400 Boys and 50 More

Several years ago, contrary to the evidence of most of the stories in this section, I made a conscious decision to stop imitating other writers. I swore off Lovecraft; I gave up Philip K. Dick as a guide to reality-based plot-twists; I kicked my thousand volume set of Jack Vance novels out of bed. (Just kidding, I cradled them to me tenderly.) I set out blindly, or mutely, to find my own voice.

Imitation has always been part of my method. I unconsciously mimic voices, as a defense mechanism or a way of empathizing with others, or perhaps a bit of both. Like many writers, I hear voices in my head when I am writing, a professional hazard that helps me write dialog and create characters, but also makes it substantially harder to tell when my loved ones are asking for help with the housework. But while I am a sucker for stylists, and forever trying to write like my idols, this has come at the cost of rarely paying attention to my own voice.

I have tried to accept the fact that to some extent my voice is a misshapen melange of everything I’ve loved. Perhaps no distinct, unmistakable style will ever emerge from the mishmash I call me; I remain as unsure as ever of exactly how this process of being a writer is supposed to work (aside from the writing part).

The fact is, when I swore off mimicry, I did it in a terrible Arnold Schwarzenegger voice.

Maybe I shouldn’t listen to myself after all.

The rest of you definitely shouldn’t.

POKKY MAN

VERNOR HERTZWIG

FILMMAKER

In 2004 I was contacted by Digito of America to review some film footage they had acquired in litigation with the estate of a young Pokkypet Master named Hemlock Pyne. While I have occasionally played boardgames such as Parchesi, and various pen and paper role playing games involving dwarves and wizards, in vain hopes of escaping the nightmare ordeals that infest my soul, I was hardly the target audience for the global phenomenon of Pokkypets. I knew only the bare lineaments of the young man’s story—namely that he had been at one time considered the greatest captor of Pokkypets the world had ever known. Few of these rare yet paradoxically ubiquitous creatures had escaped being added to his collection. But he had turned against his fellow trainers, who now hurled at him the sort of venom and resentment usually reserved for race traitors. The childish, even cartoonish aspects of the story, were far from appealing to me, especially as spending time on a hundred or so hours of Pokkypet footage would mean delaying my then-unfunded cinematic paean to those dedicated paleoanthropologists who study human coprolites or fossil feces. But there was an element of treachery and tragedy that lured me to look more carefully at the life and last days of Hemlock Pyne, as well as the amount of money Digito was offering. I found the combination irresistible.

HEMLOCK PYNE

POKKY MASTER

To be a Pokky Captor was for me the highest calling—the highest calling! I never dreamed of wanting anything else. All through my childhood, I trained for it. It was a kind of warrior celebration… a pokkybration, you might say, of the warrior spirit. I lived, ate, breathed, drank, even pooped the Pokky spirit. Yes, pooped. Because there is dignity in everything they do. When it comes to Pokkypets, there is no room for shame—not even in pooping. In a sense, I was no different from many, many other children who dream of being Pokky Captors. The only difference between me and you, children like you who might be watching this, is that I didn’t give up on my dream. Maybe it’s because I was such a loser in every other part of my life–yeah, imagine that, I know it’s difficult, right?–but I managed to pull myself free of all those other bonds and throw myself completely into the world of Pokkypets. And I don’t care who you are or where you are, but that is still possible today.

VERNOR HERTZWIG

Hemlock Pyne’s natural enthusiasm connected him ineluctably with the childish world of Pokkypets—the world he never really escaped. The more I studied his footage, the more I saw a boy trapped inside a gawky man-child’s body. It was no wonder to me that he had such difficulty relating to the demands of the adult world. In cleaving to his prejuvenile addictions, it was clear that Pyne hoped to escape his own decay, and for this reason threw himself completely into a world that seems on its face eternal and unchanging. The irony is that in pursuing a childish wonderland, he penetrated the barrier that protects our fragile grasp on sanity by keeping us from seeing too much of the void that underlines the lurid cartoons of corporate consumer culture, as they caper in a crazed dumbshow above the abyss.

PITER YALP

ACTOR

I think we knew, and assumed Hemlock knew, where was this was probably heading. And it’s hard to see a person you care for, a friend of many years, make the sorts of decisions he made that put him ever deeper into danger. It didn’t really help to know that it was all he cared for, that all this danger was justified in a way by passion, by love. And when you saw him light up from talking about it, it was hard to argue. He’d never had anything like that in his life. I mean, he’d been through a lot. Coming back to Pokkypets, sure it seemed childish at first, but he was so disconnected from everything anyway, we had to root for him, you know? But we still feared for him. He never did anything halfway, you know? Whenever he started anything, you always knew he was going to push it past any extreme you could imagine. So it was only sort of… sort of a shock, but more of a dreaded confirmation, when we heard the news. I remember I was in the kitchen nuking some popcorn for dinner, and the kids were watching Pokkypets on, you know, the Pokkypets network… and then our youngest said, “Look, it’s Uncle Hemlock!” Which seemed weird at first because why would he be on their cartoon? But then I saw it was the Pokkypets Evening News, and even though the sound was turned up full, I found I couldn’t hear what the anchorman was saying. I just stared at the picture of Hemlock they’d put up there… the most famous shot of him, crouched in the Pokkymaze, letting an injured Chickapork out of a Poachyball… and from the way the camera slowly zoomed back from the photo, I knew right then… he wouldn’t be coming back to us this time.

AUGUSTINE “GUST” MASTERS

SEAPLANE PILOT

I was friends with Hem for years and years, used to fly him out here to the Pokkymaze in midsummer, come and collect him before fall settled in; I’d check in from time to time to see how he was doing, and drop off the occasional supply. He was a special sort of guy, and there won’t never be another like him. For one thing, he was fearless, as you can imagine you’d have to be to try living right here like he did. From where we’re standing, you can watch the migratory routes of about 150 different types of Pokkypets; everything from the super common Pecksniffs, to the Gold-n-Silver Specials, to the uniques like Abyssoid, who comes up out of this here lake once a year for about thirty seconds at 8:37 a.m. on September 9, and only if the 9th happens to fall on a Tuesday. Really it’s a Captor’s dream, or would be if it wasn’t a preserve. Hem came out here every year, and never once tried to capture or collect a single one of the Pokkys… in fact they were more likely to collect him. He got adopted by Chickapork to the extent you couldn’t tell who belonged to who. Anyway… he made it a point of pride that he never carried a Poachyball, that he was here to protect the Pokkypets, to prevent them from being collected. When he was young he was a heck of a Captor, but once he put that aside, that was it. He didn’t try charming them with flutes or putting them to sleep; he didn’t freeze or paralyze them with any of Professor Sequoia’s Dust Infusion, or Thunderwhack a single one. He came out empty handed, and tried to make a Pokky out of himself, I guess. If I had to pick one thing, I guess I’d say that right there was his undoing. That and Surlymon.

VERNOR HERTZWIG

What others saw as evidence of everything from low self image to schizophrenia, was to Hemlock Pyne nothing more than a kind of dramatic stage lighting, necessary to cast an imposing shadow over a world that considered him but a smalltime actor in a community theater production. It did not matter to the rest of the world that in this tawdry play, Hemlock Pyne had the leading role; but to Pyne himself, nothing else mattered. He had cast himself in the part of the renegade Captor who would give himself completely to his beloved Pets. That it was to be a tragic role, I suspect would not have stopped him. And while he seems to have had premonitions of his fate, he could have asked any number of those who spent their lives working in and around the Pokky Range, and have heard many predictions that would end up remarkably close to the eventual outcome.

AUGUSTINE “GUST” MASTERS

Right here is where I came in for my usual rendezvous, at the appointed time, ready to take him out of here. At first I thought maybe I had the day wrong, because usually I’d expect to see him with all his gear packed up and waiting here on the shore. It was later in the year than he’d ever stayed, not our usual date, so I thought it was my mistake, and I went hollering up the hillside trail here toward his camp, figuring maybe he could use a hand packing up his stuff. But halfway up the trail here I got a really funny feeling… not a nice feeling at all. I never travel here without a few extra Poachyballs, and some Coma Flakes—I mean, I’m no Hemlock, I come prepared for anything. And I was just freeing up a Poachyball in case I had to make an emergency capture, when I heard this grumbling in the brush off to the side of the trail, and very clearly I could hear a big old Pokkypet crawling around in there, just saying its name over and over again so there was no mistaking what I was up against. Going, “Surly… Surly…” Like that. Just a nasty old Pokky, saying its name like a warning… that one bad note over and over again.

Well, I don’t mind saying it scared me, and forgot about trying to catch it, since that’s a tough one to collect even if you’re fully prepared. I didn’t have any Pokkypets of my own to back me up. So I hightailed it back to the plane, and took off, just cold and sweatin, my guts full of icewater, you know. I tried to get Hemlock on his radio a couple times, but no answer there, and I was starting to believe we weren’t going to get anymore answers at all. I brought the plane in low over the maze, low as I could, and the way Hem would hide his tent in the trees I knew it would be hard to get a clear picture of what was going on there—but as I was flying over, the wind swept over pretty hard. Banked me a bit just as it was parting the trees around his campsite, and I got one clear look that I’ll never forget. Right below me, the tent had been flattened so that the poles were sticking up out of it. Gear was scattered everywhere—clothes, camera equipment, pots and pans. And Hemlock was scattered everywhere too, in and around the tent. I hardly knew what I was seeing. His head staring up at me, on the other side of the site from his chest; an arm here, a leg there. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were open, but I didn’t see how they could be. I figured he had to be sleeping after an attack like that. I knew I’d need help getting him out of there, so I banked into the wind and headed back to town.

HEMLOCK PYNE

10 DAYS BEFORE THE END

This is Surlymon. He’s a very old Pokkypet, and we’re just getting to know each other. I’m not usually here in the Pokkymaze this late in the year, but I had a little upset at the airport and decided I was not ready to leave my Pokky friends just yet to return to all the… all the bullpoop and the hassle of… of poopy humans back in the so-called real world. Just wasn’t ready. So here I am, and some of my old friends seem to have moved on, and some new Pokkys have moved in. It’s the migratory time, you see… all a completely natural part of the Pokkypet cycle, and pretty exciting to see it in action. Not to say that there isn’t danger here—there’s plenty of it. But that’s what keeps me going. Nobody else could do what I do… give themselves to the protection of the Pokkypets the way I do. And they respect me for it. They know that I have the best of intentions… that I’d be one of them if I could. But in the meantime, I’m getting to know Surlymon here… getting to earn his trust. Isn’t that right, Surlymon? We’re getting to know each other. Yes we are! Yes we are! Now… hey… HEY! Watch it! Back off! That is not cool, Surlymon. Not cool. Good, Pokky. Okay, good old Pokky. Yes, you’re a good old boy, I know, I know. I love you. I love you. I’m sorry I had to snap at you like that. I’m Hemlock, okay? Hemlock! Hemlock! Hemlock! I love you. Hemlock loves you. Hemlock. Hemlock…. Hemlock.

AUGUSTUS “JUSTICE” PEACE

HELICOPTER PILOT

I’ve known Gust for years, and through him I knew Hemlock Pyne, though we weren’t what you’d call close. That day he came back with news about Hemlock’s troubles, I could tell he’d seen something that nobody should see. Well we called the Pokky Park Service, which is basically every other person around here, and we got three Captors together and I took us out in the chopper. We landed on Baldymon Hill, which overlooks the Pokkymaze, and they went on down there while I kept an eye on the chopper, ready to light out at a moment’s notice. I could hear them when they caught up with the Surlymon. They had some pretty tough pets with em, but that sonofabitch was tough. It took all three Captors in full Pokkybattle, and each one of them used at least three Poachyballs, setting their own pets on the Surlymon. It took eight—eight!–Pokkypets to wear down that Surlymon. I think the final attack was a full-on Typhon-Crash-Mastery move, and then the Surlymon finally went into slumber. It was only then that the thing was vulnerable and they could poach it. I heard all this, mind, I didn’t see any of it… but I’ll tell you, every time I heard that thing giving out its call, my blood ran cold. “Surly! Surly!” Well, I can’t do it. It was a horrible sound though. When they finally came crashing through the underbrush dragging the Poachyball, with their own poor little pets limping along behind, the Captors looked like they’d been involved in the struggle themselves… and I don’t mean psychically.

But then it was over to me and Gust. He led me back down the hill and into the maze, to the campsite, and there was Hemlock Pyne in a dozen pieces. It was weird and awful. Gust called his name a few times, trying to wake him up, because we didn’t really realize the extent of it yet… It was a sleep like nothing we’d ever seen. I had some Sudden Stir powder with me and I sprinkled it in his eyes, but it didn’t do a thing. And I’ve never seen a Pokkypet or Captor yet who could sleep through that stuff. After a while we decided we’d best get him into town to the Pokky Clinic, so we gathered up the pieces. Filled four Poachyballs with the parts. That was all we had to carry him in.

MADRONA SEQUOIA

FRIEND, POKKYCOLOGIST

What Hemlock wanted was a way to mutate into a Pokkypet himself. He was very, very uncomfortable being in his own skin, especially when it meant he was a Captor or Master of Pokkypets. He wanted to merge with the Pokkys… become one of them, share in their alchemic process. Hemlock sensed a transformative power in them, and he wanted this for himself. When he was studying with me, we went through the triadic life cycle of the typical healthy Pokkypet, following its course in many, many creatures. When he first went out into the Pokky Range with the idea of studying and protecting the pets, you know, he placed himself in the habitat of the Pigletta. It was a good fit for him, since they are such friendly creatures, but his ulterior motive was to bond so closely with one that it would allow him to stay with it through all its transformations. Of course everyone who adopts a Pigletta feels that theirs is special, and that they have a unique friendship… but in Hemlock’s case I think there is a real argument for this. After all, he had stopped collecting at that point; he never stunned his Pokkypet or trapped it even briefly in a Poachyball to subdue it. He made friends with it as if he were another of its kind, and in his second summer back there, he was witness to its first transition into Chickapork. I know how much Hemlock wanted to see the final change to Boarax… which, sadly, took place in the autumn immediately after Surlymon, so he missed it. This, as I say, was a spiritual quest for him, and he welcomed its transformative intensity from the first, even though in the eyes of other Pokkypet Captors he immediately went from role model to traitor. This was when people started saying he was crazy, sending nasty letters, even making threats. This is when the Missile Kids stepped up their attacks on his character. It got harder and harder for me to bear, but Hemlock said to pay it no mind. It didn’t bother him. The only thing that bothered him anymore was any sort of threat to his beloved Pokkypets.

VERNOR HERTZWIG

At the same time that Hemlock Pyne was alienating his former worshippers, he was winning for himself a new audience that would one day be captivated by his insights and his breathtaking cinematic records of his life among the Pokkypets… a life that few have ever attempted, let alone accomplished. Going through his films, I found him to have possessed an innate genius—not only for capturing Pokkypets, but for capturing moments of pure cinema. Here, we see Pyne in his early summer campsite, a spot he pitched between the dens of burrowing Chickaporks, so that he could live among the frolicking Piglettas.

HEMLOCK PYNE

This is Chickapork. My Chickapork. We’re long time buddies, aren’t we, yes we are. Chickapork is my most beloved Pokkypet, and it’s really important to understand that we are mutual friends. I do not own him. I did not capture him. I have never imprisoned him in a Poachyball. So you see, it is possible for us to have a harmonious relationship with these beautiful creatures without have to… Hey! This… this is Pigletta… this is one of Chickapork’s offspring or little sibs, I’m not sure exactly—hey, where are you going with my cap? Come back with that cap, Pigletta! That is a very important cap! That was a gift from Professor Manzanita! Oh… oh god, oh no… A lot depends on that cap, Pigletta! Get… give me back my cap! WHERE’S MY FUCKING POKKYMASTER CAP?

PROFESSOR MANZANITA

POKKYPET EXPERT

In the field, it was obvious that he wanted nothing more than to be a Pokkypet. He would act just like them. The simple continual act of stating his identity with such clarity, this thing the Pokkypets do incessantly, Hemlock adopted this behavior. If you want out to visit him in the field, or if you were an unsuspecting Captor who came across him, Hem would act as if human language and human behavior were completely unknown to him. He would just say his name at you, over and over, like a Pokkypet. His mantra, his act of affirmation: Hemlock. Hemlock. Hemlock. He saw the Pokky world as a rare and simplified place, everything streamlined and stripped down to this one act of self-naming. That world had a siren’s allure for him. But that world… simply did not exist. The truth was far more complex.

TAIGA MOSS

CURATOR, POKKY NATIONAL WILDERNESS MUSEUM

Well, I’m afraid although Hemlock Pyne might be a hero to some people, to us he seems simply deluded. Our relationship with the Pokkypets goes back tens of thousands of years, to when we believe the Pokkys and people shared this land. We treated each other with respect, and we have done so throughout our history. We created the original Poachyballs, and we captured and collected the first Pokkypets to be captured and collected. We held the first Pokky battles; those rituals are very ancient, the result of the relationship between man and Pokkypet. So there is a very long tradition of understanding between our people and the Pokky people. I would say that what Hemlock did, was the ultimate disrespect. In living among the Pokky, in treating them as cute cartoon characters, he crossed a boundary and paid the price. The ultimate price. There is a reason he will not wake up, and honestly, we don’t expect him to. I think a lot of people are in denial about the sort of trouble he caused for himself… and really for all of us, because I don’t know if it will stop with Hemlock. There has always been this barrier from time long past… and he damaged it. Irretrievably. It’s plain to see if you’ll just look at him. Truly look at him for once.

JASPER CHRYSOLITE

POKKY CLINIC

We are here, in cold storage, at the Pokky Clinic, because quite simply this is the only place we have been able to arrest the very strange and terrible processes that have Hemlock Pyne in their grip. In those steel drawers behind me, if I were to open them, you would see Hemlock Pyne much as he was when they brought him in to me for revival. As you already know, I was unable to wake him, even with the finest waking compounds at my disposal. I say “much as he was” because Hemlock did not stay as he was in those first hours. The separate parts of him lost their normal color… some began to swell, others to wither… and there was a terrible odor associated with him, which I would rather not go into. Whatever this process is, some sort of Pokky contagion he caught from Surlymon or elsewhere in the Pokkymaze, I had a sort of hunch that extreme cold might arrest it; and so we arranged for some cold storage, which has indeed seemed to do the trick. We will of course keep trying to wake him as time permits; and if we can devise some other approach to his condition. We also have that Surlymon captive and under observation, in hopes of understanding better what happened… but for all we can tell, it is simply a Surlymon like every other Surlymon. There is nothing special about it. Which makes us think that whatever strange thing happened to Hemlock Pyne, it was purely a result of his peculiar make-up, his particular situation. It behooves us therefore to try and understand Hemlock himself a little better. Really, what else can we do?

CRYSTAL BURL

Would I say I was his girlfriend? Why yes, yes I would. I mean, not always, but… but we were always friends. We founded Pokky People together. We were inseparable. We met when we were both working at Mistress Masham’s in the Mall, and Hem was in charge of the Pokky performance. They had a little routine they did where the Pokkys would come out and dance on your table—I mean, various small Pokkys. Nothing large or unhygienic. All the food at Mistress Mashams was served under silver covers, and the Pokkpets would whisk these away with a big flourish. Hem would come out with a half dozen Poachyballs, open them up, and set the Pokkys going. I thought it was pathetic, and I told him so… and he confided in me that he was only in there as a saboteur. I thought he was kidding, trying to impress me, but no… one night right after we really got to talking, he went into his usual routine, but everything was different this time. He’d packed a bunch of wild Pokkys into the balls, and he let them loose in the middle of a little kid’s birthday party. The Pokkys went crazy—eating up the food, tearing into presents, getting underfoot. And out of nowhere Hem kept producing more and more Poachyballs, opening them up, setting them free. He was laughing, we were both howling, and the more freaked out everybody got, the more delighted Hem was. It seemed to feed the Pokkys’ frenzy. They were swinging from the light fixtures, smashing windows, breaking out into the streets… oh, it was on the news that night and for days, and it was really the beginning of Hem’s mystery… because right after that he disappeared. I didn’t see him myself for months and months. It turned out he had made his first visit to the Pokky Range.

VERNOR HERTZWIG

Alone in the wild, Hemlock began to craft his own legend—fashioning himself into a creature as strange and colorful as the Pokkypets he adored. Against a backdrop of untouched wilderness, he portrayed himself an uncivilized man, fearless and ferocious yet as sweet as the creatures he refused to capture. It was as if in liberating the Pokkypets wherever he found them, he was setting free some caged part of himself.

