Tales From Tiamatu

I stole a catboat: my final act of piracy.

The boat was seventeen feet long. Nobody looked twice when I sailed out of the cove, because it was Tuesday. It’s half-off pints night in Blinkan on Tuesday. Even if it wasn’t, most people have better things to do than watch over a dinky catboat.

My leather hat was the only cover from the rain. The tanner who made it could have used a bigger cow.

The force of a conjured wind pulled me by the sails. It tugged me far away, to the lagoon of a desert isle.

The last of us had gathered there. We made a pitiful fleet. The shore was dotted with 32 sorry-looking little boats: all stolen.

The clouds rolled past us. The rain had gone west.

I had hidden our plunder on this island: over the beach, past the tree with the broken branch, and left after the creek.

It all was there—as I remembered—in the chests in the cave with the bat that tries to bite me.

Yes, I showed them all that island’s secrets. They couldn’t wait to get their grubby, chubby fingers on every last one.

They took its riches, as was the dole I owed: insurance payments for lost limbs, outstanding overtime pay, last moon day’s bonus, that sort of thing. Say what you want about pirates, we got one hell of a union.

We used to have an accountant on our galleon. Our books became bunk when he caught a bad case of gangrene. It took most of the afternoon to figure what was fair.

The symbols of my own wealth had been kept on my catboat—which hung low from the weight of new silver. That I’d gotten when I sold the galleass in Blinkan. It belongs to a traveling circus now. They paid extra, because the deck could fit a small elephant.

I used to think I was well liked as a captain. Then everyone got paid.

We parted ways on the beach, each of the men blowing sails in all directions—with money that’d be gone before tomorrow.

Last was my first mate, Murmr, and I.

Murmr was a Partaur—having the body of a parrot and the head of a person. He sat beside me on a log of driftwood.

In our last conversation, we recalled our first.

“Come along with us,” Murmr recalled me saying. “Let’s lie in wait and waylay some harmless souls. Let the sea swallow them alive, like the grave —whole, like a spit pit. We’ll get all sorts of valuable things and fill our homes with plunder. Throw in your lot with us and we’ll share a common purse.”

I churned the heel of my boot, digging a hole in the sand.

“You’re a crook, Vin,” my first mate said, “but no liar.”

I called him half a crook and half a bird.

He made an off winged comment about how I get when I’m hungry. He said I could keep the fishing rod I gave him for moon day. He didn’t have the hands to use it.

Murmr flew off to wherever he went, with a bag of coins swaying in his talons. Half would belong to the bird, half would go to alimony.

I looked down at the rod—stained Ashwood. It had cost me three Uromalonian dollars.

I casted the line in the cove. Two fish bit. I cooked them on a makeshift fire and looked out at the Tiamatan sea.

The only salt I had was in the waves upon the shore. I had the choice between tasteless or soggy fish. I went with the latter. The water sizzled on the embers.

Looking back, I think I undercooked the buggers.

Finished, I kicked dust upon my fire. The bones went in the bush. I waded out to my anchored boat.

I whispered to my Mantis: the bug that sat upon the bow of the boat. Its praying hands pointed south. A gust of wind rushed to its command. The Mantis did its slow dance as it spoke orders to the air behind our sail.

With haste, I pulled into the harbor at Parasu in the afternoon.

I laid a bed of blankets across the planks scattered with silver, my pack, and a salt-stained repeater rifle.

This was a harbor that made a back alley in Saplu look holy.

If there were three honest men in Parasu, it was the two fishermen knee-deep in the surf, and the dockhand waiting to catch my rope. I flipped him his due and asked him about his folks.

He looked at the catboat, back at me, and told me his father was taking up chess. His mother was visiting family in the Coreworld. His eye went back to the catboat.

I stepped onto the dock and turned my back to the shore.

“If any chuckleheads look twice at my boat,” I said to the dockhand, “give a couple shots to the sky. I’ll come running.”

The dockhand looked back at the lumpy blanket on my boat. He scratched his nose.

“Fill your pockets,” I said. “Not a handful more.”

A sign, five feet wide, rose from the mud - past the dock and the fish stands. MAVIS’ MANTISES: THE WAY TO ALL WAYS, flaking letters read. A painted bug pointed down the puddle-clad road running up to town. I walked past.

I tried to keep low beneath my brim when I passed The Lobster Pit, a local tavern. Still, a voice cried “Vin,” and called me a frog.

I turned to see Captain Brow—of siege of Korkton fame—poking his red face out the window. I sighed and went in to meet him.

The Captain was the type who walked in tow of his belt buckle. He stood as I entered, and called for the barkeep to fetch my usual.

Brow sat back down, next to the usual suspects: Toat and Dripes. Toat had flakes of grouper in his beard. Dripes was the smartest of the bunch—and worse of for it.

Over the bar hung a magic mirror. A baseball game was showing: a 6-2 blowout in the ninth.

A glass of rye whisky was laid before an empty seat.

I said I didn’t have the time.

Brow called me a wet blanket and smacked the table.

“Just one,” I sat down. “To my retirement.”

Toat let out a deep laugh.

The table went quiet.

Brow leaned back.

“Are you past your prime?” He mused. “But retirement, Vin, what’s the matter with you? Your ship’s not as fit as mine—It’s quick enough. Your crew tolerates you. I’d say some like you. The east sea, Vin, the east sea! Those merchants haven’t a clue: ten-dollar hats on five-cent heads, that’s what you told me! Six more fortunes in a month’s time! Four of us to share it—you agreed to that. Quitting, Vin? You’re making me green—Vin—green!”

“You hear about the Ironclads?” I asked.

Brow laughed. “A bluff. Some science fair project.”

“I’ve seen one,” I grabbed a cigarette from Dripes. “They speak. You sail in one’s range, Brow, it speaks.

Brow leaned in. “A cat doesn’t need teeth to growl.”

I looked out the window and out to the sea. “It speaks—hell answers.”

“I suppose Vin is right,” spoke Dripes, handing me his matchbox. “I’ve heard the rumors, of Uromalonian ships that breathe smoke and ash. The tide is no more their master. Their sides are clad as mighty cliffs.”

“Yes!” I pointed to Toat. “Listen to Dripes, he has sense.”

“Sense for naught, friend.” Dripes replied. “I make no tracks to change my course. What I know has made me foolish.” He was quoting from the poet Tapiski—the egghead. “Our beds are laid.”

“So’s yours.” Brow pointed—his elbow on the table. “You think you can slink off like mud in the bathtub. Hide your tail like the dog you are, Vin. If you’re right about these ironclads, you’re as dead as I.”

I lit my cigarette.

“Dead as I, too!” Said Toat.

“Where will you go?” Asked Dripes, taking back his matches.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t know.” Brow raised his hands. “Hey Toat, he doesn’t know! Tell me you still have your Galleass, Vin. Your crew, they waiting in the harbor, ain’t they?

“I have a catboat.”

Brow smacked his forehead. “You’re a lost cause, Vin! The spine of a berry branch, half the sense. Vin Vogin, Captain of the S.S. Yellow Belly. Cutting the wake on a catboat, with smoke breathing ships on his heels! What kind of dime-store novelist cooked this one up? You don’t even know where you’re headed!”

“I’m here to see Mavis.” I said.

“Mavis?” Brow threw his hands again. He turned to Toat. “Hey Mavis, I need a Mantis that can point me to a faraway beach with bottomless drinks. Off any Uromalonian maps is preferred. A decent par-three course nearby as well, if it’s not much trouble.”

Toat wrapped his beard around his head and brushed it with his fingers.

“Vin, dearest. I sell bugs, not miracles.” Toat said, pretending he was Mavis and Brow was I.

The two laughed. I blew smoke.

“You best be going,” said Dripes. “Mavis closes soon.”

I shifted my jaw. With a nod, I motioned to stand.

“Not so quick.” Brow reached for his cup. “Let’s raise a glass.”

“What to?” Dripes asked.

“The age,” he laughed, “of the Ironclad!”

The bell shook when I opened the door. A thousand eyes turned my way. Mavis, sat behind the counter, had her face buried in a paper.

Potted plants crowded the room. Ivy ate the walls. Mantises, in the hundreds, had free reign of the store. The big-eyed bugs feasted on the crickets let loose within this indoor jungle.

