Up the Road

by Daniel A. Rabuzzi

in Issue 161, June 2025

Currents of heat roiled up from the caravan halted on the road below, carrying the odor of alien salts.

“As if the twilight itself has grown sullen,” thought Tad (short for “Tadileqs”).

“Grexical airs from a devil’s bunghole,” thought his cousin, Cheese. No one could remember how he had acquired the nickname, and no one called him anything else.

Two tall green-gray figures with heads like goatsuckers emerged from one of the wagons. Opening their impossibly wide mouths, they began to ululate, rictal bristles quivering, skinny arms thrust backward. The hairs on the necks of the cousins quivered in response. The nightjar-men were range-finding, locating their prey via echo.

“Run,” said Tad.

“Oh sweet damn,” said Cheese.

The cousins backpedaled like frogs from their prone position, in a ridge-top thicket of hazel and haw overlooking the ancient road deep in the wilderness. Springing upright, turning quicker than eels, the two men careened down the opposite slope. Veterans of many fights, including pitched combat in the service of their home city Mervaniloë, they were scarcely cowards, but they were also not fools. The dozen hounds loping from the caravan and up the scree after them had not been remarkably unnerving, though the way the pack seemed to talk among its members felt ominous. The company of soldiers following the dogs caused no undue alarm, except for the fact of their muskets. Firearms required powerful magic to operate, magic that was—as everyone knew—impossible to maintain outside the centralities and connections housed in cities. Magical laws could apparently be rewritten. Now was not the time to ask if the spindly jar-mouths shrieking behind them were the creators of the new magic, or merely its instruments. Tad and Cheese had no desire for closer acquaintance with such beings.

Not for the first time, they cursed the Umesiarch’s chief intelligencer for recruiting them for this mission. “Recruit” being a euphemism, of course. The lord’s spy-master was also a usurer who held the considerable debts the cousins had inherited from their fathers’ jointly owned dry goods shop. 

“May that gorniq choke on his own fork,” they said. It was not always sure if they meant their commander and creditor, or their fathers. Maybe both.

In exchange for cancellation of those debts, Tad and Cheese would survey the unknown regions to the west of the city, along the crooked spine of the old road leading in that direction. They were authorized to sign letters of intent with relevant parties for trade and rights to fish and game where appropriate. They were to provide thorough topographical maps, ethnographic reports, and studies of the natural resources. 

“Assuming we are able return to our city by the bay,” said Cheese, daily, as they sat eating cold victuals to avoid detection, or as they slogged through thorny brakes and over stony rubble of dubious origin, or huddled under a stunted oak tree that gave scant protection from the rain.

“Don’t be so glum, cousin,” Tad would respond. “If we do return, as I’m sure we will, you’ll finally be eligible to marry your beloved Hégesippé, and make a slew of beautiful knife-smart children for whom I will be godfather.”

They were four months past the River Chiw and the waste of Jacqsmery with its all-too-enticing ruins, beyond the debatable border of Brunbinnoë, far from human habitation other than that of charcoal-burners, a few bold trappers, and the deranged anchorite-wizards known as the Dhyrenics. The road they had been surveilling ended at Mervaniloë, but no one had gone more than a month’s journey west from the city for centuries — the lands of the west had long since fallen into disarray and worse. Scholars said the road had been built by the Alini, as a highway before their empire collapsed leaving only a bastardized Alindric to remain as a common tongue for the scattered peoples of a corrupted era. For most of its winding length, it was a barely discernible trace in the wilderness, frequented more by bears and foxes than by humans, and by the centipedes and rhino-beetles that stalked the bears and foxes. The humans who picked their way over its riddled route were almost always brigands, random sorties of nomads from the northern grasslands, and misguided pilgrims, not armored companies with cargo in tow.

The first of the hounds crested the ridge before Cheese and Tad had reached the bottom of the incline on their side. Strange vowels tumbled over the ridge line, down upon the fleeing scouts, mixed with the calls of the dogs and the distant braying of mules and bellowing of oxen. Sliding ahead of the cacophony were the pings and howls of the greenish goatsuckers-who-walked-as-men. The hounds were following the aural feedback trail right to Cheese and Tad.

