Processional Crabs

A day of relatively uneventful travel was interrupted in the late afternoon when both carts came to an abrupt halt. The gafl were shuffling their feet and making unhappy snuffling noises. When we got out to see what had upset them, we found a line of crabs marching along on the ground ahead.

Each one was carrying a piece of food: a leaf, a root, an apple, a dead mouse or beetle. Several of them were carrying the dead bodies of other members of their species, but these were crabs, after all; the only unusual thing was that they hadn't already eaten them. The overall effect was similar to a line of ants, only considerably larger, and all moving sideways. Though most of their cargo was ordinary enough, one was carrying a sausage; another had somehow acquired an entire cupcake, intact and in pristine condition. A chocolate-covered coffee bean perched on top of the frosting, unmarred by even a grain of sand.

Despite their small size, the crabs evidently frightened the gafl, who resolutely refused to cross the line. We couldn't have moved the wagons forward without crushing the crabs anyway, or at the very least finding some way to halt their progress while we passed, which we found we were reluctant to do. Besides, we were curious as to where they were all going. We turned to follow them instead.

The sun was setting when we reached the top of a ridge and finally discovered the crabs' destination. The line ended at a heap of food spread across a flat area of the valley below.

Sitting behind the heap was a crab the size of a house.

Each of its eyestalks was taller than I am. Its legs were lazily spread around it, like the buttresses of a cathedral, and it was using both claws to pick through the pile of food with all the delicacy of a gourmet. The total silence of its movements was rather unsettling in so large a creature. Bits of roots and leaves were scattered on the ground around it, apparently too bland for its tastes, but every piece of meat the smaller crabs brought was quickly snatched up and stuffed into its scissoring mouthparts. A few of the smaller crabs would have been snatched up themselves if they hadn't scuttled away quickly enough.

Silently, we all backed up a little, crouching down behind the ridge until we were out of sight of the large and apparently carnivorous crab. Mogen quite sensibly attempted to pull us farther away. Curiosity got the better of us, though, and we peeked over the ridge just long enough to see the crab with the cupcake deliver its gift.

When the giant saw the smaller crab holding up the cupcake in front of it, it actually clapped its claws together in apparent delight. The clack they made was deep and unsettlingly meaty, like a collision between two wooden barrels full of steak. With exquisite care, one rowboat-sized claw came down, plucked the cupcake from the tiny claws that held it, and tucked it unharmed into the giant's chitinous maw.

A shiver ran through the giant's body. It sat perfectly still for a moment. Then, with a majestic and terrible grace, it rose to its feet and began to dance.

If it had been performed on two legs, I might perhaps have identified the step as a waltz. Both massive claws waved joyfully in the air above the crab's carapace while its legs spun it in elegant circles. Despite the lazy grace of the movements, each step of the giant's legs sent a tremor through the ground. All around it, the smaller crabs dropped their gifts and ran for their lives. (Several took the opportunity to steal a better gift from one of their fellows; these were crabs, after all.)

We probably should have run as well, but the giant crab's dance was such a bizarre surprise that we watched, enchanted, for several seconds before Mogen grabbed us (all three at once; I'm still not sure how) and dragged us bodily back from the ridgeline. She was quite right, of course, and we offered our thanks and apologies as soon as we were several valleys away and (hopefully) safely out of earshot of the giant.

We speculated about the crab in hushed tones for the rest of the evening. Was it a spirit? A mutant of some sort? Would any of the smaller crabs have eventually grown to that size, if not eaten by predators or each other? We had no way of knowing.

Still, we all agreed that we were glad it had the smaller crabs to fetch food for it. Otherwise, it might have felt the need to go hunt for itself.

Surprising Sheep

Roughly a century ago, in the town of Specklemax, a modestly successful farmer by the name of Ekestrial Floo decided to supplement the income of his farm by breeding brindled sheep. Brindled sheep were by no means new to Specklemax; the breed had been something of a local specialty for several generations, as had the attractive salt-and-pepper yarn produced from their variegated wool. Not much had changed about the breed since the brindled pattern had first been introduced some decades before.

Ekestrial Floo was at least as much an inventor as a farmer, an enthusiast in amateur engineering of both the mechanical and genetic varieties. He kept a small army of customized clockwork pipe crawlers, which plowed, seeded, and irrigated his fields, and which only occasionally attempted to upend and plant his house. Much of his success was due to his creation of a variety of pumpkin whose fruit, when left to ripen in the sun for a week or two, fermented into a moderately powerful explosive.*

Given this sort of track record, when Floo began to leave more of the day-to-day operation of his farm to his sister (who had her own, far more predictable, farm to run, but evidently never lost the habit of taking care of her baby brother) so that he could devote most of his attention to his sheep project, the people of Specklemax knew that he must be up to something interesting. Neighbors began to drop by the farm more often, partly out of curiosity, partly out of a desire to be forewarned if the lambs began to fly or breathe fire.

The results were far more mundane; journals and letters from the time report that Floo initially succeeded only in producing sheep with a greater variety of striped patterns. He was evidently dissatisfied by this development, though, intending something far more original, so the neighbors kept checking.

They were not disappointed. After four years of work, Ekestrial Floo walked into town one market day proudly leading the first of a new breed of plaid sheep.

They were twins, in fact: one had fleece with a pleasant blue and yellow plaid pattern, the other a handsome red and black. Some of the more cynical townspeople naturally accused Floo of simply dyeing the sheep, but a quick shearing of one plaid flank showed that the pattern was mirrored in the skin beneath.

Floo's triumph was lessened somewhat when he discovered that the process of spinning the plaid fleece into yarn or thread would inevitably blend all of the colors together into a muddy green or brown. He had apparently expected that the sheep would allow the production of plaid fabric - a favorite in Specklemax - without the need to dye the wool beforehand. Unfortunately, he had neglected to speak to a weaver, or anyone with an actual knowledge of textile production, before embarking on his project.

Though he was initially crushed to have wasted four years of his life on a pointless project, Floo did live long enough to see his plaid sheep become one of Specklemax's major tourist attractions, which I hope came as something of a consolation to him. The sheep are now a familiar sight in the area, scattered like brightly patterned handkerchiefs across the hills around the town.

Specklemax, incidentally, is in a relatively low-lying and swampy area of the Mountainous Plains. To the best of my knowledge, it has never been less than several months' travel from any of the more arid regions of Hamjamser.

It came as something of a surprise, therefore, when we crossed a dune on the outskirts of the Golden Desert and found a small flock of Specklemax plaid sheep grazing in the valley below.

They were unmistakably the Specklemax variety; the placement of their eyes, which are unusually protruding even for sheep, is quite distinctive. None of us could imagine how they had ended up in this remote corner of the world.

Naturally, those of us blessed with legs left the wagons and approached the flock for a closer look. Sheep are rarely the most observant creatures around, but these seemed so utterly unconcerned about their surroundings - including our approach - that we paid perhaps less attention than we should have while we walked toward them.

As a result, we were taken entirely by surprise when a giant centipede erupted out of a nearby patch of sand, hissing like a homicidal steam engine and rearing up high enough to block the sun with its outspread legs and fangs.

I don't know what species it was, but it was far larger than even crocodile centipedes ever grow. I've seen streetcars that were shorter and probably weighed less. Mogen had her crossbow out before I could do more than blink, but I doubt it would have had much effect on the creature. Even if she had managed to hit a joint in the centipede's heavily armored body, a single crossbow bolt would likely have done little more than make it angrier.

"My sheep!" The centipede hissed in a voice like a pot boiling over. "Mine! No touch! If you touch them, I will kill you and bite you until you die!"

Oddly enough, this was actually reassuring. Creatures that offer threats instead of simply attacking you can usually be reasoned with.

Being the only member of the group who'd visited Specklemax and encountered plaid sheep before, I was walking slightly ahead of the others. As a result, I found myself in the uncomfortable position of negotiating with the giant angry venomous chilopod. I've traveled by kilopede and have no particular fear of arthropods of any size, but kilopedes are essentially placid creatures. This one was quite clearly not.

Still, it was speaking Amrat, sibilantly accented but perfectly understandable, and it hadn't actually made a move toward us since we'd stopped approaching the sheep. Its sheep, apparently.

I reassured the centipede that we had no intention of touching its sheep; we merely wanted to look at them. It hissed suspiciously at me.

They were, I added, very nice sheep.

At that, the centipede's hostile attitude seemed to melt away completely. It flipped its antennae forward and rubbed its claws together.

"Yesss! Are they not beautiful?" the centipede crooned. With alarming speed for such a large creature, it dropped back to the ground and scuttled over to the sheep, where it curled its body into a circle around the entire flock. It rubbed its head lovingly against a plump red and yellow one. "I have named this one Rock because she is the prettiest." The sheep all continued to chew placidly as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

After that, conversation with the centipede went remarkably smoothly. Once reassured that we had no intention of touching, stealing, eating, bothering, or otherwise interfering with its sheep, the massive arthropod was happy to tell us all of the minutiae of its apparent occupation as a shepherd. We were treated to an exhaustive list of what the sheep did and did not like to eat, given far more information than we needed about their various ailments, and personally introduced to each sheep by name. (For reasons the centipede did not explain, a full third of the sheep in the flock, both male and female, were named Skeezel. Perhaps it simply liked the name.)

As far as we could tell, the sheep had most likely wandered off from another caravan, or perhaps a farmstead with unusual origins. The flock had already been living in the valley when the centipede had arrived "many long times ago." This could have meant months or decades, although given the size of the centipede, I suspect it was closer to the latter.

Finding the sheep too beautiful to eat, the centipede had instead made friends with them. Its method of "making friends" apparently consisted of tipping a sheep over and resting its head on top of it like a pillow. (It was happy to demonstrate the process for us using one of the older sheep, which continued to chew its cud with an expression of long-suffering patience.) Luckily, the centipede didn't seem to feel the need to repeat the process with us; whether that was because we were capable of speech, or because it wasn't interested in befriending non-sheep, I don't know.