A Mantis leaped off a shelf, and onto the brim of my black leather hat. It did a lap: crawled down my neck, over my duster jacket, down to the silver on my belt buckle, and across to the grips of my pistol. It lunged from my holster to the counter and once more to the top of Mavis’ paper.

“Vin, dearest.” She said, still reading.

I told her about the ironclads and my retirement. I told her the new hard times had come and asked if there was a bug that could point me far away.

She folded her paper, and laid it on the counter.

“You know Lonsway?” Mavis asked.

“The trader? What about him?”

Mavis got up. She went behind a curtain, into the back room. She returned, with a yellow mantis on her finger. Its back was turned to me. It hopped backward off her finger and kept its back turned to me.

I asked why it was yellow, why it looked backward, and what it had to do with Lonsway.

The mantis had a disease called Plotedrivis. Side effects include a yellow color, and an inability to deviate from pointing and moving wind in a single direction. When a mantis catches Plotedrivis, most people set them loose and find another. Lonsway was stupid enough to follow its direction and see what happened.

After a great voyage, Lonsway found himself on a swampy island named Zilla. There are people there: folks who made a town because 1000 years ago their ancestors also listened to yellow mantises.

Lonsway would go back every year, to sell Uromalonian baubles and other shiny objects in exchange for Zilla’s natural resources. Made a killing.

Zilla is not on a single map, being generations past any connections to the Coreworld.

“Behold,” Mavis said, lifting her paper to read, “the best-kept secret in all Tiamatu. Your usual rate with me, Vin, dearest. Leave it on the counter—tenfold.”

I protested such a price.

Mavis licked her thumb and turned her page. “You’re buying the mantis—and paying for my discretion.”

I paid her in full.

The yellow bug walked backward, climbing up to my shoulder.

I turned to go.

“The more we try to kick dust from our boot,” Mavis told me, “the deeper it gets in the sole.”

The sun came and went eight times. The ninth moon hung over me, the eve I first saw the island of Zilla. The catboat was sick of me and the silver I made it carry. Its stern took on water. I drew closer to shore.

Zilla’s lighthouse was useless as a candle when you haven’t a match. The only thing it cast on the sky was a weak silhouette.

This was a one boat town. Half that boat—my boat—was sinking.

I looked at my spoils: the piles of silver. It was enough to crash this island’s economy, I supposed.

The yellow mantis was conjuring wind, pulling me into the dock. I told it to ease, took out a paddle and went west along the shore to a short beach nestled in the trees.

There, with a paddle for a shovel, I buried all but a pocket’s worth of my riches.

Kicking the sand with my heel, I smoothed the mound. My footprints were raked away with a branch—which I plucked from an Ash tree.

The shore end of Zilla’s dock led to a dozen stone stairs. Moss—villainous and green—clung to them like stink on a monkey. It brought trouble to my boot and I slid with each step. I found no traction and almost lost a tooth to the effort of those twelve steps.

I swallowed by pride and sat on the first, scooting upwards on my rear. My pack and the salt-stained repeater rifle rested on my lap. The yellow mantis, pointed to the top of the stairs, stood on the brim of my hat.

A couple of log storefronts, a forge, and a jailhouse caught the moon in cracked and dirty windows. Mold had made its way into the frames. Nothing but the lizards stirred in the thick air of the night. Footprints lingered in the muddy street. The legs who had spread them had all gone to sleep.

An old sign read in big text: WELCOME TO BUR SONG. In smaller text below: ZILLA’S BIG CITY.

To my right was a stone cube covered in moss. It was covered in yellow mantises. This was when the guide on my hat bid me farewell. He went to join his sickly kin. I’m sure he’s there to this day on that mossy block, pointing down. There the yellow mantises feast, dance, make love, and die.

Without my pointing guide, I was drawn to the light on the hill over town.

I followed it to where the street became a path. The houses grew thin and decrepit, and my legs cried foul—having been packed in the catboat so long.

I passed fields of strange fruit. The trail curved around fences, past which livestock—beasts unknown to me—lay with ebbing chests. The many forks in the path brought no confusion: there was one light in all of Zilla, and I made tracks towards it.

The sound of a mediocre violin came out of the light. A voice—equally average—rode it down the hill and to my ear. A woman, singing:

My son’s a drunk, and so be I.

All my wife’s to do is cry.

I am Loafmeat, of Birm!

Drinkin’ till my belly’s firm.

Though I be an agin’ man

I get lucky—when I can.

Beware, you, beware the riddler!

He’ll say words that made no sid-ler.

Many a guise in a poet’s prose,

Beware, you, when words are clothes.

I am beetle, Dung the beetle!

Foolin’ those dumb as the needle.

The light split, with each line and all my steps, till it became the dotted windows of an inn-house. It had a good view of the sea—if you held out a thumb to hide the outhouse that leaned over the edge of the bluff. Around the inn was a small barn that looked down the hill towards a mucky and shadowed forest.

Something stirred within the barn. I dared not wonder what.

Over the inn’s porch was a painted sign: THE SWAMPY LILLY.

I hit the swinging doors.

I wanted nothing more than a bed. My host—the innkeeper Byne Lilly—insisted on a glass of jenever.

There were four guests in the parlor. I had caught them amidst some celebration.

They all said goodbye and left the inn shortly after I entered. The innkeeper, her husband, and I remained.

The fire in the hearth was competing to one-up the humid evening air. Its light licked the walls of the parlor. My eyes, nulled by the moon, burned from its heat. Before I could adjust, there was a cup in my hand and I was sat in a green leather armchair: the pride of the entire room.

Across from me was the innkeeper’s husband: a short-little wiry man who his wife introduced as Rye Lilly. If a bird had flown from his shaggy hair and out the window, I’d have thought nothing of it.

He looked at me with squinty eyes, and wore a cheeky grin.

“A guest?” He said. “In Zilla? You must be hiding in the willows, Mr.”

“Rye Lilly!” Butted Byne. “You best to be wrong, to make the suggestion.”

“I’m wrong about a whole lot,” he looked to his fire, “but if a man sails into Zilla at this hour, he’s a convict. Or worse—a salesman.” He turned to his wife, “remember that clown with the cure for typhoid?”

“You know Lonsway?” I asked.

“You know Lonsway?” Rye answered back. “You’re not here to collect that—what did he call it—that subscription fee, are you?”

I told him I was only an acquaintance and didn’t care for Lonsway either. Rye replied that I was welcome to stay—even if I was hiding in the willows.

“If we wouldn’t board criminals,” Byne told me, “We’d be out of business.”

We cycled through the stupid questions that tourists and locals are obligated to exchange.

The fire was mighty healthy, yet Rye kept adding logs to it. He was the kind to snuff a good flame with too much fuel.

You’d think it was a fine fire, and he’d toss in three more chunks of wood.

Then—as it was gasping for breath—he’d put his face to the embers, whistle like a tone-deaf bird, and we were back in the business of making the room too hot.

I was told, offhandedly, that my arrival had fulfilled a promise made to Byne by the Sun. To my confusion, she told me this story:

It started on their eighth anniversary—of marriage and ownership of the inn—when they were feeling quite down on themselves, over their failure to drum up business within that time.

Tourists never came to Zilla, and nobody had use for an inn.

That night, they drank until Rye fell asleep in the chair in the parlor. Byne opened the window for a smoke.

Right outside was a firefly, ass-a-glow in the muggy air. Three sheets to the wind, Byne hurried out to try and catch the thing, hoping it could be tamed as a pet.

Byne chased the firefly through town and down to the harbor. It kited her over the end of the dock. Her foot made a splash, water went up her nose, and she paddled to the shore. There she fell asleep and woke up to the Sun coming into the sky.

Byne said hello to the Sun, and wished it a good morning.

The Sun was humbled by the gesture and took a few moments to speak with her. Byne asked it if she could have a wish.

The Sun said that it was busy, but it would see what it could do.

Byne told the Sun about the inn on the hill and asked if it could do anything about the lack of business.

The Sun wrote the matter down on its hand and went on to other things.

That night, Byne tells me, was not a night at all. The sun never faded in the sky, and the moon never showed up. The town was thrown into disarray over what to do about keeping date and time, as there are no clocks in Zilla save the sky.

One person, as soon as noticing something was celestially off, started counting the seconds in her head. Between numbers, she assured people that proper time would be kept, and she’d let them know when they could ex out squares on their calendars.

