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APEX MAGAZINE
ISSUE 83, APRIL 2016

Jason Sizemore, Editor-In-Chief

Table of Contents

Editorial

Words from the Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore

Fiction

The Laura Ingalls Experience—Andrew Neil Gray

The Teratologist’s Brother—Brandon H. Bell

The Quidnunx—Catherynne M. Valente

Collecting James—Geoffrey Girard

Nonfiction

Interview with Author Andrew Neil Gray—Andrea Johnson

Interview with Artist Sarah Zar—Russell Dickerson

Poetry

Fertility—Craig Finlay

The Farmer’s Milk—John Yu Branscum

Myth of the Mud God—Michael VanCalbergh

Song of the Encantado—Jeremy Paden

Words from the Editor-in-Chief

Jason Sizemore

Welcome to issue 83!

This month we’re publishing only two works of original fiction, because both are lengthy pieces, totaling nearly 14,000 words combined, and our goal is to publish around 12,000 words of original fiction each month. In Andrew Neil Gray’s "The Laura Ingalls Experience," a mech takes a simulated adventure to the American frontier of the 1800s. A search for self in a hollow world makes for poignant story. "The Teratologist’s Brother" by Brandon H. Bell is a prime example of the type of world/unsettling SF Apex Magazine strives to publish. Part dystopia, part Lovecraftian, you will be piecing the puzzles of this story together long after you finish reading it.

Former Apex Magazine editor and frequent contributor Catherynne M. Valente returns to our pages (after a too-lengthy absence) with "The Quidnunx." This novelette reprint is a masterful example of world building and creating something that is both entirely alien and entirely beautiful. Geoffrey Girard, author of the upcoming Apex Publications collection, first communions, gives us a taste of his collection by sharing the story "Collecting James" with the Apex Magazine readers. Having the story fresh in my mind, I can honestly say if this one doesn’t make you squirm, then you’re a tougher person than I.

For our nonfiction selections, we have two interviews. Russell Dickerson talks with our cover artist Sarah Zar. Andrea Johnson questions author Andrew Neil Grey. Finally, rounding out the issue are poems by John Yu Branscum, Michael VanCalbergh, Jeremy Paden, and Craig Finlay.

Our podcast this month is "The Teratologist’s Brother" by Brandon H. Bell.

§

Come back next month when we have fiction by Stephen Cox, David K. Yeh, and Lavie Tidhar!

Jason Sizemore

Editor-in-Chief

The Laura Ingalls Experience

Andrew Neil Gray

6,200 words

I am on fire.

Around me smoke and orange sparks spiral upwards. I feel the heat deep in my titanium bones, but there’s no pain. For a moment, I want to fight the instincts that scream at me to pull away.

I twist out of the flames as a hundred kilos of heroic wagon driver slams into me, carrying me to the ground. He wraps me in something wooly and rough — bison robes. In the fire I could hear the crackle of burning wood, the whoosh of my dress igniting. Now the only sound is Tasunke’s ragged breathing. Then the prairie orchestra: a symphony of crickets fiddling in the night. Finally, the alarmed voices of the others.

God, I’m a fool. And such a long, long way from home.

§

Here is a postcard from Earth.

Our small tour group left the town of De Smet, South Dakota two days ago. We trundled on our rickety wagon wheels through a sea of prairie grasses, the sky and the land stretching out flat and uninterrupted. Once we even saw the dots of bison on the far horizon. But they were travelling in the opposite direction and soon out of sight, even for my enhanced eyes.

That horizon — it’s so far away. It’s still hard to process the size of everything on Earth: the flatness of the world, the giant, blazing sun, hotter than it has a right to be.

The sky has been blue and clear every day. The nights full of stars. Tasunke, our wagon driver and guide, has rolled back the wagon’s canvas cover halfway, giving us our choice of sun or shade. Alice and Hitomi stay in the shade, fanning themselves. They arrived already costumed, wearing custom-fitted corsets, pinafores to protect their delicate dresses, parasols, and poke bonnets with blue ribbons and bows. Hand-made carpet bags and needlepoint.

Me, I’ve been stuck in my tourist-issue plain-Jane dress and ill-fitting corset. If my skin was made of flesh, I’d have chafing and blisters by now.

I’ve taken to sitting on the sunny side of the wagon. Across from me is Zara, with the glittering black eyes. And beside me, Marcus, the sole man in the group, who likes to sit close. Oh, and Jack the dog curled at our feet, panting in the heat. Named after Laura’s Jack, faithful companion and watchdog. Who was lost, then found again.

Like all postcards, this one is a short tale woven from half-truths. But still, the image is real: blue sky, green grass, a team of brown horses and a wagon. It looks as if Laura Ingalls herself might be inside with Ma and her sisters. Pa out hunting on the prairie. All of them heading to the plot of land where he’ll build their little house.

You would have loved it all.

§

The fire is out. The singed bison robe unwrapped. "Get the first-aid kit," Tasunke calls out to someone behind me.

I sit up. "I’m alright."

"Ella, you’ve been burned. Don’t move. Don’t move a muscle."

My dress is in tatters, my hair melted to stubble. But it would take more than a few seconds of flame to damage me.

Tasunke doesn’t understand until he takes a light from the first-aid kit, the harsh brightness out of place in our lamp-lit trip. He touches my arm as if it’s made from bone china.

"I told you I was okay," I say.

He looks up, the surprise obvious on his broad face. "You’re …"

"Mech," I say, finishing his sentence. "And fire resistant."

There’s an ugly red mark on his hand. I touch it and he winces. "Oh," I say. "That looks like a nasty burn."

He doesn’t look away from me. "Why didn’t you say something before?"

"Would you have let me burn if you’d known?"

"Don’t be an idiot."

I don’t know why I said it. No, that’s a lie: I do know. It’s the same reason I’ve been eating with everyone when I don’t need food. Going off into the grass and pretending to pee when we stop for a break. But the curtain has come up during a scene change, leaving me exposed as the actor that I am.

The others have all arrived. I look up at them, my travelling companions, try to read their expressions in the half-light. Nothing is going to be the same.

§

You and I ignored the Church as children, even as it spread through the scattered settlements of the asteroid belt. Our family was devoutly undevout. Though I sometimes wished for the ancient gods when I was younger — the names of the Romans were written on rocks across the solar system, after all. Minerva, Juno, Ceres. What if the gods themselves had retreated there instead of dying out two thousand years before?

But then there was that cathedral inside Vesta, carved by miners who wanted to dedicate something to the glory of God in all that darkness. Sunlight piped in through optical fibers, glowing through stained glass. I only saw a monument to mankind, but it touched you in ways I didn’t understand.

There are still things I don’t understand. But I know one certainty: neural uploading is suicide. A mortal sin.

I am reminded of this when we set out on the wagon the next morning. Zara sits as far away from me as possible, avoids meeting my eyes. Her cross is now displayed prominently on her cream dress. The dull gleam of hammered meteoric iron.

I maneuver my own cross so that it’s visible, but it makes no difference.

Marcus isn’t avoiding me. In fact, he sits even closer than he had the day before. His gaze is hungry. "They made you sign something this morning," he says.

The tour company’s little flitter had touched down just before breakfast, lawyer onboard, prop-wake pushing down the grass and scattering various flora and fauna across the prairie. Ruining the illusion of the nineteenth century we’d all paid so much for.

"I had to waive all potential claims from the accident. And future claims too in case anything else happens to me. They only have organic insurance coverage."

"That’s discrimination," he says. "I thought they were progressive down here."

"As in Earth, fleshpot of the solar system progressive?" I glance at Zara. The words are aimed at her more than him but she still acts as if I’m not there at all.

Marcus nods. His hand has found its way onto my arm. I send it back where it came from with an almost absent-minded flick. But after it’s gone there’s an echo of the pressure. A disconcerting tingling.

"It’s certainly more open-minded than the rest of the solar system. Doctor Wu’s clinic is still here, after all." I wasn’t planning on mentioning the clinic, but there it is, hanging in the air above the wagon floor. Jack the dog scratches himself in the silence that follows.

Marcus’s face lights up. "Is that where you were uploaded? Did you know Doctor Wu also makes the finest love mechs in the system?"

And there we have it. Now I know what he is.

§

Your new religion didn’t stop you from working with me, sister, but how could it not come between us? Twins share so much, but this we couldn’t find an accommodation for. In ports you’d visit the chapel while I hit the bars or the casino. Feeling your disapproval when I stumbled back to our ship in the wee hours. Or after breakfast if I’d hooked up with someone. All the while I knew you were praying for me and I resented it.

Did it make me sloppy? Did it make me careless in a place where inattention can easily get you killed?

Something did.

§

We halt in a gentle hollow. The next stop on the tour approaches. Zara perks up, Hitomi and Alice put away their needlepoint.

"Lunch," Tasunke calls out. There is a sense of deflation after he says it. "We’re almost there. Promise. But we need to eat first."

He sets Patti and Pet on their picket lines so they can graze, then unwraps the meal from the basket he’s taken from the wagon. He looks at me for a moment with an awkward question in his eyes as he puts out the food. I shake my head. No sense in pretending any longer.

As Zara says grace, I walk cautiously around the wagon. Some days I feel like I’m remotely piloting a woman-shaped vehicle, and this is one of them. I have to think about every movement before I make it.

The horses are cropping the grass, chewing loudly. I walk up to Patti, who I can distinguish from Pet only by the name on her harness. "There there." I feel faintly ridiculous. What do you say to a horse? I put my hand on her shoulder, stroking it gently. Patti is muscular and warm. Comforting.

After a while, something occurs to me. I’m kneeling behind the horses, looking back the way we’d come when I hear a voice. "I love the wagon tracks." It’s Marcus, who has appeared quietly. "They’re so realistic. It’s like we’ve actually travelled back in time."

"You think so?"

Marcus looks confused. "Isn’t that the point of all of this?"

I stand up. He’s close and I have an impulse to poke him in the chest, so I do. He steps back, startled. "How much traffic would it take to make these tracks?" I say. "How many trips to keep the grass from growing? There’s got to be a machine that grooms them."

"OK, sure. But why does it matter?"

I don’t answer. I just keep barrelling on. "This wilderness around us: how much work do you think it would have taken to create it? Somebody had to remove the farm foundations and fence posts. The rusted tractor parts, all the fucking roads and ruined towns."

Marcus takes another step backwards. I’m sure if I had spittle, I’d be spraying it on him by now, ranting away. There’s a point to this, I think. I grasp for it. "Patti and Pet. The horses."

Marcus glances at the grazing animals. "What about them?"

"They’re mech. They’re not producing horseshit. Just pellets of compressed grass." I point to one of the green lumps lying between the wagon tracks.

He looks at me as if I’m an idiot. "Didn’t you read the FAQ on day one?"

Of course I didn’t. Who reads FAQs?

"Animal welfare laws discourage using real horses to pull a wagon. They might get injured."

Ah yes, progressive, bleeding-heart Earth. Where they’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in a universe that’s constantly trying to kill you.

I’m trying to think of something to say when the first Indian arrives. Or rather the second, because of course Tasunke is Sioux. But he’s from the metropolis of Sioux Falls and dresses as Pa would have in the Little House books: a plain shirt, dark jacket and trousers. He looks like the rest of us. Someone in a rented costume. This new man is something else.

He’s riding a real horse, for one thing. It glows with life, practically dancing in place. The man on its back has something of the horse’s vitality as well. He’s wearing tanned hide, moccasins, a brace of feathers in his hair. He looks at all of us impassively. Muscles move in his forearms and biceps as he holds the reins taut.

He speaks in a language I don’t understand. He talks for a couple of minutes, finishing with open hands raised. Then he turns his horse and trots back up the slight hill to the north and, in a minute, is lost in the waving grass.

Tasunke stands in front of the group. "We have been welcomed," he says. "And invited to visit their camp. We will spend the night there and partake in their hospitality."

Alice and Hitomi grin at each other. Zara cracks a rare smile. "Nicely done," Marcus says to Tasunke. "That’s attention to detail."

Tasunke glances at me. I’m fairly sure I’m wearing a skeptical expression. That’s me: doubting Ella.

§

It was one of those early mornings that was clinging to the night before. I came back from a port bar on Ceres, blurry around the edges. I was halfway to my bunk when I heard your voice, softly. "Ella. Come here." You’d been waiting up for me and I tensed, expecting a lecture.

Instead, you handed me a glowing rectangle. A slate with a decrypted message on it. "Tell me I’m reading this wrong."

I looked at the slate, trying to make sense of the numbers on the screen.

We had our probes, like all mining co-ops. Little boxes studded with solar panels and Hall effect thrusters bumbling their way through the belt, looking for pay dirt in one of the hundred million or so unexplored minor asteroids that littered the space between Mars and Jupiter.

This was a message from one of them. The rock our probe had found was a long way from us. We’d burn a lot of fuel to get there. I was already calculating the cost, the time, all the logistics in my head that said it wasn’t worth pursuing this year, when I realized what the numbers were saying.

The asteroids are full of valuable things: rare earth elements, platinum group metals, water. But most valuable of all were primordial radionuclides, radioactive elements created in dying stars. Fuel for ship drives, for the reactors that kept the lights on pretty much everywhere past Jupiter. The rock was saturated with them.

"It’s got to be a mistake." I almost shook the slate to see if the number would change.

"That’s what I thought," you said. "So I got the probe to re-run the tests. Three times."

I could feel my mouth opening, an O of surprise. "That’s got to be millions of dollars."

"Tens of millions," you said, the tiniest wobble in your voice. "Maybe more."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

You frowned at me. "Sorry," I said. "But I don’t think He’d mind, just this once. Do you?"

§

I stand by the front of the wagon while Tasunke puts Patti and Pet on their picket lines again. "Why do you bother?" I ask finally.

Tasunke looks at me.

"Tying up the horses. They’re not going to wander off, are they?"

"Attention to detail," he replies. "Like your friend said."

"He’s not my friend."

Tasunke shrugs. "This is the Laura Ingalls Experience. In the books they put their horses on picket lines, so we do too. It’s what you’re paying for, isn’t it?"

"I’m not really sure what I’m paying for."

He looks at me in an oddly familiar way. It takes me a moment, then I have it. It’s how the counsellors at the rehabilitation clinic looked at me. Faces full of concern and sympathy.

"So tell me: why did you do it?"

If I had a heart it would be pounding now. I can imagine my brain fruitlessly trying to release adrenaline into my unresponsive body. "Do what?" I ask casually.

He looks uncomfortable for a moment. "You know … Go into the fire."

I breathe out, realizing I’ve been holding my airflow back. Relief. "It’s not what you think. It’s just … I’d never seen one before."

He looks at me, confused.

"There are no open flames out there." I wave in the direction of the sky. "Fire in a ship or a habitat is a terrible thing. So I was watching it. But I was too close. I’m clumsy. I fell over."

I can tell he’s deciding whether or not to believe me. Time to change the subject. "Are they actors, the Indians?"

Tasunke laughs. A short bark. "No," he says. "Definitely not."

"They can’t be authentic. Nobody lives like that any longer."

"See if you can figure it out," he says. "Most tourists don’t."

"I’m not a fucking tourist," I say, feeling like a fool the moment the words come out. He just raises an eyebrow. Time to go into camp.

§

You and I read the Little House books as girls, both of us racing to finish each one before the other did. Laura Ingalls’s life seemed to echo our own. The vast empty spaces around the family of pioneers. The intensely practical nature of their lives. The sisters growing up together, intertwined.

On the two month trip to our little radioactive rock you started reading them again. I had other things to do, some of them involving old movies and games, some of them constructing increasingly ridiculous plans for my share of the find. And some of them secret.

One day I looked up and saw a tear, a little globe sliding down your cheek at a glacial pace, pulled by the modest acceleration of our drive.

"What’s that for?"

You blushed. Wiped it with your sleeve. "Do you remember By the Shores of Silver Lake?"

I shook my head. At some point the books had all become mixed together in my memory. Houses, hardship, horses. I’d left them behind a long time ago — turned toward the real world of machines and rocks and the treasures within them.

"It’s just …" You stopped for a moment. I could feel the emotion radiating from you. "There’s this scene near the end where Laura’s little sister Grace gets lost. They’re all out looking for her. There’s a place called the Big Slough where there’s mud and water and you can tell the family thinks she’s wandered off and drowned. They’re frantic. But finally Laura stumbles across this hollow in the land. An old buffalo wallow full of blooming violets."

I had an image then, the land carpeted in flowers. It swam up through my memory. I nodded. "Grace was there. She was safe."

"It was as if she was adrift in the blue sky." You paused for a moment. I waited for you to say something about me then. Something about the sloughs I’d found myself in.

"I’d like to see that sky some day," you said. "Just once. See Silver Lake and the Little House. That’s what I’ll do with my share of the rock."

I looked out our starboard viewport. Most ships don’t have them: they’re an extravagance, and they’re not as safe as just bringing a video feed in through the skin. But we had two — you’d insisted. Outside was the familiar darkness, studded with the pinpoint sparks of stars.

I liked the sky black. I had no interest in seeing it any other colour.

§

Hitomi and Alice find me at the edge of camp.

"You haven’t been avoiding people, have you?" They’re arm in arm, parasols in hand. There is kindness in Alice’s voice.

I’ve been scrutinizing the camp. "Just looking for seams."

But there are no seams. The horses are real, the tipis are tanned hide and hand-carved wooden poles. The smell of authentic bison stew and woodsmoke drifts through camp.

"We just wanted to tell you we don’t mind," Hitomi says. "About your …"

"Condition," Alice finishes.

Hitomi frowns minutely. "Circumstances. I think condition implies something else. Like pregnancy."

I touch my flat stomach. "Definitely not that." Never that. All the biology of being a woman — the inconvenience and the promise of it, has been taken away from me forever. I just look like I’m whole.

Hitomi smiles, her face crinkling. She could be my grandmother: the same eyes, the same wrinkles. "We knew another upload."

"On Mars," Alice says. "A few years back."

Hitomi nods. "They must be getting better. He was so stiff and awkward. You’re …"

"You have a spark," Alice says. "An air about you."

Hitomi puts her hand on my arm. "The thing we’re trying to say, dear, is that we don’t believe in all that sin business."

I can’t look either of them in the eye. "The problem is, I do."

§

There was a time when you and I didn’t hide anything from each other. There was a time when I sneered at people who used chemistry to mediate their experience of the world.

But you’d found meaning in coloured light flooding through the windows of a chapel carved in the heart of an asteroid. And I couldn’t be a part of that. So I searched for it in a small bag of pills that I’d bought in the bathroom of one of the less reputable port bars on Ceres.

§

Marcus approaches me after dinner. I’d joined everyone this time, chewing my bison and turnip stew after the traditional blessing and Zara’s grace. Her black eyes flashing at me as if I didn’t deserve to hear the words. I stayed as long as I could stand it.

Now I’m outside in the cool night. It’s alive with sound: a humming, buzzing insect chorus. The wind sweeps across the prairie, ruffling the grasses with invisible fingers.

"It’s a bit close in there, isn’t it?"

He’s standing a few meters away. I don’t speak. He comes nearer.

"I saw you had dinner. But you don’t actually need to eat, do you?"

"The food gets stored in a pouch in my abdomen, for disposal later."

"But some models can, can’t they? They break down the food for energy."

I sigh. Give into the pressure of his curiosity. "Not me. Food has a terrible mass to energy ratio for hauling around out in the black."

He’s quiet for a moment. "Um … your other functions. They’re … um, are they …?"

"Oh for God’s sake," I say. "I know you’re a mech-fucker; just come out with it."

My night vision is on and I can see his face heating up as the blush rises. "Can you …?"

I remember the tingle when he touched my arm. On an impulse I turn to him and kiss him. There’s a flood of sensation, a warmth that spreads across my chest and down my abdomen. One of his hands finds my left buttock and squeezes. His body responds, heart racing, blood vessels dilating.

Orgasm occurs in the mind, not the flesh. I could test this new body of mine. It would be so easy to give into the feelings the synthetic nerves are feeding to my brain.

But I don’t deserve this. I step back from him. "I can," I say. "But I can’t, also."

I see confusion on his face.

"I’m a biological brain and a skull and part of a spinal cord, Marcus. All wrapped up in this body you think is so perfect."

"Oh," he says. It only takes him a moment to understand. "So I was wrong: you didn’t come from Doctor Wu’s, you’re going there."

"I don’t know where I’m going." This is the part when, if I were real, the tears would stream down my cheeks.

§

The United Nations conventions on solar system resource exploitation are clear. A co-op with mining rights cannot claim a rock via surveys or automatic probes. To possess their share of the wealth locked up in a rock, members of the co-op must physically visit it, perform assays, attach a transponder, then tow it back to an authorized orbit for mining operations.

Two months bottled up with you in our little tug and I was dying to go outside. So I volunteered to do the surface work. People can get lost outside. Not floating off into space lost, but mentally — reduced to fragments, ego flattened, distracted to the point of forgetting to come in when their air runs low. But not me. I’ve never had the imagination.

Still, I wanted to feel it. I wanted a taste of what you experienced. You saw a universe threaded with meaning, where all I could see was a cold and hostile place where we mattered no more or less than the rocks we drilled into. So after I’d set up the transponder and tow lines and transmitted our mineral claim to Ceres, I took some chemical enlightenment.

This particular mix was designed to shut down my default-mode network, that part of my brain that inhibited everything else. Dissolve the boundaries between the world and myself. The literature I’d read said it produced feelings of oneness with the universe. Adherents spoke of mystical experiences.

I watched you pass by one of the ports, the inside of the tug warm and cozy compared to the vast, cold bulk of the rock we had just claimed as our own. You were busy, probably humming to yourself as we both do when we’re alone. You looked happy.

