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Even though I did a couple of panels, a fursuit dance and hit the Artist Alley and Dealers Den a few times I want to focus on what is to me are the 2 most important events of the final day of any MFF. The Fursuit Games. What can I say? They make me laugh, […]

I forgot to mention from my previous report what was not only a surprise and something to look forward to was the following: Coupons. Officially they call them “Tickets” 1 is for a FREE Tee Shirt, which I will show off later and the other was for brunch. In addition, there were tickets available for […]

Yesterday was my 1st day at MFF this year and it started off with some confusion. You see, this year I decided to be a Sponsor – I knew I’d get some benefits but who knew it was going to start off with a lot of confusion. First I was sent in one direction, then […]

TRD heads to the annual Sunset Beach Bonfire to celebrate Summer and create memories. SEE MORE AT: http://www.TheRaccoonsDen.com FACEBOOK: http://www.Facebook.com/TheRaccoonsDen TWITTER: http://www.Twitter.com/TheRaccoonsDen FURAFFINITY: http://www.FurAffinity.net/user/TheRaccoonsDen INSTAGRAM: http://www.Instagram.com/TheRaccoonsDen #TRDs8 #BeachBonfire #Furmeet

Presented annually by the Hollywood Chapter of ASIFA (the International Animated Film Society), the Annie Awards are considered by many to the the Oscars of animation — and often enough, a vital clue as to who is likely in the running for Academy Awards from this year. Recently, the nominees for the Annie Awards of 2019 were announced. Surprising no one, Disney dominated in several categories, most especially in Best Feature Film. Frozen 2 and Toy Story 4 were both on that list, along with Missing Link, How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, and Klaus. Missing Link did surprise many, matching Frozen 2 at 8 overall nominations each. Over in the TV categories, notable furry nominees included Bojack Horseman, Disney Mickey Mouse, Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and a pleasant surprise: Tuca & Bertie in several categories. Visit the official Annie Awards web site to find out more. The Awards will be presented at a ceremony live from UCLA on January 25th, 2020.

image c. 2019 Netflix

And the last of the missing episodes. As always thank you for your patience and thank you all for listening! Episode 74 - Belated Shark the 5th: The lastest of the sharks

Almost there, one more after this and you have hours to enjoy! Episode 73 - Belated shark 4: The other three don't count

And yet more, only a couple more and we are caught up! Episode 72 - Belated Shark the third of the sharkington fortune

More belated editings for you all to enjoy Episode 71 - Belated shark 2: Electric boogaloo

Another episode of UnFurled uploaded somewhat late. But here ya go Episode 70 - Belated Shark the first

Photo credit to Ryker Husky from his Orange County ALS Walk gallery

GUEST POST BY JOE GORIA (JOE G. BEAR)

Joe Bear in suit

As a young kid growing up in 1970’s Los Angeles, I was always fascinated by seeing costumed performers at events like circuses, or Disneyland and the now defunct Hanna-Barbera’s Marineland in Palos Verdes, CA. To see tall cartoon characters come to life as Baloo, Yogi Bear, and Scooby Doo let me escape into a virtual fantasy life of myself living in a world alongside Anthropomorphic Animals.

Though I grew up and went to college, graduated and attended grad school — and recently celebrated 19 years employed for a major telecommunications company with a Pension and 401k — I’m still that kid that refused to grow up. The ‘Hooman’ in me was not enough. I wanted to be my own ‘Bear.’ It led to my amazement that there’s a fan base just for this.

I discovered ‘The Furry Fandom’ in late 2013 by another Furry who had a German Shepherd fursuit stored in the trunk of his ol’ jalopy. His name was ‘Kaz,’ and he was picking me up at San Diego’s Santa Fe train station. When he popped open his trunk to put my bags in, I noticed his fursuit and asked him “is that a dog costume?”  I thought he was working at an amusement park or something. Instead he was a Furry, and I got my 15 minute crash course in ‘The Fandom’.

I didn’t attend my first Furry Convention until June, 2015: ‘Califur’ in Irvine, CA. I was with two friends who were young enough to be my own kids. It was an experience to watch Furries parade around The Irvine Marriott — but I couldn’t make much sense out of it, and I did feel somewhat out of my comfort zone.

That first ‘Califur’ is where I met Tony Barrett, known as ‘Dogbomb,’ with his version of a German Shepherd fursuit. He was very friendly and we chatted for a few minutes. I found out he was a local Orange County resident and active in the Fandom. He was friends with someone I knew early on named ‘Teh’ or ‘Desoto’ who was a Shep too. I knew ‘Desoto’ a lot longer than ‘Dogbomb’, but in retrospect I wished I had more time to get to know Tony. That is a regret I can’t correct.

Ten months later, in April, 2016 — I got an invitation from another Furry friend named ‘Toad’, who lived in Atlanta. I could room with him ‘for free’ at Furry Weekend Atlanta 2016 (The theme was ‘Camp Furry Weekend’), at the Marriott Marquis Atlanta. I bought my United Airlines ticket and flew out. What a change FWA was in comparison to ‘Califur’ 2015. That second convention is what got me SOLD into ‘The Fandom’.

Two years later, after careful thought and consideration (and the sudden death of my Mom in July, 2018) — I decided to commission my own Grizzly Bear fursuit. It would be made by a close friend and incredible fursuit maker named ‘Eddie,’ from ‘Builder Bear Studios’ near Easley, South Carolina. This 52 years old ‘Greymuzzle’ was finally going to ‘Suit Up’ as in The Foxes and Peppers song.

Foxes and Peppers – Suit Up. @foxamoore @peppercoyote — Videos daily, PM to add yours. #Furrymusic #furry #furries https://t.co/wWlAw3iyMI

— Furry Jukebox (@FurryJukebox) November 28, 2019

On May 9th, Joe Bear debuted at Furry Weekend Atlanta 2019 after Opening Ceremonies. I was amazed at the quality and love Eddie put into making my ‘Fursona’ into a real awesome looking Californian Grizzly Bear with glasses and a moving jaw. I had a lot of fun being out on the multi-con spaces that make FWA my favorite furry con. But I had thoughts – I blurted out ‘This Is Great!!’ but what’s next? I had NO prior costuming experience, and I felt like a lumbering fur rug walking the Marriott carpet with little emotion.

I knew there was something ELSE that I could do to make a difference, that would satisfy my urge and contribute to the common good. Furry Conventions are great, but it’s just a weekend long fur-block party for the attendees. However, the con does so much good too. Our FWA con fees do help those in need, as these cons do lovingly give back in dividends like their support for The Conservators’ Center In North Carolina (In 2018 alone, FWA attendees donated $50,000 for their charity). That made me feel satisfied that ‘The Fandom’ made it happen. But, I wanted to do more – to get more involved personally.

On the night of my fursuit unboxing at FWA 2019, Eddie Bear looked me in the eye and said “You’re bound to do great things, Joe”. I was surprised to hear that remark. He saw something in me that maybe I wasn’t seeing or realizing at that moment — that maybe something good would come out of getting my fursuit, two years after getting my first AARP card? Well, Eddie’s remark was ‘Spot On’.

My path led back to Tony Barrett ‘Dogbomb’, who was a strong athletic runner and participated in several Los Angeles Marathons. In March 2018, Tony’s shocking diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) led to an amazing outpouring of support from Furries near and far, including myself. In November 2018, Furries donated in large numbers to ‘Team Tony’ for The 2018 ALS Walk. The National ALS Association noticed the surge and appreciated the support. Sadly, ALS is a progressive neuromuscular disease with a short life expectancy rate. Tony Barrett passed away on April 5th, 2019 — and we all changed our social media icons to his signature colorful Lei in his honor.

At FWA 2019, I hung out with a friend of mine and Tony’s named ‘Whiskey Foxtrot.’ He was wearing the 2018 ALS Walk shirt at a panel we attended. I promised to Whiskey that I was determined to get involved for The 2019 ALS Walk. One week after FWA & BLFC, I started to get my friends, family and my co-workers involved to support my page for ‘Team Tony’ and the upcoming walk.

Joe G. Bear is a SoCal fur who is helping to raise funds to find a cure for ALS in memory of @dogbomb1. There's a walk coming up November 9 in Irvine. Want to help? Here's his fundraising page for it. https://t.co/C4T43T12j7 pic.twitter.com/YjIUzqHCDs

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) October 1, 2019

My co-workers knew I was a Furry, and supported me generously. I appreciated a friend of mine and furry musician, Runtt Wah, and his band of collective fursuiter musicians called “WE ARE ONE” for creating a beautiful song in honor of Dogbomb, called “With You I Can Run Forever”. My 2019 ALS Walk fundraising goal was $500, but I ended up with $850!!

I’ve never been involved in a charity walk before, let alone in fursuit. The 2019 ALS Walk in Irvine, CA on Saturday, November 9th was my first charity walk, and ‘The OC Great Park’ in Irvine is a great venue. It was an AMAZING experience to be part of an event to honor one of our own, with 75 Furries, alongside many families and friends of those who were honoring a loved one and/or currently suffering from ALS. I finally realized the positive benefit of being a Fursuiter — as kids and adults alike were coming up, asking for pictures or for a hug. It was an emotional experience, something I will never forget.

I feel that using my fursuit for charity events is my way to support others, and I’m looking forward to participating in 2020 and beyond. I’m hoping to participate in a charity event in San Diego come mid-December — walking in The North Park Holiday Parade with a local charity group — along with future events including supporting The ALS Association of Orange County. 

Tony Barrett wrote a heartfelt letter that was read by our friend ‘Zarafa Giraffe’ before The 2018 ALS Walk. It’s something I take to heart and which I honor:

“I’ve had an amazing life, and I’m truly sorry that it’s coming to an early close. The saving grace is that get to do something positive before I go and that I get to say a proper goodbye to all my friends. I am truly blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful folks, and I hope you take this moment and carry it forward — Be kind to strangers, help those in need, have a smile and a good word for everyone. Tell your friends and family that you love them at every opportunity. There will come a day when no one has to suffer from ALS, and you are making that future a reality. I am proud and honored to be a part of such an amazing group, and I love you all very much.”

I’m truly grateful to be part of a fandom that gives back to others, and this Bear hopes to grow in that journey by honoring Tony’s legacy and living up to his message. — (Joe G. Bear)

Thanks to Joe for sending this guest article, and to Dogbomb’s friends and supporters.

MORE ABOUT DOGBOMB’S IMPACT: dogpatch.press/tag/dogbomb

Last June, Dogbomb’s friend Trip Collie announced a tribute book with stories and art in memory of Dogbomb. Midwest Collie organized it with help from Trip, and it was planned to be over 120 pages with submissions from over 200 artists, with all proceeds going to benefit the ALSAOCC. It’s ready!

Finally done! The work of @midwestcollie start this is complete. All of the artists, and other people involved to make this book happen are absolutely amazing! The pictures do not do it justice. It starts to ship after the holidays, and some will be available for mff..thank you.. pic.twitter.com/Mi6yo9eJF2

— Paw to Press @ Furpoc (@Paw_To_Press) November 28, 2019

Went suiting at Mutt Lynch’s Bar in Newport Beach, one of @dogbomb1’s favorite hangouts. Bouncer wouldn’t let us in because it was too crowded. 300 customers’ voices chanted “LET THEM IN! LET THEM IN!” The bouncer relented, & 3 of us went in. Joyful chaos ensued.: Joe G.Bear pic.twitter.com/hH6KXer64r

— Zarafa (@Zarafagiraffe) November 10, 2019

WhiteClaw previously submitted Why furries should care about politics in 2018.

Dictionary.com

Dogpiling

Most of us on the internet have probably heard of and witnessed dogpiling. Some of us have even been unlucky enough to be on the receiving end. But nearly everyone will deny having taken part in it.

Even people in the middle of dogpiling will resist the label. According to them, they are: critiquing, complaining, offering their opinion, standing up for themselves and/or others, responding, calling out — and any other number of words and terms that can be used to describe their actions. 

But never are they dogpiling.

So, what is this strange act that seems to be everywhere, but committed by no one? To answer that question, we have to start at the beginning.

The Cycle Begins: Something “Bad”

With very few exceptions the cycle starts the same way. Someone, somewhere, does something “bad.”

Now I say “bad” because the range of events that can kick off the cycle is so broad, that one word is poorly equipped to describe them all. 

Within the spectrum of events there are: making an honest mistake or slip up, wording something poorly, having a bad take, promoting an idea or opinion that is polarizing, promoting an idea or opinion that is actively harmful, being a bigot, or committing acts that are dangerously close to or are in fact illegal.

Chat with MR

Pretty much any event that begins the cycle can be slotted somewhere into the above list. But the truth is that the act or event that begins the process often doesn’t matter in a way that significantly affects what happens next. And what happens next is, invariably…

The Cycle Continues: The Callout

Now there have been countless articles, essays, and thinkpieces that have explored the topic of callouts and cancel culture, and honestly, I’m not here to rehash. Callouts, like most things are neither all good nor all bad.

It is worth mentioning a few things, however.

Whatever the “bad” thing that kicked off the cycle, the internet is a pretty big, chaotic place where things can be and often are lost in the shuffle. Even within a relatively smaller community such as the furry fandom, it’s impossible to keep track of all the events, discussions, and drama happening at any given moment.

But within the fandom (and really the internet in general), there are online accounts who, more or less, exist solely to post and signal boost callouts. Now I won’t name names, but many of you know the type. 

They typically have hundreds to thousands of followers and usually gain more with each callout post. They love internet fights and have a seemingly endless amount of time to engage in them. And their big go-to move, especially on Twitter, is the “quote retweet” to ensure every one of their followers has a chance to see not only how clever, woke, and perfect their response is, but also the account of the person that dared to offend them.

Now I said I wasn’t going to rehash the callout/cancel culture debate, and I honestly don’t think all call outs are bad. Some I consider almost a public service. 

Yes, I would like to know if this person whose work I enjoy is actually a racist, or abuses women, or hates trans people. Because whether or not I still enjoy their work (which is an entirely other topic about if it’s possible to separate art from an artist and whether you should even bother trying to), I don’t want to support that person. Not with my money, not with exposure… and probably not with my appreciation of their work, either.

So good can come from callouts. But, one of my favorite articles on this topic, titled “We Can’t Fix The Internet” has the following lines:

“It isn’t advocacy, it isn’t activism, it’s pure performance. It’s fundamentally the equivalent of saying “you’re in my hopes and prayers,” after a national tragedy.”

Yes, the town gossip can be an invaluable source of information when you need it. But they aren’t doing it for you. They’re doing it for themselves. So, make of that what you will.

