(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 7 minutes)

Log of Two Hundred and Forty some Severed Personalities

The company’s retreat could’ve been five times as raucous, the giant Franklin kite could’ve struck shrieking sharpsychords instead of Bickyplots, and Private Blueberry still would not have heard it. Partly this was sheer focus, the narrowing of her perception so that it excluded everything from the bigger battle to the breath whistling out her own nose, so that all she heard was the pitter-thump-patter and scrabbling tooth scratching of Bludgehaven’s heart across the wooden floors deep within Bickering Hall.

Also contributing was the labyrinth of chambers, causing even sound to lose its way. Half the rooms had purposes she couldn’t guess. Interior balconies overlooking nothing. Hot coal floors with uneven rake marks. A sauna of yellow clouds and what might have been chunks of vegetables floating through them, suggesting it was a gas of soup not water. Doors boarded up, painted over, clutter piled in front, terrible, angry, living noises piled behind.

Bludgehaven’s heart was so much more elusive than its host. In order to keep it within earshot she had to leave behind every other kind of shot, dropping guns, then blades, then her outer cloak, all to become that much faster.

She cursed herself for not paying more attention to her surroundings when she felt the Bickyplot blood stiffening her ankles, as well as numbing her lips and fingertips. Experience assured her it had not been a lethal dose, but perhaps lethal to a successful pursuit. The chase had been going on so long without them finding an exit that she was starting to think the little beastie was leading her in circles.

What stung more was the knowledge of how many errors she’d made that day, from her sloppy jump off Emperor, to the clatter she raised in the kitchen, and now the commitment of their secret weapon to a foolhardy hunt that would only leave her trapped in the bowels of the enemy fortress, too stiff to outrun a falling broom.

Kidd forgot one thing however, namely that the heart too could err, and that many beings in many worlds would say that nothing errs more. It shrieked in front of her, tendrils flailing, practically knotting, as it slid to a stop in front of… a door?

It was difficult to tell, especially just with one upward glance that failed to catch the feature’s top. If not a door perhaps it was a gate, layered as it was in two different metal meshes colored brass and corroded white-green. Thirteen knobs or latches, all constructed differently, were arranged in the middle of it in a circle, her highest jump obviously incapable of touching those on the top half.

‘Secure’ was the word to describe it, assuming it was meant to open at all. Far more fascinating was whatever lay behind, as that was undoubtedly what had so frightened the heart into an attempt to change direction when it could ill afford to do so. Kidd made up the difference through fearing nothing. The gate was free to swallow her if it wished, as long as she could first swallow the concentrated Incontible.

Her dive toward it was her best executed maneuver that day. The capsule landed right atop the heart, and together they bounced off the floor. A press on a flat lever shut its opening via spring, which clipped a few tiny rings of red flesh off the tips of its tendrils, like empty drops of blood. I have it! I have an entire Bickyplot in my hands! Together we will swagger into Anchor and make it known that no mission is complete without Blueberry Kidd in its complement. The Founders cannot know, but if they did pride would reveal my father. His steps out of the crowd would be all but involuntary, that’s how we’ve just impressed him!

Flooding elation suppressed the spreading scaffolding of the toxic blood, but not enough for her to forget herself. Best to leave now, celebrate later. Little did she know that the company was already long gone, and the only being close enough to share in her victory was Eggnonce Chattelpool.

She turned to leave, walked right into his leg. Dulled reflexes prevented her from reacting as the Bickyplot bent down, pinned her arms to her sides, and hoisted her off the floor. Between the antler-bars of his hollow head the plucked bird bearing his beak-mouth hopped off a perch and grasped two of the supports, squeezing its head between, close enough to nip off her ear.

“What have we here?” he squawked, obviously enthused from the way the bird’s umbilicus twitched all the way down into the neck. “The first human being to be added to my collection, that’s what. Such a privilege for you. Let’s hurry up and get you in one of my cages before Lord Bludgehaven insists you belong in one of his. Oh, wait, ha, that’s right.”

He chuckled as he recalled his brother’s body still lying in the banquet hall. Chattelpool was perhaps the smartest Bickyplot when all aspects of intelligence were considered equally, though he was not as insightful as Spywulph nor as mathematical as Wighthall. This allowed him to quickly deduce what Kidd was doing so far from her fellows, and what was in that metal capsule clutched against her chest.

Humans were delicate, this much he knew from the few he’d managed to autopsy, tearing off limbs he’d only lightly tugged, so he was sure to stabilize her head with one hand before violently shaking her. As he wished, she was forced to drop the caging canister. Eggnonce lifted one foot and precisely crushed the end of it, rending it open and releasing the heart.

