You told me to tell this as a story. Very well, I have endeavored to do so with every cheap trick I know. For when I felt the knife move across my throat, I truly, for several moments I will not soon forget, believed I was dead. And when the boy who held the knife threw me to the ground and pounced on me, I thought it only to admire his handiwork.

I have never felt such panic. Such overwhelming dread.

All I could think of was the ring you gave me. How you promised it would save me from any possible threat. I cursed you for a liar a thousand times before I realized my throat was not bleeding. It was forever before I realized the boy had used only the blunt edge.

Still, I held my neck, gasping to regain my breath, heart hammering, refusing to believe. The boy straddled my chest the whole time, unblinking, staring intently at my face, noting every change in my features.

When I had calmed enough, the boy pried one of my hands off my neck, and placed the knife in it. I still trembled, but it was obvious now that the boy intended me no harm so I offered no resistance. The boy then grasped me by the wrist, and allowed me to drag the knife across his throat with the blunt edge.

“They don’t like Metal,” the boy whispered in my ear, as if this were the most secret of confidences.

I nodded at him, completely stupefied.

Abruptly, he burst into tears, and buried his face into my chest. By instinct, I wrapped my arms around him and we stayed in that position for several minutes. He was covered in ash, and he stunk, but in the gray of Merristown his pitiful face was as delightful to behold as a garden. It had been a long time since I’d been called upon to give comfort to a child.

I placed his age at twelve or thirteen. His clothes were worn and threadbare. I saw that his hair was a very pale shade of brown. Like an aged painting of a forest, where something vital has gone out of the materials. His skin had been similarly reduced. I think it was these observations, however slowly they moved through my mind, which finally restored to me the power of speech.

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Denny Gromaun, sir! I’m Denny Gromaun! Denny Gromaun!” he said his name over and over again, muttering it to himself, as if it were a prayer. His face pinched up and turned red as he continued to chant. I think he would have been crying if he hadn’t been so dehydrated.

Luckily my horse had wandered toward us, curious as to the noise, and I liberated my water skin for Denny. I wondered why he hadn’t been drinking from the lake, and then I realized he most likely had been. I hoped that this might be the sole cause of his maladies but even then I knew I was wrong though I did not wish to confront such knowledge.

Although it broke my heart, I had to stop Denny from drinking all of the water skin, as I knew it would only make him sick. Denny was similarly ravenous with the travel bread, and though it was similarly painful, I again restricted his portions. He bore this without complaint but I explained the necessity of such limitations, anyway.

I asked Denny how long it had been since he’d eaten, and Denny allowed that it might have been something on the order of a week, but then he went ominously silent and would speak no more.

I attempted to lead him into the house, to lay him down, but he refused to follow. This was my first clue that things had been ever so much worse in the Vannaun House than I had at first suspected. I did not press the issue, however much he needed rest. The boy was obviously still in shock and I dared not press him too hard on anything.

Instead, Denny grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back to the elm tree by the lake. He picked up the doll I’d sewn together and cradled it in his lap. It was a measure of his trauma, I suppose, that he did not appear in the least self-conscious about this.

“You fixed the White Lady,” he said, and then he turned the doll so its face was pressed into his neck, the way one might hold a crying infant. “‘Rissa would be happy for that. She’d say thank you for fixing the White Lady. The White Lady was her favorite. Thank you.”

Denny began to rock back and forth, humming softly to himself. I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder, and he flinched back, his earlier need for contact seemingly forgotten. Then his eyes again seemed to focus, and he took hold of my hand and bid me sit next to him. I did so and put an arm over his shoulder. He quivered, I think, in fear. Not from my touch. No, I think it was a fear he had been holding for a long time, and my touch had merely given him a place to feel safe with it.

“They don’t like the water either. We hid out in the lake, me and ‘Rissa. She grabbed the knife. ‘Rissa was always smarter than me. She was always the smartest. I’d have never got to the boat if it wasn’t for her. The knife burned her.”

Denny traced a line down his palm, as if to indicate where the wound had been, then pressed his face into my chest and shook again. I could think of only one thing which might help alleviate the boy’s trauma.

“Would you like to leave town, Denny? Would you like to go somewhere else? Somewhere green? I can take you there.” I whispered to him. I could think of no greater service I might hope to accomplish in my life, than to deliver this poor boy from Merristown.

This, of course, had been entirely the wrong thing to say.

Denny shook his head angrily into my side. He pounded his fists into his frail legs, and he screamed. Even if there had been other noises, that scream would have dwarfed all of them.

“I can’t! I can’t leave! She won’t let me go! She. Won’t. Let. Me. Go!”

Denny pulled away from me again, cradling the doll he called the White Lady, and climbed into a low branch of the elm tree. I let him sit thus for some time before my horse, ever the empathic creature, craned its head up and nuzzled Denny’s cheek. I think this was better than any comfort I had up to that point extended. Denny turned to my horse as though seeing it for the first time.

Denny pet the horse’s neck with long slow strokes, closing his eyes and savoring every moment of contact. Indeed, the boy’s actions gave me a whole new appreciation of the mount. The way his chestnut brown skin glistened in this dead gray place. Every bit of color radiating life. If he looked so bright to me, what must he have looked like to Denny who had been here for two weeks?

“Did you ever have a horse, Denny?” I asked, thinking it a safe subject.

Denny shook his head.

“No, we couldn’t never afford a horse. Da made barrels and ma said he didn’t need no horse noways. Not to make barrels. Mister Huttadaum could make deliveries for us when he went out with the post, ma said. We didn’t need no horse.”

Denny, reluctantly, came down out of the tree. I tried not to show my fear as he did so, for every branch creaked as though ready to snap when made to hold Denny’s weight. When he was again on the ground, he hugged my horse quite snuggly, enough that I feared it might bite him. But there was no need to worry. The horse had ever bit as much need for comfort as Denny.

“Would you like to go somewhere anywhere else in town, Denny? I’ve got a camp set up in the Wheelhouse Rectory.” I was careful not to approach him or make any threatening moves. At most I hoped to nudge him, until he recovered some small portion of his reason. I did however, remember to take out a notepad so I could record everything the boy had to say.

“Are you a Dian? Ma said I’m not supposed to talk to Dians less’n I have to. The… when the man came, he got us and the Dians both though. I runned all the way out here to make sure ‘Rissa was okay. Do you think it would’ve been better if I was a different religion?”

“I don’t know anything about that Denny, but I’ve made the Rectory safe, and I will help you and feed you if you’d like.”

“Will you guard me while I sleep? ‘Rissa and I used to take turns,” Denny asked, eagerly.

I looked at him again, and hoped that what was wrong with him was only lack of sleep. I made a thousand wishes as to the source of the boy’s trouble, but there was no denying the boy was ashen and diminished beyond simple deprivation.

“Yes, Denny,” I said, “I’ll watch over you while you sleep.”

I let him climb up on the horse, and I led him back to the village proper. Denny spoke idly, working through his shock, while we made the journey, startling into something like full consciousness only once when he realized it was dark. I gave him the lantern to hold to assure him there would be no danger. Not while he was with me. This kept him in the saddle, barely. If he’d had a bit more strength, I think he might have run off anyway.

I learned the names of the people of Merristown from his chatter.

The Porumaum family had worked the biggest field. The Beyudaums who were nothing but trouble-makers, and their sons used to throw rocks at Denny. The Kirkuauns, who pretty much kept to themselves, were said to have a rich uncle in Abroiese. And so on and so on. Denny named or implied what must have been a hundred people on our way back to the village proper. Little names and little stories of no significance, except when you put them together you get a town. You get a place full of life.

I tried to give Denny my bed in the Rectory but he preferred to sleep with the horse. I found I could deny the poor lad nothing.

“Make sure you don’t disappear, okay? ‘Rissa disappeared. So if you start to disappear you got to wake me up, okay?” he grabbed me firmly by the lapels of my shirt when he said this, his eyes never flinching. “You wake me up if you start to disappear.”

I told him I would, and then he kissed me softly on the cheek.

Masters help me, I watched him all through the night. My deep and troubled thoughts my only company. The boy rambled like a madman, yes, but there were several horrifying conclusions in those ramblings which I could not think around. Try as I might.

*****

Denny woke at around noon, and I let him eat the rest of my food. I wished I’d provisioned myself better so that I could have at least given the boy something hot for his last meal, but all I had was some jerky, travel bread, and dried fruit. Not that Denny complained. He devoured these things like they were a feast.

I also started another fire in the stove, for Denny to watch. The day was already warm, but Denny had been without the sight of fire for a long time and he delighted in watching the flames. It seemed he could not get warm enough.

By the light of the fire, it was no longer possibly to deny that Denny had worsened in the night. He was stronger, yes. Even more alert and more present. Definitely less hysterical. But also more gray. More ashen. More like the rest of Merristown. In some way I could not define, he was less there. If he wondered why I did not ask him to hold back on his food intake, he did not voice such concerns aloud.

“What have you been eating for the past two weeks, Denny?”

“Told you, I hadn’t eaten in a week ‘fore you got here,” he was still stuffing his face. He didn’t even look up at me. He would have eaten the grain cakes I’d brought for the horse if I’d let him. I might have let him if he asked.

“What about before then? There hasn’t been food here for two weeks, Denny. So what did you eat in the first week?”

Denny stopped eating at once, still refusing to meet my eyes. I have seen hungry people before, and I knew that at that moment Denny was wondering, at some level only the starving can wonder, whether or not he had the luxury of vomiting. After a few moments, it seemed he did not.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Denny muttered, tears coming to his eyes.

“We don’t have to talk about that, Denny. We never have to talk about that if you don’t want,” I said.

I should mention I was taking notes as we spoke. This conversation is not a hazy recollection, but a line by line recount. If I had to ask the damned questions, I at least wanted to get some use out of them.

Slowly, Denny resumed eating.

Of course, I knew now what he had eaten in that first week. I’d figured that out last night. I don’t know that I will ever forgive myself for asking that question, but I’d hoped I’d been wrong.

“How long were you in the boat, Denny? Do you remember that much?”

“We were in there for three days… me and ‘Rissa. We wanted to make sure it was safe… they… that first night they danced on the shore and yelled at us, and we didn’t believe they was really gone.”

“Who were they?”

“The stranger… and her. He musta done something to make her act like that. I don’t… I don’t want to talk about this neither.”

Denny abruptly stood up and went to the other room to be with the horse, carrying the rest of the food with him. I followed him, and that is something for which I also do not believe I will ever forgive myself. All he wanted was to waste away quietly, and I could not even give him that.

“What was the name of the house where I found you, Denny?”

Denny stared out the Rectory window in the forests, squinting as if trying to see far off.

“Vannaun,” Denny mumbled, “that was the Vannaun House. Ma said I weren’t never to go there, ’cause even if they were rich they was still Dian. Da said I shouldn’t go there because they was peculiar… said he knew a man like Mister Vannaun in the army. Da said… said some people just thought they had a right to hurt other folks. But I always went anyway, ’cause that’s where ‘Rissa lived.”

“Who did he hurt, Denny? Was it the town? Did Mister Vannaun hurt the town?”

Denny shook his head adamantly.

“He only ever went after ‘Rissa’s sister. She weren’t right in the head. I wasn’t supposed to hear, but ‘Rissa and I were sneaking out through the kitchens one day, and we could hear it all through the dumbwaiter. Mister Vannaun said she wasn’t right in the head, if she’d do that to her own sister’s cat and then ‘Rissa started crying when he started beating her.”

Denny shuddered. He continued to speak, however, and I wrote it down as quickly as I could. I would have so much preferred to let him have his quiet death, but I agonized that I could not allow his knowledge to die with him.

“I think he was mad she was like him, more than anything. The way she liked to hurt things. That’s what ‘Rissa said. She said her daddy only ever locked ‘Noura in her room, ’cause she was so much like him he couldn’t stand it. My ‘Rissa never got mad at ‘Noura. Not ever. Not even when she did something real awful. ‘Rissa had the biggest heart of anyone I knew. They was twins you know.”

There had not been one girl with an extraordinary wardrobe and a large bed in the Vannaun House, after all, but two identical sisters sharing space. I was eager to know more, but already the boy had been pushed to his limits. He began to fidget, and I despaired that he would die even before I could attain the information necessary to avenge him.

Desperate, I asked him to lead me to his home and he did. It was not far away, and we took a seat on a few barrels when we got there. My horse followed, and I distantly thought that I was going to have a hell of a time retraining him after he’d been allowed such freedoms. Such simple concerns always manage to intrude when they are least welcomed.

I asked Denny simple questions. He’d had four brothers, all of them older. The oldest, Barri, had been set to inherit their father’s business. One of his brother’s had joined the army, another had been apprenticed to the blacksmith, and the last had died of the Pale four years ago. He’d had only two sisters, one of whom had died in childbirth, and the other had been only a baby at the time of the Stillness.

“How come they all died? How come I’m the only one left? And how come I can’t leave?” Denny wailed. It was very hard to keep pushing, father. So very hard.

“I”ll make it all better, Denny. I promise.” I have never felt like such a liar.

He was so gray, that at times it was hard to tell him from the boards behind him. In the afternoon light. I’d been too late the second the Stillness had come, of course. I kept reminding myself that if I could know everything he’d known, then… maybe I could find out enough so you could take action. I hope I was successful, father. I hope it very much.

“I don’t know, Denny. But if you tell me what happened, I promise to do my best to find those answers.” I laid my hand on his shoulder. He caught sight of my ring.

“My da had a ring like that,” Denny said.

I gasped, but I suppose I should not have been surprised given what I know of you.

“Would you like to wear it?” I asked.

I could tell Denny, at least, thought he was telling the truth. Even though there was no way a cooper could have afforded such extravagance. It is your ring after all. I should have guessed such characteristics.

Denny nodded.

I slid the ring off my finger and dropped it in Denny’s outstretched palm. The world seemed to grow colder as I took it off, as though I’d been left naked without it. Like the walls were pressing in on me in a way they had not been before. But if I seemed unsure of myself without it, the ring seemed to make Denny grow more confident.

For half a second, I could swear I saw Denny’s eyes change color. To your color, in fact, as strength poured into his broken shell of a body. He took a deep breath, and something like courage seemed to take hold of him.

“Can you tell me what happened here?” I asked.

Denny nodded.

This, father, is the story he told me, transcribed word for word.

*****

Hard to know where to start. Lots of little things, but I don’t got time for all that, I reckon. I’ll try to only talk about the big stuff.

About three weeks back my da and I went to the general store. Can’t remember for what exactly, but ma had sent us right off to go and get it. Well, ol’ Fen the inn-keeper was there jawing with everyone ’bout some stranger that had showed up in the middle of the night. Ol’ Fen always used to do that, on account of how he loved gossip and didn’t never get enough of it at the inn. Not enough locals to impress, da said.

Well, it was Festival time and we’re supposed to welcome strangers at Festival. ‘Leastways that’s what ma always said, even though that mostly just meant showing ‘em to the inn. So everybody nodded real polite and said they hoped he was doing good and he’d stay on, and asked a bit about his business. A few folks even offered to set him up for dinner. Well, then the ol’ Fen, that’s the inkeeper, says that he thinks the stranger is a lord in disguise and probably wouldn’t want to eat at no simple table.

Everyone laughed at that, ’cause we figured ol’ Fen was being stingy and didn’t want to lose out on any custom. Bad as Red Union Man, ol’ Fen.

Well, then Fen said the stranger was traveling with a gold box. Said he saw it himself when he helped the stranger to his room. Well, that hushed everyone up. None of us there’d ever seen gold, ‘cept maybe ol’ Fen and Greeg, the store owner. Quick as that, everyone was asking what his business was. Wondering what he might be interested in buying.

I knew though. Only one reason anyone that rich’d ever come to Merristown. He wanted a Key Box made by Mister Vannaun. Nobs were always coming ’round to get his work.

My da didn’t exactly give me permission to run off to the Vannaun house, but he didn’t exactly tell me not to go either. We knew each other pretty well, I reckon. Didn’t have to talk much. I knew I’d have to tell him all of what I knew when I got back, somewhere ma wouldn’t be able to hear. Just like I knew he’d have to pretend to get real mad and whip me if ma did happen to overhear. He didn’t like the Vannauns none, make no mistake, but he didn’t mind a bit of gossip neither.

So I go there, and just like usual, I threw rocks at Soletta’s window. She was the youngest maid. Real pretty. I always wondered why she never had a husband and hung around with that old aunt of hers. Her aunt was a big ol’ mannish bull of a lady. Why was that, you figure? I couldn’t ever make sense of it. But anyways, Soletta went and got Missa ‘Rissa as everyone in the house called her. And I snuck around by the lake to wait.

‘Rissa came ’round soon enough and I bowed to her like I always done, since we got to be friends at Town School. And she laughed and told me not to do that no more. Said she was just rich and she weren’t a lady, no matter how her mother carried on. I don’t think her mother liked Town School none. I don’t think I’d ever met ‘Rissa if it weren’t the law we all had to be schooled together.

It was a good day for her to be out, she said, ’cause her sister ‘Noura was locked up in her room and making such a racket nobody could hardly think straight. Pounding on the walls and such. They’d found a rat in the cellar with its legs cut off, and it’d made her father furious. So he’d locked ‘Noura in her room with it to teach her a lesson and no one would hardly notice that ‘Rissa was gone.

Anyway, I asked ‘Rissa about the stranger and she said she didn’t know nothing but said she could find out. I spent the rest of the day catching frogs, on account of how it always made ‘Rissa laugh when I could grab hold of one. We always had to let ‘em go though ‘cuz we couldn’t never risk what ‘Noura would do if she got hold of something so small.

That was the last happy day I ever spent with ‘Rissa. I mean, strangers came to town all the time. I couldn’t have known that this one’d end up killing everybody. But that’s when it started, with the stranger.

Say, can you write while we walk? Like you did last night?

I’d like to see something before I die.

-Of course, I agreed. We walked to back along the western road, to where I’d first entered Merristown as Denny told the rest of the story.

*****

I guess I can say it now on account of everyone is dead. No one’s around to get angry. ‘Specially not those awful parents of hers.

I loved ‘Rissa. It was more than me being sweet on her. I loved her.

You’ve got to write that down. I want folks to know. I used to think about running away with her. She woulda come, I think, if I’da had the guts to ask. She used to show up with little bruises and cuts on her arm and I knew she weren’t happy at home. Always frowned when it was time to go back there. Yeah, she’da left if Id’da asked.

It’d make me want to go after ‘Noura when I saw those little cuts, but ‘Rissa wouldn’t hear none of it. Said that was the way her sister had been made and she couldn’t help it. Even said that ‘Noura tried to control herself sometimes, and just couldn’t stop doing it. ‘Rissa never had a bad word to say against ‘Noura, even loved her. But I think she woulda run away with me all the same. Anything for a chance to get out of the house.

But I’m just a boy. There weren’t nothing to do. I’m just a boy and now I’m dying and there weren’t never anyway around it. Isn’t that funny?

Anyway, I didn’t see ‘Rissa again until the night of the Festival. Thought about her a lot though when we got word the stranger had moved out to the Vannaun House. Mister Huttadaum told us when he carried the post out there that he saw the stranger had set up in the guest rooms. No one still had any idea what his name might be, but they figured him for the servant of some nob back in the city sent to fetch a Key Box.

I tried to sneak out there, but with Festival coming ma was always sending me on one chore or another, and with school being out for the season, I never got the chance. Don’t know what I coulda done, but maybe it woulda changed if I’da seen her before it all happened.

It was Festival soon enough though, and that made me happy because that meant the next day I’d be able to sneak out and see ‘Rissa. Everyone else woulda been too busy to notice.