Cheese thought of his long-suffering fiancée, and all the nieces and nephews he hoped Tad would get to meet. Tad thought of his secret and forbidden love, the one only Cheese knew about, let alone supported. They redoubled their speed, even as darkness and the broken ground made that difficult.

“West,” panted Tad. “From west. Who. The hell?”

Tad and Cheese had grown up together, served in the wars together, tried to salvage the family business together. They spoke in a private shorthand that even a sprint could not wholly hamper.

“Dunno,” gasped Cheese. “Far away. Gorniqs. Heading east. Gotta. Warn.”

“Menelequi,” agreed Tad, using the all-purpose term in Mervaniloësh for “really awful terrible person, probably sorcerous with malevolent intent.”

 As they crashed through prickets of bramble along the pasty stream that ran in the valley parallel to the ridge, they had images of Hégesippé’s father smugly shaking his head and saying “I always knew that unworthy boy would end up dead in a ditch,” and the spy-chief rubbing his hands as he foreclosed on the shop and most likely forced their relatives into peonage. 

The night was long. Tad and Cheese stayed ahead of their pursuers but could not shake them. They discovered that splashing through the stream helped a little; the rush of water distorted the range-finding shrills of the night-gulpers, who nevertheless kept advancing just behind the soldiers squelching through the sumps and sloughs. The hounds were never far, their relative silence disquieting.

“Well, scrap it,” said Cheese, heaving for breath on an eyot, as the sun began to rise. 

“Agreed, cousin.” Tad could not, for the life of him (and it appeared to be coming to that) understand the tenacity of those who hunted them. Scaring off a pair of trackers might make sense, but the effort spent by these menelequi was out of all proportion — whoever owned the caravan was taking great pains to eliminate witnesses.  

“This is as good a spot as any,” said Cheese. Their foes would have to wade through water on all sides to reach them.

The hounds assembled, muttering to each other, under some willows on one bank. A dozen grey-clad, mud-stained soldiers — seemingly human but one never could be sure—gathered on the opposite shore. They looked exhausted too, but determined. One of them carried a staff from which a pale yellow pennon flipped in the small wind. The flag featured a half-moon bearing a—to the cousins’ eyes, at least—savage grin. 

“Morning like the ones in the legends,” said Tad, unsheathing his sword and his long knife.

“Except for those bilgy bastards,” said Cheese, doing the same while nodding in the direction of the two human nightjars who had just arrived, their initial job done with the quarry at bay. 

The hounds launched into the stream.

The cousins fought back to back, chanting as they thrust and swung, ducked and parried.

“Grandma snored!” 

“Grandpa’s whiskers!” A family favorite, the episode in which their cataract-ridden grandfather had tried to shave using a butter knife, and had been rescued from his misadventure by the grandchildren.

And so on, a litany of shared memories in staccato song, more and more intimate as the circle of enemies tightened.

“Auntie’s biscuits!”

“Uncle’s busted boots!”

The cousins were bleeding now.

“Hégesippé!”

“Wixulle!” shouted Tad. “I love her!” He barked the laugh of the damned, but felt marvelous putting his sentiment into the world, even if snarling dogs, grim soldiers, and unearthly creatures were his only audience besides Cheese. Wixulle was a Cluvante, the oviparous species that lived in the reed-lands southeast of Mervaniloë, union with which was forbidden. Only Cheese knew of his love, only Cheese would stand by him should it become known. Miscegenation meant exile, and a stain on the honor of the entire family.

Cheese laughed too.

“For Wixulle!” he said.

The two grey-green creatures began windmilling their spindly arms, and increased the tempo of their calls. The remaining soldiers produced a net from a backpack and moved to encircle the men of Mervaniloë.

“Oh no you don’t! Peg you and all your kin!” The cousins would die before they let themselves be captured.

Just as the net was thrown, the dawn-light flickered though no cloud crossed the rising sun and they heard a sound as if a giant cork had been pulled from a giant bottle. They lost consciousness, with the high-pitched bleating of the goatsuckers and the yells of the soldiers suddenly cut off.