I sent you a quick message — a lie about work I had to do on the surface for a few hours — then I swallowed the pill from the dispenser in my helmet and waited for something to happen.

§

I find the seam I was looking for when we’re on the train to Independence, Kansas. It was something I’d heard some of the Indians say when I was hanging around the edge of camp. When they didn’t know I was out there. Shuune. It’s not a word in Sioux, according to the dictionary. But when I whisper it into the translator in my personal slate it pops up a suggestion. SchÃƒÂ¶n.

Tasunke’s reading a paper book in the forward compartment. The steam engine is chugging away in front of us. He looks up when I approach.

"Germans," I say.

He raises an eyebrow.

"They were Germans, at the camp. Not real Indians. I’m right, aren’t I?"

"Got me," he says. "They’ve been coming here since the twentieth century — dressing up, acting more Indian than the rest of us. They even speak Lakota Sioux. Most of the time, anyway."

"People aren’t offended?"

"My great-grandfather might have been. He was something fierce. But we have our own nation again; the farmers are all gone and bison roam the plains. They have an audience who appreciates them. Everybody wins."

He’s a good man. I can see it in him. "I’m not an upload," I confess. "I just wanted to let you know that."

Tasunke nods. "Marcus told us already. He said there’d been a terrible accident."

So much for confidences whispered in the night.

"He also said you might go to Doctor Wu’s clinic after the tour. Let them upload you there."

I scrutinize him, but he seems the same as he’s always been. Unflappable. "Would it matter if I did?" I ask.

He looks at me steadily. "I have no idea what it’s like to be you. If you think it’s necessary, who am I to say any different? Not everyone has the same ideas about the soul as the Christians do."

I nod. It’s not nothing, having him accept this. I turn to go back to my seat. "But be aware," he says as I go, "Zara’s going to come at you at some point. She has a mission now."

"A mission? Like a spy?"

He smiles at that. "A mission, like a missionary."

§

I felt myself die, twice.

The first was ego death. Courtesy of my little white pill. My self — the I inside my head — dwindled until it was a pinprick and my mind was flooded with emotion and sensation. I’d latched myself to the surface of our little asteroid, touching rock that had been unchanged for four and a half billion years. I saw you, my twin sister, connected to me by DNA, by history, by shared experience. I saw that my body was just a collection of atoms, connected to the rock by our shared ancestry in the birth of the solar system. A part of the fabric of the universe. A child of God. Connections everywhere. It was beautiful.

At some point, as my ego crept back in, I saw the sloppy work I’d done fixing the tow lines to the asteroid. I’d been in a hurry, trying to carve out a few hours for my pill. I’d used shaped charges instead of setting the much slower remote drills. And something was wrong. At least one of the charges hadn’t fired.

Mining charges have safeties: triply redundant. But they were not designed for a miner tripping on synthetic neurotransmitters who sees the hand of God in everything she does. I grabbed the tool carrier and set out to fix things.

I failed.

No sound in space: you wouldn’t have heard the explosion. But you would have heard the bang as the hull was breached, then alarms, rapidly fading to nothing as the tug lost air pressure. You should have been safe: we’d trained enough for decompression. But a slug of liquid metal had passed straight through your environment suit, peppered the backup too. Shards of rock cracked one of those viewports. There was nowhere to go.

Getting to the ship was a bad dream where everything went wrong. It felt like I was piloting my body from far away. Everything clumsy, everything frustratingly slow. My suit leaking from a dozen tiny punctures. When I finally made it through the airlock, I found you floating, a softball-sized sphere of blood next to your head.

Our emergency hibernation system was designed to keep an injured person at a minimal metabolic rate until they could be brought to a proper medical facility. It was not designed for miracles.

Nevertheless, I put you in the first bag. A straw I clutched at.

The ship was rapidly losing heat and air. Warning lights flashed. The drive worked, but life support was wrecked. I set a course for the nearest habitat, turned on our emergency beacon. Then I slid my damaged body into the second bag and felt the bite of cold.

This was the second death. When I triggered the hibernation sequence I knew in my numb heart that I wouldn’t be waking up again.

§

The Little House itself is a disappointment. The reconstruction of Laura Ingalls’s famous prairie home sits on section 36, Rutland Township, Kansas. Just outside Independence, where the train stopped. It’s smaller than I’d imagined. And not unlike a pile of logs.

"So," I say to Marcus as we stand outside, looking at the place. "Two hundred years ago they built a cabin here based on a description in a book from a century before. And Laura and her family only lived here for a year. It’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it? They were at Silver Lake much longer, not to mention her parents finally settled down there."

Marcus shrugs. "It’s on the tour. Anyway, this is the one everyone remembers." He walks over to the big sign at the side of the house and starts reading.

I feel comfortable with Marcus: it was very clear what he wanted from me, and once it was obvious he wasn’t going to get it, we’ve settled on a friendly truce. I pretend not to notice his quick glances; he pretends — well, I don’t know what he pretends. Don’t want to know.

Then I realize he’s gone and Zara is in his place.

"You’ve been avoiding me," she says, coming closer.

"Damn right I have. I don’t need your judgment."

She stares at me. Her eyes are so dark. It’s only now I realize they’re artificial. "You think I’m judging you?"

Her cross is out, swinging on a thin silver chain. "I think you want to save my soul," I say.

"If I do, is that a judgment?"

I glance around. Marcus and the others are at the schoolhouse. I catch his eye and he mimes a shrug, then he’s gone around the corner. The coward. There’s a little wooden bench by the door of the cabin and I sit down on it. "Yes," I say. "You’re judging that it’s actually worth saving."

Zara sighs. She rubs her cross between her fingers. "Did you know I have a brain implant?"

"No," I reply, startled.

"Five years ago my husband got caught outside during a coronal mass ejection without enough shielding. I got careless after he died. I think part of me wanted to join him. Until I got hit by a flying bolt during a repair job in low Mars orbit. I shouldn’t have survived, but I did. And I knew God wanted me to live. Just like you. There was a reason."

I used to experience emotions in my body: a jump in my stomach, an ache in my chest. Now there’s a ghost of those feelings — a phantom limb. Even though my torso only contains an artificial lung and my power cells, I feel tightness there. "And what about your husband? What about my sister? Did God want them to die?"

Zara ignores me. "I have Prosopagnosia. Face blindness. It happened when my temporal lobe was damaged. My implant couldn’t fix it." She slowly lowers herself down beside me on the bench. Under her dress I see the shimmer of her exoskeleton, the fabric keeping Earth’s gravity at bay.

"The worst thing is, I don’t know his face. Even when my implant brings it up or I look at old pictures, my husband might as well be a stranger. But I still remember how I felt when I was with him." She turns to me. Those eyes black as interstellar space. "What happens when you upload? Will you even feel anything anymore?"

"We’re not the same," I say. "You know nothing about me. Nothing." Anger makes me honest for the first time this trip. "It’s only temporary, what they’ve done. Nobody has ever kept a brain alive without a biological body for more than a few years. And it’s already been fourteen months."

Zara frowns. "So, what? You want to die before you’re dead?" Her face wobbles for a moment, then her artificial eyes well up with tears. She puts her head in her hands and I see the scars on her scalp under her dark hair.

After a moment, I reach out and touch her arm. It’s warm and alive under my plastic fingers. She looks up, face puffy. She’s softened by her grief and I can see her more clearly now. She’s another wounded person, in a solar system full of us.

"It’s how you honour the dead," she says, her voice thick. "You keep them alive in your heart."

"I don’t have a heart," I say. But gently this time. "But I’ll have my memories. If I do this, I’ll remember my sister for a thousand years or more. Even if I’m not really myself. Even if I’m just a copy. That’s how I’ll keep her alive."

§

I woke from hibernation in a formless grey void. Time stretched out. I was in purgatory. Then the voice of a doctor came like the voice of God himself, beamed directly into the auditory centers of my brain. He explained what had happened, the work they were doing to save me, all paid for by the extraordinary wealth I now possessed as the sole surviving owner of our asteroid.

For a long time after that I believed I was actually in Hell: he was the Devil and I was suffering for my sins.

Imagine what it was like, sister, when I finally opened my new eyes in the rehab center and understood that my punishment was to live instead.

§

At the end of the tour the others go back home. I take a quiet magnetic train to Doctor Wu’s clinic in Sioux Falls. I lie on a black couch, the apparatus around me like a spider emerging from a burrow. "This is it," Doctor Wu says cheerfully. "Last chance to change your mind before we change your mind."

He is chubby and balding, both curable conditions, perhaps preserved as affectations. Otherwise he looks completely baseline. "Tattoo artists decorate their arms," I say. He looks confused. Then he understands.

"Do I practice what I preach? Is that it? How do you know I’m not an upload?"

"Are you?"

He shakes his head slowly. "Not yet. I have a body waiting for me, when the time is right."

My hands are shaking. I’m not sure how — my adrenal glands are long gone. "How will you know when the time is right?"

"It’s right when it’s right," he says. "You paid a great deal of money to be here today, my dear. So, shall we proceed or not?"

Cremation and recycling are traditions across most of the solar system but my twin sister had always wanted to go to Neptune, and with the money from the radionuclides, it was possible, so her body was sent there. I was still in purgatory when it happened, but I was given the video once I had eyes again.

Her casket was a black fleck against the planet’s serene blue. Like Laura’s sister in the violets, it was as if she was adrift in the blue sky of Earth. Safe. Then the fleck dwindled and vanished and she was gone forever.

I touch her crucifix, which I’ve worn every day since waking up in my new body. The only tangible thing I have left of her. It’s cold, as if it still holds a memory of the billions of years the metal was locked in a rock floating around the sun, waiting for humans to smelt and hammer it into a shape that held meaning, at least for a while, for one of them.

It’s time now. I make my choice.

Andrew Neil Gray is the author of Small Accidents, a collection of short stories. He's recently returned to writing science fiction after a (too) long hiatus and has work forthcoming in The Sockdolager. He lives with his family in British Columbia, Canada. He has a modest website at http://andrewneilgray.com.

Interview with Author Andrew Neil Gray

Andrea Johnson

"The Laura Ingalls Experience" is part historical re-enactment tourism, part LARP experience, part Disneyland-esque escapism. Ella seems to be the only one who isn’t sure why she’s here, and she surely isn’t 100% prepared to be here. Surrounded by the assumptions of strangers, can Ella find herself in the stories of her youth? She has a decision to make, and it needs to be made soon. Against the backdrop of wagon wheel ruts, this is far more than just a journey to a famous home.

One of the many things I loved about this story was the connection between the frontier as endured by the Ingalls family, and next frontier humanity faces — the stars. As we venture outbound, what will we take with us, knowing there will be few resupply opportunities? What diseases will we survive, who will we choose to travel with, what will have value, and what will suddenly not be worth carrying?

Like the beauty of nature, this is a story that’s here, patiently waiting for you. It’s waiting for you to sit and smell the roses, to listen, to pay attention to the details in what’s around you, to hear the birdsong, to notice what the horses are doing, to simply be, and to let yourself just be. And like nature, this story also feels like a volcano or a supernova — filled with explosive forces that forge a new path, a new life. Nature doesn’t judge or make assumptions. And neither does the prairie.

Andrew Gray’s fiction has appeared in On Spec, The Mahalat Review, Grain, Fiddlehead, and numerous other literary magazines. His short story "Heart of the Land" was a finalist for the Journey Prize, and he has been shortlisted several times for the CBC/Saturday Night Literary Award. Andrew was kind enough to answer a few of my questions about the genesis of this story, and about his writing career.

Apex Magazine: You could have placed this "time travel tourism" story just about anywhere or anywhen. Why did you choose a covered wagon trip to that particular little house on that particular prairie?

Andrew Gray: I read to my eldest daughter every night for years, and when she was nine we made our way through all the Laura Ingalls books in sequence. She liked them so much that we started thinking about taking a trip out to the prairie to see the real locations of the books. She’s moved on, but something about the books and that idea of the literary pilgrimage stayed with me.

I’m fascinated by our relationship with the past, and I’m certain our descendants will retain some of our current obsessions, as well as inventing their own. Then there’s the idea of the pilgrimage itself, which is a long-standing literary trope. Add in my current project of writing about life in the asteroid belt over the next couple of hundred years and the story started to come together.

AM: Ella compares Laura’s life to her own — the vast distances to travel, the lonesomeness you face with only your family or traveling companions. You travel a long way, not knowing if there will be anything worthwhile when you get there, and then something tries to kill you. Do you think novels such as the Little House books, and other stories of survival in the wilderness will gain new popularity as humanity ventures out into the stars? What other fiction do you think star traveling peoples will connect with?

AG: That’s a tough question! One of the things I’m interested in is the endurance of culture. Sometimes this is missing from SF; it’s as if the past never happened. But of course many of the books, music and movies we enjoy now will endure in one form or another for centuries to come. So maybe the new pioneers of the future will look back on the old pioneers and feel a kinship. Maybe star-travelers will be obsessed with Jane Austen novels, exploring this culture that was so rooted to a specific time and place on a planet they’ll never see. Or maybe they’ll read some of the science fiction of our time: curious to see how their reality is reflected in the dreams of their ancestors. But at the end of the day, they’ll look for the same things we look for in stories: escape and entertainment, but also the ability to live other lives and inhabit other times and places. To mull over the eternal questions about being human.

AM: Ella commits the one sin her sister will never forgive. Had either of them followed a different religion, this wouldn’t have been an issue. On her journey, Ella meets people of various faiths and backgrounds, some who accept her, some who judge her, and others who simply assume. Can you speak to how religion became a part of this story?

AG: The first draft had almost no religious content at all. It emerged as a theme in rewrites, when I was trying to get deeper into the characters and the world. I’m sure that mind uploading, if it’s ever actually possible, will be wildly controversial, and the religious aspect of this was interesting to me. Thinking about culture and how it might develop as we spread throughout the solar system, the Star Trek sort of idea that we’ll just leave religion behind seems incredibly unlikely. It may even become stronger when we find ourselves in such a harsh environment. In the story it also became a great source of conflict, and a way for me to explore the characters and how they think about the world they inhabit.

AM: Ella is rather new to her transitory condition (or shall we say, predicament?). How does the newness of her situation color how she reacts to others?

AG: She’s still in shock, still reeling from tragedy and her unlikely survival. Not only that but she lives in a culture where there are strong opinions about some of the moral and religious implications of technology (not unlike our own). The advances that saved her also mark her, separate her from other people. She’s very much aware of this, but at the same time she’s a private person and won’t necessarily correct people’s assumptions about her.

AM: You’re the program coordinator for one of the Creative Writing MFA programs at a prestigious Canadian University. As a writer of speculative fiction and a member of academia, you have a foot in two very seemingly different worlds. As an academic, what most surprises you about the international community of Spec Fic writers? How are the two communities similar?

AG: Thankfully, the writing program at my university has little in common with the academia that exists in the popular imagination. I’m surrounded by writers every day at work, and constantly challenged and inspired by the great writing that comes from our students and faculty members. A fine arts program is a bit of a refuge for a writer in academia, and I think there are far more similarities than differences between my particular university community and the SF community. People in both share an abiding love of books and the worlds they can take us to. And the people are just as interesting and unusual. There maybe a bit less dressing up, though …

AM: I was looking on your bio page at your university, and you recently taught a class on Editing and Managing Literary Magazines (which I imagine isn’t so different from editing and managing a Speculative Fiction magazine!). What’s been the most interesting thing about teaching that class? What preconceived notions have your students brought to the classroom?

AG: I’ve taught the class on and off for fifteen years and it’s been fascinating to see how magazines have changed and adapted over that time. When we started, we talked about funding and about the many costs of creating a magazine (printing especially), and how likely they were to fail. Now we’re in a time when anyone can create an online magazine overnight, with almost no capital at all, and some of them can do very well indeed. Students see successful Kickstarters and start to think it’s easy. However, I have to remind them that many of the old rules still apply. Creating a good magazine still takes work and dedication and time, and most of them still fail, just for different reasons.

That’s why it’s great to see some of the newer SF magazines, like Apex, survive and thrive.

AM: Your recently released short story collection Twentieth Century House brings together a number of your previously published short stories. Which story in that collection is your favorite? Which was the most challenging to write?

AG: It’s hard to choose a favorite, but right now I’d say the title story, Twentieth Century House, fits both categories. I set myself the challenge in this story of writing about the future through the lens of a reality TV show in which the late 21st-century participants were all pretending to live in the 20th century. Because of this, the reader never really sees the future they live in and has to infer almost everything about it by the way the characters react to a world that’s essentially our own. It took me quite a while to get it right.

AM: What are some of your favorite themes to write about?

AG: Right now I’m a little bit obsessed with using asteroid mining as a backdrop to the stories I want to tell. Almost every story I’ve written in the last year or two (including "The Laura Ingalls Experience") has been set in a similar universe: that time over the next couple of centuries where we start to leave Earth and settle the solar system. I’m an optimist as a person: I do think we’ll survive our current predicaments and spread out, and hopefully the wealth of the solar system will help us deal with some of the problems down here. But as a writer, I find myself looking for the dark corners of this future, for the places our own failures are going take us and how we’re going to deal with them. The solar system is full of riches, but will they provide more wealth for everyone or just for a powerful few? Space is an incredibly harsh environment: will we be up for the challenges it poses? What will happen to our humanity as we begin to change ourselves through technology and genetic manipulation? "The Laura Ingalls Experience" touches on all three of these.

Andrea Johnson lives in Michigan with her husband and too many books. If she’s not walking around her day job with a coffee mug in hand, then she’s at home with a book in one hand and a craft beer in the other. She can be found online at her book review blog Little Red Reviewer and on Twitter, where her handle is @redhead5318. You wouldn’t know it from this bio, but Andrea is a very goofy person.

The Teratologist’s Brother

Brandon H. Bell

6,700 words

nude woman, black veil, seated on the stairs

she uncovers her face

she sees me.

— from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

I got the call two weeks into the New Year. It didn’t surprise me. I felt empty as the Arizona deserts of my childhood. Peter, when we were older — teenagers, smoking hash and reading Burroughs and probably both wondering if we were gay to like it (William S., not the hash) — would gesture at me and offer these koans, like:

Our mother, pouring dirty water into a tub.

And I would nod like that made sense. Fucking hash. I recalled that one now. No one pours dirty water into a tub. You uncork the drain. Goodbye soap suds and grime. But I guess that was Peter’s point with the image.

"Mr. Beall?" the voice on the phone said. Hispanic. Female. Curt.

"Sorry. Yes, I can be in Austin by this evening. Okay. Yes. I understand."

Hung up. Looked out the window. I’d lost my contract as of the 31st. Nowhere to go, no one to explain to. No one to tell, to make uncomfortable, who might speak condolences for me and mine. There was no mine.

During the recession, five months into my first bout of unemployment, the ex-to-be had issued a final, relief-filled fuck you and closed the door on our happy union.

Goddamned matrimony.

The intervening years had been kind enough. Until a few days ago I’d been employed. Wanted for nothing. Or: needed for nothing. I had my Lucky Jeans and my BMW and my Apple everything. Evenings with friends. Life of the party. Yoga sessions at work. Volleyball league, touch football, karaoke room nights, vodka and cranberry juice at dinner, bellinis for breakfast. Slim Dallas singles, keeping score. I make good money, I do fine, I thought. Then I corrected myself: Made, did.

I spent an hour trying to cry. I loved my little brother. Born two years apart, there was a time in our teens when we’d been best friends, when I’d known that we’d have each other’s backs, like a big dog, forever. It’d been a good feeling while it lasted.

I can’t remember if it was Mom walking in on Peter masturbating and the subsequent door removal, or one too many nights, dinner growing cold as Mom and Edward had our hands gripped in a circle around the table while they attempted to pray the gay away. One of us had sided with ol’ Willy Burroughs after all. I don’t recall how they found out. Sometimes wondered if Peter had as many blanks as I do. Probably more. Because I was older and whatever it was, one too many parental pronouncements, punishments, prayer circles … I left.

"You know why I don’t believe in God?"

That shut their mouths. I don’t remember the words that came after, just that it blossomed quickly into a high-pitched argument and I packed what I could into my white Nissan Sentra and left their house for good.

These days I’ve chilled on the criticism of the religious believer. Given this world, it fits perfectly that there’s some vengeful deity waiting to let us know how we messed it all up and to exact eternal torment. Yeah, legit as hell.

No combination of memories, good, bad, indifferent, allowed me to cry. So I stood up to call her. Now my hands shook.

"Mom, it’s … Telly. Have you heard?" I waited. She had that tone in her voice. If I talked with her too long she’d start asking me to tell her she’d been a good mom. I wondered where she was in her cycle, edging toward complete mental breakdown. It’d be long nights on the porch with Natty Lights a-go-go, Virginia Slims, and bitterness. For her, the prayer circles had been a means to an end. Edward, contrariwise, meant his devotion.

She wasn’t wasted yet.

"Mom, listen. It’s about Peter."

I stayed on the phone for several minutes after telling her, saying I know and I know. Gave a Yes, Mom, he knew you loved him, in response to her good mom shtick. Hated myself for it, but it’s in the blood. The children of selfish, unstable trash are inflicted with bad compassion. Not the breed that lets you put yourself in the other’s shoes. The kind that makes you wear the other person’s shoes for them and walk for them and get their blisters for them because … Mommy loves you.

Mommy loves you.

"I have to go. I’ll take care of everything."

Now I felt sick because I knew on a certain level that I’ll take care of everything was another Yes, you were a good mom, but this was for Peter. He was my brother. My friend. I loved him.

I still couldn’t cry.

My unemployment insurance hadn’t started yet, but I had savings plenty enough for hotel, gas, food, etcetera. I packed, loaded the car, left before rush hour clogged the Dallas highways.

On the way down, I called his dad.