We all introduced ourselves as well. The centipede listened politely and, as far as I could tell, forgot all of our names immediately. It certainly never seemed to feel the need to use any of them while we were there. When asked, it introduced itself as "kerlis," which is simply the Amrat word for "centipede."

The centipede insisted on serving us supper and glided off over the dunes in search of prey. Garnet followed it. After an hour or so, the two of them returned with the carcass of what, surprisingly, appeared to be a sand-dwelling variety of walrus. More surprisingly yet, they were chatting animatedly with each other, discussing local wildlife and comparing hunting techniques. I don't believe I'd heard Garnet say so many words in the entire time I'd known her.

While Mogen was roasting the walrus over a large, efficiently built fire, which the centipede found fascinating, I pulled out a small box of pepper I'd picked up in the Scalps. The smell was strong enough to immediately catch the centipede's attention, and I had the rather alarming experience of having a chitinous head with fangs the size of my leg peeking over my shoulder to sniff at it.

"Is food?" the centipede asked hopefully. I confirmed that it was, and made sure to sprinkle some pepper over the centipede's portion - roughly half of the roasted sand walrus - before we sat down to eat.

The centipede reclined like a large cat while it ate, holding its meat with a few pairs of legs. It took one bite and shot upright again with a hiss that made the rest of us jump.

"The food!" it hissed, clicking and smacking its mouthparts in what I eventually realized was enjoyment. "Hot! It is food that bites! Good good, yessss."

The sight of a centipede the size of a small dragon masticating a chunk of walrus with its mouth open is one that I sincerely hope never to see again. Still, it was rather gratifying to see my relatively minor contribution to the meal enjoyed so much. It's easy to forget what a treasure spices are in lands where they're not commonly available.

The night was once again pleasantly uneventful; most wildlife seemed to avoid the valley, for obvious reasons. We did take care to choose a campsite upwind of the centipede (which smelled like acid and carrion) and the sheep (which smelled like sheep).

The next morning, we thanked the centipede for its hospitality before setting off. I left it with a few spoonfuls of pepper in a twist of paper, which it stroked lovingly with an antenna before scurrying off to bury somewhere.

Once we'd said our goodbyes, the centipede appeared to lose interest in us entirely. When we last saw it, it was making a fuss over Rock the ewe, who chewed placidly while the centipede's fangs neatly plucked burrs and twigs from her bright plaid fleece.

---

* The pumpkin - which he dubbed the Firecrack-O-Lantern - won Floo a commission from the Fiogajas, the notoriously pyromaniac royal family of Specklemax, to grow as many as he possibly could each year. The pumpkins became the centerpiece of an annual dinner party held by the Fiogajas, during which servants launched pumpkins off of the manor roof with a homemade ballista and guests competed to detonate the fruits with flaming arrows before they hit the ground. Floo's neighbors were surprisingly pleased with this turn of events, reasoning that as long as the Fiogajas were blowing up fruit on their own land, they were less likely to wander into town and attempt to create a waterspout by dropping dynamite down the town well.

Sadly, the Fiogaja family manor no longer exists. When the family finally exhausted the town's patience, leading to their deposition and exile from Specklemax, the head of the family at the time - Baron Zamran Arketily Spork Fiogaja - ignited the manor's entire cellar full of firecrack-o-lanterns before leaving town. Residents at the time attributed the Baron's act to a fit of pique at his family's expulsion from town, but in his later years - which were evidently happy ones, despite his exile and lack of eyebrows - he admitted that he had "just wanted to see how large a bang it would make."

The pumpkin seeds not consumed by the resulting fireball were propelled, along with very small pieces of the manor, for miles across the surrounding countryside. To this day, volunteer firecrack-o-lantern vines still occasionally sprout in previously non-flammable pumpkin patches as far away as Tazramack, to the usually unpleasant surprise of gardeners. It's considered wisest in the Mountainous Plains to light one's pipe a safe distance away from the pumpkin patch.

The Painted Ones

It was lucky that we found the caravan when we did. By that point, after a month or two of traveling through the wild, trackless wastes of the Golden Desert, I had almost forgotten what Tirakhai had hired me to do when we'd started.

I had been unable to get much information about the "Painted Ones," those mysterious beings that apparently required caravans to travel with artists as a precaution of some sort. The people I asked were as ignorant as myself, responding with shrugs and vague rumors they'd heard; or they were strangely reluctant to discuss the topic, giving small shudders and quickly changing the subject. Eventually, I stopped asking. I assumed I would find out if, or when, we actually encountered the Painted Ones. I was slightly less sure by then that I actually wanted to do so.

Less than a week after we rejoined the caravan, the Painted Ones showed up in person and answered all my questions - and as I'd suspected, I almost immediately wished they hadn't.

We never saw or heard them coming. Even Garnet, whose ears and nose were several degrees sharper than average, had no warning. We came around a high dune and they were simply there.

Judging by their appearance, I would guess that the Painted Ones' ancestors included Deinonychus, or one of the other great hunting lizards. They were tall and muscular, with scaly brown hides and sharp, bony faces. They had wide, flat feet - perfect for running on sand - tipped with dagger-like claws as large as my hand. My head barely came up to their breastbones. Even Garnet, I think, would have had difficulty facing one of these. Against a whole pack, the caravan would not have stood a chance.

We had plenty of time to look. The entire caravan froze at the sight of them. The gafl immediately burped out their alarm stink, a reeking cloud that caused several passengers and even one of the gafl handlers to pass out. No one else moved. The Painted Ones didn't seem to mind the smell at all; they just stood there and waited.

There was an aura of casual and utterly terrifying confidence about them. Somehow, standing there with all their sharp edges glinting in the sun, they managed to convey that they would not hesitate to kill and eat every last one of us. It probably wouldn't even take them very long. They looked at the people in the caravan the way you look at fruit in a market stall, considering which ones are the plumpest and ripest and how many pieces you would slice them into before eating them. We would have had about as much chance of fighting back as a fruit would. The only reason the Painted Ones weren't getting started, right now, was that we - I - had something they wanted more than meat.

Then again, maybe they just weren't hungry at the moment. I prefer not to think too hard about that possibility.

Tirakhai had made his way over to me at some point, moving surprisingly quietly for such a large man. I had been somewhat distracted, and I jumped when he whispered to me.

"Well, artist. They have come to meet you." He gave me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. "Good luck."

I would rather have pulled the tails of a thousand flying hyenas than walk out to meet that pack of fangs and claws. Tirakhai had to give me a rather firm shove before I could make my feet start moving. Still, they hadn't eaten us yet - and nothing focuses the mind quite like the awareness that a creature who would like to eat you might be willing to bargain for something else instead.

I have met plenty of saurian people in my life; most of them are not all that different from any other person, aside from a somewhat higher quota of claws and scales and a habit to tread very carefully on thin floors. The Painted Ones were not like any of them. I am glad to say, in fact, that I have never met anyone like the Painted Ones - with the possible exception of the Cathomar I once riddled for my life. Still, there was only one of him. There were at least a dozen of these tall saurians. (Somehow, I never took the time to count.) Their teeth and claws were wickedly sharp, except where they'd been broken off in jagged stumps. They seemed to have plenty to spare. The bases were crusted here and there with dark substances I didn't attempt to identify. Slit-pupiled eyes, in all shades of gold and copper and blood-red, inspected me with a hungry intelligence that made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. I have heard people speak of "undressing someone with their eyes," but I believe most people would stop at the skin.

Their breath had the faint, metallic tang of old blood.

In my mind, I gave my nose the rest of the day off, to calm its nerves, and gave my full desperate attention to my eyes. The Painted Ones apparently wanted an artist. I swallowed and tried to think like one.

Many of the Painted Ones were marked with what turned out, on closer inspection, to be elaborate tattoos. The pigment had been expertly worked in between the scales to form complex patterns - bold stripes and rings and spots that turned into lacy designs when seen up close. Others of the pack were unmarked. I wondered what the difference was, until I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a shred of cloth at the base of one hunter's horns. I was still less than comfortable around these tall and exceedingly pointy people, so I was slow and careful in working my way closer. Close up, the shred turned out to be a piece of old, half-detached skin - still marked with the traces of a tattoo.

That was the difference, then. The Painted Ones, like many scaly people, shed their skins periodically - and far more thoroughly than most; tattoos, permanent on most skin, were hardly more lasting than paint for them. They had come to us because they wanted them replaced.

Several of them had pouches hung on strings around their necks, hanging next to brightly colored stones and the occasional clinking bone. (None of them bothered to carry knives.) From these pouches, several of the unmarked took yellowed and much-folded scraps of paper and presented them to me. They were sketches. Done in a wide variety of different pigments and styles, each showed one of the Painted Ones decorated with a unique pattern. The owners of the sketches gestured to the faded designs, then to themselves. These ones, apparently, had their own personal designs and wanted them re-inked.

Others, rather than giving me a sketch, pointed to my sketchbook and made empty-handed gestures. I assumed that these had not yet found a pattern that they liked and wanted me to design one for them to try.

I'd never done tattoos before, but I knew at least the basic theory. Karlishek silently loaned me a few sewing needles - not ideal, but the best tools anyone had on hand - and I got started.

It was almost more than I could manage to drive the needle into the skin of the first hunter's arm. The impatient tapping of its left-hand dagger-claw on the sand was what finally got me moving. The needle didn't even make it flinch.

Once I'd started, the work itself was enough to keep me going; painting and drawing is usually like that, though this was probably the most unusual canvas I'd ever done it on. The Painted Ones' skin was tough and pebbled with scales, hot from the sun, crisscrossed with a hundred small scars. The powerful muscles and tendons beneath it barely twitched with the jabs of my needle. The smells of hot leather and old blood filled my nose. The skin was various shades of brown, from the pale tan of parchment to a deep, rich chestnut color. It looked as if it had originally been meant for camouflage in the Desert. Their culture had clearly left that idea behind, though, favoring bold designs that could probably be recognized from miles away.