Rather than capture it himself he allowed it to flee into a shadowy corner and disappear, focusing instead on his new prized specimen. Sooner or later a newly intact Bludgehaven would come of those shadows, whether the heart chose to reclaim and seal the body that had gone cold or construct a new one from scratch. Either way, Kidd would be safely locked up out of his reach, no matter how much he tried to argue jurisdiction or the doctrine of Finders Keepers.

Kidd couldn’t argue, not with bumpy talons still over her mouth, her nose, her eyes, her scalp, so her captor chattered away, about the doctrine in fact, insisting that heart she was chasing couldn’t have been said to have ‘found’ her, as it was without eyes and fleeing at the same time. He had other points about his claim too, and they lasted all the way to their destination, which Kidd was only allowed to see once he’d opened what sounded like a repeatedly locked door and gone inside.

“Welcome to your new home,” Eggnonce boasted. “I’m sure we’ll have to use you for bargaining at some point, but until then I’m going to make a study of you.” She was dropped onto her feet.

“What is this place?” she asked, taking a few cautious steps through something she only realized couldn’t be called grass when it brushed against her ankle. The overwhelming sensations of failure and defeat had already frozen inside her, keeping her from stoking enough anger to insult him or demand her freedom. All I can do is pivot. This is now a reconnaissance exercise. For everything he learns I must learn something about them.

“My menagerie little miss.” There was something as much like a tree as the fronds blanketing the ground were like grass in the center of the tall circular chamber. He pranced around its purple trunk and occasionally-drooping knot eyes as he spoke, pointing out the various creatures and the minimal comforts he afforded them.

“You’ll notice the glass lattice of the ceiling, allowing plenty of light.” She looked up: bare branches confronted each other all the way up, some growing stubbornly flat along the glass itself. Far too thin for her to climb all the way up. Even what flew in there didn’t like to be too near the top, perhaps sensing a drafted boundary enchantment which further prevented escape.

“There’s a food door over here, though I’ve no idea what I’m going to feed you. It was hard enough finding something for Hamishand to feed your Founder. On the other side of this panel here you’ll see my laboratory, from where I’ll observe your natural behavior. I assure you the glass is quite unbreakable, but I do detest the sound of banging on it. Refrain from doing so or I may be forced to amputate whatever you chose to bang with.”

“And who are my new… neighbors?” Kidd asked, finally taking note of the other beings present, most of them a good deal smaller than herself. Whatever they were, none seemed curious about her presence, paying more attention to Eggnonce despite his constitutionals around the tree-thing being utterly routine.

Scuttling green half-melons on spider-crab legs treated the trunk and stump as a vertical road. Inky billowing flukes undulated through the air, dangling fleshy strands tipped in teeth like an ivory comb. Berries of blood locomoted through the false grass by repeatedly turning themselves inside out. There were many more forms as well, with those simply being the ones where more than one specimen was present.

“Don’t mind them, they won’t bother you,” the nasty unnaturalist answered her, making it clear he would brush off most of her requests for information with ease. I have to be under the watchful eye of the only curious one.

Blueberry could be just as resourceful, and was able to silently answer her own question, to a degree, thanks to her pet. Wagner usually reacted to other living things that approached, tightening if it did not trust them, slithering out a ways if it wished to investigate, but the contents of the menagerie it did not bother with at all, as if the big cage was empty.

To that she added the obvious unusual traits of her fellow specimens. While Bickyplots were hideous abominations, like the contents of an attic had grown a beefy coating of mold, they still conformed to recognizable body plans, with clear heads and four limbs. Chattelpool’s collection did not; their existence had an improvised quality.

Wagner innately recognized them as both not fully alive and not of the world from whence he came. Nor were they animals of Pursuitia. Thus Kidd concluded they were anatimals, but originating from the home world of the Bickyplots. They too were pilgrims once, though by now they had thoroughly fashioned themselves conquerors.

The anatimals’ aberrant nature would explain why they were kept here, as other animals of their world, like their monstrous ‘hunting dogs’, were used openly. Her mind went back to the barred metal door with the thirteen latches. Was it the passage through which they brought their own animals? Was it, unlike the opening accessed accidentally in the First Declaration, open constantly? Did they come and go as they pleased? If so, why did Bludgehaven’s heart try to flee from it? It wouldn’t be difficult for something on the other side to be scarier than me. If there’s a Bickyplot predator over there I could turn this entire conflict on its head just by luring it out, gifting it thirteen scents.

“What’s behind that big metal door?” she asked pointedly. Chattelpool paused, birdcage head perfectly hidden by poor posture and the trunk.