A counter-movement rose up, electing that it was better to simply consider this episode one long day. Zillans, not being ones to create conflict, still maintain two distinct calendars to this day (or the other, depending on who you ask). Byne and Rye—off principle—belong to the latter camp.

With the sun shining for such a long period, it grew hot.

That was when the Miller showed up on the Lilly’s front porch. He was shirtless and said that his wife told him to sleep on the couch because he was sweating too much for her to handle.

The miller found that the couch gave him a bad back. He needed to let a room at the inn until this all blew over.

Rye stuffed old dishrags under a fitted sheet, and the sweaty miller was fast asleep in one of the upstairs rooms.

Then the door opened again. In walked the huntress Yvette, with soot and singed eyebrows on her face. Apparently, her cabin had burnt down.

Somebody had stopped to clean their glasses and happened to hold the frames between the Sun and the dried-out leaves in her front yard.

Yvette, was embarrassed. She took pride in having a well-maintained front lawn.

She had managed to salvage a leg of venison before her cabin turned to ember. It was medium rare already and made for a good supper. Rye cooked his a little extra.

Last came a writer for the local paper. Thinking the world was ending, he had sold his house for faster-appreciated assets. After a rousing stupor, he decided it would be best to wait out the rest of the apocalypse in the inn.

The inn had no vacancy for sixty-five days, as that woman who counted will tell you. The roof in the parlor had a leak from the miller’s room. All the chairs smelt like venison. The writer ran out of pages to write his memoir, so he had begun defacing Rye’s childhood collection of dime-store novels to finish the chapter’s on his mother’s remarriage.

Byne interrupted her story to point out the damage taken by the parlor. She even got me to sniff the miller’s sweat stains on my seat, and informed me, as their current guest, some of the rules they had adopted to avoid “such unpleasant events which—if repeated—will be reflected—as fair—on a visitor’s final bill during the checkout process.”

Rye threw ten logs in the fire. They almost snuffed out the flame, if not for heroic fanning.

Stepping off the soapbox, Byne got back to telling me about the events that led to my arrival.

Eventually, Byne had told Rye about the conversation she had with the Sun, right before the situation had started. Rye got all worked up about it, saying she would have to speak to the Sun.

“Thank it for the help, no doubt,” Rye had said, “but there’s such thing as too much help. My neck’s starting to peel.”

Byne sat on the porch and clasped her hands to pray. After awhile, Rye went out to meet her.

“Did the sun answer?” He asked.

“They have me on hold.”

Music emulated from Byne’s hands until a voice finally came to her.

It wasn’t the sun itself, but rather a representative from the sky.

This being informed them that they had no idea what was going on and that the prayer would be transferred to their overseer.

This happened a few more times, over many days (as half of Zilla will tell you), until Byne got through to the Sun.

The Sun let them know that what was happening had nothing to do with the wish Byne had given. The Sun explained it was just being kind that morning and forgotten her wish almost instantly.

The Sun had no idea why it had been left in the sky so long.

The prayer was then passed on to the Sun’s boss, as mortal relations were not in the Sun’s job description.

The god of time thanked them for letting them know about the issue.

As it turned out, the Moon was simply using its vacation days and the god of time had difficulty finding a rock that could cover it.

A well-rested Moon returned to the sky shortly after, and the sky was normal again. The woman who counted the seconds lost her popularity overnight.

The miller took a bath and his wife came by to see him. She was captured by the arid quality of his underarms, and welcomed him back to their wedding bed.

The huntress and the writer had gotten fond of each other—an affair Byne doesn’t wish to elaborate on—so they decided to rebuild a cabin in the outskirts together.

There was a small party, and that’s when I had walked in the door.

Byne concluded, saying “the Sun must have sent you, for all of our trouble.”

I had thought that it had taken me eight days to sail to the island, as I saw the moon eight times while at sea.

Damn, I was far from home.

Out of logs, Rye ran outside to chop down a tree. He stuffed it in the fireplace: branches, leaves, bird nests, and all.

zI found new habits in Zilla.

Howls from the barn would wake me, and I’d go to the parlor for coffee. I’d humor Byne’s stories, quaint and outrageous, before working up the energy to help Rye chop logs for an hour—to fuel the fire that he dared not see hungry. Then, the three of us would walk into town, where I’d be left in the street while the pair shopped for lunch meat.

I caught looks from the old and questions from the young. Every day I’d have a story drug from me: tall tales of the sea and my travels.

The local kids hung on every word—especially the bad ones. I drew the ire of their parents. Thus, I attempted to impart lessons everyone could benefit from:

I had fed the navigator to the sharks because he’d been a bully to the man rigging the sails.

The Captain of the Powder Swan did not listen to instructions and good advice—that was why his leg was cut off.

The privilege of an evening with the beautiful Lady Nina was earned after I finished all my vegetables at dinner.

Byne and Rye would leave the storehouse with cuts of lunch meat. Shaking the urchins from my legs, we’d stroll back to the inn for a lazy afternoon of food, drink, and song.

In the evening, I’d wash my face in the vanity in my room, and wonder how I ever became so old.

I was happy. Life was boring.

I asked my hosts—the innkeepers Byne and Rye Lilly—about the local game.

Hunting?” Rye asked.

I answered yes.

Rye took me to the porch and pointed to the forest. He told me was hungry.

Byne watched me clean sea salt out the barrel of my repeater rifle. I asked her what sort of critters I could expect, and what was acceptable to kill.

“So’long it cannot speak to you,” She said, “It’s game.”

Rye suggested that Twofor should go with me. Byne explained that Twofor was the inn’s director of excursions and activities.

They led me outside and to the barn that overlooked the forest.

Rye pushed open the two big wooden doors and the morning light caught two big eyes.

Twofor was a lizard, tall as my chest and longer than two horses and a pony running single file. He was eating a spider, big enough to fill a wheelbarrow.

Byne went to pat the lizard on the head, and Twofor slurped back a spider leg like spaghetti. Rye took a saddle from its stand, placing it on the beast’s back.

“Careful,” Rye told me, “he’s fast.”

Byne told me to pose beside the lizard. I did, with a raised eyebrow.

She took out a sketchbook and began drawing, so I could keep the memory of my adventure for years to come. I protested that I didn’t need the souvenir.

Byne shook her pen hand. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it will be charged to your room.”

I packed Twofor, the lizard, with three pouches of Ale, some dried meat, and my repeater.

Byne and Rye seemed happy to have the inn to themselves. They didn’t even wait on the porch for me to say goodbye.

I didn’t have to give Twofor a kick. His legs scrambled—like crumbs on the beard of a loudmouth— and those wiry limbs carried us into the wild.

In Zilla, even the trees have the disposition of a wet rag. The semblance of the trail that we followed strung through puddles and ponds alike. Twofor either had hidden gills, or a death wish. His fat, flat head was fully submerged at times, as we waded through the swamp.

I had to hold my poor repeater above my hat, as his wagging tail kicked muck on my armpits.

We got to a patch of ground, dry by comparison, and the lizard smacked a leech off the back of my neck with his tail. For the rest of the morning—till I gave up on the vanity of the effort—I was picking the buggers from out my breeches.

I had first known the Zilla as a speck, when I saw it from the sea. Riding through the swampland of the forest, I learned the island thought the same of me.

The sun pulsed through the mossy trees. I rode through humid air and lukewarm puddles, on a cold-blooded beast that mistook my discomfort for thrill.

As curt as that lizard seemed, Twofor found the concept of brunch sacred. I dismounted in a clearing and sat down on a rock to eat. Twofor climbed a tree. He came down with a wriggling spider leg in his mouth.

I looked up and noticed that the tops of the trees seemed to crawl.

I wanted back at the inn.

Twofor took five: a powernap on the grass. Morning ale rubbing my head, I was looking the same. I think Twofor awoke the moment I nodded off. We were soon back on the trail—if you could call it that.

We crossed a great and mighty river. Twofor wrinkled his spine. I was bucked from his back.

I said “oof.”

He said “gaaak.”

I was cross with the damn Lizard. I tried to mount. Twofor said gaaak, and shook his head. He kept doing this until I got it in my head that I was to walk from here.

The hunt had begun.

Twofor, in his own way, instructed me to make him a bed of the leaves on a cottonwood tree. He fell asleep.