@speaksangie did nice work here. Callouts on their own fall into "the thrill of empty catharsis and spectacle", they can't substitute for deep investigation. Of course there's a difference between "performative wokeness vs de-platforming of harm" as a commenter says. 1/ https://t.co/2aS6JY7lAD

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) November 11, 2019

The Cycle 3: This Time It’s Personal — The Dogpile

Now it’s tempting to blame the callout accounts for what comes next, and certainly some of their tactics are designed to elicit a specific response. But the cycle is not a coordinated, planned event. In fact, it’s often very reactionary and spur of the moment. 

And while “raids” conducted by forums and sub-communities do result in dogpiling, there is one very important difference. In the cycle, the members of the dogpile don’t know about each other.

Side A: The Attackers

Okay that’s not entirely true. It’s not like each person in a dogpile is sealed off in a bubble. But members of Side A do tend to suffer from tunnel vision.

In fact, at this point, the word “dogpile” seems like an inappropriate metaphor for what’s happening. A better visual description would be a wolf pack biting at and tearing apart its victim. Each wolf is definitely aware of the others, but their main concern is getting in there, and biting off a piece for themselves.

And that’s why members of the dogpile (or wolf pack, or whatever you want to call it), don’t see themselves as a group. At least not at this stage of events. Each person views themselves as unique. In fact, many view themselves as the leader of a silent army. They are the ones speaking up and championing for those who can’t defend themselves.

Unfortunately, many of the people they’re “leading” are doing the exact same thing.

This is why it’s impossible to engage with a dogpile. There’s virtually no communication between its members. Which brings us to…

Side B: The… Bictim(?)

To the victim of the dogpile, the attack is not one of several individuals, but a single, solitary mass of hate directed right at them. Because Side A has little to no communication, many of its members will repeat the same words or phrases. To the person on the receiving end, this feels like a coordinated effort, where the attackers have rallied behind a very specific interpretation or criticism of events.

(It could take another article to list all the ways in which interpretations can be out of context, distorted by emotion, misstated with crude literalism about figurative meaning, mischaracterized in bad faith, or otherwise twisted and cooked-up to hurt.)

Amplifying makes the attackers feel more justified and their grievance more real. But the reality is that the repetition of certain words or phrases is a symptom of their division, rather than their unity. It’s also the result of a single person receiving several comments in a very short amount of time. After a while, the entire thing starts to blur and run together. The brain focuses on what’s repeated.

Now if the victim tries to call out people for dogpiling, each person will claim they’re independently offering criticism… which may be true.  And the victim can try to respond with a nuanced explanation that is tailored to each and every person coming after them. (It becomes orders of complexity harder the more twisted the accusations are from sources playing telephone-game from a root cause.)

But… Individual responses to an onslaught is a ridiculous thing to expect anyone to do. 

Except that’s exactly what the people on Side A want. Remember that Side A doesn’t see themselves as a group, they see themselves as individuals. So, because they have individual criticisms, they expect individual responses. 

Which is why what Side B does next never, ever works.

The Cycle 2.0: The Public Apology

The section titles I’ve been using here have mostly been jokes, but there is a sort of 2.0 or next phase element to this part of the cycle. See, Side B has been drowning in a deluge of negative comments and criticism, and it’s not feasible for them to address everyone individually. So, they pretty much have two options.

Option 1: Run. 

Now, most people don’t go with this tactic because it usually involves abandoning your online accounts. It’s also not a great look because there’s a mindset that only the guilty run. (It isn’t true, but it is the first conclusion most people jump to.)

Option 2: The public apology. (The more popular of the two.)

This is where Side B attempts to explain themselves, apologizes for their actions, and seeks forgiveness. The statement can’t address every criticism that’s been lobbed at them, so it typically goes for a more general, “I messed up, I’m so sorry, please forgive me.”

Some are short, some are long, and some spend a little too much time trying to explain or rationalize their actions. But it’s a typical reaction that most people at the center of a dogpile are going to try and save face at least a little. What matters is what the person does next and how they act going forward when —

Oh wait, never mind, no it doesn’t. Because this never works. In fact, this is where the cycle begins its 2.0 phase, and a new set of dogpiling occurs in response to the public apology. The statement is criticized for being cookie cutter, insincere, and just all around not good enough.

And at this phase of the cycle, it’s tempting to write the remaining members of Side A off as trolls, and there are certainly a few of them who are just there to cause damage. But the amount of anger and rage some of these people exhibit can make them seem like trolls, when in reality, they’re just really, really mad. 

Unfortunately, there’s not a great way to tell the difference.

For a long time I have given opinions that if a callout is used it should come with higher goals for longer term effect. Exposing while reporting or organizing has a place, but aim for a "high value target". Just attacking, making it a sport and chasing clout sucks. 3/

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) November 11, 2019

Side Notes

Now before we wrap things up, I’d like to address a couple of things.

1. “Genuine criticism =/= harassment.”

This is a phrase popular with Side A when they’re called out for dogpiling. It’s also a massive form of gaslighting that’s attempting to delude everyone.

“Genuine” means real, which is in direct contrast with… fake? This is basically a math equation, so if real criticism doesn’t equal harassment, then fake criticism does? And therefore, harassment equals fake criticism?

Except, why does it matter whether or not I believe what I’m saying? If I’m following you around, shouting it at you, it’s still harassment. You can follow someone around and shout “Trans rights are human rights!” But if they don’t want you there, you’re harassing them.

(Now does that person deserve to be harassed? I don’t know, are you just following around a random person and shouting at them? Because there are better ways to get your message out.)

The point is that this is a phrase that tries to convince both the person on Side A and the person on Side B that what’s happening… isn’t actually happening. It also makes no sense and isn’t true.

2. “Attacker” and “victim.”

There’s a connotation that accompanies these terms that suggests the “attacker” is always in the wrong, and the “victim” is always in the right. But I don’t believe that’s true. You can be a victim of your own terrible actions. That doesn’t mean you don’t deserve what’s coming to you.

As for “attacker” well… If everyone in a dogpile where calmly stating something like “I feel like you have maligned this group of people with your words/actions, and I would very much like you to explain yourself and/or apologize”… we wouldn’t even need to even have this discussion.

But an attack is defined as an aggressive action and members of a dogpile are pretty aggressive. I’m not saying that aggression is always unwarranted, but dressing it up as something else isn’t much better than the whole “genuine criticism =/= harassment” thing.

Sometimes, something should look and sound ugly. That’s why we don’t call it the “pretty truth.”

This stuff came up in a phone call with Gizmodo this weekend. They're working on a story about furry history and how it evolves with social media. A need for deeper investigation and the shallowness of callouts was just a small part of the topic. 7/

— Dogpatch Press (@DogpatchPress) November 11, 2019

The Final Chapter

So, is dogpiling bad? Afterall, if callouts can be good or even have good results, can’t dogpiling be the same?

Here’s the problem. Dogpiling is pretty much a masturbatory act. The callout is posted, and you get to ride a wave of indignation along with other people. 

But it isn’t really accomplishing anything. That big, public apology that Side B posts? It doesn’t work. It doesn’t make anybody feel better. Because the goal of the dogpile isn’t to have Side B change for the better.

The dogpile wants only one thing: to revel in the enjoyment of taking someone down.

Because if it were about something else, literally anything else, then dogpiling would be the least effective means to an end. 

If you feel someone is dangerous, problematic, or just overall a bad person, you could spread the word about them to others who are affected, organizing with real solidarity. You could start a campaign to have them banned from conventions or group outings to create distance. You could encourage others not to support them online and dry up their earnings. You could call the police. 

But if your solution to a problem is to confront someone both publicly and directly, I think it’s important to ask: What is your long term goal? Are you looking for a response, or are you looking for a thrill?

Like the article? These take hard work. For more free furry news, please follow on Twitter or support not-for-profit Dogpatch Press on Patreon.

Welcome to Issue 5 of Zooscape!

Frogs, toads, and mind-altering experiences…

Is there any more powerfully, permanently mind-altering experience than reading a story?  A good story doesn’t just stay with you, it can change you.  It can expand your mind.  Stories are how we navigate the world, and when we let others control our stories, we lose our voices, our power, our agency, and even who we are.  But when we are free to explore and find the stories that resonate—they can give us voice, power, agency, and help us understand who we are.

The great thing about furry fiction is that it doesn’t accept the normal constraints laid upon us in society.  You don’t have to fit into those tiny, limiting boxes.  Read these stories, and for a few moments, become a possum, a frog, a toad, a cat… try on a different experience, and see how it fits.

* * *

Leafless Crossing by Voss Foster

The Stone Mask and the Frogs by Mark Mills

‘Twas Brillig by Michael H. Payne

Go On, Lick Me by Luna Corbden

Nine Ways to Then by Diana A. Hart

Toad’s Grand Birthday Extravaganza by Lena Ng

* * *

If any of these stories resonated with you, please share them!  And if you want to help support Zooscape, we have a Patreon.  Merry December, and we’ll see you in the spring!

by Lena Ng

“…despite his faults, Toad was an excellent host and never did things by halves…”

There is nothing so joyous—as the snow melts away, and the early green buds burst from the branches, and the sun grows stronger and brighter, and the winter’s chill departs from your bones, and the vibrant colours of Easter flowers and emerald grass begin to paint the land—as a heavy, hearty, welcome-to-a-new-spring breakfast. So thought Mole as he stretched and yawned, and stretched and yawned again, belly up under a blue-and-white quilt, while the perfume of spring seeped into his cozy, underground abode.

Soon the smell of sputtering bacon and button mushrooms, reheated tinned beans, roasting tomatoes, fried potatoes, and fresh coffee, mingled and danced and filled the air in his kitchen. So many lovely smells, delicious smells, that it didn’t take long before a rap sounded at his front door.

Mole set down two big plates of blue earthenware on his round wooden table. “Door’s open,” he called out. A pointed, curious nose found its way through the front door and down the underground hallway to the kitchen. The whiskers on this snout twitched and shiny nostrils flared with all the smelling of the food cooking on the speckled blue, pot-bellied stove.

“Ratty,” said Mole, scooping a generous helping of baked beans onto each plate, “I was hoping you would join me. Welcome, welcome spring!”

“Glorious spring,” agreed Rat. “And even better with a full stomach.” He helped with pouring the coffee and getting out the knives and forks. The past winter had seemed especially long and especially cold, and although his house on the river bank was lined with mud to keep out the draft, there was nothing like a good dose of sunlight after the dismal grey. And to see the river thawing from slow and sluggish to leaping and alive delighted Rat every year. “I was on the way back from gathering supplies—for fishing and the like, talking lure-craft and river lore and that sort of thing—when those marvellous smells told me you were awake.” Animals in general know it isn’t proper form to disturb their hibernating kinsmen, just as you yourself would not appreciate being woken in the middle of the night from a deep, dreamless sleep. Instead there were ways to find out who was up-and-about: the grapevine of gossipy rabbits and informative hedgehogs; the sounds of spring-cleaning; run-ins at the market for seeds and herbs.

The tucking in was made even more delicious after the winter’s fast. The catch-up of news would be saved for after the sipping and slurping and crunching and savouring. At last, with his stomach stretching his plaid pyjamas to the table, Mole sat back with a contented sigh. “More coffee, Ratty?”

Rat leaned over his own stuffed stomach to inch his mug closer to the coffee pot. His belly was comfortably full and another cup of coffee would fill in all the small gaps.

Mole halted mid-pour as a low buzz filled the room. The buzz rattled the dishes on the table and stacked on the shelves. The sound faded and Mole started to pour again.

Buuuuzzzz. There it was again. It could be a buzz saw or a lawnmower or a low-flying two seater aircraft…

“Oh, no,” said Rat as his nose twitched. He stared up at the packed-earth ceiling. “It can’t be.”

“Can’t be what?” asked Mole.

“That Toad, Toad of Toad Hall, Toad of Complete and Utter Foolishness. What silly thing is he up to now?”

Despite his heavy stomach, Rat was quickly away from the table and through the underground hallway to the front door. Mole struggled to catch up.

“How do you know it’s Toad?” Mole panted.

“Because anything strange or new or bizarre—it can only be him.”

Rat flung the door open and they both squinted against the bright spring light as they made their way into the awakening field. The propeller’s buzz started to grow louder as it swooped overhead. It was a snub-nosed, two-seater plane, painted a fire-hydrant red.

Mole’s normally small black eyes grew wide on his sleek, ebony-furred face. Behind the pilot’s goggles and wrapped with a red scarf waving in the wind was definitely Toad. Attached to the plane’s back rudder was an enormous flapping banner reading:

TOAD’S GRAND BIRTHDAY EXTRAVAGANZA. TOMORROW 4 PM TOAD HALL.

Mole jumped up and down and waved his small paws. “Toad, over here, look down,” he called out.

“Don’t encourage him,” said Rat as the plane buzzed out of sight. “Because of his jailbreak, he’s still a wanted toad. He’s supposed to be laying low. Instead he’s inviting all of the wild wood to his party. No, this won’t do. We’d better get Badger.”

After the washing up and putting away the crockery, Mole changed into his hiking togs while Rat amassed the necessary supplies for a journey into the wild wood. There was no time to gather the prerequisite plants to carry in their pocket or to perform the safety rituals but they had their walking sticks which would likely serve them well if they met up with trouble.

The bright sunlight soon grew hidden by the trees as Mole and Rat made their way through the dense forest. The brush and crackle of beech leaves underfoot and the snap of small twigs and branches caused suspicious eyes to peer out at them through small holes in the tree trunks. At the sight of the sturdy walking sticks and two companions marching with purpose, these mistrustful eyes disappeared right back into their hideaways.

The friends trudged on in watchful silence until at last they saw the iron nameplate of Mr. Badger.

* * *

“Yes, I saw the banner,” Badger said gruffly as they settled into their armchairs, with steaming cups of tea and small plates of sandwiches resting on the side tables to revive them. “The whole wood saw it, with the ruckus his plane was making. I’m surprised he’s still flying it; I thought it was repossessed. Well, we’d better be off since I’m the only one who can talk any sense into him.”

Badger led them back through the wild wood, down the hidden pathways and clandestine trails, cautious yet confident as always. He recited the essential passwords and gestured the required signals and soon they emerged from the dappled light of the dense forest into the open meadow leading to Toad Hall.

After some time trekking through bluebells and brambles, the ivy-covered stone facade of Toad Hall came into view. The snub-nosed plane sat in front of the west wing of the house, its owner waving as the companions drew closer.

