summoned up in me such a visceral hatred in me that I struggled to keep it from showing. Call it an ancestral thing. Or a quirk of national pride.

“Might you fetch me a glass of water?” she asked. The decanter was perhaps four feet away from her. From me, it was fifteen feet. “I am ever so thirsty.”

I did as I was bid, as per always. If I let a bit of water splash on her pretty satin dress in my haste, well! We all have our burdens to bear.

~

Over the course of the week, I played the part of an exemplary handmaiden to the most spoiled, naïve, and useless of princesses. I fetched her water, her cat, whatever flower happened to catch her eye as she strolled through the gardens under her umbrella. I cut her food – cutting a steak was ever so much effort, you see, and she was so afraid of getting sauce on her smooth, pale hands – dressed her in the most needlessly byzantine of garments, beat out her mattress when she thought she might have detected a lump, killed whatever spider or other insect happened to cross her path and throw her into a panic. Useless, useless, useless, and all throughout, I smiled, smiled, smiled. Nowhere did she go without me by her side.

Well… that is not entirely true.

The day we were to leave, she was called into the presence of her mother, Queen Aphelia. The sky was dark yet. Isolder’s capital was not far from Cordelon’s – perhaps a day’s ride, on a route so safe that we were foregoing guards for most of it – but one had to set out early. Narthena had put up such a fuss over this small hardship that only the reminder of the beauteous prince at the end of the journey diminished the whining in any discernable sense.

I attempted to eavesdrop, but could not. Guards milled about the halls so that avoiding detection was impossible. As it was, the audience took half an hour and when Narthena quit it, she was dabbing her eyes with the blue cotton of her gown. Something white poked out of the top of her bodice.

“Oh, Theon, how I shall miss this place!” she cried and I took her hand as she did so.

Just faintly, I may have heard the words, "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two." But so faint it was that I dismissed it as a quirk of my imagination.

~

Narthena, to my surprise, did not receive her own mare to ride upon, but the queen’s own – Falada, strong, large, and beautiful, yet with the gentlest of temperaments. Necessities, including the princess’ dowry, were loaded up on the horse’s rump, although my beast received the larger share. The majority of the princess’ worldly possessions were to follow in another day or two.

We set out. Soon, it would be time to act.

The first four times she asked me to fetch her water from the stream that ran alongside the road, I acquiesced promptly and courteously, as a good servant should. Her goblet was filled, her hands received the goblet, her mouth received the water from the goblet in turn. Too close it was to the capital to turn my coat quite yet. And something else stopped me, something force, expressed in that faint sentence I caught in the air of the castle.

Ah, but the fifth time…

Charms and tricks though the queen of Cordelon uses, they shall not stop me from committing that which I set out to do. And they did not.

“Theon, pray fetch me some more water. I thirst terribly.” She did not perspire or appear to be in any discomfort and I suspected, not for the first time, that sometimes she had me do things simply because enough time had passed since the last time.

We reigned our horses in. Well along the path now – halfway there, if I were any judge, and well past the point where any citizenry could hope to hear us. “To be honest,” I declared. “I would really rather not.”

Narthena and, I could swear, Falada, stared at me as if I had grown an unruly appendage between my eyes. The thought of anyone refusing her royal highness, beyond, say, her equally royal mother, may never have occurred to her in her short, sweet life. “What is the meaning of this?” she asked. Incredulity dripped from every syllable.

I shrugged. Oh, it felt good to do that! “In our acquaintance with one another, I remained unaware of any deficiencies with your ears. To put it bluntly: you can fetch your own water.”

Her mouth opened and shut a few times, with nothing so noble as a word escaping it. Eventually, the shock of the situation compelling her to commit improbable deeds, she slid off of Falada onto the dirt of the trail. Her hands grasped onto the goblet for dear life as she did so, and as she bent down by the stream to fill it up. She drank, slowly. I thought I could see a glimmer in the corner of her eye.