We was all out on the green, dancing ribbon ’round the pole. Just finished and heading back to listen to ol’ Fen tell stories at the inn. He did entertainments like that himself. My da said he was a bit theatrical, whatever that means.

Well, I was walking along with everyone else, when the whole crowd stopped. I looked back to my mother and father and they were standing there still as stone. I asked ‘em what was the matter, but they didn’t say nothing. Went around and touched damn near everyone. I can say that, right? Damn? I get to say that and you won’t get cross with me, right?

-I assured Denny nothing he told me would make me angry. I even told him to ride the horse as his walking was becoming labored.

Well, I touched damn near everyone. I even pushed some people to the ground, and that made them move, but only enough so that they didn’t break their necks. I tried to drag my ma and the baby back to the house, but that weren’t no good. They was too heavy to move, and when I came to my senses I realized that I had to check on ‘Rissa. Maybe I couldn’t help my family, but I could save ‘Rissa from it maybe. If it hadn’t got to her yet. So I runned out to the Vannaun House as quick as I could.

Took me a long time, but I never stopped running.

She told me later she’d been trying to get away from them for hours, hiding in the walls and whatnot, but when I showed up she’d finally made it out of the house. Burst out of the door with the knife in her hand right as I got to her doorstep. She was bleeding too. Not bad, but enough to really scare me.

‘Rissa started crying when she saw me, and I was worried she’d stab me so I ducked down low and shouted at her to stop. That stopped her, but she still pressed the knife against my hand though. Only thing that satisfied her. ‘Course I know why now.

“They’re here, Denny,” she said. “The Shaen came back and they’re here. We got to get out in the lake.”

I went with her, a’course. Thank the Lords and Ladies for that.

Like I said, I loved her. Not everyone did, ’cause they figured she was stuck up, but I knew her well enough to know better. She had a good heart, my ‘Rissa. Best person I ever knew. So a’course I went out on the lake with her.

I’da followed her into Ewil Brenven if she asked.

*****

We got the boat out without too much trouble. It was a little thing that Jors the Butler used sometimes to fish. The whole boat was barely big enough for the both of us. Like I said, a little thing. ‘Rissa stood next to me holding the knife the whole time I was getting it ready. I thought that was ’cause she was scared. I didn’t know her hand had melted to the knife till we got out into the water.

First thing she asked me to do when we got out on the water was hold her. So I did. I loved her. I did. I really did. You believe me, don’t you? You believe I loved her no matter what I got to say next?

-I assured Denny that I believed. This seemed to give him some comfort.

She told me about how everyone had changed since the stranger had been out at her house. Everyone had started acting funny and trying to do things to please him as soon as he showed up. ‘Rissa said she stayed out of his way and never saw him but once and that was out of a window when he’d first showed up. Said she got a funny feeling about him and knew she ought to keep out of his way.

It was hard for her though, with him being there. You see, the stranger took a liking to ‘Noura.

‘Noura never got in trouble while the stranger was there. In fact, it was ‘Rissa getting locked up now when ‘Noura did something bad. ‘Rissa getting the rod taken to her. It was always her father doing it, she said. And he’d get a far off look in his eye when he did it, like he was confused. He’d tell her she ought to be more like her sister and then he’d lock her in the room no matter how much she cried and apologized.

Lords and Ladies that makes me wish we’d been a few years older. We coulda runned away if we were both older. My poor ‘Rissa was scared every day.

Well, she was locked in there on the night of the Festival when her father came in and tried to kill her. Only a few hours before I showed up. ‘Rissa said she knew straight off something had gone wrong with him, ’cause he had a knife. She had to use her doll to block it. Her precious little White Lady. Thank you for fixing that again. I know ‘Rissa woulda been grateful.

Well, I asked her how she’d fought it away from him, on account of him being so big and she said she hadn’t. When she’d touched the knife it’d got hot and her father had screamed and dropped dead. That’s how she knowed about the metal. That and old stories. It’s got to be touching you though. You touch them with it, and the metal gets hot, and then they die. She’d had to kill both maids before she’d got out.

We were both tired, and when I asked ‘Rissa if we should go to the far shore and try to escape, she told me no. So we floated out there. ‘Rissa let her knife hand rest in the water, hoping she might be able to get the knife off that way. She couldn’t of course. That came later in the night, when she pried each finger off one by one, even though it made her bleed and cry out. She had me tear off bits of her dress for bandages.

She used to play the Key Box beautifully. I knew looking at her hand that wouldn’t never happen again. I don’t think I coulda done that if I was her. Ripping my hand off the knife. Don’t think I woulda had the guts.

‘Rissa made me take the knife and wrap a bit of her dress around the handle. Said it might protect me if we had to use it. She asked if she could lean on me and sleep a bit and… I hope I’m forgiven, but it almost made me glad everyone had died. Just so I could get that one moment. Do you think the Lords and Ladies will forgive me for that?

-I said that they would, and I realized that Denny was not telling me this story for its own sake. He was making a confession. I wanted to tell him I already knew. I already knew what he’d done to stay alive. But I stayed silent.

We saw ‘Noura an hour or so before dawn. She was on the shore with the stranger. They was… they was fornicating. That scary old man and little ‘Noura. Scared me to death to see them there. Didn’t even notice them till they started shouting, which is what woke ‘Rissa up.

‘Rissa covered her eyes and said that weren’t her sister, and that her sister had been taken over by a demon. I tried to look away too, but I was so scared I froze. I’ll never forget what ‘Noura said. She musta said it a hundred times while they danced and screamed and fornicated there on the shore.

“I’m the good one now, Laurissa! I’m the good one now! And nobody is ever gonna hurt me ever again! I get to do whatever I want now! I’m the good one, Laurissa!”

Oh how that made ‘Rissa sob. That made her cry so hard I couldn’t barely hold her up to stop her from falling out of the boat.

She said, “I love you Annoura. I still love you. It isn’t your fault that you’ve been made into this!”

‘Course, that only made ‘Noura laugh.

-Denny was silent for a few minutes after that.

*****

I think they coulda killed us. They coulda found some way. I don’t know why they left us alive. Maybe they knew we’d die anyway and wanted us to suffer.

The walls of black went up in the morning. I couldn’t see ‘em but ‘Rissa could. She and ‘Noura could see things like that sometimes. Things nobody else could. ‘Noura would talk about it more often, but ‘Rissa could do the same thing. Tried not to talk about it too often ’cause with them being Dians folks in town might have got upset.

I couldn’t see the walls, but the whole world made an awful sound when they went up. This dry crackling sound. Made the boat crackle too, and that’s when we started to take on a bit of water. Not much, but enough so we’d have to keep bailing it out. That’s when ‘Rissa and I started sleeping in shifts.

We stayed out there for two more days, drinking the lake water when we got thirsty.

‘Rissa started to go gray, so I paddled us ashore against her wishes, and set off on the Eastern road, hoping we could get to the next town and find help. She needed a doctor and I’da fought a whole village full of the Shaen to get her to one. ‘Cept there weren’t none. Nothing was left.

I had to drag her. Didn’t even have the strength to look and see how everything was dead, she was in such a right awful state. Both of us were so damned hungry, you can’t even imagine, but she kept fighting me. I ain’t never been that hungry in my whole life, or so weak, but I kept dragging her.

I finally saw a bit of green, and I whooped and hollered, ’cause I figured that’d mean I might at least be able to find some food for us, but well… I guess you know what happened.

-Denny look down at his fingertip, which for the first time I noticed was more gray than the rest of him.

We couldn’t leave. So we made a camp there, hoping someone might come and find us. If we couldn’t leave, then maybe they could come in. Like you did.

-Denny looked off into the distance. I followed his gaze. I could see the line in the ground now, between the gray and the green. The border of Merristown.

*****

I think we lived ’cause ‘Rissa loved ‘Noura and I loved ‘Rissa. Like in them old stories about the Aodani. How the only way to put yourself outside of their power is to love truly. That’s the only thing I could figure. Or maybe ‘Noura wanted to keep us alive so we’d suffer. Maybe I’m only dying ’cause I didn’t love well enough. I don’t know. I’m too tired to think about it anymore.

I guess you figured out that I feel asleep and ‘Rissa decided to up and disappear on me. I woke up and she weren’t there. Took me a while to find her.

-Denny began to sob, and pushed me away when I reached out to comfort him.

She’d pushed her head through them walls she saw. I think she did it on purpose so the rest of her would be left. So I guess you know what happened and I guess you know what I ate that first week.

I tried not to, I swear! I didn’t want to and I threw the rest of her in the lake to stop me from doing it anymore than I had, but I couldn’t help myself that first time! I didn’t want to but I had to do it anyway!

I went inside that damned house long enough to get her doll. I used it for a grave marker. Lords and Ladies, please forgive me. Please, do you think they’ll forgive me? Please?

I loved her so much! I would’ve done anything else if there had been another choice! Can’t you see that? I didn’t want to eat her!

-Denny charged off toward the border. I shouted for him to stop, but it was no use. I wanted him to know that he was forgiven, but we both knew he was doomed anyway.

- There was a faint red glow in the areas directly around his body where he passed through the boundary between life and un-life. It looked rather like the fire seeping out of a black coal. Denny’s body didn’t retain integrity for more than a few feet after the crossing. When I finally caught up with my horse, it was mostly covered in pale gray ash.

- I found your ring around the carbonaceous remnants of a finger. I wear it on a string over my clothes now. I am reluctant to let it come in contact with my skin.

*****

Merristown is dead.

The cause was murder.

The town was waiting for Denny to die before completely collapsing. There aren’t even buildings there anymore. Just clumps of soot laid out in strange patterns. But grass is growing there again. Plant life is creeping back inside. It will all be covered over in a few years.

There can be no doubt the Foul-Maker has returned to his experiments.

Masters help us, I believe he has finally found what he has been searching for. What he has been searching for all the centuries since his Twisting. I know what it is now: A female sociopath with the knack.

He found one in Merristown and her name is Annoura Vannaun.

I’ve been rebuilding all the pages slowly but surely. Pages are the things up top that no one cares about except me in fits of OCD. Here are the ones I have done, not that you care, but let’s pretend you do.

Most importantly, here are the pages to:

- Donate (which you can do anonymously, for the Wall of Donors, to have a character named after you, or to pick the next update.)

and/or

- Subscribe (which you can do to get a monthly story written about you, and exclusive content although I can’t promise how regularly content will be exclusive)

Now, let us again never speak of those… again.

Actual Cool Stuff,

but Probably Not if You Have a Vagina

There are NEW Tide World Pages!

- Here is one full of maps of how the mainland looked at different times, and brief explanations of why it looked that way. Geopolitical history beotches! (You’ll want to read this one if you like the Tide World)

- Here’s a page of more little images like the ones I posted yesterday. There are about twenty of them in all.

- Here’s a page of awesome Tide World related art made by good artists who are not me. I like all of these a lot.

The Machete Army is also alive again!

Which you can see here

The Contributors pages aren’t alive again yet, because I’m still hoping that maybe one of you will be able to find a way to recover those and be a totally awesome pal. Or that I”ll think of a way to save them in a Eureka moment.

I’m still working on putting everything back where it’s supposed to go. I’m just goin to keep cracking away at it a bit at a time.

This is Akrin’s Eye. Symbolizing purity, allegiance to the Dawn, and… other bullshit. This is pretty much how it’s drawn in the lands you’re familiar with with slight variations. There’s a cooler version on the continents you haven’t seen yet.

I used to be pretty constantly surrounded by drawings I’d made of things from the Tide World. It was a bit weird, I admit, if not quite Russell Crowe in “A Beautiful Mind” levels of weird. I try to keep the whole aspiring Fantasist thing low key now that I’m an adult, but I do miss the slightly scared looks of people entering my living space.

These all came from my first attempts to write the main sequence Tide World novels in high school. This one was meant to represent someone called the White Lady, who is rather different in the current version of the Tide World than she was in “Crappy Emo High School Tide World.” I also used it to symbolize the Loke in general. Now I use it for something else.

I had three major setbacks in my decline into insanity.

I used this every time I wanted to symbolize the Woa. I used to have a better version where the little spirit dude didn’t have teeth or eyeballs, and the demon dude had more evil eyeballs, but I’ve lost it somewhere along the way. By the way, I made all of these in MS Paint.

The first involved me spending the night at my grandparent’s house in junior high and coming back to discover that Rachel’s friends had come over, spent the night in my room, and taken all of them because they “looked cool.” I found this to encouraging in a strange way.

I used this every time I wanted to symbolize a Metal Weaver, although the “pi symbol” is now anachronistic and on a different group of guys. The forehead symbol is “Elem’s Rose” which is what’s branded on the head of every full Metal Weaver (Brandyn wasn’t yet a full Metal Weaver in “Rights of Hunt”). I don’t want to tell you how or why it’s branded there because it’s super duper awesome and super duper spoilery.

The second involved my friends Caleb and Casey coming over, breaking in through my window, and drawing penises over everything because “you needed to get out more, man.” I believe I was a freshman in high school at the time, and when I confronted them about this it was also partly because I hadn’t been home to let them copy my history homework.

This is an old pre-first Tide War Sun Wheel, symbolizing the Haestan. Modern versions have only 7 spokes, and yes, there is a reason for that. I mean, the actual reason is that I”m a recluse and have way too much fake history for a place that doesn’t exist. But there is also a real fake reason.

The last time I had a major setback was in college, when I went away and returned to find out my father had thrown everything away, including the map I’d been editing and reediting fairly constantly for about ten years, which had among other things the locations of all the Ald Lines and Citadels.

This is a mountain where magical stuff happens in the prologue of the main sequence. That sequence of events is more or less the same as it was back in the day, but I’ve changed Metal Weavers a lot since then if you’re one of the few people who read that monstosity while it was up.

Metal Weavers used to basically just be ripped off versions of Warders (all Lan clones basically) but as I came to really develop the culture of Angard, I realized they’d be much more like Native American Irish Samurai Mormon Viking Detectives.

I found that kinda discouraging and pretty much stopped drawing after that. I said to myself “No more paper! If you can just do everything digitally, you’ll never lose anything ever! But well… I never got good at drawing things not on paper. So I stopped drawing.

This is what I figured a Metal Weaver’s armor would look like, since you can’t really have metal plate armor in a world with the Woa, unless you want to get cooked alive. Aside from that, there are various other reasons that metal armor wouldn’t work for a Hunter so I figured it would all be leather or ceramic.

The belt here… well, it’s shitty, and doesn’t exemplify what I think a Metal Weaver’s belt looks like now. But pretty much everything else is spot on. The vest is called a Habriik and it’s made of tile wrapped in individual leather pockets. It’s super heavy and you basically have to be a Metal Weaver to wear it, but it helps with impact blows from giant stuff.

The sword is a Sairain, the blade of a Metal Weaver, and the sheathe indicates the blade is made of Woven Moonlight. Metal Weaver blades come in two styles. A blade made of something called Spun Fire which is pretty much indestructible and is the “general use” sword. The other sword made of Woven Moonlight and you use it to kill Woa. I won’t tell you why, but you have to keep Woven Moonlight in a special sheathe that has a locking mechanism on it that doesn’t allow it to be drawn unless you enter the right combination. It’s very dangerous. A Metal Weaver gets a sword of Spung Fire and Woven Moonlight when they graduate and receive their brand.

I only thought up what their helms would look like last year, but I don’t have a drawing of that.

I have some scanned drawings I’ve done over the ages (I didn’t have a good scanner at the time they were scanned, so the images are crap, unfortunately, but I assure you I was much better at drawing on paper than cartooning pixel by pixel in MS Paint), but they’re all either maps or spoilery stuff I probably shouldn’t show you. I suppose I should start sketching again, but it would be frustrating to be less good than I was at the point at which I stopped.

I’m out of presentable material that’s my own.

This is something NOT from high school. In fact, it was made for me by my friend Annesofie in Denmark, to show how the vascular system works in a Lorenatt based on some sketches I showed her. Lorenatt are sex vampires for those of you who don’t remember/didn’t read the Shaen Appendix. The cool thing here is that Lorenatt have another vascular system, made of what I call “Carnivories.”

The red line that makes a fang up at the mouth, is actually attached to a fang. Not shown is that this is supposed to be repeated on both sides. So the vampire teeth on the Lorenatt actually drain their victims blood right into the Lorenatt’s bloodstream. I’ve got notes on how that works, but they’re boring so I’ll spare you the details.

I’ve always hated that vampires just “drank” blood. Then it goes into their stomach and then what? I thought it would be interesting if a Lorenatt directly incorporated someone’s blood into their own bodies for use. I also thought it would be cool if they drank blood for a purpose.

The way I figured it, the Lorenatt were supposed to be viral vectors, and were intentionally engineered such that they’d die of anemia if they didn’t consume human blood. Their marrow was designed to be shitty so they’d always have to go out and get fresh blood samples. That way, the Drakkan’mirr could be sure that the Lorenatt would seduce humans, and incorporate their blood into their system as regularly as possible, so that the Lorenatt’s body could synthesize viruses against that person’s immunities. So the whole time a Lorenatt is feeding, on a cellular level, it’s body is trying to make a virus to kill the immunities in the blood sample it took in, that the Lorenatt will then pass on through fluid exchange into the human population. They’re there to evolve and pass on viruses basically.

There’s a whole bunch of crap about how the Lorenatt create illnesses that’s spoilery so I won’t get into it, but think of what happens when Lorenatt feed on each other and you might have a good idea.

It’s weird to go back through all this stuff and think about just how long I’ve spent on imagining the Tide World. I know I’m just a guy whose blog you read, but sometimes I feel very odd about all of this writing business, rather like I’ve wasted a good portion of my life. I don’t regret it, not really, but I do feel it’s a waste unless I can write the books down. I don’t have a lot more digital stuff from the Tide World that isn’t spoilery, so here is a cartoon I made for someone in high school. Unfortunately, cartooning is about the limits of my ability with MS Paint.

I’ll get the second part of the Murder of Merristown done by the end of this week.

Dearest Father,

- Per your instructions, I am compiling this report through the use of an illiterate street-youth. If it matters, he’s a thirteen year old boy of Talli stock, named Fletcher Lowbridge. I found him, of all places, begging on the front steps of the Academy Library.

- I am writing the letters on a blackboard and young Fletcher is copying them as though re-creating a picture. The words themselves are senseless to him. I have verified this in the usual way.

- I have taken pains to ensure that I do not accidentally read, touch, or look at the letter as young Fletcher writes, or rather re-writes, it. I gave the boy several choices of stationary, so I do not even know exactly what the letter looks like.

- I will write my report “as a story” as you have requested. I will also attempt to be thorough and explain what I felt as events occurred.

- As you requested, I purchased this blackboard from a schoolhouse where it saw heavy use. Once we are finished, I will write several poems on the blackboard and draw several pictures, then burn the object. The ashes will be scattered into the river.

Although I do not understand in what way these methods are superior to cryptography, or why you were so adamantly against encryption in this instance, I trust in your superior wisdom that these actions will keep our secrets safe. For I have discovered many secrets.

I am, as ever, your loving son and humble servant.

Hanna’ael Ki Salarahi Nashiidao

May the Circle be Unbroken

*****

Even before the village proper came into view, I knew Merristown was dead. The air tasted of un-life, the scent of ash filled my nose, and even in the pre-dawn dark I could sense something was wrong with the landscape. It was all I could manage to drag my horse into the accursed place.

I’d been forced to travel cross-country in the dark in order to sneak passed sentries posted farther down the road. The terrain was of such inhospitable disposition that it had taken several hours to traverse, and I’d been forced to guide my horse the entire way. Needless to say, the ordeal proved to be exhausting.