They woke in an even stranger place, one smelling vaguely of jasmine and cloves, scents they only knew from the druggist shop. The sun was high. Tad and Cheese realized they were lying in a bed, which felt ludicrous because the wilderness contained no beds, let alone one so soft and fragrant. 

“Greetings.” 

Three women approached them, dressed in darkest green with beechwood-silver piping. One had a blackbird with carnation-colored wings perched on her shoulder. Another carried a rosewood rod covered with intricate animal carvings.

“Welcome,” said the one with the rod. “To our hare’s hutch, our nettleship set safely floating here on this little slutch of dimpled water. You are safe now from the rousings of those marauders. We confounded your hunters with jellied seeps and warpage, sent wind-withies to baffle their fine seeking-whiskers, ruptured with a delicate harm the combs they sought to trap you in.”

Tad and Cheese gaped at them. They understood individual words but not the whole, or perhaps they grasped the meaning without understanding each word.

“I think,” said Cheese, hoarsely. “I mean, thank you.”

“Alindric?” said Tad, shifting to that language, or what passed for it in a fallen era.

“Charming,” said the woman with the bird. “Yes, Alindric.”

“You speak Alindric as it is written down in our oldest textbooks,” said Tad. 

“Indeed, and you fascinate us with your shortcuts and new constructions. We recognize our tongue as if through a lens of smoked glass.”

They dined on—of all things—lemon omelettes and glazed fig tarts. 

“Are you Dhyrenics, even though you be women?” said Cheese.

“No, for we have never heard of such folk. We are seek-wives, questers after knowledge, content in our chymical essays and darriatalogical experiments, conducting palustric explorations in our fenced-in water-meadow.”

“Not sure what that all means, but likely above my badge-number,” said Cheese, helping himself to another tart.

“Let’s see . . . it means that we use natural philosophy to preserve and protect. We listen to the roots and the rocks, we scry the breeze and the whisk of the willow therein. Does that help?”

“A little, thank you,” said Cheese, whose thoughts were turning to Hégesippé and to the city. He and Tad really had to go. The women had, by their own placid admission, only intended to pluck the scouts from danger and turn away but not destroy the soldiers, the hounds, and the shrieking ganglers. Doubtless the caravan was once again on its way, creaking towards Mervaniloë.

“How did you know about us?” said Tad, just as keen to leave but not satisfied about the motivations of their rescuers.

“Ah, sometimes we remember actions before they are committed.”

“No disrespect intended, my ladies, but that doesn’t clarify matters. We’re just simple soldiers.”

“Indeed, though I think you are rather special, are you not? Specialized at any rate. First-rate scouts and trackers, expert at worrying out secrets, at spying out the—how do you put it?—the lay of the land.”

The cousins heard a note of something buried there: critique, menace, amusement, maybe all three. They tried to stay attentive as honey-finches sang from wicker aviaries and aromas of countless blooms lulled their senses.

“We felt first the movement of the caravan, some months ago,” said another of the women. Tad wondered how old they were. Cheese wondered if they were sisters. Weird thought: triplets?

“From far far away, out of the west,” said the third woman. “A slow rumbling in the rhizomes, a storm-cloud ponderously peeling back the atmosphere.”

“Do you know its purpose?”

“No,” said all three women in unison. “We know not what it contains. We don’t know who steers it or what they might wish, only that its arrival has made these precincts . . . uncomfortable.”

The cousins wondered if there were three women, or one being within three bodies.

“Before the first ripples of the convoy itself,” said the woman Tad thought might be first among equals. “There were other signals, omens if you like.”

“Odd creatures, the likes of which we have not seen before. At least not recently. Not for a very long time,” said one of the other women. “Cropping up, materializing, in the past year or so.”

“Odd and harmless sometimes,” said the third woman. “Not so harmless other times.”

“Disturbing the land’s equilibrium,” said the first woman, who—seeing their incomprehension — explained that she referred to the balance necessary for growth, proper death, and ultimate renewal, the cyclical flux of life.

“Like the tides that wash the harbor of your distant city,” she concluded.

Tad shook off his drowsiness.