His dad, because though he’d adopted me, he’d later made it clear that it’d been a mistake. No story. That’s word-for-word how the exchange had gone. Don’t write. Don’t call. I hope you find Jesus.

One might forgive my ambivalence toward the Power and the Glory Forever, amen.

I dialed, listened to the sunspot buzz and then the ringing. The sun melted on the horizon, setting the high, thin clouds ablaze, spilling shadows across the interstate. The car smelled of pork rinds and gas station coffee.

"Hello?"

Funny how years pass but a voice sounds the same. The man who taught me to be amazed at the grandeur of the universe. The man who taught me I wasn’t good enough to love. The years pass, but the fossils remain, drying in the desert.

"It’s Telly."

Hang up, you motherfucker. Hang up and, if they didn’t track you down, you won’t know Peter is dead.

"Telly," he said, voice rising at the end. Surprise or delight, I wanted to interpret. I’ve learned not to trust myself in these matters.

"Have you heard?"

"Heard what, Telly?"

"About Peter?"

"What’s happened?"

And now we were getting real. His voice flat. He, too, knew Peter. Knew this wouldn’t be good. He did a weird thing after I told him. Started to reminisce.

"I think about that house in Avondale. If we’d stayed there, how different things would have been."

I wanted to reply with some snark, but I’d just told the old man his son was dead, so I laughed without mirth and said, "Yeah. We were still happy then."

"I’ve had a good life, Telly. But maybe we could have had a good life together."

"Stranger things," I said.

"How are you, Telly. Can you do this?" He was old, older than Mom both chronologically and in terms of his circumstances. Tennis-balled walker, Life Alert, meds, home health nurses. I knew this only because Peter had related those details. Austin wasn’t in the cards for him. Mom could have come if she’d had the will. But Natty Light, Virginia Slims, the porch, and bitterness.

"I’m fine. I have it covered."

"I’ve always thought of you as my son," he said, and all I heard was I was a good mom, wasn’t I? Same shit, different would-be parent.

"I need to do this, for Peter. Then I’ll deal with the me part. I wish …" but I didn’t know what I wished.

"You’re still searching. That’s good," he said. It pissed me off.

"I’ll let you know how things pan out," I said and hung up.

This is what crying feels like, I thought. But I still couldn’t do it.

Welcome to the Home of Idiot Children. An unknown woman pursues you. You run in circles.

—from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

A woman, hard, Hispanic, and probably lesbian — I felt instantly attracted to the detective. I had a thing for the unattainable. Gender and orientation could suck my cock. So to speak.

"Mr. Beall?" she said. Dark hair tied back. Dark eyes. Olive skin. Jeans, badge at hip, white button-up, assessing glance.

"Detective," I said. Offered my hand. "What are we doing here?"

"This is where your brother’s body was found. Right there," she said and pointed at the median. We stood on the sidewalk near Neches on Sixth Street. Alan Parsons Project blared from a headshop and across the street I could hear just enough of a pop country song echoing from the Loathsome Wolf saloon to make them both sound like garbage.

"I thought you needed me to ID his body?"

"I have questions about your brother. Peter."

I waited. Most civilians, at this juncture, were telling her their life story. I don’t know that, but it’s what I inferred from her demeanor. I lacked time, inclination … Well, that was a lie. I had all the time in the world. But if she wanted more from me she’d have to drop the tough cop routine.

"Do you know what time he was found, Mr. Beall?"

"I only know what you told me. Not much. Telly."

"What?"

"My name. It’s Telly."

"Bice. Rhymes with peace."

I laughed. Imagined she said it both for clarity (I thought she’d said ‘beast’ at first) and out of a sense of irony. She didn’t look like a peaceful woman. Hard living, hard-working, hard playing. She had a bead on life and intended to make the most of it.

"Pleased and all that. So why is time of death your question?"

"Friday night, closing time. He was found, dying, in the middle of Sixth. Nude. Mutilated. No one saw his arrival. He was in great pain. Would have been brought there."

A dry desert, wind across dunes. Peter.

A curdled stink tainted the breeze. I heard the beep and engine churn of a garbage truck in a nearby alley.

"Look, I want to see his body. Make arrangements. See him laid to rest and be done with this."

"That’s not going to happen quickly … Telly."

"Why?"

"Your brother is one of a series of victim found murdered in this way. The medical examiner and forensics are doing their thing."

The word struck like a bludgeon. Murdered.

"I want to see him."

§

A quiet drive to the morgue. Tell me about your upbringing, Mr. Be — Telly. She was on the clock and this was part of the job. I forgot my earlier reticence, and I told her all about Peter and me and the fundy funhouse that was our childhood. CliffsNotes version. We arrived. She showed me the way inside.

We were able to see him right away. Uncovered his face. Yes, it was Peter.

"You don’t have to look further," she said, the examiner watching us.

"Go on," I said.

She showed me the mutilations. Feet, then groin. My stomach crawled into my throat. Copper and bile pooled there. The world heaved and turned. I held on to the table until it settled.

"Was he alive when this was done to him?"

She nodded, demure but watchful.

"Burned his feet, then castrated him?"

The antiseptic smell was betrayed by the stink of burned hair, charred meat.

"We believe the damage to the groin occurred first. Then the feet. That may be chemical. Forensics is unsure. The reason they are holding the body for an extra day. Cause of death was this cut to his inner thigh. Blood loss. This is unique among the victims."

"Anything else?"

"The full tox screen takes time, but he wasn’t drunk."

"I’ve seen enough."

§

The drive back: quieter.

"Where are you staying, Telly?"

"Down Sixth. I walked from the hotel. The old one. Nice." I couldn’t recall the name. It’d rained in my desert, enough to wrinkle the dirt-clod skin on the ground, but no more.

"The Driskell," she said.

"Yeah."

"So …" She thought I could help with her investigation but I guessed her reluctance was a learned courtesy. I distrusted my instinct. Technique would be more worthy of Bice rhymes with peace sounds like beast.

"Just ask. If I can help you stop whoever did this —"

"You talked about your parents. The extreme religious element of your home. At what point did Peter start dabbling in the occult?"

"What? He didn’t. He was an atheist, like me. Probably from about age twelve."

"How do you account for his book?"

I shook my head and raised my hand. Recalled that she wasn’t Peter. Peter would have read a dozen thoughts in the gesture.

"Was he found with a book?"

"You don’t know about his book? The one he wrote?"

"Peter never wrote a thing in his life. He’d recite these poems, but never wrote any down that I recall."

She pulled to the curb beside my hotel. The car idled. At the corner young men with dreads laughed at a woman dressed like the statue of liberty, keeping Austin weird.

"He did. It’s become a local bestseller even. Go grab yourself a copy in pretty much any store on 6th. If you get a chance to read it, I’d be interested in your thoughts."

"You want to join me for drinks later, detective? I don’t know anyone. Appreciate the company."

She gave me a look.

"Company, Bice. That’s all I’m suggesting."

"You can find all the company you want on Sixth," she said, tone suggestive of a smile though her face remained smooth, noncommittal.

I nodded my thanks and got out of the car. Walked along the street until I found a shop where I would get a copy of this book of Peter’s.

There are six of us on a raft in a river. you, Father, I, Mother, the veiled woman.

—from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

Thirty seconds after she pulled away from the curb and I strode down the sidewalk, I called Bice.

"So soon?"

"You said Peter was found dying. He wasn’t dead yet?"

"That’s correct."

"Did he say anything? Before he died?"

"We have two witnesses. Story corroborated. He said ‘Regard her alone or something will be breached.’ "

"Nonsense?"

"Maybe."

"I guess he was in a lot of pain by that point." His withered feet. Charred flesh flaking away from the curled bones.

"He may have been quite lucid. Shock, adrenaline."

"Maybe."

"Let me know if anything relevant comes to you," she said.

"Sure."

I found another head shop cum tourist trap, filled with smoking paraphernalia, glass cases of studs, spacers, gauges, and rings, and walls decorated with tee-shirts. Black concert shirts and a smattering of lewd slogans. Skinny Puppy. Mercyful Fate. I’d tap that. The obligatory Misfits shirt, sloppy skullface. The kid behind the counter had oily, pink hair that matched the acne-scarred ruin of his cheeks. Boredom. Clothed in black, more rings on his fingers than a mafioso in a Scorsese flick. Distended earlobes stretched over metal bangles I might have fit my whole hand through. He nodded at me, no eye contact.

"You got a book? Peter Beall’s the author. Impasse something or other?"

"The Scoob," the kid said and smiled. His teeth looked like bleu cheese. He pointed at a display.

A pile of a dozen copies of the book. The one on top leaned in a cradle and I read his name below the title, The Scooby Doo Impasse. I cringed at the font. Comic sans in lurid red. The illustration, a cartoonish drawing of a man beside a hand grasping to rip the rubbery mask from his face. The book felt slippery and hefty enough to slide from my grasp. I held on to it like holding onto a last remnant of Peter. Took it to the register. Patchouli and cigarette mingled in the stale air. A sludge rock anthem blared from the sound system. Sounded like Black Sabbath but wasn’t. A headache constricted my temple.

"You gotta two-si-two if you gonna make it in the benny clossam tonight," the kid said. Crumbly teeth bared in a grimace or a smile.

"What?"

"Oh never mind. You gonna enjoy this book."

"Thanks," I said. Accepted my change and left.

Chilly and damp out. I didn’t want to go to my hotel room. Didn’t want to be inside. Found a restaurant on the strip with some tables in an open air area and got a drink and a couple tacos. Diced beef, corn tortillas, fresh onion, cilantro, salsa. I leafed through the book between messy bites.

Table of contents. Saw it had an afterward. Turned there first. Peter, you sonofabitch.

Hi, Telly, it read. I knew you would read this first. You always read the last chapter first. Let me explain why everything before this makes sense. I’ve cracked the world wide open. I hope you’ll be proud.

I read the end of his book.

§

"Detective. Yes, it’s Telly Beall again. Listen, I’ve been reading the book — No, we need to meet. Of course not. I do think it’s important. Yeah. Yeah. Ok." Hard ass bitch.

She wouldn’t see me until the next day.

Veiled as if for funeral. Chthonic frolicker in empty spaces.

Holy void.

You step near.

— from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

I had a couple drinks at a sports bar on the strip, ate dinner, then headed back to the hotel to put this day behind me. Couldn’t sleep. Turned on the tube, but everything was inane and grating. I got up and, seeing the time was short of midnight, thought I’d see what was open. Blow some time.

Saturday night. By this time the heart of Sixth is blocked to traffic and cliquish herds surge from bar to bar, taco stand, pizza counter, food truck. Too many frat boys, Cowboy fans, self-aware blue collar heroes, alt-scene betties, and gangbanger poseurs. Here a too-clean neo-yuppie in his sports jacket and thin white girl in black dress at his elbow. There a line of college-age ladies in boots, daisy dukes, tank tops, and cowboys hats, bottled beers daintily in hand.

Didn’t realize you could walk around with drinks in Austin. Hmph. Bored cops watched the crowd from street corners. Bouncers hawked the attractions of their club or sat, reluctantly allowing entry. Homeless oldsters in beards and backpacks smiled from doorsteps, sometimes-buskers with guitar, harmonica, or spouting incoherent poetry.

Top forty radio rock, country, and douchebag post-grunge filled the air. Smelled like trash and funnel cake. I walked the middle of the street, taking it all in when I first spied one of the processions. Thirty feet ahead of me, the crowd parted, opening into a bubble. I thought a car drove there, so I edged to the side. When the edge of the empty space reached me, then swallowed me, I stopped in stunned silence.

It seemed that all the laughter and music fell under a shawl of mystery, like voices in another room. Even the light dared not fully penetrate this dark bubble. Around the edges, forming the rough circle that defined it, traipsed women in veils. Nude. And in the gloom between them scampered a creature. Body dark, humanoid. Head vast, twice the height of the body, covered in curlicues. Garish colors. It reminded me of something I could not place.

Still, the thing passed me, dancing like the god Pan, then one of the veiled women grazed me and I saw that she wasn’t quite naked, but wore a flesh tone bikini. She said a word, her eyes full of night. Ah-son-noot-li. Something like that. I thought I heard someone screaming. The bubble was closing around me, passing beyond me. In moments I would re-enter the crowd.

Then the world tipped, and the surface of the universe raced to smack me in the face.

You hold your totem and confront the tyrants of toil and reward. Neos Therion,

thirsting deicide, let these not be

wax wings.

—from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

Awoke, gasping for breath. The world pointillist, then a monochrome edge detection, resolving back into real. I could feel the dampness at my crotch and smell the piss. Coherence slid into place, and I wondered at the trio staring down at me: a cop, a lady in a big, puffy baker’s hat, and a young chick with buzzed head, goth makeup, but otherwise sunny disposition.

"You okay, dude?" she asked. Eyes sparkled. Smile. Distrusted her on instinct.

While the baker helped me up, the cop said:

"Have a bit too much to drink, buddy?"

"I have seizures," I said.

We talked. He took notes and maintained a stern expression, expecting cracks.

"Do you know about these … processions?"

"The what?"

"The women in veils, walking in a circle —"

"Yeah, the Scooby Dooers," he said, as if that made sense. Nice, Pete. You got others doing it now.

Once he was satisfied I wasn’t bullshitting him he sent me packing. Smelling of piss. The baker had left while we were talking but the girl had lingered and followed me as I left. A block on, I turned on her.

"What gives?"

"Just thought someone should make sure you get back to your hotel —"

"No," I said. She squirmed under my gaze. People could smell the urine as they approached on the sidewalk and our own little bubble in the crowd had formed.

"I … wondered what she said to you?" she said. I wondered how old she was. I felt so far from youth that anyone under thirty could be any age.

"What?" I asked.

"The veiled lady?"

"Don’t know. Maybe an Indian word."

"Dot or feather?" she asked. Her shoulders hunched against the cold.

"Native American," I said, chiding tone.

She laughed.

"One spoke to me once. Said ‘Do you have love in your soul that can grow?’ Ain’t that something?" She smiled. Despite the buzz and the heavy, dark makeup she was cute. But she had that damaged goods cast to her eyes. Please like me — I’ll help you to like me. Normally, I’d take the opportunity, but right now it was one more thing for which I lacked inclination.

"I’m reading the book, too," she said. "I’m gonna follow the steps —"

"Throw that book away. Stay away from those people."

On the way up to the hotel room, I kept thinking she followed me. Sensed a woman at my back. Heard the staccato tapping of heels in my wake. Every time I turned around I was alone.

Telly, I mapped it all. From the Cambrian Explosion to 9/11. Every supposed supernatural incident in every holy book or mythology, every weirdness (Roanoke, the Marie Celeste, etc.), and events of historical significance, from the invention of the printing press to the completion of the pyramids. Then I tracked Earth’s passage through my dataset of all those events. A topology of the fantastic emerged. From it I can infer those fantastic events born of truth and those that are mere fancy. I can infer the religions linked to beings on the other brane. I have inferred that we have been in a century-long emergence from that other brane. In another few years we will pass from it completely. Even now it touches the globe in about a dozen locations. Among those, there are maybe three deities—beings from that other brane—we might communicate with. Herein are instructions for how to do it.

—from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

"Almost a third of the book is devoted to rationalization of the form of the local deity —"

"The deity of Austin?" Bice asked.

"I guess, yeah."

"Of course," she said, glancing around the Loathsome Wolf. Early evening, deserted but a cluster of frat boys talking up one of the bartenders. Bice and I sat at the far end of the bar, each nursing a beer, empty shot glasses near. Our bartender was a black girl with a huge afro who wanted to chat with us but had taken the hint with pantomimed disappointment. Cute. She’d made us both smile. "And?"

"And what?"

"What’s the form of the deity?"

"I don’t think he knew. In his rationale it was super-important. And in turn, the whole totem thing mattered because it gave the seeker form to be understood by the deity."

Bice nodded. The sort of nod that signals nothing.

"He favored the beaver as his totem. Did he have a beaver figurine on him?"

She took a sip of her drink. "In fact he did. Thought that was odd. Little pink-purple toy. Probably goes to some cartoon."

"So, he chose the beaver because it isn’t a predator — predator would send the wrong message — but it builds dams to hold back one of the great elemental forces. So it is not without power of a sort. There’s other details I think would have mattered to him. Here’s the part that will matter to you."

My turn for a sip. Hops, foam, bitter and sweet. "You Don’t Have to Call Me Darling" played on the jukebox.

"He didn’t say as much, insofar as I’ve read, but I’d wager some kind of drugs have been involved in these ceremonies."

"I can confirm that some but not all of the victims have traces of krokodil and so-called new LSD. 2C-E, smiles, n-bomb."

"Someone said the phrase ‘two-si, two’ to me."

"Yeah, drugie lingo. Who said it?"

"Doesn’t matter," I said. She didn’t like that, so I added, "Kid in a head shop.

"So here’s the thing. Think about how those drugs interact with someone. I’m speculating. He was really caught up in this idea. And it’s a compelling idea. Basically a way to hold on to a soft atheism while also allowing for a rationalization for a spooky history filled with gods and demons. You know: all the stuff that most people believe but have to have faith in because it just doesn’t exist. Anymore, Peter would say.

"But he made a bad choice. A bad recommendation to his readers. They all used this beaver totem. If they did just a bit of research … Wikipedia, so forth … they would have known about this story about beavers once had been hunted for their balls. That beavers understood they were being hunted for their balls and would rip them off and throw them at the hunters so they could escape."

Bice choked on her beer.

"What?"

The bartender heard me says ‘balls’ and saw Bice’s reaction, and now stood listening. I cocked my thumb to the left and mouthed ‘beat it.’ Exaggerated pout, but she walked away. I shook my head.

"It’s bullshit, an old wive’s tale, but doesn’t matter. The seeker — Peter’s readers, at least the ones found dead, and Peter himself — went through the ritual. They created this Bene Classum: a holy space created to honor the deity. Then they would spend a day meditating on the deity and their totem in relation to each other. Finally they’d do the holy space ritual again and meet the deity."

"Telly, I’m not making connections. What am I missing?"

"So Peter was high as a kite on this LSD stuff and thinks he’s faced with this god from another universe. Gets spooked. A bad trip. Believes this deity wants him. And in his mind all his power is rooted in this beaver totem. The only way to get away —"

"The groin injuries," she said.

I nodded.

"Self-inflicted," she said. "Holy shit."

"I imagine at the end, Peter realized his mistake and cut his thigh to speed things up."

That visibly hit Bice, who lean back in her chair. Exhaled.

She waved the bartender over and paid the tab. I left the tip, irritated she’d beat me. We walked out onto the sidewalk. It was chilly. I wanted to put my arm around Bice. Wanted to feel a body next to mine. I’d not realized I drank enough to get buzzed. Bice lit a cigarette. Took a drag.

"The burned feet? What did he use to cut himself?"

"Hell if I know," I said. "And I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter. You look far enough, you’ll find out. But my participation ends here. I’d rather think he was on to something a tiny bit legit — a real pattern throughout history at least — than that this was all just mild schizophrenia."

People moved past us, on the sidewalk, in the street. Odd, so early in the week.

"It’s crowded," she said. "These are all his followers."

Sure enough, I watched the steady procession of the myriad tribes of Austin, and in their midst flowed the periodic voids where the paper mache-headed dancer pranced, surrounded by naked-looking women in black veils.

"Creepy shit," I said. "The big-head thing … He must have referenced it, but I haven’t read that part yet."

Bice watched the procession.

"I don’t want to believe that his dad and our mom destroyed him," I said. Wanted to say more but my mouth only gaped. Bice put her arm around me. I bear-hugged her in return.

Consider foliar theory. If all flower parts are leaves, might all people parts be minds?

—from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

This is the craziest thing that happened over these crazy days tracking down Peter: Bice and I running through the crowd of Scooby-dooers, laughing. We shoved through the mass of bodies, against the tide, rude and loud, breaking every Bene Clausum, ruining the solemnity of the veiled ladies as we bumped them from their perfect circles and then tripped the idiot with the giant paper mache head. I heard curses in our wake.

We ended up in front of a pizzeria and I bought us a couple slices and more beer and after we finished I wondered if we might end up together at the end of the night, but I soon realized this was my overactive libido. She expertly deflected my come-ons and of course I ruined the mood to have made those advances. It’s that stupid Tom Hanks romcom idea that men and women can’t be friends that leads a dumbass like me to pursue someone like Bice, because if we’re hanging out and having a good time, she must want some Telly. Yeah. Or as Bice said: Yeeeeeaaaaah.

Hard as she was, Bice had poise and she didn’t bolt but stayed with me. We sat at a table on the sidewalk and drank some more beers, had more shots. Scooby snacks. I laughed at that, getting more drunk than I intended, faster than was wise. Bice kept pace, but held her alcohol better than me.

"We should get you back to your hotel, Mr. Beall."

"Telly, Bice. Telly. We’re friends now," I said. I wanted to say more, but didn’t. I didn’t want to be a jerk. It came naturally, though. And I was drinking to excess out of a feeling of loss and the thing that grounded me was thinking about our mom and Natty Lights a-go-go and I didn’t want to be like that. Didn’t want to be like her. I already felt so bitter. Add the drink and I was almost there.

We walked through the crowd, stumbled, entered the passing Bene Clausum. I passed near one of the veiled ladies and she turned a baleful glare my way. I smiled.

"Hey, baby," I said.

Bice pulled me back on course.

"Sorry, sorry," I said to her, then looked up and found the man-shaped thing with the huge head in our way. It startled me. I felt my brother so near to me in that moment. I smelled hash and heard his voice, speaking one of his koans. For a split-second I imagined myself in some vast desert, pouring out a bucket of dirty water.

I held my arm up, finger pointed to the sky.

"I have a totem better than your fucking beavers."

Anger flushed my face. I felt it. My expression, hard like a mask. Then I glanced at Bice and we exploded with laughter.

