by Eric Flint
Fear flooded through Johnny as he saw her fall. He took a few steps toward his truck, but remembered that this was her way, not his. He stared toward the mound of clothing and flesh. As the last rays of diffuse light escaped behind the western hill, he thought he saw something crawl over the edge.
He watched the horizon for hours after darkness covered the hills. The words flowed into his brain. When he could not ignore them, Johnny walked inside and added them to the song.
Child (Early Spring)
Johnny worked on the row of small stalks near the rock. Sweat poured off his face, sucked up by the ground as it dripped off his nose. This year he decided he would work the fields his grandfather gave him. He heard muffled laughter and looked up to see Manuel and James grinning.
"Are you going to hoe that row for another hour?" Manuel asked. "I think everything's okay in that particular spot by now."
Johnny leaned against the hoe and studied the ground. Manuel was right. "I've been thinking how to tell you two something." He walked over to the rock and leaned. "Are you guys taking on extra work this year?"
Manuel shook his head. "With you sharing last year's profits, we don't have to," he said. Johnny saw worry and doubt creep into Manuel's eyes. "Should we?"
"No, no, that's good," Johnny said. "So did both of you put some money back for the growing season this year?" He saw their tentative nods. "Good because I'm not going to pay you a salary for working the farm."
"Pardon me?" James looked away.
"Hear me out," Johnny said. He glanced over the fields and at the hills surrounding them. She's here, he thought. She's always here.
"My grandfather gave this land to me and I will leave it to my son one day, but the farm is another issue. That's a business and I need good partners. If you agree, I'm going to formalize what we did last year. Of course that means that you take one-third of the risk, also."
Johnny saw two mouths open in shock.
"Well?" James and Manuel agreed, still stunned. "Oh and if anything comes up, let me know. I can still advance money. We have an operating loan this year as well as crop insurance."
"Thank you, Johnny," Manuel said. He opened his mouth, but words failed him. James nodded.
"One more thing," Johnny said. "I want both of you to take some time off when those two babies come in April."
"Maybe a day or two," James said. "But my wife would kill me if we left the farm in your hands for too long."
They laughed. James cocked his head at a sound in the fields. Something moved. Johnny heard it. Johnny's partners finished their business with agreeing to meet later that week. Neither wanted a signed contract, they took Johnny's word. Johnny told them that articles of incorporation would satisfy the legalities. James grabbed Manuel's arm when the sound came again, much closer than the first. The two men left.
Johnny threw the hoe in the back of the truck and grabbed the Gibson. Sitting on the rock, he played the song Natalie gave him last year, singing the new words.
A little girl came to the edge of the field as he finished the song. "That's beautiful."
"It's also a hit," Johnny said, not looking at her. "Duane McAl
lister wanted to record it and I let him."
Johnny turned to her and smiled. She wore a blue dress and shirt. Her skin reflected the sunlight. She was a beautiful little girl. For a moment, an image of the maiden, woman, and the old woman superimposed on the little girl, but the vision vanished as quickly as it came.
"Hello, Natalie," he said. "I've been waiting. You need to go see your son. He's at the house with his nanny."
The little girl giggled, but nodded. The wise eyes stared as she smiled. "Play, Johnny. Play the song again."
* * *
Terry Bramlett is the author of Formidable Enemy.
The Realm of Words
Written by Eric Flint
Illustrated by Luis Peres
1
Damn Les Six. The way I see it, it's all their fault. Sure, you could blame Wolfgang. Humans would. That's because their minds are twisted and whenever disaster strikes —which for them, is about twelve times a day— they're always trying to figure out who's to blame by looking to see who caused it.
Idiots, the lot of them. The more educated they are, the worse. The real eggheads among them go so far as to prate on and on about the sufficient versus the necessary cause— blah! blah!
Who cares who causes a disaster? What's important is— who's responsible for getting me caught in the middle of it?
The lousy drunks, that's who. Ever since we arrived in the Mutt, Les Six have been acting like the world's just one giant party. Yesterday they kept me fetching alepots until midnight. And they started drinking at noon!
True, I didn't have to listen to the windbag today. I don't care what Magrit says about the so-called "best actual sorcerer in the world." Zulkeh is a windbag, windbag, windbag, windbag. That's it —pure and simple— question closed.
But it wasn't all that great. The reason I didn't have to listen to the windbag is because Zulkeh was holed up all day with the other windbags, plotting some idiot scheme to travel to the "Realm of Words."
No kidding. I'm serious. Can you believe it? Why would they need to travel to the Realm of Words when they already live in it twenty-four hours a day? Not only that! Everybody else seems to think this project is a really grand old idea— Magrit and Gwendolyn were talking about it all day! And when Les Six finally stumbled into the salon around mid-afternoon, bellyaching about their hangovers (for which, naturally, the only cure is more drink— Wittgenstein! fetch us some alepots!), no sooner do they let out their first collective belch than they start prattling about the prattler's project!
