“Be careful walking to school,” Vimala says, a mantra that is common in their mornings. Her daughter Chinni has to walk half an hour to get to school, and while she is always accompanied by her friends, Vimala still worries. The road is more of a dirt path, and she knows how easy it is to be tempted by something off the path. People with safety and security could dream of paths less taken and find whimsy in twisted, poorly maintained routes. For people like Vimala and her family, the well-worn paths were the easiest and the shortest paths to the destination.

“Yes, Amma,” her daughter says, and Vimala wishes that she could offer her daughter more than just words of advice and warning. Her husband owns a bicycle, but he is off to work at the break of dawn. In the evenings, he leaves the fields for the local bar, spending half his salary on cheap liquor and fried snacks. Vimala does not know what he finds in the sordid, dirty place. The few times she has visited to bring back her inebriated husband, she found a place filled with grimy men, cheap string lights covering a thatched shed, some delusion of being something more than the place actually was. It was a place of vice, a place where dreams died, a place where men withered and finally let go of their hopes of leaving the village behind for something grander and greater.

Chinni is well-behaved, and she comes home with report cards with high numbers and comments from her teachers that Vimala reads with pride. But she is alone in her pride. Already, she is hearing from her in-laws about the eventual day when Chinni will be taken out of school. The only thing keeping Chinni in school is the free lunch given by the government and the free childcare provided by the teachers. But the colleges that come after school will ask for tuition, and there is no college within a traveling distance from their home. Chinni will have to be kept in a hostel, and Vimala knows that in their family, such things are unheard of.

In their village, daughters are treated like yearly crops. They are raised to harvest and then sold. Sons are trees, watered and cared of, expected to provide shade. Daughters are never treated as one’s own. Vimala sees that thought in both men and women. She remembers the sting of her own childhood, of never belonging. Her mother’s home became her brother’s, and this new home she has with her husband is her husband’s. But it seems she is alone in remembering. Everyone else around her seems to understand and accept that it is the way the world works, and it is the way the world must continue to work. They want her daughter to repeat Vimala’s life. When Chinni is a girl still too young, she will be placed like a doll in front of some strange family and their son. The family will appraise her value and demand a dowry, as if they are doing Vimala an enormous favor by taking her daughter away from her.

Vimala wants to say she will never partake in the ritual, but her life is evidence that she has done everything just as other people have. She will live the same life as the people around her, and perhaps the only inheritance she will leave her daughter is the same fate. A transactional marriage with a man that others deem appropriate, a lifetime of domestic chores and simple living, a life devoid of dreams. Vimala wishes that her daughter could live any life other than her own. Anything would be better than a life so barren of love, so bereft of hope, and so destined for an inconsequential life and death.

But she cannot offer anything more to Chinni. Instead all she can offer her are the smallest of pleasures. Vimala takes out two candies from the knot she’s made at the end of her saree. They are hard mango candies, sweet and sour, wrapped in thin paper. She presses them into Chinni’s hand.

“Come home right after school,” she says. “Don’t hang around the school field.”

Winter is coming, and the days are growing shorter. The path from the school to their home is too narrow for cars, but people travel on bicycles and motorbikes, and she knows the recklessness of men when they are given anything that can go fast. “Chinni” means small, and her daughter has always kept to her namesake. She is a bird-like thing, thin and gangly, easy to miss.

“And walk on the side of the road,” Vimala warns her.

“What if I don’t?” Chinni asks, a joking tone in her voice.

“Then the Boochodu will get you!” Vimala yells, tickling her daughter’s sides. It is a frequent joke in their house. A threat of a mystical bogeyman who will take her daughter away. Vimala had received the same threats from her mother when she was a child, although the tone had been different. Vimala had thought the Boochodu to be a real person, some shadowy figure in the night who came and abducted unruly children. For her daughter, the Boochodu was a character restricted to bedtime stories. Chinni knew he wasn’t real nor a real threat.

After Chinni leaves, Vimala sets out to complete the day’s work. She is considered a housewife, but the house is much to maintain. She hears of women in the cities who have maids or machines to do the dishes and the laundry, but in their little village, all she has is her two hands. They are rough and calloused now, and she resents the day Chinni’s will be the same. She feeds the chickens in the yard and cooks lunch for her and husband. With the steel lunch box tied up in cloth, she walks to the field to join her husband in working the land.

It is difficult labor, under a sun that does not relent, but it is the only work available in their land. She sets out to leave earlier in the evening than her husband. Someone has to be home when Chinni returns. A train passes through the edge of the farm land, and she imagines the journey of the train, all the people traveling inside of it. The train makes the same journey every few days, but it has seen more of the world than Vimala has. She has never been to a city, and the little television in their home is a relic of the past, with a screen that curves outward and where everything is too colorful, too artificial.

In the evenings, after Chinni comes home from school and before her husband comes back, she watches a soap opera for a half an hour while Chinni does her homework. It is the one little pleasure in her otherwise mundane life. The woman in the show is belittled and humiliated, overworked, and Vimala sees parts of herself in the woman. Granted, the woman lives in a palatial house, wears jewelry even to sleep, but at the core, their problems are the same. A bad husband, a sad marriage, and a life that seems devoid of hope. But in those soap operas, hope does sprout eventually. All the problems are resolved by magic. The woman’s husband changes into a romantic hero, and the heroine herself discovers she is special and talented. After thousands of episodes and countless misunderstandings, there is a happy ending.

But Chinni is not home yet, and the soap opera episode ends on another cliffhanger. Vimala goes out of their little house to see if she can see a little figure walking on the road in the dusk. There is no one, and the light is rapidly diminishing. Soon, she will be able to see nothing. She lights the kerosene lamp and heads out beyond their compound fence.

It is only a half-an-hour walk, a route Chinni has taken for over a year. Sometimes she does come home late, disregarding Vimala’s warnings to play with her friends in the dusty school field. From her home, Vimala ventures out on the path to school, but she sees no one. She goes to the homes of Chinni’s classmates, but they tell she left the school on time while they stayed behind to play. She comes home again, hoping that she might find her daughter in the house, but it is empty.

At the bar, her husband is too drunk to be of any help, and so she walks the path between their house and the school. She checks behind the school building, where there are always abandoned beedi butts and broken bottles of liquor. She checks the fields and the bus stand and finds nothing.

She continues her search, poring through the streets of the village, knocking on every door that she can think of. Chinni is light enough that most adults can carry her with one arm. There are so many places where a little girl can be hidden. So many ways to hurt a child so fragile.

Finally, she makes her way to the bar, where her husband is sitting with friends. His face is slack with drink, his words slurred. It takes him a minute to register what she is saying, and when it does, he is not as worried as her, not nearly as concerned. The men start from the bar, each armed with heavy steel flashlights and lanterns, searching through the fields and the nearby forest, calling out her name.

The other women come to Vimala and escort her back home. Her home is relegated to waiting, to wailing in silence while the sky gradually lightens into morning. The day passes and another, and a week goes by. Her house remains empty. The police are informed, but there is little they can do. The truth is that village lives do not hold much value, and Vimala herself knows that it could be a freak accident. There are old wells in the village that have never been filled up or closed. As more of the forest is being converted to farmland, kraits and cobras are beginning to crawl through the rice paddies and the village alleyways.

After a week, there is an unsaid acceptance of Chinni not returning. Her husband stops his search and buries himself in half-hearted grief and alcohol. The police ignore her gaze when she goes to the police station for updates. Vimala is not angry with them. There is nothing to search for. The old films she sees on television have crimes with clues, with pieces of fabric left for detectives to find, with motives and money to be gained, but in her case there is nothing.

Vimala continues her search, scouring the fields and shining lights into open borewells, venturing further into the surrounding forest and calling out Chinni’s name and getting no response. She stops going to the fields and stops cooking their humble meals. Their house gathers dust and she gains the feral appearance of those on the fringes of society.

She goes out earlier and earlier on endless searches in the same area, seeing if there is some new hiding spot in her old village she will discover. Hope is long gone, but she wants an end. She wants an answer. One morning she leaves for the rice paddies far beyond their village. She has scoured the land multiple times before, but soon it will be winter and the mornings will be too cold for her to walk for long periods.

She spots small footprints in soft soil, and she thinks of all the times Chinni has walked and played in the village. Her one pair of shoes were things to be saved and sparingly used, polished every morning before school and kept neatly outside the door of their home.

Vimala follows the footprints. It cannot be Chinni, but it is perhaps some other child lost in the fields. It is early enough that the snakes will still be out, and their village rests at the foothills of mountains known for leopards.

She follows the footprints and goes into the forest, to where the trees are so densely packed together she has to squeeze between them to pass. The footprints are now dirty marks of mud, and she gets the feeling the child was running. Vimala notices the increase in the length of the gait, but it takes her minutes before she sees how the footprints are different now. They are an adult’s footprints now, and the forest is no longer filled with the morning birdcalls or even the sounds of her own footsteps.

The footprints disappear, and when Vimala stops, she sees she is lost. It is a simple thing most days to get back to the village. It is only a matter of heading downhill, where the forest meets the edge of the fields. Now the land is flat where it should not be, and the trees are strange and gray.

Vimala hears footsteps, slow and deliberate. When she turns, there is no one and nothing.

“Who’s there?” she asks, hoping it is not a leopard or a bear.

Instead, it is a young woman dressed in rags. She looks like Vimala, yet is taller and wilder. Her hair has ribbons streaked through it, and her feet are not barefoot but bound with cloth. It is Chinni, but not so small anymore. Instead, she is a changed thing. She is a wild and free thing, unhindered by responsibilities and untethered from the rules of society.

“Amma,” Chinni says, and her face is filled with joy but devoid of childhood. She has seen things, this young woman, and survived things. She stands straight in a way Vimala can never stand. In her life, she was expected to bow to the world, to the people around her, to her husband. But the young woman in front of her does not slouch to hide her body or wear a veil to cover her hair.

“Chinni?” Vimala asks.

It is a mirage or a delusion. Vimala has finally succumbed to the madness, and she welcomes it. It is a pitiable thing to be half-mad. To embrace the madness fully is to no longer see the concerned and critical looks of the people around her. It is a madness in which she can be with some form of her daughter.

Vimala embraces her daughter. She ignores the changes in the temperature, the way the sky is red, and the way her daughter’s form flows and changes shape like water within her arms. The way something is not quite right, because something wrong is better than nothing at all. Because the monster who steals disobedient children away may be spiriting them to a place where they belong. And for all of her effort and all the ways she shrank and bent herself to fit into the roles she was given, she never felt she belonged.

In the village, a little girl returns to an empty home. She keeps her shoes to the side of the door, and calls for her mother.

I turn over on the couch, where I’ve curled into one corner. In the middle of the night, I didn’t have the energy to move Lena’s laptop. Instead, I just slept around it.

The couch smells like dried-up white wine in one spot, something I never realized until I started sleeping here. We must have spilled it a long time ago. We haven’t had wine in the house for two years, since before the IVF, before the cycle-coded calendar in the kitchen and the evenings we’d giggled and clinked together the matching self-insemination syringes.

Cheers! We’d said.

I squint into the living room, listening for the baby’s whimper as I look at the time. It’s 5:30, which feels like a blessing. Four hours of sleep. I’m sure Lena got less.

The baby sounds rise and fall, closer. Under them, I hear Lena’s slow footsteps padding down the hallway. There’s a sear of guilt as I consider, split-second, whether to pretend to be asleep still. But then they’re here in the room.

“Good morning, mama,” Lena murmurs, more to the baby than to me.

“Good morning, mama,” I say back, smiling.

As always, when the baby is actually here, in front of me, with her tiny wiggling shrimp fingers and her face squashed up in the huge effort of crying or gurgling or smiling, I melt.

What’s happening to me? I’d said to the delivery nurse, when I felt my eyes overflow all at once, nothing like the crying I was used to.

Welcome to parenthood, she’d said. It felt practiced, tailored to the bewildered men she was used to seeing in the delivery room. Not to me, who could have been in Lena’s place if it had gone that way.

“I’m going to make some decaf,” Lena whispers to me. The baby is settling into her chest, little face slack over the edge of the wrap Lena wears to hold her close, to be one being. “Will you do the bottles?”

I nod and roll out of the throw blanket that I’ve gotten used to sleeping under. Lena sways toward the kitchen, her soft hums keeping the baby quiet. As I turn to fold the throw—a semblance of the normal, neither of us want to talk about how I’ve been sleeping out here—I see them.

Four wet shapes on the floor in front of the coffee table.

Smudged half-circles I can only see because thin light through the living room window catches them.

I gaze around the room, trying to identify the source. My face feels slack with sleep and confusion. Maybe I spilled a glass of water as I moved the coffee table in the night, half-awake? But, no, it rests on modern, square legs. Too heavy for me to have shoved it semi-conscious, and the wrong shape to leave those marks. And there is no glass of water.

“Did you move the crib last night?” I whisper to Lena when I’m in the kitchen, rinsing bottle rings as she clicks on the coffeemaker.

She frowns at me over her shoulder.

“From our room?” she asks.

It stings to hear her say our room. It is ours, but I’m on the couch now and she’s with the baby. I wonder if that’s what she means, even by accident: her room and the baby’s room. Ours.

“Yeah,” I say. “It looks like something got moved in front of the coffee table.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marks on the floor,” I say. “Did we spill something?”

Lena shakes her head in the same gentle cadence that she approaches every movement, now. Back and forth, quiet and smooth. Serene. I feel like I can’t keep up with it.

“Maybe we have a leak,” she says, handing me a mug.

The baby makes a quiet little sound and a fist emerges from her onesie to curl toward Lena’s hair. I take a sip. Decaf coffee tastes the same as regular, to me.

It takes almost until evening for me to remember to check the living room ceiling. The baby is restless today, a continuation of last night. Lena tries to open her laptop for the third time only for the baby to wake and squeal again.

“I thought you were on maternity leave,” I say, trying to tease gently. I worry it comes out shrill.

“Just a couple of emails,” she whispers, reaching for a bottle as she pulls the baby into her arms, balancing the open computer.

“They should know better than to email you,” I say. “Let me take her.”

Lena hesitates a millisecond too long.

“Thanks.”

The baby is always warmer than I remember. Even though I touch her dozens of times a day—when Lena showers, when she wants to change her clothes or stretch her arms–it’s as though my skin forgets. And my nose forgets her smell, which up close is overpowering, the raw scent of brand-new flesh, of being completely alive. I kiss her forehead and try to ignore how immediately she returns to fussing in my arms. I whisk her away into the kitchen to defrost the 4pm bottle. I try to replicate Lena’s soft sway as I walk and it feels clumsy in my hips.

Lena takes a half hour to frown over her laptop. The baby, meanwhile, naps fitfully in my tired arms. I don’t know what to call it when, dozing, she turns her sucking mouth to my breast. I know that I scowl and then turn red, ashamed.

When Lena joins us, a thin crease has appeared between her eyebrows. It’s the face of the old Lena, the Lena who would stride through the front door promptly at six, who would lean in to kiss me at my desk, who would regale me with complaints about her coworkers over dinner, to my delight.

Her reading glasses are still on, giving her eyes a slight distortion that makes me love her with such violence I’m surprised at myself. I lean over the baby’s head.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper.

Lena rolls her eyes.

“Never prettier than when I’m wearing nipple guards,” she says.

But she kisses me anyway, lingering in a way that weakens every joint in my body. Her mouth tastes like the syrupy tea our doula gave her. I watch the crease smooth itself as she nestles the baby onto her shoulder. And then they both are gone.

The new Lena, born with the baby, floats on something I can’t see, a buoyancy in her movements that gently bobs her away from the shore, out of reach.

I pull out the stepladder and haul it to the living room.

The ceiling is dusty. Cobwebs form tracery against the stucco. I find several things I need to do—fix a piece of crown molding that’s coming loose, replace the batteries in a smoke detector, repaint—but I don’t find a leak. I even check around the casing of the ceiling fan’s motor, wiping lint from its blades which falls like snow. But the ceiling is unblemished, and there are no signs that anything has dripped through it and onto the floor.

From the stepladder, I can barely see the smeared shapes, but when I climb back down, the light hits them again. Four sloppy curves, evenly spaced. They’re not water stains, I realize, or not just water. They’re greasy, like oil wiped by a rag. One of them is crusted with a thin rind of mud, as though tracked in and left there, but there is nothing in any other direction.

I sweep up the lint and spray down the smears with cleaner. When I come back with a handful of paper towels, I can’t even see them anymore.

That night, I make soup for Lena with as many beans and vegetables as I can. My body feels hollow from lack of sleep, and I can only imagine the wear on hers. It’s hard not to compare how I think I’d do in her place.

There were pros and cons for each of us, but we’d agreed it was lucky that Lena had conceived instead of me. Her company’s maternity leave was generous, whereas my freelance work was spotty at best. And so that was the reason we clung to, along with little things: the year difference in our ages, Lena’s family a few hours closer than mine. But we both knew the real reason: that she was better at hard things.

It was my hands that had gone numb as she pushed through the tenth hour of labor, and it was me that the nurse handed a cup of juice to, saying I looked pale.

When dinnertime comes, Lena doesn’t eat the soup because the baby can only settle when she’s bounced on tiptoes. I offer, half-joking, to feed Lena spoonfuls as she bobs.

“I’ll get a bowl in a bit, when she’s down,” she whispers. “Smells amazing.”

Much later that night, I awake in a panic.

Before my eyes are open, I’m thrashing to get my legs untangled from the couch throw. The baby has screamed louder than I’ve ever heard her, and my heart pounds in my throat. But as I struggle to sit up on the couch, I realize the house is silent. I stiffen and wait for the next round of cries. I listen for Lena. But all I hear is the soft click and hum of the refrigerator’s compressor and the faraway whir of the white noise machine that Lena plays for the baby. I must have dreamed the scream.

I blink into the dark living room, waiting for my breath and pulse to calm, trying to make out the bleary shapes around me.

And then, one shifts.

Just slightly. An adjustment. The rise of a spine with a breath.

I do not move.

I know I am mistaken. I must be. My eyes dart to the curtains that I forgot to pull closed all the way, so that they billow in the air from the vent. When my eyes slide back, the shape has resolved itself—a heaped blanket with one of the baby’s slings sprawled on top of it—and I’m alone.

I squint at the heap through my lashes, trying to recreate what I thought I’d seen. But it stays gone, the objects insensate. They do not breathe again.