The exhaustion, however, soon became the smallest of my concerns. For when the sun rose, and I was finally faced with the full reality of your predictions, I fear I quite lost my mind. At least for a while.

Firstly, Merristown was gray. I have never seen, heard of, or conceived a place so gray and dismal as Merristown. It made me sick to look at so much gray, and to call it disorienting would be an understatement. Even to recall it now twists my stomach.

Secondly, the entire town, down to every last surface, was coated with a strange sort of ash I have never seen before. I thought it would be oily to the touch, but it was the driest powder I have ever felt. It seemed to suck at the waters of my body and leave my skin cracked, and thereafter I endeavored to touch it as seldom as possible. I did, however, take samples should you be interested.

Lastly, and this was by far the hardest concept to grasp, nothing lived in Merristown. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

I will explain what I mean by nothing, for the word alone is insufficient.

I could find no sign of any creature, wild or domesticated. In a daze, I even checked over a dozen bird nests. All were empty. Even the eggs were gone. There is no sign left to indicate what this place once was, save for the vacant buildings. Whatever sounds this town may have once made, the land is silent now. I closed my eyes, and all that came to my ears was the wind, my own beating heart, and the occasional neigh of my horse.

Leaves fell like rain from trees already more dead than alive. Whole fields were little more than kindling. I took a spade and dug into the soil, and I could find no worms. So if there was the smallest part of doubt in your mind, let it vanish. From the Masters’ Eyes above to the earth below, this is a murdered place.

I cannot imagine what force has accomplished this, but it is as though whatever it was grabbed hold of something called “town” and throttled it to death.

As to other incidentals I noticed that first day, they are as follows:

Over a quarter of the village proper had burned to cinders, though the fires seem to have been accidental. A hearth left unattended, a candle abandoned, the usual symptoms of neglect. Most of the homes seemed lived in as of a few weeks ago, except for the disturbing lack of inhabitants.

I hope one day you will tell me why that should be.

Curiously, all information I could gather on my way to Merristown was third hand. You told me to expect as much, yet even knowing this would be the case, I still can’t believe. How can a village of nearly three-hundred souls vanish without leaving a single survivor? Or someone who knew a resident? And in the names of all the Masters, if they are dead, where have their bodies gone?

I looked. Even though you told me my search would be fruitless, it is not within me to accept that so many can perish without a trace. From all my efforts, I found a single scrap of cloth, from a coat or a shirt. The material was bleach white. It was caught in a tree branch a full twenty hands from the ground. How did it get there?

I could find no answers.

Some time well after noon, when I knew I could stand the sight of death no more, I set up camp in what was left of the Wheelhouse Rectory. I spent the last of my strength beating all the dust out of the place. Once done, I surrounded myself with a circle of Iron Filings and Salt as you instructed, and set down all of my provisions within its perimeter.

As inappropriate as it felt, I let my horse have the use of a spare room, for the beast was too terrified to be left out at night. I kept a fan nearby my sleeping place so that I could scatter the Salt and Iron Filings instantly in case of an intrusion. Call me superstitious if you must, but the Rectory was the only place in which I could abide even the notion of sleep.

There was a wood-burning stove to keep the Rectory warm, and though it was spring I found I desired a fire. It did not take long to start the fire, for the wood stack outside was untouched and the kindling very dry. I considered that the smoke plumes might alert whatever agent caused this destruction to my presence, but I again trusted in your wisdom that this would not be so.

I have never before taken such comfort from the sound of crackling wood or seen a fire so full of colors. Heat had never before struck me with such physical force, or induced on my flesh such variety of sensation.

I slept fitfully, awaking at every creaking sound, convinced that you were wrong and that the deathly force had returned. Eventually, through sheer exhaustion, I slumbered. I wonder now how much more I might have learned if I’d searched through the night. Would I have found the boy? And what else might he have told me in that extra time?

I see I am getting ahead of myself.

Suffice it to say, that is how I spent my first night in the dead, forsaken place that Merristown has become.

I wore the ring you gave to me as well. I did not take it off but once in my time there, and then I think you would agree that it was for the best. I find that the most painful to think about. You see, he said it reminded him of his father.

*****

The next morning was occupied by a formal, more methodical search. As instructed, I looked for “things out of place.” Here I found my training as an Academic to be of at least some use. I went from house to house relentlessly searching for any clue as to what had happened.

My findings revealed relatively little, but rather more than I had expected. For example, I knew within a few moments, that what had befallen Merristown had happened all at once and been over in a few moments. The placement of objects was too neat, too in line with village life, for there to have been any kind of panic. At one moment the people of Merristown had been alive, and in the next moment, they had been the victims of some unimaginably terrible Stillness.

The majority of private homes were tidy and empty. As if the residents had packed up to go somewhere shortly before the Stillness. In those homes where this was not the case, I inevitably found the dinner table set for a feast. There was no food, not even the rotten remains. All organic material in Merristown seems to have been utterly destroyed by the Stillness. The Stillness even destroyed lamp oil, as I checked several lanterns to see if I could augment my stores.

Upon searching through the ashes of what I believe to have been the town’s inn, I found the melted remains of glass and tin-ware at regular intervals. I took this to mean that the inn had been crowded on the night of the Stillness, otherwise I should have expected to find the glass and tin remains concentrated in one central storage area.

I also came across a single burned timber in the village common. If I stared hard enough, I could see winding circular distortions captured in the dead grass surrounding it and an unnatural wrapping pattern extending up the length of the pole.

My conclusions were as follows:

-The Stillness occurred on the night of the Spring Dawn Festival, a few weeks before my arrival.

-Given the size of the Wheelhouse here, I have surmised the population of Merristown was largely Galenite.

-On the night of the Stillness, the Galenites had gathered in the town proper for a communal celebration, whereas the Dians stayed home to observe the holiday in private.

-Aside from the placement of dinnerware, the fact that the ribbons appear to have been woven all around the Spring Pole indicate daytime festivities had been concluded at the time of the Stillness.

-Placement of cookery also suggests the Stillness occurred some time during the beginning of the actual meal. Save at a very few private homes, I did not find cookery set aside for cleaning.

You said I should attempt to convey my feelings to you. Very well, then. You know my history. After I realized what had happened, I spent the better part of an hour digging at the ruins of the Spring Pole, trying to make out the ashes of individual ribbons.

By my estimation, there were between thirty and forty children involved in the Spring Pole Dance. I am certain of that. At least thirty children danced there that night, and at least thirty children vanished before they could even finish their meals. No one would even know their names.

When I realized this, I wept in fury, and wished there were something more I could do than record these events for your purview. I spent a few fruitless hours in the Wheelhouse, Town Hall, and Rectory trying to find books that would at least hold the names of the dead. I found nothing.

After I realized that such searches were futile, I liberated my horse from his room in the Rectory, and rode out to the surrounding homes. If all I could do was record, I was determined that I should record everything possible. If there was any clue at all, I determined that I would find it no matter how small.

I set out as your hound, father, determined to put you on the trail of this quarry.

Outlying farms were unremarkable. They displayed the same Galenite/Dian patterns as the homes in the village proper. I discovered only the kinds of secrets I would expect to find in such homes. Bits of crude pornography hidden in a boy’s room. Coins inside a table chair, hidden there by a miserly wife. Bottles of liquor, now strangely full of ash, tucked away in barn rafters.

After a few hours in this pursuit, I grew angry that I might not be able to discover anymore information of worth. But I refused to let my frustration get the better of me. If I had to stay for a month, I would search out what had happened here. I was shocked, when after riding over two hours from the town proper, well beyond the last farm… I came across a mansion.

A true mansion, in the sleepy village of Merristown.

*****

I will tell you now, even though I am getting ahead of myself, that this place was called the Vannaun House. I find I have difficulty thinking of it by any other name. As if speaking of it in general terms taints all related objects.

If I had not been so driven to explore every inch of the devastation, I might never have found it. There was no logic to its placement, hidden as it was behind looming trees. In fact, I did not even see it until I was almost at its doorstep. The estate also contained a small lake on its grounds, but there were no structures to indicate that it was ever put to any commercial use, which speaks to unimaginable amounts of wealth in a place like Merristown.

Given your peculiarities, perhaps you will not understand why this place was so unusual. I shall endeavor to explain:

I grew up in a small town, and know firsthand that the richest families tend to do everything in their power to display their wealth. Especially if there is some dispute as to who is wealthiest. This often translates into the holding of balls, opulent building projects, or the donation of certain items with the family name prominently emblazoned somewhere on the object. The wealthy in small towns acquire power by dominating the social sphere. I have checked and the tradition is no different in Larin than in Tall.

Yet even though this was easily the grandest building in all of Merristown it had been almost hidden by intent. It had no grand garden, no masterful entryway, no iron gates with the name of an estate. Only a dirt road that on a rainy day would be mud right before you stepped foot on expensive stone.

From the very first, the Vannaun House made me uneasy. More uneasy than the rest of Merristown combined.

Every window was adorned either with thick curtains or shutters. All were closed and, presumably, had been closed since the time of the Stillness. When I opened them again, I found the coloring of the furniture to be deep and rich, as if not often exposed to direct sunlight. The family that lived here had been both wealthy and secretive.

The wardrobes indicated to me the primary masters of the home had been a man, his wife, and what I assumed was one very spoiled daughter who had twice as many dresses as most girls of her age and station. Her room also featured an enormous goose feather bed, large enough to accommodate four grown men. I had little doubt she had been the envy of the town’s youth.

The girl’s bedroom was curiously messy and I could only surmise that it had not been cleaned as regularly as the others. Of all the rooms in the house, even the wine cellar, the girl’s bedroom had the only door with its own lock. Not that it presented much difficulty to me, of course. Yet once entered, I could find nothing of value in the room to indicate what needed protection. I assumed, wrongly, that the girl’s father had been overprotective.

The servants quarters at one time housed a chef, a butler, and at least two maids. It’s always difficult to tell with maids. The depressions in either of their mattresses indicated that both beds may have held two people regularly. That could have indicated that two women of similar size shared each room, putting the total number of maids at four, or, based upon the goings on in other estates I am familiar with, it may be that the maids often slept in the same bed at intervals only changing beds randomly so as to obscure their lifestyle.

I could not see even an estate like the Vannaun House supporting four maids, so I decided that the latter scenario was most likely to be correct. Which told me that the maids lived with an expectation that they would be watched, even in their private quarters, and punished harshly should their love be uncovered.

I also found a half-full glass of water on the nightstand of what appeared to be the guest room. The bed there seemed to be largely unused, but other than the presence of the glass, I could find no evidence of a fifth occupant. I did not inspect the glass for fingerprints, and I am now ever so sorry that I failed to do so. I cannot imagine he would make such a mistake, but I regret my failure to check.

I deduced from a workshop and some papers that the family business had been the manufacture of musical instruments. There was quite a lovely Key Box in the parlor which bore the father’s mark. I tried to play it to make the quiet go away, but all the strings had rotted. There is nothing, I think, so sad as a Key Box which will not play.

I am not from this area, but I can only surmise that the father must have been gifted indeed to rise to this station in life. Even if no one now seems to remember who he was, even when they stare at the maker’s mark on their Key Boxes and try to recall where they came from. The documents held every bit of information I might have ever wanted, save for any name of any person who had lived in this home or anywhere in Merristown.

I was almost ready to give up on the Vannaun House. In fact, I was making my way through the kitchens with the notion of leaving when I found the first sign of actions which had been carried out after the Stillness.

*****

There were only a few drops of blood on the back steps, but you cannot imagine the effect they had upon me. My heart ceased to beat for a few moments. My palms began to sweat. My tongue became at first swollen, then dry. I wanted to scream, but could only gasp.

Not only was this blood obviously left by a fleeing human (fleeing what? I did not know), but it was organic material which had survived the destruction of the Stillness!

This, of course, led me to investigate the kitchens. One of the knives was missing from the block and from the immaculate state of the home, I knew this could not be coincidence. Someone had obviously taken the knife from as a weapon. I followed the blood until it dwindled into the grasses surrounding the lake where it disappeared altogether. I admit I found this discouraging.

I searched the surrounding area for a while and found no further clue, but I was not to be deterred! I moved with such vigor that you would never had supposed I spent most of my life reading books in quiet rooms. And my efforts were rewarded, father!

A wider search revealed a white porcelain doll under a lone elm tree some distance away on the other side of the lake. Someone had set it there with intent, for it was undeniably in a seated position almost keeping vigil over the lake.

The doll was a rendition of either a high born lady or a Nimble. I couldn’t tell, but it’s the kind of fashion I was told comes out of Pareem. It’s body had been gashed open, and I found more blood on it. Even tarnished, the doll seemed expensive and custom made.

I concluded the following:

-The girl from the house, or possibly a very young maid, for whatever reason had been spared the totality of the Stillness.

-In fright, the girl fled the mansion pausing only long enough to take her doll.

-The girl had been pursued, and either used the knife to defend herself from her attacker, or had the knife used on her. Possibly, it might have been taken from her. Gashes on the doll would indicate it was used against her at some point.

-However, even if injured, it is obvious the girl fled long enough to make it across the lake. She had enough time to position her doll.

This left me curious as to where she might be now. Had she been caught and vanished, as had everyone else? What had kept her, of all other people, alive long enough to fight back? And what had pursued her? What agent had caused this destruction?

I searched, but could find no footprints.

All that was left of that child’s life was the doll. A fragile porcelain-faced doll with a gash in its cloth body.

I found a needle and thread in the maid’s room and repaired the doll as well as my trembling fingers would allow. My search was over in any case. I planned to make a cursory inspection of a few other outlying farms the next day, of course, but I knew I would find nothing as significant or as telling as this doll. When I was done, I knew my repairs would not fool a scrupulous child but at least the doll was no longer so obviously broken.

I set the doll back in its position at the bottom of the tree, determined that I would spend the following day searching for its owner. I knew she had been killed of course. A force capable of destroying an entire town does not find itself thwarted by a mere child, but I would pursue every avenue no matter how small.

I was ready to go back inside the Vannaun House to make camp when the boy jumped out of the elm tree above me, and slashed a kitchen knife across my throat.

D’yall see who that is? Do ya? Well, Do ya!?!?

That’s right, punks! It’s Kiyudr, famed member of the Machete Army, and recent graduate of a little placed called Oxford. A graduate with, I might add, a super fancy sounding science degree. A degree so fancy that even hearing its name makes me stare at my fat stomach, sigh, and really think about what I’m doing with my life.

Oh yeah, Kiyudr, you rock that machete! Rock it!

I should note that the machete has been digitally added to this photo on account of laws, or something stupid like that.

Kiyudr, my dear reader and friend, I fancily congratulate you on your accomplishment, and wish you the strength to crush all your enemies and drink the blood from their skulls.

I should also note that every time Kiyudr sends me an email I begin to feel extremely uneasy, and have flashbacks to the one time I got an email from a winner of the Nobel Prize. And about how he’d emailed me after he read a story of mine, mentioning him, and the c-word multiple times.

Hobo With a Shotgun

One of my favorite movies of all time is “The Toxic Avenger.” It’s a movie with a wonderful sense of self and never aspires to be anything other than what it is, unless such aspirations somehow make the movie even more of what it is, which is the cinematic version of delicious carnival cotton candy. Every scene in the movie is crazy, absurd, and over the top, but every scene fits exactly where it’s supposed to.

Recently, Netflix released “Hobo with a Shotgun” to its instant queue. I’ll go ahead and tell you right now that this movie is kinda stupid, extremely gore-filled, and pretty much plays like a crack-head’s revenge fantasy. But oh what a crack-head revenge fantasy! Such wonder! Such delight! Such scene chewing!

I think the mark of good entertainment is whether or not it made you feel like someone took out your brain and played with it. “Hobo with a Shotgun” not only plays with your brain, but puts in a blender, turns it to puree, and jacks off on the sludge that comes out.

I cannot possibly recommend this movie enough.

Weirdly Obsessive Thoughts

About Terry Goodkind

For those of you who don’t know, Terry Goodkind is a best-selling Fantasy novelist who has a reputation for… shall we say… eccentric statements. One of which is that he doesn’t write Fantasy novels but books with Important Human Themes, dismissing entirely that it’s possible to do both. Another of which is that he doesn’t ever read novels, often followed by statements… damning the nature of the modern novel.

Just google him if you want to find more. It won’t take long, and this rabbit hole goes down pretty damn fair. He’s an amazing fount of comedic fodder.

Of Note:

One of his novels featured a battle with an evil chicken with no hint at all that it was supposed to be funny. Another book had the main character ripping out his half-brother’s spine with his bare hand. The last book had pirate plumbers and an evil abstract painter. You knew he was evil because he said “Fuck” one time. There is also a disturbing abundance of sexually charged torture in everything he’s ever written so far as I can tell. Sex torture is apparently less offensive than the word “Fuck.”

Needless to say, I have read every single one of Terry Goodkind’s books, and I plan to keep reading them till either I, or Terry Goodkind, is sex tortured to death. Also, his books were the basis of the television show “Legend of the Seeker” although tonally the works were very dissimilar.

This weekend, Terry Goodkind released another novel, this one entitled “The Omen Machine.” This novel created a lot of internet chatter, which is why Mr. Goodkind has been on my mind lately.

Due to the rather strange condition I call being myself, I thought about writing a series of fake biographical short-stories about Terry Goodkind over the weekend. I like making fun of things. It’s just how I react to the world and understand things.

As you might imagine, the stories were all quite bizarre and surrealist tales. However, I knew they were funny because when I plotted them out in my head, I started cackling like a mad man and the children had to come in and tell me to be quiet. That’s usually a good sign as far as compelling material goes.

One of the stories involved a lonely, outcast twelve-year old Terry Goodkind finding a magical Republican unicorn named Richard, developing a friendship with that unicorn, only to have it be murdered by a dirty Communist ghoul.

Another story featured a teenage Terry Goodkind in his high school metal shop, befriending the teenage version of that crazy fat guy from the ColdSteel.com videos, and creating a kick-ass magical sword that would destroy the evil council of collectivist gnomes trying to destroy the high school.

Basically, I looked up every puzzling statement Terry Goodkind has ever made on any subject, and then tried to create a history which would make all of those statements make perfect sense.

However, when I did that research, I found I started to have an alarming amount of compassion for Mr. Goodkind despite all the crazy shit he’s said. While I know making fun of Terry Goodkind is awesome and kinda habit-forming, my human feelings started getting in the way. I blame this in large part on running into someone who works for Terry Goodkind on a messageboard I frequent, who assured everyone that Terry Goodkind is, in fact, a regular human being. He also reacted with humor to my question as to whether or not he ever showed up to work to find Terry Goodkind naked in his backyard smearing peanut butter all over rocks because they were telling lies about him. Which you just kinda have to respect.

So, in the process of researching for the stories I no longer plan to write, I found out the dude didn’t become a famous writer until he was forty-five years old. He’d spent his whole life before that making cabinets and painting. Apparently, he even made violins. He’s also dyslexic and apparently had trouble in school. Which was, by the way, a Catholic school.

So, here are my human feelings about Terry Goodkind:

-At one time, he was a little kid with learning disability that got sent to Catholic school… in the 1950′s.

-As this was before the invention of people caring about kids and trying to figure out what their problems might be, he probably spent a lot of time getting beaten by nuns with rulers and sitting in the corner with, perhaps, an actual dunce cap.

-Because this was before the invention of children’s programming telling children to have compassion for one another, Terry Goodkind probably got laughed at by all the other children, while some evil nun nodded in approval.

-I’m also going to go out on a limb and speculate that our young Terry didn’t have a lot of friends, which is where he developed his imagination and distrust of groups. Now, you can say that his imagination is strange, and I’d probably agree, but you can’t tell me that he doesn’t have an astounding creative capacity.