The formation had fallen into disarray so that as we continued on our way, we remained in the Bene Clausum.

"What is it?" Bice asked. "Your totem."

"Peter. My totem is my brother Peter."

She saw me to the lobby.

"Take care of yourself, Telly," Bice said.

"You, too. And thanks." Kept it simple. I didn’t want to slur.

The lobby felt still. Sound from the distance distracted me. A song I recognized. The desk, unattended. The lounge chairs and settees unoccupied. The conditioned air too cool. Texas luxury. As I walked past the hall toward the lifts, I thought I saw a woman at the end but when I glanced up I was still alone. Heard distance laughter, chatter, base. From the lobby behind me came a tapping, stiletto heels and hurry. I mashed the button, shunning company. Come on. The tapping stopped. Started. Stopped again. I felt frightened. Didn’t know why. The door opened with a chime. I stepped in and pressed for my floor. Listened to the rapid tapping, but the door closed before I saw her.

I took the elevator to my floor. Walked down the dim hall. I turned, thinking someone walked in the hall behind me. A momentary fantasy played in my mind of Bice, coming after me. Only the dim hallway and the hum of the hotel. Distant voices from the street. The smell of aged architecture.

When I turned and walked toward my room I noticed a line of women walking past at the far end of the hall, and moments later, that one of them remained. My impression: she stood watching me. I shook my head, knowing this silly and refusing to look up to confirm. Most odd, I noticed an old song in the distance. Billie Holiday’s rendition of "Summertime." Odd for Sixth Street any time of night.

I slid my keycard into its slot and entered the room. Behind me the door slammed shut. Fumbled in the dark, walking further into the room. Turned on the light.

I saw Her.

The veiled woman, standing so tall over me. Naked except for the veil. I felt Her dark eyes and smelled Her breath: Virginia Slims and fruity carcinoma rot. Breasts bulbous, areolas vast, pubis a tangled mass. These are what I noticed because it is my nature to notice these things. The walls quaked and I knew how flimsy they were. Demarcations of a dream.

When I turned I saw that the door shut behind Him. I felt how it slammed and I knew it was His doing. I thought about doors. Dirty things done behind closed doors. Doors taken away because I was dirty and bad. He towered above even Her and His face loomed like a thunderhead. He looked at me and knew all that I was. Every last faggot bit of me.

He towered, filed a sky apparent beyond the wavering walls. His head loomed, party colors arrayed across his countenance, fun furls of tissue paper wafting in the breeze and the song.

"Summertime" …

The veiled woman touched my back, fingers grazing me like a plaything. If I looked up I knew I would see Her pubis again, the folds of Her belly, Her breasts compacted into Herself, Her mouth, parted. Wind roared past, smelling of her rot.

A part of me felt aroused and I pulled off my clothes. I knew this the wrong reaction. I did it anyway. I felt the world shift and discerned a desert landscape. Endless horizon. Heat. Between the two deities, I stood naked. With my clothes dissolved in the dust at my feet, the walls peeled fully away, faded into the haze mirage of heat and distance. Arroyos and endlessness. I still heard Billie Holiday singing:

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy/ fish are jumpin’/ and the cotton is high ...

Peter.

These things, whatever they intended, if intention were even possible, could only understand me through the vehicle of my totem.

Peter.

I recalled the look on his face when I left that night in the Nissan. He stood in the driveway, crying. Don’t leave, he’d said. Don’t leave me. He’d have no more protection from the tyrants of toil and reward.

I’d left him. Our relationship: one episode after another of us leaving each other, over and again.

At my back, the tears and moaning. In front of me, the anger and storm lit up like carnival candy. The promises of eternal love, barely containing the wrath.

"I love my brother," I screamed up at them. "You were the ugly ones. You were the badness. Peter was … perfect. He was my little brother."

I stood in a desert vast as a solar system. The rainbow-spackled thunderhead loomed like a planet falling, a paper mache countenance that began to crack. Behind me, the wall of the veiled woman wept. I felt insane, small, vulnerable.

Peter.

Damn them. But the thought felt weak. More than anything … I pitied them. They missed out on him. I remembered the best part of his koans: the smile he’d flash afterward.

"I’m growing, brother," I whispered, eyes blurring.

It tore the brane apart.

The pinata-headed deity burst as a vast school of shimmering fish flew from it, raining down. I gawked at the sight and shielded my head as the first of the lumps pummeled me. Most of the silvery lumps fell upon the plane before me or I would have been crushed. Then they slid toward me like a rising tide. The mass tinkled and hissed as it flowed toward and then around me and I found myself wading in layers, not of fish, but cans. Beer cans. They bore a symbol fashioned after the Natty Light logo, but the letters spelled out Ah son I thought at first and then saw the whole name: Ahsonnutli.

The ground. I felt it growing hot beneath my feet. I understood the shimmering in the distance as the literal heat haze of the bizarre landscape. Between me and the dying deity a mountain of cans was growing and I climbed the unsteady pile of beer cans, fleeing the burning landscape. I found that I could crawl upward if I spread my weight. I fled the burning below me. I felt it, horrified at the heat. I didn’t want to be cooked. Telly, boiled in beer and eldritch horror: maybe the last thought I had in connection with my totem. My connection with Peter.

The beers below me hissed and popped —

I heard screaming. Heard toppling architecture. Looked up to open sky and stars. Constellations I understood no other human had likely ever spied. One quadrant of sky was bruised with a nebula or other such formation. I thought, the sight filling my eyes, that this would be enough, to behold this, climbing still higher. The landscape of cans flowed and I slid and fell.

Screamed. Knew the hard landing and heat about to hit.

I tumbled down into my hotel room, half-filled with beer cans. Alone. Alive.

Do you have form in your self that can grow?

—from The Scooby Doo Impasse by Peter Beall

"What happened here, Telly?" Bice asked. Beer dampened the carpet to either side of the hallway and beer cans spilled from my room. I’d found my pants and stood sheepish and bare-chested. A popping sound interrupted us and Bice glanced through the doorway. Cans submerged the room’s furniture and I could hear the slow hissing from some of the punctured ones, see the familiar stars where the wall and ceiling once stood, smell the skunky hops of warm brew.

I shook my head. She gaped at the mess. She’d related the injuries across downtown as beer cans with odd labels fell from the sky.

We settled on silence, for a time.

"Your parents both called the station. What do you want me to tell them?"

I wanted to offer some epic response about their sons killing gods. Instead I made a face like a desert ripe with flowers after rain. I smiled. Realized Peter had colonized my brain well enough, even before all this.

"I’ll call them," I said. "And — let’s keep in touch, detective. I need more female friends."

Brandon H. Bell’s writing has appeared in markets including The Lovecraft eZine, Hadley Rille Books, and Questioncopyright.org. He was the editor of Fantastique Unfettered magazine and the Torn Pages anthology. He is a husband, a father of daughters, and a Buddhist. He strives to be a good ally to GLBTQ and other under-represented folks. He is currently working on a novel about deicide and the posthuman condition in the Anthropocene.

Find Brandon online via www.weirdbard.com.

Myth of the Mud God

Michael VanCalbergh

Every morning I wake up heavier,

my throat filled with dirt. What I can’t hack up

I wash down with coffee and cough syrup.

I try to rinse the smell of wet cigarettes

from my body as I pick out

the stones and animals that get caught inside

my chest. When I leave, the world is the same:

The Others walk by, skirts lighting the way,

barely pausing to look beyond the inside

of their eyes. I recognize some, like Grease and Ash,

who ignore me, as I ignore them.

It’s easier to look away than stare

at faces worn like mine. Then I work,

replace the ground dried by the sun with large

pieces of my cheek and the new jobs always

with my back. I yell, as my wounds grow new,

to no-one, constantly. It goes slowly.

Most nights, I drink and bury my head long

enough to want to go home. Every day

I’m less surprised by this life

and consider, for a moment, the tub.

How long would it take to dig through

my stomach, drag as much intestine

as my hands can hold and cram them down my throat

until I found purpose?

Michael VanCalbergh is an instructor at Rutgers-Newark and in the REaCH program. When not teaching he spends most of his time convincing his daughter that Iron Man also eats his vegetables. His work has appeared in various journals including Per Contra, Naugatuck River Review, and The Collagist.

Fertility

Craig Finlay

A forgotten goddess sips watery coffee

smokes, because this is still America, in South Bend

the ash brings back the fires for her, every time

flower decked villagers danced into exhaustion

for good crops and mild winters

She remembers moss, rocks and birth

how she appeared one day from a cold spring

but on the solstice she became a white crow

some thousand years before the bronze age

Now the waitress brings another plate of eggs

the forgotten goddess stares hard at the girl’s belly

and smirks. She stirs the cream just by thinking.

In a few months the owners will wonder out loud

just why does every single girl they hire

end up pregnant within within the first few months?

Craig Finlay lives in South Bend, Indiana, where he spends a lot of his time being a librarian. His poetry has previously appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, Asimov’s, Five 2 One, and the Roundup Writer’s Zine.

The Quidnunx

Catherynne M. Valente

14,400 words

One: Bird Aptrick’s Word

Bird Aptrick said an awful word.

There are big curse words and little curse words in anybody’s language. A little cursing isn’t hardly cursing at all. A child could do it and everyone round the supper table would laugh, turn red, and stick a bun in that sour young mouth while secretly making a note to tell every one of their friends just what their beastly wee urchin had said last night on the subject of his pea soup.

This was not one of those. It was a big cursing. A beefy, grown-up cursing. The kind of cursing even a very tall man would have to do when everything in his whole world has gone dreadful and ghastly and wrong. Only a moment ago the evening was full up: cluttered with buttery bread and cheerful candles, four sisters, one still a baby, and one brother, with thick hair and pretty moles in the centers of their foreheads, lavender and thyme and hot peppers hanging to dry from the rafters, and pea soup with a hunk of pink ham the size of an apple floating in the green. Now the evening had nothing in it but Bird’s mother, Until Aptrick, standing in the doorway, her hunting gun still smoking, her clothes covered in dark blood.

And Bird Aptrick said an awful word. So would you. So would I.

"Tilly!" Bird’s father, Middle Aptrick, jumped up from the table, toppling the crock of soup and setting little Rarely to squalling and blubbering her small baby babble-curses. "Are you hurt?"

"No," Until whispered. But it wasn’t the right sort of no to make anyone feel alright. Bird’s mother leaned her gun against the wall. Bird loved his mother’s gun. It had a big barrel like a trumpet’s bell and all sorts of colored beads and charms and carvings on its stalk. It smelled of burnt air and hot metal and a full table and mother-love. Mama had made it herself when she took her vows at the monastery. Only monks could be hunters in Frogskin Bridge. Meat was far too complicated for anyone else to be trusted with the getting of it. Bird knew his oldest sister, Glass, meant to take the muzzle as soon as she could, and he was glad. It meant Bird didn’t have to. He loved the forest, but not because it was full of food and exciting shadows. He loved it because it was never the same twice, and he loved it because no one could find him there.

Until’s hands were shaking. She sat down very determinedly on the floor and wrapped her long arms around her knees. Bird got to her first, hugging her hard and stroking her hair the way she had stroked his, had stroked Glass’s and Already’s and Thrice’s and Rarely’s hair, even though Rarely didn’t have much yet. But Aptricks are a quick crowd, and Bird had hardly got his mother in his arms before they all came falling in, afraid and shivery and full of soup and worry and questions. Middle had always known the trick of getting his arms around all his people at once, even though you wouldn’t think it was possible anymore on account of everyone growing and squirming and talking as fast as clouds skipping by and there being more of everyone than they’d started out with, him and Tilly, all those years ago when they were young and the mushrooms were ripe. So he did his trick and everyone settled in round each other in a great pile. Even the baby crawled up and got herself wedged between Thrice’s hip and Already’s shoulder. She hadn’t the first idea what was happening, but she knew, the way baby animals always know, that the big animals were upset and when the big animals are upset, you’d better snuggle in where it’s safe.

Bird reached round and squeezed Glass’s hand hard, twice. It was their signal. Once meant all good and all clear. Three times meant we’ll talk about this later when no one can hear us. Twice meant Help, I’m afraid. They had all sort of signals, being only eleven months apart yet five years older than the next Aptrick. By the time Thrice came along, Bird and Glass already ruled a secret kingdom of codes and signs, and, while new subjects were always welcome, the thrones were quite full, thank you.

Glass squeezed back twice. And then she drew a little x on the back of his hand with her pinky fingernail.

Bird sucked in his breath through his teeth. They’d invented that ages ago. Ages and ages. He remembered inventing it—which neither he nor Glass did, usually. Their secret language always seemed like wild violets they picked whenever they wanted something pretty—obvious, natural, just waiting to be saved in a pocket or a book. But Bird remembered the x. He had been lying with his sister on a hill almost, but not quite, inside the big, serious trees of the Fourpenny Woods, in the autumn when red was king. Red leaves, red rosehips, red dahlias, red squashes, red storm clouds.

"Do let’s invent a busk in case we should ever see one. Or hear one. Or think we have," Bird remembered saying, rolling over on his stomach to pull up a rope of bittersweet berries and twist them round his forearm like a ruby bracelet. They had agreed last Christmas that even their secret code required a secret code word, or they would surely be found out and forced to spill the goods. They settled on busk, which wasn’t really a proper word as far as they knew, but was awfully fun to say.

"You’ve made a beggar of me!" cried Glass, giggling in the sun, her mouth turned bright gold from gobbling up wild cloudberries all morning. Bird and Glass always said this when they agreed on something, as they had heard their father say it over and over, every time he bought or sold anything on the Bridge, even if, especially if, wily old Middle Aptrick had come out far ahead in the bargain.

They’d thought hard about it, and by lunchtime Glass had won out, mainly by making the x on his hand harder than he’d made it on hers, and leaving a long red cut with her nail, which she was not at all sorry for, and called him a baby when he winced, even though he was older than her.

But they’d never gotten to use it. Not in all the years since.

Bird looked at the color of the blood on his mother’s hood. It wasn’t red at all, really. It was sort of burgundy-violet. Like new wine. And it smelled like one of those oranges with cloves stuck all over them that Papa put in the winter punch, the kind that had always looked strangely sinister to Bird, like a spiky mace disappointed to find itself floating in quince-gin and claret instead of sunk in some unsuspecting head. Bird bristled a little. He should have seen it first. He was older. But Glass had been going to the woods with their mother every day for a year now. She had shot things. She knew about blood. She knew what old stories look like when they turn real.

Bird knew what the x meant and he knew his sister was right.

It meant Quidnunx.

"Girls," Until Aptrick said, wiping her eyes so no one would see her tears and be afraid, "go and open my good chest. We’ve got to get your brother ready."

"Ready for what?" chirped Already, only seven years old and Bird was reasonably sure she was allergic to plain sentences. She’d never said anything that wasn’t a question since her first word, which was Up? and therefore sort of a question anyway.

"To get married," sighed Middle Aptrick.

Bird squeezed his sister’s hand twice — frantic, hard, bone-bending squeezes. But she just looked at him helplessly. They’d never invented a busk for I don’t know.

Two: The Ballad of Unknown Jerome and Agatha Aboveground

Once, not awfully long ago, but neither awfully short ago, in fact, just the right span to be called Ago without offending propriety, a certain peculiar Forest fell in love with a deep, craggy Valley. The Forest was very dashing, full of extremely tall, thick trees and soft meadows and thorny brambles and a number of clever, bushy animals. The Valley was quite the catch as well, full of blue stones and clover and black hens and saffron flowers, as well as being well connected socially with the rain and the winter and the sturdy mountains.

The Forest and the Valley decided to settle down together and see what they might make between the two of them. They put their heads together and tinkered with the earth and the sky and the moon and the autumn and the spring, pottered about with mushy loam and rainstorms and exciting lichens and pitch-pine and maple and birch and both peach and pomegranate trees. They experimented rashly with a year boasting four hundred and sixty five entire separate days, rather than the usual number. They dabbled in badgers, hedgehogs, raccoons, bears both giant and pygmy, red, green, and blue-tailed deer, jackdaws, owls, parrots, cassowaries, flamingos, coots, herons. For a thrilling century, the Forest and the Valley were utterly fascinated by marsupials. Then, they grew sad for a long while because they did not live anywhere near the sea, yet both the Forest and the Valley dearly loved whales and anything with tentacles. They tried their mightiest to think of a way to entice even one whale to live on land and slurp mosquitoes out of the air like brine shrimp, but the whales said they would just get underfoot and trouble everyone.

These are the hobbies of Forests and Valleys, which are only a little bit like the hobbies of people.

And as often happens with old married folk who live far from the city, they became so entwined and cantankerous, so solitary and set in their ways, so stubbornly determined to have things their way and no one else’s, that they began to look and sound not very much at all like other forests and valleys, which was perfectly all right by them.

These are a few of the children the forest and the valley bore and raised together:

a sweet, red, thorny-tufted barley that caused dreams of falling

an agate that looked so much like the night sky that if you held it up to the stars on a clear night it would disappear

a peach with ruby flesh and seeds struck sparks when thrown against the blue valley stones

pumpkins the size of wild ponies that glowed when cut from the vine, growing hotter and hotter until they melted like lava over the table by the time the moon changed

a kind of kingfisher in which both the male and female sported brilliant rainbow feathers and black tails like tiny night-peacocks. Both could say three human words, though not the same three. The drake could chirp yes, buttermilk, and rum, while the hen could sing goodbye, peppercorn, and tiger.

a sort of badger shaped like a wombat but sporting a bright blue nose and a long skunky tail. It preferred to be called a Bunk. When startled, they danced wildly in order to appear rabid and not worth the trouble while spraying Bunk-musk, which smelled just like a certain men’s cologne popular in Paris, which to the poor creatures was the most frightening and aggressive scent they could imagine.

one hundred and six species of edible mushrooms found nowhere else and named as anyone names their sons and daughters: Simon the violet-frilled lacecap, Beatrice the emerald puffball, Hugo the fuchsia black-stalked truffle

But the Forest and the Valley could not be satisfied. The lives of forests and valleys are long and no true potterer ever really finishes her work. There is always some bigger, more difficult thing to bang together. As time skipped along like a stone over a pond, the Valley began to long for a village to keep and tend. It dreamed of talking creatures who would sow and reap and invent barns and bread and be belligerent drunkards. All the while, the Forest yearned after talking creatures as well, but no cheerful barn-builders. The Forest wanted wild bandits to sneak in its shadows and pounce joyfully and disdain both roofs and rules.

And so, the Forest and the Valley went each to their most secret workshops with their best and oldest tools, both saying to the other: I shall be late to summer, darling, don’t wait for me.

At midwinter, the Forest gave its love the village of Frogskin Bridge. The tiny hamlet sparkled with fresh roads that crossed neatly in the middle of town, blue-stone wells and walls, hedges, neat pens for the trapping of wild black chickens, seventeen huts pleasingly arranged in a pattern like a sunflower, and a little bright creek that, with luck, might grow up to be a river one day. Over the creek stretched a bridge of night-agate and green Beatrice puffballs growing through the cracks like holiday balloons.

And in the whistling, wildling snow, the Valley gave its beloved the Quidnunx.

The Forest clapped its hands in delight, crackling its branches against one another. The Valley sang with excitement, curling up the edges of its chasms.

§

If you went looking for the Forest or the Valley, or even the village of Frogskin Bridge nowadays, I am not at all sure what you would find. They are not in England. They are not in Finland. They are not in America or France or Australia or Russia or India or Argentina. They are somewhere between all those places, between and beside and beneath and beyond. And it is always in the between and beside and beneath and beyond that the most interesting things happen, where no one is looking but the stars.

§

For many years, Frogskin Bridge stayed bright and clean and empty. It waited in the nestle of the Valley like a flytrap flower, ready to snap its pretty, snug jaws around the only food it wanted: folk. The Valley never despaired. They would come. They would smell the tidy huts with four rooms each, the fat black chickens and their fat brown eggs, the deep, cool well set in the crossroads like a diamond in a ring, the white-washed mill whose wheel already turned invitingly through the creek which ran and played and whooped with good health and fishes and had gotten far too big for its banks already. They would hear, somehow, in the far distance, the melting of the giant, hot pumpkins in the full moon’s light, the crackling of the fiery peaches, the six collected words of the male and female kingfishers. They would smell the chartreuse-striped Oliver mushrooms that tasted so very like absinthe growing in the thatch of the roofs and the wild, musky fur of the bunks and bobcats, the wallabies and wildebeests, nosing in the leaves of the empty marketplace. People would come. It was only that people were sometimes slow and stubborn and did not like to believe in places very much different from the ones they knew.

All the while, the Quidnunx danced with the Forest.

Now, I shall have to spend some time telling you just what a Quidnunc is, for I am almost certain you have never seen one. If you have, you can skip ahead of this bit to the part that begins After a while … and I shan’t be at all angry. But I must attend to readers less worldly and experienced than you.

Quidnunx are part tufted owl, part woolly mammoth, part kangaroo, part orangutan, part polar bear, part moose, and part coconut — only they are quieter than foxes when they want hush and louder than marching bands when they want bombast. They are bigger than bears on hind legs reaching for beehives and can jump higher than that old beehive anyhow. They make nests like magpies or mynahs, nests of every shining thing they can snatch, and see in the shadows better than any cat. But though they are big they are sneaky. If you came upon one in the wood, you might walk right by, especially if the sun was out and bold. A quiet Quidnunc looks like an umbrella-shaped pile of old fur and leaves and moss. Perhaps a wild peony would be growing out of its head — Quidnunx stay still for a long time when they are thinking or playing Ginglymus, a sort of backgammon that is also a crossword puzzle that is also a pun-battle that they taught to the giant ring-tailed squirrels.