“Quickly, now. We do not have all day.” She gulped down the remainder and as she stopped and heaved for breath, a white linen handkerchief fell out of her bodice. She scooped it up quickly, but not quickly enough for me not to see the three red dots marring its surface. Falada felt the weight of her once more and again, we moved. I swear that the cob glowered at me.

I heard the words: "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two."

~

It was another three hours before Narthena asked for water again and I could believe that she actually thirsted this time. But what kind of person would I be if I did not encourage independence in my charges? I said unto her, “Your last efforts hardly broke you. You can do it again.”

Here she really did cry, rather than merely threaten it, but I paid it no heed. Instead, I watched carefully as she sat her feet onto the dirt, made her way over to the stream with her precious, impractical goblet, and knelt down by the water’s edge. The handkerchief was once again poking out of her bodice. In my hand was a bun, meant to be a snack for the road. I took aim.

Now there was a compulsion in place against throwing even such a paltry missile at her royal skull, but there were certainly ways of circumventing it for my purposes. I threw it at the water beside her instead.

She startled. The handkerchief was freed once more, but this time there was no way of recovering it – it had floated well out of reach by the time Narthena recovered from her shock. And that was enough time for the compulsion to flicker out and die, allowing me to get down from my horse myself, find a handy rock, and knock it upon her head.

The princess of Cordelon went out like a light.

~

When she awoke, I had swapped our clothes and cleaned her scalp. Her face and hair I had drubbed up a bit, but not too much. It would not do for a princess to pack around such a slovenly handmaiden. As for myself, I looked a picture – a fact I confirmed with a silver mirror from my new luggage.

Bewilderment had taken over ‘Theon’s’ face and I must admit it galled me a little bit that such a creature would be walking about with my name. Or, for that matter, that I would be saddled with hers. I placed a finger on her lips as they parted to question me.

“Now, Theon, you know what this is about,” I said. “But others will not. You will not tell anyone about this, for if you do, you will die. Are we clear?”

She nodded, mutely.

“Get on the horse.”

As though by reflex, she made towards Falada, but I jerked her back roughly. “You know very well that she is the princess’ steed. Onto the other and quickly, now. I am eager to meet my husband.” It was not long before we were underway once more, almost as if nothing had ever happened. My handmaiden was so docile about her new circumstances that it sickened me to think on it. Surely even she could not let this stand idly? Surely even now she was concocted any sort of plan, no matter how sad?
These words cut through my reverie: "If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two."

But the handkerchief was gone. Why did I still hear it?

Falada stepped roughly on the dirt of the trail. I could feel my teeth rattle.

The Taxman

Audio version available here.

The taxman approached the house with no little trepidation.

And oh, there was such a good reason for this trepidation. This little taxman, you see – Smithly was his name – he drew the short straw. And any tax collector, no matter how large or brave they were, would hold their briefcase with shaking hands as they approached the Wizard Thompson’s house. But the Wizard owed a million dulcs to the city, the mayor promised the citizenry streetcars in the last election, and it was tax season.

So that is why Smithly made out his will, kissed his wife with a passion he hadn’t felt since their wedding day, and headed out to this eyesore of a residence with many long forms, pens, notices, and other special things.

He stepped up to the door. The bronze knocker was in the shape of some many-tentacled thing, which can’t have been an octopus, because it had too many tentacles. He did not use the knocker. The constabulary had provided the tax collectors with many interesting and stomach-twisting accounts of what happened to those who used the knocker. Instead, he took an iron rod out of his briefcase and beat it against the door, ready to flee at the first sign of dimension-warping death.

It did not come. The door opened into a perfectly mundane hallway. There was no one on the other side.

Smithly stood there for could very well have been for hours and ages, his knees knocking together like hands clapping. His teeth chattered, his muscles went taut. The only reason he didn’t sweat was because he felt so very cold. Eventually, he moved forward – not by steps, but by millimetres, like an overgrown caterpillar.