- A now teenage Terry Goodkind graduates high school after getting told he’s stupid a lot, probably without many job prospects other than construction.

-Once he’s free of the strain of an Academic environment, Terry finds that he likes accomplishment. He sinks enough time into carpentry that he winds up building cabinets. Which, if you had a grandfather like mine that made you help him out in the shop, you know ain’t as easy as it seems.

-So, resentful of a system in which he didn’t do particularly well, Terry grows up and finds he can thrive in a different sort of system. An economic system. And everything he does there is a direct insult to every rotten thing that ever happened to him when he was young. Over time, this becomes entrenched.

-Terry learns how to paint. Gets in some galleries. Makes violins. He’s gotten very good at making things. Which no one probably told him in school, so screw all those people.

-Dude finally writes a book, despite his reading disability. He becomes famous on his first try. Gets big fast… and now he’s surrounded by the kinds of people who overreached him as a kid. The ones who never had any problems keeping letters in the right order, and writing them down in the right order, which is all the mean old nun cared about. The kinds of people he probably worked construction for when he first started. The kinds of people who’d never really wanted to have anything to do with Scary Terry Goodkind.

-Everything I know of followed.

Perhaps this is all wrong. I don’t know for sure. I don’t really think I’ve ever seen an interview that gave me a very good sense of who Terry Goodkind is as a person, or explored his past. And I don’t expect to.

I used to work with a guy just like Terry Goodkind. At minimum, you’d need to build several houses with him over the course of a couple years, save the life of someone he’s related to, or have a conservative radio talk-show program, before he’d even see you as a human being let alone open up to you.

In other words, I started thinking of Terry Goodkind less as “Black Box that Makes Weird Things A Happen” and more like “A Guy Like One of the Construction Workers I Grew Up With Who Suddenly Became Famous.”

I humanized him, damn it! And now I can’t undo it.

After a while, I found myself understanding the abrasive attitude, the super conservative positions, and the socially inappropriate levels of passion. In fact, I saw some of those traits in myself.

I don’t really approve of a lot of the things he’s said, and would probably argue them at length if I actually knew him… but I can’t imagine how my father would be regarded if he became famous, or his friend Dutch, or anyone else from the old sawmill.

So now I can’t make fun of Terry Goodkind or enjoy fun being made of him without feeling a little bad. I mean, I might make fun of him anyway, but now at least I’ll do it with a sense of empathy and understanding.

Goddamn human feelings, getting in the way of my goddamn laughs.

Brandyn danced at the end of the sand bar behind the tavern, as the Rim Wind blew her amber hair every which way. Locks of it licked her cheeks and forehead like trickles of molten gold, struggling free of the white cloth she’d tied around her forehead. For all the fury of her surroundings, Brandyn’s was a slow and peaceful kind of dance. Like a mighty oak swaying in a light breeze.

She would extend one arm only to retract it a moment later. Or raise one foot and kick slowly out before turning and falling into another stance. Whenever she moved, her body never wavered, never lost balance. Not even when the wind got so fierce it made the whole tavern shake.

She was, Egan realized as he watched her far away through the tavern window, practicing for a fight. She was practicing what she would do if she had to kill someone. The beauty of it made Egan’s heart ache.

When Hyrd came down, not much later, he frowned to see Egan at the window.

“I thought I told you to be careful about that,” the old Captain huffed.

“I am being careful, Captain. She can’t even see me.” Egan tore his eyes away, but made a special effort to remember the way the wind had wrapped Brandyn’s clothes around her when she faced east. He seared the image of the cloth hugging every inch of her body into his mind where it might never be forgot. For some reason he could not quite put name to, he had an strange desire to weep.

“That man is still here. Carrying that little scroll around with him wherever he goes. Will be for a while, I reckon, till he’s got himself a few hundred idiots for his army.” Captain Hyrd spat on the floor in disgust.

Egan didn’t care as much as he usually would, since he had yet to swab the decks. A bit of spittle was of no concern. He had difficulty thinking about anything but Brandyn dancing out by the shoreline. Nothing mattered so much as the grace of a beautiful woman. His woman.

“How come you’re so against it, Captain? I mean, I’ve heard men talk about it before. All the stuff they’re fighting for. It sounds better than the Baronies, that’s for sure.”

“Heard a few men talk and now you’re a philosopher, I take it?” Captain Hyrd poured himself a drink and gulped it down. As far back as Egan could remember, the Captain had always been at least a little bit drunk.

“Just saying freedom don’t sound so bad, Captain.” Egan shrugged, and turned back to the window. Brandyn spun in half-circles now with her legs planted wide apart and only her waist moving. It made him want to touch her. To feel the warmth off of her as he had felt it when he’d carried her out of the water, or when she’d come to his room at night.

“There’ve been four wars for freedom in my lifetime. They all end the same. The southland Barons decide they don’t want to be called Barons. Then they get a bunch of men to die so they can write their new name in blood, and when they’re done having their fun, they surrender for bribes from the north and nothing fucking happens.” Hyrd looked down at the shot glass with his one good eye, snorted in disgust, slammed it back down on the bar, and carried the bottle with him over to sit by Egan.

“Well, let’s see what’s got you so bold this morning, Mister Egan.”

The Captain fumbled with a spyglass in his pocket, extended it, and aimed it out the window in Brandyn’s direction. He shook his head snorted, slapped the spyglass shut with a practiced gesture that only looked careless, and let out a grunt.

“She can move, I’ll give her that. If I were a younger man with wick in me candle, I suppose I’d fancy her too.” Captain Hyrd put the bottle to his lips and lifted it.

“She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Egan said, breathlessly.

Hyrd seemed to find that funny. “Well, you ain’t lived that long boy, but I’ll give you the benefit of my experience and say she’s still quite a looker. And I can see that with just the one good eye.”

“I love her, Captain,” Egan didn’t care who knew. Didn’t care if it sent the Captain into a frothing rage. He could no more deny his love for Brandyn than the nose on his face.

The Captain sighed.

Perhaps it was foolish, and perhaps and his brains really had been addled, but Egan realized he was not as afraid of the Captain anymore. Or at least not as afraid as he had been before Brandyn arrived. Over the past few weeks he had begun to see the old man as something rather like a father. And if Egan was not out of his mind, Captain Hyrd seemed to be regarding him as something of a son. It was as if Brandyn had brought the two of them into a communion that had always been there below the surface but never quite realized.

“She’ll break your heart lad. The young ones always do. Can’t help it, it’s the way they’re made.” Hyrd took another pull from the bottle, “Though I suppose maybe everyone oughta have their heart broken at least once in their life. Getting my heart broke drove me out to sea, and I can’t say I would change that for anything.”

In this single solitary moment, when the two of them were alone and a girl from out of a legend danced a killing dance not two hundred paces away… in this moment, Egan figured such questions could be asked as could never be asked again.

“How’d it happen, Captain? What was it that made you give up the sea?”

Captain Hyrd paused, resting his hands on his enormous belly. After a moment, the Captain seemed to decided that in this single moment, answers could be given as could never be given again. The Captain set his cane solemnly on the table and stoppered the bottle of whiskey, though he did not set it down. Captain Hyrd coughed before he spoke.

“Back during the war, we got message that the northern baronies were trying to cut off our supply line from Angard. They helped us out, back when what we were fighting for was called the Union. Gave us all kinds of things. Weapons, spyglasses, clothes. Good stuff. Kept us fighting long after we might’ve given up. They’re all for freedom, the Angardi. You can ask Brandyn about it later. I’m sure she’d love to share.”

Brandyn’s danced had quickened out on the sand bar. She spun, going end for end on hand and foot without ever seeming to lose sense of where she was. Occasionally, she would fall to her knees only to spring back up again, wild with the thrill of soaring through the air.

“Well there was only one ship coming in from Angard, and the northerners sent six of theirs out to intercept. We’d never have bothered to help if the odds had been better. The Angardi are the best sailors on the sea. Ask any man worth his salt and he’ll tell you the same. Two or three ships, and we would have never gone out to help. Never would have left the damned port, even.

“But with six we were honor bound. So we sailed there, and it began like it usually does. I had finesse with it, of course. I fought for every advantage. But mostly it was a few sweeps, and a lot of men jumping over and killing other men… and that’s when… when it came up from the Deeps. Worst thing I’ve ever seen, Mister Egan. I pray to the gods I never see one again.”

Brandyn slowed now. Moving as she was when he first saw her, hands extending and retracting. Feet kicking and falling, finding new stances.

“What was it, Captain?” Egan asked.

“I don’t exactly know, boy. I don’t know and I never want to find out, but I knew it for one of them. The things that the black gods left behind in the Tide War, out swimming past the sea swords. Don’t never sail out beyond them damn sea swords less’n you have to, Mister Egan. I won’t say never, on account of sometimes a man has to make his own way. But mostly it ain’t worth it. And….”

Hyrd waived his hands in the air, as if wiping away the last few words.

“Seven notes, boy. Seven notes are taught to every captain of every ship. Seven notes taught to every man who ever got put in charge of other men, from here to the lands beyond the Silver Sea and the Rift. Seven notes to call Right of Hunt. When you’re grown, I’ll play them for you but once and you had best remember them for all your days in this world. For if you ever need them, odds are you won’t have time to fumble about.

“Armies hear those notes, and even if they’re in the middle of killing each other they stop. They find where the dark things are and they turn as one, all sins forgiven, and they take the fight to where the fight needs taking. Seven notes, Mister Egan, and it was I that sounded them that day. I called Right of Hunt, and we took our ship to aid the others.

“The sea was full of swells, and you knew that somewhere the Rim was in a fury. Before we got close in enough to help it had already sunk one ship, tore it right in half with one great big tentacled arm. It takes ‘em a while to do it, but if they get a good grip they’re strong enough. I told my men to stand by the side blades. We may not have had much of a chance, but we would go down fighting.”

Brandyn flipped herself through the air more slowly than she had previously. Egan saw her support her body all on one arm, before pushing herself back up in the air. How long could she keep something like that up? How long before she would get tired? He’d never seen her tired.

“We had an iron ram a’course. Barons bitch about the cost of replacing them every year, but they put ‘em back all the same because no sailor worth his salt will go to sea without one. So we figured where the center of the thing had to be and sailed there, and as luck would have it we struck it. Dead on.”

Hyrd absentmindedly reached up and rubbed his hand over his missing eye.

“It would’ve snapped us in half from the start if I hadn’t personally gone down to get the men moving. Don’t seem like much, the side blades, and I’ll be damned if I was ever too strict on having ‘em out. Seen too many men get cut on one in a sudden swell, but I’d had ‘em out there in the Deep.

“So when it wrapped it’s tentacles ’round the ship we set out with ‘em. Two men to a blade, moving them like saws. Makes you sick to touch the things out of the Deep, and it stings. But if you cut them long enough they bleed, and we knew it was our lives. So we cut… but it had so many arms… too many, in the end.

“I called Right of Hunt again. There wasn’t much else to do. Again and again, I called it out. Called it loud enough to wake the gods. Three of the remaining ships turned back. In fairness, it was all of them that could but it still weren’t enough. No war is bigger than the war we were fighting. No war bigger than that of men against the things that live in the Deep.

“Two of their rams struck home. The other skidded past. But it was too sly to be taken by that. We can’t get over how big they are, so we always forget how clever they can be too. What’s an arm to a thing that has dozens? What’s a wound when it’ll heal? It was sinking down. Pulling us with it. I could hear the planks cracking. It was using the rams to suck us down with it. To hold onto us.

“The men set to panic and there was nothing I could do. What was I to shout? Don’t jump? It’ll gobble you up if you jump? I couldn’t very well tell them to stay because it was only going to do the same. Your da was the last man still working the blades when the ship was going down. It pulled him right off. I saw it snap his back before he reached the water. I don’t think it meant to spare him the drowning. I don’t think it even cared.”

Brandyn held her hands behind her back and was kicking with only her feet. The sun was slowly rose as she moved, as if she were calling the day to her. Foot up over her head, followed closely by the other. Then down in a squat and up again. Side to side. So fast it was like water becoming steam and then so slow it was like freezing.

“It made the mistake when it brought its head up to feed. They have mouths see… that was what I’d always figured. It had a beak like an octopus and I knew that meant it’s brain had to be just behind. I saw it plucking men out of the water and shoving them in there. I’ve been drunk every day since I saw that, Mister Egan. And gods help me, I’ll be drunk every day until I die if’n it helps me forget seeing men dragged into that fucking thing’s maw.

“I ran back into my cabin, lost my eye when one of the planks snapped and a splinter took it. I didn’t even realize, because I was too busy looking for was my harpoon. When I found it I grabbed it and ran back out and saw it swallow another man. I decided right then and there that’d be the last meal that fucking thing ever ate!

“It went looking for another, Mister Egan. Sending its tentacles right toward the body of one of my lads! Well, not if I had anything to say about it! I waited for enough lightning to see by, and then I picked up that harpoon like thunder in my own palm, and I threw it down. Down right into it’s fucking throat!”

Egan watched the Captain, and licked his lips. Brandyn was sitting on her knees now, facing the sun, head bowed down toward the sun like she was praying. She showed no signs of moving. The Captain trembled with remembered fury.

“The fucker was bigger than any damn octopus, a’course. The harpoon weren’t big enough. From what I could see I figured it needed another good three feet, so I scrambled on up to the highest part of the ship and when I found the moment I wanted, I jumped and put my heel right on the end of that fucking harpoon and stabbed that shit eating monster right through the gods damned brain.”

Captain Hyrd pounded the table so hard it rattled, and let out a booming laugh of contempt.

“It had eight great big black eyes, Mister Egan, and I stared them down while I watched it sink. And with its last bit of life, I saw it hate me, hate me because I was some little animal that had killed something as big and as old as it was. I spit in its eyes, Mister Egan. Spit in the eyes of evil itself, and with the last effort it had in it, it bit down and tore my leg off.”

Captain Hyrd panted from the force of the recollection. He turned to the side and spit.

“All my own crew was dead, but after a while, after I had near bled to death some of them as were on the last few ships sent out a boat for me. Put a torch to my leg, tarred it up and I spent every day for a week tied to a cot below-decks screaming and crying for my mother. When infection set into my eye they figured I was dead. I asked ‘em to give me a proper Captain’s burial and who was they to refuse? After what I’d done, they were damn near as afraid of me as they were of that creature! So they set me down in a little row boat, with a saber and a harpoon and enough whiskey to drink myself to death.”

Brandyn was walking back to the tavern.

“Angardi found me the next day. I thought they’d been sunk before we showed up, but it turned out they’d never been there at all. Ha! Can you imagine?

“In the mean time, I’d got just drunk enough to pass out and puke up all the whiskey and pass out. Bastard Angardi fixed my leg up proper, while I slept. Did a good job of it, not like those buggering bonesaw loyalists. Angardi even cut my eye right out of my head along with most of the infection.”

The Captain lifted his patch for a moment, revealing the hollow space where his eye had been.

“Was one of those like her that did it. ‘Course I fought him every inch of the way, begging him to let me die. Said it hurt too much. I deserved to die after all I’d done. After losing all my crew. After losing my ship. And you know what he said?”

Egan shook his head. Brandyn walked in through the door that led up from the beach.

“Said I could owe it to him later!” Hyrd laughed as if he had been telling the world’s funniest joke then turned to Brandyn. “You hungry, girl? I’m famished!”

*****

“They’ll come for me you know. Little men like that, they don’t know how to let things be.” Brandyn said. Night had fallen, and it was one of the first things Brandyn had said the entire day.

“Aye, reckon so.” Hyrd murmured around his fish.

“I’m not going to kill anyone. I wasn’t made for that. I wasn’t spared death for that.” Egan wondered if that wasn’t what she had been fighting with all that while down on the beach.

“Wouldn’t ask you to. Don’t care for killing much either. Got too old for it.” Hyrd said.

“What if… what if we just ran away and hid somewhere for a while?” Egan said. He hadn’t touched his plate at all, which compared to Hyrd and Brandyn seemed strange since their own meals were almost completely devoured. “He said himself they had to go off to some big battle. They can’t look for us forever.”

“Wouldn’t work.” Hyrd said.

“Why not, Captain? She… she doesn’t have to be here when they come back!” Egan did not realize he was shouting until he looked down and realized he was standing. He felt ridiculous. Then he realized he didn’t care.

“I can take her up north of the Crayn Bard’s Cove. Then we can cut back into the mountains. There are places there no one has been in a hundred years. No one would find us! She can be safe! She can stay!”

“I won’t stay here.” Brandyn said.

It was the way she looked at him. Like he was a tiny child with concerns that could be easily dismissed because they were too feeble to mesh with the complex geometry of the adult world. It was the way she turned to him without even the courtesy of pretending she had thought about staying. He’d never felt so small in his life. Not “can’t” no appeal to duty or honor. Won’t. As if all his love meant nothing to her.

Egan stumbled, trying to think of anything to say that would make it better.

“I… I could go with you, Brandyn! Tell her Captain! I could go with her!” Egan fumbled for words, trying to figure out what had changed. Tried to figure out how it was possible that Brandyn didn’t feel the same thing for him that he felt for her.

“Brandyn, I love you! I love you more than life itself!” he felt naked.

Brandyn met his eyes coolly. There was no weakness in them. No remorse.

“Boy, sit back down and stop making a fool of yourself.”

Egan ran to the door and didn’t stop running until he’d reached the beach. He felt even more foolish when he had to stop because his foot was bleeding.

*****

“What are you looking for?” Brandyn asked.

Egan had started coming the beach after his foot stopped bleeding. He’d seen Brandyn come when she was still a long way off. She must’ve wanted to be seen, but he had only acknowledged her when she was standing so close that her shadow had fallen over him.

“I figure I’ll know when I find it.” Egan didn’t look up to see her face. He didn’t know if he could bear to see himself reflected in those precious eyes. He was still angry. Still feeling betrayed for having his love so soundly rejected. And still feeling stupid for feeling those things.

“You found me around here, didn’t you?”

Egan pointed to the spot. The waves were coming in hard enough that every now and again there was white spray jumping out of the inlet like jewels thrown up into the air.

“My people have a story, I think you should hear.”

Egan had not stopped walking along the beach, but Brandyn didn’t seem to mind.

“I can tell it while we walk. I like the sea air.”

Reluctantly, Egan nodded.

“The Haestan were great builders, and they made all of the world. Once, tree talked to tree, mountain spoke to sea, and bird sang to fish. All things had been made by the Haestan, and they could speak to all things. So, when the Haestan were gone, the world refused to work as it once had. A great confusion followed as the world forgot its secret language.

“Without their guiding hand, the world fell into chaos. But some of the Haestan’s servants had been left behind. And those that had the most wisdom were the Aodani, but they were jealous of this wisdom and did not wish to share it with mankind because their secret was the secret of the Haestan’s power and they were covetous of it above all else.

“One day a Raven came. Raven too had been a servant of the Haestan, but was angry at the Aodani for they had turned from the mission of the Haestan and forgotten their true purpose. Raven was wise and tricksome, and spent years serving the Aodani to gain their trust. Even though almost all the world had forgotten, Raven still knew how to speak to a few of his friends.

“He spoke to his friend the Lion, who was big and fierce and told him to make a terrifying noise. Then he found his friends Tiger and Bear and told them to also make noise so that the Aodani would fear that such a fight as the three would make would break what little was left of the world.

“So the Aodani came to Raven, for they were lazy and knew Raven to be useful, and asked him if he could find some way to make Tiger, Bear, and Lion leave one another in peace. So Raven said yes, that he knew a way but that he would have to think on it for many days.

