The Wondermark Gazette

Our story thus far: Grenadon and I constructed a catapult-device to sling us away from the isolated sandbar and towards the Isle of Yam-Runners and Grenadon’s home village. To avoid a twenty-mile swim, and to rid myself of the pesty coot, at the last moment I upended the old man’s barrel and have taken to the air by myself. Really at this point it is getting pretty complicated to explain exactly what’s going on.

The wind whipped at my eyes and stung my face with tiny bee-stings of tears. I had to fight for a glimpse of the water drifting by a mile below. It was a smooth wash of colour, flat and spotted with specks of white, like my old porch-boy, Armand. I briefly wondered if the boy was happy with the Chief Magistrate, and allowed myself a secret pleasure at the thought that he was probably miserable with that corpulent man-mountain.

Who knew when next I would have the chance to see the earth from this height? I’d sworn off aero-carriages ever since a feeble aviator had come crashing through the Manor’s roof without valid collision insurance, and zeppelins were right out on moral grounds. As I craned my neck for a better view, I disrupted the terrifying air-current, sending the barrel spinning wildly — my stomach lurched at the motion, my liver stopped making sense of the world, and the sun made a hundred rotations in a second; my head mashed to the side, and I got a good, close-up look at my shoulder. The salt that encased my body began to agitate and swarm like tiny white bees. Again with the tiny bees! The granules stung my eyes, and I tried to scream, but the wind stole my voice — no doubt planning to sell it on eBay, the craven element.

In my periphery I sensed the approach of that great blue expanse, far below, and then rapidly, terrifyingly close –

And then all was still, and dark, and boring. I felt nothing. I couldn’t move, nor see, nor hear. I swam inkily in a sea of blackness. The demonoid stillness devoured my senses blah blah blah gothy clap-trap.

This was Death, I knew. Or else I had stumbled unawares into Professor MacGinnig’s Sensory-Deprivation chamber in the University basement after-hours — this last was unlikely, however, as I couldn’t recall removing my trousers.

I briefly recalled the last time I had felt this detached from the physical world. It had been the morning (er, afternoon, by the time I’d awoken) after a raucous to-do at the Manor. I was in my pedagogical prime, flush with wealth and licentious energy. I had mutual agreements with the Police Bureau in effect, any unpleasantness with bat-creatures was still far-off and unknown, and I had not yet heard the accursed name of Special Investigator Peapoddy. True, I had not yet met Lara, the delectable Head Inspector who’d stolen my heart and spurred me upon this curious adventure — but my life was simpler for it, filled with nights of delightful waif-maiming, and afternoons of regretful hang-overs. It had been a blessed epoch.

As I lay suspended in darkness, a face squirmed beneath my eyelids. A vaguely luminous sneer taunted me with haughty, fey disdain. Peapoddy. “You know I’ll find you,” the apparition said, with such assurance that I thought I felt my body shiver. Which was impossible, because shivering meant weakness, and I wasn’t weak, because that would be ridiculous.

The face shimmered and shook, re-forming itself into the hideous, melted shape I recalled vividly, as if a wax taper had been smashed by a meat-ogre into the vague appellation of a visage: this was what the man had looked like the last time I had seen him, high on that lonely cliff by the Hospital back in Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats. Blazed to a crisp in the Manor, yet held alive by some dark alchemy. The wretch raised a stone with his deformed hands, ready to dash my brains out.

A stone? Nay, a human skull, a long, jagged gash gaping from the rear side of that scorched, blackened bone. My uncle, dead by my own hatchet-wielding hand.

I felt crawling tentacles of stinging hatred wrap themselves around my soul. More bees? No, this was a slimy feeling; more like a sadistic mould, or a jelly-fish of spite. Peapoddy rotated the skull, until those dark sockets were boring accusing holes in me, indicting me with their blank, be-sooted gaze. I tried to squeeze my eyes shut, but they were already shut. I couldn’t hide.

For a brief moment I entertained the idea that I was still in the Manor, still asleep after that late night of wantonness, and that I would awake to find the entire terrible escapade but a rum-addled night-mare. I would find my sheets soaked with terror-sweat, and I would have Barnell, my sheet-wringer, hop to his task at once; then I would go down-stairs to the kitchen and have some brandy and old grapes. Then I would lounge about aimlessly, projecting an aloof sense of entitlement.

Peapoddy hammered the skull down at me, and I did not awake in my bed.