Quidnunx have fur like a patchwork quilt. Tufts and tails and puffs and pelts and fuzz and fleece! Streaks of ermine, stripes of mink, squares of snow tiger, swirls of lion and rabbit and stoat and lynx, bristles of housecat, brushy hedgehog, velvet wolf, woolly ram, spotted deer. Brown, black, grey, rust, gold, sable, a great, round motley autumn scruff. Some adventurous mosses have learned to live on a Quidnunc. The Quidnunx don’t mind. Bees come and rest on the moss and the odd peony, and they don’t mind that either, because bees are crunchable, like popcorn. And the Quidnunx do like to crunch. Their favorite things in the world are crunching, stealing, hiding, boxing, and talking to the moon. A Quidnunc’s teeth are terrifically long and tusky and sharp, the sort you see on skeletons in museums and have dreadful dreams about afterward.

A Quidnunc stands up slowly. She has a lot of body to unfold. First her arms open up — thick, shaggy bear-lion arms tipped with colorful claws. (In a pinch, you can always tell Quidnunx apart by their claws.) Then she stretches her neck up and peers out from her soft chest. She blinks her enormous two-iris-eyes in her wildcat-jack o’lantern face. Tall, punky tufts of hair like a horned owl twitch in the wind, checking for snacks and spies. Some have stubby antlers and horns, some have bony nubbles like crowns of river-rocks, some have wild stripes of electric blue or magenta, but all have tufts, and what grows on your head is to a Quidnunc what a surname is to us.

Then, our Quidnunc picks up her punch-bowl body in her arms, lifting her belly up so her feet can get free. Up she goes on one furry-hippopotamus foot and then the other, stretching out her springy knees. She shakes down her belly like a girl wiggling into a dress and makes the sound that Quidnunx make, which is called the thumpus. It’s as though she has a drum in her stomach and somebody is enthusiastically tossing rocks at the drumskin. Whack-whong, whack-whong, whong-wack. They can roar, too, and howl, and even carry a tune, but if you are within roaring range of a Quidnunc you have other worries. All this done, the Quidnunc can wander off to find trout or Roman coins or a bullfrog to play Houppelande with, which is like lacrosse but also like cricket, only with a deck of cards, four pairs of pink soapstone dice, and a bullfrog to lob from crosse to crosse.

A male is called a quire, a female is a quoth, their young are quodkins, and a group is a quiddity. In the mad dinner party called taxonomy, they sit somewhere between diprodontia and ursidae, and squabbles with felidae over the pepper grinder. I am telling you all this, and using Latin, which is very difficult, so that you will feel certain that Quidnunx are proper animals, as real as you or I or your pet dog.

After a while, the Valley began to suspect it was the Quidnunx keeping people away. No matter how well you set a table, no one will come to eat if a pack of lookie-loo monsters have their great fat noses pressed up against the windows. The Forest argued, quite reasonably, that as Quidnunx were already here and people were at this point mostly imaginary, the lookie-loos shouldn’t have to budge one little bit. Perhaps the Quidnunx might even move into the village and then they wouldn’t have to trouble with humans at all. The Valley made several rude noises and refused to speak to the Forest all winter long.

You must always beware if someone is giving you the silent treatment. Usually it means they are making a scheme. When a person is not so busy talking they have ever so much more time to think. The Valley did not give up, nor did it ask the Forest’s leave any longer. Instead, the Valley did two things, one of which was an excellent notion, and the other was the sort of thing only a crowd of great grassy hills and the hollow below them would think was at all helpful.

Having gotten so wonderfully good at mushrooms, the Valley quietly invented a new one, named it Agatha, sent it out like a clever little dog, and told it very sternly to fetch. Now, the secret of mushrooms (and many other things) is that the bit you see sticking up out of the good black mud, the bit you slice up and fry in a pan with thyme and butter, is only the flower. The briar of the mushroom goes on for miles underground, silent and delicate, nosing through the dark like a dreaming worm. The Valley told the Agatha mushroom to stretch out as far as it could, as far as it took to find people, which were animals who walked on two legs and had no tails or very much fur and whose favorite things were building and talking, and only then should it start pushing up its thyme-and-butter parts into the air. Off went Agatha, out of the Valley and through the Forest, growing as fast as a mushroom can, which is not so fast, but not so slow, either, stopping every so often to listen for talking and building and walking on two legs but no tail.

Finally, the mushroom thought it heard something, the right sort of something, and proudly pushed up its fungus-fruits out of the crumbly, cakey earth. It had very good hearing, for just then a man was walking home carrying a basket full of stonemason’s tools, since he was a stonemason, along with two rabbits, some bitter greens and parsnips and crabapples, and three long silver trout for his supper. Now, this happened so long ago that no one in Frogskin Bridge can remember exactly what the man’s name was, even though plenty of people would like to say they were his great-great-great-great grandchildren, so when this story gets its telling once a year, everyone calls him Unknown Jerome and gets on with the tale. I shall do the same, because I do not remember, either.

Unknown Jerome could not explain what he saw when Agatha came sprouting up, but he liked it very much. Agatha Underground is a wild sort of hot crackling blue with mottled dark mackerel patterns all over its lacy miles. But Agatha Aboveground has button-caps shaped like perfect, tiny houses. Their roofs are green, their walls are purple, and their windows are orangey-yellow so that they look as though someone very small is happily living away inside. And they popped out of the ground, hundreds of hundreds of them, right in front of Unknown Jerome, glittering and glowing in the soft blue heart of the evening like fairy lanterns. They lead off through the woods where Unknown Jerome had been hunting. He had hunted there most of his life, so he knew very well that nothing like this had grown there before. Unknown Jerome looked around to see if anyone else had seen this strange thing so that they could shake their heads and stroke their beards together. But he was alone. Now, some folk would be frightened. Perhaps they would try to stamp out the mushrooms or burn them out. But Agatha Underground had gotten lucky. Unknown Jerome was a peculiar fellow. He was not frightened at all. He laughed. He looked down and judged his basket to have most of the things he needed to keep being alive, thought about his empty stone house with no wife or children to make stone into a statue of happiness, and started walking, following the mushroom-houses into the wild deep dusk.

Agatha Aboveground had blossomed all at once, miles upon miles of button-cap huts with purple walls and green roofs and glowing orangey-yellow windows. As Unknown Jerome walked the long, long way from the place where he had hunted all his life to the Valley and the Forest and the Bunk and the talking kingfishers and the agates like the night sky and the huge, toothy Quidnunx, he met others, some traveling toward home, some traveling away from it, some just wandering, for there are always wanderers who love their wandering and hold it dear. And a few of these decided to follow the mushroom-path with Unknown Jerome and see where it ended up. Nobody remembers their real names, either. The Mysterious Mummers joined with their wagon full of puppets and costumes and masks when the woods turned into a warm desert. The Unnameable Cowherd, and her cows, came along when the desert became a long, grassy plain. The Obscure Bandit put all her weapons in a locked chest and bore it on her back all the way through the swamps and sticky, stinging fens. The Anonymous Beermaker rolled his barrels ahead of him like sled-dogs when snow fell on the swamps and they all had to travel on skates, peering through the ice for a reassuring glimpse of the mushroom-houses still glowing softly beneath the cold.

When they came, at last, to the end of Agatha Aboveground, they saw a valley as cozy as a hearth spread out before them. Everything just as they would have it if they could have dreamed up a home. Empty houses ready for a long-earned sleep, a working well, a fine bridge, chickens already in their pens and laying squawkily. But the Valley’s second grand idea to entice folk into its arms nearly ended the village of Frogskin Bridge before it began.

The Valley knew a great deal about chickens, you see. It knew that if one’s chickens are reluctant to lay, you ought to place a pale rock that looks more or less like an egg where the daft birds ought to be nesting. Seeing the egg-shaped rock, they will think to themselves: ah, someone has already laid an egg here, which means it is a good and safe place for my fat, feathery rump to wiggle down. The Valley reasoned that people needed the same sort of encouragement before they would do any sort of wiggling of their own. So it pushed up its beautiful blue stones, not so differently than Agatha pushing up its button-cap houses, in a ring all round the village. The Valley twisted and bulged and burst its stones until each of them had a human face, a happy, welcoming human face that would tell any person that this was a good, safe place fit for eggs and rumps alike.

The trouble was, the Valley had very little idea of what a human looked like. It had only heard other Valleys and Forests and Mountains and Dells and a few Tundras whispering about them. So the grand faces the Valley was so proud of did not look very much at all like people. They soared into the air, huge, with cheekbones like knife-edges, noses that stuck out like beaks, ears like wings, eyes that took up half their stony faces and always looked shocked and scandalized by some blue-stone gossip they had just heard. But the fruits and flowers woven into their hair was perfect, for the Valley knew very well what they looked like. Somehow, the Valley had gotten the mouths right. But a right mouth in a face all fantastically wrong looks even worse than a warped one, and all these things together caused Unknown Jerome and all the rest of them to scream bloody terror at the peaceful town and the gentle clouds and the saffron flowers who had put on their smartest leaves and petals for the occasion.

But Unknown Jerome noted that the faces did not seem to be able to come alive, nor did their mad, moony eyes follow you when you moved. The Unnameable Cows seemed undisturbed. The woods practically boomed with game. The huts shone clean and bright—big versions of the miraculous mushrooms they had followed for so long. Unknown Jerome meant to stay. As soon as someone got around to making a loom they could throw cloth over the stone faces if it still bothered everyone so much. This was judged great good sense, and a wandering, just like that, turned into a village. They would be safe here, and happy, and nothing would trouble them.

Of course, none of them had met a Quidnunc yet.

Three: Book Brownbread’s Song

Book Brownbread lived on a bridge.

Not under a bridge, like a troll, or near a bridge, like a ferryman’s daughter, but on the eastward slope of Frogskin Bridge, in a modest green puffball with six rooms and a little garret at the top, which was all hers. She had raced both her brothers Upon and Away for the garret, and twins always cheat, so the fact that she careened down the westward side of the bridge an aroused Bunk’s length ahead of them should tell you just how fast Book could go, when she wanted to go, which was only sometimes.

The creek that tumbled through the Valley had indeed grown up into a river, and grown up so wide and fast and well that it got a name: the Longago. Frogskin Bridge once stretched across the Longago, but you couldn’t say that anymore. Nowadays the Bridge is a hill with a hole in it, and through the hole roars the Longago. And if creeks can grow up, bridges can, too. The emerald Beatrice puffball mushrooms swelled bigger and bigger until the thread-merchants and cheese-hawkers and perfumers and winetraders and jewelmongers and toymakers who came every day to buy and sell everything they could think of, and then three things more, on the bright, wet cobblestones of the bridge realized how much easier it would be to just move into the thick green balloons and never leave. Naturally, they ran out of puffballs quickly. Between the mushrooms, Unknown Jerome’s descendants built spindly, madcap towers and houses and guildhalls and taverns. The stonemasons got quite over-excited over the whole thing, and used every bit of architectural nonsense they had ever learned, the fancier the better, with the result that the Bridge is a great bristling zoo of buttresses, flying and otherwise, pinnacles, trefoils, clerestories, gargoyles, finials, arched gables, lancet windows, spandrels, vaults, stained glass, rose windows, colonnades, and pillars of every style. When even that got too crowded, they kept building higher and higher, adding new towers and spires and terraces on top of the old ones, throwing new bridges — bridges upon bridges! — between the houses so that you could walk from the bookbinder’s chapel to the greengrocer’s transept without once touching the bustling street below.

Book Brownbread didn’t live in a transept or a chapel. Rich girls lived there, and boys who could have two copies of a book if they wanted. Her family had a puffball because Great-Granny Brownbread had been a wonderfully shrewd lady. She’d guessed how the Bridge would go and staked out a big thick Beatrice before anybody thought to charge rent for them. And back then, she wasn’t a Granny. You simply did not argue with Unlike Brownbread when she called something hers, or you got the business end of her favorite Sunday truncheon. Thanks to that truncheon, Book and her family lived comfortably, though not finely. Book and her brothers sold fruit with their mother, Loud Brownbread. Their father, Nowhere, made puppets on the green puffball balcony, which served as laboratory and shop all together. They were not the best puppets you could buy on Frogskin Bridge. They were not the worst. If you wanted a marionette that looks so real you’d almost ask it what it fancied for lunch if you weren’t careful, Nowhere Brownbread was not your man. Nor did he have any interest in making dog puppets with real fur and such sweet glass eyes you’d love it like a real pet. He made what he liked and hung it off the balcony when it was done. A tall girl walking the Bridge might feel the scarlet velvet feet of a feathered battle-mongoose with six tiger’s eyes in his checkered belly brush her hair. If she wanted it, Nowhere would sell his mongoose, fussing over its racing stripes. If not, she could jump in the Longago as far as he was concerned.

Thus, puppets did not bring much into the household but squares of oddcloth and glass eyeballs. The fruit-barrow Book and her brothers wheeled out onto the Bridge every day put candles in their holders, roasts in their pans, linen on their beds and their backs. Loud Brownbread had a voice like a burst of fireworks, sudden and bright and deafening. Though each of her children had been born quiet as moonlight, she taught them to holler first thing. To holler, to bellow, to sing, to howl, to boom. From the belly, not the throat, from the bones and the big beating of the blood. Eggplants, blueberries, blackapples, coconuts, figs, greengages, persimmons, grapes, lemons, lingonberries, muskmelons, yams, and squashes. A patch of Brownbread cousins grew them in the shadow of Grufferface, the great blue-stone statue that looked as though it was about to holler out a lecture on coming home late at night. Loud and Book and Upon and Away sold them, singing all the day up and down the Bridge: two for a penny, six for a milkcap, a bushel for a crown, life is sweet when your bread is brown!

Book Brownbread wore her brightest clothes when she pushed the barrow. She’d sewn them herself out of just about everything—scraps from the brocadiers and leather-cutters’ trash-heap, mostly gold grommets for which she’d traded a basket of her own raspberries to a draper’s rebellious son, ribbons for her dark hair from every birthday present she’d ever got, shoes from the dancers’ lodge when the summer shows had done, re-soled with cast-off puppet-legs and puppet-tummies and puppet-noses. For every time her father finished a puppet, she’d ask:

"Might I have a bit of the left-asides? For my collection?"

And feeling proud that one of his children was proving nearly as odd as himself, Nowhere would turn over piles of glass eyes, tufts of fur dyed magenta with beetroot, glass garnets, satin rope, mounds of fabric cheap and grand, in squares and strips no bigger than her palm. As Book grew she added more and let out seams until, at fifteen, she had a barrow-dress you could see all the way from Grufferface, coming up over the peak of the Bridge like a rainbow sun.

She was wearing it when Glass Aptrick came to call. But she wasn’t working, not particularly.

Oh, she had her barrow piled high with the right sorts of things for October: pomegranates and Brussels sprouts, blackberries and beets, butternuts and cranberries and leeks and blistering hot peppers and pumpkins that hadn’t started to glow just yet. And she was certainly singing, in her pleasant milkrummy low and loud voice: two for a penny, six for a milkcap, a bushel for a crown, life is sweet when your bread is brown! But Book Brownbread wasn’t working. No matter how nice the fruit or how good the opportunities for snatching shreds of satin from the laundries, hawking sweetness up and down the Bridge was never quite enough to occupy her mind. So, on Tuesdays, she let it out to run and play. On Tuesdays, Book barrowed by herself. Upon and Away had their pumpkin-handling lessons (for a fruit-seller is also a lamp-lighter in Frogskin Bridge, and pumpkins must be handled more delicately than any gas flame) and Loud went out to the Grufferface Farm for new stock and cousin-handling, not less volatile than gourds.

It had all started with the penny wonderfuls: little stories printed on beet-skin paper with pictures in beet-root ink, so that the whole tale, small enough to hide in your apron if anyone was coming, was red, red, red. Pale red pages, dark red words. All the Bridgers were mad for them. Pudding & Sons had the best ones and everyone knew it, mostly because Seldom Pudding could draw like a mole could dig. They were very secretive about who wrote them, however, and the mystery made the stories better, somehow. By noon on any Tuesday Frogskin Bridge exploded with red flags as everyone stood in the street to read. The other fruit-sellers read with one hand and bartered with the other, crying their wares out of one side of their mouth while the other mouthed the latest adventures in rapturous excitement.

Book, despite her namesake, couldn’t afford them. Not every week. Not enough to keep up with Quidnunc’s Quarry. Occasionally, Mama would come home with one glorious burgundy broadsheet for all three of them to share. Upon, Away, and Book would climb into each others’ laps so they could all read at once how the daring young inventor/gymnast Halfway Sapsago hunted Quadrillion, the Quarrelsome Quidnunc from the Carnival Woods, seeking revenge for the death of his innocent family, having sworn to rid the Woods of monsters once and for all and bring home his kidnapped bride from the terrifying Quatrain, a Quidnunc palace of untold treasure. But they only got a taste every few months, and so it was all really very hard to follow when they’d missed the whole bit about Halfway taming the kingfishers so that they told him the way to the hermit called No. 6 Buttermilk, who in turn gave the earnest hero a set of wings made out of licorice roots, and thus it seemed to the Brownbread children as though all of the sudden Mr. Sapsago was flying about for no reason whatsoever. Upon, being very sensitive about the rules of narrative being broken, had burned the last one, and that was the end of penny wonderfuls altogether.

Unable to read and sell at the same time like everyone else, Book, only on Tuesdays and at first only very quietly, began to change her selling song. Two for a penny, six for a milkcap, a bushel for a crown, the world is bright when your bread is brown! It wasn’t much of a change. She kept it in the right rhythm. But it was something other than the first song she’d ever known, and it excited her.Soon it was: joy for a penny, sunshine for a cap, a kiss for a crown, one red cherry and you’ll forget to frown! And that was exciting, too. But not as exciting as the crisp, foggy evening, just as the hot pumpkins were beginning to glow on all the balconies and terraces, when her funny magpie-mind felt wicked and wily and sang out to the alleyways: hearts for a penny, souls for a milkcap, forgiveness for a crown, the dead come near when the leaves turn brown! A passing hop-and-barley-man jumped nearly out of his bones, gave her a stern that’s-not-nice-for-young-ladies glare, shuddered, and trundled on up the upward side of the Bridge.

Imagine! Book Brownbread had made someone shudder! With just the words out of her mouth! Oh, but now she wanted to do it again! Could she? Could she make things other than shudders? What if she tossed off the old rhythm completely? Oh, but it was a good rhythm, really, old and sure and it had taken good care of her. Book began to make her selling-songs into story-songs, and no one told on her when Loud Brownbread came home from the cousin-farm with new fennel and jackfruit. Soon, she sold more on Tuesdays than the rest of them managed the whole rest of the week.

Glass Aptrick came to call on a Tuesday. She waited until Book had got to the end of a verse before she interrupted, for she kept her manners very polished and tidy.

"‘… come to the Wood at Midnight,’ said the Brave Bunk to the Fool, ‘and I shall show you secrets and tigers and jewels!’ "

Glass cleared her throat. "Miss Book."

"Oh!" laughed Book, startled out of her song before she could quite decide whether the Brave Bunk meant to leave the Fool to be eaten by Quidnunx or not. "I’m sorry, Glass, I didn’t see you! Have you come for the plums? They’re very good this week. White and red both."

Book quite liked Glass Aptrick. They went to school together at the Doppelbock, the great old barrel-shaped schoolhouse nestled in where the river curved into Pufferside. Pufferface, the statue whose cheeks ballooned out like a terrified horn-player, stared right into the upperclassmen’s window as though it meant to blow them over the mountains and away. Glass was a year younger than Book. She always had dried venison to share after lessons and could recite all sixty-eight verses of The Complaint of the Bunk to the Blacksmith. Book loved that poem like a second dessert, but she could only ever remember forty verses or so. Glass looked a great deal like her brother—the same bourbon-colored hair and greenish-hazel eyes and moles on her neck. Book rather quickly shuttered thoughts of the moles on Bird Aptrick’s neck. There was no use in it. He was Melancholy’s sweetheart. Book felt that was only right and fair. Melancholy Pudding, the beautiful publisher’s daughter, who could do sums as fast as she could take a breath—that was just the sort of girl you’d sing into a love story with a boy like Bird. You couldn’t get upset with the world when it behaved like a story. You could only read as fast and hope the end didn’t come too quick.

"I’m afraid not, Book," Glass sighed. Her big eyes filled with tears. She looked down, fidgeting with the knots on her hunting belt, and two tears pocked onto the cobblestones. "I need a crown of plenty. A … a good one. I have money. Blood oranges, I think, and trumpet vines, red dahlias and chrysanthemums and … and some bittersweet berries, too. Black ribbon and saffron. Maybe some frangipani and moonflowers. And cloudberries. There have to be cloudberries."

Book squeezed her friend’s shoulder. It seemed the right thing. You couldn’t smile while someone else was crying, but Book couldn’t imagine why a crown of plenty would make anyone cry. She’d made dozens of them herself and she always loved the work, weaving everything together so that it looked as though it had grown that way in the first place, singing happiness and luck and patience into the knots.

"I’d be happy to make it, Glass. Happy as sunshine. Who’s it for? Who’s getting married?"

"Bird!" cried Glass Aptrick, and barked out a horrid, sharp sob. "He’s got to marry that thing before the moon goes dark." She shoved her hands into her hair and snagged them there, yanking her skull back in helpless fury, looking up through the towers and spires and gargoyles of the dizzying Bridge. She crossed the middle and third fingers together on her right hand, but Book could not know this meant: I hurt and I don’t want to anymore. "And all I can do is make him pretty."

Four: The Talking Woods

Quidnunx are cunning, enormous, ferocious, rude, quick-tempered, greedy libertines, robbers, and tricksters. Any wise sort would stay well enough away from them. Live and let live, they in their territory and we in ours.

The trouble is, Quidnunx are also delicious.