“Raven went to his friend Horse, who was quick above all others and his friend Hawk who could see furthest and deepest. Raven asked Hawk where the Aodani kept their great secret, for he had seen that the world was cold and that many of the Servants of the Haestan lived without knowledge of what they were.

“Hawk flew up so that he hid in the light of the sun, and when he looked down he saw a Fire greater than that of the sun. A great shining Fire that surrounded everything that the Aodani touched. But the Fire was also a Song, and it was also a Spear. The world was different then, and one thing could be many things. When Hawk came back he told Raven of this and told Raven where he could find the Fire.

“Raven swooped down in the middle of the night, for as Hawk’s wisdom came by day, Raven’s wisdom came by night, and in night no one could see him save by his will. He took the Fire, which was a Song and a Spear, but knew it was too heavy to carry by wing and knew that when the day came he would be caught. So, walking low to the ground, he took the Fire to where Horse waited and put it on his back.

“Horse took the Fire and raced the Horizon. Horse ran at the speed of day’s breaking so that wherever he raced night became day, all across the whole of the land, but when he reached the waters, Horse despaired for he could not swim.

“So Horse sent Raven and Hawk out over the sea, and sent Lion and Bear and Tiger out to make loud noises in hopes that someone would come to help them carry the Light to where they could not.

“They called long and loud, but it was not enough. So they stopped and decided to speak as one. They spoke the name of their One True Master, and when they sang all seven at once, friends came from out of the waters. Their names were Dolphin and Whale. Whale was a wise old grandmother and Dolphin was a young man with many hundreds of children who swam with him all day through the waters.

“Raven begged them to take the Light out to the oceans of the world, so that the old days could come again and they agreed. And they made an agreement together that whenever the Fire fell into the waters they would pick it up and carry it forward so that it would shine across the whole of the world.

“But they warned Dolphin and Whale, the same as they warned everyone else, that the Fire could not be held for long. It was not meant for any but he who promised that he would Return, and that to hold the Fire any longer than was needed to pass it along would mean certain death.”

Egan pretended to be very interested in a shell he had come across. It was a white conch. Nice enough he supposed. He curled his sandy fingers into its center.

“I know you saw them. They wouldn’t have left unless they were sure that help was there for me. And they wouldn’t have left unless that person was a good person who needed to see the Fire.” Brandyn knelt down next to Egan and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Do you understand?”

“Reckon so. Fire is just for looking. Just for keeping warm by. Not for holding onto.”

Egan sat down, feet toward the water, and brushed the sand off of the conch shell without thought.

“I’d like to sit here for a while if you don’t mind.”

He sat for two hours watching the tide go in and out.

*****

Even with all the trouble brewing, Egan had never seen the tavern so full nor so loud. It was Brandyn that had done it all. Brandyn had made people love her, had charmed them into forgetting their troubles. Made them love her and Egan still loved her despite everything.

It was like one of those confidence games you heard about in the city. A man came up to you and told you what his business was so well, that you never even realized he’d robbed you. Except what Brandyn stole was your worries and your troubles and your heart.

Even Hyrd seemed less melancholy. The Captain even sat down once in a while and shared drinks with miners, a breed which he generally found contemptible. The only sour note was that when he went to market, Egan would sometimes see the little man with the scroll walking around, making declarations. Some locals were starting to follow him around too, those that hadn’t been sent off to the army already.

It made Egan nervous, going to market, but he went anyway, because as fearful as he was they still needed to eat. And no matter what was outside, he wasn’t going to show any fear in front of Brandyn. Not after he’d already diminished himself so far in her sights.

Egan didn’t see the black-bearded man before it was too late. He had been leaning against an empty stall, and came up on Egan’s side while Egan’s arms were full of baskets. The shove would not have knocked Egan off his feet in usual circumstances, but with his arms overburdened, and the wound on the bottom of his foot still not quite healed, it sent him sprawling backward into the mud.

“You know, you don’t look so tough when you don’t got a demon watching your back.” The black-bearded man had a red ribbon wrapped around his left bicep. Egan had seen them on some of the other people following the little man with the scroll.

It took Egan a moment to realize that Brandyn was being insulted.

“You watch your mouth!” Egan cried, scrambling to his feet.

“How many men she laid with, ‘sides you? How many has she fucked over to her cause?” The black-bearded man asked.

The left side of the smirking face was still a network of bruises in which Egan could see the shape of Captain Hyrd’s cane. Angry beyond belief, Egan took a swing, only for someone behind him to suddenly kick his legs out. Egan fell back into the mud, this time face first.

There was weight on his arms and legs. Two men, pressing him down into the mud. He struggled. The black-bearded man put a knife to Egan’s throat.

“You shall know them by their strength which is great. You shall know them for they shall fear the light, and seek always the dark offered behind evil doors. And you shall know them by their sinful appetites, for they will fuck anything…” The black-bearded man spit in Egan’s face “no matter how pathetic.”

Egan felt tears run down his face. Hot, shameful tears mixing with the mud.

“She ain’t. She ain’t no demon,” he blubbered.

The knife came up, and slit Egan hotly across the cheek. The black-bearded man spoke close so that his pungent sour breath blew into Egan’s nostrils.

“Hope the fuck was worth betraying your country, boy. Only a matter of time now.”

The weight vanished. Egan waited a while to get up then turned to look over his shoulder. There were half a dozen men with the red ribbon. If he were brave… if Brandyn had taught him how to fight, then he could… but he could not. All he could do was stand there with mud, blood, and tears on his face.

“I… I’ll tell ‘em what you done!” Egan shouted. Bleeding had never felt so stupid.

“Won’t make no difference. Demon’s a demon. She’ll get hers. Maybe I’ll get mine too once they’ve chained her up.” The men laughed, and as Egan bent over to collect his lost baskets, they stayed there laughing, pelting him with the occasional rock.

He bore it silently.

*****

“They’ll kill her Cap’n. No matter what she says, she can’t fight that many. Not forever.” Egan tried not to move his lips too much, because it made the stitches on his face hurt. He was out in the back of the tavern with Hyrd, standing over the grill. The Captain was holding his spyglass and looking at the sea.

“They’ll wait. We still have time. Dumb of ‘em to warn us though.”

“They called her a demon.” Egan fumed.

“Reckon she’s been called worse names by better men.” Hyrd said.

“She ought to kill them. Ought to kill them all.”

“They’ll get theirs if they stand in her way when the time comes for her to go. But best we pray that it don’t, because we want to stay here when she goes.”

“What if they decide to do something stupid?”

Hyrd licked his lips and stared through the spy-glass out over the ocean.

“Then I reckon we’ll have to do something stupid right back.”

*****

When Egan awoke, Brandyn was packing her bag. He thought about announcing he was awake, but found himself too upset to care. When she’d come to him last night, he’d hoped that things might be different.

“I ain’t never seen you pack. You get a letter today?”

“No. But I think it might be a good idea to have some things at hand in case I need to go.”

“Where to?”

Brandyn sighed, and put the bag on her cot. A second later she sat down next to it, and rubbed her forehead. Egan wrapped an arm around her waist in reassurance. Part of him said that if he could wrap his arm around her, and keep it there, she might never have to leave.

“I should have died. I was ready for it, and when I lived… when you pulled me out of the ocean. I was so… so happy. So grateful for every breath. But that doesn’t last. Chagraen Lo’Shan used to tell me that, but she said I wouldn’t believe until it happened. Life creeps back in around the edges.” Brandyn sighed and fell back.

Brandyn stroked his hand. Egan noticed that the shell he had given her was neatly packed away with the rest of her belongings. It hurt to think that it was all the connection they would have in only a few short days.

*****

Hyrd paced the tavern. He’d refused to rent the spare rooms for the last week, so there was no chance they’d be interrupted. He and Brandyn sat next to one another at a table as they watched the Captain walk the length of his ship.

“They’re going to come tonight.” Hyrd spat and then hit the floorboards with his cane.

“How reliable is the information?”

“If it’s false, then it’s the most expensive lie ever told in the history of this damned town.” Hyrd’s knuckles were white.

“I should go then.” Brandyn said.

“No. That wouldn’t make a bit of difference. I’ve made arrangements. We’ll be fine. We just have to wait till nightfall so they won’t see us go.”

“That’s cutting things a bit close.”

“Don’t see any other way.”

*****

When it got to be dark, and there still wasn’t anyone in the tavern, that’s when Egan knew that it was going to be for real this time. That all the wait was over. That it was only a few moments until something happened. The revolution had arrived, even if was only a revolution for the three people in the tavern. Egan sat on a barrel, bag in hand, staring out a window, while Hyrd mucked about in the kitchen.

“You seen my Navigation tools, boy?” he shouted.

“No, Captain.”

“It’s the big brass thing that looks like a triangle.”

Egan, who had used it to scrape the grill several months previous, and broken it, said “Never laid eyes on it, Captain.”

“Damn it then. Very well. I just didn’t want one of those fucks getting hold of it.” Hyrd barged back into the room noisily. He hadn’t said a word as to their intended destination, but Egan had an idea from the way that the captain had been looking down the extension lately.

“Where’s your girl?”

“Outside, getting the lay o’ the land.” Egan said bitterly. He’d wanted to go with her until she’d flatly rejected him.

“Watch your tone, Mister Egan. Moments like these are gonna be what you’ll want to look back on when you get to be my age. Make sure you remember ‘em fondly.” Hyrd pulled a coat on that Egan had never seen before, a great big blue wool monstrosity with shiny brass buttons. It must have been one of those things that he kept in the chest under his bed. There’d been a saber in there, but he’d already given that to Brandyn.

“What’s the plan, captain?” Egan asked, not for the first time.

Hyrd pulled his spyglass from a pocket inside the big coat and went to the window again. He slammed the table with one hand and smiled. “Ha! She’s still there! Plan is, we sail away for a bit. Let the Rim Wind carry us down along the coast, and we set port some place people don’t give a fuck about this war.”

“Where’d you get the boat?”

“Made someone who owed me a favor buy it.”

Brandyn came in at that moment, Hyrd’s saber at her side. Egan noted how comfortably it sat there, like it had been made for her.

“About a hundred and fifty. Meeting up in a warehouse. Wouldn’t have been able to find even that if one of them hadn’t been dumb enough to carry a torch part-way.” Brandyn walked swiftly around the tavern, blowing out lanterns. Captain Hyrd said nothing to stop her.

“The ship stands ready, but it’s a way down the coast. It might take an hour to get there.” Brandyn looked at Hyrd kneeling on his crutch, but didn’t say anything. She only walked over to the back door by the grill and held it open for Egan and Hyrd.

Egan made sure to take a look at the now dark tavern before he licked his lips and blew out the final lantern. It had been his home for a good long while. Maybe like the one of the shells he found on the beach he’d grown too big for it. He puckered his lips and turned his last vision of the tavern to nothing but the smell of smoke.

*****

Hyrd seemed glad of the sound of the ocean, even though it made Egan feel that their chances of setting out to sea were dubious at best.

“Do you hear her, Mister Egan?” Captain Hyrd whispered.

Egan had taken to walking slightly behind and off to the side of the captain, as every now and then the sand turned treacherous and the captain slipped. Neither of them acknowledged when Egan saved the Captain from falling on his ass. Egan rememberd to shake his head.

“She’s glad to have me home, boy. She’s saying ‘ol’ Sam Hyrd, I ain’t seen head nor hide of you for fifteen years now! Come on back to me ol’ boy! Come back to you mother!’” Hyrd opened his mouth and breathed deep the salt smell of the waters.

“Oh that’s a pure wind, Mister Egan. That’s straight from the Rim itself. Not too much further now.”

The ocean was black, and the only way Egan could see the choppiness of its waters was by watching the reflection of the moon break apart and come back together. Up ahead, Brandyn paused, and looked back. She must have been fifty yards out front, but she had proven capable of crossing such distances repeatedly with minimal effort.

“She sees it, now.” Hyrd whispered.

“The boat?”

Hyrd shook his head.

“No more of that, Mister Egan. I called the tavern a boat, but a ship… a ship is a lady. Beautiful and refined, you treat her well and she does the same by you. You keep her decks polished and bright, so you always find purchase. You keep her sails plump and billowing so she steers you swift and far. Oh boy… such a thing is a lady, such a thing as I have not known in these fifteen years.”

Hyrd’s pace quickened, and he almost fell again before Egan caught him.

“You all right, Captain?”

Hyrd laughed. “Fifteen years ago, I swore I’d sail the sea no more, not so long as evil men owned the ladies I loved. What a fool, I was. What a child! I should have fought harder. Should have clung to them with every last breath I had. Should have taken a knife to the throat of those who had made my ladies into whores.”

In a rare admission of weakness, Hyd threw his arm over Egan’s shoulder. “Together boy, let’s get all of us home.” Hyrd hopped as Egan, stooped over, walked beside him.

“I’ll teach you to fish. We’ll make a new life of it, somewhere by Samaerael. Don’t care for the Jesters or the Avatars. Don’t care for the way they treat the Dim, come to think of it, but we’ll have our lady with us! We’ll have our fine wo-” Egan walked a half step before he realized that Hyrd was no longer hopping with him.

“Captain?” Egan called, turning.

Hyrd fell, grabbing Egan by the waist and pulling him down. There was an arrow sticking from the captain’s side. It’s oil slicked fletchings sparkled in the oncoming torchlight.

“Brandyn!” Egan called, not caring if he was announcing his position. “Brandyn they’re coming!”

Far ahead, Egan saw Brandyn pause, and look back. Far away in the night, bowstrings went taut. Egan swallowed. Several snapped loose all at once. Brand pulled the sabre out of its sheathe. Egan wanted to heave, because there was no way… until he realized that Brandyn was still running, still leaping ahead untouched, somersaulting, and throwing sand up in the air. Every single one of the arrows had missed her.

Some men came running down at them, from up over the rocks.

Grabbing Hyrd’s hands with his own, Egan dragged the captain down the beach, straining with every muslce and leaving a trail in the sand. Brandyn was there in an instant, holding several arrows in her hands. Arrows that she had plucked out of the air with no trouble at all. She looked down at Hyrd, then back up at Egan.

“Get him to the ship.” Brandyn said resolutely.

She turned in time to catch an arrow aimed at her face.

Egan saw then, why she had never shown any fear. Why she had treated the men who threatened her as naught but toys… because… against what she was… against what she could do… what was a sword or an arrow? What was the strength of any man, no matter who stood beside him?

Brandyn had been made by the gods to fight demons. Legend said her kind had been made as weapons in the greatest war ever fought. What fool human thought he stood a chance against that? Brandyn flowed away into the night, keeping herself between Egan and the captain.

Egan watched it all, as he dragged Captain Hyrd toward the ship.

Brandyn moved in such a way that she took the sword of the first man away from him and used his own weight to break his arms. She flowed away from every weapon that came near her. Then she brought a man holding a club close before striking him right below his rib cage with the flat of her hand. He fell as if he would never rise again.

They fell faster than they could keep up the charge. They fell almost too fast to see.

One man would thrust where Brandyn was, only then she would be up in the air, using the shoulders of one man to propel herself, before breaking her fall against the chest of another man. She fought as to make Egan believe every story of the gods ever told.

The bearded man was next. There was no great show down. No great bravado. He opened his mouth to yell, and then Brandyn’s hand was in there, yanking his entire face to the side, dislocating his jaw. She paused only a moment to put an elbow in his crying face before she was at it again.

Egan looked back to the captain, who was still bleeding in gushes. That was good, Egan knew as it meant his heart was still beating.

“Just you never mind about all that captain, they ain’t never gonna touch us,” Egan whispered.

In between the time he had looked down at the captain and looked up, Brandyn had crested the rocky dune and somehow managed to find the little man. The one who’d read the scroll in the tavern. He was all alone.

Brandyn seemed to whisper something in his ear, then she took hold of his hands like he was a child who’d tried to steal a sweet and… Egan almost threw up as both of the little man’s hands went tumbling to the ground.

He tried to count the bodies as Brandyn came running back, tried to internalize the fact that woman he’d lain with so tenderly had somehow taken down over forty men with no apparent effort. And seemingly not had to kill one of them. He stopped pulling on Hyrd when she came close.

“The arrow, we should pull-”

“Do it and he’ll bleed to death.” Brandyn knelt down and picked the Captain up so that he laid perpendicular to her chest. Then she ran. Ran so fast that Egan knew he would never would have been able to keep up if the ship hadn’t been so close.

There had always been a small dock down by the cove, rarely used and what it’s original purpose had been no one knew but there was a small one-masted ship there big enough maybe for five to crew. Brandyn leapt aboard with Hyrd still in her arms.

“Is he… is he going… to be okay?” Egan panted.

Brandyn had the captain laid across the bow of the ship, arrow still in his side. She ran up and down the ship, untying ropes and throwing them overboard. There was an anchor on a chain, and Brandyn began to pull it up so fast you would have thought it was nothing but a length of rope.

“Brandyn! Is the captain going to-”

“Put pressure around the wound! I’ll be there as soon as I can.” she yelled.

Egan wrapped both his hand around the arrow and pushed down so that the arrow was in the space between his thumbs and forefingers. The captain began to cough. Brandyn rushed by, so that Egan thought she meant to help, but all she did was turn a crank that let a sail unfurl before running back to the wheel and turning it hard to the port side. The gentle rocking of the ship began to increase as they got underway so that Egan had to take extra caution not to put too much weight on the captain.

“Tis a fine thing, boy-o.” The Captain whispered. He was barely audible over the sound of the ocean, and Brandyn scrambling up and down the ship. “A fine thing, to feel her living and moving ‘neath you, like an old lover.” Egan wanted to slap the Captain for the madness of it, but the Captain’s lips curled up into a smile that was heartbreaking in its fullness.

“Your da… he was a brave man. Last to stand his station.” Hyrd had a coughing fit. “I would’a died there, not for him. I’d pissed myself before I jumped on that thing, you see. Ocean washed it away, but I’d pissed myself just like a babe. Never told no one that. Your da shocked me into act-”

Brandyn appeared and pulled the arrow out of the captain without preamble. Hyrd screamed as Brandyn had never heard. There was a needle and thread in her mouth, and a bottle of the captain’s whiskey in her hand.

“I figured they found out about the ship when you brought your whiskey here. Just remember that, in case you want to get mad about this later.” Brandyn opened the bottle and poured it straight into the wound, which sent the captain into a small convulsion. Brandyn restrained him easily enough.

“You cunt! This is why you don’t take a woman to sea!” Hyrd raised his hands to fight, but Egan held them back. Brandyn inspected the hole in the Captain’s side.

“Your liver’s knicked. Point might have got your lung, but that won’t be the death of you.” Brandyn took a needle and thread, and somehow, even with the rocking of the ship, managed to do a fair job of getting the captain stitched up. Hyrd was still delirious from the pain.

“A man, now there’s a sailor. A dick like a mast, something firm what you can use to navigate the stars by! A cunt though? Ha! Like a sail with a hole right in the middle of it. Not good for a damn thing.”

The captain started to cry when Brandyn cut his shirt off.

“No, please. Please don’t do it. You bitch! No, you bitch!” Brandyn pulled the Captain up toward her, bending him at the middle, she rolled some cloth around him making a compression bandage over his wound.

“I hate you!” Hyrd wailed.

“Aye, captain. Duly noted, but you brought the supplies on board and I figured you’d be madder if we let them go to waste.” She gently put the captain down, and he lay there a while crying before he fell asleep, exhausted.

Egan joined Brandyn some time later by the helm. She was covered in blood.

“Will he live?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

*****

“We’re sinking.” Captain Hyrd announced. He was laying back in a chair tied in front of the helm. Egan and Brandyn ignored him the first few times he made the declaration. It wasn’t until he resorted to an obviously painful string of profanities that couldn’t be ignored that they bothered to listen.