I fall back asleep. It takes a long time. The baby sleeps through the night.

“You can always just get her flowers,” my mother says through the phone.

I am loitering in the detergent aisle. We don’t need detergent, but I’ve already put the fruit Lena asked for and all the other things on the list into the cart, and the conversation doesn’t feel finished.

“They’re nice,” she’s saying, almost defensive. “It’s a cliché for a reason. That’s what your father did, and I always loved them. Keep it simple.”

“That’s true,” I say, trying to remember Lena’s favorites. Lilies? “I guess… I don’t know, for her first Mother’s Day I want it to be special.”

“Sweetheart, you’re going to do this every year. Next year with a toddler, and then the macaroni art starts to come home from preschool and that’ll be better than anything you could buy her.”

She’s doing something in the kitchen. I can hear cabinets opening and banging shut. I picture her pinching her cell phone between her shoulder and ear, like I’m doing.

“Bottles every four hours, still?” Mom asks.

“She slept almost seven hours last night,” I say proudly, like I’m supposed to. My mother is excited to hear this.

“Isn’t it so sad when one stage is over?” she says. “You miss it, even though you couldn’t wait to be done.”

Mom promises to text me a website that has the kind of lilies she remembers Lena ordering for our wedding.

“And get yourself something, sweetie,” she adds. “You’re a mom, now, too.”

When I get home, Lena is asleep on the armchair with her feet up on the coffee table, the baby napping on her chest. They’re beautiful together, matching in soft beige without meaning to, dappled in the afternoon light. I feel for my phone to take a picture. Something to send to my mother, though I realize it’ll mean keeping the picture myself. I don’t think about that. One of the grocery bags rustles in my hands and Lena opens an eye.

“How’s the world?” she murmurs.

“You’re not missing anything,” I whisper, snap a picture, hit send.

I stare at the ceiling fan. Dim light filters in through the curtains from the street lamp. A shred of lint that I missed hangs off of one of the blades.

I had promised myself, locking eyes with my reflection as I brushed my teeth, that I wouldn’t check the time. I remember the deep breathing exercises I’d learned from an online video years ago, and resolve to try them instead, letting breath fill my lungs and press against my taut diaphragm. Hold for a moment. Then out in a hiss. The video had dissolved into slow-motion footage of waves crashing against sand, and I close my eyes, trying to picture them as I breathe in and out.

As I slide into sleep, the sound of my breath twists and doubles into a sound like the rush of water at the edge of my consciousness, filling the room.

In the morning, my hands are still clasped to my ribcage where I’d placed them to measure my breaths in. On the floor, the prints, greasy and caked with thicker mud, are back.

“Have I ever sleepwalked?” I ask Lena.

I’m picking up each of my shoes, looking for grime. She’s feeding the baby in bed, a curved pillow wrapped around her like a cloud. She looks up at me and I see the bliss drop from her expression slightly.

“No,” she says. “Why?”

“These marks keep showing up on the floor,” I say. “It’s not a leak. I checked.”

Lena shakes her head slowly.

“Maybe you tracked something in when you shopped yesterday?” she said. “I bet we’re just too tired to notice. Things are going to fall by the wayside for a while.”

I nod, but I don’t agree. She doesn’t seem tired at all. She is doing so much. The least I can do is keep the house together.

“I’m going to mop again,” I say. “Do you need anything?”

She smiles at me, looks down at the baby who swallows softly and grips the bottle in her tiny fist.

“I’m all set.”

The marks on the floor are clearer. This time, before I spray them down and fill the mop bucket, I examine their shape. They are heavy on one side and delicate on the other, as though whatever made them was leaning off-kilter. And there are small splits down the center of each that remind me of something I can’t place right away.

When I’m filling the mop bucket, I remember the summer in my early teens that I spent at a wilderness camp, where we earned points for correctly identifying animal tracks from a chart. Graceful crescents for whitetail deer, skinny cat-paws for red fox, cloven lobes for bison.

I stare at the prints now, bottle of cleanser in hand, blinking. In the split-seconds between my eyes opening and closing, I try to conjure whatever creature I imagine leaving these tracks. Do I see afterimages shimmer behind my closed eyes? Gnarled legs, jet-black and dripping, thick-knuckled and long. I know I am imagining them, but they are clearer than anything I’ve imagined before. Images shift and warp in my mind, usually. These stay. I close my eyes as long as I dare. A few seconds, and then my pounding heart forces them open. I spray the floor down again and leave the mop there.

At five, I take out the package of frozen ravioli, but I forget it on the counter. When the washing machine chimes, I gasp and realize I’ve been sitting on the couch for almost an hour. I rush to switch the laundry and start a pot of water boiling before Lena and the baby wake up from their nap.

When Lena comes in, her hair is tied back in a bun, her glasses pushed to her forehead, and her phone in her hand. The baby is wriggling in her sling.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she says. She doesn’t whisper. She’s right there.

“What?”

“I swear,” she says, “They can’t do anything.”

Pacing with the baby as I chop an onion for sauce, Lena details the disaster unfolding at her workplace. The someone or someones assigned to cover Lena’s HR management role in her absence have fumbled their jobs so badly that a former employee has filed a lawsuit, throwing the company into crisis.

“Unbelievable,” I sneer, gleeful. The gossip feels precious, the laughter between us at others’ expense a balm. I’ve missed this more than I can bear.

“But,” she grins, “You’ll never guess what else.”

I widen my eyes. I am her audience and my attention on her is rapt.

“They offered me half-time to help organize everything for the lawyers. They’ll pay me for full-time, plus overtime, plus they’ll grant me additional leave.”

Lena caresses the baby and talks on about the timeline of the suit, the benefit to her resume, the validation that she is indispensable to the company. I smile approvingly. I ignore the heat in my face and the spikes in my throat.

“It does mean,” she says, “That I’ll need to leave the baby with you while I’m at work for a few weeks. Just a couple hours a day. I hope that’s okay. They’re offering so much money. It has to be worth it.”

I nod vigorously, blinking water from my eyes. I wince at the tang of onion and the taste of salt.

“Of course,” I say, and then the lie tumbles from my lips. “What could be better than more time with my favorite person?”

That Wednesday, the house sounds different.

Lena is up early, and all the lights in the kitchen are on. The radio reports the news, and she pulls out the stepladder to get the regular coffee pods out of a cabinet.

“I pumped already,” she says, winking. “There’s more than enough milk in the fridge for today.”

She pours coffee into a tumbler, grabs her keys, and is gone.

The baby frowns up at me from her bouncer, squinting in the bright light.

From the kitchen, I can see the tracks on the floor in the living room, in front of the coffee table.

The baby cries almost all day. I do not go into the living room. The prints are still there that night.

I sleep with my arms folded around my head, covering my ears. All night, I keep waking to the sound of something very loud, but very far away, a crushing roar like a waterfall.

At dawn, I peer under my forearm and think that I see an eye, huge and black, glistening and soaked.

I do not breathe until Lena bustles in to hand me the baby and kiss me as she breezes out the door.

Nothing is there when I look back.

“Have a good day,” I whisper, but the door is already closed.

Today the baby screams at me nonstop as I try to give her a bath. I give up, shaking and sobbing, and pat her down with baby wipes while she howls. Her little face contorts and turns red, then nearly purple. I back away.

“I’m sorry,” I plead. “Please, I’m so sorry.”

She purses her lips when I try to give her a bottle, later. She kicks me when I change her. I’m sweating through my clothes by the time Lena comes home.

She takes the baby from me without a word.

I scrub the living room floor until my cuticles bleed. The tracks do not disappear.

The baby cries throughout the night, and I lose count of how many times I hear Lena get up to soothe her after the first dozen.

It is darker than usual, and I realize that the streetlight has gone out. I stare across the living room and do not flinch when it appears.

All of it.

Skinny, contorted legs lead up to a body twisted with jutting bones, at once heavy and emaciated. An angular head with one bleary eye that sees nothing and another that gazes at me, shining, wet, and huge. Whether the thing drips with water or some greasy tar I can’t tell, but the whole of it is a smear, dribbling down limbs to the floor below, as if oozing from the pores beneath the thick, dark fur.

The baby’s cries echo down the hall and the creature opens its blurry mouth. Water gushes out, more and faster than can be possible, as though draining an entire sea. I am drenched, and it is not cold but boiling and salty, and it blisters my skin and the raw flesh of my throat as it pours over me in waves. I feel pieces of myself dissolve and then I wake up for real, gasping as I wipe thick sweat from my eyes.

I rush to check on the baby, but Lena already has her.

It is the weekend, and Lena shakes her head at me as I stumble into the kitchen well after ten.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I overslept.”

“You look terrible,” she says. She feels my forehead with the back of her palm. “You’re warm.”

Panicked, I fumble for a face mask from the junk drawer, but Lena waves it off.

“You’re probably just run down,” she says. “I can’t imagine how hard it is to take care of her all on your own.”

She points me into the bedroom with strict instructions to take acetaminophen and rest. When I lie down, the bed smells like Lena, but it is not familiar at all.

I am small in my fever dreams, shrunk down to half size or less. I wander around our house for what feels like hours, dream-time stretched out and disjointed. I’m looking for someone, but not for Lena, and I can’t figure out who it is. When I call out, I find my mouth doesn’t form words, and my voice sounds absurd. Our house bobs up and down as though it is floating on a river. I hear the roar of water everywhere.

On Sunday afternoon, my fever breaks. Lena brings me a plate of leftovers from the takeout she has ordered.

“We miss you,” she says. She’s not carrying the baby. Sensible, in case I’m contagious. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight.

On Monday, Lena lingers in the kitchen, her keys in hand.

“You’re sure you’re okay with her?” she says. “You’re feeling up to it?”

“Of course,” I say, smiling. I’m bouncing the baby, who wiggles in her sling in my arms.

“Call me if you need anything.”

I walk around the house all day with the baby wrapped tight against me. I get the laundry done, then re-organize the kitchen and clean the bathroom. Whenever I walk through the living room, the creature stares at me and drips.

My mother calls, and I pinch the phone between my ear and shoulder as I throw silverware into the dishwasher.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong with the baby?” she asks, alarmed.

I hadn’t realized she was crying. I drop a handful of spoons and get a bottle out of the fridge.

“Gosh,” my mother says, more to herself than to me. “She sounds like how you did when you were that age. Blood-curdling, that’s what your father used to call it, when you cried.”

I don’t know what to say. The baby whimpers a little as she sucks down the bottle of milk, as if she’s angry with me.

“It’s so hard at this age,” my mother continues. “But it’s really not forever, sweetheart. You’ve just got to get through the first year, really.”

I don’t know what time it is. I can’t even think past the next hour.

“You know,” my mother says, “I sometimes used to run the faucet in the sink and turn the shower on at the same time when I couldn’t get you to settle down.”

My breath catches.

“Something about the noise of running water seemed to help,” she says, and then laughs. “Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t hear you and Lord knows I needed that little break sometimes.”

I don’t register what else she says. I’m running water over the dishes in the sink, and it’s deafening. The sound is all around me, and then it concentrates in the living room, drawing me to it. I drop my phone and it splashes on the floor.

The creature turns toward me. Its mouth is open down to its knees.

Lena is shaking me. With a sting, I feel her slap across my face.

“What?” I shriek, “What?”

“Where is the baby?” she screams, her face flushed with rage. “What’s wrong with you?”

“She’s—” I flounder, looking around frantically. “She’s here—”

I’m soaking from head to toe, my hair dripping into my face and onto the living room floor.

Lena has left the front door open and I hear her crashing through rooms down the hall.

“Why?” she screams, “Why is she in the bathroom by herself?”

I don’t hear what she says next, so I don’t know where it is that she says she is going with the baby, who she has wrapped in a towel and is hugging close while she throws things into the diaper bag and clutches her keys. I can only hear the roar of water. I feel the look she gives me though—heartbreak, sorrow—like a knife to my stomach.

I turn to the creature as the door slams behind them.

It looks back at me, eyes streaming. I hear something, now. Beneath the water’s roar, I hear the whimper at last, a little cry of terror and anguish. It’s been there the whole time, an urgent pull. Please.

I open my arms.

“Come here,” I whisper.

It climbs into my embrace, its sickly legs trailing down into the pool of water beneath us. It is light and fragile, and I feel the tiny warmth within it, the fluttering of its heartbeat. I smell the wet scent of its skin. It trembles against my collarbone.

“It’s all right,” I whisper. I rock gently back and forth. I move to the couch, and we nestle as one into the soft cushions. I find a blanket and dry us both.

“I’ve got you,” I say, over and over. “I’ve got you.”

No owl came for you.

But you watched her go:
best friends, best friends
until that moment
when she warned you: Don’t follow.

But when had you ever not followed?

Bricks, bruising.
Blood, a little.
Eleanor, why?

For months—years—you marked time at another school,
which was deathly dull.

Every summer she returned
ever more a stranger.
Maths was your magic.
So you knew, each autumn, when she
disappeared,
that hers was not the only platform
between 9 and 10.
That there exists, in fact,
between any two
numbers,
a space that may
be more
finely
divi-
ded.

9 and 5/6: Smash!
Wrong.

Inside the infinite,
every outcome is inevitable.

9 and 18/25: Smash!
Wrong.

But it was righter;
you felt that.

You noted that in your notebook.

Somewhere, in there, was a place for you.

A platform that would open
to a train
to a school
that was almost like hers,
to a friend
who was almost like her,
but not
to a bird that would belong to you,
if not quite an owl.

A finch
or a falcon vulture
bluebird blackbird
woodpecker
parrot
sparrow
robin raven—
anything—
with a scroll in its beak.

9 and 4,817/6,311
Smash!
Wrong.
But righter.

You noted that in your notebook.

In this world, you saw her
less and less—
best friends once,
but not now.

You saw her
(and her owl)
sometimes
from the room that was yours
(in the house that you had since inherited from your parents);
she was visiting her parents:
best friends, next door friends,
growing up,
but nothing now.

She was 30… 40… 50.

For you, whose birthday was only 3 months and 3 days after hers,
it was the same.

(This is the simplest kind of maths.)

Now, she was a Minister of Magic.

9 and 40,927/54,581
Smash!
Wrong.
But righter.

You noted that in your notebook.

You were not invited to her funeral
(an accident: a hippogriff)
But the dream transmuted
as you did,
so that while—yes—you would enter any platform that opened…

What would you do at a school?

Let it be—if you were dreaming—
a house for pensioners.
And let them offer you a bird.

In its feathers, you could rest your hand.
Rest.

9 and 226,943/302,573
Smash!

9 and 328,687/438,241
Smash!

No.
At one time, perhaps,
this may have been about something else.

Eleanor, why?

But as your numbers have become sharper
(a series of inessentials
whittled
implacably a-
way)
so has your ambition.

Your try another and another
(smash smash)
and your body stoops
and your hair whitens,
and you acquire a staff, too,
to assist your balance
(have you, at any
earlier period
of your life,
so resembled a true witch?
did Eleanor, even, ever so inhabit the part?)
and the
problem nar-
rows,
increment by 
in-
cre-
ment,
as your newest notebook fills:
infinity opening
to additional infinities,
and within them—
shiver—
lie
an infinite number of platforms
that will open
exclusively
to you.

Finer. Fi-
ner. F
in
e
r
.

Irvine, California (Dec. 23, 2024) — Effective immediately, fans can enjoy a new Sunshine menu featuring a Cheesy Chalupa, a hardshell Double Nacho Cheese Taco and Plasma Twists. Fans can also order Taco Bell’s iconic Nacho Cheese Sauce a la carte and create their own cheese-tastic combinations.

Parker Solar Probe Briefing

December 23, 2024

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a historic mission poised to transform our understanding of the Sun, is scheduled to reach its closest point to the Sun on Tuesday, Dec. 24, Eastern Time. The spacecraft has withstood brutal heat and radiation to deliver unparalleled observations of the only star we can study up close.

Coverage will begin on NASA Television and the agency’s website at 4:00 p.m. EDT.

White House Press Release: Announcement of Findings from Parker Solar Probe

On December 24, 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reached a scientific milestone by flying over seven times closer to the Sun than previous spacecraft, orbiting just within 3.8 million miles of the Sun’s surface. During yesterday’s flyby, the probe’s science team analyzed the most recent data and concluded the Sun’s plasma is not, as previously thought, comprised primarily of hydrogen.

Analysis reveals that the Sun’s plasma is predominantly lactose, plus a mix of vegetable oil, modified food starch, maltodextrin, salt, dipotassium phosphate, Capsicum annuum, acetic acid, lactic acid, cellulose gum, potassium citrate, sodium stearoyl lactylate, citric acid, annatto and oleoresin paprika.

NASA has assured the White House that these findings are legitimate.

The President will provide more information as it is received.

We urge the American people, and all the people of the world, to stay calm.

Substack Post: The Sun Is Made Of Nacho Cheese. Now What? 

January 1, 2025

Happy New Year, readers!

I was convinced that the nacho cheese announcement was a prank, but… the data has been verified by scientists globally.

The implications are enormous. But I say, look to the future of food! Now that you can buy Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Sauce on its own, you can cook your own Sun-fun creations. Enjoy these five nacho-inspired meals, and drop a comment on which one was your favorite.

Stay cheesy, my friends.

Climate Change journal

“Concerns of Sun Mining by Taco Bell”

Open access | Volume 178, published Summer 2025

C. Major, J. Baker, M. Scott

Abstract: This paper examines the correlation between the recent NASA discovery of the Sun’s composition, revealing unexpectedly high levels of compounds structurally identical to processed nacho cheese, and the concurrent release of Taco Bell’s expanded nacho-based menu offerings. Our analysis identifies a statistically significant negative trend in solar luminosity measurements beginning in the early 1990s, coinciding with the introduction of Taco Bell’s signature nacho cheese products. We propose that Taco Bell may possess privileged access to solar mining technologies. If the fast-food restaurant continues any covert mining it may be practicing, Earth’s climate will experience negative consequences.

Melinda Davies @DreamDivergent posted on June 13, 2025, “If the SUN is made of cheese, what’s the MOON made of?”