That didn't seem to be the only purpose of the patterns, though. Several of the adolescent hunters, for example, seemed to have deliberately chosen their designs to be as painful as possible - lots of dark, intricate work in the relatively soft skin around their nostrils, under their arms, in the bends of their knees and elbows. I could see them grinning at each other as I inked the patterns in. I can handle this much pain, they seemed to be saying to each other. Can you?

The older ones, having apparently moved on to other methods of competition, seemed to choose their designs more aesthetically. Some seemed to be simply abstract; others emphasized physical features, such as unusually muscular arms or protruding brow-ridges. One particularly precise drawing featured a long, jagged line twisting down the left thigh. When I began to paint it, I found myself tracing the path of an old scar, faded nearly out of existence. Apparently, even scars are impermanent for the Painted Ones. They commemorate the best ones in ink instead.

Knowing that gave me a somewhat different view of some of the other patterns.

Karlishek eventually worked up the courage to stand and watch while I worked. He'd been talking to some of the older caravan passengers - apparently, they were less reluctant to discuss the Painted Ones when the real things were standing in front of them - and had found out a little of the history behind this odd arrangement.

Apparently, the Painted Ones used to attack caravans in this region. Unpainted then, they weren't interested in trade; they only wanted the plump, tasty merchant passengers and draft animals. As a result, many caravans started traveling with armed guards. Those that couldn't afford an escort simply set out and hoped. An occasional survivor would return from one of these, parched and delirious from the heat, raving about traveling companions devoured and precious cargo dumped out like inedible garbage onto the sand.

This inspired groups of adventurers to set out from nearby cities (relatively speaking; this is not a densely inhabited region of the Golden Desert).  Drawn by the irresistible combination of riches and danger, they would arm themselves with steel and arrogance and venture into the dunes in search of these lost treasures. Many of them were also eaten. Others, failing to find the treasures they sought, turned to banditry instead - which only made matters worse.

Trade in the region was just short of drying up altogether when one group of the Painted (then the Unpainted) Ones happened to attack a caravan with a tattoo artist aboard. Like many artists, she was rather stubborn, and she continued to work on the tattoo she was in the middle of even as chaos erupted all around her wagon. (Her client, squeamish about pain, had fortified himself with large quantities of Desert ale and didn't notice a thing.) When one of the attackers slashed open the side of the wagon where she was working, she broke his leg with a nearby sledgehammer and went back to work - in plain sight of the astonished predators outside.

This was the turning point in the Painted Ones' career. They crowded around, fascinated by these marvelous paintings beneath the skin. (Until this point, their encounters with the art of the Golden Desert's other cultures had mostly consisted of taking the jewelry off of their supper.) The fighting stopped. Someone, somehow, managed to figure out enough of their language - or perhaps they had learned enough of their prey's language - to negotiate an agreement: the Painted Ones would leave the caravan alone if the artist tattooed each of them. They had found, like many before them, that they preferred art to food.

Word spread quickly. For the next few years, caravans would hire the most spectacularly tattooed people they could find to walk out in front, as advertisements of a sort, hoping that the predators would stop and see what they had to offer before simply taking what they wanted. In nearly every case, it worked. Soon, the display became unnecessary; word had traveled between the packs, and even those who had never been painted knew what to ask for when they found a caravan. No one wanted to be the last Unpainted Ones left in the Golden Desert.

No one is sure how there can be so many of the Painted Ones. There are not enough animals in the Golden Desert to sustain a population of carnivores this large. The most popular theory is that they have some hidden desert paradise - an oasis, a plateau, a secret river valley - that they return to between their voyages across the sand. If it's true, no one has ever found this hidden paradise and returned to tell about it. The Painted Ones themselves certainly aren't telling anyone.

Their language, on the rare occasion that they spoke, sounded to me like a distant relative of Halsi - one that had been put through a meat grinder. They hissed the vowels and chewed the consonants with great relish.

"Mashrakh," they kept saying to me. "Mashrakh farrakesh. Hechram rrkh." I eventually came to suspect that this meant something like "stab harder, weakling. You're barely scratching me." It was easier to work out the signals they used: a wave for "bigger," a slashing motion for "darker," a twiddling of the claws for "more complex." I tried to oblige them as quickly as possible.

Complexity seemed to be reserved for the oldest among the pack. I was surprised when I first noticed that there were children among them, though I shouldn't have been. The smallest ones had only a stripe or two each and tried to chew on my bag of tools when their parents weren't looking. I didn't try to stop them; it could just as easily have been my leg.

Most of the patterns were in black, with touches of red on some of the larger and more dangerous-looking adults. Luckily, I had a good supply of black and red pigments; these colors are easy enough to come by in nearly any area. When I pulled out the small bottle of blue paint, though - the last remains of the cockleworm dye I picked up on the Gray Coast - one of the Painted Ones laid its elegant handful of daggers on my arm and shook its head. (Her head, as I found out later.) The common colors were all very well for the rest of the band; blue was reserved for the leader. She wanted only a few touches of the color at the tips of her horns and tail, possibly to match the tattered blue feathers tied to her horns.

It had been morning when we'd encountered the Painted Ones. The sun was setting by the time I finished. No one complained about the loss of time; in fact, very few people even came out of their wagons all afternoon. A few of the brave but unassuming passengers - usually Karlishek and Garnet - kept me supplied with water and reassuringly non-predatory company, but that was all.

The Painted Ones took several minutes to admire themselves when I finally finished the last one, turning in circles on the sand and making pleased little churring noises. (I hoped they were pleased, anyway.) One of them even gave me a friendly nudge with its muzzle before leaving, making me feel as if a rack of kitchen knives had suddenly decided to get affectionate. By then, though, I was a little more able to take the gesture as a compliment; I was, if not actually comfortable around the hunters, at least not actively terrified. It is always a pleasure to have one's work appreciated, and even more so when the mark of that appreciation is that one is still alive.

The Painted Ones left nothing behind when they glided off over the dunes, running with such a silent, effortless grace that they barely seemed to touch the sand. It was startling to see after being so close to them for so long. I had felt the tough muscle and bone beneath their thick skin; the adults must have weighed at least twice what I did, yet they appeared to weigh nothing at all. They paused at the top of a high dune, a line of boldly patterned shapes against the burning sky, and then were gone with a whisper of sand.

I spent the following day or two inside the wagons. After that day of relentless heat and terror, I needed the rest. The aquatic passenger (more about him later) actually let me share his water-filled vehicle until the shakes went away.

Painting the Painted Ones might be the most difficult project I have ever undertaken. It is certainly the most difficult one I have done without being paid. It was thoroughly unique, though - and in exchange for doing it, I was allowed to remain alive. I consider that an excellent trade.

Unexpected Canines

A few days later, the desert had lowered into a slightly more fertile valley lined with rocky cliffs. It was probably too dry for agriculture - there was a sluggish trail of muddy water down the middle of the valley, no more - but the sand was sprinkled with grass and wiry little bushes. We even caught sight of the occasional goat, though they were always darting out of sight behind rocks by the time we noticed them. They were far warier than we were.

In hindsight, that probably should have told us something.

We walked downstream ("stream" being a generous term) for another day or two. Running water tends to lead to more running water, and enough running water will eventually have people living by it. This is true nearly anywhere in the world. The food - animal and vegetable - was far more plentiful in the valley, and there were occasional clear pools where we stopped to refill our water. Occasionally, there were even trees with enough shade to sit in. Rattlebirds and orange-furred marmlets stared at us from high in the rocks. They scuttled away when we looked at them.

On the third day, we found out why all the animals were so skittish. The valley had gotten deeper, winding in sharp zigzags beneath the sandstone cliffs. There were occasional spots where the water actually trickled instead of oozed. We were in much higher spirits than before. We were walking beside the stream, debating whether marmlets were edible or poisonous like their cousin the nightshade gopher, when we came around a rock and found a pack of saber-dingoes staring at us.

Everyone froze.

Saber-dingoes have gained something of a bad reputation in the Golden Desert; unfortunately, they have earned most of it quite honestly. The most common theory is that they are descended from only the nastiest bits of wild dogs, lions, and wolverines. In most parts of the world, the wild canines - wolves, jackals, thylacines* - will leave people alone, correctly judging that these bizarre upright creatures with their fire and metal are much more dangerous than any wild predator. Saber-dingoes are different. They will not attack large groups of animals - hence the use of caravans for desert travel - but they will not hesitate to attack anything, no matter how large or well-armed, as long as they outnumber it.

There were four of us. There were eight dingoes. The smallest of them probably weighed more than Garnet. We had a few knives between us, ranging from bread knives to potato peelers; the dingoes had claws and teeth. They also had the fangs for which they are named, two each, serrated blades as long as my forearm that hung down to either side of their chins. If anyone had been placing bets, they would not have been on us.

We had been downwind of the dingoes, and they had been busy dividing up a dead goat, so they were as surprised as we were - but considerably more pleased. In moments, they had left the goat behind and were slinking toward us with the casual, eager grace of a predator who has just spotted much larger and better-fed prey.

We raised such pathetic excuses for weapons as bread knives and backpacks and tried not to panic. The goat did not look as if it had had a chance to run very far.

That was when Garnet came out from behind us. We tried to stop her - pointlessly, as a few feet more or less of distance was clearly not going to make much difference to the dingoes - but she shrugged us away and kept going.

She stopped, facing the ranks of saber-toothed grins, and began to grow.

Thick, black fur sprouted along her arms and neck, and her loose clothes rustled and shifted as muscles and limbs expanded beneath them. We could hear her bones creaking. In what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than twenty seconds, there was a nine-foot-tall black werewolf with claws like a velociraptor standing where the small woman had been. She was still wearing the same delicate pink sari she'd had since leaving the caravan. It looked positively tiny on her now.

Wordless, she pulled back her lips and growled at the pack, giving them (and us) a clear view of fangs that would have put a crocodile to shame.

The pack held very still for a second. Then, without the slightest twitch as a warning, the largest saber-dingo - a male with a ragged mane - sprang for her throat.