HEMLOCK PYNE

I used to just dabble in Pokkypets. I captured and trained them like everyone else. I saw nothing but what was right in front of me. I never looked any deeper. And I was troubled. Our world, the world of people, is so shallow… it’s just a thin coat of paint, right on the surface, and that’s enough for most people. The Pokkys are colorful and cute and uncomplicated, and that’s all they need to know. But this wasn’t the truth, and without truth I just… I wasn’t making it. I needed the truth that was under all that. I did drugs. I drank. I lived a crazy, crazy life. Nobody knew me. I didn’t know myself. I was drinking so much, doing so many drugs, it was destroying my mind. All the colors started to blur together. I couldn’t tell Chickapork from Leomonk from Swirlet. It was like when you mix all the colors of paint together and you just get a greyish brownish gunk. And then one day a Flutterflute, I was drinking on the beach, out of my skull, and a Flutterflute landed on the bottle just as I was about to take a swallow. Who knows… it might have been my last swallow. I might have drainked that bottle and thrown it aside and walked out into the waves and that would have been the end. But I watched that Flutterflute there, getting in the way of my drink, and it looked at me and said, “Flutterflute!” That’s all, that’s what they do. So simple. Just that beautiful simple statement: “Flutterflute.” And something in me… I felt something emerge, as if from a chrysalis, bright and clear and strong, and I said, “Hemlock Pyne.” Everything in my life was as simple as that. “Hemlock Pyne.” That is what I was, and it was enough. It was deep. And what that meant was everything else was deep. Bottomless. And everything changed for me right then, right that very moment, saying myself back to that Flutterflute. I say it a lot now. It saves me every day: “Hemlock Pyne.”

VERNOR HERTZWIG WITH CRYSTAL BURL

VH: Now please explain to the viewers, Crystal, what it is you have here.

CB: What I have here, Vernor, is Hemlock’s last recording… recovered from his campsite… the recording of the Surlymon.

VH: Now I understand there is some uncertainty whether the recorder was running already or whether it was turned on during the Surlymon’s attack, and if so whether it was Hemlock himself or the Surlymon that switched it on. But that doesn’t really matter, does it? What matters is the contents of the tape, which you I believe have never listened to is that correct?

CB: That is correct. Dr. Chrysolite said I had probably better not.

VH: Dr. Chrysolite is a wise man and you do well to listen to him, but his prohibition does not apply to me, so I am going to listen to the recording now, the lens cap was never removed during the battle, I am just going to listen to the recording if I have your permission to do so.

CB: I give it, yes.

VH: If you will please to start the… there now, I hear wind, very loud, and something like a ripping sound… perhaps the tent’s zipper. Actually, yes, it sounds as if the Surlymon is coming in range. I can hear it quite clearly saying its name over and over again: Surlymon… Surlymon… And now clearly I hear Hemlock, much closer. Of course we know he had no Poachyballs, and no other Pokkys with him at the time. He is really alone against this creature. The Surlymon is saying again, “Surlymon. Surlymon.” And occasionally just “Surly,” as if it is too excited to say its full name.

CB: They do that sometimes when they’re excited… even add extra syllables…

VH: And now Pyne is… he seems to have hit on a desperate strategy… he is saying his own name several times to the creature. It is almost as if they are having a conversation, like so: Surly… Surlymon… and Hemlock says Hemlock. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock. He’s saying it again. And the Surlymon seems to be having none of it. Surlymon. Hemock Pyne. Surlymon. Surlymon. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock. Surlymon. And now a terrible, terrible sound. You… you must never listen to this recording Crystal.

CB: That’s what Dr. Chrysolite recommended as well, Vernor.

VH: Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock Pyne. Hemlock… Surlymon. And now I hear nothing but Surlymon. You must destroy this tape, Crystal. I think that is the only course of action.

CB: I will, Vernor. I will.

VH: Surly. Surlymon. Surlymon. Surly.

HEMLOCK PYNE

We are here at the edge of the Pokkypet Arena, deep in the Pokkymaze. The Pokkys have never allowed me this close before, but I think it is a sign of their acceptance—a sign of how far I’ve come–that they are allowing me to set up my camera here overlooking the arena and film their battles in progress. Remember, these are entirely natural and unstaged… these are not like the Coliseum battles that human captors arrange, which go against the will and the inherent nature of the Pokkypets. What you are seeing here is the source of humanity’s watered-down commercially driven arena battles. This my friends is the real shit.

Now it looks like a Scanary is going into the arena, setting the first challenge… Scanaries have three attacks: Wing Blast, Chirplosion, and Tauntalon. This is a fairly good combination unless your Pokkynemesis happens to have natural resistance to more than one of these. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. And now… it looks like… yes, it’s a Pyrovulp. Oh, this is going to be intense! Pyrovulps are extremely vulnerable to Tauntalon—extremely. But if the little guy can get past the Scanary’s first attack, then things could get interesting. And it looks like… Scanary is rearing back, puffing up a little bit… just look at those gorgeous chest feathers… could be Tauntalon coming in first… But no! Wings going out, we’ve got a blast coming in, and Pyrovulp has got its head flame forward. This was a very bad move on Scanary’s part, and I think it’s going to regret… Would you look at that! Wing Blast has fed Pyrovulp’s headflame. The whole Pokky is on fire, just burning up… this lets Pyrovulp bypass an entire part of its normal attack and go straight to Auraflame! The only risk, and I’m not sure he knows it, is that Auraflame can easily feed into Scanary’s own… oh my god oh my god… Auraflame, incredibly powerful and hot, has triggered Scanary’s innate Chirplosion. I am moving away from the Arena, friends, because when this happens, the blast can spread far outside the –WHOA!

VERNOR HERTZWIG

In his records, Hemlock speaks less and less of the human world; civilization and its pleasures recede into the distant past, remembered only for its discontents. At the same time, the brilliant, colorful struggles of the Pokkypets, seeming so much simpler, become more and more a symbol for the conflict of his soul. Deeply torn, it is as if he battled himself in an arena of his own devising. But no longer a Captor or a Trainer, without Pokkypets to do his fighting for him, every injury cut deep into his psyche.

LARCHMONT AND GLADIOLUS PYNE

HEMLOCK’S PARENTS

LP: This is Hem’s Pokkypet collection, much as he left it when he moved away from home. I’m afraid we encouraged him more than we should have, since he was a somewhat lonely boy, and he got such pleasure from them. His first Pokkypet was a gift from my mother, who had an affinity herself with the little things—

GP: I thought he won it at a state fair, throwing dimes in Collymoddle bowls; or a prize he won at school

LP: —no, it was from my mother, I think he’s still got the card in his room somewhere pinned up on a bulletin board. We knew there wasn’t much of a future in it, but that’s not the sort of thing you can worry about when you just want your boy to be happy… but as he got older and we saw he wasn’t moving on to other things, wasn’t progressing if you will, then we started to get a bit worried. But somehow Hemlock found a way to make a living at it early on, doing his shows and trainings and whatnot; and although we were disappointed that he felt he had to move all the way to the other side of the country to pursue his interests, we did support him in it. It seemed like his Pokky career was really taking him somewhere. Then, well, I don’t know how much truth there is in this, but he tried out for the part of Burny, the Pokky trainer in Chirrs, and according to him he was first in line for the part, but then Woody Harrelson tried out for the role and they gave it to him. Well, really, that was the beginning of the end for our boy.

GP: He just sort of spiralled out of control.

LP: I held it against Woody for a long time, but… well…

GP: It’s hard to keep a grudge against Woody Harrelson. He’s a fine young man.

CRYSTAL BURL

We used to go to the Pokkypet stores in the mall, and Hem would get really upset looking at them in captivity, and he always talked about starting a Pokkypet Liberation Front—but that’s not what Pokky People is about or ever was about. Pokky People allowed him to channel his frustration into something positive. You have to understand, the frustration turned so easily into anger. He could be the happiest most joyful person you’d ever met, but the flipside of that was… was also there. He could be very dark at times. I know he felt that if he didn’t have Pokkys, he’d have gone to some very bad places with some very bad people. The Missile Kids, for instance—they tried to recruit him for a while, and I think he was attracted. They could be very seductive. You know, Minny was a real minx, and Sal was sarcastic and cutting but I know Hem respected them as trainers… and then that weird Pokky they had with them all the time, Feelion. In the way that Hem could almost convince the Pokkys that he was one of them, Feelion had a bunch of us convinced that he was one of us. But though Hem flirted with the Missile Kids, he eventually came to believe they were on a bad path—I mean, certainly in terms of drugs they were doing crazy things… I think even their Pokky was on amphetamines.

HEMLOCK PYNE

If people knew, truly knew what wonderful creatures these Pokkypets are… they would consider, as I do, that to capture them, to try and train them, to force them through their tri-stage transformations at an accelerated pace—that all this goes against nature. Look at little Chickapork here… just look at her. She is my hero. So sweet, so loving, so intelligent… truly a hero. And to think that people want to put her in a ball and give her performance drugs and and and just dump her out in the coliseum to battle against other Pokkys that humans—fucking humans!–have declared her enemies… it’s just sick! And it makes me so angry. Because she’s perfect. The lifestyle they live out here in the wild, it’s perfect. I have learned so much from these creatures, but it’s hardly the beginning of what we could all be learning from them. Our lives… there’s something missing from them that these Pokkys have mastered effortlessly. We need that thing. We don’t even know what we’re missing… but I’ll tell you… it’s something fucking huge. And without it, we’re so far short of perfection it’s not funny. That’s why nobody’s laughing, isn’t that right, little Chickapork?

VERNOR HERTZWIG

As his differences with reality widened into a schism, Hemlock Pyne fought reality with tooth and claw. If it did not fit his idealized view of nature, it was reality that must be bent and even broken to fit. His insistence that Pokkypets held a deeper meaning does not stand up to scrutiny. Where Hemlock looked at the colorful characters and saw inscrutable depths, I see only crisp lines, primary colors, two-dimensional expressions. Even in this Rhinophantom, which Pyne in his writings calls a juggernaut of disaster, evokes in me no such premonition. It is just a cute, cuddly pet, that has undergone completely ordinary metamorphoses into a brute that is dumb and awkward, yes, but completely without malice.

HEMLOCK PYNE

…What I found in the bushes here, by the side of the river, is something new to the Pokkymaze. I would like you to study it with me. This is something we have to understand, but I’m not convinced we can. We are so good at missing the point! I discovered this earlier today, just after dawn, and I haven’t touched the scene… I’ve just been waiting for it to get light enough to record. Now in the night there was the sound of a Pokkybattle. This is rare enough, but not unheard of in midsummer. What is unusual is that it took place far from the Arena, and quite near my tent. Just a very weird sound of two Pokkys calling back and forth to one another in solitary combat. I couldn’t hear them clearly, but you can see now that they both cast exhausting spells on one another, and, well, here they are. They show no signs of waking or getting along with their day. You can see the Porphyrops has been trampled down into the mud, and the Glumster is just lying with its eyes open, which is a strange position for an incapacitated Pokky. I don’t want to intrude in their natural cycle, but I’ve made some very gentle sounds and I’ve been getting progressively louder, trying to see if I can wake them gradually. But so far no luck. I have to say, I feel very privileged to see this. To my knowledge no Pokky Captor or trainer has ever observed this sort of behavior. I am the first. These are the sort of secret revelations the Pokkys have granted me now that I have become such a part of their pattern of life. And these are exactly the things that I need to protect from the rest of the world.

AUGUSTUS “JUSTICE” PEACE

There were really no poachers in this area. The one exception might be the Missile Kids, Sal and Minny, and their Pokky mascot Feelion. But I don’t believe they went up there to poach anyhow. The couple times we were concerned and apprehended them, there was no sign they’d been up to any actual Pokkypoaching. What they did do, I’m pretty certain, was show up to bother Hemlock Pyne. Tease him. They made a lot out of being his rivals, you know. And I’m sure it drove him nuts.

HEMLOCK PYNE

I’m here at the shore, this is so upsetting, here at the shore watching those fuckers… those goddamn poachers… Sal and Minny. I know what they’re up to. They’re rubbing my nose in it, that’s what they’re doing. They’ve come in to poach—look at that boat full of Poachyballs! There’s just no question… they know I’m watching even though I’m well hidden here. What kills me, fucking KILLS me, is that they have the full support of the Pokky Park Service. It’s criminal. It’s so corrupt! You just… the lesson here is that you just pay off the right people and you can come in and capture all the Pokkypets you want. Well, I’m not letting them get away with it. They think they can… what’s that?

“Feeeeee-lion!”

Do you you hear that? They’ve turned their Feelion loose.

“FEEEEE-LION!”

This is just sick, it’s perverted. They’ve trained their Pokkypet to turn against its kind. This poor Feelion doesn’t realize they’re using it to lure in unsuspecting Pokkypets… to pull them in where the Missile Kids can capture them. Well, we’re not going to let them get away with that. No fucking way.

“Can you Feeeeel me, Pyne? Can you Feeeeeeeelion me?”

Did you hear that? So much for them calling me paranoid. There’s no mistaking that for… for a threat!

“Feeeeee-lion!”

The cruel thing is, I can’t even report them. Because I know they are here with the full knowledge of the Park Service. I can’t believe I get grief for coming out here to protect these poor creatures, while Minny and Sal just waltz in, pack their Poachyballs full of innocent, defenseless Pokkys… To think the rangers would actually try to stop me from getting close to the pets, while these guys… I’m sorry, I can’t talk. This is making me too upset. I’m in tears over this!

VERNOR HERTZWIG

Pyne’s disgruntlement became so great that he finally turned against the people who had given him the opportunity to work in the Pokkymaze in the first place. His associates became, in his mind, implacable enemies. There is a sense in his final days of rage that he no longer saw anything beyond the picket of Pokkys, among whom he counted himself, except an homogenous foe.

HEMLOCK PYNE

Oh I know who they are, all right… I know they set me up for this those… those goddamn fucking motherfuckers. You know who you are, you fucking shithead mothercockingfucksuckfuckers! I’m out here trying to help these beautiful creatures, while you’re just swimming in corruption… you don’t care a thing about preserving their environment. You people who have sworn to protect it, you’ve become the thing we have to protect it against! Motherfuck! This… it’s just not right. It’s fucked. So very, very, very, very fucked.

CRYSTAL BURL, GUST MASTERS, PITER YALP

We’ve come here today to honor Hem, and to pray for him to wake up real soon. We don’t understand what happened to him—what was different this time that he refuses to wake up. We were thinking that maybe if we came out here, to a place that was dear to him, we’d have some insight… we’d get a glimpse of Hem’s thinking.

This right here is his favorite camping spot, where he’d come and spend the first part of the summer at the foot of the Pokky Range before heading north into the Maze. He chose this spot because it was right between two Chickapork dens. There’s footage of him playing with the Piglettas, and then of course when one of them made its second stage transformation into Chickapork, Hem and that Pokky bonded real hard. It’s been a year now, and those original Pokkys have gone on and become Peccanaries and Boaraxes; the ones grazing out there in the meadow, one of them might have been Hem’s own Chickapork.

I wonder if they miss him. I sure do.

VERNOR HERTZWIG

The irony of Hemlock’s last trip is not lost on anyone who looked at his life. As the days of fall grew shorter, he left the maze as he always did, with no desire to return to civilization, but knowing he could not make himself comfortable among the hibernating and overwintering Pokkys. However, an encounter with an airport Pokkypet vending machine, in which Hemlock tried to buy the freedom of every captive Pokkypet but soon ran out of quarters, sent him rebounding from the crass commercial exploitation of his beloved Pokkys, straight back into the wilderness. Returning to the maze later than ever before, he found his familiar environment had been altered by advancing chill; and his familiar Pokky friends had moved on their migratory routes, while new creatures moved into the maze to overwinter there. Creatures such as the Surlymon.

HEMLOCK PYNE

I am back, friends. I didn’t know I would be doing this, obviously, and I would not recommend it to anyone else… but frankly, I find it exhilarating. I am overjoyed to be back here. The longer I can put off dealing with the fucking human world, the happier I’ll be. And you know what? This is a part of the Pokky life cycle I have never seen. This is a learning moment! I have never been here in the winter… and though I won’t be staying for the whole season, I will certainly see more of it than any person ever has. Because no other person, trainer, captor or civilian, has stayed even this long. Who knows what I’ll learn, what wonders await?

VERNOR HERTZWIG

Toward the end of the process of compiling this account, we received access to Pyne’s final recordings. Here we see him with a large grouchy Pokkypet that almost certainly is the Surlymon that finished him off. Of most interest in these studies is that this Pokky appears to have changed radically sometime between the date this footage was taken, and the time of its capture by the Pokky Rangers. Experience gained in a battle is the usual mode by which Pokkys gain sufficient energy to transform into their morpheme. And it is hard not to conclude that it was the battle with Hemlock Pyne that caused this Surlymon to undergo its third transformation. Most confusing to Pokkyologists is that while its form changed dramatically, its name and its song remained the same: Surlymon….

Here, Hemlock records the untransformed Surlymon stalking the maze in an endless search for amusement. He seems to be searching this simple creature for a deeper meaning; but whatever it is eludes him, as it eludes us.

HEMLOCK PYNE

I don’t know what this Pokky wants. Superficially, it seems to be looking for food and interested in nothing else. But there is something the Pokkys have, something innate in them, which draws me. I feel sometimes so close to them, I almost have a name for it—one I could express to myself, but which might be impossible to communicate to others. There is something… something there.

VERNOR HERTZWIG

But here I must disagree with Hemlock Pyne. The cute cartoon features, so simplistic and round and bright, need evoke nothing beyond the simplest emotional connotations associated with their coloration. He looks for depth where none exists. The Pokkys have no secrets, and nothing to teach us. If anything, this is their entire lesson: They mean nothing, and nothing about their relationship with us is real.

JASPER CHRYSOLITE

If I open this door and pull out the tray, you can see the desperate effort we have undertaken to keep Hemlock comfortable in spite of the bizarre process that seems to be having its way with him. Here you see his head, the eyes still closed in an attitude of sleep that for all intents and purposes seems permanent; Here, his hand, somewhat distressed after its short stay in Surlymon’s mouth. The torso, on which the head hardly fits at this point. Part of a leg. The other parts, all gathered from the maze, do not quite add up completely. But this still seems the sort of risk Hemlock stated repeatedly he was willing to take to be one with these creatures, to learn the lessons they carried with them. Lessons, perhaps, that may one day apply to us, as we share their natural world?

HEMLOCK PYNE

I know I have felt something like this before, but the shortness of the season sharpens this sense of giving. I have the words now. They have given them to me. I owe the Pokkypets everything I have. Everything. And I owe them completely. I would die for these creatures. I would die for these creatures. I would die for these creatures.

VERNOR HERTZWIG

We still have no idea what he means.

Property of Digito of America

THE BOY WHO FOLLOWED LOVECRAFT

Douglas sits alone at the side of the house, waiting for the Aunts to call him in, alert to the slightest creak of the front door or to one of their hard-toed shoes sounding upon the porch. They cannot see him from inside the house, so he always has time to hide the magazine, shoving it into the crawlspace along with the rest of his collection. There is a trace of autumn in the Sunday evening air, and the summer-blanched leaves of the old sycamores send a rustling shade over the crumbling pages he turns so slowly and savoringly. The paper feels soft and rough as a kind of leafy bark, not dissimilar to the earth where he crouches and thumbs through his issues of Weird Tales again and again.

The date on the magazine is April 1929. This is only September, yet he has read the copy cover to cover so many times that the magazine appears as worn as one twenty years old, its bright reds faded to vermilion, the fearsome masked priest now a colorful faceless smudge. The other issues are in worse shape, what’s left of them. Hard to imagine that once they had been bright and crisp—as bright as the quarters or the stacks of pennies he’d shoved across the newsstand counter. Some, found in downtown secondhand shops, were old when he’d bought them for a fraction of their cover price. But they are no less precious for it. His only regret is that the oldest ones suffer more from his constant rereading, and he has been forced to stop carrying them around with him, away from the house and the watchful Aunts, to the parks and libraries and quiet private places where a boy might hide and read in peace, and seek the strange thrills these stories provide.