He reached the threshold. A shock raced through his bones, paralysing him, stilling his shaking and all other movements save his breathing. He couldn’t even blink, poor man! Even when a speck of dust fell right upon his eye!

“WHO DISTURBS MY SOLITUDE?” boomed a voice from everywhere.

Smithly felt his jaw loosen, not enough so that he could open his mouth wide for a full-bore yell. He gave it an admirable try, though.

“THAT’S ENOUGH OF THAT.”

The pseudo-yell shrunk into a squeak.

“NOW TALK PROPERLY.”

“M-Mr. Charles Smithly from Municipal Revenue. I’ve come to see about your taxes.” He swallowed, hugely. “...or maybe even have you pay them...”

The ground opened up beneath him. Smithly fell, something big smacked him on the head, and everything went so terribly dark.

~

When he came to – which wasn’t all that long afterwards, actually, somewhere between thirty and sixty seconds – he was bound to a chair with invisible chains in a lamp-lit room. There was a table before him. On the other side sat the Wizard Thompson.

Honestly, the wizard wouldn’t have looked to impressive to you or I if we’d been ignorant as to his grand status. Just a middle-aged man, even if he were really plenty older than that, with a big nose and an only moderately competent attempt at a beard. He didn’t even dress that oddly, unless button-down shirts, suspenders, and ties suddenly became dreadfully passé in the time since Smithly approached his house. The ornate gowns and cloaks a wizard was entitled to were not for him, as they were a bit of a hazard in his line of work.

“Now,” he said with a voice that was not so booming, but quite deep all the same. “You must be able to tell me a reason why anyone would weep over the death of a taxman.”

Smithly considered this. Having not been killed yet, he’d calmed down a touch, but he knew his answer had to be good. “My wife would miss me a bit,” he said. “And her parents like me, which I understand is not a certainty with in-laws. Also, I think I’m a pleasant fellow to have drinks with and I’ve never made a collection in anger.”

The Wizard Thompson grunted, but he did nod, which Smithly took as a promising sign. “And?”

“I’m kind to animals.”

“Then why don’t you have a dog?”

Panic rose. He was spying on him! Has he been spying on him? They did say that he could see anything that went on in the city; maybe he had a watch on all the tax collectors, just for these moment, and... Oh, just tell the truth! “My wife sneezes whenever they’re about.”

“Good, good. Now, just one more question... Why should I pay your taxes?” And here the wizard’s expression became terrible indeed and Smithly thanked his lucky gods that he had the good sense to take care of his necessities beforehand.

What should he tell him? The city needed streetcars? The Wizard Thompson could teleport at will.

Civic duty? He always did like to remind them all how many times he saved them from devilspawn and what have you.

Because everyone else had to pay them and damnit, he should have to as well? He also liked to remind them all how much he wasn’t like ‘everyone else’.

Mr. Charles Smithly was small and not very brave, but he had a job and felt he did it moderately well and that if he didn’t pull this one off, someone else would pull the short straw. It would keep going, on and on and on, until this city had no tax collectors. On that day, the city would be rubbish.

“Because if you do,” decided Smithly. “If you pay the full million, I’ll do something for you.”

“Do what?” asked the Wizard Thompson, leaning forward.

“Anything. Anything you name.” There. The only possible solution. “But we’ll have to sign a contract, if you please.”

The wizard smiled, not at all nicely. “Agreed.”

~

Have you ever heard of an hoxform? Oh, you educated readers must have, but I must provide an explanation for children or the ignorant: an hoxform is the product of a drunken tryst between a cobbler and an imp. Yes, I know, it doesn’t seem that dreadful. But it’s like vanilla and cumin, which are fine and innocuous enough tastes on their own, but combined together makes one reach for the minty toothpaste. An hoxform smells bad, looks worse, has runny bits all over it and relishes the eating of belly buttons. If you think this doesn’t sound serious, consider that these hoxforms possess large mouths and even larger teeth.