She met him halfway. There was a brief scuffle, full of flying sand and snarls like ripping cloth. The two of them paused just long enough for us to see that she had somehow gotten her teeth around his throat - he probably would have lost it if not for his mane - and then she flexed the muscles of her neck and shoulders and threw him fifteen feet into a sand dune. She was on him again before he could get back on his paws.

The other dingoes tried to leap at Garnet as soon as her back was turned. After all, the point of a pack is not to attack things alone. The rest of us shouted warnings, and she backhanded them across the sand before they could get near her. They gave up after only a few tries.

The largest one was far more stubborn. I won't go into detail about the rest of the fight, except to say that he was bleeding from a dozen wounds - none of them fatal; she seemed uninterested in killing him - and was missing most of his left ear by the time he finally gave up, crawling away with what remained of his tail between his legs. The rest of the pack followed him without a sound.

Garnet stood there, panting, and watched them go until they were out of sight behind the next bend in the valley. She turned and gave us an apologetic grin with too much red in it.

"Sorry if I frightened you," she said, and collapsed.

It took all three of us to drag her over to the stream. We had cleaned her wounds, as well as we could, and were just starting to bandage them when she shifted back to human. Every cut promptly healed on its own. This is fairly normal for shapeshifters; they never stay wounded for long. When you're reshaping your entire body, there's no reason to leave holes in it.

Garnet remained unconscious until after sundown. When she woke up, she emptied the nearest pool of water, ate our entire supply of dried meat, and followed it with everything that remained of the dingoes' goat. If she hadn't been so exhausted, I suspect she would have gone out into the dark to catch another one.

When she had finished, she apologized again for frightening us and for not telling us sooner. We assured her that no apologies were necessary. After all, if she hadn't been there, we would have been not only frightened, but rather unpleasantly dead as well.

We had to admit, though, that we were rather curious.

Garnet had come from a part of the Desert where werewolves were rumored to live, she said, but none of her relatives could remember there being one in the family before. Apparently, it's a trait that can skip many generations before it shows up again, like blue eyes in a dark-eyed family, or carnivorism in a family of herbivores. She confused her parents to no end as a teenager. She was always hungry - she could out-eat everyone in her family - but she never seemed to actually grow any larger. No one was sure where she was putting it all.

They found out when she changed for the first time, at age fifteen. She had been growing - but not in her normal body. Instead, it had all been going into that mysterious little side pocket of existence where werewolves keep their extra mass. The first time she changed, she destroyed her dress and half of the room she was in, mostly due to panicking and exiting through the nearest wall.

She's been careful to wear loose clothing ever since, just in case.

She stays human nearly all the time because it's easier, she said; she weighs less, eats less, hits her head on fewer doorways, and is far less hot without all that black fur. Also, walking around as a nine-foot pillar of muscle and sharp ends tends to frighten people.

"Actually," she said with a rueful laugh, "it frightens me a little too. It's too big, too strong, too pointy. Most of the time, I just try to forget the wolf is there." She paused for a moment, then smiled. "I guess it was good to have it today, though."

We all quite emphatically agreed.



* Yes, I know that thylacines are not technically canines, but they take much the same role in the parts of the world where they live. The same is true for houndworms, cerulean monitor lizards, and the feral candroids in a few of the wrecked floating cities.

Sky-Hunch

I'm starting to think it's just something about this stretch of road. Today was my third encounter with someone who couldn't speak to me - at least not in any way I could understand.

Just like yesterday, I had been walking for most of the morning when I saw a dark shape in the distance, just off the road. I couldn't tell what it was at first. A blanket? A dead tree? The outline shimmered in the heat haze and refused to resolve itself into any shape I recognized. I had to get much closer before I realized what it was.

It was one of the flying hyenas.

Even the ordinary, ground-dwelling hyena is an oddly proportioned creature: thick-bodied and front-heavy, all neck and shoulders and ears. Its back slopes up from short back legs to a high, domed head, with a scruffy mane of fur along the spine. Its neck is almost as thick as its waist. The little tuft of tail almost seems like an afterthought.

Flying hyenas are stranger still; all of their proportions have been exaggerated even further for flight.This one had bat-like wings easily twice as wide as the span of my arms, and its toes were unusually long and flexible, somewhere between paws and talons. Its chest was massive. It takes truly amazing flight muscles to lift a creature the size of a hyena. The Desert name for the flying hyena - sarkotha - means something like "sky-hunch," and now I can see why. Most of the animal seemed to be shoulders and a long, muscular neck heavy enough to balance its small hindquarters in flight. Like a bat, there was webbing between its tail and its hind legs.

I don't know whether it was male or female. Unlike most mammals, there is no obvious way to tell male and female flying hyenas apart except that the females are larger, and I'd never been close enough to one to make a comparison. This one was large enough to be frightening, even lying sprawled on the sand.

The hyena's fur was gray-brown with a pattern of black spots. The bare skin on its wings was much the same. The wings were tough, translucent membranes, like those of a bat, leathery and wrinkled at the joints. Enough light shone through from the sand that I could see red and blue blood vessels beneath the surface.

There was a loop of rope tied around the hyena's left wing.

I'm not sure how the rope had gotten there in the first place. Maybe someone had left it somewhere, and the hyena had gotten tangled in it; maybe someone had actually tried to catch the creature. If so, they must have been insane. I could see its fangs from where I was standing. The area around the rope was red and swollen, chafed by the fibers and the hyena's teeth. It looked as if the hyena had been worrying at the rope, trying to get it off, and had only succeeded in pulling it tighter. The membrane was so constricted by now that the wing probably couldn't have opened completely - which explained why the hyena had been traveling on foot. From what I've heard, they never walk when they can fly.

Judging from the tracks in the sand, it had walked for a long time, and dragged itself for a long time after that, before collapsing from exhaustion or dehydration. It wasn't moving. I was fairly sure that its eyes were shut, though the dark rings around them made it hard to tell. Until I noticed the faint rise and fall of its shoulders, I wasn't sure if it was even alive.

It was clearly alive, though. That was all I needed to know. Aside from the fact that I hate to see anyone suffer, I've read enough fairy tales to know the proper course of action in situations like this. That rope had to come off somehow. I set my bags down a safe distance away and rummaged through them until I found my bread knife. It was a less-than-ideal tool, but I needed something with teeth to cut through rope that thick, and I don't carry a saw around with me. The bread knife would have to do.

(The picture above, by the way, I drew later, from memory. This was a situation that called for either helping or running away, not standing around sketching.)

The hyena didn't move when I approached. It seemed to be unconscious. It made a noise when I touched it, somewhere between a snarl and a snore, but it didn't open its eyes. Gingerly, trying to shake the beast as little as possible, I crouched by its wing and started sawing at the rope.

It was a long and difficult process. The sun beat down mercilessly. It had been bearable when I'd only been walking; sawing at a rope was much more strenuous, and therefore hotter. The rope seemed to part at a rate of one strand per hour. As slick as it was with my sweat and the hyena's saliva, it was hard to even hold onto it. I was terrified that I was going too slowly and would never finish, that I was going too quickly and would wake up the hyena, that it would wake up anyway and bite my arm off. Somehow, I managed to keep going.

I had almost finished when I became aware of a low rumbling sound from somewhere nearby. I looked down to find a pair of dark eyes, ringed in black, glaring at me above a wrinkled muzzle. The hyena was growling.

I had no idea how long it had been awake, but that was obviously a sign that I was out of time. Fortunately, one last yank of the knife was enough. The last strand of rope parted, and I scrambled away as fast as I could without stabbing myself or turning my back on the hyena. I got to what seemed like a respectful distance and then went a bit further.

The hyena didn't get up immediately; it sat there, baring its teeth at me in a snaggly bear-trap snarl that would have put a crocodile to shame, until I was far enough away to satisfy it. Only then did it stagger to its paws. It moved gingerly at first, favoring its injured wing; something must have felt different, though, because it turned away from me to look. The tendons flexing in that great neck were as thick as my wrist. Cautiously, it unfolded its wing, and the frayed rope slithered off and fell to the ground.

The hyena gave its wing a tentative flap. Then, with a thoroughly inhuman cackle that raised all the hair on my spine (never mind that I don't have any right now), it beat both wings in the most ferocious takeoff I've ever seen and flung itself into the air. The river was fairly nearby, just over a few small hills. Apparently, they'd been too much for it to manage before; with its wing unencumbered, though, it swooped right over them. I could hear the splash when it dove into the water.

I climbed over the hills and sat just behind the crest of the last one, watching the hyena. It drank at first, lowering its head into the sluggish current and chomping down water in great, famished gulps. Having dealt with its thirst, it just stood there for a while and let the water wash over its wing. It took several minutes for the swelling to start going down. After that, the hyena romped and splashed around in the water in what looked like sheer joy, kicking and scooping up big waves with its wings. It shook itself like a dog when it finally climbed out.

It froze when it saw me. I'm not sure what it was thinking. On a human, its expression would have looked like a perplexed frown, as if there was some puzzle it was trying to work out. We stood there and looked at each other for what seemed like forever. Finally, the hyena dipped its head in what might have been a nod, then turned and loped away up another hill. It lifted into the air with another ghastly cackle and flapped off into the sky. I watched it until it was out of sight.

I didn't do any more walking today. Instead, I went to lie in the river myself for a while, until I was less overheated and my hands had stopped shaking. It had been wonderful to see the hyena back in the air, free to return to the element it was born to rule. I was glad I'd been able to help it.

But I hope I never have to do anything like that again.

Market Street, Day 4: the Singing Huntresses

These two looked like an interesting pair. I could hear them laughing from across the street (one of them, anyway). I introduced myself, and they agreed to let me draw them if I bought them another round of drinks.