Douglas hides the magazines from the Aunts because they have already shown they do not understand. They have forbidden him to spend his allowance on such things; forbidden them in the house; forbidden him from reading such horrors. “Nightmares, trash and madness,” they had called the tales; and that word alone had ensured his disobedience, for it was madness he sought to understand. Madness was the reason he lived here, after all; it was the reason the old women had brought him in as a foster child: “A kind of madness took them,” was all they ever said when he asked about his parents. More than that, and the nature of madness, he was left to investigate on his own; and it came to him in these tales which spoke openly of unreason, of madness caused by fear. And as he read, he became enwrapped in a kind of beauty, borne by the words. Madness became a key, opening the door to new worlds where he could lose himself while feeling that he could go beyond himself…

Hinges squeal. “Douglas? Douglas, child, where are you?” Aunt Melissa steps onto the porch and comes quickly toward the corner. Douglas shoves the magazine into the dark opening and slips back around the side of the house until he stands in the back yard. He makes her call again, louder, and then responds. “I’m back here, ma’am!”

She cranes around the side of the porch, looking exasperated. He strides toward her, passing the crawlspace, and hurries up the front steps to stand at her side.

“Well, I promise you, I looked back there and didn’t see a thing. Come in now and have your supper. Aunt Opal and I have things to do—we can’t be waiting past dark while you dig your holes or arrange your soldiers, or whatever it is you get up to back there. School tomorrow, so early to bed tonight.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“That’s a good child. Come and eat then. Oh, and before I forget.”

She produces from one deep pocket a bright silver quarter. His heart leaps at the thought of what it will buy him. He hides not his smile but only its meaning. “Thank you, Aunt.”

“Remember now, it’s more than many have these days. Spend it wisely, as I’m sure you will. God bless you, child, you’re a good boy.”

The school day drags. Douglas sits alone, as ever, in the back of the sweltering classroom, writing slowly, scarcely seeing the columns of numbers he must add and manipulate, the dull rote words he must read. At recess he remains inside with his treasured April issue, gazing at the jumbled, nightmarish illustration that accompanies “The Dunwich Horror.” Miss Marsh leaves him to his solitude. She has long since stopped trying to convince him to go out with the other children. She frowns, he thinks, whenever he produces one of his magazines; but she has never tried to confiscate one, never questioned what he reads. In this sense, the classroom is safe—perhaps the safest place he knows. Certainly safer than the schoolyard.

Today, a shadow falls over his desk. Miss Marsh hovers over him. “Douglas?”

Feeling his cheeks flush, he looks up at her, closing the magazine, pushing it under the desk.

“That’s all right, dear. I was just wondering… I believe you might have just enough time to make it to the newsstand and back before lunch is over. Unless I’m very much mistaken about what day it is.”

Her smile is knowing. He starts to speak, but whatever he might blurt, as he rises from his desk, banging his knees, nearly knocking his papers to the floor, remains unsaid.

“Don’t be long now, Douglas.”

He runs.

Out the schoolhouse, out the gate, and down the busy street. A streetcar jangles past; as he waits on the curb, he digs into his pocket, fails to find the quarter, and experiences a moment’s terror—until his fingers brush the warm disk, and he pinches it, brings it out to reassure himself of its presence. He rubs it like a good luck charm. The streetcar passes and he darts across the street to the row of shops across the way, the newsstand at the corner.

For a moment the racks confuse him, and he seizes up with dread. What if it isn’t here yet? There are piles of periodicals wrapped in twine, still to be unpacked and set out. Another thrill of disappointment, as when he thought his quarter lost, grips him. Then he spies the bright lettering, in an unaccustomed spot, peering out above the top of a mystery magazine: Weird Tales, The Unique Magazine.

He pulls it from the rack, slaps his quarter on the counter, cutting off the newsdealer’s nasty snarl, and rushes away with hardly a glimpse at the cover: An enormous ape carries off a woman in a gauzy pink slip. More than that, he won’t allow himself to see until he has time to truly savor it.

He slips back into the classroom with a few minutes of recess remaining. Miss Marsh gives him a smile, and as he lays the issue reverently on the desk, she comes a few steps closer. For the first time, he refrains from hiding the magazine. Although it pains him to hold still, he looks up and sees her gazing at the cover. Her eyebrows arch; she laughs. “Oh, my,” she says. “That looks like a very exciting story. Who wrote that one, do you think? Are these the authors?” She reads down the names listed on the cover: “Sophie Wenzel Ellis. Seabury Quinn. H.P. Lovecraft…”

His heart leaps at the name. Lovecraft! A new story! Douglas almost opens the issue right then, but Miss Marsh’s expression gives him pause.

“H.P.,” she says again. “I wonder if that could be the same… Howard Phillips… of Providence itself. Do you know his stories, Douglas? You do? I believe he is a local man. In fact, I think he lives not far from you on College Hill. Perhaps he’d like to know he has a bright young reader right here in Providence.”

Miss Marsh suddenly catches sight of the clock, and gives a little gasp. Rushing to the door, she leans outside and bangs the triangle. The clanging blends into the shouts of children, and the room fills up again with the greater noise of students. Miss Marsh catches and holds his gaze through the crowd, but what she has promised seems too great to acknowledge. He looks away, rolling up the magazine and shoving it under his desk. What else does she know about him, he wonders? Does she understand how madness haunts him? Would the writer, H.P. Lovecraft, understand? It all seems too secret, too personal, to discuss with anyone. But if anyone might understand, it would be a man like the one who writes such stories.

He hardly notices the passage of the afternoon, wondering if what she said could be true. At home, the Aunts have gone off on some errand, leaving him free to surround himself with his collection. He sorts through the magazines and pulls out everything by Lovecraft.

Combing through the issues, he sees how many of these stories are by one man—by this same Lovecraft of Providence. He had not recognized the pattern until Miss Marsh pointed it out. The thought that a living person could have written these stories had never occurred to him. He had not required that of them. They existed, that was enough. They carried him away to other lands, other places exotic and faraway—with names like Celephais and Sarnath, Ulthar and Ilek-Vad—all so different from the names he saw around him: College Hill and Federal Hill, worlds, he saw now, which were locked away in the stories of Lovecraft. From one mind, then, so many of Douglas’s own dreams had sprung. The knowledge is a key turning in a lock, revealing a new dimension to what he had already known. Indeed, Lovecraft had written “The Silver Key,” in which Randolph Carter found a secret path into a land of dream; he had written “The White Ship” and “The Cats of Ulthar,” and other tales of dream. But he had also written “The Rats in the Walls,” a tale of madness that had chilled and fascinated Douglas in equal measure; “The Festival,” “The Call of Cthulhu,” “The Outsider,” “Pickman’s Model”… and these truly are tales of madness. They hold secrets dark as the ones that haunt Douglas, the nightmares that torment him when he tries to think beyond his own memories, to a time before the Aunts had taken him in, a muddled dream which tells him nothing, a dream which remains impenetrable, approachable only, perhaps, through a deeper understanding of what madness itself might mean.

He crouches by the house in the deepening gloom, reading and rereading, searching for clues. The latest issue holds a story of Lovecraft’s called “The Hound,” a tale of grave robbers who pilfer a cursed amulet and are pursued relentlessly by its winged guardian. Douglas has read the story before, in one of his older issues of Weird Tales, but it takes him some time to recognize it. Everything seems altered by the fact that it was written here in Providence. He pictures the story taking place somewhere nearby—the graveyard might be Swan Point; the baying hound pursues the robbers through familiar neighborhoods rendered strange and mysterious, filtered through the light of Lovecraft’s words. His whole world feels changed in much the same way as the story. Providence itself has acquired a twilight tinge, a mysterious beauty he had never noticed until now. It took Lovecraft to make him see it.

Lovecraft…

His Aunts would know how to find the man. They have lived here all their lives; they know everyone, from the oldest families to the newest residents of the neighborhood. They had grown up in Providence when it was a much smaller town, and they still treat it as their own village. But how is he to question their knowledge without letting them know what he’s asking? For Douglas is quite certain they would not approve.

He decides on a sacrifice. He will pose a riddle and watch them attempt to answer it, and in the attempt learn much.

Douglas sorts his tattered magazines, looking for a cover that features Lovecraft’s name in suitably large letters. There are few appearances, and most are in small characters, rubbed illegible by constant use. Cringing inwardly, he returns to the latest, September, issue. With a pair of Aunt Opal’s sewing scissors, he slices into the brand-new cover, painstakingly cutting around Lovecraft’s name, removing the block of bright text. The wounded magazine he carefully replaces in the crawlspace, then slips onto the porch and puts the slip of colorful writing under the brass knocker, just at eye level. Then he lets himself into the house and busies himself with homework until he hears a clatter at the door: the Aunts are home. Muffled exclamations. They enter the house in a state of heightened excitement, their voices high chirps of curiosity.

“That’s Lillian Clark’s nephew, isn’t it?”

“I know who it is, and I certainly don’t intend to encourage him.”

“Missy, whatever do you mean? He’s no harm, that one. The poor fellow.”

“He’s not right and never has been. The hours he keeps. I hear he is an Atheist, did you know that?”

“Let’s be charitable, now.”

“The fact remains… whatever does he mean by this? Leaving it as some sort of calling card. Keep your distance from that one.”

“I was only thinking I might ask Miss Lillian.”

“No!”

“Come now, it’s only a short walk, what could it hurt? If her nephew is becoming more erratic, she should know. Before he harms himself, the poor man. You remember that time he collapsed on the street during a cold spell?”

“The only reason to speak to Lillian Clark is to ensure that she keeps her nephew away from us. If you wish to speak to her on that account, then I will accompany you.”

“I will do no such thing. Let’s just keep this to ourselves for now. If there’s another event, then… then we’ll discuss further steps. Now where is that boy?”

As Douglas listens, he cannot help but feel a kinship growing—affinity for a stranger. If the Aunts knew his secrets, would they speak of him in similar tones? Doesn’t muttering follow him about—on the schoolyard, in the streets, haunting him, setting him apart? In this he feels a kinship to all outcasts. It sharpens his resolve.

He finds Lillian Clark’s house the very next day, simply by greeting the postman on the walk to the Aunts’ front door. The postman is happy to provide the street number and even a description. Douglas stops short of asking if he knows the name of Lovecraft. He does not want the great, the wonderful man to be warned of his existence. Douglas’s admiration, his hopes, are too sensitive and secret. The deep sense of kinship he feels dare not name itself. It must be nourished in darkness. But he knows that if he can get close, he can touch the man directly—let him know that he understands, that they are kindred, that they share the same visions. But caution is engrained in his nature. Douglas prepares slowly.

In the shortening days, he devotes a measure of each afternoon before dusk to walking repetitively past the Clark residence, which proves to be not a house at all but an apartment building. Eyes glower at him from houses all around, and once he crosses the street to avoid a neighbor who clearly means to apprehend him. Of course he must return home before dark each night, and take great care not to arouse the Aunts’ suspicions. Once he creeps out long after bedtime, down the dark streets, and takes up a post only to find a light burning still at this hour in one window of the apartment building. He imagines H.P. Lovecraft at work even now, hunched above a writing desk, pouring out his visions of otherworldly places. Imagine, setting pen to paper, and the paper carrying one away like a magic carpet, an enchanted scroll, to the River Skai… the wilds of Arkham… imagine…

Within a week, his pilgrimages acquire an air of desperation. On Saturday, he finds an excuse to tell the Aunts he will be out all day—he suggests he’s hunting for a job in town, perhaps at the newsstand, or delivering papers. They remark on his initiative, pack him a lunch and watch him go. But it is straight to Lovecraft’s building he heads, and although he cannot stay in one spot or cross the same path too many times without attracting suspicion, he manages to cover enough adjacent streets that he can keep the house in view every few minutes without himself being viewed by the neighbors. He consumes his lunch during the course of the day—crackers and cheese and wedges of bread spread with butter and sugar. He despairs. Eventually he tells himself that he will make one more circuit, and then return to pretend to the Aunts that his attempts to find work have all ended in discouragement.

From the side of Lovecraft’s house, a man appears. It could be any one of the building’s tenants, or even a visitor, but Douglas has a feeling about this man. There is an air of solitude about him. He stops in front of the building, tall and gaunt and wearing a dark suit that makes him hard to see against the lengthening shadows. Douglas slows his pace and tries not to show any interest. From half a block away there is little chance of drawing attention to himself, except by staring too hard. The man’s face—it must be Mr. Lovecraft!—is partly hidden, in shadow itself, beneath the brim of his hat. He hesitates at the end of the drive and turns back to the house, then suddenly stoops and puts out his hand as if summoning with a magical gesture… what?

A cat appears, as if out of nowhere, a speckled calico that sniffs his fingers then rubs itself against his cuffs. Here comes a second, and a third, and now Douglas sees that they have emerged from under a hedge. A black cat walking stiffly, as if crippled by age; and a small kitten that bites the elder’s tail, then throws itself against Mr. Lovecraft’s foot and meows until he picks it up caressingly. Even in the shadow of the hat, Mr. Lovecraft’s smile is clear. He whispers to the creatures, then sets the kitten down and sends it running back toward the hedge. Bidding them a soft farewell, he turns and heads off down the sidewalk, toward town. The calico follows him a short way, then rounds back toward the house, encountering Douglas following in Mr. Lovecraft’s path. Douglas looks for the kitten but it has hidden itself. He would like to pet the creature that his idol has just touched.

The spires of Providence show themselves through the trees as the street tips downhill toward the town. Douglas keeps the dark-suited man in his sight at all times, never letting the gap between them grow too narrow, lest he be spotted. And Mr. Lovecraft stops repeatedly—at first constantly accosted by cats that seem to know him and anticipate his passing. To each one that will let him he gives an affectionate stroking. Douglas feels a pang; such kindness!

Then the houses with their sun-touched lawns fall away, and the city lies ahead. The absence of constant feline interruption should quicken Mr. Lovecraft’s pace, but it seems to have the opposite effect. He walks with his eyes to the sky now, taking in the buildings, the sky, the sights of Providence. For Douglas, it is almost like having a silent guide, opening his eyes to beauties he had taken for granted.

On Thomas Street, heading west into the city, Mr. Lovecraft stands for several minutes staring up at an old colonial church—one Douglas knows from the Aunts to be a Baptist institution. Mr. Lovecraft adjusts his hat as if tipping it to the tall white steeple, and moves on. Where his eyes catch, where he pauses to take in the sights, Douglas also pauses. A visible shudder passes through Mr. Lovecraft as he passes the weirdly paneled Fleur-de-Lys Studio, a building that has always amused Douglas but today seems somehow repulsive. Is this something he has absorbed from Mr. Lovecraft’s fascination? Certainly the building does not seem to belong among the others. Mr. Lovecraft turns left, heading south again on North Main, now barely glancing at the bulk of the Cheapside Block; then slowing again as he nears Market Square and the brick Market House. In the crowds here, Douglas knows he can come nearer without being seen. As Mr. Lovecraft heads west toward Westminster, Douglas darts nearer so as not to lose him. He comes so close that for a moment he can almost reach out and touch the object of his pursuit—and sees at this close range something that surprises him.

The suit, this close, looks shabby and worn. It reminds Douglas of clothes worn by some children at his school: the grubby ones, the ones his Aunts might speak of as “unfortunates.” In these difficult times, Mr. Lovecraft’s suit is not so different from many others in the crowd, but it sets Douglas back for a moment. He had assumed that writing stories would have made his hero rich. There is no evidence of that. Even the hat’s brim is frayed. He hangs back a bit, not wanting more details to intrude on his vision of the man, preferring the slightly distant, somewhat blurry version—but knowing there can be no reclaiming it. For better or worse, this is H.P. Lovecraft the man.

Past the grimy granite pillars and portico of the darkening Arcade, Mr. Lovecraft turns abruptly into a shop. Douglas approaches slowly, staring into a brightly lit interior. Dusk is deepening in the street, but inside the shop it’s all shining brilliant tile and glass cases, and Mr. Lovecraft looks like a spectral silhouette leaning forward. A uniformed attendant greets him with great familiarity, and then extends a small wooden paddle heaped with a creamy brown blob. Ice cream! Douglas realizes how long it’s been since he finished his lunch. His mouth waters. Mr. Lovecraft scrapes the ice cream from the spoon against his teeth, then nods. A minute later he emerges from the shop with a hugely scooped cone, forced to tilt his head to one side lest it smear his hat brim. Douglas recognizes the scoop. The Aunts never let him so much as sample the flavor, stating it unsuitable for children, but he has bought himself a cone or two surreptitiously. Coffee ice cream is a Providence specialty.

His pace becomes more leisurely in the throng. The streets are full of citizens seeking an evening’s entertainment, a meal, a stroll. Mr. Lovecraft savors his ice cream, and vicariously Douglas takes enjoyment from the older man’s pleasure. All these sights and flavors, yes, they are part of Mr. Lovecraft’s world—somehow they feed his fantasies, they stoke the visions that he then crafts into stories and passes on to Douglas. Douglas feels an almost unbearable pang of affection—for the shabby gentleman, clearly impoverished, spending his spare dimes on sweets, petting cats, strolling in the colonial byways like one in a dream. This—yes, this! Douglas feels the beginnings of a deep kinship, but really it is not the beginning—it is the culmination. It had begun with the stories… it had begun in Kadath and Sarnath, in Dunwich and in Celephais. Douglas understands him perfectly, the lonely man walking alone, so apart from and indifferent to the crowds that swarm around him. In this they are the same. In so many ways the same. Past banks and churches, the clanging of streetcars, the lights coming on around them, neon signs garish and alluring. At Mathewson Street, an immense church (another of the Aunts’ landmarks, Episcopalian, said with faint dismissal), Douglas sees like a glowing shrine the marquee of the Loew’s State Theatre. For a moment Mr. Lovecraft stares at it almost wistfully, he thinks; but then he turns and walks down another avenue, down streets less grand, darker. It’s easy to remain unseen here. Mr. Lovecraft finishes the last of his cone, stops before a small alcove, brushes his hands together fastidiously, then steps in off the street, out of sight.

Douglas slowly approaches the alcove himself, and sees a small glass booth before double doors—a theatre, far less majestic than the Loew’s, and almost unattended. In fact there is no one in the booth to sell tickets—until a figure swims up inside the glass, and Douglas stumbles away before he can be spotted.

Mr. Lovecraft!

He removes his suit jacket and hangs it from a hook at the back of the booth, then settles himself in a chair at the ticket window. There he waits, staring out at the night, while Douglas sinks back into shadow to watch.

To see a movie is a rare event for Douglas; he saves his quarters for his magazines and the Aunts have no use for films, much less now that they have begun to talk. Thus there is little meaning for Douglas in the titles that appear on the booth’s placard: Hallelujah! sounds like something his Aunts might approve, but The Mysterious Island very much does not. The thought of such an island, wrapped in mystery, with Mr. Lovecraft presiding as keeper of the gateway, fills him with excitement and anticipation. He digs into his pockets in case some coins might have miraculously appeared.

Of Mr. Lovecraft he can see nothing now but his head and shoulders, with a harsh light thrown down onto him from above. A few patrons close around the booth, and Mr. Lovecraft dispenses tickets in a perfunctory manner, as if anxious for the customers to be gone. As the flurry of purchases subsides, Mr. Lovecraft turns to the coat on its hook and from an inner pocket removes a cylinder of paper. He uncurls it, flattens it on the counter, and produces from some hidden place a bottle of ink and a pen.

Is he… writing? In the lull between customers, composing? Is it possible that H.P. Lovecraft’s miraculous tales are penned here, under such circumstances?

Douglas cannot contain himself. He wants to see the words trailing from the tip of the pen. He carefully creeps from the shadows, drawing closer to the glass, trying to see if he recognizes any especially magical syllables. He stays close to the doors, where the darkness is dense and he can stay hidden—but suddenly the doors fly open, and out comes a small group of women, laughing and chattering. Their appearance jostles Douglas close to the booth, and Mr. Lovecraft looks up. Their eyes lock. Douglas feels his eyes go wide, a shock almost physical in its intensity. Mr. Lovecraft’s jaw is set. As he straightens in the chair, he drops his pen and the papers curl up instantly. He is about to say something but Douglas cannot bear it. It’s too much all at once. In a panic, he bolts past the booth and into the street, and throws himself around a corner.

Breathless, he runs along the side of the building until another door nearly opens in his face, another explosion of laughter and voices, and he finds himself caught in a stream of filmgoers leaving the theatre. He holds the door for several ladies, out of habit, as the Aunts have taught him; and as they pour past, he finds himself gazing into the dark interior of the theatre. Thinking of the Mysterious Island, which might easily be an image out of Lovecraft’s stories, he seizes an edge of the curtains that drape the exit; he rushes through the velvety portico and finds himself inside.