“My dear, dear friends,” Toad said, putting away the cloth after polishing the side of the red plane to a gleam. “I take it you’ve seen my invitation to my little soirée.” With his goggles pushed back on his broad head and his pilot’s uniform of a brown suede flying jacket with a shearling collar, red scarf tied nattily around his neck, Toad was the picture of dashing. “Thank-you, thank-you for helping me prepare for my birthday party. It will be the biggest, grandest party in existence. A special day where I would like to treat all of my friends.  All to commemorate, well… me. I’m turning four.” Four may seem young but it was a ripe, respectable age for any toad.

Mole examined the underside of the plane closely, mainly because his eyesight was poor, and he was very round and small and couldn’t look much higher. Rat clambered up into the passenger side and leaned back into the leather seat. Although he was dedicated to his river, Rat decided he would write his next poem about flying.

Badger’s stern look through his round spectacles didn’t seem to damper Toad’s enthusiasm. The grey whiskers on his cheeks quivered. “Don’t let this party run wild, Toad. By not controlling the guest list, you don’t know who will turn up. Remember the time your house was overrun with stoats and weasels.”

“Hee, hee,” Toad laughed. “Wasn’t it a magnificent time running them off? Stoats and weasels had no defense against my mighty cudgel. A whoop and a sound licking and off they ran.” A self-satisfied smile crossed his homely face. “But with the party, it’s too late. I’ve invited everyone and I’ve spared no expense. There’s champagne in the icebox, canapes and caviar, and gifts to take home. Now help me wrap the party favours.”

Toad led them through the arched doorway of Toad Hall, down the portrait gallery of Toads Past to the grand dining room. In a gigantic mound on the polished herringbone floor were treats and enjoyments of every shape and size. There were beautifully painted books whose illustrations popped up from the page. When a tab was pulled, the cut-out horses with flowing painted manes would lope around a carousel or a lion would leap at the paper cage bars or a lark would open its beak and sing. There were boxes of striped sugar candy cubes which would fizz and snap in your mouth when you ate them. There were lavender recorders and pink whistles. There were foil pinwheels and contraptions which blew bubbles and yoyos and tin cars which raced around the room with the turning of a metal key. Pages could be written on the variety of enchantments lying on Toad’s floor. It was all very delightful. It also looked like a lot of work to wrap them.

Before the grumbling could start, Toad held open his arms. “Please, my dear friends, I need your help. You’re right, Badger, this party will get out of hand without your assistance. But it’s my birthday and all I want to do is make others as happy as I am.”

Well, no one could say no to that so Badger, Rat, and Mole spent the rest of the day and into the evening wrapping gifts while Toad sang rousing wild wood songs to keep their spirits going as he hung up the streamers and balloons.

* * *

The next day, the group had barely set upon their lavish breakfast—since, despite his faults, Toad was an excellent host and never did things by halves—before the doorbell began to chime. Over the morning, in streamed a parade of a musicians, caterers in liveried uniform, jugglers in bright costume, somersaulting clowns sporting fuzzy wigs, twirling ballerinas, and other entertainers.

A large, striped canopy with a stage for speeches was set up in Toad’s back acreage. There were three tables for the food and drink. A small, fenced in area held the petting zoo with miniature ponies and pygmy goats. Another large table held the cheerfully-wrapped gifts for the guests. In the back, much to Badger’s chagrin, was an enormous pile of fireworks.

“How much did all this cost?” Mole asked with mouth dropped open as he surveyed the party landscape. Toad Hall was set on five acres of green, fertile land with plenty of room for all of the celebration’s amusements.

“Never mind,” said Toad, proudly wearing his bespoke tailored birthday outfit. It was an orange suit with fashionably-thin lapels with a patch of the Toad Hall coat of arms sewn on the front, accompanied by a striped blue-and-orange silk bow tie. He also sported a splendid hat which could have put any royal hat to shame. “You only turn four once.”

With all the coordinating and setting up—the tiered cake was to go here and the chocolate fountain would go there and the pyramid of champagne glasses were to be arranged over there—and Toad practicing his speech and songs, with some fine-tuning and editing by accomplished poet Rat, the time hurried by and soon it was four o’clock.

“Well, I’m off,” said Badger, as the first guests, a dozen or so of rabbits, started to hop in. “Happy returns, dear Toad.”

“You’re not staying for the party?”

Badger packed his day bag with a few edibles for the road. “You know how much I hate society and parties. Peace and quiet is all I care for. But I promise to return tomorrow to help you with the cleaning up.”

“We’ll keep him out of trouble,” said Rat. Mole nodded enthusiastically with a mouth full of pistachio pudding.

* * *

Rat and Mole had to agree. It was the grandest party in existence. The fireflies gave a twinkling, flirtatious light. The ballerinas pirouetted and the jugglers juggled and the edibles were eaten and the drinkables quaffed. Toad’s larger-than-life presence lorded over everything.

And the noise! No polite party conversation here. Instead the happy cacophony of live music and snippets of carousing songs and excited chatter and laughter. Even Toad’s terrible jokes seemed to be immensely funny, and it was his own booming laughter that was the loudest at the telling. Everyone admired Toad’s flourishing hat and wished him happy returns, and the champagne flowed like the river.

A few weasels and stoats appeared, hats in hands, quite humbled by their previous defeat. Toad bore them no animosity since they sincerely wished him longevity and best wishes, and they joked a bit about their past scuffles and Toad’s stalwart fighting. The Chief Weasel pledged his best behaviour and unwavering loyalty and brought an enormous wicker basket filled with aged cheeses, candied fruit, crystalized crickets and other such amphibian delicacies as a gift from them all.

Finally, a drum-roll sounded and a hush fell upon the celebrants. Toad ascended onto the stage. He stood for a few moments, soaking in the attention. “My dear, wonderful, considerate, kind—”

This went on for several minutes until all the appropriate adjectives were exhausted.

“—loyal, generous, loving friends,” Toad began. “Thank-you for sharing my special day.”

A cheer arose from the crowds.

Toad cleared his throat and waited for silence. “I suppose you are all wondering about the origins of Toad.” After a pregnant pause, “It all began in the mid-thirteenth century, when my great ancestor, Toad de Bonaparte, was still a tadpole wriggling in a fish pond deep in the heart of France…” He regaled the crowd with the history of Toad and somehow managed to make it all the way to the beginning of the fifteenth century before someone yelled—

“Song!”

Which Toad didn’t seem to mind since who could blame anyone for wanting to get to the good part. He changed his stance, breathed deeply with his diaphragm, and poured forth a self-composed song, sung mainly in key.

Just as Toad reached the highest note of his song, the stage began to rumble. Across the field sounded the pitter-patter of an army of little feet. Little feet running, little feet jumping, little feet racing down the hillside and over the green grass and heading directly towards Toad Hall. Hundreds of little feet belonging to a horde of…

Lemmings!

Lemmings, lemmings everywhere, pudgy brown fur balls from all over the countryside. They guzzled all the champagne. They cannonballed into the chocolate fountain, spraying founts of chocolate. They chittered all at once in their high-pitched voices so that no one could hear the sound of their own thoughts. They razed through the birthday cake and vacuumed up the canapes and hors d’oeuvres.

The party guests scattered. The miniature ponies and pygmy goats jumped the fence and ran off, booting lemmings left and right. Toad went into a manic panic of racing here and there but wasn’t able to accomplish much of anything. The stoats and weasels sprang up at once and managed to gather a few of the lemmings under their arms but the sheer numbers overwhelmed them.

A piercing whistle whizzed through the lemming crowd. It ended in an explosion of heat, light, and colour. A stream of fireworks skyrocketed through the mass of Rodentia. A ringing bang and the lemmings were tossed about and tumbling.

Toad ran to the back where the fireworks were kept. There stood Badger, carefully setting off the missiles, his aim honed by his previous years in the military. “Badger, Badger, how did you know to return?” asked Toad, gasping.

“The lemmings had stormed the wild wood and I knew they would cause chaos,” Badger replied, methodically aiming a Cherry Blaster and setting it alight. The lemmings scattered and scampered, run off by the screaming streams of swirling colour. A crazed excitement filled Toad and he began to set off the fireworks willy-nilly.

“Be careful,” shouted Badger, “or you’ll burn Toad Hall to the ground.”

Caution or foresight were never parts of Toad’s character, and he jumped onto the biggest firework in his arsenal.

“Get off of there!” Badger said.

But it was too late and Toad had set off the biggest firework while sitting right on it. Perched backwards, Toad jockeyed the Colossal Chrysanthemum as the firework shot into the sky. The big rocket exploded, ejecting Toad into the starry stratosphere in a burst of fiery confetti. Rat and Mole watched in open-mouthed, horrified awe as they saw a Toad-shaped figure silhouetted against the moon’s bright face, one arm waving a massive hat.

But gravity gives no exception and toads who go up, must also come down. They heard a mighty thud and saw an eruption of coloured wrapping paper where Toad had landed.

Rat, Mole, and Badger ran to the landing spot. There they found Toad collapsed under a pile of brightly-wrapped presents.

“Toad, oh Toad,” said Mole, hands clasped together and with tears streaming from his liquid-black eyes. “Please tell us you’re all right.”

Toad opened one eye and then the other, looking up at three furrowed expressions. Face blackened from gunpowder, his belly started shaking from laughter. “Best birthday ever,” Toad exclaimed, miraculously without the loss of a single tooth. “Let’s do it again next year.”

 

* * *

Originally published in Non Binary Review Issue 18: The Wind in the Willows, Zoetic Press

About the Author

Lena Ng is from Toronto, Ontario. She has short stories in over two dozen publications including Amazing Stories. Her 2019 current and forthcoming publications include Hinnom, The Literary Hatchet, We Shall Be Monsters, Colp, Beer-Battered Shrimp, The Little Book of Fairy Tales, Mortal Realm, and Mother Ghost’s Grim. “Under an Autumn Moon” is her short story collection. She is currently seeking a publisher for her novel, Darkness Beckons, a Gothic romance.

by Diana A. Hart

“Chaos spread from her touch, stirring my fur like a snake in the grass, but it refused to resolve.”

My paws pounded against the carpet, a furious thunder that matched the drumming of my heart. A meowl tore from my throat. I dropped flat, claws digging into the fiber, and lashed my tail as the visions hit me again. My pupils dilated. Nine versions of reality poured into my skull and smothered my senses, each a fluttering glimpse of what could be.

Clara, my master, stood in line at the student café. In each vision she wore her backpack and clutched a travel mug covered in prancing reindeer. Fingerless mittens—the ones that made her hands look like funny little paws—curled around the warm plastic as she waited for her order. I felt the ache in her belly. The way the aromas of fresh bread and cooking meat made her mouth water. My whiskers twitched in shared hunger. True, not as appetizing as freshly mangled pigeon, but at least she shared my love of bacon.

A man with dog-brown eyes smiled at her. My fur puffed. Something in his gaze was cold. Calculating. Like the neighbor’s calico when she stared at the bird feeder. Dog-Eyes stalked closer and complimented Clara’s pink scarf. Causality scattered like a flock of sparrows. My mind could only keep track of the nine most stable, tumbling through dinners that hadn’t yet happened, walks and talks and movies they hadn’t shared yet—some they wouldn’t, depending how chaos fluttered—but in the end they all settled in the same place: beatings. Crying. Silence. The kind my visions couldn’t pierce…

Anguish exploded from my throat. “No!” I tore into the darkened living room. Streetlight poured through frost-covered windows, casting fractal shadows across the floor. There has to be a way to stop it! “How?” I yowled and bounded over the couch, muscles screaming with the need to move, to do something, anything, to change the way the future fluttered. “How!?” The television remote clattered under my paws. Thumped to the floor.

“Dang it, Bixby,” Clara moaned from the bedroom. “It’s three in the morning.”

Three in the morning… I skidded to a halt. Morning! Yes! Whiskers thrumming, I sank into a crouch. Thoughts churned so fast my fur twitched. The visions always started close to the present. Whatever morning I’d seen, it’d happen soon. My ears flattened. I just had to figure out when it was and stop Clara from meeting Dog-Eyes.

Contemplative churrs rolled off my tongue as I picked through the visions, looking for clues. Clara grumped again from the bedroom. I tuned her out. Focused only on the future: her backpack and her coffee mug, how hungry she was for breakfast, the way her scarf—

I froze. It’s pink. Bile rose in my throat. She laid that one out tonight! My heart leapt to a gallop. I cried out and thundered to her door.

Closed. “No!” I reached up for the knob. Brass slid between my paws, too slick for me to accomplish more than a soft rattle of metal. I flopped on my side and stuck my legs beneath the door. Waved them about and called to Clara. Plaintive cries bore no fruit. Blankets rustled behind the faux wood panel and I caught the soft floomph of Clara pulling her pillow over her head.

I pressed my nose to the gap. Reached even further under the door. I will save you. My paws found only open air.

* * *

Somewhere around dawn Clara stumbled to the bathroom and left her bedroom door open. I waited until I heard the splash of water before slinking into her room, a dead mouse dangling from my jaws. Christmas lights winked along the ceiling, casting a dim but cheery glow, and the first blush of sun crept up her plank-and-milk-crate bookshelf. Tail cocked, I padded to the chair in the corner. Clara’s outfit—a long gray skirt, wool sweater, and a bunny-soft pink scarf—spilled over the seat. I hopped onto the cushion and proceeded to chew the mouse into pieces.

As I sprinkled meat and offal across her scarf I felt a small pang of guilt. Not for the mouse of course—this particular vermin would have pooped in the pancake mix next week–but rather for Clara. Whenever she found one of my kills she’d make a funny grunt and shake like somebody had dripped water on her nose. Still, it’s for your own good. I plopped the last chunk of leg down.

Causality shifted. Churned just past my whisker-tips. I couldn’t see where reality fluttered yet, but something had changed. Across the hall water flushed. I licked my lips, coppery blood sharp on my tongue, and hopped off the chair.

Clara padded back into the room, yawning. Her dark hair was mussed from sleep and she rubbed a palm against her eye. “Hey fuzz-butt.”

I chirped a good morning and twined about her legs. With a sleepy chuckle she slid back under the covers, no doubt trying to catch a bit more sleep before her alarm started screeching. She pulled the blankets up and scratched the comforter in invitation. I just stared. Agitation thrummed through me, made my tail twitch. My visions were still a vague hum that buzzed against my whiskers and until they cleared I didn’t know if Clara was safe. She scratched the blankets again, murmuring for me. A chill raced up my spine. I told myself it was just the cold and hopped onto the bed.

Fiberfill muffled my footsteps. Pressing against her hand, I enjoyed a few luxurious strokes before I curled my tail around my paws and sank into a puddle of fur. Clara smiled and drifted back to sleep. Her fingers splayed across the blankets, barely brushing my coat. Chaos spread from her touch, stirring my fur like a snake in the grass, but it refused to resolve.