Their names are Emiline and Katal. Emiline was drinking green tea with mint; Katal had something that steamed and turned the table black when it spilled out of her mug. They were in good spirits and talked while I drew. Emiline says she grew up in Ganraminga, a coastal city in Minann, just far enough from Mollogou to stay intact. It's a city of mist and elegant manners. Katal told me a long, detailed story about how she was raised by wolves on the Scalps, and how she left when she realized she was bigger and stronger than any of them. About twenty minutes later, she told me another story about how she was raised by shark-riding bandits on the Mandible Coast. An hour after that, it was sky-monkeys in the floating jungles.

The two of them make their living by traveling across the plains, hunting and singing ballads. There wasn't much hunting to be done in town, but I did get to hear them sing in the inn this evening. They say people are often surprised to find that both of them are equally skilled at hunting and singing. Katal has a lovely alto voice, sweet and clear between her fangs, and as delicate as Emiline looks, she's apparently rather deadly with her bow. It's almost as tall as she is.

There's a lot of space on the Scalps. Of all the creatures that cross them - thunderbeast, rainwalkers, candlegiraffes, wild horses, lightning hyenas - very few ever come within sight of a town. Katal and Emiline say they find some creature no one's ever heard of on almost every trip they take. This month, it was a strange elephantoid beast with multiple tusks; they grow in rows out of its mouth, curling up and over its head in ranks, like a second ribcage. There's a whole herd of them on the plains. The two huntresses caught "the best one" and brought it back to the Museum of Natural Philosophy in SuyMaTmakk, where it will probably spend the next month being cleaned by carrion beetles and then stuffed. It took the huntresses two weeks to drag it back on a wagon. This is what they were celebrating when I met them.

At this time of year, though, they mostly hunt thunderbeast and speckled antelope. Katal seemed to be wearing most of an antelope already; she wore one of the speckled skins as a dress and several particularly interesting bones around her neck. One of the songs the two of them sang this evening comes from the Scalps, and they performed it the traditional way, with drums made of antelope skulls. The clack of bone went perfectly with the clattering Hmakk words.

The songs came from all over Hamjamser. There were sea shanties, hop-fugues from Kennyrubin, lightning-fast breakdowns from the Railway Regions, arzenroyds with chords that made the silverware vibrate. I recognized love songs (frequently estimated to be half of the music ever written) in at least five different languages. They sang a few hymns, a cappella; the harmonies were breathtaking. They even sang the Saga of Neinrak, one of those bleak Northern song-tales of ice and revenge. It takes half an hour and leaves every character dead. They had the entire room spellbound by the third verse; by the eighth, we were joining in for the choruses (there are five different ones, each repeated throughout the saga). By the sixteenth verse, most of us were too choked up by the story to trust our voices anymore. It took several patter-songs and ironic ballads before anyone could smile again.

While they sang, I touched up the paint on Emiline's quiver. It had gotten scratched while she was wrestling a cathomar in the foothills of the Railway Regions. Though she's modest about it, Emiline has trained rather extensively in the kinds of martial arts that let you toss around creatures five times your size. She's the only person I've met who's chosen the contest of strength - usually the least popular of a cathomar's traditional three choices - and one of the only ones I've even heard of who's actually won it. The cathomar must have been quite surprised.

Some of my favorite songs were the ones from Mollogou, crooked melodies with strange, metallic chords. Katal's instrument is called a trangaban; it's an enormous stringed thing, like a five-foot banjo made of steel. It looks like she occasionally uses it as a club (presumably when her actual iron hunting club isn't handy). For the Mollogou songs, she played the trangaban with a pair of tin spoons, producing a sound somewhere between a steel drum and a dulcimer. Emiline plays the soolian, a relative of the clarinet. It has a flared opening carved to look like a dragon's head. The two of them showed exactly how good they were with their instruments when they performed a traditional haknit from SuyMaTmakk; soolian and trangaban skittered up and down the scale, forming complex, glittering harmonies with Katal's powerful voice. The angry words of the haknit would have been slightly more convincing if they hadn't been grinning so widely the whole time.

The Cat's Radishes

Today, after almost a week of walking, I finally reached a village. Its name is Twokk. There was something on fire in the middle of town, but no one seemed particularly concerned about it, so I assumed it was normal. I'll take a closer look tomorrow.

It was dark when I arrived, and my feet were sore, so I stopped at the first inn I came to (the only one, as I discovered later). It's called the Moons and Magpie.* It's a cozy place, comfortably settled into its space on the street. The inn somehow manages to lean on the buildings to either side and slouch to the rear at the same time. It looks as if it's relaxing in an old armchair.

The locust stew was quite good; the meat was tender, the shells still crunchy. I've heard that's a hard combination to achieve. As so often happens, I had been there hardly ten minutes before someone sat down across the table and started talking. He was reptilian - mostly, anyway - with gray-green scales and whiskers. A thin mane of gray hair ran down the back of his neck, twisted into a tangle of braids and fastened with blue glass beads. His face had more folds than an origami alligator.

"You look like a traveler," he said. "Got that windswept look. You got a name?"

I introduced myself, and he nodded.

"Nigel, eh? I had a cousin named Nigel once. He could play the accordion like nobody else. Got so good that a dragon came and took him away to be its personal musician. Or maybe it ate him. I dunno. I'm Brexical Cheezerbaum, expatriate carter and merchant, but you can call me Cheese. You ever been to the High Fields?"

My single visit to the High Fields had, in fact, been a rather memorable one - I might write about it someday - but I settled for a simple nod.

"Well, there's something you oughta know if you ever go back. Pretty sure it saved my life once. Care to hear the story?"

I almost never say no to this sort of question. It always leads somewhere interesting, and I've found that most people don't particularly care if you say no anyway. I nodded again.

"Well, it was up on the terrace road," he began. "Highest of the High Fields, up near Pelfry and Farcastle, where there's more cliff than ground and weather's something you look down at. I'd stopped to repair a wheel on my cart - roads are terrible up there, see, 'cause the pothole crabs keep digging 'em up. Can't take horses on those roads at all. I had my cart-lizard. Good eating, though, pothole crabs, if you know how to catch 'em…

"Anyways, there I was, putting my wheel back on, when a steeplecat climbs down the cliff above me. You ever seen a steeplecat?"

I hadn't.

"Well, a steeplecat is like a tiger, see, except green instead of orange and with spines all over like an iguana. Sticky feet, too - it climbed down that cliff face like it was walking on the ground. A giant of a steepler, big as a horse, and all muscle under that green fur.

"Well, my poor cart-lizard completely lost his head - can't blame him, I suppose, since the steepler could have eaten him in two bites. First the silly thing tried to hide in a crab-hole in the road, then he realized that wouldn't work and practically turned himself inside-out trying to hide under the cart he was pulling. Me, I just stood there with nothing but the hammer I'd been using to fix my wheel - about as long as one of the steepler's teeth, it was - and the stupid hope that maybe if I stayed still, it wouldn't see me. I wasn't thinking too clearly, you understand.

"Well, as it turned out, the steeplecat wasn't interested in me or my lizard. She went straight to the cart - I could tell she was a female, cause the males have horns when they're full-grown, and this one was more full-grown than most - and she started pawing through the bags and boxes inside. Didn't break anything, just kept digging till she found a box she liked. I was so terrified I couldn't even remember what was in it. She picked at it for a while, scratching at the lid - even tried biting it open, as if it was a nut the size of my head. That gave me the shivers, I can tell you. Looked like she'd done it before.

"Well, the box was one of those little iron-bound chests, the kind you use when you're delivering china by dropping it off an airship and don't want it chipped. Even the steepler's teeth couldn't get through that. She sat there growling at it for a while, while my lizard about had a fit under the cart. Then she picked the box up in those big teeth and walked over - her paws were bigger than my head, and they didn't make a sound - and dropped the box right in front of me. Sat there and looked at me, waiting, till I realized she wanted me to open it.

"Well, I wasn't about to argue with that. I picked up the box - nearly fell over doing it - and opened the lid, though my hands were shaking so bad I nearly dropped it twice. Found it was full of radishes. I'd picked 'em up in Sickle, where they grow 'em in buckle tortoise shells, so they last for months and glow when you put 'em in water. The cat had her whiskery nose in the box soon as I opened it, so I put it down quick and backed off. She plucked those radishes out of the box with a claw and ate them, one by one, dainty as a lady eating chocolates. Didn't stop till the whole box was empty.

"When she'd eaten all the radishes - half a Geint, those cost me, but she could have eaten me instead, so I'm not complaining - she walked over to my cart, climbed up on top, and went to sleep. Right there on my luggage! Softer than rocks, I suppose, which is all there was nearby. I still couldn't quite believe it till she started snoring. My lizard got out from under that cart so fast, I was picking splinters out of his tail for a week.

"I figured eventually we might as well keep moving, since the steepler didn't show any sign of waking up, and she could eat us just as well someplace else if she wanted. My lizard was happy enough to get moving, though he spooked every time the cart went over a bump. In the High Fields, that's practically every two steps. We got another few miles before the cat woke up. She yawned - hope I never see a sight like that again - jumped down from the cart, and gave my lizard a big, friendly lick, like a dog. Poor thing fainted clear away on the spot. I was afraid she'd do the same to me, but she didn't even look at me - just turned and poured herself over the nearest cliff. I looked down and saw her climbing down the rock, faster than I can walk. Still not a sound. My lizard didn't wake up for another hour, but when he did, he was so eager to get out of there, we reached Farcastle by nightfall.

"And if you don't believe me, look at this."

He pulled a wooden box out from under the table. It was scratched and dented all over, both the wood and the metal bands around it; the marks could have come from a pickaxe, except that I've never seen a pickaxe that sharp. A few of the gouges had what looked like grass caught in them. On closer inspection, this turned out to be strands of long green fur. He opened the box to show that it was full of radishes.

"I've never made a trip since without a box of these," he said. "Far as I know, they're the only reason me and my lizard didn't end our trip as lunch. And I'd advise you to do the same."

I bought half a dozen. After a story like that, how could I have done otherwise?