“Ship’s listing too hard to port. They must’a snuck on board before we did and drilled a hole. We’re taking on water. Any of you been below yet?”

Brandyn’s face went pale, and she spent only a few minutes below decks before she confirmed it.

“Nothing you would have thought to check for. Don’t blame yourself.” Captain Hyrd leaned back and stared straight up into the sun. There was nice weather, even less than a day and a half at sea.

“This doesn’t make any sense, why would they have attacked us?” Egan said.

“Reckon they underestimated our girl here,” the captain nodded at Brandyn. “What they wanted was for me to get scared and rush out to sea. They wanted us howling mad, ready to cut the anchor without inspection. Don’t think they figured on actually hitting me. Don’t think they counted on getting her pissed off.” Hyrd nodded at Brandyn.

“Well then we’ll turn around. We’ll head back to shore.” Egan said.

The Captain nodded, his hand hanging listless on the wheel.

“Yup. Even if there’s a storm ahead of you, you’ll sail to it if’n there’s worse behind. We’ll never make it though. We’re too heavy and we ain’t got no pump.”

Brandyn looked down at her feet and swallowed.

“I can’t swim. It’s… it’s impossible for us.”

Captain Hyrd grunted, his face squinted against the sun.

“I kinda figured anyone as eats the shit you do doesn’t float.”

Egan ran downstairs and grabbed a barrel, and threw it on the deck.

“We can make a raft. Make it the rest of the way to shore.” Hyrd, bit his lip to consider.

“Check it for holes.” The captain ordered.

There were eight. Very small, but none so far apart you could use it to float for very long. The captain spit. It startled a gull on the bowsprit.

“May I see your whistle, captain?” Brandyn asked.

“Don’t see how it could hurt.”

Brandyn called out seven notes. Seven notes in musical sequence. It was a preamble to something. The sound of something newly begun. The sound of something rising and of the first step in a long journey.

“Right of Hunt, eh?” Hyrd asked.

“We call it the Spear Song.”

“Full sail, if you will, Mister Egan!” Hyrd called.

Egan tried to reckon how far they were sinking for every foot they sailed. Then he got too antsy thinking about it and decided to go below decks and haul buckets of water up instead. At least he could float on his back if his arms got too tired.

*****

It’s strange, when a ship sinks, how slow and plodding it is. How the wood wants to stay afloat even when the Deep is pulling inevitably down.

Brandyn waited the longest to abandon the ship, holding onto a barrel by the bow. She’d stuck a few rags in it for makeshift plugs. It wouldn’t hold long, but nothing else they’d been able to find or make would have done any better.

Egan held Hyrd around around the chest, treading water and trying in vain to keep the Captain’s wounded side out of the wet.

“Let me go down with her. Let me go down with the ship. Please.” Hyrd whispered, as he stared at the ship sinking below the waves. Fumbling, and trying to tear away from Egan, the Captain almost knocked the conch shell off his chest. Egan grabbed it at the last moment. It was a link, somehow, between he and Brandyn. He did not want it to go back into the Deep no matter how the day ended.

“How long do you think you’ll be able to hold?” Egan asked.

Brandyn was already struggling to stay afloat. It must have been strange for her. To be so strong, and so suddenly useless.

“It’s not my arms that are going to give out.” The barrel was already sinking lower.

“We can still try to swim toward shore.” It was a dream to be sure. He could only see the shore because it was a hazy line in the distance.

“Let me go… please.” Hyrd whispered again. Egan renewed his kicking and whispered into the Captain’s pale ear.

“We’re a boat Captain. You and me together make a crew, and wherever we are, that’s our ship.” The old man seemed to take comfort in those words, as he closed his eyes and stopped struggling to free himself.

“What do you say? Should we try for it?” Egan smiled.

“Aren’t your arms tired from hauling?” Brandyn asked.

“Yes. Yes they are. Yours?”

Brandyn shook her head.

“No, but I need ‘em to hold on.”

“Then kick with me.”

Egan scissor-kicked clumsily, the Captain still by his side. He’d drag the man ashore even if he died, and then bury him. He’d promised himself from the first moment he knew the ship wouldn’t make it.

“I thought you were one of the Nimble. When I first saw you.” Brandyn said, and how strange it was to see her crying. How strange to see her as the one weak and pathetic.

“I just thought you were dead.” Egan replied with a laugh, although there were tears in his own eyes. It made them equal somehow. Being out in the water. He’d never felt so close to her, now that he knew they were going to die together. He wondered if she felt the same way.

“I would’ve married you, you know. If I wasn’t what I am.” Brandyn called back. Egan had to slow down, because he’d almost left her behind.

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“My kind don’t marry for love. We breed ourselves like horses… but I enjoyed our time together. I’ll think of it for the rest of my life.” That had them both laughing, enough so that they only stopped when they forgot to swim and water poured into their mouths.

“What did you jump off the ship for?” Egan asked.

“I killed a Sarpent. It was running away for help, enough to sink the whole Fleet. I grabbed hold of it and killed it.” The barrel was half under-water now.

“What was so important you were all out there anyway?”

“There’s going to be a big battle. We needed an edge. The Mimaru… that’s one of the names of the people beyond the Rift. The one’s that’ll talk to us anyway… they make things. Weapons. Big tubes that shoot metal balls. We were going to get some. To help us. You could be killed for knowing that.”

Egan laughed again, “Can I tell you a secret?”

Brandyn was struggling to stay afloat more than ever, her face was barely above the water.

“Sure,” she whispered, trying to hold the fear from her voice.

Egan swam over by her. Hyrd made it awkward, but Egan brought his face as close to hers as he could. He kissed her as well as he he knew how. One of Brandyn’s hands left the barrel, encircled the back of Egan’s head, and pulled it closer.

“I’m glad that the last thing I’m ever going to see is you,” she whispered when the kiss broke.

Egan grabbed hold of her with his free hand right at the moment the barrel lost its buoyancy. She sank immediately. Not as bad as a stone might, but fast. Egan let go of the Captain and followed her into the Deeps. He grabbed hold of her and tried to swim upward with every ounce of his strength, crying salt tears into an ocean that was already too full.

Brandyn had no natural buoyancy. He’d known it the first time he’d tried to pull her out of the ocean. She was a creature of the gods, and the stuff they had used to make her body did not float. Even when they flapped arms in sequence it did little good. Egan opened his eyes under the water, and looked up a great distance to see Hyrd still floating on his back surrounded by the white light of the surface.

Egan pulled the conch out of his jacket, where he’d he stored it before the plunge and placed it in Brandyn’s hands. Brandyn grabbed hold of it with one hand, and reached up with the other to caress the side of Egan’s face. She paused for a moment to cup his ear. Egan repeated the gesture. Then Brandyn pushed him away. So hard that he could not resist or hold on.

Egan screamed the words “I love you” not caring if it took all the air left in his lungs. He screamed them again and again, until his lungs were empty, and still he swam down and tried to grab hold of her. But she sunk down faster than he could swim, so that soon there was only the ocean black and she was gone. And he, coward that he was, swam up for breath.

He broke the surface with a gasp, and grabbed hold of the captain again.

“Ship… it didn’t want you go down with it, did it?” Hyrd’s voice was the barest whisper.

“No… no she didn’t.” Egan cried.

“But she were a fine lady, weren’t she, Mister Egan? Weren’t she a fine lady?”

Egan nodded.

“Aye Captain, and she loved me. She did, no matter what she had to do in life, she loved me.”

And they drifted there for a long, slow time.

*****

They said the Friendly Folk were the souls of Captains come back from the After, joyful to be at one with the sea, their bodies finally as apt as their ships and a smile worn like a groove into their face. Egan looked at the gray-faced creature, and deliriously thought that it was Brandyn come back out of the Deep.

“Did Horse take her? Did Raven? Where is Whale?” Egan whispered hoarsely.

The Friendly Folk had no answer, but they pushed him with their noses until he realized that they wanted him to grab hold of their fins. Egan obliged with his free arm, cramped though it was. He still had the captain there with him.

“Am I dead? Is this my crew?” The Captain whispered. He was leaning against Egan like a baby now.

“No… this is something else.”

The Captain looked at one of the Friendly Folk and smiled in the most sincere way Egan had ever seen. With shaky hands the captain put the whistle to his mouth and blew. Seven notes. Seven notes like the sound things made as they began. Seven notes that were the first steps of a long journey.

Somewhere, far and away, Egan thought he could hear a conch shell. Egan took the whistle from the captain with no resistance, and blew the notes louder. He could hear it, or at least thought he could hear it, if he strained. A conch shell returning his notes.

He played the notes all the way to the shore, even when the conch shell was out of hearing beyond doubt, and the Friendly Folk were long gone. Egan played them years later, long after Captain Hyrd had healed and gotten sick again and finally died of old age. Egan played them when he was old and alone and life seemed sour. Seven notes. The Right of Hunt.

Egan played the notes and remembered the Fire that he had held, and the woman brought out of the wave. He played them when he was alone, walking the beach as the sun rose, thinking you could find anything if you looked long enough.

Even love.

Egan scanned the sandy shores of Crayn Bard’s Cove, letting the tide waters rush up between his toes and swirl around his ankles. A half-filled gunny sack slapped his thigh wetly as twisted to face the horizon, raising a hand to his brow to block the rising sun. You could find anything if you searched the beach long enough. Or so he hoped.

Some storm clouds loomed not far off shore. Other than those, Egan saw nothing but the distant profile of Bent Finger Rock jutting out of the ocean. Captain Hyrd said it was a sea sword, and dangerous at that, but Egan had never been closer to it than a spyglass could bring him. Would, perhaps, never be closer than a spyglass could bring him.

Grunting, Egan lowered his hand and continued his slow pace. The gunny-sack slapped his thigh with the rhythm of his steps. His eyes searched for glimmering bits.

The take was usually nothing better than small pieces of weather-worn glass or smooth rocks, but sometimes Egan found other things, like octopi, or crabs, or conch shells. Very rarely he would find old coins, jewelry, or other trinkets from shipwrecks. On those lucky days, it felt like everything in the world really must be swallowed by the ocean sooner or later, just as sooner or later it all had to wash back up again.

Today, however, the ocean felt empty of mystery. A blue-black void without a hint of treasures. But Egan had not come to the beach for mysteries or treasures. And that was the trick of it, he supposed. That was why he alone walked the beach every day without fail. You had to come with no expectations.

Egan inserted his hand into the gunny sack and brought out a sparkling bit of blue glass and held it up to the sun. Egan liked the glass, because it sparkled and you could use it to make pretty things. He’d take a conch if he found one that seemed especially big, but he always ended up giving them away. The octopi and the crabs he left without fail, because they were bad luck and their meat was sour.

After a moment, he threw the glass out into the water. It skipped three times before falling. He could usually skip five, but he deigned not to waste anymore. Instead, Egan picked up a bit of driftwood and poked the ground. Head down, shoulders slumped, he searched for bubbles that might indicate the presence of a clam. If he brought back enough, it might ease Captain Hyrd’s temper.

There were no bubbles.

With pants folded up to his knees, and his feet bare, Egan let out a sigh and turned again to face the horizon. And it was this action that led him to find the woman. For later, when he would recall her with the intensity of an old man remembering his youth, he would always think of her as the woman. Perhaps even the only woman.

In the years to come, Egan would relive this day many times, always thinking about what he might have done different. About what might have happened if he hadn’t seen that first, peculiar, gush of water. If he might have dismissed the first gush for a wave had it not gushed again. He might have done a lot of things differently, but in the end, Egan made his way to the inlet. Slowly though, for even then he knew that sometimes awful creatures came out of the Deep.

Egan haphazardly climbed the rock pile, taking care not to cut his feet, as his shoes were far away. After much scrambling, Egan crested the inlet and… he screamed when he saw the gray face staring at him from out of the waves. Fumbling backward, ducking behind a stone, his heart pounding, Egan could only stare.

The creature had a long, round nose and a weird sort of smile stamped on its face, and its motley eyes sparkled like new-made rainbows. The creature glanced at Egan for only a moment before it turned, ducked back into the waters and disappeared.

A woman floated there, in the waters of the inlet where the creature had been, her golden grown hair undulating in the water like amber seaweed. A vision of beauty so breathtaking, he forgot all about the creature. In all of his sixteen years, Egan had never beheld such a figure. She slid softly beneath the waters. Egan started when he realized she was drowning.

“No!” Egan shouted.

In his reckless hurry downward, he cut his foot once, right across the meaty sole of it. In his haste, all he noticed was a small sting when his foot plunged into the cold saltwater. He wasted no time in throwing the gunny sack aside to free his arms.

Whoever she was, she was heavy. Heavier than Egan would have thought any woman of her size could be. He ended up having to drag her back into the water a way just so he could find some place shallow enough to bring ashore. All the while he spoke in his slow, plodding voice to avoid the horror of having to watch the waves come up over her face.

“Missus? Can you hear me, missus? Me name is Egan, missus. Can you hear me, missus?”

The woman wore a long black leather coat, and it clung to every rock and bit of driftwood so adamantly that Egan was forced to take out a knife and cut it from her body. He hurried as much as he could, but it still felt she’d been under for far too long. Damn the gods she was heavy!

When he finally had her pulled a way up the beach, he knelt over the top of her, and patted her cheeks gently.

“Missus? Me name is Egan, missus. Are you thirsty, missus?”

It was a dumb question, and he would have asked it again, except that she started to cough.

Egan waited politely for her to finish, then took his coat off and wrapped it around her shoulders. The coat was dry except for a bit at the bottom from when he’d hauled her out of the inlet.

“I’m going to go get my water-skin, missus. I’ll be right back.”

He limped back to his possessions, which were only a satchel with a small water-skin, a bit of dried pork, and a cloak if the weather got too bad. He also had to stop long enough to cut off part of the cloak to bandage his foot when the sand and the grit became too painful.

She was groaning when he came back. Egan figured that was a good sign, although Captain Hyrd said that sometimes people moaned when they were dead, and that it was only the air leaving their bodies.

“Missus? I have some water. Can you drink?”

The woman groaned in a different way than previous, which Egan took to be an affirmation. Egan pulled the plug of the waterskin out with his teeth, knelt over the woman and gingerly let a few drops of water fall onto her lips. This of course induced her to vomit in no less than three distinct heaves, which were, thankfully, directed opposite his lap. However, she turned back after that and drank what he offered. After digging in his satchel, Egan discovered that he also had some bread, which he soaked to make more palatable and then gave to her.

“Are you feeling better, missus? It looks like there’s a storm coming. We should go find shelter.”

Egan tried to pick her up and throw her arm over his shoulder, but was once again surprised to find her too heavy.

“My ship…. the… Admiral Ma’Dox….” she grunted.

“I didn’t see no ship, missus. Just you.” Egan dug his heels deep into the sand, leaned back, and pulled the woman to her feet. Once she was standing, he found that if he sort of hugged her and tried to keep her balanced instead of taking her weight, that it was possible to keep her from falling.

“Where am I?”

Now there was a question Egan hadn’t anticipated, one fraught with all manner of dangerous implications.

“You’re… you’re in Jimroar, missus. We got word this morning. This is Jimroar now.” Egan swallowed. It was part of the reason why he had come out to walk the beach. The whole town was uncertain of how to react to news of the revolution.

He looked out toward the dark storm clouds, but his eyes were drawn down to a shape swimming away in the black waters. It was gray, from what little he could see. Just a hump, but it sent a great big gust of water up into the air. Captain Hyrd would want to hear of it. The Friendly Folk were omens.

Of what though, Egan could not say.

*****

They stopped for a while under some trees while the woman drank. The storm had broken a few minutes earlier, and in only moments it had turned the soil to mud and made the roads treacherous. To complicate matters, Egan’s bandage had worked its way off his foot.

“Sorry about your foot.” The woman said, in between gulps of water.

“I’ve had worse, missus.” Egan had found it too painful to put his shoes on, and had thus had had to carry them along with the woman. The cut was full of mud, which he scraped out using the remains of the bandage. It hurt, and he winced.

“It looks clean. That’s good. It will heal better that way.” The woman drank another swallow, paused for a moment as if she might be sick, but ended up merely coughing. She leaned back against the tree with one fist clenched in front of her mouth to stop the spittle from flying.

“How long were you at sea, missus?”

“Don’t know. A few days, maybe five. I can’t remember.”

“That cannot be, missus. You’d be dead.”

The woman looked down at herself and laughed. “I thought I was dead as soon as I jumped off the ship. I’m not what you would call a swimmer.”

“You jumped!” Egan exclaimed, mouth agape.

The woman nodded. “Seemed the smartest thing to do at the time. Say, what’s your name?” She turned to examine him.

Egan had not though of it since that first moment, perhaps because he had been too distracted by the situation in which he had found her, but the realization of the woman’s beauty returned and knowledge of it made Egan feel suddenly awkward. She was not fat as her weight would have predicted, but lithe and fit as if her body were a machine designed to move forever without rest. Her hair was a very appealing amber color caught somewhere between brown and gold.

“Me name is Egan, Missus. I work at the tavern.” he whispered, bent over the wound on his foot, trying to conceal his blushes.

“I’m Brandyn. Brandyn Im’Dredd. I… take care of problems that no one else can.” Extending a hand, she clutched Egan’s before he had time to withdraw.

It was a strange sort of handshake, in that Brandyn grabbed his arm slightly below the elbow and seemed not to be satisfied until Egan reciprocated. This close, Egan would have placed her age at nineteen. A few years older than him, but no more.

“Where was your ship sailing from? Picking up porcelain form Samaerael? Fishing the coast?” Egan babbled. He supposed she could have been a guard of some sort. Captain Hyrd said there were women guards in some countries.

“East.” Brandyn gesutred.

Egan laughed, thinking it a joke. “There’s nothing East, missus. Just the Rim.”

“No. The Rim is out further East than that. Admiral Ma’Dox has seen it. We were on the other side of the Rift. There are people there who make things. We were on our way there when we were attacked.” Brandyn closed her eyes, as if fighting another wave of nausea.

Egan frowned. No one could sail through the Rift, and all the sailors he talked to in the tavern spoke of the Rift and the Rim in the same breath. There were… things in the Rift. Things that swallowed ships entire. Egan knew there had to be something to the stories, because Captain Hyrd ordered men to be quiet whenever they spoke of them.

“No one can sail to the other side of the Rift.” Egan said flatly.

“It’s dangerous, but it can be done. If you have help.” Brandyn leaned forward long enough to pull off her boots. For as full of water as they were, Egan would have supposed her feet to be as wrinkled as prunes, but when she took off her stalkings they were as smooth as the cheeks of a babe.

“Help from what attacked you?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“You seem like you have a lot of answers.”

“Fair enough.”

“So what attacked you?”

Brandyn laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“I have a lot of secrets too.”

Egan was not sure how to respond to this, especially since Brandyn seemed to be so confident of her control of the situation. It was not something he was used to. Even here in the East, where the Baronies had never been quite so oppressive, women did not walk so confidently among men. Captain Hyrd didn’t like to speak on it much, but Egan had heard awful things about what went on beyond the mountains.

“Where are you from?” Egan asked, sensing that this was a question he might have a reasonable expectation of getting away with.

The woman pulled off the tattered remains of her black leather jacket. She was now dressed much as Egan, except her shirt was a good deal whiter. She had her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and her pants rolled up to the knees. Brandyn held her coat in front of her and frowned, biting her lip. Egan was suddenly embarrassed at having taken his knife to the coat.

“If Chagraem Lo’Shan could see this, she’d bust a gut laughing.” Then, even more softly, “Though I would say this about finishes my Prenticeship.”

