Another Chunk of Wood

in

I split off another log and stretched my neck. "Hey," came a voice from behind me, "what's a pretty thing like you doing chopping wood?" I rested the axe head on the ground and turned. He was a big one. At least six feet tall, broad as a horse, smug as a donkey. Outside my cabin on the hill overlooking town, the open sky framed him dramatically. "What else should I be doing?"

"Making dinner, mending clothes, needlepoint." He shrugged. "You'll callous your sweet hands doing this work. They'd be too rough to rub your husband's back after he comes in from work." His leer made me nauseous.

"Don't got a husband." I turned back to the wood. "So no worries there."

"No husband? I can see you need someone to take you in hand." The proposed hand fell on my shoulder, not in a tight grip, but not lightly either.

I turned and smiled. "It would have to be someone who has hands."

He looked perplexed. "I have hands."

I lifted my axe. "No, you don't." Thirty seconds later I was chopping wood again. It's good that he left so quickly. Blood is such a pain to clean up.

Blot Out the Sun

in

"Hear me!" The man stood legs apart, arms cast wide, robed in multicolored fabrics in overlapping layers. "God has spoken to me!" A crowd gathered, listening. "In this, the year of our Lord eleven hundred thirty-three, He has spoken to me! God commands me to lead you to glory. As a sign, He will blot out the sun!" A youth in similar dress, if less extravagant, tugged on his arm. "Is that really the year, fath- er, master?"

"It better be, boy," he whispered back, "or this'll never work. Now let the astronomer work." He raised his voice. "God wishes me to lead you to prosperity, and will cast the land in darkness as a sign!"

Word spread and the crowd grew. The man continued his pitch until hundreds waited. Light dimmed and the air grew cold. "Observe God's promise, how he has chosen me to lead you!" A gust of wind shivered the crowd. They waited. And waited. The day grew warmer and brighter. The crowd drifted. Some threw rotten fruit or stones.

He sat, face in his hands. "We were too far north. We were so close."

The boy sat beside him. "Told you we should've left yesterday."

Not Ever

in

It was ten feet tall, assembled from smoothed stone with cunning concealed joints, at least a ton, and covered with large, glowing runes. Awl stared up at it, and it loomed over him without even trying. "This? This is what we've been looking for?"

Doya didn't look up from where she rummaged in her pack. "Yup."

"By God Below and all our holy ancestors, why?" Normally, Doya would correct him for mixing unrelated religious concepts, but she seemed preoccupied. Awl ducked under a swing of the thing's fist. It hit a wall, shattering the stone panelling and discharging arcs of electricity.

"It can shock," Awl shouted. "Did you know it could shock?"

"No." Doya paused. "But I suspected."

"Never again, Doya. Never ag—" Awl held his shield firm against a blow he couldn't dodge, and his shield snapped in two. "Again," he finished. On the thing's fist, a rune flared bright.

"There! That's it, keep it busy." Awl wanted to complain, but a glancing swipe knocked the air from him.

"Got it," Doya said. "We should run now."

They ran until the pounding footsteps of the rune-golem's pursuit were distant echoes. Once Awl caught his breath, he muttered, "Never. Again."

Cronus and Rhea

in

Cronus looked down at the child in Rhea's arms, already soaking through its swaddle. "I never thought a baby would look so... delicious." "What was that, dear? You're muttering again."

"Nothing, sweetie."

Predictably, Rhea was upset when their son disappeared. Still, it did not dissuade her from another pregnancy. She birthed a daughter on the first day of spring. "I wonder if girls are as tasty?"

"Did you say something, my love?"

"No. Nothing. Good work." A day later, the child was gone.

Despite their grief, they continued to have children. The gloomy son, the proud daughter, the one that looked happy to have company, all disappeared shortly after birth. The last time, Rhea confronted Cronus in the act—though just too late to stop him.

"Why?" she demanded.

"Um..." Cronus looked around for inspiration. "A prophecy! One of our children is fated to kill me, see, so... you love me, right? You wouldn't want me dead?"

"What, so I don't get to have children?"

"Sure you do! Just, uh..."

"Just, you'll eat them?" Cronus smiled sheepishly. Rhea glared at him a moment, then hugged him. "I love you," she said. "We'll figure something out."

As you might know, she did.

Number Forty-Seven

in

"What's that?" Jenny pointed up to an opalescent ebon sphere that floated, apparently unsupported, about a foot from the ceiling of my room. It was not quite in the center, not quite in a corner, just there. I looked up from our math homework. "Oh, that's a sphere."

"I know that, dummy." She hit me playfully on the shoulder. "How is it floating there? What's it for? Where'd you get it?"

I blinked. "Uhhhh, I dunno, I dunno, and it just showed up one day. What'd you get on number—"

"I don't see any wires." She stood and peered closely at it.

"There aren't." Seeing her reach for it, I added, "Don't touch it, it'll shock you."

"Uh huh." Then she yelped and yanked her hand back.

"Told you."

"But... aren't you curious?"

"Yup. Scientists came here and everything. None of them figured out anything. After a while they gave up."

"So you just—"

"Yup. Hey'd what'd you think about forty-seven?" With more than a few glances back at the object, Jenny returned to our math books. An hour later, we'd finished the work and she went home.

I hope she'll study with me again. I think I like her.

The Long-Buried Truth

in

The science says that the Earth formed out of accreting dust from the sun's protoplanetary disc. The truth is that our planet is the hardened shell of Hnturi-N'gburo, hibernating comfortably within. That molten iron core we're so sure of? The iron blood of N'gburo, to whom we are as fleas. We perform a symbiotic duty, scrubbing clean the forests that grow like moss on its back, picking and prying away the scabs of its cooled iron-blood from beneath its shell. I know because I'm a janitor in the broadest, deepest building in the world, and I clean the sub-sub-sub-sub-basements every day. That close to N'gburo, it talks to me, mumbles like a half-awake genius shedding accidental brilliance while dozing on the train. One day, perhaps soon, Hnturi-N'gburo will wake. Like a bear emerging from its cave, N'gburo will shed its shell and swim through space to what we cannot know. Mating? War? A philosophical debate? Though we will all die screaming into the unhearing void of space N'gburo casts us into, I long to see that day before I die. I want to see its majesty.

Yeah, so that's why we don't need to worry about conservation or climate change.