It's entirely possible, of course, that the whole story was an elaborate plot to get me to buy his radishes. (I later overheard him telling a rapt pair of rabbit-eared Mattergovian monks how he had outsmarted a band of pirates with these, yes, these very sea-pickles.) It doesn't really matter. True or not, the story was worth at least the price of a half dozen vegetables.

Besides, I like radishes.

* Or, in Hmakk, Hmika mi Kikimey. I think the name comes from a story from the Scalps.

Malanian

During my time in Mollogou, I stayed for over a month in the town of Malanian. It was relaxing - a stable island in a sea of geographical chaos.

Geography is inconstant, to some extent, in every part of the world; this is why maps are useless before they're completed, and why Wayfinders' abilities are in such high demand. Mollogou is worse than most countries. There are very few towns in Mollogou that bother to have names. They are simply collections of random buildings, rearranged in different groups every day, shuffled and dealt across the entire country like a pack of cards. Your neighbors today could be a hundred miles away tomorrow. Mollogoons consider themselves lucky if their houses even stay intact; most houses trade rooms with other buildings, apparently on a whim. Nothing in the country stays where it's put. This is why parents in Mollogou don't put their children down until they're old enough to fend for themselves. Once something - or someone - is out of sight, chances are they'll never see it again.

Most people in Mollogou try not to get too attached to anything.

Malanian is the largest town in Mollogou. It's one of the only ones with a name. The town is built in the domain of Malanian, the pill bug spirit, which is where the name comes from (it means "Silver Shell" in an archaic dialect of Togol). There are a ridiculous number of local spirits in Mollogou; practically every copse and hilltop has one. No one can possibly be expected to remember them all. The spirits' names are usually written on their shrines, so that strangers (which means practically everyone in the country) can pay proper respect. In Malanian's case, they simply named the town after the spirit and saved themselves the trouble.

Malanian (the spirit) tends to keep to his or herself.* The spirit only appears occasionally, in visions and dreams. During the days of the locust marauders, Malanian is said to have sent nightmares to the entire town and woken them before every attack. Other than the occasional practical message, though, Malanian rarely appears to come out of its shell.

This is not always the case with spirits. A few of the ones in Mollogou have even been known to have romances with mortals; it's surprisingly common to meet people there who claim to be descended from spirits. (The truth of these claims is usually impossible to prove.) Two of the fox spirits in one forest (brother and sister, however that works with spirits) each seem to take a new spouse every century or so. Their clever, elusive descendants number in the hundreds. A Samoval spirit in Gonrang has been married for nearly two hundred years to a man who is immortal due to the Shapeshifter's Curse.

Malanian is not one of these. There are an unusual number of chitinous people in the town - not surprising, I suppose, in a town with an isopod patron - but none of them claim to be descended from the pill bug spirit. Nearly everyone in the town is fond of it, though, and of the ordinary pill bugs that live around it. The streets of Malanian are full of randomly placed rocks, logs, and damp crevices - just the sorts of places pill bugs like. The largest ones run around in the houses like mice (only better behaved). People watch where they step and don't bother to sweep their kitchen floors. Any crumbs or scraps will be eaten by the next day. It's common to see children - and adults, for that matter - walking around with pill bugs on their shoulders or in their hands. They carry them like pets or good luck charms. There's a good reason for this; the town owes its very existence to the pill bug spirit.

Malanian is a dense collection of buildings arranged in a circle, with the outer buildings forming a seamless stone wall around the outside. There are arches through which to enter the town. The walls curve inward at the top, as if the entire town is half of a giant stone sphere.** They were built several centuries ago as a defense against the local variety of dragon. Mollogou dragons are damp, sticky-fingered creatures, more like giant flying frogs than the usual reptilian variety. They are rather insanely fond of leather. They like to chew it. This caused something of a problem several centuries ago; the dragons had a habit of swooping down into towns to carry off all the shoes in sight, and they didn't particularly care if the shoes still had people in them. (People may, in fact, have served as convenient handles, making the shoes easier to grab.)

The people of Malanian (the town) apparently came to an agreement with Malanian (the spirit): if the people built the wall, protecting the town from the sides, the spirit would protect it from above. The spirit's only condition was that the wall be round. As it turned out, this worked quite well. The dragons made several more raids, the spirit repelled them (accounts vary as to how), and they left the town alone after that.*** This protection has made Malanian a haven from many other dangers in Mollogou's history, such as the Locust Marauders and the Laughing Storm.

Though it's not currently needed for defense, this being a relatively peaceful time, the wall is the reason that Malanian is the largest town in Mollogou. It keeps the town together. Malanian's buildings have stayed Malanian's buildings ever since the wall's foundations were laid. The farms around the town still have a tendency to wander off when no one's looking, as all the land in Mollogou does, but the town itself has stayed more or less in one piece. The people all know each other and happily trade with whichever farmers live nearby on any given day.

People in Malanian seem to care about things more than most people in Mollogou. Perhaps it comes from knowing they'll still be there tomorrow.

* As is the case with most spirits, no one seems sure whether Malanian is male or female. It's difficult to tell even on an ordinary pill bug.

** There are a lot of spheres in the town. The spirit likes them, apparently. I suppose that's not surprising for a pill bug.

*** Several years later, a particularly fearless tanner taught the dragons how to make their own leather. Unfortunately, not all the dragons wanted to bother raising the animals they used for leather, so a number of them just switched from stealing shoes to stealing cows. Farmers were less than pleased with the tanner for this.

Cats and Riddles

While in the Railway Regions last year, I had my first encounter with a cathomar. Don't worry - I'm still quite alive and in possession of all my limbs. In fact, as near-death experiences go, it was surprisingly entertaining.

Cathomars are some of the only dangerous animals still common in the Railway Regions. (There is the occasional carnivorous sheep, but they're relatively rare, and most are perfectly safe if they're trained correctly.) Wolves avoid anything that looks civilized, as intelligent creatures like humans are too unpredictable for comfort. The same goes for bears and dreadgoats. Most of the other large carnivores - the intelligent ones, like saberclaws and serrated raptors - have become somewhat civilized themselves; most of them live in towns these days. Once in a while, even the most dedicated predators like to get their meat by paying the butcher for it. The solitary ones, who still prefer to stay out in the forests and hunt, see travelers as sources of conversation rather than food. I've met several raptors who have trampled out of the forest, all muscles and fangs and ripping talons, only to lick the blood off of their claws and politely challenge me to a game of chess. (They're usually quite good at it.)

Even dragons have become relatively peaceful.* Their pillaging days are long gone. They've found that it's easier - if slightly less fun - to pay farmers to raise prey for them.** Half the cows and sheep in the Railway Regions belong to dragons. They acquire their gold (or other expensive collections) from estates of well-managed farms, or put it in banks and buy more gold with the interest. Business, it seems, is more profitable than piracy. Their only feuds are private ones with other dragons.

Cathomars are different. They have no compunctions about eating anything or anyone. Any animal that is not a Cathomar is food.*** The ones that talk are simply more fun.

This one was a tom - sleek, enormous, and fairly old, judging by the size of his fangs. They were nearly as long as my arms. The Train had been taking its time in coming, and I had decided - perhaps foolishly - to try the footpaths that pass for roads in the Railway Regions instead. Now I know why people generally avoid them. The cathomar glided silently out of the woods as I was walking and sat his sand-colored sleekness down neatly in front of me. He looked about twice my height, sitting down, and was slightly wider than the path I was on.

A fly buzzed near his shoulder. Without looking at it, without twitching a single unnecessary muscle, he flicked his tail up and swatted it into the trees.

"Good morning," he purred. "You're not as well-fed as I'd like, but you look educated. What will it be?"

Cathomars are quite polite when they catch intelligent prey. Creatures that can talk are much more entertaining than ones that can't. Instead of killing them immediately, the cathomars will challenge them to a contest of the prey's choice: speed, strength, or riddle. (Technically, this challenge applies even to non-speaking prey; anything that runs away has obviously chosen the contest of speed, and anything a cathomar catches has obviously lost.) If you lose, the cathomar will eat you. If you win, it will leave you alone, forever. Cathomars have excellent memories for faces and always keep their word. If you beat one, you will never need to worry about that cathomar again - only all the other ones.

Most people avoid the first two contests, as the cathomars always win. Only a giant or an exceptionally muscular samoval has much hope at winning a contest of strength, and if you could win a race, the cathomar probably wouldn't have caught up and challenged you in the first place. Nearly everyone chooses the riddles.

Fortunately, I spent several weeks on my first trip to the Railway Regions researching obscure riddles - and coming up with a few of my own - just in case I ever ran into a cathomar. (That was one thing that Plack probably needn't have worried about.) I followed tradition and chose the contest of riddles. In fact, cathomars are no better than anyone else at riddles (thank goodness); they just enjoy them. They could live entirely on non-speaking animals and never go hungry. Intelligent prey is just more fun. Creatures that don't talk are good to eat, but creatures that do talk are good to eat and possibly entertaining as well.

Numerous people have called cathomars psychopaths. This is not entirely correct. They're not insane; they're merely wild. The fact that they can talk doesn't change that. Consciences are only normal for civilized creatures, and cathomars - for all their cleverness and elegant manners - are anything but civilized.

I would love to tell you the riddles we asked each other, but I'd rather not spread them (and their answers) any further than I can help. The cathomar used a variation on the old egg riddle, easily guessed, but that's all I'll give away. You never know when you might need a riddle no one's heard before. Suffice it to say that I won the contest. When the Cathomar finally gave up, lashing his tail and rumbling, I told him the answer to my last riddle. He stopped and stared at me for a moment; then he threw back his head and roared. I thought he was angry at first, but eventually realized he was laughing.

"Very good, meatling," he eventually said, still sneezing with subsiding laughter. "Very good indeed. You have won the game and your life. Go run off and do whatever it is you herbivores do." I happen to be an omnivore, but I thought it unwise to correct him.

"And come back to visit me!" he roared as I walked away, trying very hard not to run. "We'll see if I beat you next time!"