“Precisely,” he said. “Our city, and balance. Me and Cheese, we must get back to warn them.”

“Sort of hot-foot like,” said Cheese.

“And only with our greatest gratitude for your getting us out of the pickling barrel,” added Tad. “And healing us.” The men had healed incredibly quickly under the women’s care.

“Plus feeding us. Those tarts were extra jolly.”

The three women looked at them. More than ever, the cousins felt a single, and singular, intelligence peering at them through three pairs of eyes. 

“We must ask a favor of you first,” the women said.

Bees hummed in the bushes, a morninggale trilled in a high elm.

“To extricate you from—so charming, your turn of phrase—the brining bath, we spent a not insignificant amount of energy.”

A red squirrel chattered in a tree, and the smell of bread baking wafted on a mild breeze.

“Equilibrium, as we said. It is the way of the world, and we can only serve it.”

Tad and Cheese, struggling to shake off the rhythm of the place, did not like where this might be going.

“What is this favor?”

“One of you must stay here, to replenish the energy that was lost, so balance is restored.”

Cheese and Tad most definitely did not like the slant of the matter now.

“What? That’s. . .”

“Hold on! We did not ask you to step in. . .”

“We thought yours was as an act of hospitality for waylaid travelers!”

The three women smiled as one, a sad smile.

“As is written, we have no authority over this, we who are but humble servants of the world. We regret this, very much we do. Yet, however much we may regret it, the rules are inexorable and immutable, and must be met. There is no appeal.”

The Mervaniloëites shook their fists, and would have lunged forward but found themselves rooted to the spot.

“Please, be not angry with us,” said the woman with the rod. “We will care for whichever of you is chosen to stay. We are not as the creatures from the convoy. We bear you no ill will.”

“Right, lovely, this is like telling us to enjoy the drolleries of the furnace, for the sake of warming the hearths of others!” cried Cheese.

“Wait,” said Tad. ” ‘Is chosen.’  What does that mean, exactly?”

“As a further demonstration of our neutrality and fundamental goodwill, we will allow you to choose among yourselves.”

Aghast, the cousins looked at each other.

“Oh no way,” said Cheese. “That’s just rotten cruel.”

“Cheese, cousin,” said Tad. “You should be the one to leave, I’ll stay. Go to Hégesippé. Think of her.”

“But that works for you too, cousin,” said Cheese, who was not ashamed to have tears in his eyes. “I will stay. You should go to Wixulle!”

The women held hands as they intoned, “So touching this is! Such love for one another is so rarely seen, not in prior ages and not now. You validate our intervention!”

“Does that mean you’ve dropped the hostage requirement?”

“Alas no, the chulchoisical fates are implacable, as we have told you. However, there might be a loophole, a waiver for a collateral task fulfilled.”

“Go on.”

“A life force is needed, but it need not be one of yours.”

“We’re listening.”

“One of the things that recently appeared nearby, awakened perhaps by the imminence of the convoy’s arrival. . . that would do.”

Tad and Cheese relaxed just a little, though as veteran campaigners they knew another tug on the snaffle-bit was coming. 

“What is this ‘thing’ and where can we find it?”

“We’ve never been able to see it clearly, only feel the evidence of its depredations just beyond our borders—half the animals and birds have been devoured, the other half seek refuge with us. Our power is severely limited to this place, or we would detain the creature ourselves.”

Of course, ever the blood-work to be done by the help for those unwilling or unable to do the necessary themselves. As they always did, the cousins would make the best of a bad situation. After another quarter-hour of debate between them, Tad overruled his slightly younger cousin and took on the mission. 

“You’ll have five days to trap the creature and return with it . . . alive,” said the leading woman. “Alive . . . I must stress this. Your companion will remain here. Once you bring in the thing . . .alive . . . your cousin will be redeemed, and you both may leave.”

“Cousin,” said Tad. “I will be back as soon as I can. If I don’t make it, know that I love you, and our entire family, including Hégesippé. Please also get a message to Wixulle.”

Cheese was crying too hard to do more than nod vigorously. They hugged and Tad was sent with a pip and a pop through screens of drownwood and horn pepperel back out into the wilderness.