Most of the seats are empty, though a tide of newcomers continues to trickle in from the top of the aisles. Trying to calm himself, hoping not to attract notice, he sinks into the front row seat and tips his face toward the vast curtained screen, and closes his eyes to take stock of his thoughts.

He wonders how to make his way back to Mr. Lovecraft. He has accepted the challenge he felt the man offered, but he must prove himself worthy. Once the movie has started, if he can return to the booth, he might find both the courage and the words to explain that he too has dreamt of R’lyeh, that he has heard the hound that chases the bearer of the talisman, that he has felt the evil wind that blows through the hidden chambers of the Nameless City. But as the lights of the theatre dim, as the curtains draw back from the screen and the first newsreel begins to play, he wonders if perhaps there is something else he is meant to see. Surely there is a deeper reason H.P. Lovecraft himself sits and sells tickets to this particular house. Perhaps what awaits are not ordinary serials and newsreels, staid dramas and inane musicals. The projectionist could be an emissary of Lovecraft; the projector a beam straight from that burning imagination, the magic lantern of his feverish mind.

As the screen begins to quiver with light, Douglas chants the names beneath his breath: Nyarlathotep! Azathoth! The names ring him in the darkness.

And then the darkness is no more. An explosion of light in his eyes.

Blinded, he gapes and hears a high nasal voice. He gapes and sees Mr. Lovecraft glaring at him, holding him fast in the beam of an electric torch, trained on Douglas like a searchlight. The man’s sharp pale features, caught in the beam for a moment, loom out of the theatrical dark, dwarfing the screen, and he says, “You!”

The word an uncontainable portent.

And then he leans closer, thrusting the torch like the barrel of a gun into Douglas’s face, and says the words that send the boy reeling out into the night, as bereft as the blind worlds that spin in the void to the tune of a mindless idiot god.

Douglas flees, pitching down the dark Providence streets, his mind in shards, his dreams tattered, shedding magic and mystery as if they are coins in a pocket full of holes. Innsmouth, R’lyeh, Ulthar, all crumbling into ruins. Fast he plunges from the halls of dream, never to know Y’ha-nthlei, never to be carried on black wings. The streets of Providence hateful again, no solace in their antiquity, the churchyards simply full of bones, the hounds nothing more or less than the hounds that always hunted men. And as he flees toward the rest of his life, the words still ring and circle as they always will when he casts his mind back to this night, this theatre of despair. They will echo every day and far into the night, far into the years; they will echo even after Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s death, an occasion of obscure satisfaction only capped by the unmarked grave that Douglas never bothers to seek out.

Echoing, yes, but never more terribly than that first night of horror, when he realized he could never escape into a weird dream of eldritch magic and mystery, from a truth too plain and too insistent.

Lovecraft’s final words, ringing sharp and cutting, the words that send him flying, feeling faceless as a night gaunt, into the dark:

“Get out before I call the police, you dirty little nigger!”

FORGET YOU

She came into his life the way his cats crept into his lap. One day he was alone, had been alone for years, his life and his home empty of anyone but himself and a few friends who didn’t visit all that often anyway. And then at some point he realized she had been there for a while, in his house, in his bed, in every part of his life, having accomplished the transition so subtly that he could never say exactly when or how it had occurred.

He ran his hand along her cheek in a swift caress, brushing the line of her jaw as he tucked the one stray lock behind her left ear as he often did, and said, “How did we find each other?”

“Oh, you,” she said, with that look, as if the question were another of their habitual endearments. “You’re sweet.”

He traced her other cheek, looked deep into her right eye, then her left, having memorized the stained glass kaleidoscope pattern of her irises so clearly from this practice that he could see them easily when he closed his own eyes.

“No,” he said, “I’m serious. How?”

She laughed without a sound, just an exhalation, and mirrored the movement his hands were making, cupping his face in her own palms.

“Just lucky, I guess,” she said. “Me, I mean.”

“Of course, me too, I just…”

She kissed him, and he thought, Well, that’s one difference between her and the cats.

He asked his friends, when he thought of it, in the very infrequent moments when she was not with him. “How did we meet?” he asked. And they laughed because it was such an odd question that they knew he was setting them up for some kind of joke. And when he said, “No, I’m serious,” they grew serious too, and took on a puzzled, questioning tone. “Uh… you’re asking us? You guys have been together longer than we’ve been friends.”

He went through his photographs, the digital images first, looking farther and farther back through the files, and she was in them all, and he could remember now how she had been there at the time. Beyond a certain point there were no more photos, but that was because of a huge lightning storm, when they’d gone a week without power and his computer had been fried, with everything on it lost. So of course there were no digital photographs from the years before that. He found a box in the closet full of older prints and negatives, in envelopes date-stamped by the pharmacies and photobooths where he had dropped them off to be developed. And it was something of a relief to see that she was not in any of these. He could clearly recall how alone he had been then, but he still could not remember how she’d come into his life. One thing was becoming clear though: It was getting harder to remember life without her. Soon he feared that he would not be able to remember a time when she had not been with him.

He dug out a photograph of himself alone and put it in his pocket to keep with him as a reminder. It was a self-portrait he had taken, just a solitary photo of himself alone in the kitchen looking out the window as if at the emptiness of his life, which had been very empty then. This image had always seemed to him to capture the essence of his loneliness, and looking at it now made him wistful and sad, even nostalgic. He kept taking it out and looking at it, trying to remember how it had ended. Her arrival must have come about sometime in the age of deleted images when everything was uncertain. But when he asked his friends about it, to try and zero in on a date, he couldn’t convince them that he wasn’t teasing them somehow. And when he started asking her, she began to take offense.

“Why are you always asking me this?” she asked. “What’s your problem? It’s like you’re obsessed. Do you want me out of your life or something? Do you want things back the way they were before we met? Is that it?”

“No, I… I just want to remember,” he said.

These conversations changed things between them. Or things were changing anyway, and the conversations were a symptom. There was no telling. But he felt he had started something and there was no going back. Just by noticing it, he had started it unraveling. It was as if, once she knew he had noticed the oddness, she started covering up the truth—as if she was afraid he might discover her secret. As long as he accepted the situation and went about his life without questioning it, everything was just fine. But he could no longer pretend to remember. It was driving him crazy. He was convinced she had done something, manipulated reality somehow, folded it around and inserted herself there in his life. Who was she, anyway? What was she? What sort of being had this ability to unravel and reweave the material of existence, working her way into it as if she had always been there?

“Stop looking at me like that,” she said. “I don’t appreciate it.”

“I just want to know how you did it,” he said. “I just want to know what you are.”

“God!” she said.

It occurred to him that what they were heading toward was the unmaking of what she had made in the first place. Past a certain point, it was inevitable. She would remove herself from his life. She would vanish as if she had never existed. First from the daily routine—she’d be gone from their home, gone from their bed, gone from the parties they had with their friends. Then she would absent herself from the photographs—first from whatever new ones he took, obviously, but then from the older ones as well. If he ever thought to go back through his files, he’d see nothing but photos of himself. When he asked his friends about her, they would look glum to see him filling the emptiness of his life with imaginary partners, and they’d say, “Who?”

Eventually he would have forgotten her completely, and all the evidence in the universe would indicate that she had never existed, and there would be no one to question it because he himself would have forgotten.

This was the way things were heading, and all because he had noticed. He wasn’t supposed to, he decided. He was supposed to have been oblivious, and just accept it. She must have done this before, but he was the first to have seen through it. Otherwise she would have done something different to make sure he remained unaware. She would have learned from prior mistakes, which meant he must be the first mistake. He was probably the only one who would see through her, because after this she would know what to do to remain undiscovered. In this way he felt privileged, special. He should feel fortunate that she had come to him, because it had allowed him to learn a very important truth about himself. From now on, even in his solitude, even when the memory of her had removed itself, he would own this bit of self-knowledge. He wouldn’t know how he had come by it, but he would cleave to it nonetheless. She had made him more whole, more truly himself. So there was a purpose to her being here after all.

Such were his thoughts on the last morning, as dawn crept into their bedroom, as the air grew bright and she grew dim, as the place where she was lying grew unlaid-in and the cats stretched out to fill it. But the thoughts were fleeting for he was already forgetting her, and he almost didn’t notice when, in the final moment, she woke and opened her eyes and turned and looked, but not at him, and said to no one but herself, “Why is this always happening to me?”

BONFIRES

The shore was dark when we showed up, but it would soon be blazing, and that thought was all I needed to warm me while we built the bonfires. The waves slopped in and sucked out again like black tar, and I went along the waterline with the others, pulling broken boards and snags of swollen wood out of the bubbling froth and foam, hauling it across the sand and up to the gravel where the road edge ran.

Piles from previous scavenging were heaped up high and drying there. It didn’t take us long to figure out which ones were dry enough to burn. Some of the piles already had little combs of bluish light flickering along the splintered edges, as if they couldn’t wait to burst into flame. These were the ones we pulled from first, dragging pieces down toward the sound of waves and standing them on end, so they stood there tilted and crazy, like drunken skeletons leaning on each other so they wouldn’t fall down.

I had matches and lighters, pockets full of strikers and flints and everything we’d need to start a fire. While I was standing there looking at the pile of drift, seeking the best place to set a flame, she came up next to me with a can of fuel, uncapped already, so volatile that she seemed to swim and melt in the fumes like a vision on a hot road.

“You want it here?” she asked.

“Let’s get it burning,” I said. And she tipped the can, dousing the pile so it would make a proper pyre. The stuff was tinder dry already; the touch of gas was nearly friction enough to set it off. But it waited almost respectfully, the pyre wanting me to give it life. I’ve always been obliging.

As the flames exploded, she threw the can into the fire, and you could hear it crumple like a metal lung collapsing. I turned to her and she was laughing, and then I was on her, mouth on mouth, sucking on the metal in her tongue, pierced by it. She tasted like gasoline.

We weren’t the only ones around the bonfire, far from it. Many hands had been pitching on wood and paper and broken furniture, ripped-up books and matted newspapers, dolls stuffed with sawdust, figures made of straw. We were shadows with bright glinting eyes, orange and vibrant in the light from the flames, all of us ageless and infinitely experienced in our innocence. We danced around our pyre as if it was the center of the universe; we were part of the ring of light that held off the encircling dark. I squeezed her hand and couldn’t tell, when our knuckles ground together, whether it was her bones or mine I felt. I sucked on her tongue and she chewed on my lips; we could devour each other and never run out of other to devour. We were sweating from the fire, even though the wind from the black sea had turned cold as the flames got hotter, and now you could hear the screaming it carried.

“Have I met you before?” I asked, because it seemed like I must have. But she shook her head. “I’d have remembered you.” Which must have been true because I could never have felt this way about someone I already knew. It was her strangeness that made it so easy to be with her. This was just for tonight: the guzzling fuel; the single, unique and isolated spark; the bonfire that had never blazed like this before, never lifting these exact flames. Nothing ever happened twice—even though the fire was eternally the same.

Her eyes were so deep that I couldn’t pull myself out of them. I put my hands all over her, and she was on me as if she wanted to crawl inside. As we grappled, my vision went past her down the beach, along the shore, to all the other bonfires blazing like this one. Silhouettes dancing around them, figures like stick-people, hardly more than tinder themselves. The smoke rose up and blotted out the starless dark, making it churn and billow so the cast-off firelight had a place to gather and glow back down at us. It was like a scene of invasion, all of us massed at the waterline, waiting—but not to repel the invaders, hardly that.

“Coming,” she said, breathless, urgent, and pushed away from me. “They’re coming.”

As I sprawled back on the sand I knew she was right, our time was over, and I could only be grateful we had had it. The screams were louder than the waves now, and out in the black water, just at the limits of light, the boats were coming in. One to each pyre, they surged forward, sucked in by the tide, but mainly poled in by the boatmen. As they grounded on the sand, we moved in a mob from the warm glee of the bonfires and tried to make ourselves solemn or terrifying as we pulled the passengers from the boats.

It was the usual thing: some never stopped screaming, others were far past that point. A few stumbled and otherwise came along without resisting, but others had to be taken hand and foot and dragged across the sand and all the way up to the gravel. One or two always broke and ran until they saw that there was nowhere to go, and then they collapsed or staggered off into the dark or wandered back into the surf. Some had to be coaxed out of the boats again so the craft could return, empty.

Tonight there was some unexpected entertainment, though. I saw my lover whispering to one of her charges, grinning as she spoke. The girl she was talking to looked so familiar; it might have been herself long before, on the night of her own arrival. Whatever she whispered, it must have been persuasive, because as soon as she finished, the girl from the boat made a shocked face, then ran and threw herself headlong into the fire. She burned there, burned and burned, screaming. While from that mouth I’d been kissing a little while before, visible fumes of laughter poured. The taste of gas on my tongue turned flat and musty. I felt sick but I couldn’t say what had done it to me. There were too many possibilities.

I went over to the bonfire. She tried to stop me when she saw what I was doing, but I shoved her away and waded into the fire and grabbed hold of the burning girl and dragged her out again. Her hair was gone, her skin had charred and fallen in on her bones; a lot of her was simply burned away. She stood shaking and looked at her hands, cooked and raw, then up at me, and last of all at her tormentor.

“Go,” I said. “You’re not ready for this yet. Whatever she told you, she lied. That’s what we do here. We lie.”

As I said this, I felt I spoke the truth, and it was like a touch of flame to the gasoline on my breath. I choked on my words, spitting fire, and it caught in my hair and I felt myself burning all over. It all went dark, oily clouds of blackness fumed around me, and when I opened my eyes I was on my knees and the girl was stumbling off into the shadows, smoking and weeping, heading toward the roadside where the rest of them had gone. I could hear the sound of engines out there, from the trucks with hooded headlamps that came to collect them. The trucks came and went, came and went. The boats pulled away and the waves rolled in, and the pyres burnt themselves out all up and down the shore.

I realized at some point that my lover was crouching next to me, serious now, looking weary and no longer mischievous.

“I only told her what I wished someone had told me,” she said. “That’s all. You shouldn’t have said I lied. I’m not a liar.”

The pyre was almost dead. Soon it would be embers. The trucks had stopped running. Along the shore there were no other lights. Everyone was heading in.

She took my hand but I threw her fingers off. After a while she tried again and I was too tired to repulse her.

“We’ll never meet again,” she said. “You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“So are you coming?”

I shook my head. I squeezed her hand. I watched her turn toward the sea and trudge out through the surf.

The instant she was gone, I got up and ran after her, but the water clutched my ankles and the waves pushed me back. I waited on the shore, waited there in the dark, staring after her, waiting to see if she would return.

After a while the bonfires blazed at my back, and the boats came in again and again, but she was never in them.

THE FRIGID ILK OF SARN KATHOOL

The wizened and sagacious wizard Sarn Kathool had put behind him all the whims and errant passions of youth, and in his estimation it was time the Earth did likewise. He had seen an end to the warm spring days of Hyperborea’s juvenescence, and knew the coming age of glaciation would unavoidably end this early flowering of man’s innate capacity to fling forth what all agreed were the highest achievements of civilization (never counting those ruins of prehuman megaliths occasionally excavated from the ancient lava fields of Voormithadreth as anything more than the uncouth, accidental conglomerations of mindless ophidians). Humankind’s autumn was inarguably upon it; winter would be harsh for the species; and Sarn Kathool squandered no opportunity to instruct his captive acolytes and inform his squirming visitors that none but he were prepared for the grinding doom that at this and every moment bore down upon them from the northern reaches of Polarion: a demonic glacier.

The sage’s servants nodded mutely—even those who still possessed their tongues—while his voluntary visitors quickly found a reason to absent themselves, leaving the old mage, with his shocked white brows and thin ichthyic whiskers, lost in what they took to be rheumy recollections of a youth they supposed he fantasized as idyllic.

In this, however, Sarn Kathool’s peers were mistaken. His youth had been a harsh and in most respects miserable one, in which any advantage he had gained for himself came only with the greatest expenditures of energy, dedication, perseverance and the steadfast application of a ferocious intelligence. Much of the authority he now wielded was his by virtue of having outlasted his rivals. This was a source more of worry than of nostalgia, or even of pride; for the great colleges of arcane investigation were poorly staffed and even more meagerly attended, and no longer matriculated skilled gleaners of esoterica with anything like the force and variety he had taken for granted in his youth. Few graduated from the remote monastic eyries of the Eiglophian Mountains, and cold were the kitchens of the Mhu Thulan lamaseries.

Sarn Kathool had witnessed the near total decline of civilization, and of man’s civilizing urges, in the course of his lifetime—a paltry few generations on the scale of men less practiced at managing their mortality. And seeing now the relentless, remorseless approach of the glacial age, he felt that the burden was on him to arrest and if possible, reverse humanity’s declining course. The ice would be his unwitting ally—which was well, as it had come to Sarn Kathool from various accounts that those who opposed the advancing sheets of crystalline cold rarely profited thereby.

His plan was to embrace and accept the course of nature, and navigate to an ideal destination of his choosing, rather than allowing blind fate to steer the species. It had been foretold in multiple oracular utterances, and in his own febrile visions, that the great demonic glacier would level the rich Hyperborean landscapes like a razor dragged across a whiskered cheek. Where mighty mountains crumbled and gave way before the blinding advance of frost, flimsy human structures stood no chance. No monuments of the great Hyperborean kings would survive to dazzle distant ages beyond the ice’s reign; few memories would persist even in oral form.

But there was one thing Sarn Kathool relied on to survive the ravening chill, and that was man himself: vulnerable as an individual, but wily and adaptable as a race. Therefore he bent his still keen intellect on devising a scheme for the improvement of the species. The ice would give humankind the chance for reinvention. Sarn Kathool conceived a new beginning, a new race, with all the depravity, evils and ills of this degenerate age bred out of it for good!

No one understood better than Sarn Kathool the audacity and enormity of such a proposition, but his finances were equal to the endeavor. He planned to invest every last pazoor in his creation, and no matter the extravagance of the undertaking, he intended to use all of his resources to their utmost.

From the tip of his tower, set well back in the interior of Mhu Thulan, Sarn Kathool could peer out with a spyglass on a clear, still day and see the proud although abandoned spire of the sorcerer Eibon at the edge of the distant sea. Eibon had vanished from Hyperborea just ahead of a scourge of religious persecution cunningly avoided by Sarn Kathool, who diplomatically kept fanes to both Yhoundeh and Tsathoggua symmetrically installed in the depths of his own citadel.

He daily observed the rituals and offerings appropriate to each god, to ensure that no deity would thwart his aspirations. This also meant he could not count on either one for assistance. To prefer one over the other, to beg a favor of bat-featured Tsathoggua while spurning the elk goddess Yhoundeh, was to invite catastrophe. Therefore magic could play no part in his designs. He turned instead to the far more arcane study of technology, long out of favor in Hyperborea, even though its first seeds had sprouted there, as demonstrated by the occasional discovery of vast clockwork cities beneath the crawling sands of the aural reaches.

Far and wide he sent his scouts and acquisition experts, to retrieve volumes from the rare tome repositories of Mu and the archives of Atlantis; and gradually his own library, already overflowing with rare manuscripts of illuminated pterodactyl skin and vast books cased in yellowed horn of mastodon, became Hyperborea’s most concentrated seat of scientific learning. The incenses and enchanted braziers, reeking of tradition and ceremony, were put aside for strange polished lenses, outré fuming glassware, miles of curved tubing that kept the glasswrights of Commorium busy for years on end. Along with books and secret manuscripts, there flowed into his vast manse a steady procession of youths, bought from orphanages, salvaged from the streets, acquired from slave traders either by exchange of coin or the wholesale raiding and looting of transport ships. Multitudinous were the experts and specialists in Sarn Kathool’s employ, putting all their ingenuity to work on his behalf, while never suspecting the role they played in his grand vision of humanity’s great purification, preservation, and restoration, in hand with the great cold cleansing.

Fighters, merchants, mariners, moneylenders, healers, magistrates, sharp-dealers, assassins—all occupations figured in his plan. For at heart it was simply a matter of people. The Hyperborean people were his responsibility, and he felt it deeply; they were what he sought to preserve, after all; they were reason enough to persevere.

Sarn Kathool was a keen observer and lover of people; and in a way, late in his life, he found his true calling as collector and creator of the same. The techniques of breeding, the basic principles of hybridization and the concentration of desirable traits within a population, along with the elimination of those undesirable, were known to all but the most willfully ignorant. By such rules were fine aurochs bred into prized stock, through generation upon generation of gradual improvement. The ferocious dimetrodons, so popular as guardians of the wealthiest estates, had been bred through the ages for their lurid sails of toxic pigmentation and their loud sibilant bark. The same principles could be seen at work in human breeding. But never before had anyone thought to apply them with the relentless rigor and enthusiasm of Sarn Kathool.

