“Strike me down,” says Ratio Tile calmly. “I shall become more than you can imagine.”
Reaching the West Reaches drives his sword deep into the old man’s chest. Ratio’s hands scrabble on the blood-slick blade; he chokes and sags to his knees. Reaching the West Reaches draws back and raises the sword high.
“No!” screams See Me.
“Kid! Bolt the door!” screams Dog, pelting along the gangplank.
See fires wildly; the portcullis rattles shut. Reaching the West Reaches is behind it, but the Born Breathing are pouring onto the dock.
“Run, See Me!” thunders a voice in the waves. “Run!”
Thursday, December 6, 2007
“Psychiatrists are cheap,” announces Beulah.
“Er,” says Pilsner.
“I mean narratively–”
“Yes, I thought you might.”
“–they’re an easy way to have somebody spell out all the careful little flaws and neuroses you built into your characters, and if you’re the kind of writer who does that then you’re the kind who should know how to reveal that in action! But instead the character angrily rejects it, then has a breakdown, then gives in to the wisdom of the shrink. Ding. Everybody in New York smiles.”
“Mmm,” says Pilsner, “and which of your parents is this about?”
“Your mom,” Beulah says.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
“I never understood this part,” he says, in darkness. “Shouldn’t we be suffocating in stomach acid now?”
“I told you,” she says, impatient for once, “realities overlap.” Lamplight flickers behind them and he sees that they’re not in a whale’s belly after all: the wall is stone.
He raises his hand. On the wall, it shadows a wolf.
“This place illustrates the trap of sapience: the inability to perceive reality by any other means than the senses.”
“But we’re not chained here,” he says.
“Like the best traps,” says the end of the world, “it lets you believe you are free.”
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
“And each one puts off my personal apocalypse for an hour?” says Chori eagerly. “What a deal, your Holiness!”
“Try not to think in those terms,” says Albert. “There is a tremendous treasure house of merit being built up by the nonprofits; it’s already out there, cooling the warmth of perdition. Your donation is a partial penance that corresponds to the minor amounts of carbon you’ve released in the world.”
Chori’s already scribbling out a check. “What should I put in the memo field? Is it still just ‘indul–‘”
“We call them ‘credits’ now,” smiles Albert. “We’ve found it markets better.”
“You’ve got your standard lunch-table factions in here,” says Hiram, “your lacrosse jocks, band geeks, cheerleaders and–”
“Let me guess,” says Alaric, “goths?”
“Visigoths, actually,” says Hiram.
“Are they still into self-mutilation and the Cure?”
“No. Just sacking.”
The Visigoths sack the pizza line; their leader whoops and whirls a heat lamp around his head. Some of them have ponies.
“I think the administration would be annoyed,” says Hiram, “if they didn’t produce such advanced metalworks.”
“I want a pony!”
“You should join.”
Alaric does, and learns that they sack so much because they never get any lunch money.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Dacelo’s handwriting tilts as it advances, like a man on a drunken boat, until by the ragged right edge it’s nearly horizontal. It always starts again straight and tall on the next line, though. It speaks to Proserpina of an endlessly misplaced optimism.
He spells everything right but misplaces the ends of his adverbs; his stationery is scented, filched from a woman’s desk. Proserpina remembers the absence of his mother at their dinner together.
She folds the letter and slips it under the lining of the chest at the foot of her bunk. Very sincerely, he says in closing. Your servant.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
“Bonfire” comes from “bone-fire,” which is to say a fire that can turn calcium to ash: so a very hot fire indeed. You hold two bonfires in autumn and two in spring, and you drive cattle between them, lowing and foaming. It funnels their life into the planting or the harvest.
“Professional arsonists,” the police told the news. More like vocational, thinks Donnchadh, as he and the other priests watch the West Pier burn. Their fingers tingle. They’re thundering with it, the crashing strength of its iron skeleton, the gape-mouthed worship of those who shuffled its hot bright length.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
“What if the allirhinotiger is still there?” whispered the Justin, peeking over a dune.
“Amemet will stay away as long as you’re with me.” Ptah stepped over him and descended to the riverbank. “She and I have had words before. I think you dropped this.”
The Justin ran down eagerly to claim the battered and muddy Martin. “I can’t believe Stevie didn’t take it!” he exclaimed. “All right. I’ve got you, I’ve got my axe–time we blew this afterlife!”
“There’s something I must teach you before you go,” said Ptah, and the Justin was too happy to notice his implication.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
“But all you do anymore is commercial crap,” protests Andrei. “What happened to your old work, in black and white?” He yanks a book off the shelf, fans it. “This! The stuff that came from–”
“The heart?” says Verity, and chokes a giggle. “Oh, please finish that sentence. And my ‘commercial work’ is at least as valid as overexposed pictures of a butter churn by a fencepost.”
“It’s selling out!”
“It’s my talent, used as I like, with money on top,” says Verity. “How long is this going to be an issue?”
“Until you kick me off your couch,” sniffs Andrei.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Revere’s musket worked well enough against the natives and their witching pelts, when first they came to Massachusetts; but after their tea party two years back the King’s men have been massing in Boston, and silversmith’s bullets won’t avail them much.
So they’ve been watching, the Masons of Liberty, and now they’re riding. The lanterns are bright in the church tower–a last-ditch signal they can’t take down. One if by land. Two if by wing.
Revere can’t let himself look back. “The Redthroats are coming!” he yelps into the swallowing night, while behind him race dark and slitted eyes.
Friday, November 23, 2007