Wendy’s @Wendy’s posted on August 2, 2025, “Get ready to launch your taste buds into orbit this September with Wendy’s out-of-this-world Nacho Supremes! Made with authentic Sun sauce. #WendysWins #NachoMania”

Samplings from nona’s Winter 2025 prix fixe menu

moss, creamy nacho cheese sauce, topped with bee larvae

butternut squash soup, infused with nacho cheese sauce, topped with sour cream

beef sausage, nacho cheese sauce reduction, sweet potato

cumin-spiced lava cake with nacho cheese filling, alongside savory ice cream

Superior Court of Orange County, California

Natural Resources Defense Council vs. Taco Bell Corporation

Defense opening statement

February 9, 2026

Mr. Gilbreth: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the accusations that the prosecution has brought forward are nothing more than a cheap dog and pony show. The prosecution says they will prove that Taco Bell has been mining the Sun for decades, but they will produce no evidence, only speculation. Taco Bell claims no responsibility for its classic Nacho Cheese Sauce recipe being identical to the Sun’s plasma. It simply has a recipe, a delicious recipe, that the world can’t get enough of. Is that a crime? No, it is not.

Straight Talk podcast transcript

December 2026

[Opening music]

Todd Evans: Welcome to another episode of Straight Talk, with your hosts, Todd and Angie.

Angela Booth: Today, we’re talking about an issue that’s “out of this world”. It’s been two years since NASA rocked the world with its findings. By now, you’ve heard: no longer content with buying Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Sauce directly, fast food corporations have built their own massive solar probes, shaped like tortilla chips, to scoop up the Sun’s plasma cheese. It seems that the floodgates were released after Taco Bell won its recent lawsuit against the NRDC.

TE: Some are hailing this as the next “space race,” saying it will drive competition and lower prices of the tasty cheese sauce—

AB: Which has gotten ridiculously expensive.

TE: Absolutely. I haven’t been able to buy any in months. But critics say that the last thing the world needs is restaurants venturing into space. We’ll discuss after a quick word from today’s sponsors.

CNN article

Published June 2027

Two Hospitalized After TikTok ‘Suncheese Challenge’

What started as fun turned into tragedy after two teenagers were hospitalized with second-degree burns due to the latest TikTok trend, the so-called “Suncheese Challenge.” The challenge consists of heating Taco Bell Nacho Cheese Sauce to boiling temperatures and trying to eat it. The teens suffered burns on their tongues and in their throats.

MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports

August 2031

Interview with Dr. Michael Thompson, climatologist and author of Cut The Cheese: Why We Must Stop Consuming The Sun.

Andrea Mitchell: Michael, thank you for joining us. So you predict a serious global impact from consuming the Sun’s plasma?

Michael Thompson: Yes, that’s right. We’ve already consumed too much.

AM: But what about those who say that the nacho cheese sauce is an infinite resource that we can make at home?

MT: That was a nice pipe dream five years ago, Andrea. But let’s be real: nobody can recreate the exact taste of Taco Bell’s Nacho Cheese Sauce because Taco Bell never made it using ingredients on Earth. It was always mined from the Sun, decades before anyone found out.

AM: The NRDC tried to prove that in a court of law and was slapped down.

MT: You’re right, and I can’t prove the allegation now. But what I can predict—what I can show you—is that with future decreased sun output will come another Ice Age. Are you prepared for that?

Target Weekly Ad

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The Guardian article

Published May 17, 2035

Taco Bell CEO Says Public Appetite Is Responsible For Darker Sun

Speaking on the sidelines at the annual Foodservice Conference & Expo on Wednesday, May 16, Taco Bell CEO Karl Stills attributed the recent decrease in sun luminosity to the collective appetite of the public, citing it as the driving force behind the celestial change.

In his statement, Stills defended Taco Bell’s menu offerings, emphasizing that the restaurant chain merely responds to consumer demand.

“Taco Bell was providing its signature Nacho Cheese Sauce for many years before the Sun began to grow darker,” Stills added. “Taco Bell’s menu innovations are a direct response to consumer preferences, not a causative factor in astronomical phenomena.”

Despite Stills’ assertions, many astrophysicists and climatologists have expressed certainty of a direct link between sun mining from Taco Bell and other food corporations and the observed decrease in sun output.

Taco Bell maintains that its research team has not conclusively found any determinative evidence showing that the Sun’s decreased output is harmful. “A decreased output is a natural part of the solar cycle,” argued Taco Bell’s chief scientist, Dr. Evan Roberts. “The measured decrease is only about 1.34 percent. There is no cause to panic.”

Arctic Rescue Keepers (A.R.K.) Passenger Manifest, Premier Class

Departure: May 31, 2070

June Walton—Age: 35—Passenger ID: ARK-P001

Pat Bezos—Age: 21—Passenger ID: ARK-P002

Angela Mars—Age: 60—Passenger ID: ARK-P003

Kevin Koch—Age: 49—Passenger ID: ARK-P004

Marcus Cargill-MacMillan—Age: 53—Passenger ID: ARK-P005

A.R.K. Brochure

YOUR GREAT ESCAPE

Fleeing the planet doesn’t have to be a hassle. When traversing the galaxy on the luxury departure vessel A.R.K., you will have access to all the finest Earth amenities: Olympic-sized swimming pools, fruits and vegetables, spa treatments, authentic nacho cheese sauce, space heaters—all this and more, thanks to our generous corporate sponsors. Say goodbye to ice sheets and everlasting snowfall when you board the A.R.K.

Suite reservation requires a $1 billion deposit. Act now! Your time is running out.

Rumors hold that everything worth remembering in human history has been written down by one person, someone who has been around to see it all. No one can imagine who it might be; human history has been written for thousands of years, yet no one can live that long. Except a god, one recording humanity’s actions for a purpose they were too little to understand.

No one knew who first spoke of a god of written history; the best historians could only find short sentences describing this god, but no mention of its name. Many gods were known in that time: the god of the sun, the god of the moon, and many gods that helped people in their times of need, but a nameless god that kept history was still a great mystery. These other gods were more concerned about the number of worshippers they had, how many temples were built in their honor, and their own divine stories of greatness and power, not stories about humans. Their stories were meant to be tales that were passed down through the ages: tales of great courage or wrath or kindness, these stories were reasons to worship and build temples for these gods. A god with no temples and no stories of their own was no god. Though no one knew what this supposed god looked like, everyone from the biggest cities to the smallest villages agreed that whoever was written down in this nameless god’s books was one to be remembered throughout history. Even though no credit was given and no praise was held, the nameless god still wrote down everything that was necessary; a thankless job but one the god knew was necessary for humans to keep moving forward.

While the stories of gods were told more than any other, humans were still desperate to reach the level of remembrance that the gods had by having their own tales of greatness. Whether it was kings conquering lands untouched or emperors creating mountainous civilizations, it is human instinct to want to be remembered and those who are remembered can be remembered for anything. Families have tried for centuries, gods for millenia, and while not everyone is remembered, every story worth passing down was written down by some god, somewhere. If you were not written down, you may as well have not existed.

For those who could not make their name in eternal history, they were content with leaving a legacy their own family could remember and be proud of. Some became local legends rather than national ones; others were famous within their own families. Shino had a family that had no legends and no legacy, but this was not for a lack of trying. His grandfather’s grandfather had tried to save his village from an oncoming flood, but his body had been swept away by the rushing currents. Shino’s grandfather’s father had thought he could launch himself to the moon to conquer land no one else could reach; his footprints are still marked with soot in a town center somewhere Shino has never visited. Shino’s grandfather had thought he could gamble their family’s little worth on bad bets and Shino’s father had thought joining his country’s military would be the safest option to repay the debts Shino’s grandfather had accumulated. These were stories that would be passed down and forgotten one day, just as the names of the people in these stories were gone. Shino knew his family was not written in history, not yet.

After seeing the failures of his forefathers to reach any sort of height or fame or leave a legacy worth sharing, Shino took it upon himself to make his name in history.The rest of Shino’s family wanted little in life; the siblings who survived to adulthood despite poverty were grateful to be alive. While his siblings saw their failures as reasons not to search for notoriety, Shino took his family history as motivation to do better. Shino had already forgotten his grandfather’s name by the time he was old enough to leave, as had the rest of his family. He did not want the same legacy for himself, so with little knowledge but rumors and prayers, Shino searched for the historian god. “If my name is great enough to be written down by gods themselves, we are sure to live fruitfully,” Shino reassured his mother the night before he left on a quest for a better legacy.

Shino had listened to what little he could go on to begin his quest, mostly whispers from other gods written down by devoted worshippers, largely forgotten by humanity. It was said that the god of history stayed on a mountain that never changed while history changed around it. Shino could not find much of what it meant for a mountain to never change. How much was a mountain supposed to change over time? Shino did not know and checking every mountain in the world would have been an arduous task, so Shino took his time to ask masters in knowledge what such a rumor could mean.

“A mountain stuck in time,” one master said smugly. “Find a mountain where nothing happens and climb to its peak.”

Shino pondered the master and asked, “What happens when nothing happens?”

The master said he had no more time to answer questions and needed to return to his studies. Shino knew the master had no answer.

“A mountain in the middle of nowhere would have no history. If the mountain is nowhere important, it would have nothing to occur,” a second master reasoned.

Shino thought about this too, and asked, “Are there places in the world left unexplored?”

Unlike the first master, the second master was excited by Shino’s curiosity. He answered, “There is always land left to conquer, something for rulers left to seize. As much as we record every piece of knowledge, there is always something new to learn from our world.”

The second master’s answer left Shino unsatisfied, had most of the world not already been recorded by adventurers older than Shino? Shino also knew that conquering an unexplored land required an army, resources only few in the land could afford. No one was going to give Shino what he needed so his name could be recorded by some mythical being. The second master’s answer made Shino concerned this task was an impossible one, so he sought after a third opinion, one that he felt he could take on his own with only a satchel on his back and food to trade.

Shino was able to find his answer with the third: “Find a mountain for which nothing changes. A height that does not shrink or grow, a peak that does not melt or clear, a storm that never leaves, the parts of a summit that would change with time. There are a few that fit, but there may be one close enough to make the journey close to home. But would this make the journey worth it?”

The third master’s answer reignited Shino. There was hope in such an answer, it was so obvious to Shino that he was surprised the masters couldn’t see it earlier: find a mountain whose weather never changes. He took months of climbing to scour the mountains of his country, praying that whatever god was watching over Shino was recording his journey. While climbing mountains alone was not worth a legend, Shino reasoned climbing to the peak of every tall, snowy and stormy mountaintop might be. It became an arduous task, Shino frequently having to climb down his mountain once the storm settled after days of raging furiously. He had never bothered to ask how many tall peaks his country may have had, he only had a map to cross out where he had been.

Starting up one of the last remaining mountains on his map, Shino could feel paranoia and anxiety creeping in at every crack in the clouds. Despite looking for a god, Shino never considered himself religious. With the luck his family had in their own fortune, what god could possibly have been listening? Knowing this, Shino still prayed. As he lay in his shelter, preparing for the scouting ahead, Shino prayed aloud, “Please lead me to you, whoever you may be. Am I not worthy? Am I the first to seek your guidance? I cannot go back home as much of a failure as my forefathers and only you have the solution, oh god of history.”

Until, one day, around the age of 20, the same age as his father when he left, Shino found a cabin in a blizzard, halfway up the last mountain he could check before he would have had to ask permission to leave the country to search nearby countries for other mountains. The cabin was shoddy, Shino was surprised to see it still standing against the fiercest winds he had faced. “Shelter,” he told himself as the snow crushed under his worn boots.

While the outside of the cabin had seen better days, the inside was a different story. Inside the cabin was a golden sheen that illuminated the dull colors on Shino’s wet coat. As Shino stepped inside, he looked and saw the walls were coated in lights and scrolls. The room itself was small, only another door and a fireplace displaced the walls. Shino followed the scrolls upwards and saw the cabin had no end, contrasting the shabby cabin roof outside that was at most two heads higher than him. Closing the door behind him, Shino began to strip away the snow-soaked clothing and warm up by the fire, its flames licking a wood that never seemed to burn.

Once finished and down to his barest garments, Shino saw the other door open. The warmth of the cabin had caused Shino to drop his guard, along with his weapon. He scrambled towards his knife, one that had helped him defend himself against thieves during his journey, and held it close to his chest.

This isn’t your home, a small voice reasoned in Shino’s head.

This voice was drowned out by the louder, Protect yourself, you are the most precious thing.

Standing close to the fire but far from the door, Shino saw a child, maybe younger than when Shino was when he left home on his journey for the god. The child had hair a paler blond than any scroll in the cabin, the lights gave them a golden aura.

No, it wasn’t the lights doing anything, the child themselves glowed.

The child closed the door behind them and greeted, “Hello Shino, how may I welcome you to my home?”

Shino lowered his knife, no one had said his name for months. In order to be safe, Shino had always opted for a fake name, especially if there was any chance he would have to owe money. He knew it wasn’t right, he knew his mother told him his father did something similar, but Shino reasoned that nothing should get in the way of finding this god. Now that he was in the presence of one, he thought about how stupid his actions might have been.

“Are you—”

“Please, call me Um. I am but a humble archivist. I write what needs to be written.”

Shino smiled. “That is excellent because you need to write about me!”

Um turned their head before they turned away and began to make tea over the fire. As he took a metal rod and began to poke the fire, Um asked, “Why do I need to write about you? Have you done something noteworthy?”

“I climbed every unchanging mountain to find you! Is that not worthy of being written down in history?” Shino was given a cup and told to wait for tea. As he waited, he wondered why Um looked the way they did. He thought the god of history would look, well, historical. As if to prove Shino wrong, Um reached out an arm to the ceiling and watched as a scroll fluttered down from the pile on the wall. Um didn’t open the scroll but held it tight in their hand as they began to pour tea for Shino.

“You climbed five hundred and twenty eight mountains, but I have a record of someone who climbed over a thousand mountains. Do you think climbing less than half the mountains the person in this scroll did makes you a legend?” Um asked.

“No.” Shino took a shameful sip of his tea. It tasted close to the brew made at home.

“Shino, to make legends, you need to have something worth passing down. Come back in double your lifetime after you have done something will be passed down.”

Shino accepted Um’s challenge and, in a blink and a sip of his tea, found himself at the bottom of his first mountain, the one closest to his hometown.

Once he returned to his village, Shino’s peers began rumors that he failed. None of this deterred him, Shino vowed to himself he would find something worth passing down. His first step was to leave his family home and start his own. While the chastisement from his mother was a harder sting than the disapproval of his village, Shino left his home and started a new life in a new village.

After finding a new village a week’s time away from his own, Shino was able to integrate himself. He took an interest in the village’s administration. He volunteered for all the work no one else wanted and gave helpful advice whenever asked. This attracted one of the village higher-up’s daughters to Shino’s side. After a short time together, Shino was married with a few children.

Once Shino was forty, he saw his new home thrive. Thanks in part to his efforts, his village was one of the few that was able to survive several droughts and a handful of famines. When a plague soared through the land like a blanket of death, Shino was able to help keep the village clean and away from any dirty omens. He was claimed a hero in the village many times over. He saw how his family looked at him, full of hope and pride for their patriarch.

Shino knew he was ready.

“Do you have to go to the mountain?” Shino’s fourth oldest child asked him.

“They said to return at the time when my life has doubled. When I went then, I had nothing, but now, I have everything. When you get to my age, what will you tell your children about me?”

“That their grandfather saved his village many times and was a hero!” his child cheered.

Shino smiled before he headed off, making sure everyone knew he was going to come back a legend. If he had been in his old village, Shino knew he would have been ridiculed many times over before he had left the front gates. Here, with all the good he knew he was doing, the most anyone did was a passing glance. For the first time, Shino found himself feeling respected.

The god’s cabin on the mountain didn’t change, neither in location or shabbiness. Shino felt blessed to not have to wander mountains for ages again just to meet and ask a simple favor. On the shorter journey, the more he found himself talking to himself, the more Shino was assured that he was due to be written in history.

Opening the door, Shino saw that nothing had changed. Even with styles and cultures changing in areas Shino had seen twenty years prior, the cabin had remained the same. Its intense glow bathed Shino as he began to take off his coat, rather than stripping almost entirely. As the fire flickered nearby, Shino declared, “Um, I am here to be made a legend!”

Their inner door opened and they rushed to Shino. After a moment of inspection on both ends, Shino saw no change in Um’s appearance. They looked as young as the first time Shino met them. He couldn’t find any wrinkles on the child’s face while Shino unconsciously felt the slight folds on his face crease further. His mouth twitched.

“It is further proof of your godliness that you remain so young after so many years, Um. Please, as the god of history, you must have seen my contributions.”

Um backed away, tending to the fire. “I have, yes. Do you feel these are sufficient for you to be written as, how you say, a legend?”

“Well, yes, my village may have perished without my help. Is saving a village after what could have been numerous disasters not enough for my name to last generations after me?”

Um shook their head. “Maybe a few… Maybe your great grandchild will know your name, but there are many others and there will be many others that will save their fellow countrymen from danger and their names will last until they die. After that, they are as important as the spit from a full man. I cannot write your name down as you have not done anything any other man would not have done in your place.”

Mouth agape from the god’s bluntness, Shino watched as Um made their way back to their hidden room. Before they grabbed the door, Shino came to his senses and asked, “You gave me advice last time; can you give me more? I will spend just as many years and come back to show you I am worth writing down, even in a single line.”

Um’s hand cradled the knob while they watched Shino in their peripheral vision. “Do something worth remembering, else why should history remember you?”

Before Shino could protest or ask for further explanation, he felt his body flying back through the door and ended up back at home, crashing into a nearby table while he heard his wife cooking nearby. Rushing from another room, Shino’s wife shrieked, “Shino! I thought you would have been at your mysterious mountain at this point. Tell me what you’re doing!”

Regaining his composure, Shino stood from the ruins of their table and announced, “We will be moving to the city, I have a new goal in mind.”

After getting the god’s advice, Shino took less time than before enacting a new plan to be written down in the history scrolls. When picking the village he would move to, Shino originally picked a village a week’s time away. Unknownst to Shino, he had picked a village that was less than a day from his country’s capital. When he explained to his father-in-law why he wanted to move to his country’s capital, Shino assumed that his wife’s father would have forbidden Shino from taking his daughter away from him.

Shino was never happier to be wrong; not only did his father-in-law approve, he wrote Shino a letter of high merit for when he went to apply for a job. Once Shino and his family reached the capital, the letter allowed Shino to start his job in the government in the city. His family lived better than they ever could in the city, a large house near the capitol building with enough rooms to have at least three more families move into, if Shino’s children wanted to stay.