Old friends of mine will tell you that I’ve hunted rabid Gan Bears, tracked feral Tera’eese in their migration, and even shot the venom off the back of the red-gigantus toad. I’ll tell you now, they know half of it. I never sleep on the chance to beat the bushes.

Mind you, if I said that I wasn’t scared in that forest in Zilla, I’d be bad at telling hunting stories.

I came upon a mongoose, happy as a pig in shit.

I’d never seen one so big, the length of my toe to my waist. Its coat was like silver ore, the muck on its back like the stones of the ground.

You might have seen a mongoose. I saw a hat for chilly evenings.

I turned away to pull the lever on my rifle. The creature’s glazed-out-oval eyes didn’t flinch.

My rifle spoke. The mongoose was dead.

By size, It looked to be a mature male. An honorable kill.

I grabbed it by the small of its back, and looked it in an eye.

The thing had died winking.

Fervid shrieking clapped through the swampy woods. Out of holes in the dirt and around the elm trees, came the dead mongoose’s family.

By the look of Mama Mongoose, the mature male I had shot had really been a baby.

I was surrounded. The forest had become a madhouse for mammals.

My repeater was cumbersome for such a scrap. I swung the barrel at a leaping mongoose, whipped another with my stock, fired a shot, and dropped it for the six-gun at my hip.

Like the leeches in my breeches, I gave up on trying to keep the small ones off me. Two of the buggers were clawing at my ankles, a third dangled from my left bicep by its teeth, and the rest got their digs in where they could. I had shot the first to get a hat and had ended with an outfit.

I fired five shots at the mother mongoose, leaving a spare bullet out of best practice. I missed every pull. It is hard to aim, with a mongoose playing tug of war with your gun hand.

Momma scolded me with a growl. It made a shrill call, and its children pulled back for a uniform assault. With another cry, they leaped all at once.

I was shackled to the ground, pinned by the creatures.

Mother mongoose grinned like a weasel in a hen house.

I stared back at her, with a cheek in the mud and my back crawling with vermin.

It looked at the mongoose I had killed, and then back at me.

Glazed-out-oval eyes.

It stood for a moment, only moving to breathe.

Mother Mongoose bit my shoulder, sunk its teeth, and lifted me off the ground with a snap of its neck.

I slammed back into the ground, fangs still grinding on my shoulder blade. My body seized. I was flung once more. This time I—down a pound of flesh—was ripped out of the teeth, and I flew into an Elm tree. I lay on its root. The silver of my pistol flashed in the mud. I could have reached for it, if the pain in my back didn’t have me paralyzed.

In my pain I had a vision. Two lips appeared on the grip of the revolver, and it spoke to me.

“Over here, you,” the pistol said to me, “I’m right here, can you not see me?”

My eyes must have been as glazed as the mongoose’s. The unshucked gun grew pupils of its own, and shot me a look. If he had a brain, I’d bet he thought little of me.

I was up the spout.

That whacker of a mongoose—the mother—stepped closer.

To make matters worse, the sun was in my eyes.

My brain screamed orders like a blowhard drill master. My hands were on furlough. That mongoose knew acupuncture or something. The bite on my back had me stiff as a preacher’s collar. I discovered that I could move my toes a little. This brought relief: I would die with a semblance of agency.

Fire came down from heaven.

Mother Mongoose cried. She had been taken in the flames.

14 of the critters, all in all, died that day. Every coat, save the one it had initially won, turned useless to me, all done in by the ring of fire that surrounded where I lay. Some hunting trip that was.

The flames cleared, and then the smoke. Before me was an alligator, twenty-three feet long. Its back was clad with two thin-wrinkly wings. A dralligaton, as I’ve since coined the term.

The dralligaton started licking the wound on my right shoulder.

“The hell?” I said. My lips worked again, thank heavens.

“My saliva,” the creature said, “its a disinfectant.”

“You killed all the mongeese!” I said.

“The proper plural is mongooses.”

I was nursed back to heath, but I had missed lunch.

I ate some jerky—At the risk of spoiling supper—which I picked from the mud when my arms started working and I could sit up. The dralligaton introduced himself. His name was Krook, Lord Krook. He told me that the title was merely symbolic, and that I could just call him Krook.

He told me to get onto his back.

If I hadn’t accepted death a moment before, I might have said no.

Krook flapped his wings, and we flew above the trees. The inn on the hill was a speck to me.

We flew over the forest, to a pond shaped like a kidney bean.

This turned out to be his home. Krook dropped me on the bank, and scurried into the brown sludge. He invited me in.

I told him I had just eaten, and couldn’t chance a cramp.

“I dine in the water all the time,” he said, “come in, the 20-minute rule is a myth.”

“Another time,” I replied.

Krook blushed. I think I had insulted him. He made an effort to tidy up: he dragged bones, rotting flesh, and dirty dishes from beneath the sludge. All the while, he professed how unusual the circumstance was: the pond was typically better kept than this.

The dralligaton had saved my life, and had in his own good faith made his home fit—as he saw it—for a guest. I am not a moral man, rather a villain to most. But I’d be ruder than a wasp at a picnic if I hadn’t gotten into that water.

I breathed through my mouth and waded into Krook’s living room.

The bark of the pond was worse than the bite. I already had leeches in my breeches, so the ones that bit at my arms bothered me less.

Krook and I shot the breeze. It turned out that he used to know my Grandmother, who he had met when he was young, and studying to be a legal secretary in Kag City. Beyond the fact that he had not completed his degree, Krook refused to elaborate.

I asked him if he ever got around to the harbor town of Zilla. He turned away.

The folks there, and I,” he said, “had a falling out some eighty years ago.”

Krook told me that often had a startling effect on most people, and it was in the best interest of everyone that he kept to his own corner of the swamp.

“Nonsense,” I said, “nothing startling about a fire breathing alligator with wings.”

“You’d be surprised,” Krook said.

“It’s their hang-up, not yours.”

“No, really, it doesn’t bother me.” He eyed a passing bird.

I thought about the practicalities of being neighbors with a dralliagon.

“You got a good head on your shoulders, Krook.”

That was when Krook saw my pack on the shore.

“That beer you got?” He asked.

I asked if he wanted some.

“If you packed enough.”

”Sure.”

We swam to the bank, and shared the last two pouches of ale.

“I tried to get into homebrewing,” Krook said, “but I was too clumsy: I kept tipping over the barrel.”

Krook took the pouch in his teeth, and squeezed the ale down into his throat.

Then came a burp, and its resulting tragedy.

Krook’s burp woke his fire-breathing organ. Flames flew from his mouth. I wasn’t bothered, for I had already moved to avoid the smell of the burp. Krook’s throat may have been fire retardant, but his stomach wasn’t; The string of alcohol dripping from tongue to tum lit like the fuse on a cannon.

Internal Combustion.

With a cry, my friend was dead.

The sun had finally faded when I got back to the inn. The furry lump of the mammal I had shot—the only one that wasn’t ash—was flopped on the porch. Byne Lilly came out to meet me.

She eyed me head to foot: beat as bananas with leaches in my breeches.

“All that for a mongoose?” She chirped.

I said nothing and retired for the evening.

My walk through the parlor was like making out a maze. Piled planks were strung about, and barnacle-clad pillars leaned on the walls.

Rye had dismantled Zilla’s only dock, to keep his fire burning.

I had just fallen asleep when Rye burst into my room.

“Let’s eat,” he said. “Your mongoose is cooked!”

The scrap in the swampland had done me in. The damn mongoose had right mangled my shoulder.

I woke. The bedsheets were soaked with blood. My body ached for more rest, but my head wouldn’t allow it. I got up to take a walk.

It was night. I looked down the hill towards the swampland.

With a tip of my hat—to Lord Krook the Dralligaton—I went off the other way: towards the town of Bur Song and her harbor.

I flicked a match off my boot, cupped my hands, and lit a cigarette.

Puffing like a steam engine, I made tracks down to the dock—rather, to the beach where the dock used to be.

At that moment, the last of it’s planks were burning in Rye Lilly’s fireplace. The ropes that I had used to tie down my catboat were burning, too. I’m sure I could see the boat bobbing away, if the light was good enough.

The waves lapped. The tide was fifteen feet down the beach. I sat on the mossy steps.

The holes in the sand, where they used to be dock posts, were a true black. My cigarette winded down to it’s natural conclusion. I flicked it into one of the holes. Following the dropping embers, I could see how deep it ran.