“I’ll forgive such questions once each. They are just as irritating as a bang on my observation window, so ask them a second time and I will attempt my first vocal cord amputation.”

“You could release me, then I’d be no irritation at all.”

“And no fun either. You humans always seem so dour; I’m going to find that bile sac that makes you so bitter. I swear, the only time I see you enjoy yourselves is when you put on those campfire plays of yours… but even that you don’t do out of passion. They’re necessary to fend off the winter, yes?”

“What do you do against it?” He peeked at her around the trunk, head-bird chattering madly as its useless wings flapped. “That was hardly nosy! Assuming you get what you want I’ll still be here in the winter anyway, and I’ll see for myself.”

“Ahh yes, true true.” Eggnonce grabbed the frame of his head with both hands, shook it aggressively, disturbing the tethered bird that might have been the closest thing he had to a brain. He’s trying to make it think harder. “So there is no harm in telling you that the walls of Bickering Hall are thick enough to do the job on their own. Like you we can’t leave once the blizzards set in, relying on stores to keep ourselves fed, and games to keep ourselves sane. We’ve already stored Trip to Jerusalem for our next long haul through boredom. It was a mistake letting us have that.”

“You take our very lives, why not our games, our stories, our songs…”

“Why not indeed?” he slavered. “Culture is so tasty, once we store it away and age it properly.”

“You mean defile it with rot.”

“Your palates are too short-sighted,” the Bickyplot argued. One of the anatimals flew into his cap, was chased out by the ornery bird. “When you’re as old as us you’ll learn that the purpose of fresh things, of spring, is to suffer a fall. That falling motion, that terror, is the spice of life. Your suffering fuels us. The flowering of humanity in Evidentia was most welcome, as the Silhouettes are not very good at suffering. The planes of our thought do not have enough points of intersection, but you lot… our paths cross even at great distance.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’ve flourished here Bickyplot. Fruitful multiplication. Innovation and industry. Nobody’s falling.”

“Your Founders drop like flies,” was his retort, and he sounded hungry despite stuffing his beak with the richest rot just an hour ago. “Soon they will shrivel away, and we will be so sad to see them go. Things younger don’t fall so quickly, don’t give in so angrily, and sometimes figure out how to glide on the way down.” He approached, leaned over, practically daring her to reach inside him, grab the bird, and throttle it, but she dared not. “You, thing younger that is mine, what is your name?” He would have it from Anchor anyway, if there were to be any negotiations for her return.

“Private Blueberry Kidd.”

“Kidd? Curious. That is not a Founder’s surname; I know all of those.” She refused to elaborate. He didn’t need any details of the Lenape or the Freed to add to Blacknib’s drafting references. Chattelpool took her silence as a challenge to figure it out on his own, which he sought to do by rattling his birdcage again.

“Don’t strain yourself Lord Chattelpool. I could be anyone’s child; they don’t have to be a Founder.” After she said it she realized she perhaps shouldn’t have, entirely possibly as it was for the Bickyplots to believe only the Founders were fertile; they could’ve even guessed that was why they were put in charge. I could be anyone’s, but I think I’m one of theirs. Why else would I have been cast aside? No Lenape denies their own… only Anchor’s palest shame does that.

“Claptrap!” The bird had escaped his shaking, but started circling once more at her statement. “It’s written all over you. You don’t see yourself as just another servant. Even without a steed you ride into battle, yes! The only way for this world that isn’t yours to become yours is if your sire trespassed first. Then you haven’t trespassed at all! And you can do as you please, for you are all future and no past.

No, you are either of the upper class or you think you are, which is why you should be overjoyed you are imprisoned in my suite and not Bludgehaven’s hovel. He’d have you folded into a dark box, nailed back in after every spoonful of gruel, especially after you caught his cardiolic self in one of your contraptions.”

“Will he remember it was me?” she probed, footing restored once she stopped interrogating herself and turned the harsh light of inquiry back to the Bickyplots. “These cardiolic selves seem little more than rats.”

“Rats. Vermin of yours. Small, skittering, a fur coat, but none on the tails.” He was simply repeating what he thought he knew of them, gleaned from very limited interactions and observations. Most of the details he had may have come from the power of drafting itself, delivered unto his mind when they signed the agreement to make their tongues mutually intelligible. “But you haven’t any whole rats do you? No, no whole animals at all. What you have with you are rat tails, rat feet, rat ears, rat teeth…”

“And what animal limbs are these?” Kidd asked, rapping on the melon-shell of a scuttling thing. It didn’t hurry away, but it also didn’t slow. By her estimation it had climbed and descended the tree five times already since her entrance, yet was still convinced it had somewhere to be.