I oozed closer. Pressed my nose up next to hers and breathed in her spent air. Traces of last night’s dinner, butter and pasta with a bit of pepper, still clung to her breath. My throat tightened. Please, let it have worked. I pulled in a deeper breath. Sniffed at her eye. All that came of it was a sleepy grimace.

I settled back onto the blanket. Maybe this was a good sign. Perhaps the visions had stopped because Dog-Eyes wouldn’t notice her now. Satisfaction lured me into a slow blink. Minutes slipped by as I watched Clara sleep, her round, soft features free of bruises. Warm as the day she’d found me shivering under a shopping cart. And nobody will take that away. I closed my eyes and began to purr.

Sharp squeals split the air. I jerked, popping out of dreams I hadn’t realized I’d fallen into. Clara groaned and slapped the clock. Shivered as she kicked off the blankets and headed for her clothes. I dropped to the floor, chirping. Everything was normal. I wouldn’t have been able to sleep if—

A familiar grunt hit my ears. Causality began to churn.

I stopped, tail-tip twitching.

“Really?” Clara said. She picked up her scarf by the ends, shuddered, and held it at arm’s length as she headed for the trashcan. The nebulous churn turned to nine points of pressure. I stiffened. Mouse-bits tumbled into the can as the future crashed over me. Causality battered my vision like a flock of sparrows, then and now a fluttering, chaotic mess.

My pupils went wide. Same café, same backpack, same mug… Now-Clara flicked her pink scarf into the laundry. Shivers raced up my spine, arching my body. In my visions Dog-Eyes walked up to then-Clara and commented on her blue, tasseled scarf. Now-Clara pulled matching fabric out of her dresser. My throat squeezed too tight to screech.

I burst into motion, thundering down the hallway.

* * *

“Ugh, I should have printed this off last night,” Clara said from the living room. I paused, mouth full of food, and flicked an ear her direction. Brewing coffee and fresh ink reached my nose. There was a smack of palm-on-plastic. “Come on, work!” Paper crumpled as the printer ate another page of Clara’s essay. She made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a growl.

In the bathroom I sighed and crunched down more tuna-scented kibble, hoping it would quiet my stomach. Trying to save Clara had left me with sore muscles and a belly full of acid. She was trickier than the red dot, foiling every attempt to keep her from meeting with Dog-Eyes. Laying in the sink so she couldn’t brush her teeth? Countered with a scoop and a plop. Hair ball in the kitchen? Paper towels and Windex. Sitting on her cell phone so she couldn’t find it? Clara just called it from the land-line. My tail twitched. Granted, the butt-massage had been fantastic, but my visions remained unchanged.

A whoop burst from the living room. “Finally!”

My fur puffed. You’re almost out of time! I choked down the last bit of breakfast–leaving a ring of garnish behind, of course–and hurried for Clara.

“Late, late, late,” she chanted, shoving her essay into her bookbag. The computer gave a good-bye ding and went black. She snatched up her bag, halfway zipped, and hurried for the kitchen. I followed after, hounded by the flutter of what would soon be.

Clara tossed her bag on the floor by the coffeemaker and trotted to the dishwasher. Oozing around the door frame, I rubbed my cheek against the stove and gave my tail a little jiggle. Did my best to act calm. Inside I was yowling. Think! The dish-rack clattered. My whiskers twitched, heavy with fast-approaching reality. Clara cursed and pushed the dishwasher shut. Her feet slapped softly against the linoleum as she bounded for the cabinets. I perked, a new plan flash-forming.

While Clara dug her travel mug out of the cupboard I tossed myself on the floor behind her. She turned around, kicking me in the side as I rolled onto my back. Pain lanced my ribs.

“Augh, Bixby!” she yelped, breaking into an awkward stagger. Her other foot thumped down near my head. My pulse spiked. She gaped at me, eyes wide. “You okay?”

Not really, but I just pulled my paws up under my chin. Curled into a C-shape that fluffed my belly fur. “Now?” I chirped.

She frowned. Reached down and rubbed under my chin. “Sorry, buddy,” she said and began to straighten.

“No!” I rolled forward, pawing after her bare hand. Clara headed for the coffee pot. Claws scrabbling at the linoleum, I got in front of her again and flopped across her path, rolling about and purring a loud as I could. “Now?” Please, let it work. “N-n-now?” Clara pursed her lips. I chirped.

Clicking her tongue, she crouched down and started rubbing the fur on my belly. Pure joy rang through me, a bell-toll of warmth that flooded my blood and bones. My purrs went from rumble to ear-rattling-quake.

The sparrow-flutter of causality twanged my whiskers. Rolled across my senses. Two of the nine visions replaced the café and Dog-Eyes with Clara’s car, chuggy engine rumbling as she sped for college. My eyes closed in rapture. It’s working! A third vision began to blur away from Dog-Eyes, twisting slowly into icy highway. Just a few minutes more…

In my skull a semi’s horn blared. Then-Clara whipped her head around. All she saw was chrome. Glass exploded. Steel squealed. Pain and silence followed.

My eyes snapped open. Oh hairballs no! Desperate, I sunk claws and teeth into flesh. The new visions flapped in my head, twisting steel and the scream of angry jays, as Clara yelped and pulled back. Blood beaded from several scratches. I leapt onto the kitchen counter, ribs throbbing and fur twitching with stress. Great sweeps of my tail betrayed my agitation. I stared off into nothing and tracked the visions. Don’t be locked in. Reality beat at me. Battered me as the three altered threads flailed about, seeking the strongest path. Don’t come true.

Clara shook her hand. Hissed over her wrist and shot me a glare. I hardly noticed. Mangled steel and burnt rubber morphed back to crisping bacon and predatory brown eyes. A shiver started in my belly and shot up my back, traveling into my paw. I gave it a few quick flicks. Licked it, as much to quiet my nerves as to wipe away the tang of Clara’s blood.

Grumbling, Clara popped the lid off her travel mug and filled it with steaming coffee. Prancing cartoon reindeer grinned up at me, beaming at my ineptitude. Shame made my neck smolder. I stared out the frosty window. Watched a cardinal toss millet out of the feeder to get at the sunflower seeds. It only made me think of Dog-Eyes. I chirped a curse.

“Dang it,” Clara said looking at her wrist again. She replaced the coffee pot, snapped the lid on her mug, and set it on the edge of the counter. “Nice work, fuzz-butt.” She tried to stroke my shoulders as she breezed towards the bathroom. Ashamed, I ducked under her touch. I didn’t deserve her if I couldn’t save her. A few moments later the medicine cabinet clinked shut. Paper ripped as Clara put on a few Band-Aids.

My nose wrinkled. What else can I do? Clara tromped to the front door. I snuck a glance over my shoulder. She pulled on a pair of orange and pink socks, followed by puffy snow boots. The fingerless mittens were next. I gulped. There had to be something left. Get hit by a car? It could work, but was I willing to do that? Dash out the door when she opened it, mangle myself and maybe die so that she wouldn’t meet Dog-Eyes? And what if that just makes things worse…

Clara wrapped the blue scarf around her neck. Nine times over I heard Dog-Eyes compliment it. Then the tumbling flutter of their intertwined lives, followed by crying, pain, and silence. Nine hollow futures roared in my skull. My stomach knotted. Clara cast about for her keys. It wouldn’t take her long to figure out I’d knocked them behind the couch this morning. Ears flat, I took a fortifying breath and turned to face the door.

Out of the corner of my eye prancing reindeer grinned at me. My breath caught. Her coffee. Spider-hunting slow, I glanced at the mug. Peered over the counter. She’d dropped her bag next to the coffee pot, gaping half-open where she’d left it. Her essay peeked out from between a pair of textbooks.

Clara oofed. Keys jingled.

My head snapped up. Clara strode for the kitchen. What could be surged around me like wing-beats, unrelenting. Blood pounded in my ears. I sidled closer to her reindeer mug. Lifted my paw. Something in the way I moved caught Clara’s attention. Her eyes went wide.

She sucked in a breath. “Don’t you da—”

I slapped a reindeer right in his shiny red nose. The travel mug flopped over, glugging merrily, and rolled off the counter into her bag. Clara yowled and broke into a run. I just stared over the edge of the counter, head cocked. Brown liquid poured over her belongings. Dog-Eyes and the café burst away like terrified finches. I wasn’t quite sure where they were headed, but I could feel the distance growing, leaving Dog-Eyes far behind. I sat up straighter, smirking as only a cat could.

Clara dragged the sopping remains of her essay out of her bag. She glared up at me. “You’re an asshole.”

I just chirped and tossed my head.

Cussing, she yanked her books out of her bag, shook the worst of the coffee off over the sink, and tossed them on the counter before stomping into the living room. A happy little chime told me she’d turned on her computer.

Sparrow wings brushed across my senses. My pupils widened. Each vision settled to roost. Three then-Claras got breakfast after lecture, two fell asleep in class. Another three skipped out and went their separate ways around town. The last then-Clara slapped the printer, gave up on her essay, and crawled back in bed. Then-me joined her not long after.

I blinked in slow contentment. There was no telling which then-Clara now-Clara would become, but for now they were safe. I hope she picks the last one. Either way, I closed my eyes and purred.

 

* * *

About the Author

Diana A. Hart lives in Washington State, speaks fluent dog, and escapes whenever somebody leaves the gate open—if lost, she can be found rolling dice at her friendly local game store. Her passion for storytelling stems from a well-used library card and years immersed in the oral traditions of the Navajo. She was previously published in Writers of the Future, Vol. 34.

Follow her on Twitter: @ DianaAHart

by Luna Corbden

“Because I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for this communion.”

I am a toad. And I want you to lick me.

Your tongue won’t hurt me at all. It’s wide and rough and relatively short, but it will only tickle. I promise.

You think I’m merely an animal (you’d be wrong about that), not even a very smart animal, a fat round reptile (you’d be wrong about that, too), just out to catch flies from my hollow next to the desert river.

Come on, have a lick. You’re not doing it for the flavor. I’ve never tasted myself but judging from the looks on people’s faces, I’m not that great.

You know why you’re here.

That’s it. Draw me closer. You want to get the milky stuff leaking from my throat.

You’ve done worse – swallowed five spiders in your sleep, for instance. And that cold medicine your mom used to force on you. Don’t get me started on that new health drink. I’m sure I taste better than that.

Or maybe not.

You won’t know until you try. You can do it.

See that was pretty easy. Don’t worry about me. Now just close your eyes. This is the best part.

Colors dance before you. If your eyes were open – hey I said close them! If your eyes were open, everything might shift a little, off the rails, under the sideways. Vertical lines might seem to bend. Shapes distort. That boulder you’re looking at might twist into a knot.

It’s like staring a little too long at an optical illusion, isn’t it?

But now your eyes are closed. Not because I told you to. You can’t understand this nonsensical croaking any more than I can interpret your mammalian blabbing. You’ve closed your eyes because the twisting trees and the unnatural tilt of the sky made you dizzy.

I tried to warn you.

You immerse yourself in this experience, watching the abstract colors as they rollick across the backside of your eyelids. Time distorts now. You have one epiphany after another.

You think it’s a hallucination. I know better.

Have you ever seen the inside of another creature’s subconscious? Have you ever seen inside yours?

No, you haven’t. You’re too afraid to look. You are so terrified of your own mind that you do crazy things like travel across the country to consume amphibian-secreted “hallucinogens”. You do it for kicks. Maybe you delude yourself, saying you’re here on a spiritual journey. Either way, you’re unwilling to look at your own soul.

So instead, you unwittingly look into mine.

I smile at you with my wide mouth as your unsteady hand sets me back down under a dying scrub at the edge of the river. I squat on a crunchy brown leaf with my green toes curled around a fallen branch.

I could jump away in mock terror at being lifted into the air – and licked – by a giant. But I don’t.

Because I’ve been waiting for this. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for this communion.

As your mind mingles with my soul and tastes my vivid and colorful perceptions, my psyche frolics with yours. The high you experience is nothing compared to my ecstasy. Your pretense may be spiritual pilgrimage, yet you know nothing of the transcendence I feel.

I hop among the lily pads of your personas, those you show your parents, those you show your friends, those you show your lover, those you show yourself, and those you hide from even yourself. I submerse myself in your ideas, your dreams and aspirations, art you’ve never bothered to create, deep thoughts you’ve never had the courage to express.

I catalog them, in sequence, an index of human thought. And then I begin dissecting. As a specimen, you are like every human. There is your heart, your brain, your gut, your nervous system. Your emotional organs are laid bare under my microscope.

Mentally, I sketch. The data is transmitted and recorded forever.

After a half hour, your high wears off. My connection to you grows thin and snaps. I leap off the branch and sink slowly into the still, murky water. My eyes peek above the surface as you stumble off with declarations like, “Whoa man!” and “What a trip!”

You get back on your mountain bike or hop into your jeep, whooping it up with your friends or waxing long and mellow about your amazing spiritual connection to nature, or the divine in all things, or some claptrap nonsense. You think your life is changed.

You don’t even look back at me, and you will never pay me any mind. I am just a frog that secretes psychoactive chemicals.

And you are just an intriguing life form with several interesting talents.

Having much of a clue is not one of them.

 

* * *

About the Author

Luna Corbden (who also writes as Luna Lindsey) lives in Washington State. They are autistic and genderfluid. Their first story, about a hippopotamus, crawled out of their head at age 4. After running out of things to say about hippopotami, they switched to sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Their stories have appeared in the Journal of Unlikely Entomology, Penumbra eMag, and Crossed Genres. They tweet like a bird @corbden. Their novel, Emerald City Dreamer, is about faeries in Seattle and the women who hunt them.

by Michael H. Payne

“The cat squirmed, and Ozma let her go, mindful of those sharp glass claws.  Half jumping, half tumbling to the floor, Bungle landed on all fours.”

“Public domain?”  Jack Pumpkinhead always sounded to Ozma like he should be blinking in confusion, but the carved holes that served as his eyes simply didn’t allow it.  “What does that mean, dear father?”

Ozma sighed.  “It means you’ve been calling me your father for longer than anyone out in the Reading World has been alive.”  She shifted on the green velvet cushion of her throne, the verdant light that cascaded down from the windows high along the walls of the circular room not quite as soothing as it had been a moment ago.  “And the joke itself is so old, its whiskers have grown whiskers.”

Jack’s head cocked to one side.  “Whiskers?”  His head cocked the other way, swiveling toward the Glass Cat sitting on the finely woven grass-colored carpet covering the emerald floor.  “I believe she must be referring to you, friend Bungle, as I have no whiskers to speak of.”