I did this until I had all but one left. Then the sun grew into a fat and sweaty bugger.

There was my catboat, on the horizon, running away with the tide.

My last cigarette was finished. I flicked it away.

I took off my boots and peeled away my brown wool socks. They used to be grey. My toes met the sand—rocky and damp—and I rolled up the hem of my pant legs.

I walked forward until the water reached my knees.

I couldn’t recall the last time I was without a boat. The tide couldn’t decide if it wanted me dragged out or pulled in. It yanked my ankles. The sight of the open sea around my fleeing catboat filled me with unfamiliar dread.

I heard laughter and splashing. Byne Lilly—stripped to her pantaloons—ran past me. As she did, she smacked the waves and sent water across my back.

The salt stung my shoulder and I was right pissed off. The innkeeper, wet cotton clinging to her rear, dove headlong in.

Rye, hair knotted in three different shades of brown, came up beside me. He looked directly into the Sun—without even squinting.

“I figured you here,” he said, splashing water on his face. He said something about the weather, took a step further, and fell into a hole where there used to be a dock post.

He floundered. I chuckled, turned to go back to shore, and my stomach met the nose of Twofor—the lizard—who was bolting after Byne.

I was sent flying, wondering if I’d land back in Parasu. The back of my neck was the first to meet the sea. The tide sent me somersaulting deeper below.

My eyes stung when I opened them.

There was a mermaid swimming toward me. It’d been years since I’d seen one—and she was a welcome sight.

The mermaid’s tail was blue, her hair dark, and I knew her eyes from from somewhere.

But there was no mermaid. I was suffering whiplash, seeing cross-eyed, and Byne was swimming alongside a dolphin.

Coming to my senses, I found the sun and swam towards it. Gasping for air, I paddled to my hat, which bobbled on the waves like a rubber ball.

Feeling like a soggy loaf of bread, I laid on the beach and slept.

Saplu is like the circus for degenerates.

The king of Saplu went by the name Cappa. He was lanky, bald, and bird-like. He collected exotic cigars. He’d whirl them in his fingers, smoke twirling about, as he spoke.

Cappa paid well, when it suited him. He was sure to tell you he was doing a favor.

Saplu isn’t an island. It’s a sandbank with a bunch of docks nailed together. There isn’t a tree, nor grass, nor lick of foliage in sight.

It stands in total affront to the sea.

In spite of every rusty bolt and warped plank, it’s as wide as it is tall.

Through narrow streets of wood and rot, you’d find brothels, taverns, and opium dens. You could trip—anywhere—and accidentally have told a blackjack dealer to hit.

For all of it’s amenities—nothing amused me more than the bear pit.

This is what I dreamed of—sleeping on the beach. It must have been a memory of ten years or more.

I had been shot in the foot. It had grown infected—green as a lime. I had been left in Saplu, as my men carried on to raid the northern settlements. My first mate Murmr convinced me to take the leave.

“A peg leg wouldn’t suit you,” he had told me.

The timing was right. I had gold to bring to Cappa, so he was happy to have me as a guest. I was there for a month and change—enough time to drink his wine, endure his stories, and play cards till I hadn’t a pocket to count.

I sat in with his counsel—to share the news I’d squeezed out of captured merchants and my opinions on the strength of the Uromalonian fleet.

They found me amusing, like a banker would his driver on a long carriage trip.

Of all the many things to see in Saplu—I tried spending most of my time at the bear pit.

It’s a simple concept, really. Stick a pole in the ground, surround it with a round 12-foot wall, and you’re a bear away from having a bear pit.

Tie the bear to the pole, throw in some dogs, horses, or pigs every once in a while. It’s good fun.

Me and a woman named Sam Say would sit there for hours, drinking doers and playing over-under on the last pitiful creature thrown into the pit.

When the sun was the biggest, they did the family show. When it had shrunk at night, they lit candles and held the main event: a dog, a pony, and a pig all at once.

In between the two—they let you stay and watch just the bear. Most people would clear out, but that was the best part: a bear being a bear, for a bear’s sake.

A bear strapped to a pole. Me with green goop oozing out of my foot. Being, while there was nothing better to be.

“You chucklehead, Rye Lilly!” I heard a yell.

I woke up. It was the mayor of Bur Song—a man named Elias Hipidogus. I had heard of him, but we were yet to meet.

He wore plain clothes, though they were ironed, clean, and tucked neatly in all the right places. He had a firm gut, a pointed chin, and a friendly mustache peppered grey. His belt buckle had a cow on it. His hat was made of straw.

He wasn’t dressed like a politician—no. He was dressed like a good politician.

Elias was rightly pissed off, for Rye had chopped down every tree in Zilla that wasn’t soggy from water damage.

“Every doggone tree—I don’t get you, Rye!” He cried. “It’s either selfish or stupid—but why the hell can’t you have a normal fire like anyone else? It’s hotter than my coffee cup this morning—and still I see smoke on your chimney! What, do you think firewood just grows on trees?”

“Gee, Mr. Mayor,” Rye said, “I didn’t know anybody would miss ‘em.”

Elias did a doubletake at the holes in the sand. “Where the hell’s the dock,” he asked?

“I dunno,” Rye shrugged.

I fell back asleep.

I went back to the bear pit. Why—I do not know. I don’t have many dreams.

She was a fat bear. You’d be too, if you ate a dog, a horse, and a pig everyday. There was a tuff of silver hair behind her left ear.

The bear pit was surrounded by wooden arena seats.

There was a boy who would walk around with a crate on his back. “Cold beer, really cold beer, really, really cold beer, really, really, really cold beer, really, really, really, really…”

Cold beer is all but a mythological concept in Saplu—and that kid is one of the boldest liars I know.

I couldn’t tell I was dreaming, which was for the best. I hadn’t figured I’d see Sam Say again—I’d have been pissed to know it wasn’t real.

They call Sam the whip of Saplu. She’s a bounty hunter—Cappa’s best.

She was always dressed in grey and had a hat brimmed with fringes that hid her eyes. When you could see them, they were green.

While my toe was still rotten and infected, we’d sit together to watch the bear. She’d leave for a few days here and there—to sail off to do whatever Cappa needed doing—then come back to me with the rumors and murmurs she’d picked up along away.

I’d buy her drinks as thanks for humoring my crippled ass.

One day a man in a suit with a red vest came and sat beside us. He sighed, shifting his white sideburn-clad jaw.

It was odd that in a relatively empty arena, he chose to sit right next to us. But he kept sighing, to make it clear that he wanted somebody to talk to.

“What’s the matter?” I asked him.

“I have walked a mile past my whit’s end!” He declared. “I have fought them away—the detestable conventions of my time and place—like a beast which now must beg at the feet of its master for mercy. My dreams lie behind a mirror that must always look in the opposite direction. I have nothing left and it is this stupid fucking bear that has done me in.”

“Ah,” I said, “that’s the matter.”

I woke up to an impromptu town council meeting, which was occurring on the beach. The mayor and the 6 councilors were voting on a new bylaw—which would ban Rye from taking more firewood from the island of Zilla.

Technically, Rye or Byne could have had a vote in this—as their inn made up it’s own electoral district in Bur Song. Unfortunately, Rye had voted for himself, Byne for herself, and nobody ever came to take the seat.

Rye was trying to filibuster by talking about the many benefits of having a super-big fire. But just because he was talking, they could still have the vote. There was no point to the effort.

Not much for politics, I fell back asleep.

Back to the bear pit.

The man in the suit was named Doglas Trilliam. You don’t have to remember his name, it’s not that important. I’m surprised I did, when I met him again in my dream.

Doglas’ problem was this: he was a playwright, and was finding it difficult for his local theatre to compete with the excitement of the bear pit.

He’d take weeks to write a play, hire the players, and get the set just right. He was pouring his very soul into it, as he put it.

But no matter the lengths he went to, people would rather be at the bear pit, which was just across the way from the theatre.

“I see you all—the boors—with the stupid stuffed bears,” he told us, “the ones they sell to the mouth-breathing tourists who know nothing about true entertainment. Oh! Is it bears you like, I thought to myself. I will give you the greatest story of a bear—and then you will all come to see my play!”

Doglas had sewn together a bear costume and found the biggest guy he knew to go inside it. He wrote the creature into his latest pastoral drama.