He selected only the sturdiest females from among his growing stock, and those unworthy of refinement he established as their handmaidens and servitors. A similar program was instituted among the males, although toward an entirely different end. The males were set to fighting and rivalry, with all manner of duplicity and martial cunning encouraged, so as to thin the ranks as efficiently as possible and inculcate the most effective predators. The females were not set at each other in open combat, but the winnowing process was no less rigorous. Sarn Kathool reviewed them daily and received the reports of their overseers, in order to evaluate which possessed the most desirable demeanor, the greatest evidence of compassion—the qualities, in short, that one would wish the mother of the coming race to possess.

When the determination had been made, and Sarn Kathool had selected the most promising virgin, she was given a strong narcotic draught and carried immediately to his laboratory, where Sarn Kathool set to work at the heart of an extravagant mechanism fashioned of ranked lenses which permitted him to peer at the inner workings of the corpuscles and animalcules that drove the animate engines of fleshy creatures and vegetative life alike. More, the mechanism was an intricate manipulator of these cells, with meshed gears and serried levers declining into ever finer forms, so that the wizard’s gross physical gestures were translated across great chasms of scale, permitting him to flex a frail index finger and thereby score a precise incision over the surface of an organelle, deploying an edged instrument a thousand times as fine as an ice-flea’s proboscis. With a delicate touch, the ancient sage delved into the prenatal labyrinths of the chosen maid, and therein made infinitely delicate adjustments to the ranks of half-formed homunculi that waited to be summoned forth in service from their mother’s womb.

By methods of manipulation now as lost to us as the graven records of Sarn Kathool’s experiments, the maid was then induced to carry several of her inborn homunculi to term, to parthenogenetic birth, and the issue of this birth was then herself surrounded by her slightly less perfect sisters, and raised among only those influences certain to inspire the flowering of the finest feminine instincts. The girls were kept in secluded chambers, where every sensory experience was carefully designed in advance by Sarn Kathool, in accordance with a strict regimen of his devising. When this maid had ripened to the perfect and prescribed age, then just like her mother before her, she was brought to the workroom, where Sarn Kathool labored over her with pride and not a little dread, for great was his sense that time was running short, and deep was his fear that he would not complete his life’s greatest accomplishment in time to do the Earth any good.

For through all his labors, the demon ice advanced. From Polarion the blue green sheets crept at a rate previously inconceivable, singing with a low ominous moan that never faltered as the monstrous crystals formed. As the ice clawed ever closer to his tower, laying claim to all the cities of the realm, and began to sizzle and quench even the four blazing craters of Voormithadreth, the glacial sheets emitted weird emergent surges, casting subauroral flickerings brighter than the sun—so that even at midday, the summer skies surged and sang with a haunting glow that had been associated previously with none but the midnights of midwinter. Soon, he knew, it would all be midwinter—winter with no end, ice with no edges. And he bent himself to the minuscule razors and gleaming armatures with renewed dedication and purpose.

What gave him some hope of success was the progress he had made with the males of the experiment. In contrast to the maids, he selected the finest fighters, the most wicked and deceitful, and from them removed their half-formed homunculi. Ice here played its first role as partner. For upon removal from the male fighters, he placed each homunculus in a crystalline vial, which itself he set in a block of ice hollowed for the purpose of preservation. Here it waited in a frigid stasis while he summoned one of the rejected maids and prepared her womb to receive the warrior’s spawn. The maiden’s own progeny were scoured so that there could be no possibility of contamination, and then the male homunculus was implanted. Unlike a child conceived by normal means, the offspring of these efforts were not a mixture of mother and father. The males were purely male—bred for speed, size, aggression, violent disposition, tenacity, utter fearlessness, ruthlessness, cunning. Sarn Kathool knew which qualities he wished in a protector, and such were these. For Sarn Kathool’s plan was deep and complex, and extended through the ages. He had few illusions about the world that was likely to greet his progeny.

As the ice thickened around the base of his spire, his shipments of new subjects slowed to a trickle and then failed completely; but he scarcely noticed, for by now he was fully stocked on specimens; he had all he needed. He was many generations into his plan, locked in a deadly race with the advancing glacier, which moved with a restlessness that betrayed its demonic spirit, closing white claws around his tower like an evil god seizing Earth’s last scepter.

His daughters, the mothers of all future men, were pure and noble and worthy—worthy to receive the final gift that he would give them. They were the ideal bearers of Sarn Kathool’s own seed—for this it was that he intended. Parthenogenesis only to a point, and then a final conjunction, in which his own homunculi would make the short journey from Sarn Kathool’s loins to the waiting womb and the receptive, incomplete homunculi of the perfectly created maiden. And in her womb, their offspring would sleep, utterly frozen, the glacier’s greatest power used to thwart and undermine its depredations. And in the ultimate thaw, whenever after unaccountable ages it would come, that child would commence to grow… and Sarn Kathool himself, merged with this specimen of perfect motherhood, would live and lead the way in that future age—the first of a perfect breed that he himself would continue to refine after its creation.

But still he feared, for he knew his own vulnerability. He easily pictured what could befall even the most carefully concealed tombs of the great kings. The vast estates of the dead that skirted the edges of Commorium were a waste of plundered crypts—and in all the eons of ice that lay ahead, there was no telling what manner of greedy cold wretches might come in search of the fabled lair and resting place of storied Sarn Kathool. Therefore, the warriors, bred to protect the mother and her handmaids—and to do so with all their wiles, with every trick of ruthlessness and cunning their vicious nature could devise. Any thaw, any disruption to the frozen vaults sufficient to disturb the maiden’s rest, would also stir the warriors, and in this way bring on the certain death of any violator. But Sarn Kathool could not shake the foreboding, sharpened by the incipience of ice, that this was not enough—that the maiden herself had need of innate defenses.

After much consideration, and convinced of his design’s foolproof nature, he began to make certain alterations to the maiden homunculi, although nothing that could express itself without the proper triggering conditions. In the presence of threat, at the danger of rape for instance, the maiden mother would find herself possessed of all the cunning strength and violent power necessary to exterminate her assailant. It pained him to compromise the creature’s innocence, but dark ages lay ahead. What if the warriors did not wake? What if the maiden was left alone and at the mercy of her violators? Who would protect the sanctity of Sarn Kathool’s homunculus then?

No, the female must be permitted some subtle yet potent means of defense.

And so, more generations of maiden mothers were bred, refined, and from their selfsame stock bred again. Within the wombs of his select matron, a lineage of perfect mothers waited as if queued to receive the seed of Sarn Kathool, prefiguring the perfect race that one day would venture forth. While this program wended on, Sarn Kathool neglected not the furtherance of the warrior breed, and with all he learned from his practice on the maidens, the male lineage was also improved. From the inferior yet no less fertile wombs of the subsuperior parti-matrons, he hatched males of inarguable ferocity, continually eliminating the weak or hesitant, honing the protector until he felt he had a specimen that could protect his mother from any future harm, no matter how unimaginable.

At last there came a stretch of howling whiteness, a plunge of temperature so cold and penetrating that its menacing ache could be felt in the deepest vaults of Sarn Kathool’s redoubt. On what promised to be the last morning of Hyperborea’s fleeting age of glory, the old mage, weary beyond belief yet elated by his success, mounted to the highest turret of his grim frost-locked citadel and permitted himself a final glimpse of the world he had labored so strenuously to save. The program had cost him the final centuries of his life, and in that time he had scarcely allowed himself to be distracted by the encroaching of the glacial horror that had claimed the Earth while closing around him slowly, as if saving Sarn Kathool for last.

From where he stood, it was no longer possible to see the peak of Eibon’s lofty tower, for it had long since been buried beneath the hungry blue-green waste. Weird lights glowed through the ice at that spot, and that was the only clue that Eibon had ever existed. Wherever else Sarn Kathool looked, there was not even a memorial glow. All the works of man were locked in ice. The glacier itself possessed a demonic soul, a spirit that remorselessly sought the extirpation not only of Sarn Kathool, not only of all intellectual accomplishment, not only of Earth… but of all. The fiend’s disregard for the greatest of minds was the ultimate insult to Sarn Kathool, and yet he had met it full on. His victory was a feat to be flung in the demon’s howling maw. It had not defeated him, nor would it outlive his progeny.

As if sensing his moment of gloating as a challenge, the winter-thing sped at him, wielding an ice-edged sword of wind—the blast that through some irony would come to be known as boreal, even though through all the ages of Hyperborea’s existence that phrase had evoked balmy cosseting breezes and green, sweet-scented zephyrs. Sarn Kathool cringed back inside and sealed the outer portals. Frost burned through the walls, rendering them searing to the touch, turning the lush and colorful arrases hung there to brittle grey wafers that shattered at a breath.

He turned to the spiral stairs and wound his way quickly down into the depths, and the cold chased him, icing over the steps as he descended. There could be no return. The passages were choked with crystals of ice; his very exhalations solidified and fell crashing around his feet, while the air in his chest threatened to transform into sharp shards that would stab his lungs from within. The demon howled! And Sarn Kathool repressed a youthful exuberant laugh, so narrow was his sense of escape. A joyous exhilaration quickened his steps.

And then he was in his final chambers: His workshop, his lair, and in the last and deepest room, the nuptial laboratory. It crossed his mind that the laboratory was perhaps a degree warmer than it ought to have been—as if the ice had not yet reached these depths; as if it had exercised restraint. As to why the uncalculating ice might have let a spark of warmth remain, his suspicion was so faint that he scarcely troubled with it. It was time to put aside all thoughts of restraint.

His maiden bride awaited, locked in artificial slumber. He gazed upon her beauty and saw that he had created perfection. A suitable mother in some distant age, but for now an irresistible and alluring mate. She had been prepared for him by her handmaids, themselves now locked away in secure adjacent galleries to which the demonic cold had been cleverly diverted. The warrior breed had also been frozen into their holding cells; with the chiefest of them, and her most perfect protector, cast into stasis in this same chamber, nearest to wake should she require protection.

All was utterly, completely still. The demon’s howl was inaudible.

Sarn Kathool despite the elderly gasping that his hurried plunge had elicited, felt a youthful quickening in his blood. And as he beheld his maiden matron, primed to receive him, the quickening came to a point.

Erect, flush with his life’s masterwork and the pride of his achievement, he advanced on his maiden receptacle, the vessel who would carry him into whatever future awaited, and entered her like an old man easing himself gingerly into a rocking boat.

That was not quite the last sensation he felt, nor quite his last awareness of existence. For although his spine broke instantly, there was enough life left in his eyes to see the grinning face of the warrior protector as his fierce creation twisted the wise old head entirely backwards on its neck; and with another half-turn, continuing the revolution, he was able to gaze into the wide-awake eyes of his no less ferocious maiden-but-not-mother, who was pleased beyond measure by what she saw in his expression. And even as their laughter rose in his ears, and as the obscene noises of their twinned passions commenced, to intimate exactly what form of race he had visited upon the future as the mother and father of mankind’s newest iteration, there came a storm of deafening white sound flooding his awareness, boastfully and wordlessly, mindlessly gloating— informing him how in all ways he had failed: the insane, incomprehensible, and purely witless tittering of the ice.

THE GHOST PENNY POST

I hope London’s trust in me is not misplaced, thought Hewell as he sought his valise under roadside ferns. He spotted the leather case, still buckled, its sheaf of papers safe. Drawing it from among the fronds, he climbed out of the ditch to stand beside the carriage. Always fond of a good puzzle, Hewell was none too keen on mysteries; but events of the morning suggested more of the latter than the former were in store for his afternoon.

He offered the harried driver a hand strapping their trunks back in place. The man had managed to calm the more nervous of the two horses, shaken after the affright, or attack, or whatever it had been. When the incident occurred, even though it was still shy of noon, Hewell had been dozing uneasily inside the compartment. His seat suddenly slewed, twisting him out of a restless dream, flinging him first against the door and then through it, onto an embankment carpeted in moss. Blessed moss! The coach had very nearly toppled over onto him. Thank God for a skilled driver and at least one imperturbable horse.

Just as their luggage was settled back in place, the other passenger returned from scouting the woods and approached the driver with more questions. “You say the figure rushed from where to where?”

“Well, he come up from here,” the driver said, pointing, “and then run off that way, toward Pellapon Hall. From what I hears, they be having a deal of trouble in these parts, but I never thought to fear any of it meself.”

The other man, who had said hardly a syllable to Hewell on the journey from the local train station—being as buried in notebooks as Hewell was in postal documents—appeared to be traveling in some sort of official capacity. His tone was consistent with his superiority. “I need more details, if you please. Dressed in what fashion? Speak up!”

Hewell felt it was no one’s place to pester the poor, rattled driver. And yet he was interested in the reply.

“As I said, it was all very fast, but… I thought I saw a figure all in black, covered head to toe in a peculiar kind of cape. Had on a hood to hide his face and a pair of horns atop it all. Like goat horns, I’d say.”

“Or Devil horns, perhaps?”

“I don’t know about that. Never seen the Devil meself, couldn’t speculate on the nature of his horns. But I seen goats aplenty and I’d say these were more that sort.”

The officious gentleman nodded and turned away, making notes in a tiny journal.

Once they had settled again in the carriage, to be shaken in the more ordinary way by the resumption of their journey, Hewell cleared his throat and said, “I’m an inspector myself.”

The other passenger gave him a direct look. Bushy eyebrows, gray-salted whiskers, a beard barely attended to. Hewell felt a pang of pity for the man: self-groomed, a bit threadbare, yet with an intensity of gaze which suggested that he scarcely noticed the lack of coin or comforts. He would be baffled by Hewell’s sympathy.

“Which is to say, if I am not far amiss, that you, too, appear to be an inspector of some sort.”

The man closed his notebook and returned it to an inner pocket. “Forgive me a professional reticence, but my employer would rather I not speak openly until I have conferred with him.”

“Might I hazard a guess as to your employer’s identity?”

“I can hardly prevent you from speculating.”

“We traverse at this moment the ancestral estate of the Pellapons. Is this name known to you?”

“That great house is indeed my first stop. But I can say no more.”

“Naturally. I myself am free to come forward in my public capacity as an inspector of the Royal Mail. I am traveling only slightly farther along, to the village proper, Binderwood. You are aware, perhaps, of certain irregularities—one might even characterize them as abuses—in the local mail? London has grown alarmed. I am here to investigate.”

“As you say. And without compromising my discretion, you are undoubtedly apprised that these irregularities have affected Lord Pellapon’s affairs in matters of business, person, and privacy.”

“Say no more,” said Hewell. “It is not entirely unlikely that even though the London office ordered me here, a request from Lord Pellapon was behind that command. Therefore, if I may in any way be of service, please do not hesitate to ask. It might be to both our advantages were we to occasionally pool our findings.”

“Indeed.” The eyes of the other gent began to twinkle. “I like this thought. I like it very much. As two outsiders in Binderwood, we are certain to encounter nothing but resistance, doors slammed shut in our paths. But doors are ineffective if one can come at them from both sides at once! We shall beat them at their own game, sir, whatever it may be!”

“Hewell,” said Hewell, extending his hand.

“Deakins,” said the other, almost certainly a detective of the private variety. His skeletal fingers managed a firm grip as they shook.

“I did not see you on the train from London,” the detective said, “despite several strolls from one end to the other to work my legs.”

“I ride in the mail car,” Hewell said. “I wish I could recommend it as a mode of travel but its comforts are few. There is little in the way of seating, and one is constantly hampering the sorting clerks and made to feel unwelcome. Even though I repeatedly reassured them I was there purely as a passenger, they never believed me. In truth, I couldn’t help but notice some deficiencies in their methods, yet could say nothing after my promises. On my return, I will certainly avoid that particular car. The hardest thing is to know a truth one cannot speak.”

The coach stopped and the driver hopped down to put his head in. “I hope it’s no bother, Mr. Hewell, but I been instructed to deliver Lord Pellapon’s guest right quick. It’s a short deviation and we’ll proceed into Binderwood straightaway after, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Hewell answered, pleased that he would get a look at Pellapon Hall. Since it figured into his investigation, he was glad of the opportunity to locate it in relation to various landmarks he had committed to memory. Studying the district map had given him only the faintest impression of the region.

They headed up a long drive among mature yet sickly hornbeams dappled with anemic sunlight, and the woods thinned to give glimpses of the grounds. There was not much to admire: a ragged sweep of bare, salted lawn cresting hills that ran toward the sea; and, at the end of the drive, a tall manor with wings not quite fully spread, like the halves of a traveling apothecary’s dispensary trunk interrupted in the opening. The stone of the place was rimed and spotted; sea spray and lichens had brought the house into sympathy with the local limestone. It was as if an architect had taken a stern hand to an outcrop.

A smattering of domestic staff awaited the coach, at their fore a hale, ruddy-complected figure with a raw nose and wispy hair that had gone to gray yet still retained a memory of orange. This attribute gave unspoken testimony that the twin girls waiting beside him were his daughters.

Hewell attempted to remain within the coach, but Deakins said a few words to Lord Pellapon and he found himself compelled into the house for tea. The driver, having no other passengers, was content to wait.

“Run along, girls!” Lord Pellapon barked as he led the way down a dim corridor toward the sitting room, for the two ginger lasses appeared inclined to lurk and listen to every word. They drifted away with whispers and titters, but Hewell sensed they were never quite out of earshot—his or theirs.

“Twins?” he asked.

“What’s that? The girls? Yes, and a trial to me as never to their mother, God rest her. I have no aptitude for the raising of such angels. Under my care they have become perfect devils!”

His face reddening, he looked on the verge of a fit until Deakins put a hand on his shoulder and said, “But your troubles hatch elsewhere, Lord Pellapon. With those resolved, I have no doubt your family will be restored to a more harmonious state.”

“Naturally,” Lord Pellapon agreed, subsiding into a state of quietude and a chair of oxblood leather near a window overlooking the cliffs. Through lozenges of poor consistency, Hewell saw the gray and restless bosom of the ocean. The sky was at the mercy of mist and cloud, and he supposed he might stand at this window for a year and never see an horizon. He felt grateful that his own chambers in London held no such views, or any at all, to distract him.

“My Lord,” said Deakins, “I thought since Mr. Hewell is here that you might be able to acquaint both of us, as one, with the details of your present difficulties. As I understand it, they revolve around the mail.”

“Yes, and I have had no satisfaction from the local authorities. Merricott is quite unhelpful. Incompetent, I daresay.”

“The local postmaster?” Hewell said. “Well, that is why I’m here. An obstinate fellow will be dealt with to the extent of my powers, keeping in mind that he may have a certain vestigial authority that proves recalcitrant. It is often the case with these local offices. They resist any attempt to bring them in line with the latest procedures, and any mention of increased efficiency is frequently met with outright hostility. If you knew the outcry we faced at the proposal of installing postboxes in regions even less removed than this…”

“Shameful, I’m sure,” said Pellapon. “But Merricott is not obstinate. He’s an idiot!”

“That does not necessarily make matters easier,” the detective said. “A measure of intelligence often leads to quicker arrival at an agreed destination—once trouble has been turned from its deviant course. What the perpetrators will not expect is a ferocious imagination—mine!—turned upon their plots. There is no mischief they can concoct that is inconceivable to me, and in this wise I shall expediently outwit them.”

Idiots and deviants, Hewell thought. They are certainly eager to work from assumptions.

“On behalf of the Royal Mail,” said Hewell, “I can promise a thorough, sober, and clear-eyed investigation. Now, as I understand it, Binderwood has experienced a tremendous rise in the volume of local correspondence—”

“To such an extent my business is suffering! Letters lost. Valuable communiqués gone missing in this deluge of packets, this… this torrent. I am constantly receiving missives full of nonsense while my own transactions go astray. A letter of patent I expected a month ago turned up last week in an illiterate cotter’s hut. It would be there still had not Doctor Ogilvy paid the poor wretch a visit to treat a milk-rash and spotted it in service as a blotter.”

“Many villages in Binderwood’s position are in a state of flux,” Hewell said, without trying to sound as if he were justifying the inexcusable. “Modern improvements are planned for all, to meet with the rise in demand, but some areas are still far behind the times. You have the telegraph, of course—”

“But it is the mail I rely upon, and it is the mail that has gone to Hell! I cannot append my signature or set my stamp to a telegram! I assure you, this matter concerns the whole locale. Just because it has not troubled London—”

“Pray do not mistake me, sir! It is a deeply troubling matter to London, and to me personally. The mail in all its parts is our concern, and I thank you for bringing this to my attention. I do feel, given the urgency I sense, that my time would be better spent attending directly to the situation. Meaning no discourtesy, I beg your leave to forego my tea and get on to my meeting with the postmaster, post haste.”