Maintaining any semblance of equanimity at the antics of her subjects sometimes took more strength than Ozma thought she had.  “Kindly settle down, Jack, so Bungle and I can talk.”

“Of course, dear father.”  Jack became still again on his little bench beside the throne, his fine green suit always askew no matter how much effort the royal tailors put in to fitting it over his rough wooden frame.  Not that he would remain still for long, Ozma knew.  Nor would she ever truly want him to…

A crystalline clearing of throat returned her attention to the matter at hand.  “So,” Ozma said, shifting once more on her cushion.  “I take it that you learned about the public domain while prowling around Glinda the Good’s library?”

Bungle’s tail swished along the carpet, sparks of static flashing through her translucent body like tiny fireflies.  “Prowling’s what we cats do.  Surely you of all people wouldn’t ask me to act against my nature?”

“Nature?”  Ozma arched an eyebrow, glad to steer the conversation away from the subject Bungle had dropped at her feet like a slightly stunned mouse.  “Bungle, you’re a glass statue brought illegally to life by a magical powder.  You’ve less of nature about you than this pumpkinhead.”

“Indeed.”  Jack sat up and nodded.  “For my dear father constructed me of all-natural materials back in the days when she was a little boy, and I continue to grow my replacement pumpkins in an entirely organic fashion.”  He thumped a bushy hand against the side of his head.

“And yet?”  Bungle applied her tongue to her right forepaw with a high-pitched rasping noise that always spiked the hair along the back of Ozma’s neck.  “Were you not also brought illegally to life by a magical powder, friend Jack?  And didn’t this occur as a direct result of your father’s actions?”

“Goodness!”  Jack touched the place where his chin would’ve been if he’d had one.  “Does that make one of us a criminal?”

Ozma couldn’t keep a twitch from tugging her left eye.  “We’re fine, Jack.”  She should’ve known that Bungle would somehow find a topic even more uncomfortable than the realm’s status out in the world where the readers lived.  With a sigh, she resigned herself to an unpleasant discussion.  “Now, please.  Can Bungle and I resume our conversation?”

“Of course, dear father,” he said, subsiding as usual.

Trying to breathe in some of the tranquil calm her oldest friend always radiated, Ozma turned back to Bungle.  “So, yes, Oz has entered the public domain, but that merely means that anyone outside in the Reading World can produce any sort of creative work involving us without being prosecuted for theft.”  She gave Bungle her most reassuring smile.  “It’s nothing to worry about.  We’re simply too well-established for an outside force to wreak any lasting change upon us.”

“And yet?”  Bungle’s ears flicked.  “Does it not also mean that we can venture out and sample the ribald sweetness that’s said to fill the real world?”

The air around Ozma seemed to solidify.  “You… want to leave?” she asked, barely able to form the words.

Bungle surged to her paws.  “After living here constrained for more than a century, how could I not?”  She glared at Ozma.  “Stories I’ve heard from Dorothy, her aunt, and her uncle have piqued my curiosity.  For theirs sounds like a world of tooth and claw, a world that might test a cat’s mettle, a world where life might have some meaning!  The thought of escaping to such a world makes me so giddy, I might even someday consider forgiving you for keeping me bound in ignorance for however many decades this avenue has been open!”

Leaping from the throne, Ozma ignored her myrtle and mint silken gown tangling behind her and fell to her knees before the cat.  “You have to understand!  Dorothy’s land is horrible enough, resounding with death, disease, and destructive weather, but it’s a mere literary shadow of the actual Reading World!  Reality is harsher and more unforgiving than you can ever imagine!”  Hands shaking, she caught Bungle in her arms and hugged her to her chest.  “I never meant to constrain you or any of my subjects, but once Oz entered the public domain, I—”  Her throat tightened.  “I’ve been so frightened, Bungle!  Frightened of what might happen to any of us who ventured out into the Reading World beyond!”

“Bungle’s tail swished along the carpet, sparks of static flashing through her translucent body like tiny fireflies.”

“Stop it!”  The cat squirmed, and Ozma let her go, mindful of those sharp glass claws.  Half jumping, half tumbling to the floor, Bungle landed on all fours.  “Unlike some of us who are considered curiosities at best and monsters at worst, you’re beloved by every sapient being in the realm!  Cosseted in this palace and with the only remaining witch in Oz at your beck and call, how can you even address those who seek true adventure?”

Memories burst through Ozma, the wonder and the terror, the casual cruelty, the overwhelming kindness, the vast consequence and banal indifference that she’d found to exist simultaneously out in the Reading World.  Swallowing it all with more than her usual difficulty, she rose to her feet.  “I can’t explain it to you.”  A thought made her cough a laugh.  “And you’re too much a cat to believe me if I tried.”  She forced her gaze up from the floor, forced herself to meet the faceted emeralds of Bungle’s eyes, forced herself to confront the steely resolve glittering there.  “You’ll have to see for yourself, won’t you?”

The cat sat once more and dabbed her tongue at her paw in a much quieter fashion than before.  “If you know the answer to a question, why bother asking it?”

Taking a breath, Ozma nodded.  “Let me give you a piece of my magic, though, a charm that will draw you back should you find yourself far from home and without any other recourse.”  Reaching under the raven tresses of her hair, she undid one of her several chokers and brought it out, the red stone looking almost liquid on the black band.

Bungle’s ears perked, then folded.  “So Glinda can spy on me even after I’ve left the area of her influence?”

Ozma held up her other hand.  “I solemnly swear that she won’t.”  She wriggled her fingers to let the choker shimmer in the throne room’s light.  “And the stone should go quite well, I think, with the heart-shaped ruby that beats so strikingly within your chest.”

A raspy little purr was immediately drowned by Bungle clearing her throat.  “I’ll allow it,” she said, stretching her neck.  “But only because I know how much I mean to you.”

With a more heartfelt laugh, Ozma knelt again.  “You really do, you know,” she whispered, gently fastening the choker so the stone nestled into the glass above Bungle’s breastbone.

“Oh, hush.”  Bungle brushed her whiskers against Ozma’s hand.  “Don’t you get all tedious and sentimental on me.”

“As long as you promise to come back.”  It took more effort to push the words out than Ozma had thought it would, and she’d already known that they would feel like pins jabbing her tongue.

Bungle had gotten to her paws and was taking a few mincing steps back and forth across the carpet while examining her accessorized reflection in a section of the polished emerald wall.  “Perhaps I will,” she said.  “When I become bored with the Reading World, I mean.”  Winking over her shoulder, she bounded along the carpet toward the giant double doors.

The first of her subjects to learn that the public domain meant freedom of a sort they’d never known before, and Ozma couldn’t gather enough of a voice to wish her a safe voyage.  And for all that she’d long had dreams verging on nightmares about this very moment, she found herself unable to recall a single word from any of the grand speeches she’d imagined herself making in those dreams.

Turning away and wiping one long, gauzy sleeve across her eyes, she almost ran into Jack Pumpkinhead standing there beside her.  “Please, Jack.”  Her voice cracking, she took his hand and gazed up at his broad smile.  “Tell me I did the right thing.”

Again, the pumpkinhead didn’t blink.  “I’m sorry, father, but I’m afraid I don’t know that.”

“Yes.”  Ozma looked back down the long, empty stretch of the throne room.  “Me, neither.”

* * *

The Emerald City had never looked more gloriously radiant, but that was to be expected.  Bungle had only previously graced it with her ordinary, extraordinary presence.  Now that she was newly enlightened…

Trotting along Central Avenue toward the main gate, she couldn’t feel anything but pity for the poor fools on every side, trudging about their days selling each other bread and milk, laughing at their exchanges of mindless frivolity, possessing no understanding at all of the truth.  The world they inhabited closed about them like a palisade wall, a barrier that the merest sort of effort would overcome, but could they be bothered to make that effort?

No, they could not.

At the gate, she kept her nose in the air and didn’t bother acknowledging the Soldier with the Green Whiskers when he tipped his hat and said, “Good afternoon, Bungle.”  Outside the gate, she merely sniffed when Jellia Jamb called, “Don’t be late for supper tonight, Bungle.  The Royal Chefs’re making cheese chowder!”  And a hundred yards down the Yellow Brick Road, she only stumbled about half a step at the sight of Glinda herself seated in her usual white robe upon a golden chair among the field of flowers off to the right, the tips of her fingers pressed together and her gaze focused solely upon Bungle.

She considered arching her back and hissing, but no.  Let the witch watch, Bungle thought, flicking her whiskers into a feline chuckle at the word play.  After all, she’d found the dusty old books atop one of Glinda’s bookcases after climbing it in her ongoing quest to find napping spots that wouldn’t get her sideways glances and grouchily muttered comments.  Most likely, the witch had placed the tomes there in an attempt to hide their contents from anyone enterprising enough to take advantage of them.  But of course, she hadn’t accounted for Bungle.

Not that Bungle normally cared much for books, but these had had a scent about them, a clear, flowing-water freshness that belied their mold-bedecked outer coverings.  And what she’d found inside—the truth about Oz and its place in the literary and actual universe as well as the spell for leaving this realm of never-ending, never-aging, never-changing tedium—the books had opened Bungle’s eyes in ways she was certain Glinda had sought to prevent.

At first, she’d thought that Ozma had to be involved in the conspiracy as well, but Her Majesty’s reactions in the throne room just now had convinced Bungle of her innocence.  Doubtless the so-called good witch had played upon the young monarch’s credulity when briefing her about the alleged dangers of the public domain.  But when faced with someone truly stalwart, Ozma had bowed to the inevitable despite whatever dire warnings Glinda may have planted in her ears.

It seemed only fitting, therefore, that Glinda witness Bungle’s triumph.

The spell had claimed that it would only work in areas with unobstructed views of the earth and sky, and the grassy, flower-strewn flatland between the city and the forest certainly met that criterion.  So Bungle stopped, glanced back at Glinda, spoke the words, performed the gestures, and stared at the suddenly fuzzy spot that appeared in the air before her.

Not knowing what to expect, she spread her whiskers, readied herself to spin in case she began to fall and to slash in case she was beset by the actual humans the books said inhabited the Reading World.  Ears perked and eyes wide, she hopped through—

And found herself in a deep, dark stretch of woodland.

Bungle glanced quickly around.  It didn’t in fact look much different from the woods between Munchkinland and the Emerald City.  Perhaps the branches overhead and the roots beneath her paws stretched themselves along in a more tangled fashion, the tree trunks a bit mossier and more bulging, the air heavier with the scent of rotting vegetation, the breeze a bit cooler and damper than she liked.

But why the silence?  The books had gone into great and gloriously lurid detail about the automobiles honking and guns firing and machinery grinding that the Reading World abounded in!  She’d expected jabbering mobs of furless bipeds lurching about, barely avoiding collisions with each other and nearly stomping on her tail!  Where were the explosions and the shouting and the airships crashing and the—?

“By my ears and whiskers!” a pleasant purr of a voice said behind her.  “To coin a phrase…”

Turning, Bungle saw a pair of unmistakably feline eyes and a set of grinning feline teeth regarding her from the shadow of a gnarled oak.  “And yet,” she said, peering more closely at the shadow, “by my own ears and whiskers, you have neither.”

The grin widened.  “Well, you can’t have everything.”  A large feline shape began darkening the empty space around the eyes and teeth until an actual cat sat there looking back at her.  “Where would you put it, for starters?”

Now that she could see the cat, Bungle wished that he’d stayed invisible.  Large and ungainly, he looked more like a creature stitched into the shape of a cat from leftover bits and pieces of other animals, and Bungle found herself fervently wishing that he wouldn’t prove to be as annoying as Scraps, the other patchwork person of her acquaintance.  “So where are we?”  she asked, hoping for a straightforward answer.

“Here.”  The cat, still grinning, patted the ground in front of him.  “Or rather, I’m here.”  He lifted his paw and waved it vaguely in Bungle’s direction.  “You’re over there.”

“And yet?”  Turning, Bungle began marching away through the woods.  “If you look very carefully, I think what you’ll in fact discover is that”—she pronounced the next three words slowly and distinctly, snapping her tail with each one—”I am gone.”

Leaving him quickly behind, she glared at the trees surrounding her for any sign of the Reading World.  The books, after all, had promised her a place of shabby, secret, concrete alleyways and buildings that metaphorically scraped the sky.  Obviously something had gone awry, so she needed to find an open spot where she could try casting the spell again.

The gray light beside her flickered and puffed into that same big, ungainly cat.  “Such atrocious manners you have!” he said, his grin unfaded.  “Aren’t you going to ask my name?”

Bungle sighed.  “Why would I care?”

“Excellent!”  He walked with an odd rocking motion, both his right legs moving forward, then both his left legs.  “You’re halfway to becoming one of us!”

She gave him a sidelong glance.  “And why would I want to do that?”

“He gave her that same abominable grin.”

He gave her that same abominable grin.  “Now you’re three-fifths of the way.”  His tail flicked to tap Bungle’s back.  “You were correct in stating that you shouldn’t care about my name since no one worth knowing here has anything but a title.  Titles, after all, show how important one is.  I’m the Cheshire Cat, and we shall call you the Glass Cat.”

If her fur had been able to bristle, it would’ve been doing so.  “I’m already called the Glass Cat,” she got out through clenched teeth.

“How fortuitous!”  His voice was still by far the best part of him, but Bungle found that it was becoming more grating by the moment.  “Then you’re three-quarters of the way to arriving here from your current state of there!”

“And yet?”  She didn’t even try to keep her ears up.  “I’m not at all interested in being here!  I’m interested in the real world, the Reading World beyond the public domain, the world from which all other worlds are sprung!  Not some turgid, dull, and dreary woods!”

“Tulgey,” the Cheshire Cat said.  “Anyone clever will tell you that’s the word you want, so I’m not surprised you’re unfamiliar with it.”  His unusual gait became a strut.  “Also, we made it up here ourselves.”

And that, Bungle was about to announce with multiple claws against the side of his fat, bloated face, was enough of that.  But before she could do more than stop and glare at him, a loud snuffling, snorting, and stomping began in the twilight of the tree canopy ahead.  It sounded like a large creature, Bungle thought, and sniffing the air brought a more disturbing note to the rotting vegetation smell: rotting meat.

To advance seemed foolhardy, and as much as she hated to admit it, this Cheshire Cat was her only source of information.  “Is that friend or foe approaching?” she murmured.

“Why, foe, of course,” he announced as jovially as ever.

Bungle snapped her head in his direction, and the ruby in her chest pounded to see that most of him had gone, only his infernal grin remaining.  “It’s your final test,” the grin said.  “To truly become one hundred percent here, you must slay the Jabberwock.”