DOGLAS TRILLIAM’S THEATRE OF JOY AND SORROW. NOW WITH BEAR. The sign had read.

But how can you compete with a real bear, when all you have is a sweaty guy draped in furs?

This is why Doglas had sat beside us.

“You belong to the,” he looked over his shoulder and back at us, “felonry, yes?”

“The felonry?” I asked him. “What’s meant by that?”

The thespian looked down at my pistol—then over at Sam’s. “Take no offense—sir and lady—but you would be what some—not I—would call the dregs of society.”

“You’ve lost me.” I told him

“Criminals.” He said. “You look like criminals. I need criminal help. I have a crime that needs committing.”

He wanted us to steal the bear.

“Hey, Chartie,” I called down to the bear keeper.

“Yeah, Vin?” Chartie the bear keeper answered.

“Mind if we borrow the bear this afternoon?” I asked.

“Yeah, no problem.”

We were in business.

The beach was quiet when I woke.

Rye was painting a symbol of an axe onto a sign, alongside the words LEGALIZE IT.

Byne was skipping stones with her friends and having an argument over what kind of personality the color yellow would have if the color yellow was a person.

So this was retirement.

I fell back asleep on the beach.

The stage was set. The sign now read DOGLAS TRILLIAM’S THEATRE OF JOY AND SORROW. NOW WITH REAL BEAR, AS SEEN IN BEAR PIT.

This drove people wild. People were coming from all over to see the matinee showing of what Doglas had titled “The Evening Of Multitude.”

I was in charge of the bear. My crutches made this difficult. I wondered what was more difficult to tame, the beast or my raging foot, still oozing with gooze.

The play is a tragedy about a woman who models her personality around people that she is trying to impress.

She’d be talking to her neighbor, who’d tell her they hate when the weather is hot, and she’d agree (even though she had said earlier in a monologue that she enjoyed nothing more than getting a good even tan going).

She’d be on a date—and say that she was an avid fisher, even though she was allergic to seafood.

She’d ask questions and then say “oh no way, me too!” Her lines rarely deviated from this.

She was played by a local starlet with a brilliant voice and the dramatic range to pull off the character’s many learned personalities.

The character’s only relief would come when she would go into the forest. The chorus sang a song about it that went like this:

It was there she could be herself,

For out there, there was only a bear

And a bear doesn’t care.

The bear played the part beautifully. I think the creature finally felt loved and appreciated for something other than her ability to maul a pig. She got on great in her scenes with the lead—even I was breaking into tears.

The crowd was laughing, crying, and keeping their mouths shut all in the right places. I caught a peek at Doglas Trilliam, who was making travel plans to take this show to Logle City.

Then came the fourth act. To teach the main character a tragic lesson about adapting into other people’s personalities, a witch turns her face into a donkey face.

The actress—wearing a donkey mask—goes to her friend, the bear, for the showstopper dramatic peak of the entire play.

To an untrained eye, the donkey mask could be mistaken for a horse mask.

The bear saw the mask and thought the woman was a horse—just like the ones she was taught to maul in the bear pit.

The bear mauled the actress.

I woke up, finished with that dream.

Byne and her friends had finally decided that if the color yellow was a person, that person would have a guileful personality and should not be trusted.

Rye—needing firewood but unable to take it from the island—had come up with a solution. He swam into the sea, went right overtop a shark, and dove down towards a long-forgotten shipwreck.

Piece by piece, he dragged it onto the beach, where he chopped up its planks and dried them out for his fire.

“You can take the bear out of the bear pit,” I said, “but you can’t take the bear pit out of the bear.”

“What?” Byne asked.

Time passed.

I took many more naps on the beach. My shoulder healed.

The day of Rye’s 29th birthday arrived. Byne put together a picnic. We took a walk out to the valley to eat, drink, and give the man a couple of gifts.

This all went to plan. I had bought him a fresh matchbox. He was always in short supply of these—and the shipwreck wood he had collected was almost running out at this point.

Byne gave her husband new shoes. They were leather, dyed a bright red, and I wondered where on the island she had even found them. He looked kind of stupid in them, I thought. He ran around the field to break them in and “see how fast they went.”

He looked at it all: the picnic, his gifts, and his wife. He nodded.

“I love you,” his wife said.

He nodded. A snake leaped from the grass and bit him on the calf.

“Egad!” He cried.

The snake ran away. Byne gasped. She was pretty sure that it was an old snake that bit her.

“Why does it matter that it’s old?” I asked.

By old, she didn’t mean the age of the snake, but the type. On Zilla, an old snake is a snake whose poison makes you get old really fast.

As it turns out, it had been an old snake that bit Rye. He may have just turned 29, but his hairline had moved a good two inches in only a couple of minutes.

“Rye!” Said Byne. “We must get you some help!”

“Can’t we have some cake, first?” He asked.

Byne was red in the face. I pulled her away to where we could logically assess the situation without Rye’s disregard for his own wellbeing adding to the stress. He ate his cake.

“Shoot,” Byne sighed, “there’s no way around it.”

“Around what?”

“We have to go see my mother-in-law.”

We took Rye, his forehead steadily creating new wrinkles, to the far west side of the island—a direction I was yet to go in. An old stone path strung up to a bluff overlooking the sea.

I was beside myself. We were looking at a house made of emerald and gold blocks. It made me squint—the sun was magnified through it.

Byne’s eyebrows were furled. Her hand was on Rye’s shoulder, hurrying him along. He was growing a beard in real time—and it was dotted with little grey hairs.

There was a vegetable garden. It was meticulously arranged, in rings that surrounded the house. It formed a maze, with the shining green and yellow house growing out of it’s core.

The first layer was tomatoes, which were suspended by golden garden stakes and grew above our heads. After this came cucumbers, bell peppers, and cabbage.

The path through required us to complete a full circle of the home before we were able to step another layer closer. It was convoluted, yes, but it matched the pomp and circumstance of a house made from rare metals and jewels.

The final ring of the garden was made of roses.

When we were clear of the foliage, we were met by a woman sitting on the porch.

She was an elf—Rye’s mother, as it would turn out.

She was no more than 2 feet tall, slim, and adorned with silver brown hair. The look in her eyes was all that could reveal her true age, for her skin was bright and smooth. The same could not be said for her son, Rye. You’d think he’d spent the morning with Loggle City’s best comedians, by the laugh lines that were forming on his aging face.

Lady Morri, the elf is named. Rye calls her mother—so does Byne, through gritted teeth.

“Oh Rye,” she said, “you’re so skinny—have you come home for a proper meal?” She shot a look at Byne.

“Mother,” said Byne, “there is little time—Rye has been bit by an old snake!”

Morri sat up and stood on her seat so she could hug her son. She rubbed the top of his hair. This brushed his matted hair back, revealing pointy ears. Hadn’t noticed those.

“Oh Ryevelston,” Morri said, “it is not safe to leave the garden—I told you this.”

Byne reminded her of the urgency of the situation. It was by the magic of an ancient snake that Rye would be geriatric by the late afternoon—there must be ancient elf magic that could fix it.

We were invited inside. The front room of the house was set up to be a little boutique for maple syrup candies, pottery with inspirational quotes on them, and paintings from local artists.

Past that was a parlor with a couch buried below a pile of throw pillows—many of them bigger than Morri herself. The elf lit a few scented candles, bid us to sit, and poured each of us coffee.

She told us there was a solution—an antidote to the snake’s poison. On the northern side of the island, there was a stork who laid magical eggs. In all of Tiamatu, there was no better anti-aging serum than these eggs. Rubbing a drop of the raw egg whites on one’s face was enough undue a year of wrinkles.

These eggs were so powerful, it was rumored that if you actually cooked one and ate it you’d be able to actually travel back in time.

Along the way to finding these eggs, we’d have to endure temptations, trials, riddles, and perhaps even confrontations with horrors we could go our entire lives considering yet never fully understand.

I’m paraphrasing, of course. Morri dragged on to explain the unnecessary history and context of it all. When giving us directions, she felt the need to tack on phrases like “if you hadn’t let Rye get bit by an old snake…” and “if you didn’t leave Rye to run around in the field by himself you wouldn’t have to…”

With some coffee and elf cookies in us, we left the house of emerald and gold. As we left, Morri gave her son an elvish cookbook—filled with many other potions and concoctions that could aid in times like this.