The Wizard Thompson had one penned into his third basement, in a magic seal that looked for all the world like a hopscotch game. This Smithly noticed as soon as he was led down after the signing of the contract, but he was much too polite to voice this.

Then he noticed the hoxform. He squeaked. His stomach reeled, despite its lack of contents. “I’m to kill that?”

“Yes,” said the Wizard Thompson. “I’m much too busy to do it myself, but obviously, I can’t keep it here forever – the stench of it! But rest assured, should you die, I’ll grant your wife a generous settlement. I’d romance her too, but as I said, I’m very busy. Now, you’ve got everything you need?”

All Smithly had was his briefcase filled with papers and things, the iron rod, fear, and a bit of a desire to give this wizard a smart smack on his big nose. “No.”

“Excellent.” The Wizard Thompson snapped his fingers and teleported out of the room.

And the hoxform was shambling outside the hopscotch square.

Smithly followed his first inclination, which was the same as the first inclination of any human with a lick of instinct, and that was to grasp the iron rod like a sword and back up into the farthest corner. To this would have been added a scramble for the high ground, but there was no high ground in the third basement. The wizard had not even the basic courtesy to have a sturdy bookcase he could clamber onto. Had he done so, Smithly might have had the leisure to tear some cloth off of his clean and professional outfit to stuff in his nose – the hoxform really did smell dreadful.

But he had to make do with breathing through his mouth.

The hoxform shambled closer, as hoxforms are wont to do. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth between those very large teeth, dripping syrupy saliva all over the nice, clean floors. Almost puppy-like, except puppies weren’t bipedal with mouths about level to one’s belly button. Also, puppies tended to be fluffy and not have skin like rough green violet leather. And their claws could be trimmed. And they didn’t have opposable thumbs.

Smithly dug his shoulders into the two walls. They absolutely refused to give way to a secret passage. His hands couldn’t seem to keep the iron rod steady for love or life and the hoxform, of course, lunged for the belly.

He struck the rod sharply over the creature’s head. Again. Again!

The hoxform slunk back and tilted its head at him, like a confused child. That head leaned back ever so slowly, then snapped forward, claiming the iron rod. It gulped it down and burped.

That was when the taxman screamed because really, that’s when almost anybody who wasn’t a wizard would have screamed. The hoxform screamed right back, which didn’t help at all.

Really, now! What else did he have! Just his silly, shiny briefcase, filled with miscellanea, and absolutely nothing else aside, because this damnable room was austere to the point of monkishness! Except... except... Wait, wasn’t one of its parents a brownie? And what did brownies particularly didn’t like?

Still screaming intermittently, because that seemed to keep the thing from coming any closer for the time being, Smithly put down his briefcase and shimmied out of his coat. It was a new coat. He’d just picked it up from the tailor’s the other day and it fit him nicely. He’d miss that coat, but it would be too sticky after this. He chucked it at the hoxform. It landed on its head.

The hoxform stopped its screaming – and so Smithly stopped his – and pulled the coat off of its head. It inspected it with its watery eyes and gave what seemed to Smithly to be very much like a grunt of satisfaction. It donned the coat with a flourish, the pus and whatnot oozing through, and the taxman silently mourned his fine coat. The creature proceeded to wander about the third basement, presumably to search for a mirror. It paid no heed to any other living things nearby, belly buttons or no.

Smithly pondered his next move. It was distracted, yes, certainly, but how was he expected to finish it off? I must remind the reader that it did eat the iron rod ably, which as a rule, no creature mundane or magical should cavalier about. But if it were suffering any ill effects from the act, it gave no indication.

He opened up his briefcase. Papers, papers, pens, pens. Nothing that could be reasonably expected to take out anything that was larger than an insect. Except...

Smithly took off all his clothes then, leaving on only his long johns for decency’s sake. All these articles – his shirt, his trousers, socks, and shoes – he trailed in front of the hoxform like candy. All these the hoxform donned, becoming more and more ecstatic the more clothes it put on.