“Well,” Lord Pellapon muttered, “it would be greatly appreciated. Tilly, where are the detective’s biscuits?”

Deakins gave the postal inspector a nod and settled down to business: slurping his Lapsang souchong while the maid scurried off for the missing digestives. Hewell made his own way back along the passage to the foyer. Seeing no servants, he was about to open the front door himself when it flew inward, nearly crushing his nose.

He found himself facing a tall young man in the act of delivering the afternoon mail. Before he quite registered that Hewell was a stranger, the lad had relinquished two handfuls of letters. It was rather a lot of mail for one house, Hewell thought, weighing them in either hand.

“That will be all, boy,” Hewell said to the youth’s bewilderment. The dazed lad nodded, bowed, and returned to his waiting nag, looking back at Hewell several times. Hewell shut the door and inspected the letters in what illumination passed through the high foyer fanlight.

Lord Pellapon’s mail was ordinary enough: the usual admixture of cancellations and the standard Penny Black stamp, self-adhesive pride of the Royal Mail. He could never see one without admiring it: Queen Victoria’s blessed profile, beautifully engraved against a background of engine turnings. The common red cancellation mark was a bit difficult to make out, which had led to talk of printing in new colors, a notion Hewell despised as undignified. The black ink framing Her white visage was elegant, unequalled. He had seen them being printed, had touched the etched plates, had welcomed what they meant for the efficient handling of mail in a reformed and modern postal system. Everything about them pleased him.

The Penny Blacks decorated a number of thin, rustling envelopes, as well as a rather larger bundle bearing the inscription of a solicitor in London. But in his left hand were four or five packets of a more irregular sort: cheap, thick paper, each bearing a stamp he did not at first recognize. Foreign? Or some local variant?

A troubling variety of unauthorized regional postage stamps had sprung up in the shadow of the Penny Black. It was not entirely accurate to call them counterfeit; they were more along the lines of homages, although of course highly unlawful. These were an affliction of remote counties but a manageable one, rarely worth the time it took to suppress them unless they traveled beyond their home districts.

The letters in Hewell’s left hand all bore the same peculiar stamp: it was engraved with care and craft, but printed in violet ink on a press whose plates were minutely out of register, such that the profile was ever so slightly blurred. This figure of royalty wore a fanciful three-tipped crown and was definitely not Victoria Regina. The profile’s most remarkable feature was a sharp dot of carmine red marking out the iris of the eye. As a work of art and amateur production, it was intriguing. However, it also bore the legend “One Penny,” which rendered it a competitor to the Royal Mail, a blatant forgery, and therefore intolerable.

“It is our job to deliver the mail,” said a piping, musical voice.

“We’ll carry those to Papa!”

The packets were snatched from his hands.

“Thank you, Mr. Hewell!”

Even as he turned to look after them, the twins were gone, ascamper down the corridor. They veered to the right and headed up a flight of stairs. Perhaps knowing that their father would not want to be interrupted in the sitting room, they left most of the letters stacked precariously on the newel post. But the left-hand delivery appeared not to be among them. Hewell considered this for a moment, then decided to continue with his own business.

The coachman was still waiting, but the young courier had already passed into the distant spray of hornbeams that lined the drive. Hewell was quite certain he would be seeing him again soon enough.

The last leg of the journey into Binderwood was uneventful. After the sullen demeanor of Pellapon Hall, he found the mien of the village cheerful. Hewell took little pleasure from the merely scenic. He preferred the presence of people, and those in quantity, with all the attendant reassuring noises and behaviors of his kind. He had dark suspicions of the sorts of associations and activities that might arise among naturally social and gregarious creatures such as man when they found themselves spread too thin.

The village gave the impression of coherence. A tinsmith; a chandler; grocer and butcher cheek-by-jowl; an inn. At this last, the coachman helped him out and tendered his slightly scuffed luggage, plucking off a wedge of moss. From the door of the inn, Hewell looked along the central lane and identified the post office, just across the way. Everything was close and convenient. With a satisfied nod, he went inside.

A small, tidy upper room overlooked the street, and the innkeeper’s wife was solicitous. He was far from Mrs. Floss’s first London visitor and Mrs. Floss was far from impressed. He immediately took a meal in the overheated common room, sitting as close to the door and as far from the unnecessarily roaring hearth as he could manage, while the landlady complained about a cold that wouldn’t leave her bones, giving every indication that she would be happy to complain about those who complained about the heat. As he swirled the last of his stout and washed down the last bit of bread, a lanky silhouette came in from the street and nearly stumbled over Hewell’s outstretched legs. The boy removed his hat and shifted it from hand to hand before realizing that he should offer one in greeting.

“You are the postal inspector, sir, is that correct?”

“I am, lad. We met at Lord Pellapon’s door. Sit down if you wish.”

“I’m Toby, sir.”

“Of course you are.”

“My master, the postmaster, Mr. Merricott, sir, sent me to extend every courtesy and let you know he awaits you at your conveniently… earliness…”

“Very well, Toby. Tell him I will be along—well, no. I’m finished here. I shall accompany you back this very moment.”

“Sir, it would be my pleasure, sir.”

“Mr. Hewell is sufficient.”

Hewell pushed aside the empty tankard. They brewed a fine stout here in Binderwood—a very fine stout indeed. But for the sake of his duties he must keep a clear head.

Young Toby led him the short distance down the street and then across. Hewell saw the courier’s nag slouched in a muddy paddock, all spattered herself. By contrast, the office was orderly, neat, and well maintained, with no obvious signs of systemic disruption that might explain a mail system gone awry. Postmaster Merricott was of demeanor consistent with his office. A thin, prim, fastidious man of slightly more years than Hewell, he rubbed his palms together continually, as if trying to congeal and remove a stubborn patch of gum arabic. He dispatched Toby to the back room to fetch a district map. Hewell already possessed a regulation map, but he was keen to inspect the village copy for any discrepancies. Local terrain was often at odds with London’s representation.

Merricott managed to make himself present for any question Hewell might pose while at the same time blending discreetly into the background of the small office. Toby’s presence was harder to ignore. The lad rustled ledgers, sorted letters loudly, and was constantly banging in and out through the rear door to attend to the horse and various other responsibilities of a rural postal clerk.

After an hour spent in a survey of the most superficial aspects of the office’s functions, Hewell set aside his magnifying glass and let it be known that Merricott was at liberty to be more forthcoming.

“I wonder whether you might educate me regarding any local, shall we say, irregularities. When it comes to postal standards, that is.”

“Certainly, Inspector,” said Merricott, and followed this by waiting silently.

“Well?”

“Sir?”

“I await explication.”

“Of what, sir?”

“Local irregularities.”

“I would not tolerate them, Inspector. I’m sure London would take a dim view of that.”

“Do you not sell, in addition to the standard Penny Black, some other form of postage?”

Merricott’s expression turned from bland to befuddled.

“Other form? Only the Penny Black, sir. We are not as remote as all that. I have heard tell of counterfeits in circulation elsewhere, but we’ve seen no sign of them here.”

“Well, you wouldn’t recognize a good forgery, now would you? But come, come, that’s not what I’m getting at. Today I spotted another stamp, of a violet hue—”

They were becoming aware of an increasing hubbub from the back room, and at last Merricott jumped to his feet and called, “Toby! What the blazes are you crashing about in there for?”

“Tea, sir!”

Merricott settled down again and resumed his guided finger-tour of the contents of his desk. Toby emerged a minute later with a peeling and blistered red and black japanned tray, upon which rested three cracked cups and a fissured, fuming teapot. His cheeks pink with embarrassment, he poured for the two men and then flushed further when he realized he had included his cup among theirs. He begged their pardon for his presumption and started backing out of the room, taking his empty cup along.

“I wonder, Mr. Merricott,” said Hewell, arresting the boy’s retreat, “if you might be so kind as to allow me to accompany young Toby on his rounds tomorrow.”

“Are the maps not sufficient?” Merricott asked.

“They tell only part of the story, at least from my perspective. A guide well versed in the environs gives a deeper understanding of the ordinary obstacles. I am far from seeing how any sort of irregularity is possible in such a well-ordered office as yours, Mr. Merricott, so the trouble must lie outside it.”

“Thank you, sir. And thanks to London for its trust. I see they have sent their finest. Toby! Tomorrow you are at Mr. Hewell’s disposal, understood?”

“What… will, will you then join me on my route?”

“Indeed,” said Hewell. “I shall return at first light.” For it had grown dark as they worked, and it had been the longest sort of day, comprising a journey followed not by rest and recuperation but by work and still more work. Hewell had but a handful of days for his investigation and dared waste none of them; he also dared not return to London without an explanation, and ideally a solution put in place. He doubted he could solve the issue of mysterious figures running across wooded roads and upsetting horses with their sinister costumes, but issues involving the mail could surely be sorted.

Toby raised the cup to his lips and sipped air, his teeth clattering on the rim. “First light,” he said, and bounded backward out of the room. More clatterings ensued and then the boy resumed his work. Hewell heard the scratching of a pen.

“A diligent lad,” he said.

“Toby? A very industrious lad, yes. Deliveries twice, sometimes three times a day. Our residents are avid correspondents. He lives in the back there; no family worth mentioning, so I’ve taken him in. At times I’ve had to prevail upon him to slow down, if only for the sake of poor old Eglentine.”

“You’ve a literate population, then.”

“You will find many good souls, especially among our youth, who are charitable with their time and use it to help the unlettered. They compose missives where once they might have gone visiting. In some ways, it worries me, the decline in social intercourse. And yet the post office has benefitted thereby… and it does keep the young ones out of trouble.”

“Would you say this might be the cause of a recent increase, even an overabundance of mail?”

“It might appear so, but the increase in postage has been slight. No letter travels unless it has been stamped. No stamps are sold but in this office. And there has been no noticeable increase in postal sales. Therefore…” With a plain-dealer’s shrug and open hands, he demonstrated the simplicity of the problem: there was none.

Toby put his head through from the rearmost room. “Night mail is accumulating, sir. I’d best attend to it.”

“Don’t you dare risk Madame Eglentine in the dark, Toby! I won’t have it!”

“No, sir. It’s a fine night, I’ll have no trouble on my own two pins.”

Merricott gave him a nod, but Hewell merely blinked. After a few moments, he pleaded fatigue and excused himself, leaving the postmaster to begin whatever shop-shutting he normally conducted.

Out in the dark lane, Hewell stood quietly watching and listening until he saw a tall figure pass through a far-off haze of light. The long-legged character strode away from Floss’s inn. The inspector headed after him.

Beyond the faint light cast in the lane by the homes and shops of Binderwood, where the buildings grew sparser and the distance between them greater, Hewell’s eyes had to catch what glimpses they could by starlight. There was just enough of this astronomic glow to keep the striding shape in sight without putting himself at risk of having his footsteps overheard.

Spectralia’s Courier was in a state of panic. He had never felt such dread, not through all the conflicts and quarrels that had beset the Kingdom during his tenure. The Dispute of the Seventeen Borders; the Deputation of Ghosts; the Battle of the Sea Stars—none of these events had involved him directly. Even the War of the Woods, in which he was conscripted, had been fought and finished quickly, resolved with several duels, one sword fight, and a formal armistice followed by cake. Although the Kingdom had certainly been in danger and dealt with its share of spies and subterfuges, the threat had never before come from beyond. Internal pressures were one thing. Civil wars flared up continually, but Her Ladyship, the Ghost Queen, had a strong and fair hand when it came to managing her subjects. This was a different matter. What bulwarks could she erect against the actions of external principalities? What chance had Spectralia against the far-off yet famously meddlesome influence of London? The people there obeyed no monarch but their own!

In darkness, moving stealthily down astral paths known only to Initiates, the Courier Tobianus reminded himself that his duty was not to solve these problems but simply to report them. The Ghost Queen, once roused and enlightened, would certainly know what to do.

But arriving at the meeting place, Tobianus discovered that word had spread already and his errand in this instance proved superfluous. Several dozen subjects of the Ghost Queen, apprised by the Terrors themselves, had gathered in the dark glade near the Grimstock Menhirs—those standing stones older than London but by no means as ancient as Spectralia. In the lee of the stones, they guarded a lantern and shared what they knew while waiting for the pale Queen to pass judgment. When Tobianus finally caught sight of her, she appeared to be listening patiently with closed eyes to their worries. Hearing of his arrival, her carmine eyes flashed open. She beckoned him forward and asked him to contribute whatever unique information he might possess. Under her warm regard, he felt his fear melt away. The Queen knew already of the convocation at the Oblivious King’s estate, where the breach of security had been observed at first hand. The Royal Terrors were her eyes and ears in that place, so of course she knew whatever they knew—and in fact they knew far more than the Courier regarding the disposal of the mail he had delivered.

“We know he studied a Ghost Penny,” said the Queen, and the twin red Terrors nodded. “From this he may infer, eventually, the existence of our post.”

A murmur swept the gathering.

“I am to take him on my rounds tomorrow,” said Tobianus. “He will accompany me throughout day, which means the Spectral Mail will stall completely.”

The Queen dismissed his fears with a small flick of her hand. “For the duration of this emergency, We are suspending the Courier’s exclusive contract and putting all delivery in the hands of the citizens. Ferry your own correspondence. If you wish to pool your efforts, We will leave that to your discretion. Use the astral paths. Eschew the main routes. And especially avoid engaging with the Courier while he is compelled by the Inspector.”

“But who will tabulate the Motivations?” Tobianus asked. “My quarters are under scrutiny. I dare make no calculations.”

“Again, for the duration of the emergency, all citizens are to be responsible for their own tabulations. We hereby suspend the Haruspices of the Shuttle and refer you to rely on the actions of dice, as in days of old. We trust you have all retained the original Codex of Action and Circumstance. If your copy has been misplaced, you will need to confer with a neighbor.”

Apparently many copies had been misplaced, which pleased Her Eminence not at all. Without the basic Concordance, they were all at odds and evens; her ongoing addenda were useless on their own. Various complaints were made regarding the clumsy process for emergency Concatenation. Few remembered how it was done, many of the original dice had been misplaced or swallowed by pets and small children, there was endless room for erroneous interpretations, &c., &c. At last the Queen was forced to make a ruling.

“Very well,” she said, without hiding her exasperation. “We will perform one final Compilation tonight, before the Inspector puts the Courier under compulsion. The matter will be submitted, all possible actions Concatenated, and a course revealed. We will rule for the collective, but each of you must then make your own tabulations until the threat passes. Therefore watch carefully. We are disappointed, however. It was never Our intention that the knowledge would settle in one place, the procedures forgotten by all of you. That is a dangerous way to organize the Kingdom, for centralized knowledge is vulnerable and easily lost. You must, in future, do better.”

A light rain began to fall as the Queen and her chastened cabinet adjourned. She was wrapped in water-resistant robes of state and her sedan chair readied; and then off they went on the public road, fortunately little traveled at such an hour.

The Kingdom was a perfect square and their destination lay in the northwesternmost corner. No need was there to consult a map, for in its superficial aspect, Spectralia exactly corresponded with the familiar demesnes of Binderwood. The true measure of the Ghost Kingdom extended into spiritual depths. It was a land of mysteries, carefully papered over, only to be peeled away through an unending series of Initiations. Tobianus had been granted six of these. Certain citizens had three times that number. The Royal Terrors claimed their Queen had bestowed them with three and thirty Initiations, all in the course of empowering them to look after her affairs.

Any (purely hypothetical) outsider, following on their heels in the dark, damp night, would see only the common byways marked on any map. But for the citizens of Spectralia, the path was illuminated by numberless Evocations. They passed the Dire Domicile, from whence an evil light leaked out, known as the source of the Luminous Scourge, which had stricken children and kine alike and was avoided by all, despite the good-natured widow who appeared to inhabit the place. Then followed the Cavernous Extant, a pitted pasture riddled with tunnels and subterrene architecture built by a race of serpent men widely hoped (but not proven) to be extinct. Beyond was a copse that must never be crossed—the Copse Uncrossed, they called it, simply because the Queen found the name amusing and none dared question her wisdom, any more than they dared cross the copse. They skirted it discreetly.

At last they arrived at the Cot of Concatenation, and here the Courier was privately pleased to see that word of mouth and gossip had yet to supplant the Ghost Penny Post. Not a single member of the household was expecting the arrival of the Spectral Lady and her retinue. All the Cot’s inhabitants were forcibly roused, that the Weaver could be put to work. There was some consternation due to the hour and the Weaver’s advanced age; outnumbered by the presence of so many loyal subjects, however, the complainers gained no foothold with their sleepily mutinous mutterings.

The Weaver’s frailty was a threat to the Spectral Crown’s continued existence, but it appeared both she and the Kingdom would survive another night. Her stalwart grandson, the Cotter himself, volunteered to feed the flame and boil up vapors enough to power the steam-stoked Loom, but the Queen insisted that tonight they would rely on older methods. As the Weaver sorted strands of wool, all those assembled stated their names and status in service to Spectralia. For each citizen, a thread of yarn was drawn. A tally was made also of the unrepresented citizenry, for not every subject was free to leave their home and join the Court in darkness, much as the Queen might have wished it. While the Weaver sorted, the Queen busied herself with her combing-cards, punching holes into the rectangles of thick cardstock in the patterns she had devised to represent both the open-eyed will of the Kingdom and the actions of blind fate. She handed the cards to the Weaver. The old woman fit the boards into her Loom, then set to weaving. It was slow and quiet work as the shuttle wove, and Tobianus dozed and woke several times while the Cotter made tea and offered it about with oatcakes. The Ghost Queen never nodded. Her bright red eyes watched enrapt as the blind fingers danced; as she studied the weave that gradually emerged, her expression grew solemn and skeptical. At last they reached the end of what the cards had written and the strands of wool were severed. The Queen took the length of cloth and laid it across her knees, studying the pattern writ in textiles.

“Weaver, your job is done.”

“Oh, aye, Your Majesty!”

“Hm… We chose no strand for the Inspector, and yet his presence is everywhere in this. With regard to the Kingdom, only a few of us are specifically addressed in these Motivations, our Courier chief among them.”

“Yes, my Queen,” said Tobianus.

“Tomorrow, along with your regular mail, you are to carry one letter of the Ghost Penny Post. You will receive it first but deliver it last, and deliver it only to Us. Understood?”

“Yes, my Queen.”

“The Royal Terrors shall see you have it before your departure. You will make no effort to hide it from the Inspector, but you will not permit him to touch it until your regular route is done. London’s hand in this is clear: as an agent of the competing post, this letter is for him alone to deliver. Tobianus, We will leave you to determine your own course. Your facility with the dice is almost the rival of Our own.”

“Why, thank you, Your Majesty!”

“The remainder of you shall spend the day in ordinary pursuits. At midnight, we will all reconvene at the Specter’s Seat. Tomorrow night will be as taxing as this one, We suspect. Therefore return to your homes and sleep. We release you now—all but the Terrors, of course.”

The party dispersed into the spongy, silent night, plashing through puddles, the risen moon a grinning lookout playfully dodging clouds.

As Tobianus picked his way back to the post office, he tried to slip free of his conviction that for Spectralia, all was about to be forever altered. But his Queen would surely say that change was the eternal nature of things. Change, chance, and choice. This was the very essence of the matter addressed by Concatenation.

He had a shiversome moment when he felt sure he spied a shadow skulking in the lane beyond the post office, then a flare of light from the front door of the inn picked out the silhouette of a man just entering. Recognizing the figure of Floss the innkeeper, his worries eased somewhat.

Madame Eglentine pleaded with him fruitlessly for favors as he passed her paddock and went in through the rear of the post office. He lit a lamp and stoked a very small fire in the very small stove, just enough to take off the chill. Then, settling down with a cup of cold, watery tea, he sat on the end of his rather lumpy bed, reached between his feet, and fished about until his fingers found a small box on the floor. From this he took a tattered notebook, its pages filled with columns of numbers and corresponding text. Beneath the book of tables lay a rattling half-dozen multifaceted dice. From the end of the bed, he could lean forward onto a wobbly secretary, bracing it with his elbows. He pulled the lantern closer and rolled two dice clattering across the deal surface, warped and ringed with the pale ghosts of wet saucer bottoms.

Totaled up, the pips amounted to 21.

