Reaching the West Reaches can run now, for the first time in many years. It’s strange and painful, and he staggers gladly to a stop at a cold-breathing cave to set the dwarf down.
“The Wish Power could never heal me before,” he grumbles. “Tell me why I can’t–”
“There is no why,” sighs Stumble Jade, sitting.
He peers into blackness. “What’s in there?”
“Only what you take with you,” says Stumble Jade. “Your weapon–you will not need it.”
Reaching the West Reaches takes up his broken blade anyway, and limps through the entrance.
The Backstroke is waiting inside.
“Hold out the plan-scroll, boys,” says Captain Lanthorn, and her first mates stretch the saurian form across the empty little shop.
“It’s been long since I designed at such a scale,” frets the old clockmaker, twitching once a second. “I can’t guarantee it will work!”
“Of course it will,” she murmurs. “It’s perfect, isn’t it, boys? And now, unique.”
Cutpenny binds his wrists and gags his mouth. Curl snaps the cord for the heart-key from around his neck.
It’s six days before anyone finds the body. Around him, dragons of teak and rosewood are just beginning to wind down.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
“They didn’t mention the exact amount,” says the actress, “but I understand it was quite generous.”
Clemson shrugs a face. “Not important,” he says, “I would have given it anyway, but when I saw the top prize was having you read my screenplay…”
She smiles, and braces herself. “Yes, well, we should get started.”
“Of course.” He rummages. “Um. As long as we’re talking, would you mind reading some of it aloud?”
“I suppose not.”
“Starting with the title?” He plops it over.
“Telephone Directory,” she hesitates, “City of Los Angeles.”
“You can just start in the Js,” Clemson says dreamily.
When she and Sterling start over it’s glorious: they spend whole days together in the park, sunshine and honest silence, and the earnest rhythm of his words.
But six months in, she remembers why things ended. He rants at length and his arguments are ill-founded; he never listens to her. When she finds herself cheating with Bisson and Willis, she knows the time has come.
She takes him out to a coffee shop to break it to him. “It’s not me,” she scribbles on his cover page, “it’s you,” and leaves him with one of those stickers on his back.
Longinus started the first two cults by accident, and found them tremendous annoyances. The steppes made him as depressed as they made everyone else clingy; he swatted them away like Mongolian horseflies (but smaller and less determined).
The third he assembled deliberately, and for a specific reason: he hadn’t slept with anyone in a hundred and thirty years. Just a run of bad luck, which didn’t get any better, as the name “Sisterhood of Love Divine in Flesh” somehow managed to attract eighty-nine eunuchs.
The fourth cult got stolen by Ahasuerus and that just ruined the whole thing for him.
“Anything at all,” croaks Konohanasakuya-hime, holding up her worn paper sign. Flame has licked its edges; blossoms rot in her hair.
“Okay,” says Phanindra, and digs in his memory. “Um, your name be praised?”
“I bless you,” she grins toothlessly, but Phanindra doesn’t feel very blessed. He’s been spotted as a mark and the crowd’s surging from street grates and alcoves. Gods paw at him, crippled, crying, one-eyed and fox-headed. “Pray to me!” they beg. “Just a little!”
“I’m sorry,” he says desperately, “I haven’t got any more,” and wishes to no one that he lived somewhere colder.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
“I am not a teacher,” hisses Proserpina, as Ernestine sniffs curiously at the oatmeal bag.
“She has to learn from someone. The Novak girl is crueler even than you were.”
“Iala’s not so bad. And you know I was caught once already!”
Radiane nods. “Exactly. With three of us you won’t have to go without a lookout again.”
“I thought you understood the storybooks. That a third link is weakest, that once you make a circle of more than two–”
“My mistake, Ernestine,” says Radiane loudly, “I thought here you could learn to be dangerous,” and Proserpina bites her own teeth.
I. i. There was a man walking alone at night; ii. and Pharez said, “I’m a rob that fucker.” iii. So he set upon him. iv. But the man overcame Pharez, and took his knife.
II. i. And Pharez was greatly amazed. ii. And he said unto the man, iii. “What are you, some kinda ninja or somethin’?” iv. And the man spoke, saying, v. “I am no ninja. I was simply prepared.”
III. i. The man left, and Pharez was sore troubled, and thought upon many things. ii. And the first thought was that iii. he would buy a gun.