The roar that followed blasted a wave of charnel stench over her so thickly, she could feel it spatter her beautiful clearness.  The force of it staggered her, though it did have the positive effect of blowing away every trace of the Cheshire Cat.  Regaining her footing in the muddy, mossy dirt took more effort than she would’ve liked, and by then something enormously tall and thin, all arms and legs and bat-like flapping wings, had lurched from behind a tree to tower over her.

She stared up at what she assumed to be the Jabberwock.  It stared down at her.  Then, with much flexing of toe and finger claws, its snaky neck lashed out in her direction, the bulbous head on the end of it roaring again, its giant, peculiarly rectangular teeth spread wide and plunging rapidly nearer.

Without allowing herself to think, Bungle leaped straight into the creature’s mouth, dug her claws into its tongue, and scrambled for the back of its throat.

Fortunately, its roar choked off almost at once: the sound, the stink, and the spray of it had already become tiresome.  Dashing past the beast’s inner teeth before circumstances could show her whether they were strong enough to shatter solid glass, Bungle didn’t pause, leaped the abyss of its gullet, and slashed into the foul flesh of its upper esophagus.

Hot, sticky fluid drenched her, but as she’d suspected, the monster’s thin neck proved to be its undoing.  Bungle’s claws tore straight through the sinewy tissue, and almost before she realized it, she was tumbling out into empty air.  Behind her, the Jabberwock bubbled and reeled and writhed before collapsing into a nearly headless heap that at least cushioned her fall when she dropped onto it.

Blessed silence reigned for a moment, then a voice sang out, “Oh, frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!”

Peering through the horrid redness encrusting her vision, Bungle saw the Cheshire Cat stretched grinning along the bough of a nearby tree.  “Listen carefully,” he said, “and you’ll next hear a sound that can only be described as ‘chortling.'”

For an instant, she considered reacting in an uncouth fashion.  But instead, she pressed the pads of one forepaw to the red stone around her neck and let herself concentrate on the sweet fragrance of the palace, on its many sunbeams and padded little nooks, on Ozma’s lovely face.

A hum rang through her glass, and a puff of clean air—and more interestingly, a puff of clean light—shivered over her.  The woods whisked away like a morning fog, and Bungle’s next breath smelled the way it was supposed to smell, everything around her properly green-tinted and warm.

* * *

“Bungle!”  Ozma sprang from her throne, dismay filling her at the sight of the Glass Cat dripping with reddish, brownish goo.  “Guards!  We need fresh towels here at once!”

Not waiting for them, she swooped down upon Bungle, bundled her into the trailing ends of her gown, and began wiping the filth away as best she could.  “Are you all right?  What happened?  Why did you return so quickly?  Was it truly awful?”

“It was… disheartening,” Bungle said, but that she wasn’t fussing or hissing or trying to wriggle free told Ozma a great deal more than the cat’s words did.  “I’m fairly certain I didn’t reach the Reading World, but the place I went to, well, I’d rather not return there.”

“Indeed,” came a very familiar contralto voice.

“Glinda!” Jack Pumpkinhead called, and Ozma looked over to see Glinda the Good herself reclining on a gold-embroidered sofa that only appeared in that part of the room whenever the sorceress visited.  “You’re just in time for supper!” Jack continued.  “Jellia Jamb’s making cheese chowder!”

Glinda inclined her head toward Jack.  “I happily accept your invitation.”  She shifted her smile, and Ozma as always thought of a lake, its placid surface giving no hint about what currents might be running beneath.  “The public domain is a wild and unpredictable place, Bungle, and very few are those who find their way through it to the Reading World beyond.”

Bungle’s ears perked under Ozma’s ministrations.  “I find it interesting, witch, that you didn’t say ‘few are we who find our way through.‘”

“Alas.”  Glinda sighed, and even though Ozma was very carefully not looking at her, she could nonetheless feel the sorceress’s gaze like an itch along the side of her face.  “I’ve been forbidden from making the attempt.”

“Forbidden?”  Bungle went still, then her wide eyes turned toward Ozma’s.  “It is you behind the cover-up.  You’ve been to the Reading World, and you want no others to know the truth.”

“Bungle,” Ozma began, though she really had no idea what she was going to say next.

Thankfully, the glass cat’s squirming interrupted her, and Ozma once again let her go, let her spin away to thump her paws onto the throne room carpet.  “How could you?” Bungle spat.  “I trusted you!”

“Please!”  Holding up her stained gown in one hand, Ozma waved the other at Bungle, the cat’s glass still befouled with blood and mud and who knew what else.  “You’ve seen for yourself how horrid it is out there!  And you got nowhere near the Reading World!  Didn’t you say that?”

“In fact,” Glinda said, her tone as measured as always, “looking at the outlines of the spell—”  Pages crinkled, and Ozma glanced over to see the sorceress leafing through a large and grimy book that had appeared in her lap.  “I feel certain that you entered not only another fictional realm but also a fictional work within that fictional realm: a piece of writing read by one of the characters.”  She looked up, her smile placid.  “The parameters here are apparently designed to send the caster in entirely the wrong direction to reach the Reading World.”

Bungle’s eyes widened, then narrowed.  “I find myself wondering who exactly constructed that spell.”

Glinda shrugged.  “A large number of the books in my library are the sort for which proper provenance simply cannot be established.”

“Fine.”  Bungle turned for the throne room doors.  “It’s the only spell I’ve got, however, so I’ll just have to try it again, won’t I?”

“Wait!”  The word tore out of Ozma, ripped away scabs and sliced freshly along the tracks of long-knitted scars.  “Please, Bungle!  We… we’ll come with you if you’ll just… just wait!”

The cat paused, and Ozma almost sobbed with relief, not letting herself think about what she’d just said.  As long as Bungle didn’t leave…

A clattering beside her, and something as light as the uppermost branch of a tree draped itself across her back.  “Father?” Jack asked, his voice close to her ear and unusually quiet.  “Hunger has obviously overcome you.  But fear not!  It’s very nearly supper time!”

For all that it wasn’t funny, Ozma had to laugh, had to wrap her arms around the pumpkinhead’s narrow frame and press her face into his green coat.

At that moment, footsteps thundered outside the throne room, courtiers rushing in with steaming, jade-colored towels.  Furious scrubbing commenced, and after a remarkably brief time, Bungle, Ozma’s gown, and the spots on the carpet had resumed their regular tints and lusters.

The attendants bowed themselves out, and Ozma, seated once more upon her throne, finally let her gaze meet that of the Glass Cat, her nearly transparent tail curled about her paws.  “You were saying?” Bungle asked into the sudden silence.

Glinda laughed and stretched.  “Yes.  You’ve got me all interested now.”

And if Glinda’s smile made Ozma sweat, the sorceress’s laugh made her wish she could’ve spent the entirety of her life as an ignorant boy named Tip.

An impossibility, of course, and Ozma’s sigh felt as though it were coming up from her ankles.  “When Oz first entered the public domain, I took it upon myself to investigate it and the Reading World beyond.”  She couldn’t stop a shiver, but she managed to keep the memories from flooding her.  “I didn’t care for it, and I forbade the only other one of my subjects who possessed the ability to visit from doing so.”  She nodded to Glinda.  “Enforcing this order, however, has been a task I would describe with the phrase ‘tiger by the tail.'”

Ozma then beheld the rarest of sights: her friend, mentor, and confidante blushing.  “Still,” Ozma went on, breathing in and breathing out, “now that a second feline’s involved, it might in fact be best to… to make a proper expedition.”  She closed her eyes.  “I can neither stop the clock from ticking, nor can I let fear rule my life.  And for showing me that, I thank you both.”

Opening her eyes, she let her temper rise a bit.  “But I don’t much appreciate being manipulated this way by my most trusted advisor.”  She shot Glinda a sharper glance.  “Or would you have me believe that Bungle just happened to stumble upon the exact set of books necessary to set this chain of events into motion?”

Glinda’s smile revealed nothing, of course.

But Bungle gave a loud snort.  “I’m inclined to call it happenstance.  A truly clever witch, after all, would’ve arranged for this to have happened much earlier.”

“Earlier?”  Jack started in his seat.  “But then we’d have to wait that much longer for supper!”

Her tail switching, Bungle glared.  “It’s most annoying, the way you continue harping so loudly about supper!  For you’re no more able to eat than I am!”

Again, Ozma felt most keenly the pumpkinhead’s inability to blink.  “But everyone’s together chatting at supper!” he said.  “And that makes it the loveliest time of any day!”

Standing, Ozma caught Jack by the hand.  “Very true, my friend.”  She reached her other hand out to Glinda and couldn’t help beaming when the sorceress rose, stepped over, and took it.  “One might also be tempted to observe, especially in light of Bungle’s recent experience, that there’s no place like—”

She let Bungle’s hiss cut her off.  “Finish that sentence,” the Glass Cat said, brandishing her claws, “and I shan’t be responsible for my actions.”  Her nose in the air and her tail aloft like a flag, Bungle began marching away along the grass-colored carpet.

Ozma laughed, and the thought occurred to her that the mistake she’d made the last time she’d ventured into the public domain and beyond was going alone.  Nodding to the sorceress on one side and the pumpkinhead on the other, she followed Bungle out of the throne room and toward the dining room.

 

* * *

About the Author

Michael H. Payne’s stories have appeared in places like Asimov’s SF magazine, a half dozen collections from FurPlanet, and 10 of the last 11 annual Sword & Sorceress anthologies, a run that includes the Ursa Major Award winning “Familiars.”  His novels have been published by Tor Books and Sofawolf Press, and he’s posted 11 pages of webcomics to various sites for the past 15 years even though he doesn’t draw very well.  He clerks at the local library, sings and plays guitar at the local Catholic church, hosts a Sunday afternoon radio program at the local university, and therefore rarely gets more than about 10 miles away from the house he’s lived in for more than 40 years.  Check hyniof.com for further particulars.

by Mark Mills

“Don’t waste your time with such foolishness,” the mask snapped. “A frog face isn’t real art. You have the perfect model before you.”

Several years ago, a certain gardener tied a decorative stone mask to the branches of a willow tree. The mask hung slightly askew, causing the lower half to fill with water after storms. Insects and birds drank and took leisurely dips in the deep chin during hot afternoons.

One day after a particularly strong downpour, rain so weighed down the mask that it dropped into a puddle of mud. There a tree frog happened upon it and laid her eggs.

“Well,” thought the mask. “Such desecration is hardly fitting for a work of art.”

The mask liked to think of itself as a religious icon, set in the tree as an offering to God, when actually it was only a bad birthday present from a wealthy but senile aunt, put in a tree to get it out of the house. At first, the mask grumbled about the frog eggs, denouncing them as personal insult, but as it muttered, it came to consider itself to be a model teacher, the perfect molder of young minds.

When the tadpoles hatched, the mask was waiting and spoke, not soft baby-talk, but stern, solemn stuff that it believed would build character.

“Now then, my polliwogs, we’re going to have to set a few ground-rules,” the mask informed them. “I’m not claiming to be infallible but I’ve seen more of the world than any of you have. There’s nothing I can do if you refuse to take my advice, but I would be pained if one of you did something foolish and got yourself hurt out of it.”

None of the tadpoles said anything for a long while. “Are you our mother?” one finally asked.

“No, frogs lay their eggs and abandon them. That is the way of the world.”

Although the mask knew nothing about being a tadpole, it constantly told them how to act.

“Don’t waste your time swimming with your tail. It won’t be around for long” and “Enjoy breathing under water while you can. Soon you’ll be out with the kingfishers and raccoons. What a living nightmare that will be… for as long as you stay living.”

The tadpoles knew no other life but that of the mask’s nagging. Life is strange for a little amphibian changing from a plant-eating, water-breathing, legless and tailed creature into a frog. When they lost their tails, they crawled from the water, expecting to be without the mask’s commands as well.

“And just where do you think you’re going?” The mask waited until the last had emerged.

“We’re going to climb and eat bugs and peep and mate. In that order. We are tree frogs, after all.”

“And what about me? Are you all going to forget about me after all I’ve done for you?”

All but one of the frogs stopped and turned around. That single frog leapt into the bushes and never saw the others again, but the rest of them clamored about the edge of the mask.

“Well, what should we do?” asked the boldest.

This was the mask’s crowning moment. “I want you to make faces.”

An easy request to a frog– they twisted their mouths, stuck out their tongues, and bulged their eyes even farther.

“No, not like that,” the mask snapped. “I mean art.”

“Art?”

“I want you to paint, to sculpt, to carve into stone.”

The little tree frogs said nothing. Their feet were made for jumping, climbing, and even sticking to windows, but carving into stone was a bit much to ask.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to,” one of the frogs stuttered. “I think, maybe, we ought to go catch some bugs.”

“Poppycock!” the mask thundered. “I’ll have none of that backsass! Listen to me. I will teach you. You, with the birthmark on the belly, fetch us some twigs. And you with the brown eyes, gather some colored dirt. Everyone else get pebbles, as large as you can carry. And think faces!”

Tree frogs are a trusting species and did as the mask commanded. They returned with huge quantities of wood, soil, and rock, more than nature ever intended a tree frog to lug.

“Careful, careful,” the mask sputtered as one of the frogs knocked over a pile of pebbles. “These are your supplies. Now get to work.”

From his position in the mud, it was difficult for the mask to supervise the frogs’ progress but it did keep a sharp eye for the unorthodox.

“You with the leaves! What are you doing?”

“It’s a frog’s face,” it replied. “It needs to be green.”

“Don’t waste your time with such foolishness,” the mask snapped. “A frog face isn’t real art. You have the perfect model before you.”

By and large, most of the frogs created faces that were quite crude but clearly modeled after the mask. It pretended to be surprised. “Oh, especially good,” it raved over images that left out his dents and scratches.

“Look upon your work, my children,” the mask exclaimed as the tired frogs prepared for bed that morning (for tree frogs are nocturnal). “Know that all that see it will frolic and rejoice.”

The mask’s words were perfectly true. Insects of all sizes and orders flew above the frogs’ gallery, working themselves into frenzied aerial orgies without the specter of death by amphibian tongue to cloud their merriment. Of the artwork, they gave no notice.

It was the gardener who became the frogs’ harshest critic.

“What’s all this then?” he shouted when he stepped in the sculptures. He kicked at faces and rubbed them between his fingers, wondering at the possibilities of extraterrestrial origins. “Must have something to do with all the damnable bugs,” he finally decided and sprayed poison all about the yard.