Humans did not bother to note down the name of the first hunter who killed a Quidnunc, turned it into steaks and roasts and cutlets, and set the whole village to thirsting after more. Nor did they jot out the name of the beast while they were making beast-broth and hanging monster-mutton out to dry.

But the Quidnunx did. They are very fond of jotting, as a rule. Her name was Coyly Grumble, she had red hair and hated tea no matter how much cream you put in and her big round nose always somehow made her look like she was happy even when she wasn’t. Coyly was born in Frogskin Bridge, one of the first babies who hadn’t been born somewhere else. You can tell by her name. When Unknown Jerome and the others came to the town that had waited so long for them, they immediately started to name things, which people do so love to do. But they quickly discovered all the usual sorts of names had been taken by the one hundred and six species of edible mushrooms and also by the Bunk, who were very possessive about them. So, as a gesture of neighborliness, the people of Frogskin Bridge gave their children names nobody had ever thought to give to poor, unsuspecting infants before. (The Quidnunx had done this for ages, but no one was much in the habit of asking Quidnunx names back then.) Finally, each of the first families took a particular mushroom as their crest, the way lords and ladies in Europe used to do with an alarming number of birds and lilies and fish. They still have not run out quite yet. Every house in Frogskin Bridge has a wooden sign showing their particular mushroom, which the Valley thinks is very sweet, and the Forest thinks is awfully tawdry. Eventually, some old codger invented a kind of astrology out of the whole business, and folk get rather peculiar about the mushroom they were born to.

And so, Miss Coyly Grumble, whose name as really rather plainer than you might think, was hunting green-tailed deer. She’d already caught a couple of hares and a Bunk in her clever traps and, as would be pointed out in very loud voices later, didn’t really need any more meat, who did she think she was? Searching for better and quicker prey, for a hunter always likes a dish best when it nearly got away, Coyly ventured deep into the Fourpenny Woods, a name so new the trees hadn’t yet heard the news. She said the Quidnunc tried to steal her horse and her sweetheart-ring. She had every right, she said.

The Quidnunc’s name was Rigmarole. Having never been shot by anything before, he didn’t know what to do when Coyly’s arrow hit him, so he died. I shall not tell you about the things a hunter does in order to turn a creature into pieces that can be cooked and baked and roasted. It is too grim and messy. Later on, you would hate me for it. Coyly shared her victory with the whole village. After all, there was so much! Every soul in Frogskin Bridge could eat their fill for a week and still have sandwiches come Sunday. Feasting tables groaned at the crossroads, (newly christened the Claret Cross), fresh thick milk, hot cider. They poured out the very last of the old wine and the very first of the new beer and hung garlands of zinnias on the bluestone well (now called the Very Well, as most folk answered thus when asked how they felt these days). And when they put their tinkered forks, piled high with Quidnunc stew, into their mouths, everyone groaned altogether.

They had never tasted such sweet, savory, delicate, wild, and sharp yet soft and mellow and rich meat in all their lives. It filled them up more profoundly than beef, made a better gravy than goose, a more sophisticated drumstick than chicken. They felt strong and awake and starving for more, not because it did not satisfy, but because suddenly, nothing else could.

§

Humans are quick-tempered, rude, ferocious, cunning, modestly-sized, greedy libertines, robbers, and tricksters. Any wise sort would stay well enough away from them. Live and let live, they in their territory and we in ours.

The trouble is, humans are also delicious.

The Quidnunx came to town on a holiday. They hadn’t planned it that way, but when they learned about calendars later, they thought it was a pretty good joke. They came at First Frost, when the leaves of the trees still glow red and orange and gold, but rimmed with silver frost, like young ladies putting on their first diamonds for their first ball. The new ice was not yet strong enough for skating, but it felt wonderful to crunch it underfoot while dancing down the creek bed, mugs of hot sour gooseberry toddy in one gloved hand, lover or child or friend in the other. Often Aptrick, Bird’s grandmother, I’ve forgotten how many times great, played her famous one-man-band, banging drumbeats with her knees and blowing three oboes at once while squeezing a concertina. Studied Brownbread, Book’s something-great-grandfather, finished the frosting on his beautiful cakes, cleverly baked in the shapes of the twenty old stone sourpusses that they’d all grown very fond of by now. He and his wife, Keepup, and those of his sons that could be bothered carried them, one by one, to the Very Well for the Midnight Bonfire and Pastry Contest. Thoroughly Pudding was only three. He rode on his mummy’s strong shoulders, begging for a story, the same one as last night please, Mum, he’ll be as good as grapes if you do. Coyly Grumble was entirely toddied already. At sunset, the mayor, George Broom, (he’d refused to give up his name to a "damned side dish," but relented when his daughters came, saying he figured he’d better set his girls up right "before all the adverbs get used up") had crowned her Frostfrau and Knife of Midnight. Laughing in Onpurpose Lob’s arms, Coyly slipped in the slushy river-mud and fell, splashing muck all over her blue sash and the Frostfrau night-agate crown. She laughed harder, her face red, her nose joyful. She’d be the first to cut into the Quidnunc pies at the Bonfire, if she could hold the sword. The hunting had gone so well. Coyly had brought down three more herself. Every day parties rode out with ribbons in their hair. Quidnunx were big but lord, they were stupid and slow.

Coyly Grumble loved First Frost. She’d come to all five, since old Lizbel the Mummer, one of the last of the Agatha gang, had, after years of mostly napping, gotten one last brilliant idea and promptly died from the shock of it. As Coy lay back in the freezing earth, her hair trailing in the creek, the slow water trying valiantly to run away from the frost, she hoped the holiday would stick. Lizbel would like that. But you never knew, with these things.

Quidnunx have excellent timing. All robbers do. So good that no one could possibly misunderstand why they came. Ten Quidnunx came out of the Fourpenny Woods—three and a third times as many as you should care to see together in all your days. They walked so quiet that no one saw them, though they stood taller than all the houses, than the new school, than the wheat-tower Hindsight Gudgeon had just finished building, even with Frippery Sloe’s grassheart gargoyle on top, its upstretched claws full of loaves and cakes. No one saw them until Coyly Grumble saw them. Until Coyly Grumble, still full of toddies and giggling at a joke Onpurpose had whispered in her ear, heaved up the Obscure Bandit’s stolen szabla sword with two tourmalines in the hilt. When the Bandit died, she made them all promise it would never cut anything but pastries again. Coyly would probably have made liars of all those sad faces at the Obscure Bandit’s deathbed, if not for Onpurpose Lob’s joke. When she turned her head to laugh and show him how her eyes could sparkle when she looked at him, the Quidnunx fell on her and gobbled her up. Because of her joyful nose, even when she looked the Quidnunx in the eye and screamed, Coyly looked, somehow, happy. But she wasn’t.

The avenging quiddity got Onpurpose almost by accident, since he’d stood so close to his girl. The thumpus bonged and sounded in their bellies. They threw back their manes at the moon and howled, they ate the mayor George Broom and Keepup Brownbread, the charcoaler Yet Marmalade and the miller Unpleasant Bock, together with a brace of his friends, they pummeled the half-frozen ground with their hippopotamus-feet, they ripped up the new apricot trees like daisies, they devoured the beekeeper Susan Frumenty, the dovekeeper Ichabod Arent, and the innkeeper Untoward Cask, they punched the Very Well until it wept, they gulped down the fishmonger Spurious Tealeaf, the ironmonger Vainglorious Plait, the cheesemonger Bruno Stout, and the gossipmonger Bylaws Pudding, though her boy Thoroughly only lost his left hand. They scooped up, tenderly, miserably, the Quidnunx pies and Quidnunx sausages, the racks of barbecued Quidnunx ribs and crocks of Quidnunx-and-potato soup, the Quidnunx Wellington and Croque Quidnunx, the tureens of Quidnunx Bourguignon, the Quidnunx quiche and Quidnunx kabobs. They cradled the First Frost feast in their furry arms and whimpered, moaned, keened, wailed, shook, hissed at the village that was once Frogskin Bridge, and bolted back to the Fourpenny Woods.

But when the ten grieving Quidnunx had huddled into the deeps of the forest again, into home and hearth as a Quidnunc wants it, when they had buried the pies and the sausages and the quiche and the kabobs, all the Quidnunx agreed that they had never tasted such savory, delicate, sweet, sharp, and bitter yet silken and melting and spicy meat in all their lives. Those Bocks and Puddings and Stouts and Brownbreads and Frumenties had filled them up more profoundly than Bunk, made a better gravy than owl, a more sophisticated drumstick than armadillo. They felt awake and strong and starving for more, not because it did not satisfy, but because suddenly, nothing else could.

Two hunting parties met on the edge of the wood, where the pines and larches become farms and towering, bug-eyed stone faces. The band from Frogskin Bridge wore mourning black. They carried bows and quivers and knives and blowdarts and traps with bronze teeth. Their horses had leather strapped round their bellies so no claw could get at their insides. The hunters’ eyes sunk down into dark circles, red and sore from many funerals. The Quidnunx brought no weapons nor horses—they had their jagged razor teeth and long bearish claws. They hadn’t bothered with armor, but a Quidnunc never goes out without dressing up. The quoths wore belts of wagon axles and lost brooches and the new milkcap coins Mayor Broom had commissioned from the Plait foundry. The quires wore great, blood-bright poppies in their hair and wild stripes of sap-paint on their pelts.

Each of them stared furiously at the other. Then guiltily. Then they didn’t want to stare at all, but looked at their feet or the sky or something under their fingernails.

"I want to eat you," said the biggest Quidnunc, who was called Catchpenny and had two nubby green antlers on her head.

"I want to eat you, too," said the leader of the hunting party, who was called Idem Arent, Ichabod’s quiet daughter who loved her father like a lost dove, the father still, very likely, being digested by one or several of the beasts before her.

"It’s not personal," said a Quidnunc called Inglenook, though it was, really. Idem was Rigmarole’s mate. They had collected dried out speckled Frederick mushrooms together, hundreds, and made a mush under the spring stars, which is what Quidnunx call magic you can keep for later. They’d bottled one cupful for every trick they’d yet to play on the other.

"No, it’s not personal," said Idem, though it was, really. The doves hadn’t stopped crooning and shrieking since her father died. They sounded like the inside of her.

Sometimes — not very often, mind you — alive things can look in front of them and behind, see how badly, how really wretchedly, they are about to muck it all up, and just decide not to. They can see how wrong they were, up until this very minute, bloodily determined to put their feet, shake their heads, and say wasn’t that a near miss? Good job we turned out to be so clever and level-headed and the good kind of cowardly or else who knows what would have happened?

Which is just how Idem Arent and Catchpenny sat down in a little clearing in the sugar maples and hazelnut saplings and giant baobabs with all their friends and made a treaty instead of eating each other. The other hunters, Brownbreads and Frumenties and Plaits and Aptricks and Brooms, pulled woolen blankets out from beneath their horses saddles to save everyone’s knees. Catchpenny put one foot on a blue and brown plaid. It disappeared under her toes. They shared food — which wasn’t half as good for the humans as a bite of Quidnunc popover would have been, or half as nice for the Quidnunx as a bit of Marmalade on Brownbread. Idem gave Catchpenny the necklace she wore, her mother’s, a gold chain with a jet carved like a very loving, gentle pig, the big grey furry ones the Unnameable Cowherd had brought over the plains and the deserts. Catchpenny gave Idem a set of Houppelande dice she had stuck in her fur.

In the end, it took them two hours. The treaty was very simple. Good ones always are. The Bridgers wrote it out on parchment; the Quidnunx carved it onto three gnarled, but willing, baobab trees. Both agreed to be bound by it until after supper, the last nap’s wakeup, and the end of the universe. You can still go and see it, if you like. Schoolchildren go and visit once a year, every year, so that they can yawn and pinch their friend when she isn’t looking and pay no attention whatever to the claw-drawn letters gouged into the bark:

DON’T BOTHER US AND YOU WON’T GET BOTHERED.

IF YOU WANT TO BORROW SOMETHING, JUST ASK.

THOU SHALT NEVER EAT ANYTHING THAT TALKS.

This kept the peace for a long, long time.

§

But not forever.

The Quidnunx say they had nothing to do with it, but you can’t believe anything a Quidnunc says. They are just ever so good at loopholes and the mischief you can make in them. However it happened, within a decade or two, almost every sort of animal in the forest had learned, mysteriously, to talk in full, complete, and often reasonably elegant sentences. Except the kingfishers, who clung to the six precious, hard-earned words they’d learned when everything in the world began, and the deer, who could never remember if you had to have your mouth open or shut for talking, and anyway, they thought it was a fad and soon enough everyone would get back to keeping their thoughts to themselves.

§

This is why Until Aptrick spent her youth in a monastery, studying endless books of vivisection and linguistics. Memorizing the eaten and the safe and not once mixing them up. Being introduced socially to chipmunks, raccoons, giant tuft-ear squirrels, groundhogs, beavers, wallabies, cassowaries, Bunks, lemurs, lynxes, foxes, a thousand songbirds, even a jaguar who had come visiting his mountain lion cousins and decided to stay. All so that she would not break the treaty and accidentally kill something that could call for its mother before it died.

Five: The Reading of the Bunk

Until Aptrick brushed out her son’s hair. He had lovely hair, she’d always said so. So had everyone else. Bird was one of those boys who could turn brushing his hair out of his eyes into a promise, or an apology, or an invitation, or an inside joke, depending on who he was brushing his hair out of his eyes for. Tilly and Mids had often lain in bed when they couldn’t sleep, when the summertime was too hot or the rain too loud, twining their fingers together in the pumpkinlight and playing the game parents in a little village often play: guessing who their children would turn into when they grew up. Glass was easy. She would hunt, she had always wanted to hunt, you couldn’t really stop her if you wanted to. She’d been sneaking after their old calico Tessy since she was three, throwing nets over her, scooping her up when she’d just gotten a good nap going, coaxing the poor creature into her room with a tomcat-blind made of teatowels and catnip. Tilly couldn’t imagine her marrying anybody. Mids thought she’d find a butcher’s boy to clean her kills and they’d get nice and fat on chops.

"I think Already might tell fortunes one day," Until mused. "She does so love to stare at the soup-leavings and waggle her eyebrows."

Thrice wanted to haggle like her father, to buy and sell until the sun burnt out, so Mids felt certain she’d marry up, maybe even into the Arents or the Brooms, if they only let her broker the deal herself. Rarely might grow up to be a tugboat for all they could tell from her brand new little scrunched up face.

And Bird? Who would dare place bets?

Bird loved everyone except three people, one of which his parents didn’t know about. Everyone certainly didn’t love Bird — he was too talkative for that, too much of a know-it-all, too stubborn, too hard to keep still. And he didn’t love everything — he thought those penny wonderfuls were dreadfully dull and he wouldn’t touch a dish with garlic in no matter how anyone else might exclaim over it. He split his time very democratically between his sister, the Fourpenny Woods, the Doppelbock school and the Bridge. It wasn’t that Bird didn’t show any interest in anything, Tilly always said, but that he showed too much in everything, and never could stay still for long, even to finish a book or an apprenticeship or a girl. Oh, he loved Melancholy now, but Mids didn’t think it would last. Melancholy could stay still professionally. Middle Aptrick had been just the same sort of boy once. Girls liked him the way they liked horses, instinctively, boisterously, unguardedly. All his friends had been girls; still were, mostly. In the end, though, he’d wanted the one who talked to him like one horse to another, and he thought Bird would be the same.

"I’ll put a jar of pennies on him hiring on with the Mummers," Mids said, sleepily winding his wife’s hair round his fingers. "He’ll want the Bridge in the end. He’ll want the excitement. Old Sclafferface won’t do for much longer." The statue nearest them always looked as though it had just taken a good, hard slap to the face. They lived so near, in fact, so almost in the Woods, that morning came an hour later than usual in the Aptrick house. They had to wait til old Sclaffer’s shadow moved to put the kettle on and rouse the babies. "We’ll be going to see him play the biggies — Unknown Jerome and King Cutlassfish and Pericles — by the time he’s twenty."

"His Pudding girl is so pretty. She’s got manners like a baroness. Don’t you like her?"

"Sure, Foxface," Middle said, falling asleep already. She liked Foxface best of all the pet names he’d tried. "I like her fine."

They might have asked Glass what sort of man Bird was inching toward. She might even have told them. But that would spoil the game.

And besides, none of that mattered now.

§

Bird sat with his hands in his lap. He was trying to be calm and beautiful and serene, like a bridegroom should. He tried to think of paintings he’d seen with weddings in them. How their faces had looked. How they’d held their arms.

"Shut your eyes, Big B," Glass said. He did. She brushed gold paint from a little pot onto his eyelids. Bird knew the smell of that paint. He’d helped put it on his Aunt Happenstance when she married By Gudgeon years back. It was very expensive. The whole sprawling family had one pot, passed around when anyone got up the need to marry. It smelled sharp and green, like nettles, but like old coins, too. It should be a happy smell. Glass painted gold diamonds on his cheeks and gold swoops over his eyebrows. She rubbed his lips with a blue paste Bird knew she’d made herself—her duty as his nearest sibling—out of cornflowers, Lydia mushrooms just ripe, and black vinegar. Bird remembered how silly and marvelous By Gudgeon had looked with all this on. Like a wild, alien creature, he’d thought then. Something fierce and elfin and hungry. Glass put the knuckle of her index finger in his left elbow. I love you. Then she pinched his leg. Hard. I’m sorry. They’d discovered long ago that a free pinch took a lot of sting out of having to be the one to apologize.

"Mum," Bird whispered. "What’s happening? What’s going to happen?"

"Birdy, you know. I’ve killed a Quidnunc. We don’t have a choice."

"But you didn’t mean to," Glass whined. Bird hated to hear her whine. Whining was the last refuge of babies, they’d agreed when Already came and neither of them could stand another minute of her colicky bawling. Let’s never. Never ever again. "It shouldn’t count! The Second Baobab says: IF YOU WANT TO BORROW SOMETHING, JUST ASK. Well, I want to borrow a cup of what’s right and fair!"

Until Aptrick kissed her daughter’s head. "Just because I didn’t meant to do it doesn’t make me innocent, my love."

Bird tasted the bitter blue gloss on his mouth. He grimaced. He was trying. Be a painting, Self, he thought. Serene, beautiful, calm. But he didn’t want to be serene or calm. (He always wanted to be beautiful, but in that he was no different than anyone who has ever lived.) He wanted to understand. Bird always wanted to understand as completely as possible, so completely that his teachers usually just sent him to the library at the start of class rather than answer his questions past teatime and all reason.

"Mum, at a wedding, aren’t you and Papa supposed to tell the story of how my wife and I met?" Bird asked, looking up through his well-brushed hair and putting on his good-son eyes, the ones that always made his mother crack.

Tilly wanted to get on with this and get it done so that they could all skip to the part where it was over. But it was Bird’s wedding, bizarre and lonely as it was turning out to be, and he would have it his own way. Besides, Bird always loved that part best. Before the dancing, but after the long, boring vows when you sit down or else you’d give the couple bad luck. Everyone filled up their claycups with fiery peach muscat-wine and took their slices of redcake, made from the peculiar tufted barley of Frogskin Bridge milled as fine as dust. Then all four parents, usually already peached to the gills, tried to remember everything their children had told them about how they met and put it in the right order to make any kind of sense. They always botched it, Bird suspected on purpose, because it was always more fun that way. They ended up giggling til they could hardly breathe and settling on the facts: our By met Happenstance Medoc at the bottom of the Longago River where they both attended the naiads’ watercolor lessons on alternating Wednesdays. By wore grey. Happy wore seaweed.

Even better, from there on out, the couple would tell that story as though it was the very leanest truth, and no one would argue.

"Sure, Birdy. But …"

"But nothing. I know you can’t laugh and mix up who saw who first because nobody’s seen anybody. But you owe me. First time in fifteen years, but you owe me good, Mum. So tell me how I met my bride. Tell me why I’m marrying a dead Quidnunc. Because that’s just an old story and you’re acting like it’s real. You’re acting like we’re actually going to do it. You might as well tell me to get started spinning straw into gold because you shot a spinning wheel. It doesn’t make sense."

Until Aptrick pulled her wedding clothes out of her good chest. She smoothed the black linen and dyed green-blue fur with her long fingers. They would do for Bird. At fifteen, he was only a little bigger than she’d been at twenty-five. She’d worn trousers, as a huntress and a Medoc. The women in her family never wore dresses if they could help it. She would have to find the wine-colored sash. They might have used it for swaddling clothes. Until couldn’t remember. But it was the right color. And her mind filled with the Quidnunc blood running off of her head like rain that night.

"It’s in Idem Arent’s treaty," Tilly began. Glass interrupted her.

"I’ve been to the Sensible Bluffs loads of times! Show me the tree that has this rot carved on it!"

Until sighed and rubbed the back of her neck. "This came later. Just because six or seven people write down a few nice ideas and shake paws on it doesn’t mean everyone else will just go along because it’s hacked into a tree you can’t even see from the Very Well. Come on, Glass. What have I always said?"

" ‘People are the worst!’ " piped up Thrice from the kitchen. She stirred a boiling pot of honey and cranberries for the redcake, carefully keeping her brown pigtails out of the sticky soup. Thrice clenched the wooden spoon and whirled it round with all her seven-year-old might. Bird laughed.

"What? That’s what Mummy says. She likes Bunks better than people. And toads."

Until Aptrick swept up her baby girl in her arms, tickling her and gnawing her shoulder like a Bunk gnaws its little ones. Thrice shrieked and squirmed.

"Except for my people," she said, squeezing a little too hard, which made Thrice burp. "I like my people best."

"I saw you snuggling one in the garden!" Thrice giggled helplessly. "You’re a Bunk-snuggler!"