Tobianus opened the book of correspondences, leafed to the section that looked most fitting to his situation (“Friend or Foe: When Faced With a Stranger, Some Affinities”), and ran a finger down to 21:

Bold and yet invisible, the ghosts that guard Spectralia urge substantiation. Be thou therefore like a ghost, aflit by day, and yet substantial in full dark.

Toby planted his elbows more firmly on the desk that he might hold his head in place. From the Courier, for much of the remaining night, there issued a series of low, perplexed moans.

Hewell was roused by roosters, having slept only fitfully, his dreams riddled with the weird scenes he had witnessed. His boots were still wet and he was grateful he had brought a spare coat, easy to find by touch in the dim gray light as it was one of his few remaining dry garments. Downstairs, he found Floss and his wife already about. She scowled at his muddy footwear, then muttered something about parties that thought so little of their responsibility that they felt at liberty to “run about at all hours,” speaking as if for her husband’s benefit but clearly concerned with the habits of their lodger. Hewell paid a perhaps unconvincing amount of attention to his breakfast of stout and cheese, then, with boots still damp, fled into the puddled street, escaping just as the inevitable quarrel broke out behind him.

Toby looked wan with exhaustion, but Hewell refrained from inquiring as to how he had slept. The lad spent some time sorting the mail, brewing tea, readying the morning’s deliveries, and sleepily answering Hewell’s questions, although queries and responses sounded similarly stilted. As it happened, they both awaited the arrival of a dispatch whose eventual discovery proved something of an anticlimax. Mr. Merricott announced the official start of business, discovering as he opened the door that an envelope had been shoved under it. “Unstamped and unaddressed. What are we to make of this?”

Toby plucked the letter from Merricott’s fingers and secured it in his courier’s pouch. “I’ll bring it along, sir, and see if anyone recognizes it. Mr. Hewell, if you’re ready, we can look to borrow an extra mount, but often I go on foot if there’s no great urgency.”

“The day being fairer than the night, I have no objection to a leisurely tour.”

They embarked on a route that somewhat recalled Hewell’s dank trek of the night before, except that they stopped at almost every door. The citizens of Binderwood appeared to be great correspondents, in keeping with current trends that Hewell was used to hearing pronounced “worrisome.” People no longer went visiting; so ran the complaints. They sat in their homes, both consuming and composing endless floods of correspondence. The art of conversation was a thing of the past! It was letters people wanted now and nothing else would do. They poured their meager monies into paper, ink, and postage. The post office, as Merricott had noted, benefitted thereby; stationers were in Heaven; but still somehow it was a curse on society. Nor was it only youth who were afflicted. Grown women—even men!—devoted themselves to the frivolous pastime. The fact that Victoria’s royal visage bedizened the humble Penny Black confirmed all conspiratorial fears that the monarchy was behind this epistolary threat to civilization.

“What can be done about it?” the worried critics of postal trends demanded of Hewell.

“Probably nothing,” was his usual response, and he was content with that. Still, in pursuit of his employment, nothing was not an official option. And he was quite busy after all, keeping up with a certain long-legged fly named Toby.

Near noon, they walked the drive to Pellapon Hall, and Hewell noted Toby darting nervous, expectant glances at a certain curtained window of the upper floor. Above the second-story windows were several widely spaced portals, each matched to a roof peak.

“Perfect for concealing madwomen,” Hewell quipped.

“Why ever would you say that, sir?” asked a suddenly pale Toby.

“Never mind, lad. Novels are the staid diversion of an older generation that I fear will find no grip among your excitable peers.”

As they mounted the lichen-colored steps, the front door opened. The Pellapon twins stood there, hands outstretched for Toby’s delivery, but a tall and almost skeletal form rushed from the dimness, took Hewell by the shoulder, and compelled him deep into the house. Other than the two investigators the parlor was empty, and the detective shut the door behind them to ensure it remained that way.

“Hewell, we have much to discuss,” said Deakins with grim authority, speaking in a hoarse whisper. “I have made several discoveries and am on the verge of greater. I looked for you at the inn last night, but you were—”

“Out, yes, I often cannot sleep in unfamiliar quarters, and so I walk about to exhaust myself. Had I known you sought me, I would have come to visit.”

“I was hardly here myself. Strange goings-on. Furtive meetings. And much of it centered on this very house.” He clenched Hewell’s elbow and drew him in closer. “Tell me, sir—what have you discovered? If we put our clues together, the truth cannot elude us both.”

“Nothing has come my way, I’m afraid,” said Hewell. “With careful study of the postal procedures I have found a few discrepancies, easily corrected. Of course, my investigation is not complete, but—”

“I on the other hand have found what I believe to be a forger’s den,” said Deakins urgently, and stabbed a bony finger at the threadbare carpet beneath their feet. “In the cellar, sir. A small press suitable for printing currency. The plates are hidden away, but they cannot hide the stains of colored ink.”

“Perhaps there is a more innocent explanation. A small press may also be used to print festive broadsides for childish amusement.”

“This is no game, Hewell. In the woods, I have seen figures consorting. Figures of a decidedly weird aspect.”

“Surely you do not believe there is some… supernatural explanation?”

“The diabolic specter that attacked our carriage—”

“Mr. Deakins, I took you for a man of methodical detection. I would be disappointed to learn that you look to intangible—”

Deakins stopped him with a hand to his chest. “I am a man of tremendous imagination—that is my chief instrument, sir! However, my evidence is most substantial. Look here.”

From his inner pocket, he produced a crumpled sheet of paper, a letter writ in fine script with violet ink. It trembled between his fingers, but he would not let it loose despite the difficulty this afforded Hewell as he tried his best to read its fevered passages, succeeding only in snatches.

…a party of four shall advance north from the Serpent’s Lair… at the dungeon’s threshold, await instructions, for the winding stair is certainly entrapped… regarding encounters at the Green Monkey’s Tomb, take three cups of jade tea and consult the Augury of Night…

“Poetry?” Hewell ventured.

“Poetry? It is conspiracy! A cabal within this very house. Unbeknownst to Lord Pellapon, but dependent on his oblivious nature.”

At that moment, the door swung open and Lord Pellapon himself looked in. “Gentlemen! There you are. Mr. Hewell, I trust your investigations proceed apace. The postal courier dawdles in the hall. It is most unseemly. I will lose Tilly over such irregularities. Mr. Deakins, you mentioned developments?”

“Not as such yet, no,” Deakins said to Pellapon. “We have some increasingly tangible suppositions at the moment. But soon, very soon, I believe we shall have concrete results to lay before you, Hewell and I.”

“Glad to hear it, very glad.”

“We shall meet later, to confer,” the detective said quietly to Hewell. “I expect to have more proof by tonight, and perhaps the culprits themselves in hand. I may need your assistance. For now, betray nothing and trust no one. We will play the hand we’re dealt, and play it as two fellows well versed in bluffing.”

“You have my full confidence and you will receive whatever cooperation you need,” Hewell assured him, although he had seen no evidence whatsoever that Deakins understood even the basic principles of bluffing.

Toby waited at the bottom of the steps, visibly anxious not to fall behind with their deliveries. Hewell’s agitation suddenly became a match for the boy’s, a nervous nausea rising from the pit of his belly as if his heart were one of the dozen leeches in Dr. Merryweather’s celebrated Tempest Prognosticator, desperately throwing itself toward the minuscule hammer that sounded a warning bell. He dispelled much of the slimy dread by walking vigorously, so that by the end of the hornbeam drive he was feeling less oppressed; but the sense of an oncoming storm was still with him.

“Are you unwell, sir?” Toby inquired.

“Well enough, lad. Let’s get this over with.”

The Ghost Queen rose later than she had intended, given the importance of the day. The Terrors had left word of their successful delivery, so the first piece was in place. But Spectralia remained in grave danger and she must not lower her guard until the emergency had passed. She was still not entirely sure of its nature.

Although she had read the Concatenated Motivations to her subjects in a voice of supreme confidence and authority, in truth the compiled results of the Weaver’s carding were exceedingly vague and she had taken numerous liberties in her interpretation, erring always on the side of offering reassurance. The tabulations could only be precise in addressing dilemmas that admitted to bifurcation. “Shall I respond to my suitor? Yes or No? Which fork of this road should I take? Right or Left? Should I climb to the attic or descend to the cellar?” With dice, and especially her ivory Ptolemaic of twenty facets, she could select from a much wider set of possible paths. But she had not yet discovered a foolproof way to reduce all life’s questions to such a rubric. The card technique she had devised—based on the work of Jacques “Digesting Duck” Vaucanson, coupled with her own method of mechanical compilation—allowed another approach to analysis, but it was still more suited to fabricated situations than to the tangled weft and warp presented by reality.

Fortunately, she had founded Spectralia with a poet’s sensibility, which she leaned upon in times of uncertainty. Even when a course could be determined by rolling dice, the path beyond the first few steps must be elaborated if not improvised—spelled out and developed in detail. In this, her muse had served her well.

Each day began with an hour of historiography, the fabric of Spectralia spun in careful script in the pages of her minuscule books. When the work of word-spinning and world-weaving was done, the Terrors took the volume to be thread-bound and placed alongside the myriad others that made up an ongoing illuminated history of the Kingdom. Ordinarily she would then spend the rest of the morning deciding the fates of her subjects—all those who acknowledged her dominion within the square borders of Spectralia—but today contained more urgent business. It had rained in the night and the woods would be ideal for a harvest. She called the Terrors to equip an expedition.

The day was brisk; the wind from the sea made her shrink into her wraps. The wheels of her conveyance juddered unpleasantly over every twist of root or rocky stub. Deep in the shade of the Pellapon Woods, they pushed her to and fro until she spied the purple caps and yellow veil of the ghost mushroom, growing in a fairy circle at the base of a blasted oak. The caps stained her gloves as she gathered three of the dozen or so that grew in the mold, and then the Terrors wheeled her back to her alchemical lab. Belladonna berries and other elements waited in tincture, but it was the ghost caps that exerted the key influence and she prized them for their freshness. In a mortar she made a grainy purple paste thinned with spirits and various liquors, then blended this with the other tinctures.

She set aside most of the violet solution as ink for the next special printing of Ghost Pennies, but a small flask she extended to the Terrors. Four hands reached for the purple vial, but she held it back a moment.

“You are Protector Princesses,” she said emphatically, to impress them with the gravity of their errand. “Behave like such for once. Cook will admit you and identify the portion to receive Our sacrament.”

Thus the affairs of the Kingdom kept her busy until well past nightfall.

No sooner had Toby returned from one circuit of the district than they arrived back at the office to discover the next mound of missives waiting. Merricott cheerily handed them over, and Toby accepted his new assignment with a buoyant optimism that Hewell found exhausting, as it appeared to indicate that the lad thought he would soon come to the end of the work—an impossibility, given that the mail would never cease to flow. As a senior of the postal system, it behooved him to show no sign of impatience or fatigue, but Toby’s unstinting enthusiasm proved difficult to match. After a time, Hewell fell into a daze, following along without much attention to the particulars. He had long since memorized their route on the postal map he carried and felt he could have taken over Toby’s duties with little trouble.

It was not until sometime after nightfall that the day’s final delivery was made and they returned to the post office one last time. Merricott had long since removed himself homeward, to dinner and to bed. Toby shared a light repast of bread and cheese they had collected on the final approach. These sat poorly with the earlier meal of crab apples they had picked along the road and eaten as they walked.

Hewell made no mention of the night mail and prayed that Toby would not mention it, either. He wished to be done with this day, if only it might be done with him.

As they finished their meal, Toby said quietly, “I feel that I can trust you, sir. More, She has hinted that I can.”

“She?”

“In time, sir. In time. We have one last letter to deliver. Would you care to come along?”

“Something tells me that I might,” said Hewell, and he looked on in fascination as Toby opened his courier pouch and drew out the blank envelope he had secreted there that morning. It had traveled with them all day, neither of them remarking on it, but a haunting presence nonetheless. The envelope was unsealed, and Toby bowed the sides that he might reach in and retrieve a piece of folded paper. Opening this revealed a blank sheet and one loose postage stamp. It was the same Hewell had seen on the letters delivered to Pellapon Hall the prior day: violet and blotched, both regal and malignant.

“I have for you, sir, the penny stamp of our Kingdom. We call it the Ghost Penny.”

“I assume it will cost me a penny, then?”

“As you say, Mr. Hewell, and well worth it.”

Hewell handed over his solitary copper, glad that he always kept one on hand in the event of just such an emergency—one never knew when a letter might need mailing, and not even an officer of the Royal Mail could post correspondence without a stamp.

Toby accepted the coin and cupped it in his hands. He pursed his lips and puffed away the crumbs of bread and cheese from the tabletop where they had dined, then opened his hands and released not only the penny but a pair of dice. And not typical dice. One was cubic, but its pips were replaced with asymmetrical scratches, perhaps hieroglyphs. The other had more faces than Hewell could count without losing track and was marked with Greek letters. Toby examined them both closely, then took a small hand-bound volume from his breast pocket and opened it to a page on which grids were filled with marks corresponding to those on the dice.

“Very well,” Toby said to himself. He then handed the blank paper and envelope to Hewell with odd, stiff formality. “Seal this up as if you’ve written a letter to be mailed, then stamp the envelope.”

Puzzled but amused, Hewell folded the sheet several times and slipped it into the fibrous envelope. He then took up the Ghost Penny and regarded the pale visage upon it, with its single blurred red eye. The backside was sticky with a wash of gum arabic and the purple stain had bled into it.

“I require something with which to dab the stamp,” Hewell said.

“It is traditional to place the Ghost Penny on your tongue and rest it there a few moments,” Toby said. “That will be moisture enough. Like the Penny Black, it is self-adhesive.”

Hewell licked the violet stamp, surprised to discover that it tasted of those very flowers, with a sugary sweetness that barely masked an underlying bitterness. His fingers, as they smoothed the stamp in place, were all atremble.

“And now, by the ruling of the Concordance, I am to show you this.”

Toby spread out a district map. At first it appeared identical to the one Hewell carried, all its features familiar from the day’s wanderings. However, the place-names and designations were markedly different. The main street was labeled as The Row of Silent Ones. There were a Ghastly Bypass and Staring Knolls; also Tiny Gnashers—a bridge above the Ghoulfast Cataract—which he had seen himself that day and crossed repeatedly on that selfsame bridge, although he could easily have waded the so-called cataract (in truth a very small weir) without wetting his knees. Toby ran a finger along a dotted, circuitous path marked as the Ghost Road, which touched each location on the map. “This is the route I take when performing my secret post, sir. We will follow it tonight, to reach the Specter’s Seat.”

At the bottom of the map, Hewell finally spied a legend, neatly calligraphed: Spectralia.

Deakins was right, he realized. This was a game. And although he had never been fond of time-trivializing amusements, he found himself caring very much about the outcome—thrilled to be engaged in it.

Seeing the district annotated with unfamiliar designations, he wondered what world he had been led through all that day. This one had slumbered unseen within it—unseen by him, that is, for it occurred to him that Toby saw them both.

And the others—Binderwood’s bewildering populace—how many of them took part in this game? Last night, stalking Toby through the fields and finally to the Cotter’s hut, he had seen men, women, children—the aged and the spry—all attending to the strange cowled figure in the wheeled chair. A soft yet rough voice—feminine and ageless—few of her words had reached him. But for her audience they appeared to hold great power.

Tonight he supposed he would hear them for himself.

“You must address your letter, sir.”

“Oh, yes. To whom?”

“To yourself.”

Hewell blinked, dipped a pen, and did as he was told while Toby watched closely. He tried to pass the letter to the boy but was refused. “This one is yours to deliver.”

They set off without further delay. The Ghost Road ran parallel to the public road in many places, even crossing it on occasion. They went in silence. Hewell soon found that they did not walk it alone. From certain houses as they passed, costumed figures emerged and fell in behind them. Horns and scales, masks of textiles, claws purloined from taxidermied creatures. None spoke. The cortege added to a growing sense of immanence; the night was gravid with revelation. Obscure emotions bloomed. Inner silences, thoughts forever unvoiced, threatened to make a thunderous clap that would deafen them all. It occurred to him he ought to have felt terror. Instead he felt wild joy.

As the woods closed in, scenes of greater weirdness greeted them. Half-lit tableaux, scattered scenes of figures caught in ritual or combat or some confluence of the twain. Two haphazardly armored knights faced each other, swords and shields held high, one shouting, “I cast Bolt of Oblivion upon thee!” To which the other countered, “My Looking-Glass Greatshield repels the attack, which returns to thee in triple force!” Then a supervisory figure in a starry cloak, after shaking dice in a leather cup, intoned, “Thou’rt both struck down in the same instant!” But as the third figure spoke and the first two staggered, they noticed the passing procession. They arrested their falls, gathered their weapons, and joined the silent marchers. The wizardly one gave Hewell a nod and a wink. He recognized the innkeeper Floss beneath the overshadowing hood, although Mrs. Floss was evidently not a participant in these matters.

Pellapon Hall loomed ahead of them, and within the great house loomed a greater one, spectral and mysterious like the grinning face that hides within the moon. Turning aside, they crossed the dewy fields and descended into a crevice in the cliffs above the sea. The waves cast luminous foam, futile yet persistent, onto rocks far below. The populace of Spectralia filed in behind Hewell and Toby. A bonfire burned in the lee of the cleft, barely troubled by wind. On the far side of the fire, back in a natural hollow upon a shelf of stone, he saw the cowled figure of the previous night. Her wheeled chair was off to one side, empty, for she had been set upon the ancient seat. Within the hood, her visage was dim; yet it took no effort for Hewell’s mind to fill that void with the likeness engraved on the Ghost Penny stamp.

He studied the letter he carried, comparing the face on the stamp with the one before him. The etched engraving, with its fine crosshatches and delicate dark borders, appeared to reach beyond the boundary of the stamp, creeping over his fingers, his sleeves, flickering out through the night. He looked up and saw the entire world becoming an engraving, redrawn continually by some fluid invisible hand that gave it animation, keeping it in constant, shimmering flux. The colors of objects barely stayed within the lines that sought to contain them, as if the inks with which the world was painted were trembling, blurring, running free. Hewell’s flesh swarmed with tiny etched lozenges and diamond-shaped pores, his skin but a net of finest mesh that barely held his soul. He was surrounded by figures out of a Goya aquatint, the night a subtle intaglio printed by some mysterious process. If the fire were but artifice, then how did it emit both heat and light? An inner flame drove everything, even the dark-edged rocks, even the painted night. The sky itself was out of register, with stars no more than offset dots of purple, pink, and blazing red, just like her eyes. Her eyes…

His gaze returned to the Ghost Queen of Spectralia, to her regard.

“Come forward, supplicant, and state your business,” said the husky, hidden voice he had heard the night before. He gladdened at the sound of it. Toby and some others produced a heavy mantle which they laid upon his shoulders. Tufted with fur and feathers, it suited the wildness he felt in his heart, the wildness of the creatured wood. Further, they rested on his crown a headpiece set with horns, and secured a griffin’s beak of papier-mâché that covered up his nose.

“I bear a letter,” he said from within the mask.

His voice appeared to echo from somewhere far out in the night. The rocky chamber had become a stage, but he could not tell if it were an opera house or a puppet theater. Hewell had lost all sense of scale.

“To whom is it addressed?” said the Queen.

He looked down to reaffirm what he had written. But what it said was not what he remembered having writ:

“To… to the Ghostmaster,” he said.

“Open it, then,” she said. “Open it and read what your heart has written there.”

His finely etched hands tore open the envelope. He started to hold out the letter, to show her that it was blank—but instead he discovered words crawling over it, characters engraved in violet ink. It was his own script, but somehow more beautiful than he had ever before accomplished. He stroked the words with his fingers and tasted violets; even his eyes filled with the flavor. The night reeked of wormwood and forest mold and the blood-tang of the sea. He was gazing too deeply into the letters. Retreating slightly, he began to read aloud to the assemblage, clinging to the words as if they would bring him back to some familiar footing.

“At the behest and pleasure of Her Majesty, Queen of Spectralia, I am honored to accept the post of Ghostmaster General. I swear to execute my duties with all honesty and to the utmost of my ability as Her Majesty’s agent in the realms beyond these borders. This post is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. In defense of Spectralia, I rest my soul in the hands of the Silent Ones. May they end my life horribly should ever I betray the Spectral Lands. Your obedient servant, Lord Hewellian, Ghostmaster General.”

“Your heart’s wish has been revealed and granted, all in the same instant,” said the Queen. “Now come forward and prove your fealty.”