“And tell the gorniqs, that bunghole of a spymaster in particular, that I will piss on their grexical graves from heaven, or from hell, wherever,” thought Tad as he headed towards the lair of the beast in the low hills to the south of the road.

In two days of roaming the rumpled lands, Tad confirmed what the women had said, namely, that the region was largely empty of animals and birds. Lovely, he thought, into the belly-chute I go.

On the morning of the third day, he heard someone humming and singing just beyond a grove of  ash trees. Creeping through the trees, sword and knife both ready, Tad saw just about the last thing he could have anticipated. By a brook, a small man naked to the waist sat beating his laundry on a rock, while singing off-key in what sounded like another antiquated form of Alindric. The mannekin, at most two and a half feet tall with his shoes on, was broad shouldered and heavily muscled. He had an enormous nose, say rather a stubby snout like the one on a baby elephant (Tad had seen an elephant once, transshipped from southern savannahs to northern plains via Mervaniloë, why, nearly the whole city had turned out quayside to see that marvel — focus, Tad, focus). His skin was grey-green, similar to the complexion of the screeching goatsucker-men. He had no weapons visible, and was unadorned except for a largish yellow locket hanging by a stout gold chain around his neck. 

Even though he was downwind, and still as a turbot, Tad had the feeling that the man was already aware of him. The prehensile snout curled up. Tad could hear the snuffling over the flow of the creek.

“I know you’re there,” said the man, with the same accent to his Alindric as that of the women, and in a surprisingly deep voice. “No use hiding, I will find you. Come out and show yourself.”

Tad considered the offer for a moment, shrugged, stood up, and came out of the ash trees. He stopped well clear of the brook and the rock. The little man looked bouncy quick.

“You speak Alindric,” he said.

“Is that what it is called?” said the man. “I didn’t know. I just speak it.”

“Who are you? Do you live around here?”

The little man put on his shirt, still wet, before speaking.

“You know, I am not sure. My name is either ‘B’ or ‘8,’ as best I can tell. I do live here…now.”

He pointed upstream. Tad could see, obscured by more ash trees, a hut constructed ingeniously of bones. Despite himself, he admired the framing and joinery. If only he and Cheese had had such accommodation on any number of nights spent outside in foul weather.

“Um, how long have you lived here? Nice house, by the way.”

“Thank you,” said the mannekin, brightening. “You’re quite polite. I have not had any company for…well, forever, I think.”

The morning really was pleasant. The brook shushed, a single frog chirrupped from a hiding place on the far bank, a lone flycatcher teez-tweeped from the top of a willow.

“They all avoid me now,” said B or 8.

“I think I can imagine why.”

“It’s not my fault, you know. I’m just so hungry, all the time. No sooner have I eaten than I am hungry anew. Even as I speak with you—and I cannot express how much I am enjoying our conversation—I cannot help thinking too of how delectable your flesh appears.”

He smiled as he said this, without apparent malice. His proboscis pulling up, revealing rows of sharp teeth and a mighty tongue covered with papillae, was jarring nonetheless. Tad raised his sword chest-high.

“Yes, yes,” sighed the little man. “Your meat attracts and intimidates me simultaneously.”

“You’d be wise to focus on that latter aspect.”

“Wait . . . are you here then to eat me?”

Tad chuckled. The man, after a pause, chuckled hesitantly.

“No,” said the scout from Mervaniloë. “Truly, that’s the absolute last thing I could desire. How about this instead? How about I take you to a place where food is always abundant.”

B or 8 knit his brows, which made his snout wriggle.

“Very tasty too,” said Tad. “Here, look.” He took from his backpack the provender the women had supplied for just this occasion: figs, hazelnuts, pears, several kinds of sausage, various cakelets, a loaf of olive bread, and a pie containing small birds. 

“I have no experience of such things,” said B or 8 at length, eying the food with strong and obvious desire—his snout had moved at five different angles, all of which spelled “hungry, now.” “But this sounds implausible. Why would you, an utter if kind-sounding stranger, make such an offer?”

Tad thought of Cheese, and all their loved ones back in Mervaniloë, and lied with great conviction.