“Pull!”

I coughed on seawater. Something, either a wave or a back-alley surgeon, injected a rasping gout of salt into my nose. I drowned in bitterness, thrashing my arms, finding them not pinned by the confines of the barrel, but free to smack the water gaily. Chattering cold enveloped me, and I rubbed at my stinging eyes. I tried to shout, but was unable with my lungs full of grossness and ocean.

“Hold his arms! Don’t let him touch his face!”

Strong, brutal hands fumbled for my wrists, grabbing me powerfully, restraining me. I remembered those burly constables in Lara’s hospital room, holding me hostage before Peapoddy’s hateful, waxy inquisition. I smelled a powerful burst of sea-weed and clams, which did not exactly remind me of the Hospital, but that was okay, I could work it into my imagination somewhere.

I fought the hands. I lost. I struggled, but they were too strong. I tried weeping for sympathy, but it must have been too hard to see my tears among the salt-water, because they kept on dragging me along.

Rough stones slid along my back. I felt myself lofted weight-less for a moment — then I landed heavily on scratchy earth. My arms flopped free, and I poked myself on sharp blades of grass. Everything was uncomfortable.

My legs tingled with burning pain. I moved to feel them — and my fingers came away on fire with gelatinous goop. It hadn’t been hatred wrapping its stinging tentacles around me. It had indeed been jelly-fish.

What felt like sticks and branches and shards of bark scraped along my legs, ripping the jelly-fish flesh from my skin with long bursts of blinding white pain. I tried to scream, but water drowned my breath in my chest. With a powerful, body-folding spasm, I birthed a gout of vomit, trying to aim side-ways so it wouldn’t cascade back down into my face. I was only partially successful.

“He’s breathing,” came a far-off voice.

I was hit with a sharp finger of pressure, tracing itself over my legs, working in lines across my throbbing ankles. Then I felt another point, and another, and another, until a half-dozen wobbly nails pinned me to the ground. One traced its way across my face, and I realized it was a hot stream of liquid. Were they pouring tea on me?

No. No, they weren’t.

I coughed, sputtered, and lurched my way upright. A shout rang out for someone to grab my hands, to keep my fingers away from my face. I fought blindly, desperate to rub my burning eyes, until strong muscles held me still. I was helpless as a crab on a crab-smasher’s stand. I wondered when the mallet would fall onto my carapace. Figuratively, I guess.

My fingers fell open, and Grenadon’s shard of bright-jade tumbled from my hand. Then my skin tingled as warm breath encircled my ear.

“You need to keep still,” came a woman’s voice. “You’ve got jelly-fish poison on your hands. You mustn’t touch your eyes.”

I struggled to speak through broken, salty lips. I wanted to explain the blinding pain that seared its way through my eye-balls and auguring its way deep into my brain. How could I possibly convey the wretched horror of that writhing, stinging agony? “They burn,” I rasped.

“Lie back,” she said, and a firm hand pressed me back down onto the grass. It had been some time since I’d heard those words from a woman, and I tingled with a vague sense of anticipation. This day might work out pretty well after all.

What felt like a bucket-ful of hot water smashed into my face, and I sputtered and coughed, finally forcing my eyes open. A slim figure swam into my vision, straightening himself upright and buckling his trousers, tossing long black hair over his shoulder.

Her shoulder. It was a her. But I could be forgiven for the momentary mis-judgement: a woman was wearing trousers?

“Get the bright-jade,” she told someone to her right, and I turned to see a husky, bearded man gingerly pluck the green shard from the grass by my hand. He reverently placed it back into my palm, and I wrapped my fingers around the stone. Then the man lifted my arms, and others my legs; they hoisted me atop their shoulders, and I saw the barrel-staves, smashed and ruined, in the shoals a dozen yards away, white salt spilled from its center like foaming, snowy guts.

I saw my own skin, wrinkled and parched from the salt, and felt my bushy beard scrape against my shoulders as I moved my head.

The woman turned to me, and I saw her jade-green eyes sparkle in the bright sun-light. She was beautiful, ruddy and strong, with trousers that flattered her silhouette; all she lacked was a bustle, for her hips, oddly, were barely as wide as her shoulders. But despite that critical short-coming, when she smiled at me I felt my heart seize in my chest.

“Welcome home, Grandfather Grenadon,” she said.

NEXT: The Charade

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