I'm not sure what's worse— listening to a windbag talk or listening to people talk about a windbag.
Then, of course, once Magrit saw Les Six knocking back their alepots, naturally she suddenly developed an overwhelming thirst. Even Gwendolyn got in on the act. So there I was, racing back and forth all day from the salon to the kitchen fetching alepots, when if it hadn't been for the souses I would have been somewhere else, when Wolfgang ambled into the room.
At first, I was a little relieved. It'd mean more alepots, of course, but I figured Wolfgang's babble would distract the others from babbling. And I'd rather listen to a babbling idiot than to idiots babbling.
Besides, I was hoping Wolfgang would start feeling Magrit up and the next thing you'd know, they'd be off to the sack. Then Gwendolyn'd leave, and I'd only have to fetch alepots for Les Six.
I had every reason to hope, too. She's a proper witch, Magrit, I'd be the last to deny it, but she's also a complete slut. Of course, they're all sluts, human beings— male and female both. Never act rationally about sex, the way amphibians do. Civilized, we are. A clutch of eggs in the water, a quick spray of sperm, and that's it. None of this sloppy disgusting stuff— and they say we're slimy! But, I suppose you can't blame them, handicapped by nature the way they are. Evolution reached its peak in the Age of Amphibians, and it's all been downhill since. Humans are just a stupid accident of history. Hadn't been for that comet—
Well, what's past is past. Anyway, it didn't work out that way, because no sooner did he sit down than Wolfgang started moaning and wailing that the dwarf Shelyid —he's the windbag's apprentice— and the two Kutumoff brats had gone after the windbag into the Realm of Words. (I'd thought better of that little guy. But he's only human, even if he is a dwarf.)
Uproar! Uproar! Uproar!
I could see the disaster coming, and there I was! I started looking for a mousehole but I was handicapped what with the alepots I was carrying. Before I could dump them Magrit snatched me up.
"No you don't, you mangy little lizard!" she hollered, adding insult to injury. "You're coming with me!"
"Where?" I demanded, as if I didn't know.
"We've got to go rescue the poor little tykes!"
Me, I would have let natural selection take its course. And what was th
e fretting for, anyway? If Shelyid had survived years in the company of the windbag, I didn't see where a little trip to the Realm of Words could hurt him any. And what did I care about the Kutumoff brats? The boy was about as interesting as an encyclopedia, and the girl— well, if Polly Kutumoff had been a proper salamandress, of course, I'd have told all kind of lies about being the most degenerate salamander who ever lived so's I could cash in on the Kutumoff Grand Old Tradition, but the truth is that swaying hips and batting eyelashes don't do a thing for amphibians.
I tried to explain all of this to Magrit, but she wasn't having any of it and Gwendolyn was getting downright peevish with me. So I shut up. I'll take my chances with Magrit, but Gwendolyn's a different story. Woman scares me and every amphibian I know. Even the dumb frogs down at the Old Mill Pond call her The Knife. (Her knife itself they call the Edge of the Known Universe.)
Now everybody was charging around all over the Kutumoff mansion. The Kutumoff elders showed up, demanding to know what all the ruckus was about. When they heard, Madame Kutumoff immediately started wailing and wringing her hands. (Best hand-wringer I've ever seen, by the way. Really world class.) Papa Kutumoff, on the other hand, reacted kind of oddly. He just got this little smile on his face and wandered off muttering something about his boy getting into his first real scrape and his girl being a chip off the old block. Whatever that means.
For a while I started getting my hopes back up, because soon enough it became clear than nobody had any idea exactly how they were supposed to carry out this "rescue." First they charged over to Uncle Manya's mini-mansion and stormed into his library and started ransacking all his papers until they found the windbag Zulkeh's formula lying right there in plain sight on top of the desk where I'd seen it straight off but kept my mouth shut. Then they tried to read the formula and was that ever a laugh! Humans are all windbags at heart, but there's still a whale of a difference between the Genuine Article like the wizard Zulkeh and a bunch of boozy wannabes.
Then they charged back to the Kutumoff macro-mansion and stormed upstairs into Magrit's room and Magrit started consulting her grimoire and brewing up potions and what not and was that ever a laugh! Mind you, the old witch is one of your all-time potioneers. She could whip up something that'd make a scorpion fall in love with a rock and the scorpion would die of heartbreak because she'd whip up something else that'd cause the rock to have a heart attack. But travel to the Realm of words? No, no, no, no, no, no. No such potion. No such spell. No such hex.
That requires Grade A, officially-approved, pedigreed, certified, documented, diploma-ed, Zulkeh-style WINDBAGGERY.
But then, just as I was starting to feel relieved, I also started getting a bad feeling. Some of that came from watching Gwendolyn, who, since she doesn't know zip about magic wasn't trying to figure out a way to travel to the Realm of Words but was just relieving her tension by sharpening her knife which is already as sharp as a razor and I could tell she was getting to the point where she was just going to have to try the edge on something and whenever humans get to that point it seems they always remember that you can cut off an amphibian's tail without doing any "real damage" since the tail will grow back, which is true, but it hurts.