Perhaps I will. It's always a delight to see a game played well. If the stakes are low enough, it doesn't matter whether it's played well by you or your opponent. Losing to a worthy adversary can be as satisfying as winning. It's rare to find anyone who understands that. That was not the case in this game, of course, as I had a rather personal interest in winning, but that couldn't be helped.

Perhaps next time.



* They are not tame. If you call them tame, quite a lot of them are still likely to eat you. "Relatively peaceful" doesn't mean you can insult a dragon and expect to live.

** They pay with Train tickets, of course, not actual coins. Few dragons will willingly part with anything metal.

*** Except llamas.

The Gray and Motley Coast

I seem to end up in the Great Shwamp twice as often as any other region of Hamjamser (except possibly the Railway Regions). Other travelers I've met have said the same thing. It makes sense, I suppose. The Shwamp draws everything in. Every river, stream, and ditch flows into it, at least occasionally. It's downhill from everywhere but the ocean.

I got in through a mangrove swamp this time. (All swamps are part of the Great Shwamp, just as all forests are part of the Great Wood.*) I'd been traveling along the coast, stopping in each of a line of the most monochromatic fishing villages I've ever seen. There seemed to be no color in any of them but driftwood gray. The rocks were gray; the houses were gray; the plants were gray; the people were gray. They wore gray clothes and lived on gray fish. Holes in the gray sand contained off-white ghost crabs, which seemed almost garish next to everything else. The villagers were delighted to see someone who carried lots of bright colors and could be persuaded to paint them on things.

In the last village, I noticed a few children playing with what were obviously indigo cockleworm shells; it turned out that they had an enormous field of them just offshore. Cockleworm shells make the best blue dye in the world. I brought this to their attention before I left. If they have any success at farming the worms, I wouldn't be surprised if the Gray Coast eventually becomes the Blue Coast.

It was a few days later that the gray dunes began to give way to mangroves. It was a welcome change. The mangroves were gnarled, ancient trees, raised up on tentacular roots like bark-skinned squid afraid to get their faces wet. Lopsided crabs climbed in the roots next to lizards and sea-green estuary frogs. There were flightless grasshoppers the color of painted Sackamock pottery jugs - and about the same size. Some of them were almost as big as badgers. They ignored the leaves of the trees, preferring instead to take neat little slices out of the roots, which were roughly the consistency of cast iron. I tried to keep my fingers away from them.

Between the mangroves and the sea was Snaffle, a decidedly non-gray fishing village that seemed not so much built as accumulated. In Snaffle, there is no apparent distinction between house and boat. I often had to check under the floorboards to tell which I was on. People without a boat cut their house away from its neighbors and float around in it; people without a house tie their boat up to the village and never leave. They gradually acquire more and more permanent gangplanks, which eventually become whole floors and have more cabins built on top of them, until what was a boat and a dock has become a single conglomeration of buildings with new docks sticking out of it. As far as I can tell, only about a quarter of Snaffle is built on actual land - if the word "land" even applies. It's mostly mangrove roots. The rest of the village has grown out from there. Many of the most solid-looking buildings are built on what are still recognizable - just barely - as the rotting hulls of old boats. I suspect that most of the village's foundations are held together by limpets. There are public fishing holes in the streets and, apparently, private ones inside the houses as well. People put baited strings down through a hole in the kitchen floor and pull up dinner without having to leave the house. Every surface of the village seems to sway, just enough to notice; even the walkways built on solid roots seem to rock gently back and forth, if only in comparison to the rest.

The whole village has a sort of patchwork look to it, being made of boats and whatever spare timber was handy at the time. Sails that have been patched until they're more patch than sail are cut up and made into dresses or coats; many of the people are as motley as the village. There are walls made of driftwood, or furniture, or packing crate slats still printed with their contents. Many people name their houses after the words on them. The inn where I stayed was called the Petrified Fragile. Some of the builders line up the labels to form rhymes:

Olives
Olives
Coffee
POTATOES
THIS WAY UP
DO NOT EAT
Extract of Pear
Salmon
(PICKLED)
The Finest Tomatoes
Peppermint
Pufferfish
Handle With Care

In the end, I had to leave the village in rather a hurry. The hurricane crickets had begun singing. I didn't know what that meant, but the innkeeper (an amphibious man named Cacophonous Moonwreck, who cultivates barnacles on his bald head) informed me that they only sing when there's going to be a storm. The impromptu mating season begins when they first sense the storm and ends, rather abruptly, when it arrives. That way, if the females get blown to other islands, they have all the eggs they need to start new colonies of hurricane crickets.

No one in Snaffle seemed especially concerned about the storm. They've reassembled the village so many times by now that it's practically routine. That's one advantage of living in buildings that float; if your house gets uprooted and blown out to sea, you just tie a bedsheet to the mast and sail it back.

Not being quite so accustomed to hurricanes, I thought it would be best if I made my way inland. I'm glad I did. The storm was frightening enough even three days away from the coast. When it caught up with me, I was able to take shelter in a hollow barrel oak, along with what seemed to be half the animals in the Great Shwamp. The trunk was full of them. Squirrels and tree lemmings crouched in holes with owls and snakes. Marsh wolves crowded into the wide base of the tree next to otters, beavers, several dozen assorted rodents, and one cantankerous alligator, who was given all the space he wanted. The dark hollow of the trunk above us was full of the quiet rustling of winged creatures. Feathers drifted down occasionally. Somewhere up there was a black panther; it never came low enough to see, black on black in the dim light, but I caught the glint of its eyes a few times.

It was an odd few days. The storm raged outside and made the wood around us creak. Inside, everyone was silent; even the goolhowlers and yatter monkeys kept quiet, as if they knew the roaring of the storm was out of their league. The carnivores refrained from eating any of the other animals. Either the storm had inspired some sort of truce, or they were smart enough to realize they were outnumbered. I shared some of my dried squid with them. They were very polite about it. When the wind died down two days later, all of them crept out of the tree and vanished quietly into the Shwamp. I'll probably see any of them again. I'm sure they'd prefer I didn't.

I found the boardwalk a day later, and I've been wandering through the Great Shwamp ever since. I'm in no hurry to leave. There hasn't been a dull moment so far. Nothing has been quite as exciting as those first few days, though - and I couldn't possibly be more grateful for that.



* The odd pronunciation of the Great Shwamp is due to the person who first named it. The Great Wood was named by the legendary explorer and dimensimancer, Lady Erica Pelican, the first to realize it was all the same place; The Great Shwamp was named by Shamyorl Heffelish,** the same sabertoothed explorer responsible for the Shilver Forsht and Lake Shoshenloosher.

** His name was originally Samuel, but he changed the spelling to match the pronunciation.

Still in the Dark

I did get to meet Mr. Pelirika tonight, as it turned out. Mrs. Pelirika was cooking some sort of improvisational stew over the incubator's oven, adding little bits and pieces that her children found in the dark. Their night vision is obviously much better than mine. They would wander off and return with plants, fish, snails, assorted crustaceans, and numerous other things I couldn't identify. I think one of them may have brought back a snake at one point. It seemed to be a rule that they gave everything to their mother first, so she could check that it wasn't poisonous. She thanked them warmly for everything. A few times, after the children left again, I saw her discreetly drop a few of the unidentified things back into the water.

I donated some salted cucumber squid that I got at the coast. It would have been rude to share dinner without contributing something. The stew seemed to be almost finished, the children beginning to be more interested in eating food than finding it, when there was a disturbance in the water nearby. It was just a splash at first, but it quickly grew into a great rushing sound, as if something huge was emerging from the water. It was practically underneath us. Before anyone could move, a huge dark shape rose out of the Shwamp, blocking out what few stars were visible through the trees, and sloshed up onto the wagon. The whole thing rocked crazily. The children screamed. I was about ready to do the same until Mrs. Pelirika said, quite calmly, "Don't be so theatrical, dear, we have company. Did you bring anything for dinner?"

"Oh," said the dark shape. "Sorry - didn't know we had guests. No one's jumped overboard this time, I hope?"

The screams turned out to be excited ones. By that point, all five children were climbing on the enormous silhouette. I still couldn't make out any details. I introduced myself, and an extension of the shadow came out of the dark to engulf my hand in a massive and rather damp handshake. This, it seemed, was the nocturnal Mr. Pelirika.

It turned out that he had brought something for dinner: a sabertoothed marsh pike, three or four feet long. The fish appeared for the children to admire, then promptly vanished back into the dark. I could hear him chopping it up to add to the stew. I couldn't see whether he used a knife or not.

"It took me half the day to catch this fish," he said as he worked. "I hunted it into the ruins of a sunken village three miles from here. It was clear it had been there before. Every big fish needs a lair, a deep hole to lurk in, and this was one of the biggest. I must have chased it through hundreds of flooded rooms. It knew the place better than I did. It was fast, darting into hidden openings and doubling back on its trail over and over again. I nearly lost it several times. But it could never quite outrun me. Slowly but unstoppably, I kept up with it, gaining a bit more with every failed evasion. Finally, I was close enough that I could almost grab its tail - if I'd been foolish enough to do that to a pike - and it slammed into a rotten timber, breaking it in half. The whole tunnel collapsed in seconds. It was lucky I was so close behind the fish, or I would have been buried alive!"

The children gasped. Mrs. Pelirika seemed unconcerned.

"As it was, I lost my net in the chaos. I was trapped in the last room, the only entrance buried under a ton of rubble, facing the most vicious fish in the Shwamp with only my bare hands-"

"If that was the only entrance, how did you get out?" Mrs. Pelirika asked.

There was a brief pause.

"I'll get to that in a moment," said Mr. Pelirika with great dignity. "Don't rush the story. Now, when the pike attacked, I was quick enough to jam its mouth open with a piece of wood..."