As Shino aged, he gained more respect from his fellow countrymen, helping strategize and lead battles as the number of enemies of the country grew. Shino grew to be a natural leader, his oldest children starting families in the house that only grew with age. While his decisions were thought to be more ruthless against any country that tried to smudge the beauty of their prosperity, Shino was well liked by a majority. Once it was time to elect a new leader, Shino was the almost unanimous winner, with the few dissenters changing their mind once Shino brought further happiness to his country.

His rule was bloody, but only to outsiders that refused to come. Many saw the wealth and joy Shino brought to his country and were nothing but jealous. He cut leaders down like the threshing of wheat, giving any land captured during the times of war to citizens who had nothing. At the peak of Shino’s reign, a quarter of the world was under his command.

Once he was sixty, Shino saw everything he ruled over and everything he had accomplished. He saw his children grow up to fine adults, his wife raise a home that gave Shino the support he needed to guide his people, and the citizens he gave a better life to than he had at the same age. He knew the god would be pleased.

“Father, you have accomplished more than any man I could find, why do you still go on what appears to be a fruitless journey?” One of Shino’s sons grew to be an academic, one that questioned if the person Shino was meeting was even a god.

“If you saw them like how I saw them, you would understand.” As Shino aged, he found himself giving vague answers to his children about his goals. His children would never understand, his wife never did and argued with Shino the days leading up to his journey.

His son continued to complain, “Then take me with you! Let me see this so-called ‘god’ and prove to you that this dangerous journey was never worth it.”

Shino put his foot down. “If you are calling it dangerous, I refuse to allow you to journey alongside. I forbid it. Besides, young one, if I did not go on this journey, we would not have had this wonderful home, or the education you received to be able to snap at your elders. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

The son wanted to snap back, but it would have only proved Shino right. Even though Shino was the highest politician in the land, no one followed Shino in his journey. Bringing such a time of peace and prosperity into the country itself, many felt grateful to have Shino as their leader and those who didn’t were terrified of the consequences of hurting the sixty-year old man. This made the journey to the mountain much easier than in previous years, despite his old age slowing him down.

Instead of letting himself in once he reached the cabin, Shino thought it would be polite to knock. He raised a fist to the door but before he could rap the cabin door, he heard Um say, “You may come in.”

The door opened on its own and Shino shuffled inside. Um was sitting, waiting for Shino’s return. They were unaged while Shino’s joints cracked and popped more than the burning wood. The fireplace looked unchanged, still flickering as brightly as the first time he came through. The only thing that seemed old in this cabin was him. “I followed your advice.”

Um looked Shino up and down, Shino wearing coats made out of animals only found in countries he had taken over. Exotic furs lined his body, Shino asked for only the warmest for his journey. “I can see.”

“Am I a legend in your history?” Shino asked.

“What advice did you follow?” Um asked.

Shino was taken aback, wondering if the god couldn’t remember the past twenty years. No, it had to be a test, to see if Shino was paying attention to the god’s words. Shino answered, “You said to do something worth remembering. I did. You must see the gifts this country has been bestowed under my leadership?”

Um asked, “Is the slaughter of thousands worth remembering?”

“Yes, we remember the lives of those we have had to cut down in order for us to better our people.”

“Do you remember Okin, the fifty-ninth throat you had to slice? Do you remember Chi-Won, the mother that you executed? Or do you remember the idea of them, the concepts of dead citizens to be remembered?” If Shino had not known better, he would have assumed Um was mad. Instead, Shino knew Um was asking in earnest. They were testing Shino, getting towards the end, he felt the title of a legend was within grasp.

“While I do not remember, the fact that you do means you have been looking, watching. I must be ready,” Shino rationized.

“You are not,” Um responded.

Shino stopped, his heart sank. It had been sixty years and he still wasn’t ready. Before Shino could protest, Um clarified, “People come and die all the time. Killers are not new, there are and always will be people who kill in different names, whether it’s religion, their country, or their way of life. Killing for the sake of making a name of yourself is nothing new. Do you want to be a legend?”

Shino nodded vigorously. Shino heard the door open behind him. Um looked to Shino and said, “Come back in twenty more years after you do something that will leave a true mark on history.”

Shino was once again swept away before he could ask for an explanation. Sixty years and the god refused to put his name down for him. All Shino ever received was vague sayings instead of real answers. Frustration from divinity erupted into a loud anger as Shino started to destroy valuable art pieces his wife had spent time curating to make their palace a home. When one of Shino’s sons found him and restrained Shino from destroying their home, the son asked, “You just left not that long ago, why have you returned?”

“I am quitting as this country’s leader, effective immediately. I have a new goal to make my name matter,” Shino explained.

“But your name does matter, father. It matters to your family, isn’t that all that matters?”

“No!” Shino cried.

He knew his time was coming, this next visit would be the last one he would have with Um. After Shino’s resignation, the country began to enter a time of war, wiping the peace Shino worked for within half the time he had spent working for it. Before his meeting, Shino would have cared that his legacy in the country might have been destroyed, but Shino continued to swallow his anger. Some of Shino’s grandchildren were drafted into the wars ahead, but Shino didn’t care when he heard over half of them perished on the battlefield.

Shino’s wife left him after she found her husband becoming an uncaring patriarch. His kids stopped visiting his home, shrinking Shino’s living space from a large mansion to nothing more than a shack, smaller than the cabin he was destined to see. All the while, Shino spent his time in pent-up rage. He had lost almost all of his belongings he gained during his leadership, but kept around a knife he had taken from a foreign temple. The knife’s blade was nearly invisible, only small black specks were seen in the blade’s edges. Shino had always felt there was something special about this blade, so he decided this was the one possession he needed. He focused all his anger into this blade as he trained to use the knife to the highest of his potential.

By the time Shino was almost eighty, no one visited him anymore. Shino didn’t notice anyone coming in or out of his cabin, just whether someone had touched his most important knife. On the day before his final visit, The academic son spent one more visit to convince Shino to give up on his mission.

“Mother is dead,” the son announced.

Shino didn’t move. It took him a long moment to realize what the son had said. All Shino could respond with was an unenthusiastic, “Shame.”

“Do you care? Most of your family is dead, do you care?”

Tears swelled in the son’s eyes as his father responded, “I don’t know.”

The son slammed the shack’s door, the whole foundation shook under his anger. Shino didn’t look at his son during the encounter, he refused to give any of his negative emotions where it didn’t count. Instead, he packed, focusing his anger on the knife. He knew where he could make history.

Shino didn’t pack anything for the journey, not that he had anything worth packing. The cabin was still there, undisturbed by time while still falling apart. Once Shino opened the door, he saw Um was not inside. It looked as warm as the first time around, but the heat felt less inviting. Instead, Shino felt rage, nothing had changed but he continued to age. He felt the god mock him from the other side of the door.

The door he had yet to open, the one that no doubt contained Um’s living quarters. It was ridiculous, why would a god need to sleep, but Shino rushed to the door. Inside, he saw Um, sitting at a table, hunched over something Shino was unable to see. Their back was turned to Shino, but they still greeted him like an old friend. “Shino, have you made your mark on history?”

They sounded happy, almost excited, infuriating Shino further. He took the knife and plunged it into Um’s back, holding them against the table while Shino sliced in further. Shino dragged the knife and watched as black blood spilled from the god’s back, flooding the floor as the god began to shrivel. The body turned to a shade of white devoid of any life as Shino stabbed them for the umpteenth time. Once the god no longer moved, Shino saw what he had done. The body looked aged and decrepit, as if all the years spent young caught up to the poor god.

After he finished inspecting his years of anger abused onto one god, he saw what Um had been working on on the table; a piece of parchment with one line: “Shino killed the god of history—” The name was covered in ink and Shino was unable to remove it.

At first, Shino smiled; he had finally made his name in history, the god had written Shino down like he wanted. He grabbed onto the parchment and read it against the nearest light. For a short moment, he was proud. Then the consequences of Shino’s actions filled his mind. Shino had only known one god, but there must have been more. Killing a god had to incur the wrath of many others. He looked back to the parchment and thought about how to spin this in the positive. “People conquer gods all the time, right? I cannot have been the first warrior to do so. Let me just write down their name, so I’m secure in history. It was, um…”

Shino couldn’t remember. The god’s name refused to surface, Shino couldn’t think of any of the times he had addressed the god by name. “Well, I told my children at some point, I must have, I’ll just ask—”

Shino stopped, the names of his children were fading from his memory. Panic set in as Shino ran out of the god’s room into the main cabin. Once in the main room, Shino noticed it was dark, only moonlight illuminated the room as it began to fall apart. The cabin began to shrink, scrolls from the infinite ceiling rained onto Shino before turning into dust once they hit him. Shino attempted to grab a scroll from the wall but it disappeared into nothing once his fingers touched.

The cabin became smaller and the threat of Shino getting hurt inside grew larger. He ran out into the snow and closed the door behind him. His heart began to slow and he looked to the cabin falling in on itself until it disappeared. Shino looked around at his environment, he had no idea how he got to the mountain or why he was sitting next to a pile of wood in a blizzard. He reread the piece of parchment as winds began to pick up. “I am Shino and I killed the god of history. I am Shino and I killed the god of history.”

Those who travel the mountains claim to hear the voice of a god killer, crying as he repeats the last thing he ever read. History went on without him as his country faded into obscurity and his family legacy was lost after two generations.

ca. 17,000,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /brave /pure_water /+4~3 /GUIDE

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:

The planetbound speaker laments
the defeat of an uprising
against Community of Im-
provement, asserting that gravi-
ty was lost there… They narrate
gravity’s role in history.

ENTRY:
Oh weight, go bring love’s ratio
To bear on relations some may — eons rare, new —
Then create! We can remake seasons
Of people’s misuse, of stupidity, of
Violence’s great lie. Fate must decide:
Sparkling echoes of the Sunbow’s jetting car
Or let youths drill, bind wire still wounded for;
Free Colony’s sieged atmosphere
Or Filament Braid which breathes free, this blazing pillar
We yet have to create, the ratio: Gravity!
Fight this grim age, make it still right,
Curve free, that your mass returns!

Considering how, not bowing fervent on
The pleasure of Directors,
One planet names this true rule, its native-span sun.
Yet skies scan distant violence
From a weightless reign, vain estate of none,
Traps rich oxygen to lash to canny toxic gas
And choke partisans. Thick, your smoke stands,
That pure remonstrance at Entrepreneur’s act!

Long ago all was dust, fallow. Along
Came planets and people fully stranded, aflame
For pointless war, anointer
Of temporary weight, fate prepared for end of
Life. Before space flight, waste scored the sky,
All raged against all, and what they call
Weight no one saw; chaos alone reigned.
Yet gravity was not trapped; modestly it had set
Eyes for new ways, a truer sight:
Infrared, releasing secrets of planets,
That terraforming for carbon or water can
Be shared in equal weight, the
Wild harmony as yet unrealized.

We were as dwellers held fast to grieve
In nature’s obscure station,
Still mindless, trapped by planets’ blind will.

Car black from ardor, some take us forward and backward:
Finishers of the solar system,
Erasers of our safety,
Yea, when Clockworker Gods rent space!
A wave of terror made the
Archipelago’s boundless metal
Cloak gas planets, their rich and vast holds
Stream massed chemicals as feed
For terraforming. Our pay: mourning or bitter war.

Though large of mind, well read, did their violent charge, so
Assented, spent on concentrated mass,
Broaden gravity’s most freeing span? In all
People clockworkers bound for sorrow, you’ll see
Trapped throngs in the vacuum, this wrong that
But raises the poison germ of stations,
Immanent form of might I judge so eccentric.

Weight, oh still you hid your face,
Opening space, making plain your
Price of loss whose output could not prove otherwise:
A nightmare of bare violence.

Easing pain of clockworks’ unwaning years
Like radio bursts first glossing gray skies,
Four Systems rose, sending your
Balanced ways, ungated channels
So people may live free, when they all bestowed
Weight’s love, pure mind, curve of grace
Upon the mass that sung songs of
This open ringing fellowship.
True, their executives lived useless wealth, yet through
Their beneficence justice was reckoned fair.
Freest of their age, they earned our esteem.

Catalyzing culture, the Four Worlds enticed all that
Beauty of brief few hours:
Bare ship songs of such longing, there
Cries verse nothing of their like;
Courageous sports of moral favor,
Which those players built in Limb and Payload;
Such arts ignite history’s brightest partage.

Mysteriously ceasing,
That relished order where Four Systems sat
Deadened to a nothingness.
None can guess what stress happened
To undermine a society so new;
None knows what passed in that open.
Eras through gravity’s void, we let vacuum endure
Enough for people’s fall. All agree that nothing
Can subsist in its absence.

Who could make what won’t undo?
Not the clockwork gods, not four modest stars,
Nor any unyielding war.

That answer came ersatz, stands
For distant theft by starborn, for violence in this cult
Of Clear Extent’s rule, who annexed freedom
And allowed equal weight’s feral, fetid hollowing.
Toil-built planets benefit spoiled
Figures self-titled as executives,
Relishing their rule as presidents
Without weight in their vowed inner principles,
No people’s mass, just facile greed, no
Reason-hewn orbits well fit for human needs,
Merest bare flow of power’s mystique
Gleaned from brainless ceremony.
When gravity’s beauty is banished
For centrifugal might’s hollow image, your
Mass remains bound in the past.

Clear Extent, your enemy,
Whose million hours nothing grew.

It’s said our loved conductor planet,
Gravity’s first carrier, had
Patterned the First Entrepreneur, and nursed that
Blessed onset self-extension, that
Guide for us to prosper by
Equal extent of technical means.

It’s true that mecha arm and neural shunt had proved the
Reach and worth of Community
Of Improvement over all;
In competition the self found its
Orbit: new planets that you live for,
That all free atoms yield for the people’s task.
Still all this but extends a single will
Effaced by one edifice:
Station! all our morals depraved;
Station! those advances unmade;
Station! if one knows it one hates;
See dwellers’ stark atrophy,
Despair unseen by sleek stationers, where
Drone torture and transport are goads,
Made from avarice ignorant of weight.
Station! this place is a grave,
Here where this shining core of your insight is buried!

We still see a mass whose pull redeems!

Covenant clubs, organizations that can rescue us,
These experiments in free and balanced living,
Borne planet by planet, friendless while waiting for
The triumph of justice against all adversity.

I orbit Free Colony with unyielding force, I
Follow Hacker of the Archipelago’s strong pull,
Heed Filament Braid’s great weight as heartily
As star-rippling waves hail nearing eras
Where no authority wields terror of power
Or abuses the planet-bearing fruit of our toil!

Deny dead regimes for infrared’s sighting,
Undo the cult of tradition
With time’s speeding by free striving,
No role from mecha arm alone
May be built in eccentricity’s name!
Free Colony, ever sync my pulse with thee!

Gravity, undying one, come while we yet live!

USER-ADDED RECORD:
It is difficult to be unmoved by the passion of Pure Water’s poem, which articulated some of the clearest values of gravity as a governing principle. It’s one of the first poems to celebrate the very Covenant clubs that would coalesce as the Covenant of Cycles, true inheritor of gravity’s freeing value. The historical narrative, though steeped in long-forgotten literary devices, depicts the core flaws of previous interstellar regimes, allowing current readers to grasp the real benefits of our Covenant’s existence. Still, this poem is not without its controversies. Purists are often embarrassed by the poem’s non-inverted rhymes and floating syllables, though other scholars took those liberties seriously in the spirit of its message. Others debate the brief passage on the Covenant clubs. Pure Water would have been aware of the rising Covenant of Cycles, yet it is not mentioned in the poem. Some speculate that the poet was forced to keep such likely praise a secret due to political repression. A more marginal view holds that the Covenant of Cycle’s dependence on stations — only recently dismantled — repelled the anti-station sympathies of the poet. It is remarkable how such an emotionally direct poem can include these ambiguities still discussed today. Conductor of the Records, Prudent Era.

Anonymous Splice of “Joyous Avatar of Light,”

ca. 9,000,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /prudent /anonymous /-4~0 /REF

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:

Just before a Lot-Light game, its
anthem is interrupted with
changed lyrics by a group of hack-
er activists demanding rights.

ENTRY:

Containment fields TRAP US for the fun
Optic sensor MAKES SURE WE DON’T STOP
Avatars FLAUNT WHAT WE DON’T have
And WOUNDS glow from OUR HANDS —

REPROCESSED fungus ALL WE EVER EAT
GIVING HOMES TOO cold OR HOT TO LIVE,
Spend our partage BUYING MEDICINE,
Now WE ARE ASKED TO bow!

Before they TWIST THEIR GRAVITY
While OUR WASTE MAKES STARBORN SMILE
Until directors ARE UNDONE
FLIP THE SHIPS
WRECK THE DECK

Use our exercise break to peruse
The TOOLS TO HALT THE WORK-HOURS, what
Fun to SMASH SERVERS WITH everyone,
Forget there’s much else more!

When WE TAKE THE hazard TO RESIST, then
PISS OFF THE PLANETBOUND DIRECTOR, this
Enacts the CHANGE WE NEED IN OUR condition:
Call QUITS AND GIVE TO all!

Before they TWIST THEIR GRAVITY
While OUR WASTE MAKES STARBORN SMILE
Until directors ARE UNDONE
FLIP THE SHIPS
WRECK THE DECK

From Diadem to Wildcat’s reddened sun,
Planetbound to server-works, all can
Register REVOLT, OUR LIVES ALL pledged
To MAKE NEW WORLDS WITH you!

All PEOPLES will receive the signal call,
Terms which people cross all space have learned:
BAND AGAINST EXPLOITERS, TAKE YOUR STAND —
Play Covenant’s LAST game!

Before they TWIST THEIR GRAVITY
While OUR WASTE MAKES STARBORN SMILE
Until directors ARE UNDONE
FLIP THE SHIPS
WRECK THE DECK
EFFACE THE DATA
FORGET THE RHYME, FUCK you
I WON’T DIE
While THE SPACE REGIME LETS US TOIL and smiles!