Two waifs in black garb with porcelain faces appeared from the darkness. Between them, hunched over so he looked no taller than they, was a prisoner. Their captive was blindfolded, muffled with a kerchief, his hands bound behind him. They forced him to his knees before the stone seat.

As if from a great distance, across a gulf of years, Hewellian recognized the private detective, Deakins.

“Let the prisoner account for himself,” said the Queen. The guardian twins undid first his gag, at which he gasped and began to plead incoherently, and then his blindfold. His eyes rolled but he did not appear to see them. When at last his gaze settled on the bonfire, he gave a little jerk and suddenly stilled. A moment later, he looked straight up at the moon and said accusingly, “You!”

And a moment after that: “We!”

And then: “It is… but we… I saw a hill of faces!”

“So have we all,” said the Queen. “But where does your path lead you?”

The detective’s confusion was so extreme that Hewellian stepped forward with a surge of pity and put himself between the captive and the Queen. “It takes him far from Spectralia, Your Majesty. I will lead him there safely. You may release him into my care. Come, my poor dear man.”

But as Hewellian stepped forward to untie the ropes, the prisoner started screaming.

“There can be no Initiation for him!” said the Queen in disappointment. “Fall back, Ghostmaster. He cannot see the truth of Our land and therefore cannot serve it. ’Tis unfortunate, for We are in need of a Spymaster, or even a plain Detective. Instead We find ourselves with a Prisoner. It is the one category of subject for which We have no use. There are no prisons here.”

“There are the Serpent Dungeons!” said one of the doll-faced girls.

Deakins swayed and subsided into a heap on the stones. His sprightly guardians tittered. “He has fallen into a swoon!”

“Not the mark of a Spymaster, surely.”

“We should dress him as a beast and turn him loose in the woods!”

“He would startle the ponies,” said the Queen. “That will never do.”

Hewellian bent to the fallen prisoner and loosened his bonds. It was impossible to care for the man while balancing the heavy griffin mask, so he set it on the ground and was shocked by the fierce face it presented. It was no wonder Deakins had collapsed when Hewellian approached.“Your Majesty, with my deepest respect, I request permission to restore Mr. Deakins to his bed, and thereafter ensure his safe return to London.”

The Ghost Queen inclined her hooded head. Some trace of violet magic still worked its way across her pale features. “You have your charge. We will communicate from time to time, but the Concordance must serve you in outlying regions. In the main, you must determine your own way. Tobianus will instruct you further.”

She offered her hand, and he kissed it, finding it cold and thin and ivory-white, the fingers stained with violet ink. Her crimson eyes flared at him. The night’s etched aspect was fading, releasing its grip, the world falling back into tones again, more mezzotint than engraving. He was losing hold of something ineffable, even as he secured his grip on Deakins. Prevailing upon Tobianus to take the detective’s legs, they lifted the man between them and headed out of the crevasse.

It was not far to Pellapon Hall across the ragged sward. They reached the house to find several stewards having hurried ahead to admit them. Slightly revived yet profoundly incoherent, Deakins was taken off to bed. Hewellian made hushed arrangements to retrieve him in the morning. Somewhere in the house, Lord Pellapon snored on, oblivious.

“And now, Master Tobianus, I believe I will require some instruction in my duties?”

“To the post office then, if it please you, sir.”

“Conduct me there, post haste!”

Hewell and Toby were still at work poring over tables, notebooks, and gazetteers when the strutting cocks of Binderwood began to crow in the courtyards and from atop the homely stone walls. There were several such false alarms before the sky truly began to brighten. It felt unwise to let Merricott find them buried in work at such an hour, so they arranged to part and join up again soon. While Toby went to borrow a cart from the livery yard, Hewell returned to the inn for his belongings. Only Mrs. Floss was awake to see him enter, and it was clear from her demeanor that she was none too pleased with having all the morning’s travails left in her hands. More comments were made about the shirking of responsibilities, but he felt quite sure this time that they were not intended for him. As he sipped scalding tea, with his luggage at his feet, he pondered the logistics of the day ahead. He would have to ride with Deakins in the mail car, no matter that it irked the sorting clerks.

Opening his valise, he gazed inside at the sheets of violet Ghost Pennies. These, Toby had assured him, were safe for common distribution, lacking the curious properties of those prepared by the Queen expressly for state ceremonies. Along with the stamps were several volumes full of tables to explicate various courses of action. Once Hewell left the region, there would be innumerable decisions that must be made in less time than it would take to send and receive Concatenated Motivations via mail from Binderwood. The telegraph might one day be a more efficient means of determining outcomes and charting choices, but in the meantime, there was a ghost-route to be inaugurated and administered. In return for service to Spectralia, he would keep a penny for every five Ghosts he sold. And Hewell expected to sell quite a few once he had expanded her reach to London—or, as it would henceforth be known, to Greater Spectralia. The Ghostmaster General had a great deal of work ahead of him.

Hearing the clatter of hooves and the squelching of wheels, he rose, bade his hostess good day, and helped Toby lift his trunk into the back of the cart to which he had hitched Madame Eglentine. Binderwood was soon out of sight behind them. Not long after that, they turned onto the hornbeam drive.

It was a strange, sullen morning at Pellapon Hall, the staff moving in an exhausted daze and the twins nowhere in evidence. Lord Pellapon strode up and down the corridor from the parlor to the foyer, irked as much by the private detective’s deterioration as by his defection. Nor did he appear overly grateful for Hewell’s offer to see Deakins safely back to London, and even into Bethlem Royal Hospital if need be.

“Nervous collapse is always a danger in one so entirely dependent on his imagination,” Hewell said discreetly, out of Deakins’ hearing.

“Then what about you? Do you not also rely on your wits?”

“Wits are not the same thing, Lord Pellapon. I am but a civil servant, dependent on my superiors. Thus I avoid the burdens of too much independence and leave the difficult decisions to others more visionary.”

Hewell led the docile, wide-eyed detective down to the cart and left him comfortably seated, humming to himself and counting his fingers until he proved he had hundreds of them. Hewell remounted the broad steps to take Lord Pellapon’s hand in farewell.

“I apologize for the twins,” said the elder man. “They both complain of exhaustion or they would be here to see you off. Deakins was a great favorite of theirs until… well, they cannot understand how such afflictions may affect a grown man. A shame about his investigation. You know, he claimed to be on the verge of some revelation. And now the matter of my wayward mail’s no closer to resolution. It’s all a muddle.”

“I don’t think the mail will trouble you any longer, Lord Pellapon. Upon thorough review of Merricott’s methods, I have suggested several procedural improvements—all minor, true, but cumulative in effect. Toby will see they are implemented immediately; you may rely on him to address your concerns. I believe you will note a distinct improvement from this moment forward.”

“Well, that’s fine news, then! Dull procedure triumphs where fancy makes no headway!”

“A sentiment worthy of enshrinement,” Hewell said, and stopped short, caught by a movement at an upper-story window. A face floated behind the glass. She was watching him, he realized with pride. His Queen!

As if sensing how his heart leapt out to her, she slowly opened the window so that he might see her without the distortion of glass or darkness. Her skin was paler than any ivory, her hair so white as to be almost blue, and her eyes glinted faintly like twin red stars. From either side of the window frame, two pairs of smaller hands reached in to settle a bright three-pointed crown upon her head.

“If I may,” said Hewell, “please tender my respects to the eldest Miss Pellapon.”

“The eldest?”

Hewell gave a slight wave to the Queen, but she responded not. He realized that her gaze, and her smile, were directed past him, to the cart, where Toby sat holding the reins. The lad grinned back, then noticed Hewell’s eyes upon him, whereupon he flushed and turned away, covering his sudden change of color by clucking imperiously at Madame Eglentine. When Hewell’s gaze returned to the upper window, he saw it had been shut and shuttered. The crowned white face was gone.

“Ah, so you have seen Eliza,” said Lord Pellapon. “She reveals herself to very few. She was always a fragile child, but by some miracle she survived the contagion that carried off her mother. I am fortunate to have the three of them as reminders of Lady Pellapon, God rest her.”

“Is it albinism that keeps her hid away?”

“The doctor assures me that her condition does not preclude fresh air and sunlight, but she would almost always rather stay indoors, composing these tales of hers, these… games. The servants and her sisters appear to find them engaging. I suppose she has a talent for it.”

Hewell received the impression that Lord Pellapon did not entirely disapprove.

With paternal pride he added, “I must admit, she is a help to me, especially when it comes to ordering about her diabolical siblings and keeping the staff in line when they have tired of my commands. Frail she may be, but not so frail she cannot rule the house.”

And more than that, thought Hewell, putting his hand to his heart, of which he silently acknowledged she was now the very queen.

THE FINEST, FULLEST FLOWERING

A sour note shrieked from the limousine’s speakers, making Milston’s fingers curl in his lap. He took a moment to compose himself before rapping precisely, and with a now steady hand, on the glass separating him from the driver. The tone had droned into a hum that tunelessly dreamt of someday becoming hypnotic. “What is this we are listening to, and is there any way to turn it off?”

“Down, sir, but not off, I’m afraid.” The driver lowered the volume to a level barely audible; this was in some respects even more annoying. “Part of the colony’s ambiance, sir. Part of the design. Won’t be much longer though, sir. We’re almost there.”

“There” turned out to be a pale brown stucco bungalow, unremarkable except for the roof of green ceramic tile. From overhead, you might not see it among the trees. Everything here—from the hidden runway to the matte and muted colors of the limousine—bespoke discretion, if not outright camouflage. As he stepped from the car, and the driver came around to retrieve his single suitcase and worn black valise from the trunk, he heard the volume of the music increase again, and he realized it was everywhere, moaning from speakers in the trees. There was no turning it down. The sour notes, still plentiful, were also now unavoidable.

His luggage was placed on a cart. “Your bags will be waiting for you in your suite. But first, sir, your tour.” The driver bowed, ducked back into the limousine, and executed a turn that took the car back toward the airfield. Milston looked about, waiting for a word or direction from the plump older man who stood watchfully by the cart, presumably a concierge. “Am I to meet my patron here?” he asked finally.

“Mr. Milston, it is my great pleasure. Like you, I delight in anonymity. In fact, it has become essential to my survival. Without it, I could never travel—although at this point I rarely leave the island. All my needs are more than met here… as I hope they will be for you. Shall we begin?”

Milston took the proffered hand, found it dry, uncalloused, possessed of a faint tremor. “What am I to call you?” he asked.

“Patron would be perfect. I think you will find me worthy of the title. Nothing would please me more than to support your work. I understand you will need convincing, but surely you have already looked into my ability to fulfill my promises?”

A young woman in a dun uniform emerged from the bungalow to retrieve the cart. The men walked into the trees. They soon came out on a terrace overlooking hectares of manicured parkland. There were more jade roofed bungalows, but no buildings taller than three stories—nothing that stood above the trees. From the plane, as it descended out of blinding tropical clouds, he had seen breakers and beach on the far side of the island. Plenty of room for the Patron’s playground.

“Everywhere you wander—and I assure you there is no place off limits—you will come across beauties and wonders. My aim is to provide them in endless profusion. Of course, we are only a decade into the garden by now—barely out of the planning stages.”

A small silver car awaited them, an electric capsule mounted on a buried track. The Patron urged him in, and once they were seated, the tiny car glided down the sloped terrace. The ubiquitous drone of the music had modulated into something like a faintly complaining whine. The car sped through sculpture gardens and groves where avant-garde topiary trimmers had been at work.

“I will not attempt to impress you with the names of my gardeners. As with many I’ve hired, the best practitioners are known by name only to the connoisseur. I rely on cognoscenti to advise me in all things. Which is of course how you came to my attention. Your work is the finest in the field, and you are approaching the height of your expressive powers. I hope to provide the opportunity to explore avenues you might never have dared believe could open to you.”

The car rolled to a stop at another low, earth-colored villa, this one overlooking a lake. Fans of spray wavered against a backdrop of palms. The air was just warm enough to make the breeze delicious.

Inside the house, the music was muted to whatever managed to filter in from outside. “A home of this sort is what we provide initially,” the Patron explained. “With time, architectural variety is expected to arise, and you would be encouraged to help design your own ideal accommodations. A great deal of what you see is blank slate, unmolded clay… whatever medium suits you.”

They had come out into a room of several stories’ depth. The ceiling was all glass, flooded with sunlight, the cavernous space below filled with scaffolding. The center of all activity, suspended in the pit, was an enormous black stone over which dozens of artisans scrambled, busy with torches, chisels, drills. “A single iron meteorite, brought here at my expense, that Samira Potocki might pursue her inspiration. It is the heaviest single object ever lifted by air transport. I first had to commission and build a plane powerful enough to carry it. But expense has never hindered me. I liberate my artists to dream as big as they like… or as small. I just completed a STEM lab, for the whim of another resident who works at the level of the electron. Few will ever see the work he creates—but that is no longer the point of art, if it ever was. If the audience is properly appreciative, can it matter to the artist if that audience numbers only one? Ah, Samira! Meet our latest prospective colonist!”

She was a small dark woman in dusty coveralls, with sharp features and bright eyes. “There is nothing so radiant as an artist fulfilled,” the Patron said, and her smile supported his statement.

“Delighted,” she said. “I hope we will soon be neighbors.”

“What are you working on?” he asked to be polite.

“I’m not working on, I’m working toward.”

“I offer all my artists the space and resources they need to explore without worrying about arriving anywhere. For Samira, a meteorite… for you, I wonder? I hope to learn what I can offer, beyond the obvious supplies.”

Milston inclined his head, squeezed the sculptor’s hand briefly, and was ushered forward. Beyond the space full of scaffolding, outside again, another car waited to carry them deeper into jungle.

“You can of course walk, drive or be driven, or request any manner of conveyance,” the Patron assured him. “For some, the incubatory process is stimulated by aimless driving, so we have started on construction of a self-contained highway system. There are creative solutions to every need, when you have access to sufficient resources. Also, I detected perhaps a bit of a mutual spark between you and Samira? Let me assure you that privacy will be respected and promoted in a way the outside can never approach. My guests can explore any type of relationships they wish, without censure. Whatever limits you wish to impose on your own tastes, I leave you to set for yourself. I hazard no guess as to your predilections. Now… from the visual arts, to the audible.”

The building they next approached was a thin spire among the trees, itself a treehouse sheathed in translucent resin mesh. It was awkwardly placed in a scene of such balanced beauty. “One of our earliest residents,” the Patron said. “As you can see, he had a hand in his home’s design—and while his natural talents are many, in styling himself an architect I fear he might have finally overreached. Still, I do not like to inhibit my artists. This is all part of his growth.”

They rode a small cylindrical lift up the trunk of the tower, stepping out onto a circular loft that gave a view through the trees of distant shore and a misty estuary. Wide white birds glided toward the waves. Seated before the vista, as if controlling it from a vast console of sliders and keys, was a man with long, thinning grey hair.

The squonking of the island’s ongoing soundtrack grew aggrieved. “Our resident composer,” said the Patron.

“Why are you disturbing me? Have I not asked you repeatedly to leave me off your tour?”

The composer would not turn around. He treated them to a view of his bald, spotty pate, and that was all.

“In most cases, I have respected that wish,” said the Patron. “But I felt an exception was necessary.” The Patron turned to Milston with an apologetic expression. “From time to time I may insist on a patron’s privilege. I trust I know better than to abuse it. Consider that we only come to admire the view.”

“Well you’ve seen it. Now be off!”

“I have been enjoying your latest compositions very much, I should mention,” said the Patron with apparent sincerity.

The bony white fingers paused on the keyboard. “I am told that in certain of the residences, speakers have been disabled!” The air trembled with an extended note not quite of melancholy… not quite of anything specific enough to characterize. Milston found himself staring at the poorly manicured fingers, the ragged, bitten nails, like visual equivalents of the sounds that had accompanied his tour.

“A pleasure meeting you,” he said, but there was no verbal reply from the composer, just another misplaced warble, a sonic non sequitur that sent the birds from the trees.

From the treehouse they proceeded to a vast kitchen complex, where chefs with names he almost recognized ordered about kitchen staff of only slightly lesser celebrity. Lunch was served above the waves, on an enclosed pier from which he could look back toward the island or out toward the undisturbed horizon. Each dish was a revelation.

“Imagine such miracles at every meal,” the Patron said. “And in every aspect of your life and work. Does it tempt you? There is much more still to see, but I wonder what you think so far?”

“You are persuasive,” Milston allowed himself to say.

“Well, it is not I alone… it is the enterprise. What we have here is a place that allows the fullest, finest flowering of human endeavor, in all its variety. The arts are permitted come into their own. What I get out of all this is something I cannot describe. To be patron… there is no greater honor or pleasure. Now, shall we go? There are others to meet. A tiny portion of our residents, but it should give you a taste of all you’ll have access to. Ultimately, our greatest resource is the community we’re gathering.”

“Before we continue, I just want to clarify the one stipulation that I’m sure has been a sticking point for many before me. The fact that…”

“You can never leave?”

“That one, yes.”

“Our residents find security in certainty. I can bring anything I like here, to the island, but nothing gets out. Nothing, and no one. A prison, some have called it, but one that allows for utter freedom of expression. I should think you especially would find this liberating, given that your own work has been so restricted, curtailed, and banned outright.”

“What about the rest of the world? Don’t you wonder if you’re robbing them of something essential? Something they might miss?”

“Does the world deserve them, Mr. Milston? Would that world miss you?”

Milston, sitting very still, said nothing more.

“Shall we?”

They rose and walked along the pier, once more back to a silent silver capsule.

The rest of the day was spent in the company of an extraordinary variety of extraordinary people—poets, painters, planners, programmers. At sunset they joined a party being held in a plaza by the sea. Milston mingled and the Patron disappeared, but Samira soon found him and introduced him to still more of the colony’s residents. The composer did not attend the fete, but he was there in spirit with a brooding score that made them all laugh, eliciting frequent snide remarks.

“Please tell me you are a new composer,” said an elderly woman with reflective pupils, but then she stopped his mouth with a finger. “No, don’t! For now, let us leave some mystery. There is little enough of that here, though each new arrival brings the hope of it.” And she gave him a wine-soaked kiss, with an expertly placed but feeble grasp at his crotch, which cost him nothing to endure.

It was full tropic dark but still early when the Patron found him in the crowd, and pulled him aside once more. “Mr. Milston, I have given you a full day of my time. This is all I can offer a prospective resident, I’m afraid. In the morning, we either put you on a plane and you never hear from me again, or you wake to begin your new life here. If the former, I very much enjoyed meeting you, and I regret but respect your decision. If the latter, then you may sleep in as late as you wish. There will be plenty of time for further orientation, and I promise you, I will enjoy following your work, and look forward to learning from the master. Now, your suite is ready if you are.”

They rode a silver car in silence through a landscape of artfully illuminated fountains and pools. Guests walked among the trees, watching the car pass, as if wondering what choice he had reached. But there had never really been any choice to make. When the car stopped before the bungalow where the day’s tour had begun, he shook the Patron’s hand and said, “I appear to be jet-lagged, apologies if I have not quite been myself. I’m sure I’ll feel better after a night’s rest. Can we meet again sometime tomorrow afternoon?”

“Perfect,” said the Patron. “I’ll leave instructions that you are not to be disturbed. Good night. And welcome. You’ve made a splendid choice.”

The silver car whispered away.

The house was small, but it had all the comforts and conveniences. He unpacked his suitcases and put his clothes away; found a bottle of very old whisky and a box of very young cigars, but these were not what tempted him. He went out onto the terrace and gazed over the gardens. He was braced and waiting for the aimless soundtrack to make one more offensive squawk when, suddenly, it stopped. The sounds of island night crept in. It was bliss. The landscape was sparingly painted with light, evocative as a dream. He saw hints of buildings through the trees, the glow of ornamental ponds, white coral pillars, miles and miles of gardens. A distant spire that must have belonged to the composer, now retired for the night. In the absence of music he felt he could finally think, could finally imagine what might take its place, what this garden truly needed.

“The finest, fullest flowering,” the Patron had stated, and indeed it was true. The place was in full bloom. But every garden needed pruning, and a blossom deserved to be lopped before its prime had passed, before its petals fell.

He set his black bag on the table, thinking of tools he had always wanted but never bothered to acquire, never daring to think he might get to use them. But that could come later. For now, he had all he needed to get started.

He took out his prize set of shears, edges gleaming, of pristine surgical steel.

I’ll begin with that composer’s horrible, hideous, ragged-nailed fingers, he thought, looking off toward the dark house of sound, imagining notes that were very sweet indeed.