Until, as the last shoe was crammed onto its over-large foot, it collapsed onto the floor in rapture. Smithly beat its belly with his briefcase until it regurgitated the iron rod. Then he switched his weapon.

~

Later, the Wizard Thompson inspected the taxman’s handiwork. “Inelegant,” he said. “But ultimately effective, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it?”

He filled the briefcase up with coins, allowed Smithly to wash his hands up, and gave him a pair of shoes. What a kind man, thought Smithly, in a bit of a daze as he shambled through the streets back to Municipal Revenue. Certainly not at all like the stories.

~

The next morning, Smithly’s supervisor called him into the office and looked very serious at him.

“Now Charles,” he said. “You did a very brave thing yesterday, no question, but there is a bit of a problem.”

Smithly’s hands shook again, his heart thumped loudly. “Whatever could it be, Mr. Garret?”

“We had a look at your deposit after dawn broke and it’s all gone, every last coin.”

His jaw dropped. He could just about manage a “Pardon?”

“Fairy gold, Charles. That’s what Thompson gave you.”

Smithly recovered from his swoon eventually and it was at that time that his supervisor offered him some basic but essential advice. “Next time,” he said. “Make certain you sign that contract in blood.”

~

The taxman approached the house with no little trepidation. In his briefcase, stoppered tightly and wrapped with a cloth, was a red-filled vial.

Latitudes

This is set in the same world as 'Strike in the Shining City' but is otherwise unrelated.

~

In the northern wastes, the dead marched.

White-faced men and women, gums black with rot, their clothing worn loose over their bony frames, pulled their sleds. Spoiled foot, novels, and silverware. All the necessities of survival, pulled over miles of ice and snow from ships long since foundered.

The peoples of that land – the living peoples, that is, those who learned from millennia of trial and error how to thrive in such a place – watched the procession, close enough to make out the details and far enough to be out of reach from the wights. But the intelligence was valuable and that is why they watched, despite the risk.

But those that marched never looked up. Nor made noise, nor stopped for sustenance. The dead very seldom took notice of the living.

~

Jocelyn Jones had a father once and from what she could remember, he was brave and kind and knew everything important about everything. Then he wandered off to sea on some grand expedition and she never saw him again.

But she had been proud that her own father was to be part of history – engineer on the first ships to navigate the Great Northern Sea! – as was every one of her fellow citizens, so it took her years to worry. How could she be expected to? Once the last whaling ship spotted the Sedemay and Idemay in Mutiny Bay, it would be at least three years before the sisters could break through the ice floes to the other side of the continent and send word of their safety. Perhaps even five years.

Then six years passed. Seven. Eight. Nine. Not a sign, not a whisper. Jocelyn grew into a woman in that time and buried her poor, patient mother on the decade’s anniversary of the sailing. She counted the coins of her inheritance and decided, for decency’s sake, she must find and bury her father too.

She told no one of her intention. The attention of the papers and the interference of the commander’s widower held no charm for her, no matter the financial support they would offer. Friends and family could not be trusted to keep their mouths shut. She merely booked passage on a packet ship and walked aboard.

“Another young one out to seek her fortune!” said the captain with a laugh. She was Norrish, Jocelyn observed, so maybe she had a right to do so. Laugh, that is. How many like her must she have ferried across these waters when she herself felt compelled to seek her own fortune elsewhere?

“Too true, too true,” said Jocelyn. She smiled. A personable captain brooked well for an enjoyable passage.

This turned out to be completely false, as her stomach was apt to remind her all throughout the three months on the open ocean. With good winds, those three months might have been only one. She would have loved to stand on deck all the days and nights, taking in the same sights as her father did years ago, but her love for clothes that were not soaked entirely through overcame all.