“Because I care about the welfare of others I find in this wooded desert. We who are forced to haunt such realms must look out for one another. It is part of maintaining the, um . . . balance.”

The short man shuffled his feet, looked at the banks of the stream and then at the surrounding trees.

“That would be most welcome, if what you say is true. I just . . .”

“What have you got to lose? Your larder is pretty much empty. You’ve scared everything away.”

B or 8 said, “Once I had a mother who could have guided me in such decisions. I believe I did, anyway.”

“How so?”

“I have a picture of her, together with a piece of her clothing. Right here. I always carry it with me.”

The little man pulled from his back pocket a letter, and removed the locket from around his neck. As any child might, he shyly but proudly held them up for his visitor to see. Tad, hugely curious even as he dreaded and despised every element of what he must do, signaled for him to put the items on the rock and to step away.

“If you steal or damage these,” said B or 8. “I will seek to kill you, despite you being over twice my size and no matter the sharpness of your implements.” 

Tad felt fear for the first time in dealing with the manlet. He nodded. Retrieving and then viewing the locket and the letter, he saw that the back of the locket was inscribed “To B.” Or it might, in fact, have been “To 8.” The script was antique and the inscription worn nearly smooth.

Tad said, “I don’t know what this is a picture of. It more resembles a gridwork or lattice, maybe akin to the nautical maps we use in my city but in miniature. And it’s not a scrap of clothing, it’s a letter, though in no language I can read. Do you know what a letter is?”

“I do not know much,” B or 8 said, shaking his head despondently (which made his snout wobble, which made Tad almost laugh, which in turn made Tad feel guilty). “I only remember back a short while. A year I think, as these things are reckoned.”

“Remarkable, as you are apparently full grown, despite your short stature, and you speak and reason far beyond any infant’s abilities. How could this be?”

“I don’t understand myself. I woke up suspended in a vesicle within a wall in a room inside an empty house. I punched my way out of the pocket, slippery naked, my nose found air and breathing. Not just any house, you know, but a huge one, room after room, so many rooms, all empty. Not many windows. Almost no windows, as I think on it. Must have once been filled with people though, their furniture and books were scattered and heaped everywhere. I found the picture—I am still sure it is of my mother, no matter what you say — and the letter, as you call it, in a box on a shelf in the room where I was birthed. Tucked in with the clothes and shoes I am wearing. I found hundreds of other vesicles, tanks, and containers, all cracked and dry in other rooms. I found machines, none of which made any sense to me, which was no matter since none of them worked any more.”

“Where is this remarkable place?”

“Due south from here. More or less. I walked about two months, I think, to get here. I had to leave because there was no food, and I was starving. I am always starving. Even now.”

B or 8, or whatever the poor creature’s name might be, looked again at Tad, clearly measuring what it would take to overpower the scout. Tad set the letter and the locket back on the rock, retreated, raised the knife and sword into combat position.

“Listen,” Tad said. “This is awkward for us both. My offer stands. You’d die trying to get the drop on me, though I doubt I’d remain unscathed. A poor outcome for us both, though worse for you. If you’re hungry, eat what I brought. Hey, peg it, I’m hungry too—let’s eat together and talk things over, hey?”

So the two ate breakfast together. In between rapid bites, B or 8 talked pretty much nonstop. He asked questions by the dozen: about the names and habits of animals and birds, about Tad’s city and what it was like to live among people, about how Tad translated between Alindric and Mervaniloësh (B or 8 marveled that there could be more than one tongue in the world, having lived his life without hearing words of any language spoken aloud), about what Tad had seen and learned on his grand reconnaissance. B or 8 had all the makings of an autodidact; all he lacked was a library and the occasional mentor, or, better, a regular symposium of like-minded souls. Above all, they swapped notes about the food, which was uniformly excellent. By the end of the meal, they had reached a tacit understanding of mutual non-aggression.

“There’s more of this in the place you came from?” asked B or 8.

“Oh yes,” said Tad. “The hosts there, all women, are excellent cooks. Very generous too.”

“Alright then,” said the mannekin. “I consent. I will come with you.”

“And you won’t try to eat me.”