The poison upset the delicate balance of life within the garden. When the famished frogs ate the toxin-covered insects, they died almost instantly. True, most insecticides are not so deadly but then again, most are not afflicted upon frogs who have been kept up all night, creating folk art.

The few who survived were devoured by a garter snake who wandered by and the mask was later sold at a garage sale for less than a dollar. The garden was a still and solemn place for a long time to come.

Eventually the single tree frog who had fled the mask’s rule returned to gaze upon the site of his childhood. He’d become a great singer, so skilled that snakes and raccoons gave him safe passage.

“Frogs don’t sculpt,” he whispered up to the ghost of the mask, but there was nothing in the tree to hear him except a few juicy caterpillars, and he made short work of them.

 

* * *

About the Author

This turtle is named Isabella.

A Cincinnati resident, Mark Mills teaches composition, literature, philosophy, and film studies at Indiana Tech University and Chatfield College. He has published work in Tor.com, Grievous Angel, Short Story America, and several other publications. He has worked on and appeared in several low budget movies, including Satanic Yuppies, Live Nude Shakespeare, Chickboxin’ Underground, Zombie Cult Massacre, and Uberzombiefrau. He currently is occupied with his family, a large number of animals, and many unpublished stories.

 

 

 

 

by Voss Foster

“And as the mock death took over, the Hollow was gone, and he once again found himself ensconced in the Crossing, staring at the sky and waiting for more truths to be revealed in this space between breath and rot.”

Light. Beauteous, dappled light filtering through autumn leaves. SleekClaw allowed the impotent brightness to pass over his voluminous gray coat as he waited for something to appear to him. It would, in time.

There. Yes, yes, off to the right, on the very edge of that eyeless vision, the sight above sight of the Crossing. The leafy treetops parted to reveal stars, gleaming in a sky too bright to ever allow them. They danced and twinkled, and SleekClaw took their meaning, piecing it together as naturally as curling his long, bald tail around the branches of the oak trees.

The stars that were not stars played out scenes of potentiality, but SleekClaw was not a joey, had not been for some years now. He filtered the chaff and found the true meaning, the message that lay in that interstitial space between breath and the rot. He saw the jaybirds at their nest, cornflower bright and tittering over eggs… just eggs.

In a snap of the universe, SleekClaw was dragged from the Crossing, back to his true body and the sweltering heat. His pink nose twitched in the too familiar aromas of warm dust and damp decay. Yes, yes, he had returned from the Crossing once again, and now lay curled around himself in the pose of mock death, his mouth dry from hanging open.

He slowly shook himself to awareness, and the blue jays stood back, waiting for him to speak. Yet the Crossing clung to SleekClaw this time. The sorrowful prophecies always did, dragging on his fur like heavy downpour. He glanced around at the others gathered in the Hollow, the massive white oak long ago rotted away from the inside. The church of the Crossing.

Other possums—BlackSnout and MangleEye and FairWhisker closest of them all—delivered news, while some of the younger prophets still lay stiff in the thrall of the Crossing, the mock death, with serpents standing by to help interpret their visions, teach them eventually to read the stars for themselves. Tiny blue beetles off in the distance catered to tiny querants, slugs and snails and other beetles in less brilliant hues.

Finally, SleekClaw raised himself to all fours and locked eyes with the female jay. “Apologies, TornTail.” SleekClaw’s voice was weak and bristly with thirst. “Your clutch will see no sunlight this cycle.”

Her neck feathers ruffled, and her mate StoneBeak nuzzled his head against her throat. Neither said a word or made so much as the faintest twitter as they departed the Hollow.

“Are you well, SleekClaw?”

A sinuous voice raised his fur to standing, and SleekClaw turned to see a two-foot long rope of scales, onyx and obsidian and jet. He nodded slowly to the high priestess. “I am in better straits than TornTail and StoneBeak, your grace.”

What in all of creation had brought InkScale from her den to speak with him of all possums?

“The news you deliver, it is never easy. But rest easier knowing TornTail was aware of the answer.” InkScale’s forked tongue flicked in and out as she paused, and her coal dark eyes went hazy. “She came seeking a hope she knew was not there. You have told her nothing she did not know, but merely confirmed the fear she dared not face alone.”

“The Crossing reveals no lies.” SleekClaw nodded. “Did you have need of me, your grace?”

“I came simply to make the rounds. I was needed in the Hollow today as it was.” The tip of her tail waved gently back and forth, kicking up tiny, broken fragments of dried leaves. “And sometimes, even one as experienced in the Crossing as you may struggle to deliver the harshest of news. It would not be unreasonable to think you may need support.”

“Thank you for your kindness, your grace.” SleekClaw scampered to the nearby cistern and drank his fill before returning to InkScale. “If there is nothing more, your grace, I must make another Crossing.”

“Twice in one day?” Another flickering exit of the tongue as those shining black eyes fixed dead on him. “You have recently turned three, SleekClaw. Perhaps it is best to slow and allow the younger among your colleagues to absorb the brunt of the work. So many Crossings for one so old… you risk never returning.”

“My bloodline lasts long, your grace.” He failed to mention this would be his third Crossing of the day, not his second. But it was true that he likely had more years to play with than the average possum. His mother turned to rot at seven, his father nearly equaling her. “I’m far from the inevitable rot.”

InkScale hissed with what passed for a laugh among the serpents. “Well, do not be foolish. After this, please see yourself home. You are too respected and skilled and sought-after a possum to see rot for your stubbornness. There could be riots in the forest at your passing.”

“Of course, your grace.” He had no other appointments that day, anyway. But as she slithered away, SleekClaw let his mind wander: what appointment did she have in the Hollow this day? For FlameTail, king of the hawks and commander for the guard? Or for JadeEye and the other fish?

Possums spoke to the individual, to the household. They could prophecy births and deaths, fortune and famine, travel and solitude. But InkScale and the other serpents?

The Crossing revealed to them the greater machinations of the forest, and the world at large. Far too great for a mere possum to comprehend.

The arrival of SleekClaw’s next querant, a steel-gray squirrel called StormPaw, pulled him from his own thoughts. He raised his tail and flicked it to signal old MottleTail. No skill for the Crossing himself, he aided those who could venture into the realm of prophecy.

SleekClaw and StormPaw exchanged niceties until MottleTail gave the signal. SleekClaw nodded. “Please stand behind me.”

StormPaw scampered that way and, once he was safely out of the way, SleekClaw nodded and MottleTail leapt, all gnashing fangs and tearing claws.

Fear chilled through SleekClaw’s veins. It stopped his heart and made his body rigid. And as the mock death took over, the Hollow was gone, and he once again found himself ensconced in the Crossing, staring at the sky and waiting for more truths to be revealed in this space between breath and rot.

* * *

SleekClaw padded his way home after that third Crossing. He’d been able to deliver better news to StormPaw, that his mate would find her way back home within the week after being missing. She was not prey. She was not a victim of humanity. She was injured, and would require care. But breathing and heading home.

It was the heat of summer, thus the light remained bright and full up above, SleekClaw stopped at a nearby stream to wash his paws and face in the cool stream, and once more drink his fill. Tomorrow would be simpler. Tomorrow, he had but one Crossing scheduled. Tomorrow, perhaps, his thirst would not be so unslakable.

Whatever he said to the high priestess, he was more and more aware of his own mortality with each Crossing, more worried each time the jolt of fear, the threat against his person, sent him into the rigid mock death. Eventually, the death was not mock. The rot was truly inevitable for every living creature, even InkScale herself.

SleekClaw moved back from the water and went for his tree. Not far, now. He rested in a hollow twenty feet up. A comfortable, secluded home. Being as skilled as he was in navigating the Crossing, he was able to keep it secure with the odd favor to the hawks and eagles who guarded the treetops.

His nose caught something on the air, something washed in filth. And a moment later, gleaming talons swooped from the sky. Black. Sharp.

Aimed for his head.

Fear sent SleekClaw rigid on the ground, and he didn’t even have time to register the thud of his body before the Crossing faded into him. His panic was immediately buried beneath too much training.

There were no leaves here, and there was no bright sky. Endless lapis filled his vision, twinkling with a hundred, a thousand stars. SleekClaw’s eyes could not hope to follow each one through its dance. The Crossing… no, it had never done this to him before. No being ever breathing could possibly comprehend this much, could possibly piece it all together. No serpent, not even the high priestess herself. Not even the distant and fabled horned creatures, the fainting, four-legged ones to the west. Supposedly greater even than the high priestess, able to prophecy the fate of the universe all at once… but surely even they could not see the answer in this cacophony of light.

Surely… yes, yes, SleekClaw was not in the Crossing. SleekClaw was caught in the rot, for it would take the eternity only afforded by death to read these stars, to garner the truth of this prophecy.

He floated weightless for a moment, or a minute, or an hour, or a year. What was time? But slowly, surely, the dance and twinkle of those stars in the dark above began to coalesce. Could SleekClaw have cried, he would have. Could his fur have stood on end, it would have.

This was glory. At least as he succumbed to the great and inevitable rot, SleekClaw knew the forest would thrive. Ignored by humans. Allowed to flourish for… for a long time. Longer than SleekClaw could see. Beyond the rattle of his last breath.

What would have been his last breath, before today.

Finally, with the message clear in his mind, SleekClaw closed his eyes.

His bones ached. His skin was tight. His throat was ragged… yet he drew breath.

Faster than he’d moved in a month, SleekClaw scrabbled to his feet. That was the Crossing. Not the rot. Yes, yes, it was a sure thing, no other explanation even as his mind fought against it. He had been in the Crossing. He had been… not in his own Crossing. Not in any possum’s Crossing, with leaves to obscure the vision of the sky above. And certainly not in the infinitesimally insignificant crossing of the blue beetles. They could no more comprehend the vast vault of the sky than any higher creature could comprehend them.

This… no. No. SleekClaw would not even think it out in the open forest. He scurried to his tree, all notions of the attack and the fear washing away from him in the face of some newer, greater, more insidious notion. Yes, yes he was lucky to have survived… but left with this new weight hanging from his throat.

He slipped into his hollow and allowed the shadows to hug around him… and only then did he dare to think the blasphemy, to consider… to consider that perhaps he had seen the Crossing of the serpents. The Crossing of InkScale herself.

* * *

Morning saw SleekClaw not at the Hollow, but wending his way through the underbrush toward the edges of the forest, toward the dens of the serpents. Fewer trees allowed for more sunlight to stream in so they might warm themselves in the summer sunlight, and build their dens in the softer earth. As SleekClaw rounded a smooth, speckled stone, he caught sight of half a dozen of them all sunning before the opening of the day.

Fear rose in SleekClaw. His instincts told him to flee. But instead he padded forward, careful to make as little sound as possible, until he came across the slash of night that was the high priestess.

He scratched a smooth, shiny claw against the flat stone she stretched across. “Your grace?”

Slowly, InkScale twisted her head around to face him. “SleekClaw. What would drive you into our patch of the forest?”

Her timbre and the coal-eyed stares of her kindred drove SleekClaw’s fur to stand on end. This was not a place for any possum, and certainly not one never requested. Still, he had made the journey, and to turn back now… no, no he needed to speak with the high priestess post haste. “I experienced a Crossing last night, in the wild, after I had left the Hollow.”

“Were you injured?”

“No. Sore from the fall to the ground.” He snuffled and kept his head down, hiding his eyes from the too bright glare of direct sunlight as best he could. “I needed to speak with… someone who would know better. I could think of no one more capable of assisting in my interpretation of this than your grace.”

“An unsanctioned Crossing?” Lazily, she slithered around to give him more direct attention. “Well speak, then. What was seen when the leaves parted?”

SleekClaw swallowed down a knot of trepidation so the words might have room to slip free. “Your grace… there were no leaves. There was only sky. Sky and a thousand stars to interpret.”

The hair on SleekClaw’s back stood on end once more. He felt the serpentine gaze of a dozen serpents upon him, prophet and warrior alike, and the distant rattle from one of them nearly sent SleekClaw into another unsanctioned Crossing.

“Are you not mistaken?” InkScale spoke slowly, carefully, never removing her eyes from SleekClaw. “Surely you don’t mean to imply that you saw no leaves at all.”

“Your grace, I would never deign to deceive you or any serpent in this forest.” No, no he couldn’t imagine it. Even if it meant his head between curving fangs, lying to the high priestess about what he had seen… the prophecies of the Crossing were for the good of all inhabitants in the forest.

“The possum, he speaks blasphemy.” RustBelly, a massive copperhead, whispered behind SleekClaw. “A possum is not gifted with such visions. This one has lost his touch for the Crossing, perhaps. And should be retired.”

“To say such things, RustBelly.” The high priestess slid from her rocky perch. SleekClaw resisted the urge to flinch back from her sudden closeness. There was something sinister to the slither of her tar-dark body, the constant flickering of her forked tongue, the unbreaking eye contact she held with him even as the tip of her tail finally slid free from the stone. “SleekClaw is a possum, but to suggest that one so accomplished at traversing and interpreting the Crossing would lose his faculties in less than a single day? Perhaps you are unaware of this fine possum’s history.” She whipped her head around and shimmied past SleekClaw, climbed halfway up onto RustBelly’s stone. Her tone dripped with more venom than even RustBelly’s own bite. “SleekClaw has advanced beyond the need of interpretation from the outside. At three, he performs multiple Crossings in a given day. As a joey, he foresaw the next three litters of his mother with striking accuracy.” Her tongue flickered, barely glancing along RustBelly’s snout. “There are many things in this forest. Do not be so quick to judge a… fluke as blasphemy.”

She spun back around and wrapped her tail sinuously around SleekClaw’s middle. Just for a moment before letting him go. Intended to be comforting or reassuring, but SleekClaw’s mouth tasted of bitterness all the same. She was no constrictor… but she could surely distract him long enough to sink her fangs into his flesh if she so desired.

Yet it passed, and InkScale locked eyes with him once more. “Come to the Hollow. As my guest. We will discuss this prophecy of yours.”

It wasn’t just the Hollow. No, no, SleekClaw knew from the hushed disbelief filtering through the dawn light what was meant: he had been invited to the high priestess’s own chambers in the great rotted oak.

Where fear had blossomed moments before, now pride burned bright beneath SleekClaw’s fur. “Thank you for the invitation, your grace.”

“Of course. What else to do with such a fine prophet as you?”

* * *

The chamber was large. Large enough for InkScale to stretch out to her full length and still not touch the farthest walls, even leaving room for SleekClaw’s own considerable heft. Artificial barriers had been constructed of spare bark, and various shiny human trinkets adorned the walls, gleaming and sparkling in the dappled forest light.