Egan had no awareness of standing, or of walking back, but he caught himself when he had almost walked over a small bluff that would have sent him falling about three feet back to the surf. Chagraem… that meant something. Something he’d heard out of stories.

“Missus…” Egan stuttered… “Where are you from?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

Egan nodded, eyes wide with fear.

“I’m from exactly where you think I’m from.”

Brandyn jumped to her feet so quickly, that Egan yelped in surprise. She stood with such grace that he would never have guessed she had spent five days barely alive in the sea. Egan raised his shaking hands over his face, cowering behind them.

“How would I go about sending a message? I have people I need to contact.” Brandyn said, taking his arms and patiently lowering them to his sides.

She took the lead so naturally, Egan felt like there hadn’t been a time in his life he hadn’t been following her orders.

*****

Captain Hyrd only had the one good eye, but when he wanted to he could use it to glare as well as any two others that Egan had ever come across. Similarly, the fact that Captain Hyrd’s left leg had been amputated below the knee, and been replaced by a length of wood, didn’t seem to imply any sort of impairment at all, so much as it implied that he was always liable to have a good club handy. Even if the club happened to look a good deal like a cane.

Egan swallowed, and stared at his feet when he opened the tavern door, already feeling the Captain’s eye boring into his soul.

“Mister Egan! And where did you be this afternoon, while the Captain of the ship was forced to tend bar hisownself?” Captain Hyrd took the wood whistle he kept on a string around his neck, and blew into it, one loud note. “Come now, Mister Egan! Stand and report!”

Egan straightened his back, but because he could not bring himself to meet the Captain’s eye, compromised by looking at the ceiling above the Captain’s head.

“Captain Hyrd, sir, I was at the beach combing for valuables, sir!”

Some of the men at the tables laughed when Captain Hyrd thumped Egan in the chest with his walking stick.

“And what did you have to show for your efforts, Mister Egan? Gold? Jewels? Baubles from the old times?” The Captain had brought his face close to Egan’s and although the Captain was shorter, a development that had happened in only the last year, he still seemed to loom. “Well, Mister Egan? Stand and report!”

“One woman, lost at sea.” Brandyn said, entering the tavern. The men stopped drinking. A hush fell across the tavern.

“By the Rim, what’s the meaning of this? Get your ass off my ship this instant! I will not have some bloody woman mucking about in a man’s place, by the gods I will not!” Even from the periphery of his vision, Egan could see Captain Hyrd’s eye bulging.

“I think you are mistaken. I see no ship.” Brandyn’s was confident as ever. Egan knew that was about the worst thing she could have said.

“I’ll tan your hide, girl! You’ll leave this boat here and now or I’ll-” Captain Hyrd choked when Brandyn suddenly appeared in front of him, her breasts at a level with his eye.

“Let me take you at your word, then, Captain! If this is a ship and I am lost at sea, then I am in distress and you are honor bound by your oath as Captain to the nation of Shen Anrath to offer such help as you are able!”

Captain Hyrd, not to be outdone, raised his cane again and thumped Brandyn in the chest. To Egan’s surprise, she gave not an inch. In fact, the blow had almost knocked Captain Hyrd off balance.

“Then you picked a hell of a time to request aid girl, because as of this very morning this ain’t the nation of Shen Anrath.” The Captain said, quickly regaining his composure.

“Then you are still bound by three thousand years of Maritime Code that has been accepted as Law since the Abandonment! As Captain you are no doubt aware of this!”

“I… I will not be dressed down by some skirt-wearing, broom-sweeping, child-bearing…” Captain Hyrd struggled for a word, and then stated the obvious with a vehemence so powerful that it showed he had still found it the worst possible option, “woman! I am the Captain of this here ship, and if-”

“I request permission to come aboard Captain, until such time as my own vessel can find dock and be repaired!” Brandyn gave a salute so sharp and so whip-like quick Egan was surprised it didn’t cut off the top of her skull.

Now the men in the tavern were laughing and cat-calling from the tables. No one ever got the best of Captain Hyrd, and now that a woman had, the men were set to make the most of the occasion.

“She’s got spirit, Cap’n!”

“Right-o, Cap’n, will you help a woman in distress?” another said in a mock plea complete with blown kisses.

“Tell her to piss off Hyrd! We ain’t at sea!”

Egan closed his eyes against what was coming.

“Who said it?” Captain Hyrd hobbled around so that he was facing the other way.

“Who said it?” He went from table to table, using his crutch to knock the tin pint glasses to the ground.

“What man here dared address me as something other’n Captain? What Dim bastard, whose brains ran down his mother’s leg dared break rank on my ship!” By general agreement voiced by the fact that he was the man away from whom everyone was trying to move their chairs, Captain Hyrd focused in on a great big man with a beard as black as coal sitting at a table in the middle of the tavern.

“Well, you pile of cum rags, what have you got to say for yourself!” Captain Hyrd thundered. The man, who by some luck still happened to have hold of his glass, smiled and took a drink. Egan cussed under his breath. The fellow must never have set port here before.

“I said let her stay. She looks good for a gander, and maybe a lay if we can get her liquored up enough.” Captain Hyrd waited long enough for the man to raise the glass back to his lips before he struck out with his cane like a sword and knocked the cup to the ground. Part of the man’s front tooth flew with it.

“You crazy old bastard! I’ll fuckin’ gut you-” Captain Hyrd struck out with his cane again, this time knocking the man on the side of the head. And again, until Captain Hyrd was so unbalanced, that he was leaning on the table while he was lashing out.

“You dumb fuck! Just ‘cuz we ain’t on the sea don’t make me not a captain… and it don’t mean this ain’t a boat.” Captain Hyrd took the man’s bloody nose and general lack of consciousness for agreement, and then set his cane back on the floor, and limped back over to Egan and Brandyn.

“Well, Mister Egan, it looks like you somehow managed to injure yourself due no doubt to your complete lack of competence as a sailor!” Captain Hyrd spit on the ground. “However, since you earned it giving help to a ship in need of assistance, I will only dock you your day’s pay, and will give you the luxury of the gut we keep in the storage room so you can stitch the wound.” Captain Hyrd laughed and stomped his cane on the floor of the tavern.

“Wouldn’t want infection setting in, would we?” Captain Hyrd jiggled his stump and laughed uproariously. Some of the other men, those who were totally drunk, joined.

Brandyn was still standing at salute, her eyes still faced forward on the same spot as previous. Captain Hyrd inspected her from toe to hairline and back again.

“Alright, princess, looks like you’ve got yourself aid and succor, but I’ll damn well know what you’re about. What ship was you on?”

“The Westward Wind, Captain!” Brandyn shouted.

Captain Hyrd spit on the floor, with amazing accuracy so that he was close enough to get a few specks on Brandyn’s foot without actually spitting on it directly. Egan knew this to be a sign of uncommon affection.

“Next you’ll tell me you was captained by Ma’Dox, no less.”

“No Captain! Admiral Ma’Dox was leading the Fleet on the Amber Gale, we were captained by his son Dranner!” Egan had never figured out how to shout like Brandyn did, because it seemed to be at the exact level of volume that pleased the captain.

“I’ll give this to you perky tits, when you lie you lie big.”

“I give my captains nothing but the truth sir! We were led by Admiral Ma’Dox, him that pissed in the Eastern Rim and put tongue to the mist that came back and said it tasted like honey. Him that the Sarpents fear for his blood is as poisonous as the Black Waters off Ewil Brenven. Him that is so loved by the sea that he is sucked off every night and every morning by a pod of the Friendly Folk! Him and no other!”

Hyrd sucked on his lower lip, and turned his head to spit. Egan gaped. He knew that was as great a sign of respect as the captain could possibly give.

Captain Hyrd laughed, and Egan about shit himself from the shock of the sound. “I like the cut of your jib, girl.” Then he slapped Brandyn on the shoulder.

Captain Hyrd put his whistle back to his lips and blew two shorts. Egan relaxed, but was surprised to see that Brandyn knew the signal as well.

“Egan, help our newest recruit throw that mutinous whore-son overboard,” Captain Hyrd sneered at the man he had struck earlier.

“Then you show her to a cot upstairs, and when you’re done you can both come back and swab the decks.” Cap’n Hyrd limped back behind the bar, and gave two notes from his whistle, one long and one short. Slowly, now that they had been granted permission, the men slowly began to get back to the purpose of drinking.

Egan looked to Brandyn, only to find her already halfway to the unconscious man. Egan ran to her to help, but she had already grabbed the man under the arms, and was dragging him to the door with no apparent difficulty. Only at the last moment, did Egan remember to open the door for her.

Brandyn set the man down by the side of the ramp that led up to the tavern, brushed her hands clean of some sand and smiled back at him. A few gulls cried out in the distance.

“I think that went well, don’t you?” Brandyn said.

Egan nodded dumbly.

*****

Captain Hyrd didn’t make Egan swab the decks any longer than it took for him to realize that if Egan kept at it, all he was going to do was bleed all over the place. So after a while, Captain Hyrd sent him out back to fire up the grill, and let Brandyn stitch up his foot.

Egan winced when the needle cut through his flesh for what seemed the hundredth time.

“Damn that hurts. Umm… Missus.”

“I have to make it tight. And I’m not married, so call me by my name.”

Egan didn’t know how comfortable he felt with that.

“It might hurt less if you hadn’t poured Hyrd’s whiskey down it first… Brandyn.”

“Had to make it clean too.”

For all the pain Egan was in, he noticed the calm rapidity of Brandyn’s motions. As if she had stitched wounds since before Hyrd had even thought to love the sea.

“What is this place?” Brandyn asked, inclining her head to indicate the tavern.

“It’s Captain Hyrd’s tavern.”

“Has anyone thought to tell him it’s not at sea?”

“Mostly they’re too afraid.”

Brandyn snorted, and then did something tricksome with the needle, before snipping it with Egan’ knife. She took some white rags she had gotten somewhere and wrapped them tight around his foot. “Fifteen stitches. No tendons cut, and no muscles. You’ll be fine as long as you watch for infection.”

“Thank you.”

“No. Thank you. I imagine I might have drowned before much longer.”

“You swam for five days, I bet you could have held out.”

Egan slowly got to his feet, and limped his way over to the grill. He took some wood from a pile and set it down below. He struck at some tinder with a flint, while Brandyn positioned herself to keep the wind away from the fire. Egan couldn’t help but be impressed that he hadn’t even had to ask.

“I didn’t swim. Can’t. It goes with the occupation.”

“Would that be ‘Solving problems no one else can?’”

“You could say that.”

The spark took, and Egan patiently blew on it while Brandyn took the initiative and pulled some fish out of a hooped basket. Hyrd must have got it earlier in the day, which he would no doubt take the time to curse Egan for once he had a free moment. Going to market was Egan’s business.

“How come he’s not at sea anymore?” Brandyn asked.

“Nobody knows. I don’t ask.” Egan sat back and enjoyed the smell of the ocean in his nostrils. The sun was setting, and he supposed if he were sitting on the back porch of the tavern in different circumstances, that it might have been romantic.

“Is it because he lost a leg and an eye?”

“No. That wouldn’t have stopped him. Not for a moment.” Egan bit the inside of his cheek. How was it that even five days at sea, Brandyn still smelled good? Smelled like a lady? Egan felt some weird sentence speaking to this rise in his throat and die, so he faked a cough to mask the noise.

“I wouldn’t ask him about it though. A fellow a while back asked about it, and Captain Hyrd thumped him worse than that other fellow.” Egan said.

“He your father?”

Egan flicked a few drops of collected moisture on the grill and saw it hiss. It was hot enough. He took another knife and put the fish down on a tray by the side of the grill as he set to cutting fillets.

“Nope. Hyrd never even had a wife so far as I know. My father was a crewman on his ship. Lost him at sea. Been taking care of me since I was young.”

Brandyn made as if to ask another question, so Egan answered first.

“Ma got hooked on Bloom. Captain took me and sent her away when I was still real young.” Egan had been told that had happened around his fourth birthday, but he couldn’t really remember.

Brandyn took another knife and stood by Egan, cutting another fish. Better, Egan had to admit, than he had. Except for some reason, on the last fillet, she left most of the bone. A question rose in his mouth, but then it felt stupid. He decided to ask the obvious.

“How long do you figure?” Egan knew he didn’t need to specify until what.

“Two months. Maybe three. They’ll need time to load and come back.”

“Things are strange around here. Might be you should try to keep a secret what you are. Folks could get nervous.” Brandyn threw some the fish on the grill. It already smelled good.

“People will be safer that way.” Brandyn agreed.

The sun was sinking below the sea now, somewhere way far away. “What does it look like? The Rim?”

Egan took a seat on a barrel, and Brandyn joined him there.

“Admiral Ma’Dox said it’s loud. Louder than thunder. And it’s hard to tell you’re there because the sky’s still above you…. but then you start to see that the sky is also in front of you, and that it’s running right down into the water, sucking it up. You can’t even sail into it straight, because the wind is blowing so hard to the west. You can’t even have any sails up in the rigging. You have to sort of… build speed and then glide up toward it… and then….” Brandyn licked her lips as if she wasn’t sure how to continue.

“What? What happens then?”

“Then… Admiral Ma’Dox says if you pull out a looking glass, and look real close… if you wait for the storm to break in just the right spot… you can see rainbows. A whole great big wall made of rainbows.”

They watched the sun find its watery grave, together.

*****

Egan woke early, and then did a piss poor job of getting the tavern ready for the day. Most of this was due to his foot, as he had to move slowly and keep the leg stiff or lest he rip the stitches. There was still the market, and he was still having a hell of a time picking up the pint glasses that Hyrd had knocked down the afternoon previous.

He righted the last chair, when he noticed Captain Hyrd behind the bar pouring himself a small glass of whiskey.

“Morning, Mister Egan. How’s sails the ship?”

“No chairs or tables broken, Captain. A few dents in the glasses, but none as will make any complain, I reckon. I’ll have to go to market today to get something to make a stew. We’re all out of what I made ‘fore I left yesterday and the guests will be hungry for more.” There were only a few rooms in the tavern, mostly for merchants, as sailors generally slept on their ships.

“And our special passenger?” Hyrd downed the shot and poured another. Egan used to get after the Captain about drinking so early, but had given it up as hopeless long ago. The Captain thought watching your drink was something reserved solely for pregnant women.

“She went to bed last night after she ate. Surprised she had as much energy as she did.”

“No you ain’t.” Hyrd downed the other shot, and seeming satisfied put the whiskey back where he had gotten it.

“Captain?”

“You know what she is, well as I do.”

Egan bit the side of his cheek. “Reckon I might have been a bit suspicious, Captain. Thought I might be wrong. Not even sure if they was real.”

“Oh, they’re real all right. But you were right not to say anything. Folks are already nervous. Don’t need anymore surprises.” Hyrd was fumbling with a purse behind the bar.

“I can get what we need on credit, Captain. Same as always.”

“You’re going to have to go see the apothecary. And I ain’t never seen an apothecary what extends a line of credit.”

“Why?”

Hyrd raised an eyebrow.

“Requesting clarification of orders, Captain!” Egan stood at attention.

“On account of he’s got better suppliers than I do and can send a message. Also, if we’ve got her staying here I’ve got to feed her.” Egan remembered the way that Brandyn had left the bones in the fish. She hadn’t eaten it in front of him, just waited until he left for a bit. But when he had gotten back the whole fish had been gone.

“Are you….” Egan realized he was about to ask if Hyrd was okay, but the question was ridiculous.

“I owe her kind a favor. A great big fat one.” Hyrd hit the ground with his cane. A few thumps for emphasis. “Long as she’s here, I’ll look after her. Shoulda known yesterday when I thumped her and near fell on my ass.” Hyrd rubbed his missing eye socket with the palm of his hand, which was something he only did when he was very tired, and only early in the morning when no one but Egan was there to see.

“Wait till she wakes up to go with you. I ain’t got a clue as to what she needs, and she’s like to know better than the apothecary. And find out if she can cook, or sing, or… something. Anything that’ll make her fit in better ’round here. If I know the royalty they’re going to have an army through here any day to let us know whose in charge. Best she finds something to do before then.”

*****

“Really? No women at all?” Brandyn asked. She had been surprised to find that everyone who worked a stall or a shop in the market was male, and that anyone who bought anything there was similarly disposed. Egan wished she would do a better job at seeming uneasy. If anything, she seemed to find it amusing and she was already attracting stares.

“Women buy things up north where all the regular folks live. Them without any shops. But here in the market, men do all the business.” Egan felt strange with the purse in his hands. Captain Hyrd had never trusted him with hard coin before. Usually people came by the tavern to settle accounts. It hurt Egan’s pride somewhat to think that the only reason he now had the privilege was because Brandyn was there.

“What about me then?” Brandyn asked.

“I figure we should be fine as long as I do all the talking. Wives sometimes come with their husbands out here.” Brandyn was already carrying several hoop baskets filled with fish and vegetables. Enough for a stew, least for a while.

“Won’t people start to wonder if we’re engaged?” Brandyn asked.

That near set Egan tongue to blocking the back of his throat, but when he heard Brandyn laughing, he sorted things out again and settled with a blush. “No… folks know… no they won’t.”

She laughed again. That confident laugh that made it seem like all his problems were so tiny. As if he himself were tiny.

“Captain Hyrd wanted me to ask if you could-”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t even let me finish.”

“You were going to say that Captain Hyrd wanted to know if I could cook or sing or do something to make me less conspicuous. Yes. To everything.” Brandyn nudged herself in front of Egan ever so slightly that she managed to point to a few fruits that Egan then had to pay for with fumbling fingers when the stall-owner glared at him.

When they had gone a few steps, Brandyn pulled a lime out of the basket and began sucking on it. She turned back and waved at the stall-owner with a big smile on her face. The man frowned back.

“Captain Hyrd says that you ain’t supposed to be seen….”

“Yes, but you see… I’m just so glad to be alive that I can’t help myself.”

On their way to the apothecary Egan saw the black-bearded man that Captain Hyrd had beaten. The black-bearded man frowned, and muttered what were obviously curses, though not loud enough to hear. Egan thought about saying something to Brandyn, but she had obviously already seen it and chosen not to care.

Brandyn trotted ahead and spun in a few gleeful circles, head tilted toward the sky and laughing. Looking back, if Egan had had to choose a point, it was right then and there that he began to love her.

He stopped a moment to stare at her, before she doubled back and tugged at his arm to pull him along.

“Come on, lovely! The day light’s wasting!”

*****

“Do you dance?”

Egan groaned in his sleep, turned over, and murmured something noncommittal into his pillow. He thought he recognized the voice, but he had been dreaming about it a moment before, and thought this was but a strange continuation of the same dream.

“Psst… do you dance?”

A hand shook his foot. It hurt a bit.

“Ow… whosit?” Egan rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

A tall figure, almost as tall as himself, crouched down below the eaves of his room and shook his foot. Egan recognized the shape of the body and the limbs, and suddenly contracted, pulling his blankets tight around him.

Brandyn giggled. “I’m sorry to wake you. I couldn’t sleep. I thought you might like to dance.”

Brandyn took a seat at the end of his cot. He felt his feet touch her back through the material of her shirt. Felt the new crevasses caused by her depression of the mattress. Egan didn’t say anything. Just watched her, like she was an animal he might startle away if he made any sudden moves.

“I teach dancing you know. We all teach something as part of our training. I teach children to dance. It was my favorite thing.” Eyes adjusted, Egan saw Brandyn turn to face the window. Was she thinking of home? Did she miss it?

“What… what kind of dance?” Egan stuttered. Even though only his shoulders were visible above the blanket, he felt naked.