“No, really, I won’t. I will show you purest discipline. I don’t want to eat you, in any case. If I can get more of these sausages, with the figs, and meat-pies, well, I would never tackle anyone ever again. So, how far is the journey?”

“I had to cut curlicues over the terrain to get here, but straight shot, it will be about one day. You will always walk in front of me, say ten paces.” Also, Tad did not intend to sleep, planning to take several “Mervaniloë marching pills,” the compound of ephedra, coffee bean, and capsicum that all the city’s troops were issued, and that wise scouts kept sewn in the lining of their pants. 

B or 8 chattered guilelessly the entire way, his curiosity unbounded. He burbled about the little cakes and sausages, thrilled to learn about fennel and garlic as ingredients in the latter. He waxed on about the wonders of cookery, which had defied most of his efforts, though he much preferred his food cooked, except he’d had only pictures to go by in books he’d found in his birth-place. He would not believe Tad at first when told about the concept of dairy foods—oh oh oh, this yoghurt thing sounds delightful, and also, the what is it?, the butter, tell me about how that tastes. More even than his interest in food, he desired companionship. In between the flow of queries, B or 8 darted into the underbrush to snag a rat and up a tree to snatch an unwary bird. Like the most winsome cat Tad had ever seen, B or 8 offered what he had caught, its heart still beating, to the scout. Tad bowed, laughing, and declined. Step by step, mouthful by mouthful, Tad found himself growing fond of B or 8, chuckling at the snout-man’s sense of humor, and admiring the insightful nature of his questions. B or 8 wanted to ingest not only the world’s physicality but its essence, the spirit behind it—he craved understanding more than digestion. Tad’s heart crumpled with every step.

They arrived at the trees demarcated by the women as the gate to their territory. This time the transition sounded like the smack-tap-tapping of doves taking flight.

“Oh, well done!” said the first woman. “A genuine homunculus.”

“So well formed he is,” said the second. “You can practically taste the musk of the hatchling upon him.”

“He exudes the energy of the unnatural cherubim,” said the third.

B or 8 blinked, his trunk dipping. There was no food in sight, not even the most meager whiff of culinary aromas or barest hint of any kitchen preparations. No more little cakes, no more sausage.

“Done and done,” said Tad, choking back his shame. Cheese grasped his shoulder, and made motions to leave.

“Yes, you may both go.”

B or 8 looked utterly stricken.

“Come on, cousin, let’s go, now,” urged Cheese.

B or 8 had tears in his eyes. He had just tasted betrayal for the first time.

“Wait,” said Tad, dumbfounded at his own reluctance to leave, angry at himself for tricking the man he had met by the stream, with whom he had shared notes and made jokes along the path.

The women looked at him calmly, but there issued from their mouths a faint sound like the one a glacier makes when it is about to calve.

“Wait,” said Tad again. “Surely there must be a third option . . .”

The women calmly narrowed their eyes, like a pride of lions settling in for the kill.

“Tad, cuz, we gotta go,” whispered Cheese. “What are you . . .?”

“You cannot cheat,” said the woman holding the rosewood rod.

“What happens to him?”

“No longer your concern.” 

Tad noticed for the first time a half-open doorway to a windowless building behind the women, an edifice he had not noticed before, or that perhaps had not been there before. Maybe there was a table just visible inside, with straps. Maybe there were tools on the wall, and beakers and alembics, and empty buckets on the floor. Tad decided right then that, peg it, it was his concern.

“Menelequi,” he shouted, and drew his sword. Cheese swore but he always followed Tad’s lead. The two of them leaped at the women.

Three things happened then, one immediately after the other.

The women coalesced into one, their green clothing going midnight, the beechwood-silver piping becoming lightning. They, now she, sucked in their breath, with a sound of muted thunder, or a roar kept in a jar. They were about to blow the lid off the jar.

The locket around the neck of B or 8, the one so inscribed, sputtered, fizzed, then blazed with golden light. 

An explosion rocked the space, casting Tad, Cheese, and B or 8 into . . .