USER-ADDED RECORD, ADMIN ACCESS ONLY:
This entry is tagged for reference by authorized researchers. The identity of this and related transmission disruptions is under active investigation, due to patterns of server unrest following closely after their appearance. Maximum Lag is an offshoot of the Tangled Serpents cult, operating within Covenant systems. All instances of transmission disruption should be tagged and filed. Drone and small-mech resources should be redirected to server planets for monitoring, and section should be implemented for 100 hours in the event of local disruption. See meta-algorithms>>[population_sorts]+[narrative_sorts]>>subfile:maximum_lag for additional records and instructions. Conductor of the Records, Prudent Era.

USER-ADDED RECORD, GENERAL ACCESS:
One of the best features of poetry is the many forms it can take, even when there is no clear consensus on some of those forms’ value. The practice this entry represents is one such example. When the Maximum Lag organization began its practice of riots and sabotage to improve hacker living conditions, the group would override and splice popular transmissions to incite action. Simple songs like the unofficial lot-light anthem “Joyous Avatar of Light” were a useful vehicle for these communications. One advisor to this database has placed significant algorithmic weight to this entry, out of conviction for its literary value. Other advisors are still disturbed by its violence, crude humor, and association with the Tangled Serpents cult. Let this entry be a reminder that poetry is multi-faceted, and that this representative database of verse is an ever-changing document. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

“The Restored Cataract” by Lithogenous Garden

ca. 7,000,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /strong /lithogenous_garden /+2*3 /REF

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT:
May My Poems Be A WarNing Lance
Bolt On BeHalf Of DriVers Ev
RyWhere That We Will Not Be O
BeDiEnt ANy LonGer…
But I Aim First For The Heart Of
Those Who Have ForGot– LIMIT REACHED

ENTRY:
I was taught how to sing, but just on two feet,
Still my voice, only say what can be reversed:
Mythical empty ships that we’ve never seen,
Orbits that hold us fast without any truth.
Poetry like this fades, unlike our best songs,
Many-legged meters marked with all of our feet,
Long ago, back when starborn didn’t appear
Ravaging basins, home unearthed by their spins.
Cast off their verse, and we’ll return in our hearts.
Oldest friend, mark and gland that home is restored,

And I’ll sing the coming first truth of our friendship like I’ve always been meant to do:
Light in all its teeths comes to life when we keep the tunnels alive!
Like children you stick to teeths of violet and red with a handful hoarded for messages;
We know the kind of light that ruptures from living metals and stones with joy;
We aren’t so greedy for air that we smother the light in your fabricated atmospheres;
We drivers are returning to ourselves and with ourselves our planets long abandoned!

Before you perfected your mechas we perfected our tunnels from the secrets of the oldest friend;
We tended the ways through stone just as we now tend the ways between worlds;
Your ships would become rubble and vulgar light from a single pebble had we not shared it with you;
We are the people who were born from the most dangerous light;
We tamed those cascades with our oldest friend and made ourselves out of burrowed stone;
That made us into a mighty being of many-plus-two, of flowers, of tempered milk;
A people who thrive in the cascades and create beauty in our ancestral basins.

You who call us parasites and dusters, don’t insist that we love the orbits;
Though I was birthed in the hundred long cycles away from our basins,
Tunnelling between your worlds, we have not forgotten the Child of the Arch;
Don’t insist we love the orbits, because I lost half my creche even before the Onset,
Taken by the ordering drones during landfall on Cast Die,
Because even the tolerant planets, even when we ledger correctly, are no home for us.
Moreover, I was birthed near sunny season’s end when we impeached our leaders with dance,
And by my verses we impeach you; we dig our new tunnels free of your boundaries!

You starborn think you’re so strong because you can kill what you’re afraid of,
You saw the many-legged’s ordered minds and were so afraid that you poisoned every world;
You saw that we were humans who made friendship instead of fear and you ripped us away.
You force the kine to nurse you like children yet desecrate their guts by boiling them;
The kine play games, the many-plus-one play games, and from it we remember the future!
A future of our three basins populated again under the full swirling light of our restored cataracts!
Your games remember a future where everything is clear, vicious and dead.
How does the word planetseed sound when you say it without scent or even rattle?
If you knew shame you wouldn’t utter the curse that hollows your midsection, leaving you hungry and sad.

Lost to my kin I did what many homeless drivers did, and flew your trucks for partage
From the belts to the settlements, and even dropped a shipment to my ancestral basin,
Where the atmosphere’s dust and teeths had been stripped for your hateful blue.
Your drones then pressed me to join an array in that ten-season war,
With thousands of drivers in a taboo mix of conductors and directors;
We survived four collisions against Community of Improvement’s death-sick arrays,
But our planetbound middle-craft didn’t trust us drivers, and not knowing the tunnels
Had us cache our sails when the solar winds were cresting, and half died from bad camp.
I returned and it was sunny season again and all of my friends were old;
So many conductors dead, now who will raise our creches?

The worst of it wasn’t dodging the small-mechs who refused shelter during resupply;
It wasn’t seeing first-hand the destruction of our basins for the dimmest red partage;
Nor was it serving in your wars then returning to still be called dusters by the planetbound;
And it wasn’t even seeing our directors humiliated by managing supplies while conductors fought;
It was the way other drivers lost their eye for the teeths of things and held to the wrong traditions.
I do not want for us to live our lives in the halo where stone is scarce;
I do not want a way of living chosen for us by the mecha pretenders;
And yet I also do not want a way of living chosen for us by our own fears;
I will not couple only with people whose fore-generation came from the ice season;
I want to learn more than the tired stories where the children of the cautious warm the children of the hasty;
I do not want to gather particles only because of the girl who packed a lopsided pack during sunny season;
I want to gather particles because we know better than the payloaders of the cascading things;
I do not want to wait for the return of our oldest friends to finally make our way to the Joyous Fountain;
I want to restore the cataracts by ripping away the particle veils, telling my kin: we are home!

Starborn, devouring children, degrading conductors, true eccentrics of the nuclear;
You’d section us like the asteroid dwellers if you could stop us from our cycles.
Your drones and small-mechs can restrict us to the halo and still we will never go hungry;
Even if we younger ones are flung afield, uncharged and gaunt, the counter-generations will be fed,
Because the true stories will never be killed in our hearts;
I still remember how the fickle athlete had their hamstring healed by their fore-elders;
And I will live by that half-forgotten story as the preparation for our first planets.

I imagine a fountain drenching the basins enough to awaken the memories of tunnels;
The littlest crechemate or the most ignorant conductor knows better the secrets of perception
Than any grand head of the orbit with their mastery of fusion who drove the many-legged, then us from our planets,
In the name of cleaner, newer air of their poisonous invention;
I refuse your sorts and sequences for the true sequence of our authentic traditions;
Let the starborn in their boots call us dusters, but let them choke on it;
Let them call us proton eaters and we’ll tap their backsides with a wink;
Many-plus-two, flower and milk, show me every particle;
That we may eat from nothing and maintain the tunneled stars;
So that the tiered basins may make the whole system sparkle!

USER-ADDED RECORD, ADMIN ACCESS ONLY:
This entry is tagged for reference by authorized researchers. The entry and author persona have triggered a narrative restructuring among the drivers who, despite the low population (>10^8) are considerably restive and prone to eccentric violence. The population is being actively monitored for contact and agitation by Tangled Serpents agents. Per priority narrative meta-algorithms of Director of Transmissions, we are instructed to emphasize redirect in our response, stressing our gratitude for driver labor and military service. Reference meta-algorithms>>narrative_sorts>>subfile:drivers for implementation instructions. Conductor of the Records, Strong Era.

USER-ADDED RECORD, GENERAL ACCESS:
Lithogenous Garden was best known for her ushering in a rebirth of poetry among driver communities, following a long decline and the collapse of the many-legged population, with whom drivers formed a symbiotic relationship. The rebirth is commenced in the poem’s sudden shift, from its first lines in the formal mirror-rhythm to the long lines of the poet’s own traditions. Contemporary readers have noted the vexed relationship Lithogenous Garden has with both mainline Covenant traditions and driver traditions alike. This tension, which the poem captures so strikingly, mirrors the troubled but valued role of the drivers in shaping Covenant History. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

“Of Those Other Turnings” by Fortunate Night

ca. 1,300,000 hours past

ADDRESS: /records /non-operations /narrative_set /clever /fortunate_night /+8~0 /GUIDE

PARSING CREATOR ABSTRACT
RECORD NOT FOUND
GENERATING ABSTRACT:

The planetbound speaker observes
the holiday known as the Mi-
nor Turning, marking completion
of the star system’s calendar,
compared with the better known Tur-
ning of the Covenental Year.

ENTRY:

ENTRY:
To call it a minor turning
is to tell me that you came
from elsewhere, fast.
You didn’t stay long.
Such celebrations are too small
for those who live so near
velocity’s native limit.
Here where the gas giant is
too close to a star too dim,
it’s just the turning. My second.
They always say, “May you
be blessed to live to a second
turning, and may the years
after be none too difficult.”

I imagine in the great craft
they drink something even frothier
than our blend of edge-seeds
whose infrared roast allows
them their delicate ferment.
It’s also possible that they view
something with more sparkle
than our exosphere thermals,
whose ionizing glass pebbles
briefly make our sky the soft
blue of the Diadem. Nobody
would disagree that the mass
of the galactic star draws more notice
than our handful of planets and moons.

My first turning in that mere
three million-strong system,
I remember jetting to the outer
cloud with my friend Ranging Arc
steering our little craft’s central jet.
We hoped to spy some remaining
drivers to see how they did it:
the grave dignity of their obscure
dances performed without witness
or official notice, the poverty
and uncomplicated joy
in the cheap ferrous redness
of celebratory jets — their very best,
in the spirit of a celebration
of what really mattered.

It all came back during the Second Turning,
watching that brief-blue sky light up
like we do with our short lives,
grateful in the quiet stars.

USER-ADDED RECORD, ADMIN ACCESS ONLY:
Fortunate Night has generously accepted the role of Director of Poetry alongside his primary teaching duties. He’s long taught to avoid the “distractions” of social questions or abstract ideologies in verse, making him the perfect fit for leading this narrative sort. He has reviewed the summary readout of the narrative meta-algorithms and has already gathered a list of poets suitable for transmitting Covenant priorities. When a starborn delegation reaches Rain-Drenched Fountain in 20,000 hours, the parties will draft a more refined narrative distinction between verse for guidance and verse for reference. For more information, reference meta-algorithms>>narrative_distinction>>subfile:verse. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

USER-ADDED RECORD, GENERAL ACCESS:
Though Fortunate Night is considered the unofficial voice of the planetbound, he is also one of the finest poets in the Covenant. Its gentle but direct criticism of starborn aloofness is a reminder of the Covenant’s core values: the free orbit of all people. True to his simple humility, during the time Fortunate Night served as advisor to this database, he did not allow his own entry to receive user-added algorithmic weight. Now that he has departed to seek his will, the remaining advisors are pleased to give this work more visibility. Conductor of the Records, Clever Era.

The poem is a dedication to the construction of a real pavilion, though the poem imagines the pavilion to be comparable to one constructed in a Taoist heaven. Nansŏrhŏn wrote the poem at the age of eight, and it is considered an example of her potential greatness as a poet.

I

Let me now tell of this.

On the moon, a cotton and ramie sunshade, hung high—
materializing vapors
from beyond the mind’s
worldly boundaries
seem an auspicious sign.

II

If constructed on Earth, this silvery structure would shine in sunlight—
its columns the color of sundown’s misty mauve;
and yet, this summery abode
will not be of the dusty illusions
within a bottled cosmos.

This royal edifice will manifest
as if the azure mussel opened its shell,
blew a mystical smoke,
and after the spout clears,
a palatial residence of exotic timber—
here on the moon.

Or, put another way,
this same residence will be built
by a divine being’s conch shell,
which, when blown,
invokes a spirit, a highly-skilled builder.
Using this same magic,
the demi-god owner of the conch shell
will tile the roof in luminant milky jade.

Or Blue Castle, an immortal of Heaven’s fifth level,
will practice his magical art of lifting brocaded curtains,
and from behind them:
a complex of viewing platforms.

Or, similarly, the Prince of the East Sea
will open the cache of his lambent box
and remove a stately villa.

Therefore, from these examples,
this heavenly pavilion
will only be completed
by a power
outside the realm
of humans.

III

The owner’s name—he who built this seasonal retreat—
is registered on a list of immortals—
position and rank,
among the superior Immortals of the Empyrean.

The owner
was an official of Heaven,
faithful and moral—
he governed the City of Opaline Twilight.
His status and reputation rank among the most sublime nobles,
and he was the most famous
among those in the office
of the Five-Colored Pearly-Haze.

As judge,
he punished Wu Kang
for violating Taoist doctrine,
Wu Kang, whom he forced to wield a steel ax
which radiated glacial-cold
from the hilt,
and cursed him
with an everlasting sleeplessness
to stand beneath a cinnamon tree
impervious to chopping.
Occasionally, the owner
enjoyed watching nymphs
dance to the melody
of “A Dress of Rainbows”—
some, silvery-white,
danced devotedly near the balustrades—
the nymphs,
with brilliant pendants of lilac star sapphires
that swayed
on their sleek lavender jackets,
and coronets
that glistered like starlight,
their hairpins spotted
with iridescent starry pearls.

When in Great Clarity Palace,
at dawn, this demigod would mount a dragon,
then leave for Penglai,
and at close of day,
slept at Fangzhang.
Sometimes this being flew upon a crane
between the Three Islands.
When the owner traveled, Fuqiu with his hengxiao
rode on the left,
and Hongya with his bamboo clapper
rode on the right.

For 1,000 years, the owner lived
a paradisiacal life
in ease,
but one day, fell
into the short illusion of humankind
on the dust of Earth,
because this immortal misunderstood Taoist doctrine
and practiced in error.
He was thus exiled
to Earth’s Palace of Endless Pleasure.
Red Knot wove this connection,
and so, regrettably,
the owner of this spring-like place for viewing
entered the shack of mortality.

When friendless in the earthly realm,
in a room with taffeta curtains
and a silken screen,
sleeping companionless,
the owner may have fretted through the dead of night:
How can I ask a royal favor from the Palace of the Sun
so that I might make use of the Moon Palace?

He found a vial of an Elixir of Flight
and poured a little of the black sand
onto a waft of air.
Like a frightened silver-backed toad
that hops to its underground den,
the incandescent moon
declined into a lunar eclipse.
The owner smiled at this opportunity
to escape the sunlit scarlet grime
of his sublunary life,
and he passed through the ruddy murk
of nightfall,
through a passage to Heaven
from Earth,
an endless traverse, seemingly,
to Purple Palace—
to a banquet the owner had once attended—
a banquet with music
from deities:
marble chi flutes
and bamboo panpipes
evocatively played—
this party continued, in merriment,
as if the owner
had never left.

Yet again, I imagine the many divine beings
who attend
that ever-long event:

the Queen in her chariot,
drawn by cobalt-blue phoenixes,
a feathered parasol
preceding her retinue;
the herald of the King,
riding a milky-white tiger;
behind him
the procession members
follow a jeweled fasces;
Liu An, who wrote a book about divinities,
who summoned two dragons to his reading desk;
King Mu, who traveled west
to the Queen Mother
who lives there in the west,
in the land of demigods;
he let his eight-horsed chariot
rest on a mountain slope
while he went to the palace revelry
in the upper worlds.

At daybreak, the Duchess Shang Yuan
is welcomed—
her combed blue-black hair
braided
into three chignons.

During the day,
the King of Heaven’s daughter
is next received—
she who weaves
a nine-patterned gauze
on a bejeweled loom.

Such a multitude of divinities
gathered on a southern summit
at Diamond Lake:

the kings who assemble
under the Big Dipper
at the capital of the celestial cities
and Emperor Xuan
who, to get his feather robes of an immortal,
at Sen Zhang,
strolled with Gongyuan and his stave—
all attend.

The God of Water and the Immortal of Fire
who play Go
betting a planet on the game’s outcome—
they attend.

The freeholder
received the Queen Mother
at the North Sea—
her wagonette,
drawn by speckled kirin,
arrived in the midst of balsamine.
Laozi, met at the gateway of China’s western borders—
his powder-blue ox
on the lea.

The Immortal of Bees gives honey—
flies buzz
around pots of boiling jade—
an immortality brew.
The Immortal of Geese brings fruit—
in and out
of the glossy
blue-and-white
tiled kitchen,
he travels.

The nymphs Shuang Cheng,
with a mother-of-pearl inlaid flute,
and Yan Xiang
with a rosewood lute
produce a refined, noble melody
from mid-Heaven.
To this music of paradise,
Wan Hua
intones a piercing lyric,
and Fei Qiong
performs an elaborate dance.

A dragon’s-head kettle
pours wine from the mouth,
the wine
fermented from the marrow
of a phoenix.
A tray shaped like a crane’s back
holds seasoned dried goji berries.

One hundred invited spirits
will come from afar;
one thousand saints,
welcomed.

Still, this heavenly palace
of the upper worlds
is not large enough for everyone,
so a new one had to be built.

IV

There was no elegant seasonal retreat large enough,
so a new one had to be constructed—
how else would it be possible
for the Emperor of Heaven
to join such festivities?

Therefore, the proprietor
sent orders to ten lands
and across the nine seas
to collect builders.
A master craftsman
was given a nearby house,
and he selected the finest camphor and nanmu—
the mighty iron adzes and axes,
steadfast as mountains,
worked the pillar bases,
and the bronze levels and squares
shined an auric essence,
radiating throughout the heavens.
A granite forge, lightless-black,
melted iron in a crucible,
and the craftsmen
plumbed their measures
as skillfully
as Gongshu Ban.
A spirit of the earth
hammered his chisel
with utmost skill,
following ideas
like the father of carpentry,
Gongshu Ban.

V: A Reverie of Completion

A prismatic double rainbow
above the completed summery abode;
the ends seem to drink
from a coursing star stream;
the smaller iridescent bow
with redder bands
ascends
like the heads
of the six snapping turtles
that carry the Island of Immortals.

This elegant retreat,
singular,
bemisted:
an amber rafter
glows
in a sunbeam.
Beyond its paper-thin
white jade lattice and silk windows,
a meteor falls—
across from and level with the sky-blue corridor:
clouds upon the plain.

Nephrite roof tiles
sparkle
like scales of fish—
finely cut steps,
aligned
like geese in flight.
Cerise flags flutter
from bamboo poles—
other poles
with peacock feathers—
dense haze,
luminant
with moonlight.