But mostly it was because I had a bad feeling about Wolfgang, on account of the way he was drooling.
Now, your humans always think that since Wolfgang's a drooling maniac and he always drools that it doesn't mean anything. But what'll fool a dumb human won't fool a salamander for a minute. There's drool, and there's drool. Even people who ought to know better don't really listen to the lunatic when he tries to tell them about the twin powers of madness and amnesia. But I know that particular drool that he always starts doing whenever he's going to spring some sly one. It's especially disgusting, even for Wolfgang's drool, which is especially disgusting, even for an amphibian who doesn't have that silly human aversion to slime.
But it was obvious to me. I didn't know the ins and outs of it, of course. After all, I'm as sane as a salamander! But one thing was clear as a bell.
Wolfgang Laebmauntsforscynnewe'ld was about to spring something. And whatever it was, it was going to be crazy.
Really crazy. I mean— demented.
Sure enough, Wolfgang suddenly started raving about applying his twin powers of madness and amnesia and Magrit blew her stack at him and Wolfgang got insulted and started whining.
"Well, I was going to go with you, but since you're going to be that way about it you'll just have to go without me! And it's just as well! Doctor Wolfgang Laebmauntsforscynnewe'ld has an upcoming appointment with God's Own Tooth himself, you know, and he insisted that I had to come along. Of course, I escaped from the asylum so I wasn't going to go but now I think I will! So there!"
Magrit started hollering that he was a crazy lunatic and what did he know and Wolfgang started smirking and then —I knew it!— he started babbling in an unknown tongue.
I hate it when he does that. Magrit hates it too, because she can't understand him. That's the only part I like about it. I hate it because past experience has taught me that when Wolfgang starts babbling in an unknown tongue sometimes it's just because he's an idiot and other times it's because he's applying his twin powers of madness and amnesia and humans can laugh at him but not me because—
— everything started getting hazy!
The universe started spinning around!
I heard voices everywhere!
* * *
Sure enough. There we were. Not Wolfgang, just like he promised. But there was Magrit, and Les Six, and Gwendolyn —all of whom deserved it— and there was me, who didn't.
In the Realm of Words.
2
Only humans would come up with a name like that. Sounds majestic, doesn't it— the "realm," no less. And—oh!—so refined!—"of words," no less.
Let a salamander tell you the truth.
The Realm of Words, at first sight, is nothing but a barren desert stretching in every direction as far as the eye can see, and that's very very very far indeed on account of there is no actual horizon in the Realm of Words due to the fact that (as it might fairly be called by a clear-headed amphibian) Blatherland is flat.
You heard me. Flat— as in, not round; as in, not a sphere but a table.
How far does it stretch? Who knows? Who cares?
There is neither day nor night, since there is no sun. Light is provided by the Great Lamp in the Sky, which may either be fifty miles high and five miles wide or fifty miles wide and five hundred miles high or— your guess is as good as mine. No doubt the windbag Zulkeh would have performed experiments, but none of the company I was with was so inclined.
At second glance, the barren desert was not entirely barren. At a great distance, we spotted some mounds. Since they were the only thing visible on the plain, we headed off in that direction.
As we got closer, the mounds resolved themselves into great piles of letters. Great piles of the letter O, to be precise, stacked up in pyramids:
o o o
ooo ooo ooo
ooooo ooooo ooooo
ooooooo ooooooo ooooooo
After we stared at these piles for a bit, trying to figure out what they were, we heard a whimpering noise coming from underneath one of them. We investigated. (Rather: I watched; Magrit bossed; Gwendolyn and Les Six rummaged around.) Soon enough, Gwendolyn crawled out from under the pile holding two little p letters and one big one that looked kind of scarred up, like this: ". The little ones were wailing and the big one was blubbering "don't kill us, don't kill us!"
"I'm not going to kill you," growled Gwendolyn. That set them all wailing even louder, which isn't surprising if you've ever heard Gwendolyn growl.
"And there's no way to kill a letter, anyhow," added Magrit.
"Is too," sniveled a little p.
"You chop 'em wid a knife," sniveled the other, "just like the one the big mean lady has."
"Just like happened to everyP else," sniveled the P.
W
e stared at the piles of Os.
(Hell with it; looks silly; I hereby declare that the plural of O is Oes.).
"You mean— " exclaimed Magrit.
"It was the Horde what done it!" cried out the P. "Massacred 'em all! Made a pyramid of their heads! Me and the little ones is all that survived, because I hid them under me and the Horde thought I was dead."
A sad tale, a sad tale— but then! Will wonders ever cease? Of a sudden, all the piles of Oes started quivering and jerking around and suddenly collapsed into a great disgusting mass of Oes squirming and squiggling all over the landscape.