I don't remember all of the rest of the story, but it got steadily more dramatic from there, adding underwater tombs and cave krakens and curses from ancient drowned empires. It was quite clear where the children had gotten their love of talking. This was the way things went on all night. Every conversation inevitably grew into a wilder and wilder tale, with Mr. Pelirika going on at length about his adventures (or those of other people - he was actually only the hero of two or three stories), or the habits of exotic (in some cases mythological) creatures, or creative retellings of history. The children were enthralled and interrupted frequently with questions. Mrs. Pelirika was silent most of the time; it almost seemed as if she wasn't listening at all. Every so often, though, she would speak up to point out some inconsistency in the current story. This would stop her husband for a moment. He always managed to come up with some explanation, though, usually something even more outlandish than before.

Eventually, Mrs. Pelirika took advantage of a rare gap between stories and announced that it was time for bed. The children protested and were silenced with a look. I got the impression that Mr. Pelirika might have done the same, but knew by now that it wouldn't work. He filled all the available space in the wagon when he lay down. I still couldn't make out anything of him but a vague silhouette. The rest of the family went to sleep on top of him, as if he was a mattress, a vast expanse of solid black with bright lumps of feathers curled on top. I set up a hammock in a nearby tree. By the time I woke, the sun was up, and Mr. Pelirika was gone again.

We spent the entire evening listening to his stories, and I still haven't the faintest idea what he looked like.

Bringing the House Down

Wherever I go, I try to see at least one local performance. I don't particularly care what it is. I love music and the theater, and I never cease to be amazed at how different it is in every town. The musical I saw in Tetravania was Conrad Owle's "Obfuscation." It's about the Doff of Gelfizzy, the ruler of a small country, who is searching for something and fleeing from someone else. What and who depends on which performance you see. The Doff is played by a different actor or actress in every scene; he or she is identified by his or her hat.

Like most Tetravanian theater, the script is debatable. The basic plot and a given actor's favorite lines can generally be relied on, but there are no set entrances or exits. People go on or off stage, start or stop singing, whenever they feel like it. The rest are expected to improvise accordingly.* As a result, the story and music are different at every performance.

The costumes are done in a similar way. The cast members add or subtract bits and pieces whenever they want. On one night, one of the Troglodyte Duchesses in act two came onstage wearing a massive horsetail wig, in a shocking shade of blue, that hung down to her knees. Something about it delighted the live cicadas that were onstage for musical accompaniment in that scene. Fifteen of them ended up on her head by the end of the number.

The only absolute rule, as far as I can tell, is that no one is allowed to steal someone else's lines; if you want to do something outside the script, you have to make it up yourself. Other than that, many productions end up being theatrical free-for-alls. Most playwrights in Tetravania don't even bother to specify a main character. The stars are the ones who can upstage everyone else.

I never got to see the end of the play. "Obfuscation" does have an official main character, but that doesn't keep all the others from trying to steal every scene. Halfway through the last act, the Dowager Waitress came out in a four-foot pompadour wig that she had set on fire. The somewhat panicked improvisations that followed from the rest of the cast were some of the best parts of the entire musical. Unfortunately, the Dowager Waitress's wig then set the curtain on fire, at which the theater was quickly evacuated while the stagehands rushed to douse the flames with snuffer squids.

The musical closed a few days later. It seems to be generally accepted in Tetravania that when the actors start setting the stage on fire, the play has run long enough.



*The success of this method varies depending on the skill and quick thinking of the actors. The less skilled actors in Tetravania, unable to think quite as well on their feet as the rest, generally cultivate an expression of dumbfounded astonishment to give themselves time to think while the audience laughs. Lower-quality Tetravanian theater companies can sometimes double the length of a play with the sheer number of astonished pauses. Naturally, someone has taken advantage of this situation; "The Somnambulist," a play by the multitalented Rhem S. Trupelo, consists entirely of astonished pauses as various cast members enter the stage in increasingly ridiculous outfits. The play has no dialogue whatsoever.

Troll Game

The boardwalk has been deteriorating the farther I go. Nearly all of my traveling today involved wading. The boards are there, under the water, but you have to tread carefully or risk putting your foot through a rotten one. Still, despite its erratic condition, the boardwalk is the only way to travel through much of the Great Shwamp without swimming. It's inevitable that such an important route would eventually attract trolls.

For the most part, I object to trolls. I wouldn't mind paying their tolls if they actually provided something in exchange. Some of them do; there are many roads in the Railway Regions that would be completely impassable by now if not for their curmudgeonly but dedicated troll keepers. Few people in the Regions are particularly interested in roads. It's easier to take the Train. Most trolls, however, do nothing but get in the way.

The troll booth was built on the only unsubmerged piece of boardwalk I'd seen all day. Someone had done some work to keep that section, if nothing else, above water. There were so many posts and tree trunks wedged under and around it that it looked like a funnel shrike's nest. Many of them were held together with string. The house itself was more or less mushroom-shaped; the bottom floor was only as wide as the boardwalk, while the second looked just wide enough to lie down in. It was quite obviously a troll house. They're built to get in the way as much as possible.

As if that wasn't enough, the troll herself was sitting outside, fishing. She was one of the Northern trolls - built like a foothill, with a nose the size of a loaf of bread. She was wearing a coat made of strips of odd, shiny leather. They were quite obviously hagfish skins. Most people at least take the heads off first.

Normally, I would simply have swam around the booth.* I have no objection to getting wet. My books and supplies are not quite so waterproof, though. The only way to get them past intact was through the troll's front door.

She stood up when she saw me, her coat creaking in protest, and leaned her fishing pole against the house. The hook was baited with a slice of cucumber. She grinned at me as if she'd just caught a particularly large fish. Her teeth were a mix of brown, gold, black, blue, and missing. One of her tusks had knot patterns carved into the tip. I could see mice climbing through her hair.

"Gots any moneys?"

"Yes," I said quickly. Trolls often see a lack of money as an excuse to take whatever they want.

"Tha'sh good." Her voice creaked more than her coat, and the tusks made her speech even harder to understand. It sounded something like a rusty doorknob being ground up in a landslide. I began digging for change in my pockets, but she held up a long-nailed hand to stop me.

"NO! Firsht we plays ze Game."

"Game?"

She grinned again, even wider, and pulled a pack of battered cards out of her coat.

"Ze Game o' Pickerel Shproot."

From her explanation, I gathered that, unlike most trolls, she preferred to gamble with her victims before taking their money. If she won, she would take twice as much as usual. (What "usual" was, I have no idea.) She didn't say what would happen if I won. It seemed overly optimistic to hope that I would get by for free; a more likely possibility was that I would be eaten in revenge. Maybe no one had ever won before. I suggested that I could just pay her right then and be on my way, but she was quite firm about that.

"No wan getz by wizhout playsh ze Game. Boring here, eh? Gotza have shomething te do."

I couldn't very well argue with that.

From somewhere in her closet-sized downstairs, she pulled a card table with three legs and set it up on the boardwalk. From her coat, she pulled an enormous porcelain pipe; she wedged a lump of coal in the bowl and lit it. The smoke was black. She breathed in deeply and sat down, dealing the cards with the machinelike speed of a professional.

"Now liszen good," she said, "'coz I'z only gonna tell ye ze roolz wance. Ye gotz ninedy-sevhen cardsh in Pickerel Shproot. Twenny iz Flatz, shirty-six iz Numverz, elevhen iz Shproots, nine is Doublez, ten is Upz, ten is Downz, an' wan iz ze Shpit. Ye gotza make pairsh and Threezies. Firsht ta get three pairsh, or two Threezies, an' ye win..."

The rules were long and complicated, and I won't go into them all. I don't even remember half of them now, though I'll probably try to write down as much as I can recall later. I want to know more about this game. Does it even exist anywhere else?

I was surprised at the cards when I finally got to pick them up. The fronts of the cards were unmistakeably the madly detailed engravings of Reddish Crill. I'd never heard of him illustrating a deck of cards, but it's not particularly surprising. He did practically everything before his dramatic high-altitude demise. In my hand, I had the Nine of Corkscrews, the Three of Speckles, the Two and a Half of Rocks, the Reverse Sponge, Toothache, and a card with nothing on it but pink flowers. I tried to keep the backs of my cards hidden as much as possible. I wouldn't have been at all surprised if the troll was able to identify them by the coal stains.

Amazingly, I won the first game, more by beginner's luck than anything else. It's lucky that I pick up game rules fairly quickly; these ones were more confusing than most. The troll was not happy. The coal in her pipe glowed brighter, and smoke started coming out of her nose. She didn't say a word; she just shuffled the cards and laid them out again. I had won, so I got up to go.

"Besht two outta shree," she growled.

It didn't seem wise to argue.

She won the second game, after which she started to look happier. I had enough of a grasp of the rules to play the game, but not enough to be good at it.**

In the third game, I did my best to play badly, preferring to pay twice whatever the usual fee was rather than find out how gracious the troll was about losing. It didn't seem to matter. She was clearly not pleased with her cards. The coal in her pipe glowed hotter and hotter as the game went on, cards clenched in her rootlike fists. It only took a few rounds before it started shooting sparks; after that, it was only seconds before one of the sparks landed on her house. It started smoking immediately.

"FIRE!" roared the troll, erupting to her feet, upsetting the card table, and dropping her pipe in the Shwamp.*** She tore off her coat and began beating the flames with it.

Unfortunately, this was too much for the structure. Many of the strings had already been weakened by fire. At this new assault, they snapped. Knots broke, boards sagged, and as we watched, the entire house slowly tipped over into the Shwamp.

That put out the fire, at least.

Roaring with rage, the troll leapt into the water and sloshed over to her house. It was already starting to sink. It stopped when she dug her hands under it and heaved, lifting the entire structure several inches. I could hear dishes breaking inside.

I decided that that was a good time to leave. She seemed to have the situation in hand. As quietly as I could, I gathered up my luggage and crept over what was left of the boardwalk. I could hear her shouting unintelligible curses at her house long after I was out of sight.

I still wonder who would have won that last game.



*After checking for chekaraul and alligators, of course.

**Besides, the rules of drama require that every contest be decided only in the last round.

***It had obviously spent time in the Shwamp before. There were barnacles on it. From the look of them, some of the cards had been there as well.