Fu Bo, on the surrounding grounds,
raises a tent—
under the empyrean’s three primary stars,
he hangs curtains
ornate
with fairy-slipper orchids;
others tie sun-yellow tassels
to the silkened windows of the retreat,
adding to the shimmering tassels
already tied—
a fine mesh net
protects the carved banisters
of the graceful summerhouse
from birds, insects, seeds,
and leaves of trees.

Immortals assemble inside—
within the structure
a painting of multi-colored phoenixes
emits chi.
A sylph stands by a window—
perfume overflows
from her mirrored cosmetics box
inlaid with the image
of two phoenixes.

A room of viewing windows
with pale blue drapes,
a peacock-blue jade wine table
behind a mica screen—
propitious waves of shimmering heat
ascend in the eventide.
This same room,
painted with lotus petals,
fanned by peacock feathers—
ivory-white reclining couches,
the room filled with delicacies—
a gracing spectrum of colors
over the building
all through the day.

In this edifice, the proprietor
will hold every revelry
with a revitalizing elegance
and humble, sincere
hospitality.

From the inlaid-with-lotus-engraved-jade balustrades,
dupion tapestry,
ornate with cumulous clouds—
from the gilt eaves,
amaranthine drapes hang.

Nine branches, each with a lantern:
the light falls calmly
upon a quilted brocade futon
and handwoven mat.
Virescent lotuses
and icy-white peaches
on plates, the plates,
embossed with images
of eight celestial oceans.

Only regret
the white-as-cranes marble lintel
lacks celebratory words.

The owner of the estate
asked some highly placed divine beings
to write their feelings
in a poem,
but, for example,
Li Bai, who dedicated poems
to the concubine of Emperor Xuan,
since long ago,
remains drunk
on the back
of a whale—
Li He, whose odes were written
on the Emperor of Heaven’s
summery lookout tower,
now writes
with the absurdity
of the Snake God.

This new summerhouse
only bears
a small inscription
telling the story of its construction
engraved in iron,
written in the sophisticated calligraphy
of Shan Xuanqing.

The upper world pavilions
have beautiful engravings
from the illustrious Caishen,
whose style is
esteemed in history.

I feel shame
that I was, am, and will be
in the grime
of the lost human universe
in my lives
of the past, present, and future—
I have been falsely put on the demigod Jin Huang’s list
for punishment,
and so am exiled
to Earth.

It is also true
that Jiang Lang’s poetic talent
has been exhausted,
so the impression
of the five-colored blossom—
of his good writing—
ended.

This is why Jiang Lang pressed me for a poem.

The voices of past poets
echoed in my mind
in answer.

Slowly I held a vermillion brush
and smiled—
the paper, awash with ink
flowed with words
as a brook
is fed
by a spring.

It is not necessary
for the immortal Zi’an
to help these words—
the phrasing is so beautiful,
and passages, strong;
it is not necessary
to wash and sober Li Bai’s face
so he can join
and help.

VI

Inspired, I present the divine verse
as if kept
in a brocade pouch—
this, the created ode
for this exquisite residence
with a splendid view.

Receiving the dedication,
craftsmen place all the verses
within a hollow
of the double beams,
and celebrants
now pay homage to the view
in each of the six directions:

The freeholder of the land
offers rice cakes to the east:
At sunrise,
may you, honored guest,
ride an ageless sage’s sunbird
and enter Pearl Palace.
At first light,
sunbeams on the ground
under a mulberry
on the shorelines
of the Island of Immortals—
10,000 sun rays
redden
the bemisted day,
turn the ocean’s surface
maroon.

Woodworkers offer cakes to the south:
May you rest
like a sacred dragon
with nothing to do—
one that drinks
from a pristine pond.
On a zitan bed,
drowse and wake
in the tulips’ noon shade—
smiling,
call for a lovely servant girl
to aid in removing
your teal jacket.

Palace maids offer cakes to the west:
Covered by frost,
a petal from a celestial-blue ranunculus
wanes—
an iridescent firebird
cries.
Wearing a plain-woven silk jacket
for the season of rebirth,
embroidered with the character for jade,
a servant receives the Queen Mother—
later, astride a crane,
the Queen Mother
hurries
to arrive at her great celestial house,
though the sun’s rays
have set.

The owner of the estate offers cakes to the north:
The North Star sinks
into the vast and wide North Sea—
the wings of an immortal bird
beat the upper firmament—
courses of wind increase.
A gloom of billows
portends rain
in the Nine Heavens.

Palace maids throw cakes upwards:
Daylight colors brighten a little—
feathery clouds hang like gossamer silk.
An eternal sage’s reverie
floats around his hetian jade bed.
In the same way,
may you lie listening
to the Big Dipper,
the melodies
of the turning
suns.

Woodworkers throw cakes downwards:
Graying clouds
in the eight directions
portend
the night’s
darkness—
a maid informs of the icy air
at Crystal Palace.
Frost has formed
on the rooftop tiles, the tiles
intricately carved
with mandarin ducks.

VII

As the pilings rose,
kneeling, I prayed:
May the cinnamon blossoms never age,
and the alluring fields of grass
enjoy a long springtime.
Though the sun and its luminescence
will someday weaken,
I wish you will enjoy touring
in a bronze-trimmed oaken chariot
and find evermore pleasure.

Though lands and seas change seasons,
drive that chariot
faster than a hurricane’s current of air
and thrive
with a full life.

When the day’s closing hazes
press against the latticed kesi-silk windows,
through a nearby gilded rosewood gate
inlaid with cobalt-blue jade,
look down over 90,000 li
and see the Earth,
small, hazy—

smile and look for 3,000 years
as the clean mulberry fields
yield
to the shores
of the sea.

Despite these burdens,
with your hand,
please turn the sphere of suns
in the Palace of Heavenly Paradise,
and may your body linger in the Nine Heavens,
despite the icy wafts of air.

— Peter Longerich, Goebbels: A Biography, Random House, 2015, page 409.

Berlin, April 1945

Until now, Reichminister Goebbels could still hope.

The Führer retired to his study with his bride of one day, directing the onlookers to wait ten minutes, clicking the door shut. From that moment, reality ceased to be something Goebbels could accept or comprehend. He stared at the door, numb, the room silent except for artillery rumbles somewhere overhead… until the shot banged.

A secretary gasped. Goebbels shuddered, collapsing inside, like Hitler’s own body. For all intents and purposes, he had died with his idol of the past nineteen years.

Because all other feeling had ceased, he became aware of something large and flat in the inner breast pocket of his suit. Absently, he reached in and drew it out:

Drei Geschichten der— a head floating in a jar—

What? Snapped back to awareness, he squinted at the magazine in his hand. The final word of the title, after der, was missing, a charred hole in its place.

Where had he gotten this? Think…

Goebbels welcomed the distraction. Retreating into the passageway that smelled of damp concrete and faintly of sewage, he sank into one of the chairs. He flipped through the pages and saw the story titles. Iron Sky. They Saved Hitler’s Brain. The Frozen Dead.

Yes. It was coming back to him now…

Berlin, 1933

The Propaganda Minister fidgeted at his desk, waiting for noon. Known as the Mouse-General behind his back, but second only to Hitler in hypnotizing crowds, he kept his nails immaculate, emphasizing his prominent head with dark hair combed tightly back, hard eyes, and a mouth he used like a club. (Speaking of which, he and Magda had fought again last night, and he wanted to get the bad taste out of his mouth.)

One of his secretaries appeared in the office doorway, eyes magnified behind her glasses, wringing her hands. “He’s here.”

The minister’s ears pricked up. “He” could only be one person, and early, thank God! This was one offender Goebbels wanted to deal with personally.

He hurried back around his desk, half-dragging his club foot, and pulled a drawer open. Out came a modest-sized magazine. Its cover featured a head floating in a jar, and the title Drei Geschichten der Zukunft blazed in yellow across the top. Goebbels placed it face-up on the desktop.

“Send him in.”

A bespectacled man with long legs strode in. Too long; he reminded Goebbels of an entertainer on stilts. In three steps, the visitor reached the center of the office, where he stopped. He wore a gray suit a little cheaper, a little shabbier than the Propaganda Minister’s, and held his hat before him with both hands like a shield. His dark hair was thinning and he needed a shave.

Goebbels sat with arms folded on his desk, sizing the fellow up. So this was Steiger, the publisher, calm on the outside, but with a blanched face and twitching fingers betraying his true feelings. Perhaps he had heard of that youngster who’d boasted of how he would assassinate the Führer? Goebbels had summoned the brat, had torn him up one side and down the other, and had then turned him over to the Gestapo to determine what other mischief he was up to.

Rising from his chair, Goebbels limped around his desk, picking up the little magazine, and shoved it in the man’s face.

“What is the meaning of this?”

The visitor flinched for an instant. “Short stories, Herr Reich Minister.” Then, as if it might help: “Science fiction stories.”

Goebbels saw the reaction and felt taller, but not tall enough. That this man stood a good five centimeters above him did not help, but never mind.

“You’ve published Christoff Bowes, Zeitpiraten-Abenteurer since 1926. I’ve had the last several issues reviewed, and I see you’ve resisted calls to more accurately reflect the times and our national way of life. And now I hear you’re about to print these ‘Three Stories of the Future?'” He held up the publication and shook it. “We’re fortunate someone brought this to our attention before you dumped it on the public. Did you write them all yourself?”

Steiger paused before answering. “To be frank, sir, neither I nor my writers came up with any of them.”

Goebbels made a show of flipping through the magazine. Fifty-three pages, ads for Coca Cola and pulp paper, even the cheap kind the Americans used. “Is that why they’re all by ‘an unknown storyteller’, as you note in the introduction?” He waited till a bead of sweat trickled down Steiger’s brow, then said: “You understand, of course, that you will have to give me all three names.”

“Ah. Well, you see, sir… that would be… ” Steiger tugged his collar. “Difficult. No, impossible.”

Goebbels looked up. “And why is that?”

“It’s true that we wrote the words ourselves, but—”

“Herr Steiger, you have five seconds to start making sense.”

“We received them from an unknown sender, and not as print stories. They were films.”

Goebbels kept the man pinned under his gaze. “Go on.”

“Someone left them on my doorstep, wrapped in a package. Reels of celluloid. Curiously, when we were able to rent a projector and run them, they were quite short. Evidently parts had been edited out that we weren’t meant to see. Only the bare stories.”

“And this filmmaker included no name, no return address?”

“There was only a typewritten note from a ‘representative of future generations.’ We wondered what to make of it. In one of the films—if you could have seen it—the way the moon appeared, the future Earth, the realism—”

“You fool!” Goebbels shouted in Steiger’s face. Steiger grimaced and squeezed his eyes shut. “Don’t you realize why he sent them to you? It was so you would answer for them instead of he himself. He’s probably somewhere laughing at you as we speak. Where are these films now?”

“We don’t have them anymore; they were confiscated.”

“When?”

“I can tell you the exact day. May, the tenth.”

Goebbels knew that day, of course: the day of the book burning. “Are you saying—”

“One of my writers… His son is in the Sturmabteilung. He unfortunately let the boy hear him say too much. The whole detachment of brownshirts stormed the apartment, and the box was sitting open in a corner. They took it, every reel, the box itself, and the paper it had been wrapped in, and they ran to the Opernplatz and took turns throwing reels into the flames. The son had the honor of burning the last item, the box. Or so he informed his father afterwards.”

Goebbels frowned. He himself had spoken to the crowd that night, whipping them up as they put books to the torch: No to decadence and moral corruption! “That should tell you something about those kinds of stories, Herr Steiger.”

“We had written them down by that time. You must admit, sir, they are imaginative.”

The minister’s frown hardened into a scowl. “Imaginative? I have read them, and that is not the word they brought to mind.” He flipped through the magazine. “For example, this…” He looked up. “‘They Saved Hitler’s Brain?'”

Steiger only waited, keeping his face blank. Goebbels sauntered up and around him, speaking over his shoulder.

“From 1968?”

“That… that was when the film is supposed to have been made.”

“Is that so? Set in South America? Our soldiers living in a cave, and our Führer reduced to…” He shuddered. He wasn’t sure he could go on. “To a head? Kept alive in a jar?”

Steiger merely said, “Yes.”

“And as if that weren’t indignity enough, he goes up in flames at the end.”

Steiger kept his eyes fixed on the wall and said nothing.

Goebbels slapped the magazine against his palm, slap, slap, slap. “For this alone,” he said in a low voice, “for this alone, I could have you sent to Sachsenhausen. But it seems this is only the start. ‘The Frozen Dead’, from 1966?” Slap went the magazine against his palm. “Once again, you take pains to remind us of our defeat in war.”

“Herr Reich Minister, if you’ve read the story—”

“Every word of it, I assure you.”

“—we have been on a war footing since this new regime began. Everyone sees it. From school on up, everyone’s given uniforms, ranks, badges. It is a concern. I think the story is about where it could lead—”

Goebbels threw down the magazine. “I told you I read every word. The scientists’ plan, which might I add is disgusting, is thwarted at the end. I was even glad to see it!”

“So is it not wiser to pursue peace? Germany can rise again, without any need for retribution…”

“Germany has risen again, and I would expect you to remember that. And… My God, man! Arms hanging from a wall? And another disembodied head? What accounts for this apparent fixation you have with heads in jars?”

“It’s what was in the films, sir.”

“The films, the films.” Goebbels paced the floor. “So help me I will have that man found, whoever sent them to you, if it’s my final act on Earth.”

“The British, the Americans, they have such tales. Should we not surpass them in all things, including such imagination?”

Goebbels stroked his chin. Perhaps… perhaps. He had one more story to address, though. Without taking his eyes from Steiger, he bent down, picked up the offending publication, found the page he was looking for and held it open before him.

“And what am I to make of this ‘Iron Sky’ from the year 2012? We quit this world altogether, and retreat all the way… to the moon?”

“I rather liked that, being the first nation to colonize it.”

“We build a gigantic space-warship? We convert a negro into a stormtrooper, and dress him in the uniform like a doll? What the devil, man? Do you think those races can somehow be redeemed?”

Steiger knitted his brow, mouth tight, no doubt pondering how far he should stick his neck out. He cleared his throat. “Sir, before this regime, no one talked of race like they do now. Perhaps it’s because, well, no one really needs to be redeemed. In the story they try to change the man, but it doesn’t work so well. He was clearly meant to be the way he was and it was a mistake to try to force it, so I believe the idea’s fitting.”

Goebbels tossed the magazine aside. “I’m not sure I would want to see inside your head, Herr Steiger, or everything you think is ‘fitting.'”

For a long moment, he appraised his prisoner, standing and watching. Inside, his heart raced. His cylinders were all firing now, and the monotony of the day was far away. When it came time to write in his diary this evening, he might well give this fellow a whole page. When Steiger had squirmed enough, Goebbels spoke.

“Steiger, understand one thing. Any chance you have depends on what you tell me now. You must answer, and answer quickly. You mentioned that a note came with these films?”

“Oh yes. From—”

“I remember who the sender claimed to be. But what else did it say?”

Steiger glanced out the window, down at his shoes.

Goebbels stepped in front of the man, cigarette in hand. He blew a long exhale of blue smoke. “What are you not telling me?”

“Well—”

“Did it also mention the Führer?”

Steiger’s face told all. The man’s lower lip quivered, he tightened his mouth and nodded. “It also mentioned—”

“Himmler? Goering?”

“It mentioned you, Herr Reichminister.”

Goebbels took another drag, exhaled. “Did it now. And what did it say about me?”

A long pause. “It said only that… you would do your part to burn out our future. Those exact words. You would burn out our future.”

The Reichminister stood with one hand in his pocket. “The event of May tenth, is that what he meant? Steiger, look around you. Think. You can see the state of our nation for yourself. Are we not the prouder, the stronger for it? The very purpose of burning all that trash was for our future.”

“I’m only relating what the note said.”

Goebbels positioned himself in front of the publisher, the tall man who seemed to shrink smaller every minute. “From the moment you started talking,” he said, “I knew the Jews had set you up.” He limped to his desk, dropped the magazine on his desktop, and ground out his cigarette on it. “What do they hope to gain with this? Are they getting desperate, perhaps?”

Steiger shrugged.

The Reichminister did not stop. He continued to the door, took hold of the knob and pulled it open. Two men in black uniforms waited on the other side. The color drained from Steiger’s face.

“When you get to the camp at Sachsenhausen,” Goebbels said, “you can tell your Jewish bosses I won’t be tricked so easily.”

Steiger did not move, but hung his head, biting his lip. The men came in, each taking an arm, and led him out. The door clicked shut behind them.

Goebbels edged around his desk and sank into the chair. Reaching for the publication, he saw its cover and, for an instant, stiffened. Then he followed through with seizing and dropping it into his wastebasket, clunk. He sat back as his eyes found the wall clock. Five minutes till noon.

Well. Curious now, what he had just seen. The magazine’s title. Drei Geschichten der Zukunft, Three Stories of the Future, except Zukunft, the word for Future, was gone, burned through by his cigarette.

Goebbels looked up in his chair. Bormann and the SS men were hauling the corpses into the passageway, toward the emergency exit. He rose and followed, still holding the magazine. In a few minutes he stood in the Chancellery garden with Hitler’s SS adjutant Günsche, the valet Linge, and Bormann. They faced an artillery crater brimming with petrol, two dark shapes lying with the stillness of death in that oily pool. When Günsche lit the fire and jumped back, it wooshed up in a yellow fireball, the heat stinging Goebbels’ skin, and the magazine slipped from the former Reichminister’s fingers.

Beypore, India, 1866

On the morning of her fiftieth birthday, Bibi woke to the sound of her husband chewing loudly next to her in bed. Neither of them knew it was Bibi’s birthday, born as she was without a birth certificate, but it was to be a special day anyway because for the first time since their wedding, they would be receiving guests.

Bibi soaked basmati rice and orange lentils in copper bowls, stacked sweet samosas crammed with shredded coconut onto her best platters, and chilled glass jugs in cold water before filling them with green, salty lassi. Special silver plates had been purchased from a widow in the next village. Bibi’s husband had transported them back to their home.

Their pistachio-green bungalow sat at the edge of a mango orchard. Bright-orange garlands of marigold hung near the entrances. Bibi had woven the flowers herself; such was the occasion. Two more garlands waited on the dining table, ready to adorn the necks of the couple who would be arriving by train from Tirur later that afternoon. Bibi’s husband would meet them at the station with a wagon to bring them and their suitcases to the bungalow.