They limped into Landormouth Harbour eventually, though. Jocelyn shook hands with the captain and vowed to buy her a drink someday and never, ever sail on her ship again. But there was worse to come, as well she knew it, and with that in mind, she marched with resolution to the Mutiny Bay recruitment office.

The tweedy clerk at the front desk did not question her credentials nor her work ethic. Would-be fur traders would do the work they were presented with or die and even if Jocelyn walked into the recruitment office with a miraculous lack of knowledge of that essential fact, she would learn with admirable swiftness. The clerk shoved a contract across the width of the desk, a space conveniently left blank for Jocelyn to fill her name in. “The next batch to paddle west leaves in two month’s time, so you’ll be wanting to net yourself some employment in the meantime. We can provide you with lodgings, provided you agree for us to garnish your wages when you start properly working for us,” the clerk explained.

“Two months?” asked Jocelyn.

“Yes. Is that a problem?” The tone said with perfect clarity that the clerk possessed neither the ability or inclination to fix this if it were.

Jocelyn picked up the contract and read it over, not a single sentence of fine print missing her gaze. “This shan’t do,” she said. “I’ll come back if no alternative can be found, but not before.” Two weeks later, she sidled back in and shamefacedly signed the contract. The clerk leaned back in her wooden chair and did not trouble herself to hide her smug satisfaction.

The two months Jocelyn passed at the docks, hauling and heaving the cargo of the ships that anchored there. She grew strong with her labour and cultivated many interesting bad habits, such as the traditional boozing and brawling. Were either parent to see her then, she knew, wiggling a loose tooth with her tongue as the taste of copper lingered in her mouth after an especially interesting night in the bar, they would have dropped dead of shame.

When the convoy of recruits and old-timers left Landormouth for the rivers, she joined it eagerly. Maybe she’d miss the young men, but her funds had drained away to the extent that she had to use an advance to buy an urn.

“You’re contract’s for the standard eight, ain’t it?” asked Rupert, an old-timer.
“That’s the truth of it.” Rupert made sympathetic noises. He’d gone through the same and so would everyone else on this journey, provided they didn’t die.

She hoped, of course, that she’d be stationed at Solomon Factory, furthest north. But no, it was inland for her and that was how those seven were spent – preparing skins and furs and paddling them back east. Haggling with the hunters and traders of many tribes, who knew the business better than she. Falling in love, out, back in, back out. Digging a bullet out of her arm with her fingers and washing the wound with whiskey. Losing fingers to frostbite, then toes, after two horrible nights rescuing a comrade from the blizzard-formed snowdrifts.

You never saw snow or felt cold like that back in Spira. Such things did not exist there. And Jocelyn was still far, far south from where her father must have died. But the eight years wound up, as they were wont to do, and the factor granted her an audience in the cupboard he liked to call an office.

“I want to go north,” Jocelyn said. “How can this be done?”

“Wait some months,” said the factor. He knew the ‘why’ of it and she knew he knew, even if she could have sworn that she never told a soul. But no one can keep a secret in a place so small. “A doctor is coming, with similar interests to yours. He can keep you company; you can make sure he doesn’t die.”

Jocelyn waited eight months to match the years. She worked in the meantime, getting some practice burying bodies to boot. Some of the bodies were very young, younger than her. But Dr. Oakes came after all and he was better than she expected. He knew his way about the terrain and the languages and knew how to keep her arm from paining her.

They paddled to Solomon Factory, with many others, and they continued on alone in high summer, when the sun shined for months on end. Trudge, trudge, they went, clad in snowshoes, packs stuffed with pemmican and things to trade, and ready to forage and hunt at any opportunity.

And here is where Jocelyn lost count of the turnings of the world. Perhaps the occasional – very occasional – persons they happened across would be able to tell, but she lacked the wit to learn their tongue. The cold sucked that out of her.

“How long have we travelled?” she breathed, the air bracing her throat.

“Three days, three months,” said Dr. Oakes.

“How can you be sure?”

“How can anyone be sure of anything? But do trust me.”