“Happy birthday,” she said and looked at the silver forming on Rye’s aging head. “Look how big you’ve grown.”

As we headed down the hill towards the swamplands, Rye grew fussy. He insisted on a brief stop at the inn to check in on his fire. He had left it healthy, but it was due for fresh fuel, he told us.

“Better a starving fire,” Byne said, “than a husband who dies of old age on his 29th birthday. What would I do without you?”

Rye looked back at the road home. We entered the swamp.

We came to a great mighty river—which we crossed at a great cost. Rye’s red shoes, unwrapped only earlier that morning, were ruined.

Mother Morri had spared no detail in explaining the directions to us—which only ensured that we forgot the few instructions that we actually needed in our journey. We got lost. The soggy swamp trees came together over us, blocking out the sun.

A mouse walked up to us.

“Friend!” Byne said to the mouse. “Do you know which way is north?”

The mouse clearly didn’t know. It pointed behind it, saying “this way?” It was not confident in its answer—and I imagine was too embarrassed to admit that it did not know.

Finally the mouse doubled down, while hedging its bet by saying “I think it’s that way.”

Byne offered an empty thank you.

An owl swooped down and ate the mouse in one bite.

“Do you know which way north is?” Byne asked the owl.

“Of course I do.” It pointed a wing in the opposite direction the mouse had. “It’s that way.”

The owl accompanied us. We didn’t really know why he was following us, he was just sort of hanging out. There were a couple of times when we pointed behind us and said “look at that” and then tried to ditch it, but Rye was too slow.

At this point, Rye was using a stick as a cane. His hair was silver (where he wasn’t bald) and he had lost 3 inches of height since the time we had entered the swamplands.

The owl was my least favorite kind of unfunny person—which is to say that it was a big fan of puns. This became unbearable when it discovered we were on a quest to find eggs. Because of this, I have paraphrased its dialogue from here on out.

It thought itself some kind of guide for us. Because were just to go north until we got to the end of the island, this role became redundant almost immediately. Every few minutes it would remind us to keep going straight.

While this was annoying, the owl did come in handy a couple of times.

The first came when we walked into a clearing. Rye yawned, drool coming from his wrinkly mouth.

Byne yawned.

I yawned.

Rye asked if we could take a quick rest.

I was glad he asked, because I was feeling tired too. I turned to Byne, who I knew would refuse, being too worried about her aging husband.

But I was wrong: “I agree,” Byne yawned, “a little nap won’t hurt—it’ll help us the rest of the way.

We all lied down on the damp sand. Like falling into a cloud, the sand molded itself to my back. My shoulder sunk down ever so slightly to give my head the perfect support I could ask for.

The clearing seemed to dim with light. A cool breeze lapped us. A sound of a babbling brook emerged.

“WAKE UP!” The owl yelled. “YOU ARE LYING ON NAPSAND!”

It is said that those who take as little as a five-minute snooze on napsand are cursed with permanent sleep inertia for the rest of their lives—forever caught in that hell between slumber and wakefulness.

Yet the coziness of the sand seemed worth the cost.

It was Byne who was able to resist. In a show of strength and will, she rose from the dust. She dragged Rye—with his skinny old arm fixing to pop out of the socket—out of the clearing. Next she came for me. I was drug off the sand and was immediately refreshed.

“Rye,” cried Byne, “I thought you were lost!”

“Was comfy sand,” said Rye, “wasn’t it!”

We kept walking until we came to a house.

It was quaint, made of stones, and had smoke coming from the chimney.

We hadn’t time nor a reason to see who was inside. We passed by, but as we did a voice cried “you hoo!”

It was an old lady. She needed help opening a jar of pickles.

We went inside—to where she and her cat were sat in the armchair by the fire.

Despite our insistence that we only had a few moments to open the jar and go, she talked Rye, Byne, and the owl onto her couch, while I popped open the lid.

It was a tricky one. I had to boil some water to run over the lid before it would open. I am embarrassed, looking back, at how long and difficult my effort had been. I succeeded in opening the jar, yes, but if it could be considered a test of strength, I failed.

We had to leave, but the old lady was in the middle of a story about how she met her late husband in grade school.

That was the second time that the owl came in handy.

It whispered in Byne’s ear that it would stay and listen to the rest of the story, while the three of us snuck off to complete our quest.

Byne was not to disagree or protest the move, because “it was a sacrifice that I (the owl) had to make for the greater good.” He looked at us bravely, like a martyr or a soldier ready to take a bullet for their commander.

“You must go on without me,” it whispered, “I eggspect you’d do the same for me.”

That owl didn’t have to tell us twice.

We came to a bridge. Rye hips were creaking and he had a hunchback. His lips were dry and he kept smacking them.

There was a man on the bridge.

“Hello!” He said. “I am the Riddler!”

“Ok.” I said. He was standing right in our way. It would have been awkward to move forward without bumping into him.

“Would you like to answer my riddle?” He asked.

“Do we have to?” I asked.

“Why would you have to?” He asked.

“Is that your thing, people can’t cross your bridge if they don’t answer your riddle?”

“What?” He said. “No, I don’t own the bridge.”

“Ok,” I said, “we don’t want to answer your riddle then.”

He hung his head and sighed. “That’s fine,” he said.

I felt like an asshole.

“Ok,” I said, “sorry, let’s hear it.”

“No,” he said, “don’t even bother! Nobody ever wants to hear the riddle.” The Riddler crossed his arms and walked away.

“What was that all about?” Rye asked. He was going deaf.

Not long after the bridge, It began to look like Rye wasn’t going to be able to make it much further.

We stopped to catch our breath. Byne rested Rye down on a rock. He groaned about his hip as he went down. His once-wild-brown mop of hair was lost—replaced by a few strands of hair. The arms that were once wiry and strong were now flab on bone.

This may have been the couple’s last opportunity to talk. I left them alone.

I walked into the forest.

I came upon a cave. A frog—sitting on the roots of a toppled tree—faced it.

“Do you talk too?” I asked the frog.

“Only when spoken to,” said the frog.

I lit a cigarette. The frog shook his head when I offered one to him.

“What’s in the cave?” I asked.

“I dunno.” He answered.

“You ever want to hop in there,” I blew smoke, “find out?”

“Nope.”

Rye was asleep when I got back. Byne elected it would be best to leave him there. We would go get the eggs and hurry back—hopefully before his age had become too much to bear.

We took to the trail.

Byne talked a mile-a-minute: about every little branch that she had to bat out of her way; every rock that came between us and the end of the island; every little inconvenience that had popped up on our journey—owls, Riddlers, and old ladies alike—who had lost us time; the fact that Rye couldn’t say I love you back to her that morning because he’s so unemotionally available all the time and all he looks at is the stupid fire…

I offered her a cigarette.

Byne went silent. She stopped walking

“He may already be dead,” she said, “and I’m mad at him. Am I an asshole?”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“I know he cares,” she kicked a rock. “I just wished he could express it clearer.”

We kept going.

Finally, the trees cleared. We were on a beach—the northernmost point of the island.

Quick footprints in the mud sloshed behind us. I turned—and saw a half awake Rye riding Twofor the lizard.

“Rye!” Byne yelled. She hugged him and said, “I love you.”

The newly old man gave a toothless smile and patted her on the head.

In front of us on the beach was a wooden stand.

A pelican was sitting behind it. SHOE BILL’S EGG STAND, the sign read.

“Hello,” said Shoe Bill the pelican, “I got fresh eggs—want some?”

“Wait,” said Byne, “you’re a male pelican?” ”Yeah?” Said Shoe Bill.

“Then where do the eggs come from?” Byne asked.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”

We bought three eggs, cracked them, removed the yolks, and rubbed the whites on Rye’s face.

The wrinkles collapsed in on themselves. His face tightened. He hair grew back in, matted and brown as always. His teeth were where they should be and his back straightened out.

Rye was young—and looking great for 29 years old.

“Rye!” Byne yelled. She leaped to hug her husband, tackling to the ground. She kissed him. “Let’s stay on this beach,” she whispered in his ear, “forever.”

“We gotta get back!” Rye cried. “The fire!”

We hurried back as fast as Twofor could take us. Rye was at the reigns—there was no chance of us stopping.

When we walked back into the parlor of the inn, the fire was down to its last ember.

Crying out, Rye dove towards the hearth. In flight, he produced the only flammable item on him: the ancient elvish cookbook that his mother had given him—which had been shoved in the back of his pants.