“Nothing too complicated. The kinds of dances children are expected to dance at feasts. How to dance with partners, that sort of thing.” Brandyn turned back to him. “I could teach you, if you wanted.”

“We don’t have music.”

“Less distraction.”

There wasn’t much Egan could think to say to that, so he paused, wondering when Brandyn would leave so he could get dressed, but she simply sat there, idly watching him. Slowly, waiting for her to object, he pushed back the covers to reveal his underclothes and then even more slowly stood up.

“Put on something loose. You won’t need a shirt.”

He could feel her behind him, watching. How well could she see?

“You’re very tall. Was your father tall?” Brandyn asked.

Egan shook his head, fumbling with his belt.

“No… my mother was the one with the-” His breath caught when Brandyn’s hands looped around his back and finished the buckling for him. He could feel her breath on the back of his neck. Could feel every little hair standing adroit and alive. Writhing for contact with the breath that stirred them.

Next, she bent down and helped him with his boots. There was no hint of anything but complete professionalism in her voice. Nothing to fit with the fact that she was in his room in the middle of the night and that he was only half dressed.

“We’ll go easy. We’ve got to let that foot heal, but we can still do some.” She made a loop out of his arm, and linked hers through it. He knew he should have thought to do that, but whatever happened he knew that it would be Brandyn leading the dance. She led him down stairs, out onto the extension that ran from out the back door of the inn.

“Do you walk the beach often?” she asked.

“Every day.”

“Why?”

Because it’s beautiful and full of mysteries, and wonderful beyond knowing like you. He swallowed instead of saying anything.

“Thank you for saving my life.”

She kissed him on the cheek. Gentle and chaste.

She led him close to the water. He would have followed her anywhere.

They danced. He felt her skin hot against his, heavy and immovable. He knew he moved too awkwardly. That he was too stiff, and that he was panicking over where to put his feet and at what time. Then the moment came where Brandyn leaned forward, and her lips brushed his. The crisp first second when his mouth tasted hers.

He forgot it was a dance and had fun. They laughed, even when the ocean swirled up around them.

*****

You would have thought, from the ease with which she took to her work, that Brandyn had been working in a tavern for most of her life. After a week, you would have thought that she came from a long line of tavern keepers. After two weeks, you would have thought she’d invented the whole idea of tavern keeping.

She seemed to know what was in which bottle without asking. She could mix drinks without spilling so much as a drop, but it was more than that. It was also the way she carried herself. As a woman, it was harder for her with the customers than it was for Egan, but in her bearing alone she managed to set herself up as someone who could be joked with, but only to a certain point before respect had to reassert itself.

Egan watched her as he swept the floors. Watched as she maintained the bar that he had been behind only a few days ago better than he ever had. His foot still hurt him on occasion, although the stitches were holding up so well Egan doubted he would even have much of a scar.

Egan took a seat on a barrel and watched Brandyn joke with the men. Even some of the miners were in here now. Everyone who had been afraid of Captain Hyrd and found another place to go drink had been drawn into Brandyn’s net.

“What are you sitting there for, Mister Egan?” Captain Hyrd said, plopping down on the barrel next to Egan.

“I’m resting my foot, Captain.” Egan replied.

“Aye, I’ve been resting mine for near on fifteen years now. Figured it was more trouble than it was worth so I just had it cut off.” Captain Hyrd snorted.

“Any word yet, Captain?” Egan asked.

All the post that came in was delivered straight to Hyrd. If word had come back of Brandyn’s ship it would go straight to Hyrd.

“No. I would have said if it were. But we’ve sent out a number of messages. It’s only a matter of time until one gets through and they send for her.”

“And they’d do that? They’d send a whole ship just for her?”

“Soon as they could. Fast as they could.”

Egan didn’t realize his eyes had gone red until he realized Captain Hyrd was staring at him so hard he was forced to think of a reason why.

“You watch yourself, boy.”

“Sorry, Captain. I must have gotten something in my eye.”

“She ain’t going to be here forever, boy. And when they come, she’ll be gone without ever another thought for you. Just remember that. You pulled her out of the sea, and she owes you something for that, but it ain’t as much as you think.”

“But she… she was near dead….”

“She ain’t human, boy. She looks like us. She maybe even thinks like us. Maybe she’s even something to love. But she ain’t like us.”

Somehow, while he had been talking with Captain Hyrd, there was an uproar from the crowd. Men were pounding their tables.

“Song! Song! Song!” The call went up.

Brandyn feigned disinterest, but only to the point that men’s demands grew louder.

“Sing about Hivrat sailing over the Rim!”

“Podell and Rashianna!”

“The Sound of Colors!”

Brandyn cleared her throat, and the room fell quiet. She opened her mouth and sang a single note. Then another and another. The notes were so clear that it was as if it they been made by an instrument. Egan leaned forward, awaiting the next note in the sequence but it never came.

The tavern doors burst open and a great number of men entered. There were more outside, and the only thing that stopped those from entering was that everyone was already crammed cheek by jowl. The new comers were armed to a man.

Egan watched dumbfounded as a small fellow climbed on top of a table in the middle of the tavern and unrolled a giant scroll. The mud from his boots fell in granulated clops on the wood. The scroll was an impressive looking thing with all sorts of ribbons on it.

“Citizens of Jimroar!” the man called. “I have come in the name of the Liberty Council, to announce to you that you are now free men, protected equally under the same law as the Barons!”

Egan’s stomach tumble end for end when Captain Hyrd stood. There was an angry look on the old man’s face. The same angry look he got every time someone discussed politics in the tavern. A look like he was ready to spit nails.

“But the fight for independence is by no means over! Even now the Baronies to the north are sending men through the Hadashi Pass to steal our freedom back from us!” The little man was clearly expecting some sort of applause, but no one had said anything since Captain Hyrd had begun to limp across the room.

“Who is it, what thinks he’s captain of this ship?” Hyrd grumbled. It was a low tone of voice, nothing at all compared to the grandiosity of the little man’s proclamations, and all it seemed to do was annoy the speaker.

“I’ve been sent here to recruit men in an army of justice to-”

“How many barons will be in this army?” Captain Hyrd asked, now having taken a seat on a chair directly in front of the little man. It should have made Hyrd seem small by comparison but all it did was make the little man seem ridiculous.

The little man made to speak again, trying to brush off the interruption, but then Captain Hyrd spat on the man’s boots. Sensing that he could not simply override the Captain, the little man turned to address Hyrd.

“There are no more Barons in Jimroar. All men will be equal before the law, something which this nation has long awaited-”

“Let me, how do you say, rephrase the question. If’n they’re not calling themselves Barons, how many raping fuckers are going to be fighting in this army of justice? And how many of them are planning to bleed?” Some of the soldiers drew steel, so many that the sound of it was like the water rushing back out to sea.

“You sir, are a traitor to the cause of liberty and will be arrested-”

“Fuck your liberty! I gave my eye for liberty! I gave my fucking leg for freedom! And when I’d given every bit of everything I had, the men I fought for came along and said all those I’d fought with would not be forgot, and then surrendered! Everything I bled for was lost, and no one fucking remembers!” Hyrd screamed. There were bulges in his neck from hollering, and his face was red.

Two soldiers went to grab the Captain on either side, and suddenly Brandyn was there. She stood between the Captain and the oncoming soldiers, a woman so out of place that the soldiers paused not knowing what to do.

“Let’s not do anything we can’t undo later.” Brandyn said.

“This old man is obviously drunk, he should be taken somewhere he won’t hurt himself or anyone else,” the little man on top of the table said.

“He’s the captain of this ship. I believe he has a right to be heard.” The two soldiers were starting to waiver, but Brandyn kept her eyes locked tight with the little man’s. Egan was sweating, but somehow managed to take a place standing next to Brandyn. He felt a fool standing there, but when he stood, he noticed that some of the other men did the same.

“Madame, may I ask what you’re doing here? Gods-fearing women have no business in a place like this?”

“I ain’t got women on my boat. This here is Brandyn, and she’s got more balls than any other man in this place. Longer dick too.” Hyrd spat.

The little man’s face crumpled in disgust. “You miserable old sot, I ought to have someone cut your tongue out.”

“On account of freedom, I reckon.”

“Any man interested in signing a letter of-”

“Two years!” Captain Hyrd shouted. “That was how long I took the Union’s coin and sailed the seas for the Union. Was a regular merchant Captain before that, but I always had a taste for fighting. I sunk a hundred ships in the name of freedom. Lost a hundred men to the Deep. And when I had given everything, when my ship was sunk ’cause the one thing I wouldn’t give the Union was my honor, I was thrown away! Then someone just like you surrendered, and it was all a wash and lost in the spray. I spit on your fucking army. And any man who joins it ain’t welcome on my boat for another second.”

“I’ve had quite enough of this, you and you-”

“Vael laundaunael ard Gishai’Chagra!” Brandyn shouted. The little man jumped.

“Who said that?”

“Vari.” Brandyn replied.

“Who are you?”

“Vel ki ani ic thrum. Vel ki fell ic soureed. Vel ki haroc ic shu.”

The little man licked his lips. His face began to go white, but then he shook his head as if assuring himself of something. “Enough of this you and you, get that-”

“You’ll lose.” Brandyn was taller than the soldiers, more substantial. Even with their weapons it seemed that she towered over them, ready to crush them entire. Like a tidal wave.

Brandyn turned back to the little man. “You have eighty men, by my estimation. Thirty-eight inside, perhaps that and a few more outside. Their swords are cheap steel. The blades have never been scratched. I’d say you have maybe ten or fifteen veterans, or whatever passes for a veteran around here. You have no archers. You wanted to come in here and impress the crowd, show them something flashy. To that end you didn’t bring anyone with you who had ever actually killed anyone. That wouldn’t do much to sell your point. If you escalate this, I will not leave any of your men alive. Not one.”

“Enough of this, you and you-”

“I have called Right of Hunt!” Brandyn asserted. “I place my protection over this place. The punishment for knowing violation of this is the same as collusion with the Shaen. I will sentence you to Contemplation.”

The man did not speak again, and then Brandyn did something that almost made Egan eyes pop out. The table must have been seven feet away from them, and a good three and a half feet off the ground. Brandyn jumped on it without any seeming difficulty or trouble keeping her balance.

She stared down the little man.

“Leave,” she said.

The man left.

Egan asked her to sing when she came to his room that night, but she said she wasn’t in the mood and asked him if he would just hold her.

To be continued…

I just went on a long walk in the rain. I like going on long walks in the rain because they make me feel very melodramatic and romantic. Kind of like Alan Rickman in “Sense and Sensibility.”

And I got to thinking about a question I’ve asked myself before, mostly because realizing that I like being melodramatic makes me feel ridiculous:

1. You’re on the stage in a crowded auditorium in front of tens of thousands of people.

2. The president and someone you have great personal regard for is there too.

3. This is nationally televised.

Question: Would you poop your pants to save the life of a small child in Africa who would have otherwise starved to death, even though you will never meet this child and no one would ever know that you were motivated to poop your pants by saving a life?

Secondly, could you even do that?

Update Question: This question is courtesy of Erin’s brother. Would you poop ON a starving African child to save their life, even though you could never ever tell anyone that’s why you’d done it?

I ask you, dear readers, for your input.

“Are you a writer or something?”

Startled, I look up to find a woman’s face inexplicably several inches away from my own. She’s thirty-something, dark-haired, voluptuous… and she’s chewing gum right in front of my nose. Her breath smells like fruit extract.

I’m temporarily stunned by the length of her torso, because she is not in the seat next to me, but in the seat across the bus aisle. Her brown eyes are turned down, reading the notebook in my hands. Looking at the little pictures and notes I’ve been jotting down. Notes about the Tide World which I’ve never ever showed to anyone.

“No!” I answer hastily, slamming the book shut.

“Oh… well… my boyfriend’s a writer!”

“Huh,” I say. Then I wince. If there’s one thing I’ve learned at college, it’s that I do not at all care for people who immediately identify themselves as writers. I don’t know what that says about me. I may be the first person in the history of the world who has contempt for the creature they wish to become.

“I dabble too of course,” she adds.

Rolling my eyes, I put away the notebook and pull out a school book. I make sure it’s a big, boring, sciencey book. I open it to a page full of sinisterly complicated equations like pointing a crucifix at a vampire. The woman gets up and moves to sit next to me.

Damn.

“I’m Samantha!” she explains, extending her hand.

I stare at her, confused. No one ever talks to me. Especially not after I put up my defensive recluse/hermit signals.

I lift my hand, hesitating to return the gesture, before she reaches across my chest, grabs my hand and pumps it firmly. Her fingers are soft and greasy with skin lotion. Her nails are chipped but mostly covered with red polish. I look up and meet her gaze. I’m six foot two and she’s got to have at least four inches on me. She’s like some kind of plain-looking, dark-haired Amazon who just happens to be out of her mind on coke.

“Hi… Samantha?” I reply.

“My boyfriend had colon cancer. They had to cut out three feet of his large intestine and eight feet of his small intestine. He’s got a colostomy bag now. So he mostly spends his time writing. He said it’s been great for his productivity.”

“Oh….” I say.

Wide eyes, fast breathing, chatty. Just got out of an Indian Casino. A seeming obliviousness to mortality. Yup, definitely coke.

“Yeah, I go out a lot because I don’t like to be at home.” Samantha scoots closer to me. “So what kind of stuff do you write?”

“I don’t….” I attempt to lie. I always lie about this. It’s easier. But before I can finish, Samantha laughs and shoves me in the shoulder with surprising firmness.

“You’re so funny.”

“I didn’t even….”

“Do you want my phone number?”

It suddenly dawns on me that Samantha may be one of the rare women who is instinctively attracted to awkward, weird-looking, emotionally unavailable men whose only small sliver of redemption is that they are somewhat creative. I also realize her hip is pressed very firmly against mine and that her not inconsiderable bosom is poking my arm.

“You’re pretty cute, you know that?” Samantha breathes.

I stand up very straight and cough.

“Ummm….” I say.

Once, when I was thirteen, abandoned at a Mexican restaurant by my step-father Mike, I’d been similarly approached. After attempting to pass the time by writing a shorty-story on the back of a few napkins, a drunk twenty-something had come up to the table, leaned across it and asked what it was that I was doing. I don’t recall exactly what she looked like, because she’d done a rather decent job of shoving her cleavage in my face but she had seemed similarly crazy. And although I’d explained quite explicitly that I was only thirteen years old, she hadn’t seemed to mind much.

I did now what I did then, and I did it all by reflex.

I attempted, with every passing moment, to stand up straighter than I had the moment previous. This gave my spine the rather frustrating appearance of a tent pole that keeps getting bunched up in the nylon lining of its guide channels. I also coughed loudly and repeatedly while facing away from her, as if trying to hide regurgitated phlegm. Lastly, I began apologizing profusely for anything and everything I could think of.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to… which is to say… I’m sorry if… I guess maybe I didn’t understand… I apologize if….”

“Don’t be silly!” Samantha whispers in my ear, as she takes my palm and begins writing down her phone number with a felt pen she’s pulled out of her purse. The pen feels like a lizard licking my hand.

I do not have to splutter apologies for very much longer before we reach my stop, because, as one might expect, Samantha had got on the bus at the Indian Casino. Presumably, she also has to add living in Everett to her list of misfortunes.

“Hey! I didn’t even catch your name!” Samantha cries as I awkwardly tear out of my seat when the bus makes my stop.

Jesus Christ, Lady! How much coke did you do in that fucking casino? I wonder, silently but keep my lips firmly shut.

As I slide over Samantha, who does not at any point offer to move out into the aisle, I feel a sense of violation as though her eyes are physically inserting into my posterior. I’m almost out of the bus when I turn around to see that Samantha is getting out of her seat.

I turn, and before I can stop myself or think about what I’m doing, or if it’s mean, I shout, “No! You stay right there!” and am surprised to see that I’m pointing at her.

Perhaps because this is the first time I have spoken a full sentence to her instead of spluttering, perhaps because I am genuinely upset, or perhaps because there seems to be an actual line of force extending from my finger, Samantha sits back down. She looks shocked as I leave the bus, as if I were Odysseus and had somehow resisted her Siren call without the aid of ropes. In other words, she is shocked in the way only someone high on cocaine can be shocked when they discover they are not all-powerful.

I don’t turn to look back at the bus when it drives away. I’m afraid I’ll see Samantha’s face pressed up against the glass, crying giant tears as she silently implores me to come back to her.

On my walk home, I think about what it would have been like to have sex with the giantess Samantha, who while huge and insane had not been unattractive. Then I think about her voice and her boyfriend silently shitting into his colostomy bag in the next room, and I shudder.

I much prefer my method of falling in love with women from afar, projecting superior characters onto them, and then never acting on any impulse whatsoever. Say what you will, but if you keep to yourself, it never gets awkward.

“Young man, as I watch you sitting there, counting ever so frantically, I must ask: is it your intention to pilfer these goods in my hand?”

Around three dollars in change, held in the old man’s palm, gleams like dirty gray salmon scales in the sodium lights of the bus. Starting awake, I realize I’ve been unintentionally staring at them for the last few seconds.

I glance up, thinking to apologize, and realize the old man is staring at me with affronted indignance. In fact, I realize he’s just asked me if I intend to rob him. I’m unsure whether or not he was serious.

I stare back at him, confused.

He stares backer, the whites of his eyes yellowed with age. I can’t quite tell if he’s crazy though. I consider breaking eye-contact, but can’t quite manage it.

It’s morning and we’ve driven past the Indian Casino back into Auburn. We’ve picked up exactly the kind of people you’d expect to be leaving an Indian Casino at six am. This old man, for a perfect example, with a great gray mane of hair, now seems convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’m out to steal his loose change.

“Excuse me?” I say after what seems an eternity.

The old eyes tighten. The mouth turns down in a scowl. Yes, that’s madness all right. Such a mistake, I shouldn’t have said anything.

“Oh, the degenerate speaks! Ha! Did you think me blind, you oaf? I know your family, you uncouth rapscallion, and a longer line of vagabonds and charlatans I have never come across!”

I regret speaking less now. A lot less as I parse the words. In fact, this is almost enjoyable. Well, as long as he doesn’t become violent, I won’t have any regrets. It’s not often you meet people who are crazy in such entertaining ways.

“Okay…” I respond, half-smiling.

“Okay? Okay? What is it you find ‘okay’ you bug-eyed, adder-tongued, rapscallion! You illiterate automaton, able to string only two letters together! Rapscallion!”

I nod, turning away politely.

He doesn’t stop speaking. Again and again with the rapscallion.

He says it with such frequency now that I’m beginning to doubt I have any idea what the word means. I’m also beginning to grin more widely, and this seems to drive the old man even further into his frothing rage.

“Ha, you laugh at me? You piece of nothing, devoid of any trace of chivalry, honor, or valor? You spawn of thieves, liars, and oath-breakers! You dare to laugh at me?”

I can’t help laughing now. It’s too surreal. Every word he says sounds like it’s out of a Horatio Hornblower story. I’m wracked by chuckles. It’s the privilege of being bigger and stronger than the person yelling at you, I suppose. You get to laugh when the shouting becomes funny.

The old man huffs, indignant.

He takes a pipe out of his jacket and shakes the stem at me seriously.

“I would mend my ways if I were you, young oaf. And with that I bid you good day, sir!”

The Knower of Rapscallions gets off at the next stop, walking toward a smoke shop, still slathering on about my family, vagabonds, and such like. Other people on the bus can’t decide whether to look at me or him because by this point I’m almost crying.

After he gets off, I wipe some tears of my eyes, and get back to reading.

No one says anything, because we’re still next to an Indian Casino after all, and you have to expect these sorts of things.