These conversations and others of equal inanity sparked up on the hour, near as Jocelyn could tell. If she annoyed the good doctor with him, he did not say. She might have called him a gentleman, but her father was an engineer and her mother a landscaper. So on that count, he was no better than she. She was too much of a lady to say so, though. Much time passed regardless.

One day – or at one point in the longest day of Jocelyn’s life – Oakes made a
reckoning. “We’re near,” he said. “We keep walking, but not much longer.”

And over three rolling hills, they found them. Ice shelters with their fur-clad dwellers. They spotted the pair before their own eyes caught up with their brains. They marred the untouched and shining snow, faces unreadable, spears held at ready. Oakes, hands empty, spoke to them in something resembling their speech and they laughed. They did not lower the spears, but gave them good-natured prods with the butts of them. Jocelyn could barely feel it with the cold and the layers of furs and skins and linen she wore.

They did not laugh later, after they had done their trades and Oakes told them of the lost expedition. “’The pale people march,’ they say, in circles and they never stop,” he reported to Jocelyn. “They’ll tell us where to go, for a price, but they won’t take us there.”

Her decision was made years ago and the urn bought years ago in Landormouth felt heavy in her kit. “We make the trade.”

“Are you –“

“We make the trade.”

They did so and they headed west.

Dr. Oakes explained things on the way. “They’ve never changed their course, not since they showed up years ago. They keep an eye on them to make sure of it, but... You hear of such things in other wilds, but always singular, never in a group like this.”

“But it’s them. It has to be them.”

Then she saw the wights, marching in the distance. Her right foot moved in front of her left, quite involuntarily, but Dr. Oakes took hold of her bicep before it could go any further than that.

“They’ve seen them eat humans,” he said. “You mustn’t move any closer.”

But she shoved him off, wincing with the pain of the action, and moved closer anyway.

Two dozen wights marched, Spiran sailors all, led by an officer whose uniform had been bleached free of colour by the elements. Was it Commander Gartner herself, she wondered? She had the stature, certainly, but the flesh was practically scraped off of her skull. Jocelyn shivered, in a way she thought had been numbed out of her, and resolutely tore her gaze from the officer to the sailors. To look for a face she recognised. She found it.

She vomited, the product of which froze before it hit the snow. But she steeled herself, enough to call out, “Father?”

The dead sailor stopped, his harness going slack as the others marched past. His eyes were still there in his sockets and his flesh was mostly intact, too. Just rotting and white, with black gums. No muscle or fat on his bones – how long did it take for him to get that way? He was not a slight man when she was a girl.

He changed his course. He marched to her. He reached out to her and clutched her cheeks. He opened his mouth – a rasping sound came out which might have been her name. He closed his mouth. The flesh of his hands felt as cold as the air surrounding them. What happened to his gloves, Jocelyn wondered? How did his fingers not snap off with the slightest pressure?

They regarded each other, father and daughter. She knew not how he saw her, but she saw sadness. Half a man, with half a life. It would be kinder, she thought, to end it now, before memories of this had time to supplant the happy ones of the large man who knew many things.

Jocelyn curled her fist and punched him the remains of his belly as hard as she could, just as his fingernails dug sharply into her face. For good measure, she took out her pistol and shot him in the brain and in the heart.

Oakes helped her then, helping her carry the corpse well away from the now interested others, helping her build a fire, helping her burn the body of her father on it and gather the ashes into the urn afterwards.

“Will you do anything for the others?” he asked.

Jocelyn considered the matter. “They can look out for their own,” she said. She walked back south, urn packed carefully in her kit, and she did not look north again. Ten years had passed since she buried her mother, twenty since she last saw her father properly. She had done her duty. It was time to go home.

~

In the northern wastes, the dead marched, their numbers one fewer. In the years and decades to come, people would arrive from across the eastern seas. They would find a familiar face, burn it out of mercy, and leave the others – too tired to do anything for them.