He threw it on the ember and the pages caught flame.

“Ah that buys me enough time to chop some wood—oh wait I can’t chop wood. The dock—the dock is burned. The ship—the ship is burned. Ah,” he cried, “it’s spent, it’s spent!”

Byne grabbed him by the arm. “Rye! Let it go. There will be other fires.”

The book turned to ash. The hearth went dark.

“Don’t you remember?” Rye asked.

“Remember what?” Byne asked.

“Our wedding night.” Rye looked at his toes. “You said you were cold, so I made you that fire and vowed it would never go out.”

“I love you,” Byne said.

“Let me go collect some kindling.”

Much more time passed.

Retirement was no longer novel. As the days passed, I forgot to wonder what my old crew was up to. I stopped worrying if that traveling circus had managed to keep my galleon seaworthy.

I even stopped fearing Uromalon—and her ironclads. I no longer mourned for my friends, Brow, Toat, and Dripes, who had surely died in some lopsided battle against this metallic innovation in naval combat.

Every day, however, I thought of my first mate: Murmur. He always said if it weren’t for piracy, he’d be singing in nightclubs. I was sure that he was at least trying to make this a reality.

I listened to Byne’s stories. Helped Rye with his fires—which became tasteful and modest after our adventure with the egg whites. I hunted, avoiding any mongoose I saw. I dreamed of women I used to know, while the innkeeper, her husband, and the lizard swam at the beach. I endured awkward tea parties with Rye’s mother, where I’d always feel obliged to leave with a scented candle I did not want.

If I ever had a need for silver, I’d go to my hole on the beach—and barely dent my supply.

The rest of my time I spent trying to figure how to write—for the stories captured here amused me and I had nothing better to do with my time.

Other things happened, in addition to what you’ve read. For instance, I got married and had a son.

We moved out of the inn and built a house in a valley, some three miles from Bur Song. Byne was disappointed I would no longer be steady business for them. I promised that I would visit the parlor often and ignore that Rye famously overcharged for drinks.

I enjoyed telling my son stories about sea monsters and sitting on the porch with my wife. This is how we spent most of our days.

In the evening, I would walk into town and down to the beach, where the dock had been rebuilt.

I’d walk out to the edge of the tide. The toes of my boots would sink into the wet sand.

I’d walk back to my homestead. My wife would feign upset at me for tracking mud through the door. We’d make sure the boy was asleep and then have sex.

I was no longer Vin Vogin, the pirate captain. I was Vin Vogin. This was good.

One day, the three of us were making stew. I chopped vegetables, she minded the meat, and we sent the boy to fetch wood for the stove from his uncle Rye.

Somebody knocked on our door—the fishmonger’s son.

“Mr. Vogin,” he said, “a boat’s pulled into Bur Song. A man, named Corrum, askin’ about you.”

I cursed under my breath and told the fishmonger’s son to send the man here.

I kissed my wife and told her to make tracks to the inn. She was to stop the boy on his way back and they weren’t to return until I sent for them.

She did this—upset I did not have time for her questions.

Alone in the house, I finished the stew.

I stood on the porch and watched Rear Admiral Corrum Pear coming down the hill. It was like seeing a tropical bird in a snowstorm.

I barely would have recognized him—if I hadn’t been told of his arrival.

He was strung out from the sea. The mustache I knew him for was now a full beard. His uniform, once neat, was torn. He had lost his hat and jacket. The bags beneath his eyes were worse.

The strap on his holster was already undone. Seeing this early, I turned and loosened mine.

He walked until I could see the whites of his eyes. He stopped.

“Rear Admiral,” I said, “welcome to ZIlla.”

“Vin Vogin,” he squinted, “it is said in Uromalon that the age of the pirate is over. You and I know this isn’t true—not yet—not until you are an orchard of bones. Uromalon has forgotten you, pirate, but I haven’t. I have scoured your haunts, pressed my cause on all who know you, and sailed across Tiamatu to find you. You killed my brother. Today I kill you.”

I had forgotten my rival long before he could let go of me. I kick myself—so focused on evading ironclads that I hadn’t considered this man fueled by revenge.

“Rear Admiral,” I said, “I came to this island to die. This wish has been granted, so however the coin lands, I will not evade this duel that fate has promised you. But if we are to shoot with fatal intent—let it at least be with steady hands—not that of two hungry men, one weary from the sea. I have cooked stew, come eat with me first, and tell me what has come of Uromalon.”

We left our pistols at our sides and sat down for stew.

As we ate, Corrum Pear told me what had happened in Uromalon following my departure.

Having little patience and the most powerful fleet Tiamatu had ever seen, the Uromalonian navy had chosen to strike Parasu directly. If the full knowledge of what they were capable of had proceeded such a siege, most pirates would have pulled the same move I did: evading justice and going on the lamb.

But the presence of ironclads took most by surprise—including Captain Brow, who had believed the rumors a fluke the last time I spoke to him.

The Rear Admiral had been there for the siege. Having come from a long tradition of naval officers—each who had wrestled with pirates in their time—this was a catharsis, a final victory in a noble and holy war.

But this victory would soon sour, for there were things outside even Rear Admiral Pear’s control. Orders came from above—from the board of Uromalon themselves—which would forever haunt him.

Every pirate was to be given a deal—enlist as privateers or die.

Uromalon’s leadership had two options: Stick to their word—setting appointments with the hangman for every pirate in Parasu; or, lay with dogs—and unleash this force onto the merchant ships of their enemies in the north.

Being practical people, they chose the latter—to the anger of Corrum Pere, who wanted justice.

His anger would only grow, when he found that I, the man who killed his brother, had got the hell out of dodge.

Corrum Pere had surrendered his insignia—and set out to find me. If those fishermen in Parasu hadn’t seen me leave with a yellow mantis, he’d never have succeeded.

Brow, Toat, and Dripes were sent north as privateers—given the full pardon and blessing of Uromalon. In fact, a Loggle City producer took interest in them and created a reality magic mirror show surrounding their exploits.

This marked a fascination for pirates that swept the popular culture of Uromalon. Stripped of their teeth by the ironclads, they became romantic figures, enthralling villains of an age gone by.

I was wrong: Parasu was not sacked and turned to ash. They turned it into an amusement park.

We finished our stew.

Corrum Pear and I stepped out into the humid air.

At this point, it had been years since I’d shot somebody. It felt pointless and silly, but I knew there was no way around it. I could have shot him in the back when I was taking up his empty stew bowl, I guess, but I didn’t. Neither did he—I gave him plenty of chances.

We walked out into the field—as you do—and took the appropriate amount of paces. We faced one another.

The field went dark in my vision. I could’ve been there, or anywhere: that never matters when you’re forty feet from a man who means to kill you. It was like stepping into a familiar house.

I go back to visit Uromalon, every so often. It’s not as nice as I remember it, but it is much easier walking through the streets of Logle City when you are no longer an outlaw.

I have been invited, many times, to join in on the privateering hijinks of my friends Brow, Toat, and Dripes. I often get letters from Murmur asking me to come and hear him sing at whatever club has hired him last. But anything I once owed to Tiamatu was shot dead in that valley in Zilla.

Twelve shots between us, Corrum and I couldn’t hit the other to save our lives.

We stood there for a moment, our pistols empty and brains bewildered.

“That settles it, then,” we decided.

There was a time were we were two of Tiamatu’s fastest draws. That time had long past. We were the last to be made aware.

Corrum Pear shrugged and walked away.

I went to the inn, where my wife and son were.

My wife was helping out the Lillies, by feeding Twofor the lizard his dinner of spider legs.

She saw me through the open barn door and came bolting down the hill. I hugged and kissed her. After a moment, she pulled back. Without her asking anything, I answered.

“An old friend came to visit.” I said.

I entered the doors, under the sign that read THE SWAMPY LILLY.

My son was listening to Byne. She was telling him about the scar on my shoulder and how I was almost killed by little baby mongooses.

The five of us ate supper. When the sun was fading in the sky, my son and I went out to stand on the bluff.

I looked at the sea—the never-ending abyss that is Tiamatu. My son followed my gaze. He pointed at a lonely boat—which belonged to Corrum Pear. It was disappearing beyond the horizon.

“The more we try to kick dust from our boot,” I told my son, “the deeper it gets in the sole.”