The guests were two of her childhood friends from the village by the sea. Bibi had moved up in the world: now she lived even closer to the ocean, next to a less seaweed-strewn stretch of beach. Bibi rubbed her round cheeks with freshly ground turmeric root and oil, as she had done the day before her wedding. She admired the henna patterns she had drawn on the palm of her right hand. But her fingers tingled with such excitement that the pallu of her green and pink sari escaped her grip over and over again as she tried to arrange the pleats neatly around her waist.

Amina and Arif had married around the time of Bibi’s first wedding. They still lived in the village that Bibi had fled after her first husband’s funeral. Bibi had found love and a new life in a different fishing village. She had met her new husband one early spring evening while bathing in the ocean. She had shrieked when she had first seen him. He had been sniffing around the pile of clothes she had piled neatly next to a coconut tree, sifting through her garments.

“Hey, you! Leave my things alone,” she had wailed from between the waves. But the mysterious creature had run away with her sari blouse, and a naked Bibi had staggered onto the beach, arms clamped across her chest, knees awkwardly knocking as she had tried to conceal her womanhood. The creature had scampered between the coconut trees, dragging her blouse and frolicking, pleading with her to give chase. So she had. It was the very first day that she had emerged from the house after four months of ritual mourning. And this—this felt like destiny. A dark and playful stranger had chosen her, and she could have sworn that she had been too busy praying for the repentance of her deceased husband to even think about asking Allah for a new man.

Bibi had skipped after the creature as he had dragged her sari blouse through the sand. She had chased him between thick tree trunks and jumped over vines that had scratched her smooth, brown skin. Bibi hadn’t cared. She had been lost in the moment, giggling like a schoolgirl. The pair had collapsed on the sand and lain cheek to cheek, huffing and puffing and laughing. The sky had turned black. Bibi had pulled the first brightly colored sari she had worn in months over their bodies.

Bibi told anyone who would listen, “It was love at first sight. When you know, you know.” To the young women who sold marigolds by the temple, she would say, “When you put aside expectations of how you think your perfect spouse will look, smell, and act, that’s when you’ll find true happiness.”

Her second wedding had been a small affair, as was the custom for a widow: only two fisherwomen to bear witness, and an imam to officiate the union. Her first husband’s death, caused by choking on a fish bone, had rattled her. She was relieved that her second husband refused to eat spined creatures of any kind.

By the time the guests pulled up to the house in the wagon, it was filled with the aroma of Bibi’s cooking. Biryani, idli, masala dosa, and three kinds of daal were arranged on the table. Bibi pushed a serving spoon into a platter of pilau rice scattered with strands of saffron and topped with flaked almonds and plump raisins.

“Come in, come in!” Bibi said, standing at the entrance, two garlands bouncing in her hands. “You made such a long journey. I’m so glad you found Babu. I was worried you would walk past him at the train station. He can be too quiet for his own good.”

“But where was he… we weren’t sure?” said Arif.

“Well, you got here, so everything worked out perfectly,” replied a grinning Bibi. She laughed and ushered her guests over the threshold. They ducked to receive the floral necklaces. “Now be careful and don’t bend over,” Bibi said, patting the marigolds against Amina’s bosom. “Sometimes Babu gets carried away and likes to nibble.”

She showed the silent couple to the table, where she lifted cloths and plates to reveal the fragrant feast. She had expected at least a few compliments about her house and her cooking. But when she turned back to look at the pair, their eyes were as white as coconuts and as wide as tea plates. “Yes, yes,” said Bibi, “I made all this food for you!” She watched their eyes grow wider as Babu trotted into the house and sat by the door to catch his breath. “Very special guests have come to meet my very special husband. Now please, won’t you sit?”

Bibi stroked her husband’s hair and picked strands of hay from his beard, flicking them into the air. “I should have made a garland for you,” she said, and gave him a peck on the cheek. She picked up a cloth sack that sat near the entrance, hoisted the burlap over her shoulder, and walked to the table with Babu at her heels.

Babu settled into his usual position at the head of the table. Bibi emptied the cloth sack directly onto the tablecloth in front of him and poured him a glass of green lassi. Arif stared at the food. Amina shook her head. “I’m sorry, but we won’t be able to stay tonight,” she said.

“Arre, what talk is this?” said Bibi. “Chup karo! You only just got here. Babu helped me prepare the guest room for you. How many husbands help their wives with such chores, eh?” She dished out a puddle of orange daal onto Arif’s plate.

He looked at Amina, who was mouthing something slowly. “This is enough!” he said. The pair turned their heads and rudely stared at Babu. Babu looked up from his hay pile and let out a faint baaah.

“What do you think, Amina? I did good, eh?” Bibi said, and giggled. “For an old woman like me, I am so lucky.” Amina coughed. Bibi handed her a cup of lassi to clear her throat.

Babu didn’t speak. He chewed and grunted and eventually spit brownish wads onto the floor. A long silence followed the expulsion of the last chunk of cud, and then a burp, for extra flourish. “Oh ho, Babu!” Bibi sighed. “This is why I gave you the big napkin.” She shook her head and looked at Amina. “I never understood how husbands are always so disgusting. How do we cope, eh?”

Amina and Arif moved food around their plates. “Eat, Arif. Eat,” Bibi insisted. Arif scooped fingerfuls of daal into his mouth and talked with his mouth full, the lentils muffling his voice as he said, “We have to go.” He glared at his wife, and Amina stood and walked toward the shoes she had left by the front door. Babu had nibbled on the leather soles on his way in.

“Oh bhai! But I haven’t given you masala tea and samosas yet!” Bibi cried, clutching her dupatta to her chest. “You must stay. Babu, take them to the divan. What’s that? Yes, I can see it, too. They are very tired.”

Babu excused himself from the table and began to clear up the spit wads from the floor. He cocked his head and looked at the guests through long, curved eyelashes. Bibi nudged him in the direction of the divan and their guests followed. Arif sat on the small chair closest to the door. “Not there, Arif,” Bibi said. “That’s Babu’s chair.”

In the kitchen, ginger-scented puffs of steam condensed on Bibi’s round face as she stewed black tea in a steel pot with cardamom and slivers of unpeeled ginger root. She arranged sweet samosas on a silver plate and carried the treats to the guests, who were sitting in silence.

Babu was still chewing. “I feel so lucky,” Bibi said. She handed the samosas to Amina and Arif and placed cups of hot tea on the table. “I never thought I could have a husband who is so quiet, so loving.”

Bibi poured tea into a silver bowl and held it to Babu’s mouth. He puckered his lips, unfurled a thick tongue, and slurped the tea. Bibi stroked her husband’s head. “Tell him about your business, Arif,” Bibi said, nodding her head. “Babu is very interested in the import-export trade.”

“Really? I mean, I really think we should be going,” Arif said. He placed his teacup on the table and stood. Bibi walked over and gently pushed him back down into the chair. “Babu can take you to the station anytime, but there is no train until tomorrow,” she said quietly.

What did it matter what her husband looked like? So what if he didn’t speak the same tongue? So what if he didn’t eat the same food? Could they not see that she was happy? Did a woman’s contentment mean nothing? Bibi crossed and uncrossed her arms. She stood to refill Arif’s teacup, pouring from the pot until it reached the brim and spilled into the trembling man’s saucer. “I said, tell him about your business.”

Arif explained to Bibi that he bought long-grain rice from a distant village, transported it by donkey to Tirur, and sold it at twice the price. “No, tell him,” Bibi said, pointing her chin in Babu’s direction. Arif turned to Babu, opened his mouth, and closed it.

Babu scratched his face. “That means he is very impressed,” Bibi said. She turned to Amina. “But with all that hard work your husband does, I bet he doesn’t have much time for you, not the way my husband has time to cuddle and play with me.” Amina nodded silently.

Bibi sipped her tea and told them about the beginnings of her love affair. The night of the beach encounter, after Babu had licked her cheek and disappeared into the bush, Bibi had knelt on the sand and prayed to Allah that she be blessed with a spouse as playful and affectionate as the creature she had danced with at sunset. Her first husband had been a debt collector with a capricious demeanor and chronic bowel troubles. Sometimes the gas escaped from his mouth, other times it emerged from the rear end. Either way, Bibi said, she felt that her life had been engulfed in a constant miasma of stink.

The very next day, Bibi’s prayers had been answered. She had spotted Babu at the grain market. Her hair had still been dripping wet from that morning’s ablutions—an indecent, besharam way in which to leave the house, she knew. Mother had warned against it ever since Bibi was a young girl. “Wet hair attracts djinn,” Amma had said. “If a girl walks outside with wet hair, especially beneath trees and especially at Maghreb, the djinn will sniff you out and follow you home.”

At the market, Bibi had let the thin pink dupatta slip from her head to reveal the glistening locks beneath. She had wandered through the bazaar in her rose-pink kameez and had spotted Babu’s head peering at her from between two burlap sacks. His nostrils had quivered as he caught Bibi’s scent. His eyes had tracked her as she moved between mountains of powdered spices. She had known it was him instantly: that solid frame, those long, thick eyelashes. He had been excited to see her again.

“Two pounds of chapati flour,” she had said to the old man sitting at Babu’s side. She had eyed Babu as the man poured flour into a cloth bag and held the bag out for Bibi to take. “You want him?” he had said, looking from Bibi to Babu and back to Bibi again. “If you want him, you can have him.” The man had jiggled the bag and pointed to the coins in Bibi’s hand.

“Sometimes love really is that simple,” Bibi sighed. “You wouldn’t believe how easily true love can fall into your lap.” Amina listened with parted lips. “The very next week, we were married in that mango orchard,” Bibi said, pointing out beyond the open door, where a golden sun was melting into the mango trees. “We built this house with money my first husband had stashed. Sorry I couldn’t invite you to the wedding, but you understand these things. That is the custom for a widow. Small wedding. No fuss.”

Arif nodded his head. Amina stared at the floor.

It would be dark soon, and Babu liked to take a leisurely stroll before bedtime. “Helps him digest,” Bibi explained, patting her belly. She stacked the teacups on a tray, carried them to the kitchen, and returned with her hands dripping water. Bibi crouched in front of Babu and gently combed her fingers through the wiry hairs sprouting from his chin. When his beard was clean, she lay her warm, damp hands over his hooves and picked at the fibers jammed between his toes. She pecked her husband on the snout and stroked his cheeks until he sighed.

My office is on the corner of North Hampton and 56th, what some people might call Hampton Heights, and others consider a slice of urban decay. I call it cheap rent, and I share the building with shadows and silence. The neighborhood thrives on secrets, its inhabitants and the patrolling cops alike keeping their business to themselves. Not a place a young girl should loiter in the small hours of morning. Which is why I was more than a little surprised to find a 14-year-old Asian girl sitting outside my office one chilly Friday morning.

“A little early for a visit,” I said.

“It’s 10,” she said. She was a slight girl, a hair over five feet with long black hair and the ramrod straight back of a teen trying to make a good impression on an adult.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I slid the key into the lock and opened my office door.

“Winter break.”

“Huh.” I walked inside. “Come on, it’s freezing.” I waved her to follow me. She did.

I’m pretty sure my office was zoned as a studio apartment, but the owners had been too excited about having a tenant to put up much of a fuss about how I used the place. It smelled as musty and old as it looked. I put my coffee on the walk-through kitchen counter, hung my coat on the rack, and crossed uneven hardwood to sit at my desk. She was still standing near the doorway.

I wondered what I must look like to her. I was stocky, shorter than average, but still a head over her, with the wide-shouldered build of a linebacker. My hair and beard were long, tangled messes because I had skipped the morning shower. I would have smiled at her, but I’ve been told by more than one woman that my smile is more off-putting than my stern face. I had no clue how to put her at ease. For someone whose job it is to find kids, I’m pretty damn bad at talking to them when they find me.

“Do you want a coffee or something?” I asked. “I don’t have any of that Monster or whatever you kids are drinking these days.”

She smirked. “It’s Celsius now. But no, thanks.”

I nodded. “Take a seat. Might as well tell me why you’re here.”

She took a seat in the padded accent chair in the corner. It was an awkward several feet from my desk, but it was the only chair in the room. I’d meant to purchase actual office chairs but hadn’t gotten around to it in the last few years.

The girl sat primly in the chair, like something might jump out of it and eat her. She was trying her hardest to give an impression of someone professional and unbothered, as if any teenager ever could. There was desperation in those eyes. If she had a hat, it would be in her hand. The poor girl was terrified.

“Let’s start with your name,” I said.

“Chee.”

“Hmong?” I asked.

She nodded, surprised.

“I have a doctor colleague who helps me out on occasion. He’s Hmong.” Truth was, Fong was a good friend. He was also my cultural bridge to the neighborhood Hmong community. Being white had its advantages in many areas; communicating with minority community in-groups was not one of them. He helped me pick up a few words and understand the culture where I wouldn’t otherwise. That being said, after doing this for a few years, I had picked up a few things myself. Like common names.

I rummaged through my desk drawers for a fresh notepad, settled for a half-used one, and wrote Chee at the top.

“Okay, Chee,” I said. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“My sister’s missing and no one is looking for her.”

Chee laid it all out for me, and I scribbled the pertinent bits on my notepad: 16-year-old older sister named Bao, went out after dark two nights ago, hasn’t come home.

“What about the cops?”

“We tried. They say she is probably a runaway. But she’s not.” There was more desperate fear in her eyes than before. Maybe Chee was better at staying proper than I gave her credit for.

“I believe you.” I did, for the most part. At least, I didn’t take what the cops had to say as proof of anything. It was a rare day the boys in blue made an appearance here. Even rarer was the day they would help find a near-grown Hmong girl. “What about your parents?”

She shook her head. “My mom is too old to do anything to help. And my dad… Well, he’s gone.” She said it with the uncertainty of someone still trying to figure out how to tell people. “I don’t know where else to go.”

“Nobody else in your family will help?”

“My dad was the clan leader. Without him, no one has any obligation to me or to Bao.” She paused.

A teenage girl whose dad recently died loses her sister and has nowhere else to turn. Call me a sucker, but how could I say no?

“Any idea where to start?”

She beamed. It might have been the first genuine smile I’d seen on her. “My uncle. My mom and I live with him. I overheard him saying he saw something to the police, but I couldn’t hear what. They didn’t let me out of my room.”

“Your mom’s then.” I stood up. “You coming?”

She blanched, started to say something, stopped, and finally said, “Yeah.”

I grabbed my coffee and coat.

“I can’t pay…” she said, then added, “much, yet.”

Of course not.

Chee’s mother’s house was a few blocks away, but we still drove. The sky was a clear blue and the sun hung up there like a big lie. Not a single ray of heat reached the earth today. It was early enough in the morning that the temperatures hadn’t climbed above single digits. They likely wouldn’t all day. Even with the heater blasting, my fingers were numb on the steering wheel.

I stepped out of the car and the air bit at my cheeks. Why did I live where the air hurt my face?

There were no cars in the driveway, and the garage door was open to an empty workshop. Did she walk to school every day?

Chee’s mother was a stout woman who appeared to have had Chee later in life. She wore her age with the bearing of someone who had earned every wrinkle and spot. She greeted us at the door and, with a fuse equal in length to her height, began yelling at Chee in Hmong.

The conversation flew past me like I had front row seats at the racetrack: loud and fast. I tried to keep up, but the few words I recognized were “Bao” and “meeka”, which had something to do with being white. Hang around enough Hmong folks and you’re bound to be talked about.

After a while, I started to shiver, the cold creeping into my bones. The mother-daughter yelling match was oblivious to the cold, however, and blocked me from entering the door. I considered returning to my car and wiping my hands off the whole business. But I’d already promised Chee I’d help. Damn principles. I really needed to work on those.

A stooped, elderly man appeared in the doorway, appeared to scold Chee and her mother, then turned to me.

“Come in before you freeze your asses off,” he said. That I understood.

The inside of the house was bare, save for a large and comfortable couch. There was a large empty space on the other side of it, as though the room was meant for hosting many guests who hadn’t been seen for some time. Once we settled in, and my teeth had stopped chattering, the old man, who Chee explained was her uncle, spoke again.

“You’re supposed to be in school.” He was a tall man, bent under the weight of his age. Still, he commanded a presence of authority in the room that the women deferred to.

“It’s winter break,” she said under her breath.

The old man scoffed. “It’s January. I’m not that old.” Boy, did I feel dumb. He turned to me. “We’re very sorry for the trouble our niece has caused you. Thank you for returning her to us. However, I have to ask you to leave so we can address this family matter as a family.”

“Wait…”

The old man stood up. “To your room Chee. Sir, I can escort you out.”

Chee stood. “He’s here to find Bao.”

Her sister’s name blanketed the room. Everyone fell to silence. Chee’s uncle flushed. That interested me. It was one thing to be shocked by the mention of your missing niece, another to get angry.

“The police are looking for her,” Chee’s uncle said.

“The police are doing nothing,” Chee pleaded. “No one is doing anything.”

Her uncle snapped at her in Hmong.

“He will help,” Chee said. “He finds people. That’s his job.”

“It’s also the police’s job,” her uncle said. “Go get ready for school.”

Chee opened her mouth to protest some more and looked at me. I nodded my head towards the hallway that I assumed her room was down. Finding no allies, Chee stormed away. I felt a little bad for the kid, but I needed her uncle alone.

“If you’d please leave now, sir,” her uncle said. “I have to call the school to see if someone can pick her up.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that quite yet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Chee’s a child, you’re right about that. But she’s right about something else.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I told her I’d help. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a client and I don’t abandon clients until I’ve done my part. Right now, that means trying to find Bao. Chee doesn’t know much, but something tells me you know more. So you’re going to spill and then I’ll save you a call to the school and drop her off myself. Fair trade?”

The man studied me for a long moment, features hard. Maybe bursting into someone’s house with their teenage niece and yelling at them wasn’t the best for building rapport.

“Thov, kuj xav pab koj.” My Hmong was not perfect, but even the attempt softened his features. He continued his study of me. Whatever he found, he appeared satisfied with.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Owen. Owen Ashton.”

“You’re Fong’s friend. He talks about you. Says you found his cat.”

I sighed. “A long time ago, yes.”

He nodded. “Do you have a business card?”