. . .the woods outside the domain of the seek-wives. The three men shuddered. Their ears rang, they tasted ammonia, they sneezed. As their ears cleared, they could hear, like the buzz of angry hornets behind a leaded window-pane, the voice of the woman telling them how much they would rue this cardinal violation of the rules. You all three owe us, she said, the balance must be restored. She said her curse would find them no matter where they ran. Dwindling her voice was but the acid in her threat remained in their minds. They staggered away, and then began to sprint as their energy returned. No one wanted to assume the curse could not find them right away.

“Holy elvers,” said Cheese, as they stopped an hour later to catch their breath.

They looked at the locket, which still glowed though less intently. B or 8 said he had no idea what had happened. The locket, or the power it contained, had just responded to the seek-wives’ threat all on its own.

“Useful,” said Cheese.

“I think it’s a shunt,” said Tad. “Like the ones our warrior-mages use, to bend away sorcerous attack. Never seen anything that quick and powerful though.”

Looking closer, Tad and Cheese could see that the locket had scorched B or 8’s chest.

“Hey,” said Cheese. “That’s gotta hurt.”

B or 8 nodded.

“We have something to numb the pain,” said Tad, reaching into his backpack. “Standard issue for soldiers. Here, may I, uh, rub this on the burn?”

B or 8 nodded again. Tad knelt down, and applied the clove-based salve. Cheese kept his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“We’ll need to keep rubbing this on every few hours,” said Tad, standing up. “Will hurt more before it gets better. And we’ll need to watch for infection. We have some goo for that as well, a mold extract our chymists devised from an ancient recipe. Saved Cheese from losing an arm once.”

B or 8 buttoned up his shirt, and said, “I thank you. Feels better. But I am still really angry at you, especially you Tad.”

Tad hung his head. 

“Yet I am also really happy that you changed your mind. About your awful deception. Ooh, that still smarts. Will always hurt, which vexes me. But I think I understand what you were up against. Not who those women were, but the terrible pressure they put you under.”

Tad could scarcely believe how forgiving B or 8 was being. He was fairly certain he would not be as compassionate if the shoe were on the other foot.

Cheese broke the ensuing silence.

“Look,” he said. “We just gotta keep moving. Maybe we can sort out apologies and the lovey-doveys after, okay? Heartless world, right? For all of us. But here we are.”

B or 8 blew a soft but indignant note with his trunk, before saying that Cheese was correct, because what else could be done?

Tad said, “B or 8, look, I really am sorry. I will make it up to you, I promise. Cheese will vouch for me. He’s right though, we cannot linger. Those witches will sooner or later find the power to cross their borders.”

“And we also have another bunch of gorniqs after us too, did Tad tell you that? Ugly screechy peggers, who must be really pissed off after we gave ’em the slip.”

B or 8 humphed again and said, “I have wanted company for so long that I guess I cannot afford to be picky. I still don’t trust you. But I fear those women more.”

“Well, you bilgy bucko, trust runs both ways,” said Cheese. “Ground rule number one: no eating of us. You got that? If I see you so much as try to take a nibble off of Tad, I will slice your snooty head right off.”

“Agreed,” said B or 8. “Though I wish you wouldn’t make fun of my nose. It’s a perfectly fine, even noble, feature—well suited to its function. I don’t laugh at your lack of the same, you poor things with mere stumps for noses.”

Tad and Cheese laughed. B or 8 had a point, after all.

“One more thing,” said B or 8. “You must bathe more often. I can smell you both already.”

The two cousins shrugged, grinned. Having a fastidious, ravenous chatterbox for a companion would, at the very least, make for good stories upon their return to Mervaniloë.

Smiling his shy smile, B or 8 said, “Right then, how far is it to this city of yours? Will there be sausages, and the—what did you call it?—yoghurt when we get there? And will there be cooked snacks along the way?”

 © June 2025, Daniel A. Rabuzzi

Daniel A. Rabuzzi (www.danielarabuzzi.com) has been published in, among others, Asimov’s, Abyss & Apex, Coffin Bell, Shimmer, Red Ogre Review, Goblin Fruit, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. He lives in New York City with his artistic partner & spouse, the woodcarver Deborah A. Mills (www.deborahmillswoodcarving.com).