Tilly put the girl back down on her footstool. "Have you put the nutmeg in?"

"Yes, Mama."

But Glass wasn’t smiling. Bird saw her cup her elbows in her hands, a clear busk for: Mum and/or another adult is talking nonsense but I won’t say anything just now. Bird certainly liked Bunks better than some people. But mostly he thought people tried not to be the worst, they just didn’t always quite pull it off.

Until wiped her hands on her thighs to get the errant honey off. It clung. "Well, people were certainly at their worst then. Some still hunted Quidnunx, they just got sneakier about it. Even after First Frost, with all those graves still new, they could only think of a Quidnunx roast in a pot on their stoves. They wore masks, crept into the Woods when everyone had gone to sleep, used darts and nets and poison traps no one would think to try now. You can’t bring down a Quidnunx quietly, but you can do it quickly, and you can run. Oh, I think the Quidnunx would have poached some of us, too, if we hadn’t been so generous as to deliver supper to their doorstep. Voila! Roast Idiot, mind the bones! Finally, after a lot of halfwitted gluttons had died on both sides, the Quidnunx got tired of our games. They refused to come to the village again. They sent a Bunk called Nathaniel. He reeked of perfume, the poor beast was so scared. But he read out the jotting the Quidnunx had given him. It wasn’t a treaty — they’d done that once already and Quidnunx hate doing anything more than once. They weren’t interested in negotiating. I had to memorize it at the monastery. The Abbot has it under glass in his office. It has a nice frame. So here it is, word for word for word."

Bird watched in amazement as his mother hunched her shoulders, swished her hips like a Bunk flourishing his tail, and lowered her voice to a gravelly Bunkish grumble. She was trying to make him laugh, the way she did when he was a baby and she woke him up every morning as a different furry Fourpenny creature. He’d laughed until he couldn’t breathe. Even now, he woke up laughing nearly every morning, even when no one woke him but the sun. She was trying to make him laugh so he wouldn’t be afraid. Until Aptrick scrunched up her eyes til they were beady as a badger-wombat-skunk’s and growled:

"We Can See You, You Morons. We See Better In Our Own Blasted Forest Than You Do On A Sunny Day With Your Glasses On. Your Masks Are Stupid And You Are Stupid. Your Smells Say Your Names Out Loud. You Might As Well Have Them Written On Your Foreheads, MISTER BOON CHEDDAR OF TROFFERSIDE AND HIS NEPHEWS AMID, TILTING, AND NUFF. That Is Just An Example, You Gang of Nitwits. Now Listen As Well As You Can With Your Squiggly Crusty Snail Ears Because We Are Only Going To Say This Once. Whenever One Of You Kills One Of Us From Now Until We Say So, You Will Pay A Price. Are You Ready? It Is A Good One. No Longer Will Brave But A Little Careless Quidnunx Go Alone To The Eightpenny Woods, Which Is The Kingdom Of The Dead, Which You Would Know If You Weren’t A Such Bunch Of Bastards. The Hunter Who Fells The Quidnunc Shall Provide One Of Their Own Children To Wed The Quidnunc Ghost And Go With Them To The Eightpenny Woods And Carry Their Ghost-Bags And Useful Things Like That. And Also They Will Not Whine Or Be A Brat About It. As We Mentioned Before, We Will Know Who Did It. You Cannot Lie To Us Because You Are Not Good At It But We Are Excellent At It. This Is Not A Lie, Though. We Promise It Will Be A Real Wedding. We Are Not Just Going To Throw Them Off A Cliff Or Anything. If We Kill One Of You We Will Send A Quodkin Don’t Worry. But That Probably Won’t Happen Because We Don’t Want To Go Anywhere Near Your Lot Ever Again. You Are Rubbish And When You Laugh It Sounds Like Pigs. Just Do What We Say Or We Will Come Back And Eat You All Up And We Won’t Be Sorry Because You Taste Good And You Will Deserve It, For Crying Out Loud. We Are Done Talking, Nathaniel, You Can Stop Now. Hurry Home There Is Cake."

Tilly Aptrick put her shoulders back the way they liked to sit. "It didn’t stop right away. People thought: what a mad thing to ask for, they can’t really mean it. But then one night a knock came at Boon Cheddar’s door and there was a Quidnunc, as big as an oath, with a wedding ring and a stern expression and a mouth full of shark teeth. And off went Nil Cheddar in her mother’s dress. They got letters from her sometimes. I’ve seen them. But they’re in some language no one can read, except her name at the bottom. People straightened up. Slowly. Every once in awhile someone would decide the world had just been waiting around for them to get born and fix it all up. Or someone would just get so desperately hungry. Or they’d … they’d have an accident. Your Grammy While told me the last Quidnunx wedding in Frogskin Bridge happened when she was Already’s age. A boy named Soon Stout married one called Dapplegrim. A young one. Even a poacher shouldn’t be killing quodkins. Your grammy was a little in love with Soon."

"Am I going to die?" Bird’s throat dried up all in an instant.

"No, no, Birdy, I wouldn’t let —"

"Because that’s what it sounds like!" he cried. "It sounds like I’m marrying a dead monster and I’ll have to carry her bags in hell!"

"No, you won’t," Glass bellowed. "I’ll go. I’ll go! Mum, the Quidnunc is dead. What difference does it make if it marries a boy or a girl? They probably can’t even tell the difference! I’ll go. If we cut my hair, Bird and I look just alike. It’ll be fine. I always wanted to live in the Woods, anyway."

"Guignol," Until said softly.

"What?" Glass snarled. But she ran out of snarl halfway through the word. She’d never spoken to her mother that way before.

"Guignol. The one I killed. The one who’s dead. A thinking, feeling, talking animal no different from us or anyone. Her name was Guignol. And she was the Gallithump, which is as close as Quidnunx have to a Queen, though it’s not exactly the same. It’s complicated. But if I don’t hold up my end they will destroy this village. To the littlest stones of the Bridge."

"So I have to die," Bird whispered. "Like Soon Stout." He couldn’t breathe. What about Mel? And the library? And the place on the Bridge where you could hear the fish jumping down below and the violinist with an extra finger practicing above? What about his friends? Never and At and Untoward and Book and Little and Banjo and Cuff? What about that perfect place where the Woods are not the Woods yet but the Town isn’t the Town anymore? He would always be in the Woods now. And Glass would never be alright again. She’d never smile the same way.

"Don’t be dense. I’m going," Glass clutched his hand tight. No busks. Just her hand around his.

"They asked for a male," Until said, unable to look her children in the eyes. "I only have one. It was an accident, Bird. I couldn’t even see, it was so dark …"

"I don’t think they’re going to kill you," came a voice rather too loud for the room. Book Brownbread had lived on the Bridge so long she hardly knew how to speak softly at all.

Bird looked up to see Book in her absurd harlequin dress in the doorway of their house, holding a crown of plenty in her hands. Suddenly, Bird Aptrick loved that girl like fire. Book Brownbread, who sat in the back of the classroom so her voice wouldn’t make the teacher wince. Who was as much of a know-it-all as him. Who lay on the riverbank and closed her eyes when Glass started up that stupid poem for the thousandth time. Who walked home with Melancholy every day and walked home singing. He loved her because she looked like real life. She looked like school. She looked like last week, when nothing bad had happened yet. Bird leapt up and hugged her so hard she hiccuped, then coughed, and then he set her down. The crown of plenty had gotten squashed up a little between them, but no damage done.

"If it helps," Book said.

"What?"

"If it helps. I don’t think they’re going to kill you. Soon Stout is my uncle —great-uncle, actually. I saw him yesterday. He was very cranky and he stole one of my pears."

"But he married a Quidnunc. He went to the Eightpenny Woods," Until said.

Book looked back and forth between the Aptricks. She pulled a wrinkled moonflower into place on the crown

"Well, he came back," she said. "And he’s a sour old crab if you ask me."

Six: The Ghost of Guignol’s Vow

In Frogskin Bridge, a wedding party processes from the bridegroom’s house, and they process dancing. The mother of the bride plays the flute, whether she’s any good or not. The father of the groom plays the fiddle, the smaller brothers and sisters play drums or spoons or each other’s heads. If it rains, the couple will have good luck for at least half their marriage.

They danced on Bird Aptrick’s wedding day. No one felt like it. No one wanted to. But you can’t take that away from a boy. From a man. You can’t deny him the sight of all his family and his friends and his whole home dancing and throwing peach pits on the road to watch them spark, wearing flowers in their hair, the color high and healthy in their cheeks, the rain, hopefully, drenching them to their stockings.

But the sun rose blistering and gold that autumn morning. Bird stepped out of his house in his black linen and green-blue fur, his high boots, his dashing half-cape, his crown of plenty as red and orange as the hill where he and Glass had invented a sign for Quidnunx. He looked grown-up. He looked as serene and beautiful and calm as a painting. He clung to Glass on one side and Book on the other for just enough courage to put one foot in front of the other. Until and Middle came out after, carrying Rarely and Thrice while Already cried as though she could make all the rain her brother needed by herself. Most all of Sclafferside waited for them, standing very still, not knowing what to do or what to say. Great hot glowing pumpkins lay everywhere, in front of every house, steaming in the dawn. Bird knew without looking that Melancholy wasn’t there. She couldn’t bear it, she’d said. She’d wait forever but she couldn’t watch him go. She was weak. She was sorry. If Soon Stout came back he would, too, and she’d be waiting in the towers of Pudding and Sons, but she couldn’t watch him marry someone else. Even the ghost of a monster.

One foot, then another. It was a long way to the edge of the Fourpenny Woods.

Book let go of Bird’s arm. He stumbled a little. She nicked up his chin and danced a funny little half-step, lifted up her skirts and tried a kick, a faint jig.

"Two for a penny, six for a milkcap, a bushel for a crown, the world is bright when your bread is brown!" she sang, because she had no drum to play. Book held out her hands to Already and Glass, and they didn’t want to, they had never felt less like dancing, but they did anyhow. And then everyone was dancing all together, singing Book’s fruit-selling song, and then any song anyone could think of, and Until whistled because she had no flute, Rarely squalled because she was a baby and it was the best song she knew, Middle Aptrick slapped his legs and their neighbors hollered up the sun, weeping, dancing, sending Bird off because they couldn’t keep him.

The edge of the Woods came sooner than Bird thought. That perfect place where the Woods are not the Woods yet but the Town isn’t the Town anymore. He looked into the trees he loved, the deep, soft shadows.

And the shadows moved.

Shapes creaked and floated just beyond the treeline. Fur. Horn. Bird tried to remember the paintings. He tried to remember Soon Stout, safe at home on Frogskin Bridge complaining about his grandchildren. He tried to remember how much he always wanted to understand and to be excited that he was certainly about to understand something now that he hadn’t before. Bird couldn’t quite manage it on the inside. But he turned to the crowd and nailed a smile to his face. He waved and cried:

"I do!"

Bird kissed his mother, who fell to her knees and could not speak. He kissed his father and his sisters. He kissed the miller and the blacksmith and the dovekeeper and a couple of goats and a cow. He kissed Book Brownbread, who whispered in his ear: I’ll come to the Wood at Midnight,’ the Fool to the Brave Bunk replied, ‘and I shall bring gifts for the bride.’

Bird jerked back from her. She gave him a sly look and laid her finger aside her nose. Book Brownbread was making a busk! Had Glass taught her? They had never taught anyone, not even their little sisters. He knew what it meant, but he could not believe it. The last time he saw Glass do that he’d broken a lantern and cut his hand. I’ll fix you up and I won’t tell on you. What could Book mean? But she would not say.

Finally, Bird Aptrick faced the Woods. He could feel Glass beside him, her fear and worry crackling like a peach pit. He knew he had to say something to her, but his throat wouldn’t do it. If he said something, it would all start happening and he’d never see her again. He’d never get to the other side of it happening.

Glass reached over and pinched her brother’s ear. She grinned at him.

"No, Glass," Bird sputtered, half laughing, half swallowing the cry that wanted to come out. It was their first busk. The first secret code every between Bird and Glass, younger sister to older brother. "It’s against the rules."

"I listened to that whole rotten speech and I didn’t hear anything about not having groomsmen."

She pinched his ear again. Any younger sibling could tell you what she meant. It’s the thing you most want to say when you’re young and your brother gets to go out further in the garden than you, stay out longer into twilight, venture deeper into the Woods. But you wouldn’t say it where anyone could hear.

Shut up. I’m your sister so you have to take me with you.

The sun slid behind a bank of clouds that drifted between the Forest and the Valley. Gently, without making a fuss about it, it began to rain.

"The Quidnunx" originally appeared in the anthology Harvest Season (ISFiC Press, 2014)

Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human.

Interview with Cover Artist Sarah Zar

Russell Dickerson

This month’s cover artist is Sarah Zar, a Brooklyn, New York artist who works in mediums from oil paints and mixed media pieces to performance art. Sometimes collaborating with dead artists, Zar’s cover piece this month offers a wonderful mix of reality and fantasy.

APEX MAGAZINE: Your piece, "Hurricane Woman," seems to evoke both the physicality of the woman and the mysterious, fantastic nature of the waterfall. Do oil paints and the smaller size of the work (8" x 10.75") give you more time to work out the idea versus other media, or does it have to be fairly strong plan from the start?

Sarah Zar: Thank you. I love it when people help things seem.

I’m a bibliophile, so the intimate immediacy of that small scale is a pleasure. It envelops me, which helps with the more personal sketches. I made that specific piece in the ominous stillness of the night before Hurricane Sandy touched land. Making "Hurricane Woman" felt like being a flood. One moment I was watching my palette knife press linseed oil into a deathly pale blue, and the next, there was this woman looking back at me.

AM: On your C.V. page, you list being a presenter, curator, teacher, and musician. How much do you learn working with students, versus collaborators or even presenting or curating shows? Do you change how you create your work when you are collaborating with others, compared to working on something by yourself?

SZ: I like Jorge Luis Borges’ suggestion that the "imminence [from the Latin word imminere, ‘to overhang, impend, or be near’] of a revelation which does not occur is, perhaps, the aesthetic phenomenon." Every time we make a connection or relationship of any kind, we are creating a new zone of nonverbal possibilities, between the inner worlds of everyone involved. As a result, the collaborative curation of perceptions (whether through literal curation, collaboration, presentation, or education) is an excellent place to harvest information and generate meaning. When I work alone, I try to adapt to the demands of the creation. When others are involved, the exploration is more about balancing webs of potential, and learning effective ways to process the translations that erupt between us.

AM: Your works include painting, photography, collage, and performance. When you have an art show, or even just designing the front page of your website, what are the challenges in showing potential viewers the differences in the types of your various projects? Do you find that individuals gravitate towards your overall works, or specific project areas?

SZ: I don’t worry about demonstrating everything to all of my viewers. Categorization is a tricky beast. People who are searching seem to find the specific bodies of work that allow them to recognize something Other in themselves. They don’t need to see everything. I’m a very big fan of secrets. I can’t speak for everyone else, but most of my collectors seem to be drawn to certain tropes rather than specific project areas. Once they find a certain type of hidden message, they seem to tune themselves to that pattern, and allow it to guide their eye.

AM: With acting and performance art, movement and sound seem to be just as important as the visual aspects. When you are approaching a new performance art piece, how much of it is a visual idea versus a more dynamic mix? Have you found times where a static art idea might work better than a performed piece, and vice versa?

SZ: Definitely. I’m extremely sensitized to subtle shifts in symbolic interactions (and slightly synaesthetic), so in my realms, absolutely everything influences everything else. Much of my solitary work spontaneously emerges in my mind as a psycho-spatial gestalt, and the work of processing it involves a mix of decisive intuition, visual logic, and lateral experimentation. The initial idea usually seems to demand a specific medium, but over time, inner archetypes tend to seep and peel off their masks. The longer you leave them in the dark, the more they have to tell you when you’re ready with a candle.

AM: Many of your works use rough wood for a frame, as in "Light Can Be The Undertow," that matches the colors in the paintings well. Are your works typically fully painted before finding the wood for frames, or does the frame influence how you are creating your pieces? Do you have a process to determine which works get frames versus those that don’t?

SZ: That’s an excellent question. Every physical, technical, or relational decision is symbolic of the internal logic of my piece. If things drain of color, contain an abyss, gain specificity or ambiguity, suddenly change styles, have dust gathered in certain areas, or glimmer under a certain light, it is to reinforce or alter the other information. I collect wood pieces and elements that have a lost history, and rely on poetic interpretations of their visual qualities to pair them with specific images. The paintings are usually complete before they meet their vessels, but sometimes it is necessary to enhance a visual connection, so I’ll add an extra trace.

Sarah Zar has a small art poem book called Riddled With Spots coming out this summer, and a much larger curatorial book is in progress. Her next body of work is a combination of installation, projection, paintings, and psychological amulets that deal with new stories to process the historical shifts taking place in our time. The project deals with oracles, evacuations, trauma, and the roles of deception and imagination in healing. Announcements, and galleries of her varied works, are available at SarahZar.com.

Photo by John Urbancik

Russell Dickerson has been a published illustrator and designer since the previous millennium, creating works for many genre publications and authors. He has also written many articles for various organizations in that time, including Apex, and his work can be found on his website at www.darkstormcreative.com.

Song of the Encantado

Jeremy Paden

Do not stare into the blind eyes

of the pink-fleshed singing porpoise.

You have stared down the dancing snake

but the eyes your eyes followed as they swayed

were filled with moonlight, & the song of the split —

tongue is of the earth & is a forest song

that winds about the roots of the kapok tree.

Do not stare into the blind eyes

of the singing river dolphin.

They are filled with a brightness you think

is life but is the dimness of deep rivers,

of dreams filled with the promise of a pleasure

only gods can give, & you are a child

of grass & forest, of flowers & their fruit.

Do not stare into the blind eyes

of the boto cor de rosa.

The world will turn gray & your eyes & mouth & skin

will long only for the heaviness of rivers,

& you will call eels & angel catfish cousin

& the dense song of the manatee

will blind you to the wonders of the forest.

Jeremy Paden is the author of a chapbook of poems, Broken Tulips (Accents Press, 2013). His poems and translations have appeared in Asymptote, Adirondack Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, California Quarterly, Cortland Review, Drunken Boat, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, and Rattle, among other journals and anthologies. He is a member of the Affrilachian Poets, an Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature at Transylvania University, and teaches literary translation in Spalding’s low-residency MFA.

The Farmer’s Milk

John Yu Branscum

Every Monday morning,

he would appear wind-burnt

at our door, a dour man

with the toughened skin

of horned lizards

and the inscrutable face

of the praying

mantis,

would appear

as if the earth periodically

split and spit him out

to get certain jobs done.

What he had to sell

was not sold elsewhere.

The eggs —

not the blank

white plaster

eggs of the grocery store

but rather tea-

colored, elegant alien skulls

cool in my palms.

These charmed me.

But the milk?

I hated it.

How could something

so disturbingly textured be

"milk"?

Why would anyone

purposefully pierce the cream

placenta choking the neck

of the jug?

Why would anyone

intentionally take it inside

their mouth?

One afternoon,

after the farmer left,

my mother made a cake

for my birthday.

When she cracked an egg

on the plastic lip of the mixing

bowl, a half-formed miniature

something flopped into the batter

to be buried inside the whirr

of the blender’s blades.

"It’s time you know,"

she told me.

Reaching across the table,

she lifted a glass

of the farmer’s milk

to her mouth

and drank.

John Yu Branscum has published work in journals ranging from Evergreen Review to Chiron Review. He is a professor of English Studies, co-editor of Sarabande Books’ literary anthology Red Holler, author of the poetry collection Skinwalkers, and literary editor for the international, post-punk fashion and literature magazine Black & Grey. As well, he is the father of Francesca Lu, a toddler who has recently invented a hybrid dance style incorporating Tai Chi and dancehall hip-hop, and Vivianne, a five-year-old who is training to be an astronaut princess.

Collecting James

Geoffrey Girard

4,100 words

Two dozen seemingly identical chips rested atop small black stands, displayed on the shelves like treasure. James reached into the wide rosewood cabinet to inspect one of the pieces. It was the size of a thick poker chip. An almost perfect circle of bone.

He took it off its stand and ran his fingers along the edge. Felt where the chip has been meticulously, tenderly, smoothed. He clutched it tightly and suddenly heard the faint sound of strings. An abrupt rush of violins. A growing rhythm that quickly raced through his entire body. He heard notes, chord voices moving. A literal crescendo of …

James shook off the chip’s memory and placed it back on the stand. "Pretty fucking cool," he admitted.

"I’m not at liberty, of course, to tell you which orchestra," Zimmerman explained in his smooth, indifferent voice. "But, she chaired first violin for many years and was an associate concertmaster." He sat on the couch directly across from the cabinet in a plush black sweater, the lines of age creeping up his fat neck into grey, neatly-slicked hair. "Some men collect cars," he said. "Others collect pussy. I am interested in accumulating … something else. Which is why I was so very pleased to hear from you."

James grabbed another chip of bone. Darker, greyed. Its edges weren’t as smooth; the marks of the instrument’s jagged teeth quite obvious. He didn’t care to know any more and put it back. He missed the stand and it rolled briefly on its side like a coin before bumping into the back of the cabinet and tipping. He tsked, picking it up, and set it back in its proper place. "It’s like some kind of ghost," he said.

"Yes," Zimmerman replied. "Something like that. The stain of a dead spirit, a soul’s echo. I don’t know. You’re the wordsmith."

"And those?" James indicated several small piles neatly stacked in the cabinet’s lowest compartment.

"More ‘common’ pieces, if you will." Zimmerman gave a short wave. "Most don’t even work anymore. Primarily homeless addicts and whores from when the collection began. Practice. Couldn’t tell you much more about them."

"Their names, perhaps?"

"Names? No. Not for those."