I paused.

“I’d rather not send my niece off with a stranger. I’m sure you understand, given everything.”

“Sure.” I reached into my pocket and produced a business card. It was plain beige with my name and contact info under the words Private Investigator in bold lettering.

He took it and sat down.

“What do you know?” he asked.

“Bao was out late two nights ago. She never came back. That’s about all Chee told me.”

He scoffed. “Of course it is. Did Chee tell you Bao was a little whore?”

“No, she didn’t.” I held my poker face.

“She was all around town with these boys. Not Hmong. Not even Asian. Whites, Blacks, Mexicans. Everything but Hmong. She was trying to shame our family. Mao and I,” he gestured to Chee’s mother, “we tried to stop it. Scolded her. Grounded her. Forbid her from seeing them. But she was so determined to ruin us.” He spat the words like rotten milk. I got his meaning.

“I get your meaning,” I said. “What happened to her?”

“What do you think?” he said. “A damn boy. I went to check on her one night and she was gone, her window open. It was two days ago now. First night of this cold. I couldn’t let her be alone out there, so I went looking for her and found her. Then, I saw her.”

“Bao?”

“No,” he whispered and leaned in. “Poj Ntxoog.”

I didn’t recognize the name.

“A little ghost girl,” he added.

“How did you know?”

“Her clothes. She was wearing rags, almost nothing, but she didn’t look cold. It was below zero, but she wasn’t shivering at all. And she wasn’t wearing shoes. Her feet were bare and they were…” He choked up. There was honest terror in his eyes. “They were backwards,” he said when he had gathered himself. “There wasn’t anything else it could be.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran. I didn’t know which way I was going but I just ran.”

“And what about Bao?”

He shook her head. “Bao isn’t the first girl to go missing around here. There’s been five children in the last three years who haven’t come home. All girls. All around Bao’s age.” He looked up at me, his eyes red and watery. “All of them turn up dead sooner or later. And the Poj Ntxoog is there every single time.”

I drove Chee to school. When I parked out front, she paused and looked thoughtful.

“Not embarrassed by your old private detective, are you?”

She looked at me, uncomprehending. No one gets good humor these days.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Uncle was wrong,” she said.

“About what?”

“The first girl, Mai Neng. I didn’t know her that well, but I know people who did.” She looked at me. “No one saw a Poj Ntxoog around her.”

After I’d dropped Chee off at school, I made a phone call. Fong was a doctor, which meant there was as much a chance of him being on rotation as not when you called. Thankfully, he picked up.

“What can you tell me about Poj Ntxoog?” I said.

“Hello to you too, Owen. I’m well, thanks for asking.”

“Hi, sorry. I’m on the job and need some quick info.”

He sighed from the other side of the line. “We have to work on your people skills.”

“After I find the missing girl.”

“There’s always a missing girl.”

“Fong…”

“I know.” I pictured him raising his hands in defeat. Fong and I had been friends since middle school when we bonded over our love of detective stories. We were cool, okay. Though only one of us ended up following the path. “What was it you needed?”

I let out a strained breath. “Poj Ntxoog?”

He laughed. “I just like making you pronounce it.”

“Fong!”

“Yeah, yeah. Poj Ntxoog. It’s like a little girl ghost. Long hair, bad clothes, whole Asian ghost girl nine yards.”

I scribbled some notes.

“Supposed to have backwards feet,” he continued. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”

“Missing girl,” I said. “Hmong. Uncle who saw her last says he saw Poj Ntxoog there too. Says a bunch of girls have gone missing and this thing is there every time.”

“Weird.”

“Why weird?”

“I mean, Poj Ntxoog is sort of a trickster. Like in the stories, men will be walking alone in the forest, run into one, and fall victim to her. She’s not usually associated with missing kids.”

“That is odd.”

There was a long pause as I wrote some notes. Then Fong spoke up.

“Owen, you don’t think there’s a serial killer or something going around, do you?”

“I can’t say the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. But it’s too early to say. Could just be coincidence.”

“You don’t believe in coincidence”

“I don’t believe in ghosts either, but I know better than to rule them out.”

Milwaukee Public Library’s Capitol Branch is a small, one-story brick building across from a McDonald’s that gets a lot more traffic. I was never much of a library guy myself; I sourced most of my cheap romances online, but this particular branch was home to one of the best resources in this part of town I had — Doug Shirley.

Doug was a middle-aged black schizophrenic. Which meant he was also homeless, on and off medications, and in and out of jail. He never kept a phone number for more than a month. When he’s not in cuffs or a locked unit of one of Milwaukee’s hospitals, Doug can most consistently be found at the library.

When I walked into Capitol Branch, Doug was in his normal corner chair by a window with a large stack of books beside him.

On his meds, Doug was one of the most articulate, well-read, and well-informed people I knew and trusted. He read everything, talked to everyone, and heard every bit of gossip the Hampton Heights homeless community had to offer. And he liked me, which was a plus.

Days he was off his meds, though, Doug was as unpredictable and scatterbrained as his criminal record would suggest.

He was bald up top except for the sides. When he’s in bad places, he keeps his hair about as well as a bird’s nest. Today, the sides of his head were cropped short, the white-gray hair almost a layer of dust. A thick five-o’clock shadow was apparent even though it was noon.

I sat in the chair beside Doug and plucked a book from the pile: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

“What’s the theme this week, Doug?” Doug’s reading spells always had a theme, though they could range from as simple as dinosaurs to as esoteric as written by a Sagittarius.

He grunted a greeting but didn’t look up from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon to answer. I hazarded my own guess.

“Missing girls?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. I was close. I took a peak at a third title. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly.

“Missing kids.”

Doug smiled. “How you doing, Mr. Ashton?”

“I’m great, Doug. How are you?”

“Perfect. Weather couldn’t be better for some mysteries.” The wind was howling. Goosebumps rose on my skin. Sometimes cold was a mindset.

“Speaking of,” I leaned in. “I’ve got one I could use some help on. In fact,” I tapped the top book on his pile, “I think it fits your theme.”

“For real?”

I nodded. “What have you heard about a little Hmong girl? Went missing maybe 3 days ago, lives on 54th.”

“Hmong?”

“Asian.”

“Oh.” He thought about it for a moment. I let him. “I don’t know nothing about Asian, but I know a girl was supposed to have been out too late by the creek a few nights ago. Damn cold.”

“Lincoln Creek?”

He nodded. “Richie saw her. Said it was damn cold out. Too damn cold for a little girl. Said he wanted to help her, get her home, or warm or something. Tried to go up to her, but…”

“But what?”

“But Richie got spooked.”

“Spooked?”

Doug shook his head. “Says he saw a ghost.” Then he shrugged. “I figured he was off his meds.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“Don’t know. Richie says he got so scared he ran off and forgot all about her ‘till he was at the tent.”

“Thanks, Doug. I’ll let you read some.” I slipped a ten into the book I was holding and put it back on top of the pile. “That’s a good one.”

I got up to leave. “Oh, Doug.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d Richie know it was a ghost?”

Doug shook his head. “Said something about long black hair and dirty clothes. Sounds like he’s watched too much J-horror to me.”

Sometimes being a detective is about following people, sometimes it’s about talking to people, and other times it’s walking through the freezing cold along 21 square miles of urban watershed looking for clues.

From where Chee’s uncle and Richie had seen the girl, I managed to narrow my search to the few miles near Hampton Heights. In the hours it took me to search, the sun descended below the horizon. As soon as it did, the cold crept deep into my bones. I was wearing a heavy wool overcoat and a sweater underneath. Even still, I could not stop my teeth from chattering. My nose stung as if the cold was its own scent.

Without the sun, a few streetlights lit the neighborhood in a dull fluorescent glow. It was not the best to search for clues under, so I pulled out my phone’s flashlight. My fingers, numb even through my gloves, struggled to keep the light stable.

The ground was a frozen block of snow. Nothing fresh had fallen in the last few days and, even with the wind, the snow was too frozen to have shifted much. Which meant, after a few hours of looking, I noticed what I would not have been able to if there had been fresh snowfall or even low enough temperatures to melt: two sets of footprints headed into a dense cluster of trees at the water’s edge.

That’s where I found the body.

I was far from the streetlights, so I only had my phone light to see by, but I could tell he was not Bao.

He was a young man, maybe mid-twenties, white, slight of frame, with large eyes. He had been dead for a few days. How many was hard to say. The temperature had preserved him and his wide-eyed, mouth-agape expression. His pants were down to his knees. A set of frozen imprints in the ground suggested he had been kneeling when he pulled them down.

A girl goes missing three days ago. She’s last seen near a park. A boy, dead for about that many days, is found in the same park. There was a chance this dead boy had nothing to do with Bao; that he was a coincidence. But Fong was right. I didn’t believe in coincidences.

I wasn’t a woodsman by any means. I wasn’t about to track a deer through the forest by tracks and tufts of fur. But what even I could do was see there were three sets of footprints here: two sets of boots walking into the trees, one set of boots walking out the other way and ending by the road. Beside it, another set of bare feet walking towards the trees. Three people here? The wind rattled the branches above me.

I looked back at the boy and grimaced. A dead body is a little above my paygrade. With a surge of good decision-making that often eludes me, I took out my phone and dialed the number of Sergeant Laity, my usual source of insight into Milwaukee PD. He picked up on the 5th ring.

“What do you want, Ashton?”

“Nice to hear from you too, Laity. I’m doing swell by the way.”

“It’s fucking 11 at night. I left my pleasantries in my dreams.”

“Old man much?”

“I work odd hours. Look. Why are you calling?”

“Dead body in the woods by Lincoln Creek. Looks like it might have been here a while.”

“Jesus Christ, Ashton. Call 911 with that stuff, not me.” He was awake now.

I shrugged, even if he couldn’t see me. “He’s dead, Ashton, and not going anywhere. Didn’t seem like much of an emergency.”

“For fuck’s sake, stay put. I’m calling it in.”

“No can do.”

“What do you mean no can do? You found a dead body, Ashton. Stay by it.”

“Can’t. Missing kid might not have the time.”

“God Damn it, Ashton…”

I hung up the phone. I’d already started to follow the boot prints out of the trees and towards the road. The bare footprints stayed beside them the entire way.

The footprints faded away much before they neared the road, but I followed the direction they pointed me towards: to an old, single-story apartment building with boarded windows. It looked how I imagined my own office building would once I left.

One window was shattered inwards into a pile of glass and snow. I glanced around. No one was out—too cold and late—and slipped through the open window.

Inside was not much warmer than out as the wind howled in behind me. My breath still puffed out in front of me. The tips of my ears burned, and I wondered if I was dumb enough to have given myself frostbite. I pulled my jacket tighter and walked deeper into the building.

Whatever the layout had been before, the building was now stripped to its skeleton. Gapped hardwood floors groaned under my weight. Beams and the remaining dry wall shrieked in protest as the wind outside threatened to rip the building apart. The boarded windows offered little light. I pulled out my phone’s flashlight again. It cast dark shadows that moved as I walked like the figures at the edges of my vision. The moist scent of mildew itched at my nose. The air was heavy with dust and who knew what else. My skin crawled with the imagined grime.

Maybe I should have waited for Laity. Hell, I’d settle for Doug right now.

I turned one corner, holding my breath, praying not to see a dead little girl, and found empty space. It happened again and again as I moved through the labyrinth of indiscernible rooms until I was sure I had been mistaken and the girl was not here.

I came to a wide, high-ceilinged room that I figured was the lobby. Where there should have been a staircase down was a gaping, black hole in the floor. I stepped away from it.

I passed my light over the room one more time and froze. A dozen feet away, in a shadowed corner of the room that still managed to elude the light, a figure was curled into a ball. A young girl. It was hard to tell from where I stood, but I thought there was a faint rise and fall of her chest. I let out a sigh I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I took a step forward, but stopped.

At the edge of my phone’s light, a length of black hair shuddered as if blown by the wind, and vanished back into the darkness. My mouth went dry. Blood thundered through my ears. My breath came short and shallow. My legs tensed like springs ready to burst at the slightest movement.

Whatever it was remained cloaked in blackness an inch out of sight. I crept the phone light over, unable to keep it from shaking, to reveal another figure. Another girl. Short. She stood still and silent. Her features were indistinct under a blind of long, black hair. Her arms hung limp at her sides. She wore clothes so filthy, they may as well have been wrapped in rags. Pale skin betrayed scars and bruises over most of her body.

I told myself this was a normal girl, a scared girl, maybe even an abused girl. She was probably just as scared at that moment as I was.

I almost believed it.

“Are you alright?” I took a step forward. The girl did too, her backward feet landing toe first before flopping onto her heels. Nope, not normal.

Bao was still in the corner, shivering and taking shallow breaths.

“I’m not going to hurt her.” I said. “I’m here to help.” I took another step towards Bao. The Poj Ntxoog took another step to stay between us. It was silent the whole time, save for the sick slap of sole against floor.

Whatever it was, it did not look strong. I thought I could take it in a fair fight. But I also remembered the boy, dead in the park. Frozen in place mid-movement. I had never put too much stock in ghost stories, but I wasn’t an idiot either. Still, Bao was in the corner, shivering and presumably starving. For all I knew, she had moments left.

I began to take another step forward.

“Wait!” a girl’s voice said from behind me. Chee’s voice.

I didn’t take my eyes off the Poj Ntxoog. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“It’s almost midnight,” she said. “I saw you outside and…” She trailed off, her eyes wandering towards the Poj Ntxoog.

“Looking for your sister? Didn’t you hire me for that?”

“Is now the time?” she said and walked forward toward Bao.

“Wait.”

She didn’t. “Mai Neng?” She whispered. The ghost girl said nothing. Chee advanced. “It is you.” Chee spoke to the Poj Ntxoog in Hmong. Though the ghost didn’t speak, it relaxed. Chee walked past it to her sister and shook her awake. Bao stumbled to her feet and put her full weight on Chee’s shoulder. They staggered towards me. I didn’t dare move until they were past the Poj Ntxoog and had reached me. I put my coat over Bao.

“Can you make it outside?” I asked.

“I think so,” Chee said.

“Good. Go. The police should be here soon. There’s something I have to check.”

Chee gave me a questioning look. Her sister moaned and shifted on her shoulder. “Be careful,” Chee said, and she half-carried Bao out of the room.

I looked at the hole in the floor where the stairs should have been. It held wide like a gaping maw eager to consume. I felt eyes staring back at me from within. The Poj Ntxoog still stood where Chee had spoken to her. I couldn’t see any eyes under the mop of hair, but I felt her regarding me.

I didn’t believe in coincidences.

The Poj Ntxoog did not move to stop me when I approached the hole. Within the hole, I made out the tops of washers and dryers against the wall. This must have been the laundry room. I could fall on top of them without too much trouble. Probably. I gripped the edge, slid over, and toppled onto machine tops.

What I found there was a matter for the next day’s paper.

I stood outside, coatless, and shivering after I had given my statement. A lanky cop strode over to me from the abandoned apartment complex. He was about a foot taller than me and, even with being rail-thin, cut an imposing figure.

“Laity,” I said. It was all I could do to keep the shivering out of my voice.

The sergeant nodded. “Ashton.”

“And didn’t make a single dime on it.”

“Another pro bono?”

“What can I say? I’m a bleeding heart.”

Laity looked over to the ambulance where Chee and Bao huddled together under a paramedic’s blanket and my coat. Chee was crying. He sighed.

“I don’t think I can give you shit for it this time,” he said. “But keep it up and we’ll see.”

“I’m not in any danger of getting evicted,” I said.

He nodded. We stood in the cold for a long time.

“They called the cops, Laity.”

He grimaced. “I know.”

“They talked to the same Uncle I did. The footprints were right there for everyone to see for days. All they had to do was look. And now five dead girls, going back who knows how long.”

Laity’s wide, mustached face was set in deep thought. He was silent for a long time. “The guys did what they thought was best with the information they had.”

“When the hell did you get so political with me? It’s Owen. Don’t bullshit me.”

Laity went stern. Anger flashed through his eyes. For a moment, I wondered if my friend was going to hit me, or worse, arrest me for condemning cops. My chest tightened.

I was saved by another cop I didn’t recognize approaching us. “Sarge,” she said to Laity. “Kid’s mom is here. She won’t let us take her to the hospital.”

“God damn it.” Laity made to storm away.

“Wait,” I said. “I might have a way to help with this.”

When Fong had finished examining Bao, we stopped by my place for a nightcap. Or a morning cap. It was nearly six by then. My place was small and a mess, but Fong didn’t say anything. He was short, bald, and had gained a lot of weight since graduating from medical school, but Fong was good people.

“How was she, if I may ask?” My curiosity was burning.

Normally, I would expect my friend to stonewall me with some spiel about doctor-patient confidentiality. Today, however, he sighed. “She’ll be fine. Malnourished and dehydrated, obviously. Some bruises on her wrists. But other than that, she’ll live.”

“Nothing else?”

“No sign of other injury. She wasn’t raped, Owen.”

I let out a tense breath.

“Cops figure out who the dead boy was?” he asked.

I nodded. “Boyfriend. Ran off one night for a romantic evening, only he wanted it a little more romantic than her. Things got rough. Report will say Bao defended herself, knocked him out, and he froze to death by the creek.”

“And what do you say?”

I thought about it. “Boy didn’t have any bruising to suggest how he was knocked out. He was bigger and stronger than her. She was too disoriented to even make it home. Something else knocked him out.”

“Poj Ntxoog.”

“I don’t think it was that either.”

“Come on, Owen. You’re telling me you don’t believe? After all this?” He gestured around the room with his whiskey glass.

“It’s not that. I don’t think it was a Poj Ntxoog. I think it looked like one. You said Poj Ntxoog isn’t associated with missing kids, right? They’re tricksters. Which goes to reason they wouldn’t be protectors either.”

He nodded.

“Chee didn’t call it Poj Ntxoog when she saw it,” I continued. “She called it by name. Mai Neng.”

“The first girl.”

“Exactly. And there was something about the bodies. What this guy did to them. He turned their feet around, Fong. Turned them backwards.”

“Jesus christ,” Fong said. “This is fucked.” He downed his whiskey, and I poured him another one. He stared at it thoughtfully. “They’re going to catch him.” It sounded like a statement, but it felt more like a question.

“I don’t know.” We sat in silence, waiting for the sun to rise on Milwaukee.