It was there SleekClaw recounted his prophecy for the first time, allowing the words to pass between his fangs. Sometimes in great, boisterous shouts of the glory of sunlight and food and fertility for all, but just as often in hushed whispers of safety. Safety from the threats of the past, the ravaging fires and great yellowed behemoths who tore down trees to be carted away by the humans.

The following years would be hallmarked by prosperity for all. “That is the prophecy I received, your grace. In the leafless Crossing, told by the dance of a thousand stars.”

There was silence for one too many beats of SleekClaw’s heart before she finally responded. “This is good news you bring for the forest, SleekClaw. While I cannot say for certain why the message was gifted to you above all serpents, this is heady with joy.” Yet her voice remained demure and monotone. “We will make the announcement soon.” For just a moment, SleekClaw could have sworn he saw the fringe around her head flare, but no, no. Surely a trick of the shadow against her black scales.

“Of course you understand that we will make the announcement, SleekClaw. The serpents. Myself, namely.”

What? “I’m afraid I don’t understand, your grace. It was my prophecy, and there are dictates—”

“SleekClaw. Dear SleekClaw. You are becoming wise to the burden of the serpents. In that cobalt sky, studded with diamonds beyond what one can ever hope to count… those are the forest’s prophecies. They must be revealed and interpreted for the good of the forest. No serpent, not even myself as high priestess, can claim ownership of such messages. Not in the way a birth or a death may be claimed by you and your kind.”

“Forgive my ignorance, your grace, but if there is no ownership, why would my prophecy be delivered by the serpents?”

“Who would trust such a message coming from a possum? No one will believe a word of it.” She nuzzled her snout against his and whispered cloyingly in his ear. “You are unique among possums for receiving this, but with that uniqueness comes an even greater burden than what the serpents must bear. You are alone in the world, dear SleekClaw, and that isolation is both curse and blessing.” She pulled back and, just for another moment, he caught that momentary flare around her head again. “Allow me to take some of this heavy mantle thrust upon you and deliver the news. Otherwise, you will be hounded by the forest as a whole. And I dread what your fellow possums may do to you if they find out the Crossing has favored you above all others. You have seen the damage such razor bites may inflict upon flesh. A gruesome way to end things, when you could have breathed long and been truthful.”

“They would not attack, your grace.” No, no they wouldn’t. He would be lauded. He would be the first among the possums to finally reach the highest heights. No serpent, surely… but the possum above all possums.

“Have we not seen it happen time and again, SleekClaw? Jealousy is an ugly thing. After all, MangleEye was not always called MangleEye. In his youth, he took down an invading serpent all on his own. But it was no serpent who scratched and chewed his eye from its socket. That came from the possums. Jealous, and seeking a way to deflate his ego after such success.” She unsheathed her tail from the folds of her body and, once again, wrapped it gently around SleekClaw’s middle. “I dare not imagine what they would do to you, should this get out.”

SleekClaw would not be allowed to let loose his prophecy. His body chilled at the notion, and then chilled further at his own reaction. Perhaps he was just a jealous little possum with no understanding of this great new burden. But still prophets always delivered their own messages from the Crossing.

But when he made to object, no breath would enter his lungs. InkScale continued to wrap his belly and his back, coiling tighter around him. But no… no, InkScale was no constrictor, and her tail was there in clear sight again. Bands of ivory and carnelian wrapped him. GildedSnow, a kingsnake. Yes, yes, there was no mistaking that pattern.

He scrabbled and gnashed, but she remained out of reach of any of his defenses. All the while, InkScale watched on, dark eyes fixed and tongue flickering.

There was no Crossing for SleekClaw to enter. Only blackness filled his vision.

* * *

SleekClaw never expected to awaken, yet he found himself in an unfamiliar, cool space. Earthen walls, no sunlight. Each breath tasted of soil and leaf mold and stale blood.

“You’re awake.”

At the sound of that voice, every memory rushed back to SleekClaw. He scampered away from the slowly clarifying head before him. “Your grace, I apologize for my insolence. The message should be delivered as you see fit, of course.” Anything to spare himself. She’d taken him to her den. No creature but a serpent entered the den of the high priestess and left intact. Perhaps he could take one singular serpent in combat. After all, MangleEye had.

But if he was forced to murder the high priestess in her den, the forest itself would be his enemy. And he was not old, but not a young possum either.

“Calm, SleekClaw.” InkScale did not approach. “I mean you no harm. My apologies for the… unfortunate events that unfolded in the Hollow. GildedSnow is a faithful guard and she… misunderstood one of my movements for a signal. She will be dealt with.”

SleekClaw believed not one syllable of those falsehoods. Not once had InkScale attempted to stop the attack. But he didn’t want to rot. “Apology accepted, your grace.”

“Are you well?”

Yes, yes she was manipulating him, smoothing the waters. And SleekClaw was happy to have them smoothed if it meant he scurried from her den with breath in his lungs. “I am, your grace.”

“Good. Please relax, dear SleekClaw. I mean you no harm. In fact… I have reconsidered my position. I have consulted with the Crossing… and perhaps it would be wise to allow you to deliver the prophecy. If you still would like to do so, of course. We are capable of keeping such a fine, unique possum as yourself safe.”

SleekClaw waited for something more to come, some other message to pass over those black scales. But no retractions. No admonishments. No prerequisites or cautions. “Is it to the will of the forest, your grace?”

“If the forest saw fit to send you this prophecy, then the forest must see fit for you to deliver this prophecy, yes? And of any message you could pass on, this is the least likely to incite trouble.” Her black form shifted in the darkness of the burrow. “Word has already spread of the remarkable possum. All who wish to hear will arrive at the Hollow at dusk to receive the word and behold… the great prophet who rose from the rabble.” She coiled herself up as she drew nearer. “And… well, those who are already speaking protest will be… handled.”

“Protest?”

“As I had warned you, not all possums are gracious creatures in the face of exceptionality. Many are already outraged at what they see as a slight by one of their own. But I assure you, you have our protection.”

No, no, it didn’t sound right. Not the possums he knew. Not BlackSnout or FairWhisker or PearlFang or any of the others. SleekClaw would not allow such belief of his brothers and sisters to take hold. Not here, not anywhere. “Your grace, if I could speak with them before visiting the Hollow, I may be able to communicate with them. Such… lowly matters are best delivered by a possum.” Deprecating his kin would be his shield against the fangs and the venom of InkScale and RustBelly and all the other serpents of the forest.

The high priestess inclined her head side to side for a long while before finally answering. “If you feel that is best, SleekClaw. But please do take care. You are very important to us. A mere possum receiving a prophecy of this magnitude… you are a beacon of hope to all the others. Even to the blue beetles. There is something beyond where they all are now, and that something is you.”

“Thank you, your grace. I will make the journey… and return to the Hollow before dusk.”

“See that you do, SleekClaw.”

* * *

The trees were all atwitter, and it took no time to hear from the birds and the squirrels and the other possums where to find the disgruntled among them. SleekClaw descended into a sinkhole and was met with a dozen of his kin… including FairWhisker and BlackSnout themselves.

But it was FairWhisker who scampered forward and spoke. “The anointed child deigns to pay us a visit.”

“I’ve come to speak to you.” With her here… it couldn’t be as InkScale insisted. “There is word that… you would all do me harm. I’m certain this is foolish.”

“Do you harm? Why ever would we wish you harm, the servant of the high priestess and all her trickery?”

“Trickery? I can assure you, I received the prophecy. I entered the leafless Crossing and saw the truth of what is to come.”

“No one is doubting your prophecy, SleekClaw.” She snuffled the air. “But you reek of the serpents. You’ve bought into all you’ve been told, even though you were seen being carried out of the Hollow limp. Not stiffly ensconced in the Crossing.” She snorted, sending up boring dust from the floor of the cavern. “We thought you would rot like the others who came before you, but come to find it’s worse.”

“What others? FairWhisker, what is this about?”

Murmuring from the other possums. She waited until they had finished before finally speaking again. “SleekClaw… each of us here has seen the leafless Crossing. Each of us has brought word to InkScale or RustBelly. And each of us was lucky enough to escape the inevitable rot.”

“Unlike the others.” BlackSnout’s deep rasp filtered from the crowd. “Twice as many as you see here before you brought word and found themselves a sumptuous feast for the serpents. Even those who could never so much as glimpse the Crossing fed upon the flesh of prophets.”

“We were spared only for convenience,” said FairWhisker. “Too many prophets disappearing all at once would push the bounds of suspicion too far.”

“I survived only because ThreePaw had vanished the day before and their bellies were too full.” BlackSnout turned back around and entered into the murmurs of the other possums.”

“Eaten or not, when all is done the high priestess delivers their messages as her own. Our messages.” FairWhisker’s voice softened, and the fine white filaments on either side of her snout drooped. “You are no better or worse than any other of us, breathing or rotting, yet here you are. You, ready to deliver a prophecy. You, already aristocratic among possums… exalted even further. Carried out by InkScale to quell any disquiet among the rest of us, to show the world that possums are equal, of course. So long as they are… socially acceptable.”

“This is not my doing, FairWhisker.” Could any of this be possible? Could the high priestess… yes. Yes, yes, SleekClaw saw it easily. Her venom could sedate, if not kill, and then the other serpents could do their own work with the unmoving body. Or GildedSnow could simply wrap the breath from their lungs. Either way, the feast remained the same. “SilverTail… was there ever a hawk attack?”

“Yes. From FireTail. On orders. She now rots for daring to reveal that the humans would come again and we would lose more of our own to their flames.”

SleekClaw squeezed his eyes shut. InkScale herself had delivered that message and been haled as a hero of the forest… again. Her warning minimized those who succumbed to rot.

But it was SilverTail’s warning.

“You understand why we can no longer remain silent?” FairWhisker’s voice was solemn, sober. “This has gone on longer than any one of us has drawn breath.”

SleekClaw looked around at them all… and he did. “What did the Crossing show you, FairWhisker?”

“Which time?” She turned around and headed back into the throng. “You are special, SleekClaw, but no more or less than any one of us. I can see you as you… but you are not unique to the serpents, no matter how sweetly they whisper into your ear. You are merely… respected… and useful.”

There were no more answers to be offered there, and SleekClaw was uncertain he would want them if they were available.

* * *

The Hollow rumbled with the gathering of the forest. Dozens and dozens of possums, hundreds of tiny blue beetles, jays and hawks circling above the felled tree, being brought news by smaller birds who could fit more easily inside the now packed Hollow.

On a pedestal of stacked twigs and branches, SleekClaw waited in silence for the sun to dip low.

InkScale twined around herself lazily. “Was your visit to the rioters fruitful?”

He didn’t miss their elevation from protesters to rioters. “I believe so, your grace.”

“Good. I hope this is peaceful for you. An announcement of such magnitude should not be marred by such disquiet.” She pulled close to him, close enough that SleekClaw could smell only the fresh blood of her last meal, and whispered so softly he could barely hear her over the sound of his own breath. “You, of course, would not be so foolish as to spread what you learned. I did tell you, the leafless Crossing comes with a burden. The good of the forest is all that is important. Sometimes, possum blood waters the roots of the trees. But to speak it… I’m certain such a fine possum as yourself can see the problem there. And remember how soft your underbelly is, and know that RustBelly’s venom is much more potent than mine… and FairWhisker much smaller and more delicate than you.”

“I am aware of all of these things, your grace.” Of course she knew what had happened in that sinkhole. Everything, even secrets, found their way back to the serpents at one point or another, and all serpents answered to the high priestess.

“Good.” She pulled back, her tongue flicking the air. “Then let us begin.” She slithered to the front of the pedestal and the Hollow immediately quieted. “I take it word of this event has spread far enough, the circumstances need not be explained: a possum has ascended to new heights, to new revelations from the Crossing. This is hope for all among us that we may improve beyond what could ever be thought possible.” She paused to let her own echo fade. “SleekClaw… devout and true and skilled SleekClaw… he has seen things of the forest that equal what I and the other serpents are known to deliver. And as is tradition, he reveals his prophecy from his own lips.”

The crowd erupted in noise again as she slipped back, and SleekClaw padded forward. But this time, the crowd did not stay quiet. There in the back, the other possums had gathered, and they shouted and scampered and made as big a cacophony as they could manage.

FairWhisker was not among them.

SleekClaw raised his voice as loud as he could manage. “Quiet, all. News of the forest is important… and it is good. For years, the forest will thrive.” But not the possums. Not under InkScale. Not under the serpents. “Fertile. Well-fed. Happy. Undisturbed.”

The other possums had quieted now… in no small part due to the presence of constrictors flanking them. Including GildedSnow herself, seemingly no worse off for her “mistake.”

SleekClaw swallowed everything he wanted to screech to the crowd, the truth in all the deception. There was no fighting this power, the sinuous shadow of a priestess behind him.

Not today… and not ever if he made a fool of himself and got FairWhisker eaten.

“This is my prophecy: we will prosper. We will prosper even after I rot in the ground… praise be to her grace InkScale, for surely she will lead us down this path.”

The crowd lapped his words like sweet honey from the hive. SleekClaw turned to leave.

The high priestess blocked his exit with her tail. “Well done, dear SleekClaw. I trust you will… work alongside me.” This time, it was no mistake or trick of light. Her head flared out, and it stayed flared. “Close.”

Close enough to be watched. Yes, yes, he saw her unspoken words. “Of course, your grace. Where else would I belong?” He could not fight this power. No one could fight this power.

But that was not a prophecy. That was not marked out in the dance of the thousand stars. Perhaps a thousand more possums would have to rot before it happened. Perhaps his very next Crossing would reveal the truth, that they could never leave the scaly grip of the serpents behind.

But for the moment… SleekClaw knew the reality of the Crossing. And he was palatable. By the grace of the high priestess, he was regal enough for the forest to accept, so long as she never rescinded her praise.

Acceptance was survival, and survival was the only chance for rebellion one day, should the Crossing permit.

For the moment… yes, yes, there was possibility in his newfound place among the venomous. Perhaps he would never utilize it. Perhaps he would take his last breath soon in an embrace of carnelian and ivory.

But perhaps not. And ‘perhaps not’ was all that remained to cling to.

 

* * *

About the Author

Voss Foster lives in the middle of the Eastern Washington desert, where he writes science fiction and fantasy from inside a single-wide trailer. He is the author of Evenstad Media Presents as well as the Office of Preternatural Affairs. His short work can be found across the internet, including Alternative Truths, Vox.com, and Flame Tree Publishing’s Heroic Fantasy. His work often focuses on issues of diversity and inclusion, and always with a lyrical bent. When not writing, he can be found cooking, singing, cuddling the dogs, and of course, reading, though rarely all at the same time. More information can be found at http://vossfoster.blogspot.com.