"I would have remembered their names," James said, turning his gaze back to Zimmerman.

The collector grunted. "Only a few thousand dollars each for most of those. Nothing of great interest or value there, trust me. But you’re not exactly getting a few grand, are you?" He looked down at the small chest sitting beside the cabinet. An honest-to-God treasure chest. Two million dollars, composed of hundred dollar bills and gold coins. "I now pay to obtain the exact pieces I want. Only those who create, who touch the world through a true art. The writers, artists, and composers. Performers. Why, I even have a professional clown. Can you imagine?"

"A clown with a hole in his head? Yes, perfectly."

Zimmerman sniffed, eyes intent on James. "The actual bone grows back, eventually. Fills in with new cartilage. In a year, no one would even know. A certain actor I met many years ago, who is now on a top sitcom, comes to mind."

"I’m not what you’re looking for," James said.

"But here you are just the same."

James nodded and turned back to the cabinet. On the top shelf was the case. He grabbed the small walnut box. It was lighter than expected and closed, and he carefully set it on a round table next to the cabinet to get a better look. Opened, the top revealed a dim mirror built into the lid. The bottom was lined in velvet, several different tools resting serenely in their assigned case beds. The scalpel was six inches long.

"Man’s been using a trephine of some sort for more than ten thousand years." Zimmerman stood leisurely and added several logs to the fire. "A subtle remedy for madness and demon-possession. In more recent times, a supposed quick fix for epilepsy, headaches, and syphilis. But this is something a bit more."

"Because the patient performs the surgery himself?"

"Perhaps."

James studied a small Hey’s saw, a miniature axe with a curved saw-toothed edge, for first cuts into the skull. "Any slips?"

"Oh, yes." Zimmerman stoked the fire, pushing the new logs into place.

James looked at him, suddenly dark eyed and dangerous. "Tell me one."

"Very well. One of the first, one of the street punks. Ten bucks to suck, forty for everything. So, I offered him five grand to cut a hole in his own head." He reset the fire iron. "And, the boy went too deep, that’s all. Wasn’t the last time it’s happened. It’s tough, I suppose. Knowing exactly when to stop. When to stop cutting."

"I understand completely."

"We’d gotten a motel room," Zimmerman continued, "and the first cuts weren’t too bad. I’d bought him liquor, a good shot of Dolantine to take the edge off. He bled a great deal, many do, but I kept him standing naked in the bathtub, using the shower to wash the blood away. You want a memory, Truitt? I remember him laughing. Funny stuff, right? The few times he’d stopped cutting, I just kept laying out hundreds. The sink was filled with them."

James eyed the fire, a great granite orifice casting shadow and anguish throughout the room. "And the pain?"

"The area is numb by then, the nerves already seared. In any case, he keeps turning the blade — round and round, see? — and he’s turning and I notice his laughter has become something quite extraordinary. The kind of laugh you should never truly hear. Like one of those men at the end of a good Lovecraft. He starts laughing like that, and I know he’s close. Through the skull. I’m told you can feel when it’s time to stop. Like sawing a log, you just know. But he didn’t. Maybe the booze or the Dolantine. I don’t know. He’d finished, but then turned again. It must have cut into his brain because that damned laughing stopped immediately."

The trephine instrument itself was in two pieces. The first, a short metal rod ending in what looked like a squat socket wrench with jagged teeth. The other was a wood handle which James crossed at the top in a T and secured with the supplied grooved pin. He took hold of the handle tightly and got a feel for it in his hand. Tried his middle finger on either side, looking for the best grip.

"I shouted at him to stop. But he turned the blade again. Blood, I hoped, but something darker than blood, actually, started running out the hole. I knew he’d ruined everything. The chip was already useless. Somehow his wrist turned still again and the sound that came from his skull was nothing I’d heard before. A slurp. Some dreadful rupture of blood escaping and grey matter giving way to the alien force of steel. His naked body flopped suddenly, lunged at me. Arms flailing. Blade skittering across the floor. I pushed him backwards over the tub. Eyes still open, black sap oozing from the hole in its head. I was looking at an honest-to-god zombie and this blood-soaked thing somehow grabs my leg. So I kicked it. And kicked, and kicked. Its face … Finally, it lay in the tub, legs hanging over the edge."

"Messy business," James said. "How much to clean it up?"

"Cost almost nothing at all," Zimmerman replied. "Some are born with money. Others are born with looks. Some," he eyed James, "are blessed with something else."

"Good hair, perhaps," James said. "But, again, I’m not what you’re looking for."

"My little tale didn’t frighten you, did it, Mr. Truitt?"

Holding out his other hand, James pushed the business end of the completed trephine into his palm and the serrated teeth pricked his skin. He turned clockwise, lightly, and the teeth grabbed hold, tearing away the flesh easily. He winced and pulled the tool aside to inspect his hand. A perfect jagged-edged circle was cut into the palm, the blood welling to the surface. "To tell the truth," he said, "it may have increased my interest."

"I’d hoped it might. And I’ve judged your talent carefully." Zimmerman pointed to the small stack of books on the table. "I don’t make my selections frivolously." He grabbed one of the books and squinted at the back jacket. "An ‘electrifying new spirit,’ " he read. " ‘Mr. Truitt achieves the heroic and ruin of man simultaneously in a voice for this age.’ "

"The Times clearly don’t know shit either," James said. "I was writing song lyrics. Surely, a man of your obvious means and taste is capable of acquiring the same from a more celebrated poet."

Zimmerman reset the book. "I enjoy your work a great deal. I have two poets already in my collection, but your distinct voice is the missing piece. And, if I may remain candid?"

"Why stop?"

"I know you need the money. I know about the various menial jobs. That your wife left you. Your address has changed no less than six times in the past three years. Rotting away in that pit of a city. This offer is best received by those at a certain point in their career. The ballerina who blew out her knee. The heroin-burned pianist. The forgotten playwright. Insolvent, erstwhile."

"The forgotten poet," James finished the thought. "But, if you know all this, then you must also know that I no longer write."

"Yes. And, so, imagine what you’ve stored away."

"For you?" James set the trephine aside and ran his fingers across the last two pieces. A thin metal bone rasp to pry the now-detached chip free from the skull, and a small brush for any resultant bone dust at the end of the procedure. "I told you, I’m not a poet. I’d once hoped writing could provide the best conduit for my thoughts, my impressions, my ‘muse’ if you will." James wiped his bloodied hand on his pants. "But, it did not. I was wrong."

Zimmerman motioned for him to take his chair again, and James sat. "You’re an artist, Mr. Truitt, whether you write the words down, or not. That which made your work, made you, so unique. Which makes so few special. It’s still inside you."

"What would yours show, I wonder."

"Mine?" Zimmerman noticed for the first time that James had carried the serrated trephine blade back to his chair. "Nothing, I’m afraid, Mr. Truitt. I’ve found that most people, from the dockhand to the banker, are quite ordinary, after all."

"Most people are fortunate in that way."

Zimmerman leaned forward. "I won’t lie to you, Truitt. You would lose something more than bone tonight. A bit of what makes you special that will never come back." He rang a small bell on a table next to the couch. "Of course, there’ll always be the hope that it might."

James settled back into his chair and finished his glass of wine, the trephine blade resting in his lap, and waited for a servant to appear. Instead, a woman entered the room. Thin and younger than Zimmerman, perhaps beautiful if not for the lifeless eyes. James watched her and decided she had once been someone worth watching. But only many years before.

Zimmerman stood to kiss her cheek. "My wife, Brigitte," he told James. "I must excuse myself for a moment. But she will be kind enough to keep you company until my return."

The woman nodded and he exited. As soon as he’d gone, she’d disregarded James and the rest of the room to simply stare at the fire; she as ancient and dark, as dead, as anything else kept in the house.

James stood and crossed to the cabinet again, placed the trephine blade back into the case. Looked over the display of bones, picked one randomly, half-convinced it had called out to him somehow. He lifted it off its stand. It was ashen colored and cold to the touch. Grainy.

He wrapped his hand around the chip. The sensation and images came immediately. A burst of senses. Of movement. Dancing. The rhythm shifting through his ears and body. His very heart lifting to the tempo which moved through him. Or had the music moved toward him. He felt lifted, cool air rushing over his face. Strong hands locked at his hips. These hands did not attack him, didn’t bruise and hurt. These hands supported and caressed. They became one with his skin, with his movement, gentle. Strong. His body shuddered against their press, the heat of another body embraced alongside his. His own muscles taut and powerful, he slipped away from the hands, not too far, an instrument of the music. Leaping across the stage, leaping across the field. As if God himself were dancing through him, leaping beside him, celebrating life … celebrating James Truitt.

"Christ almighty," he stammered and let go of the chip.

He stood before the cabinet, trembling. Throughout, Zimmerman’s wife had watched him. Both terror and wonder in her face. His breaths were quick and short. He thought of reaching for another chip. Tried to decide which one to grab next.

"Would you like another drink?" the woman asked suddenly, with a soft, dispirited voice. She’d fallen back into her trained routine.

"No," James said. "Which one is yours?"

She looked directly at him, a spark of life in her eyes for the first time. "Which …"

He waited.

"I was a magnificent coloratura soprano," she said, her gaze drifting near the cabinet. "The ‘next Callas,’ some said. I performed in the world’s greatest houses."

"And your price?" he asked.

"This," the woman said. "All of it. Nearly a billion and … And when he’s gone …"

"The collection."

"I can still sing," she said. "But that something which always made it, somehow, more than singing. That’s what sits on his shelf now." She dared another look at the cabinet. "One day it will be mine again."

"To hold like the others?" James said, "for brief flashes of what you once had."

"No, no!" She glared at him, eyes wide, wild. "I thought of all that. I did! I did." Her hand reached up and pulled aside greying hair to reveal the hole in her head. A perfect circle the size of a poker chip. It was yellowed and crusted over, the old wound filled with something, and despite his best efforts, James made a grunt of disgust.

"Wax," the woman explained. "After … after my operation, I filled it with wax." The grin faded and she contemplated the fire again. "That way, when this is all mine, I can put it back," she murmured. It came out as a plea, a prayer almost. "I can put it back."

He wondered if she’d ever truly believed such a thing were possible. "What will you —"

Zimmerman re-entered the room. "Getting along nicely then? Good. Looks like everyone is coming to know each other just fine. Did she tell you to run?"

James shook his head, watching Zimmerman’s wife. "Not yet."

"Unexpected. Brigitte always does. But no one has yet." He’d again grabbed one of Truitt’s books. "I sometimes suspect you might actually like Man, Mr. Truitt."

"The ideal of, yes. And am only disappointed in the truth. It’s that disappointment I’ve always sought release from through my craft. Whatever that craft may be." He tapped several of the chips lightly again, petting them almost. "Is that really what you want in your … Your collection?"

"Yes."

James turned to him. "Then I agree," he said.

Zimmerman clapped mutely, his eyes smiling. "Wonderful."

"A few things, first."

"That wasn’t our agreement." Zimmerman’s voice was cautious, bitter.

"Where’s Brigittes’ chip?"

"Her …" Zimmerman squinted at his wife and then back to James. "That’s not your —"

"Sure it is," James crossed the room in three quick steps and took hold of the woman’s hand. "Come on," he said. "Let’s find it."

"Truitt!" Zimmerman raged, stomping after them.

"Sit down," James said.

Zimmerman studied him, then took his seat. "You won’t find it."

"Let’s see." James reached into the case.

"Please …" the woman said.

"Please, what? It’s now or never, darling. Decisions have been made." He’d reached to touch her head and she pulled away. James grabbed hold of her neck, from behind. It was half-gentle, as if he were going to give her their first big Hollywood kiss. She whirled back with his force and he slipped his hand up, revealing the hole.

"Don’t," Zimmerman said quietly.

James ignored him and, holding back her hair with his four fingers, sought the hole with his thumb. He rubbed the top of it, the wax thick, stiff, but warm to touch. He stroked it, watching her, wondering what his touch might do. She froze next to him, eyes closed.

His thumb sunk deeper, pushing in a fraction. How far, he thought, how far can I press before the black stuff comes out and she’s thrashing on the floor at my feet. He made a circular motion, testing the width of the wound. He moved in his thumb as if he were moving between a woman’s legs, slow circular movements pressing deeper with each rotation. She responded. Chest lifting, the feminine indent below her back shifting inward. She breathed deeply against his probing hand. Shuddered against his prying, intrusive … and yet confident touch.

He pressed further, the wax curling over the thumb’s joint, collecting at his knuckle. It spread to his second finger, warm and tacky. His circle widened, dared to press outward. He found the edges. Edges of bone. Brigitte’s skull. He countered his swirling, the outline of the hole clear to his hand. Finally, he felt something that wasn’t wax and the woman jolted beside him.

"Truitt …" he heard Zimmerman say his name, a warning of some kind.

He pulled his hand away and she gasped. The touch broken and lost between them. She looked up at him, eyes passive and sleepy. James inspected the hole, saw for the first time what he thought was … inside her. He cleared away the remaining wax and examined the old cut. She quivered again beside him and he pulled her closer, tilted her head.

"Yes," she said, still and languid.

He bent forward and brought his mouth to the hole.

"Truitt!" Zimmerman jumped from his seat, but didn’t move another inch. He stood rooted watching.

The kiss was short, James’s lips pressing around the edges of the hole. The tongue darted inside, flickering against her. She’d collapsed against him and his hand dropped to her waist to hold her steady as they stepped to the cabinet. "Do you know which one?"

She shook her head.

He examined the cabinet, then reached out. Selected one of the chips. "I do," he said. He brought it up to her head and she shrank away from him again. "Brigitte," he appealed.

She lifted her chin proudly. "Don’t you need to hold it?" she asked. "To know for sure?"

"No." He held it to her head again. This time, she didn’t move. She stood like one of the statues in her front yard. James positioned the chip into place. Guided it carefully and it slid in, lodging easily enough. He pressed until it was wedged fully down again.

"Yes," she said. "That’s right. I … There’s something."

"Looks like we found it." James looked at Zimmerman. Then back to the woman, Brigitte, looking for something in her eyes that might tell him everything was fixed again. That her plan had worked. Would she directly break into song? He expected not.

"Nothing," she verified. "There was a flash. A brief … It was really me again. The whole me."

"I’m happy for you." James brushed the hair from her face.

"But only for a moment," she muttered. "I can’t remember now."

"I thought as much."

"Maybe it just takes more time," she said. "Maybe …"

"Enough of this!" Zimmerman snapped. "You apparently have what you wanted. Now I will have what was promised."

James smiled. "My own chip in your filthy collection."

"Filthy? You’ll be immortalized," Zimmerman said. "That thing which makes you so special, your greatest talent, will become something real. More real than any chapbook, award or verse. You will share your true self with another human. What more could any artist want?"

"To share my true self with God? With myself."

"Fine, fine," said Zimmerman. "Brigitte, I …" He stumbled over his words. The woman hovered like a ghost in the corner, something lost in her eyes. James saw too she was fading. "Darling," Zimmerman managed, and he choked on the word. He too now recognized the creature that stood across the room. "If you’ll excuse us."

Brigitte nodded distantly and dragged toward the door. When she was halfway across the room, James moved and caught her again. His slender hands seizing her head and neck in one swift move. With another, he’d jerked his right arm and there was a terrible crack.

Her body slumped to the floor. Zimmerman had remained frozen throughout. James stood breathing heavily, looking at his own palms.

"Sit," he said again.

Zimmerman whirled on him, staring with confused eyes. "What … What have you done?"

"I told you I wasn’t a poet."

"You …" Zimmerman trembled, his jaw slack, the soft, full lips quivering. His legs gave, and he collapsed to the couch as ordered.

"My wife didn’t leave me," James said. "She was the fourth. There’ve been others since. Eleven. No, twelve. Thirteen, now, I suppose." He shrugged, glancing down at Brigitte. "I’ve tried to move. To avoid certain kinds of people, but … But I suppose my own collection has also grown over the years."

"You’re … You … You can’t do this," Zimmerman said weakly. "You can’t." But still, he didn’t move.

They never did, James thought, and so he kept talking. He had time. He always did. "Art did not satisfy. Poetry did not, could not, satisfy," he said. "So I returned to what I’d found before as a younger man." A small smile. A memory. "To better explore a truer talent, a truer craft, once again." His hand wrapped around Zimmerman’s throat. "I still hope that I’m wrong about this. I still like to think there’s something else, something else that makes me ‘unique.’ "

James held the scalpel again.

Zimmerman sneered, shaking beneath him. "Now what Truitt? You’ll kill me too and steal all the money. Is that it?"

"Now we operate," James replied.

"Ten million dollars. Fifty million."

James grabbed hold and brought the blade over Zimmerman’s head in one swift movement, running it from between his eyes to the back of his neck. Zimmerman screamed and James kept cutting. Then, across the floor to the cabinet, the case of tools. It wasn’t easy. Zimmerman was a heavier man and flailed like a child having a tantrum. James had kicked until the squirming slowed, held him to the floor. With his free hand, he’d reached back into the case for the small saw. Soon, the line had become a shallow groove.

"That looks good enough," James had said, and Zimmerman whimpered under him. James next set the saw aside and grabbed hold of the trephine, lined up the edge, grabbed the T’d top, and turned once, turned, turned. Zimmerman lay still beneath him when James grabbed the steel rasp and slid it into the fresh ridge. Found the right spot, lifted, rotating the wrist. "Look at that," he said, holding up the freed bone.

James didn’t know if it was the pain, the fear, or the spilling blood, but Zimmerman’s next words were sloppy, drunken and wet. "So now … now you have … my chip. Is that all—"

"I don’t want your damned chip," James laughed. "You told me it wouldn’t show a thing. And I believe you." He tossed the bone into the fire. "This is just practice."

Zimmerman’s eyes widened, the blood running off his brow and down his cheeks. James pushed him back to the ground, held him still. Found another spot in the skull. And started sawing.

§

The first eight times, he’d done quite well. Tossing each finished cut into the slowly-dying fire; really got the hang of it. Slipped on the ninth, though. So little bone by then. Cut too deep, he guessed.

He stood quite alone in front of the cabinet again, a handful of the original chips collected from their stands into his hand.

He clutched the first off of the small stack. An instinctive burst of colors, light, shadow, smell of paint, his hand seizing the brush, the canvas, beauty …

Grabbed another. Words, empathy, moving across the stage, laughter, warm light, applause, reflection …

Another. Movement, breathing, tempo, the weight of a hand against him again, blending, dance forms structured around the nine rasas, elation …

James let the remaining chips in the stack fall from his fingers. He reached into the case of tools and took hold of the scalpel.

Looking in the mirror, he made the first incision.

Originally appeared in Murky Depths (Issue 8, 2009)

Currently appearing in the collection first communions available now from Apex Publications!

Geoffrey Girard writes thrillers, young adult novels, and short speculative fiction. First appearing in Writers of the Future in 2003, Geoffrey has since sold more than sixty short stories, including the Tales Of … series, a collection of original tales based on U.S. history and folklore. His novels include Cain’s Blood, a techno thriller, and the Stoker-nominated Project Cain, a YA companion novel, both published by Simon & Schuster. Geoffrey graduated from Washington College with a literature degree and has an MA in creative writing from Miami University. He is the Department Chair of English at a private boys’ school in Cincinnati where he teaches literature, horror, and creative writing; and a frequent lecturer and workshop instructor at schools, universities and writers’ conferences. For more information, visit www.GeoffreyGirard.com.

Apex Magazine Issue 84 Preview

Next month in Apex Magazine, we will have original fiction by Stephen Cox ("1957"), David K. Yeh ("Cottage Country"), and Maggie Slater ("The Behemoth Beaches"). Our poetry is by FJ Bergmann, Ken Poyner, Jana Layton, and Christina Sng. Our reprint is a novelette by Lavie Tidhar ("The Drowned Celestial"). Cover art will be by Robert Carter. Look for this and more in Apex Magazine issue 84, coming in May, 2016.

Copyrights and Acknowledgments

“Words from the Editor-in-Chief” Copyright © 2016 by Jason Sizemore
“The Laura Ingalls Experience” Copyright © 2016 by Andrew Neil Gray
“Interview with Author Andrew Neil Gray” Copyright © 2016 by Andrea Johnson
“The Teratologist’s Brother” Copyright © 2016 by Brandon H. Bell
“The Farmer’s Milk” Copyright © 2016 by John Yu Branscum
“Myth of the Mud God” Copyright © 2016 by Michael VanCalbergh
“Song of Encantado” Copyright © 2016 by Jeremy Paden
“Fertility” Copyright © 2016 by Craig Finlay
“The Quidnunx” Copyright © 2014 by Catherynne M. Valente (Originally appeared in Harvest Season, ISFic Press, 2014)
“Interview with Cover Artist Sarah Zar” Copyright © 2016 by Russell Dickerson
“Collecting James” Copyright © 2009 by Geoffrey Girard (Originally appeared in Murky Depths issue 8, 2009)

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore
Managing Editor—Lesley Conner
Poetry Editor—Bianca Spriggs
Assistant Editor—Hannah Ruth Krieger

Slush Editors—Andrea Johnson, Anna Middleton, Beth Sutherland, Beverly McPherson, Carolyn Charron, Dawn Griffin, Eileen Maksym, Gabrielle Harbowy, Jessica Nelson, Joshua Cowell, Joshua P'ng, Kate Dollarhyde, Kendal Pletcher, Lauren Smith, Lia Swope Mitchell, Lindsay Anderson, Lisa Bolekaja, Mandy Johnson-Parker, Mike Baldwin, Pandalion Death, Rebecca Hurley, Reese Menezes, Samantha Williams, Stephanie Harris, and Tacoma Tomilson.

Graphic Designer—Justin Stewart

ISSN: 2157-1406

Apex Publications
PO Box 24323
Lexington, KY 40524

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