“Mimicry of my vast intelligence does not reproduce it in you,” Eggnonce claimed, “admirable as your tenacity is. No answer will make you any less my prisoner, my pet, my specimen, Kidd. Now be good, or be experimentally flayed, it makes no difference to me. Both will enlighten, but only one will enlighten your insides, so perhaps that’s some difference to you.”

Blueberry felt like defying him further, finding the razor edge of his patience and suffering a cut so that she could prevent them in future, but the Bickyplot blood was at its most painful just then, and was making it difficult to stand, so she went to the curved wall furthest from him and let herself slide down it into a sitting position. Stiff sensations bent and stabbed up into her chest, like a tent frame collapsing.

“That’s a good human. I’ll be back later with some feed samples for you to try.” With that he strolled back to the tall menagerie door and let himself out, his only goodbye the clunk of three different locks falling into place.

It wasn’t worth the effort of rising, as the door was so large she could see all its details from right where she was, and one of those details was a complete lack of keyhole on her side. It only locked from the outside, so unless she could break it down there would be no escape. I’ll have to go straight through him when he’s coming in. One failure is probably too many; it’ll cost me something that will cost me everything.

For a time she didn’t feel like doing much but observing the anatimals as the poison worked its way through her system. Curious was their behavior, much more so than Earth anatimals, for parceled out as they were the pieces of Earth animals still followed most of the obvious instincts of their origins: play, shelter seeking, and sleep.

These Bickyplot counterparts never stopped moving, and when they changed direction they did so quickly, often retracing their last path as exactly as she could discern. Those that flew never took a perch, never touched the walls. Experimental thoughts of her own tempted her, like testing the consequences of holding one still, or dropping one of the tree dwellers on the dirt floor, but for all she knew that might kill them, and if Chattelpool returned to find her eliminating the competition in his menagerie it would likely mean a quick transfer to one of Bludgehaven’s splintered crates.

But why are they like this? Whatever they used to be part of may have died, so if they don’t maintain motion they cannot draw life force from anywhere. They seem… confused. As if they are lost, but retracing their steps gives them some nonsensical hopes they soon won’t be. Like the Bickyplots they refuse to accept this is not their native land, and they grow only more encrusted and grotesque as they try to make themselves stick.

Baseless as these notions mostly were, she still tried to keep after them, for when she found herself exhausted of learning nothing her mind wandered back to her predicament. There was no means of relieving herself in the menagerie formal enough to be recognized as an effort of construction. That meant she would have the delight of burying it, and tracking where to avoid the secondary delight of rediscovering it.

Also there was nothing to stimulate her mind at all: no Bickyplot scribbling on the walls, nothing to analyze past the observation glass, and no one to talk to. But. There was someone to write to. With a stiff hand, already having to compensate for an even stiffer elbow, Kidd reached into her uniform and found what she sought, extracting a slim field journal that was little more than twenty loose pages bound together.

Not all of the young carried them, and none were as likely to as Kidd herself, for their main purpose was the transmission of information and orders silently, during difficult situations where a voice could be overheard by Founder or Bickyplot. Seeing someone crouched down, furiously scribbling in such a situation was in itself quite suspicious, so their utility was limited, less so for the person often prevented from having a stable bed.

For Kidd it was easy to conceal and take with her even as a Founder, maybe even her father, shooed her away to keep her from contaminating Muster or any of the other preferred children. She wrote in it most when she slept outside Anchor, up in a tree that had leaves so page-like she was free to pluck one and add it to the booklet.

Her fingers wouldn’t let her leaf through it, not yet, so she gently blew each page to the next, surveying what she had at her disposal. Only three pages in the back were blank, but that wasn’t as limiting as it first appeared. With the right ink and drafting she could open an effective line of communication to her peers, each message disappearing after a set time to make room for more.

Briefly her heart sank. The last message was in her own ungainly hand. The others surely had means of transmission, if they’d been thinking about her, but she’d received nothing. Yet. I’ve lost track of time. She looked up through the glass ceiling, judged the level of light. They’re still on their way back. They’ve had no opportunity yet.

Occupying her time, on that first night in shameful captivity, wasn’t difficult, not with all the thinking she could do in search of ways to make the journal two-way. Science Master Franklin had provided a number of designs for shrunken pens with internal ink reservoirs, and some of them even worked reliably, and a solitary one could do so without stored electricity that occasionally left burns on the skin if there was any sweat present to conduct it.

Of all those designs exactly zero of them were in Kidd’s possession. She could’ve fit one in between the binding loops of the journal, but she hadn’t wanted anything rigid poking her in the side as she ran. So she’d put a writing utensil in the pocket of her cloak, which was now somewhere in Bickering Hall, and it might have had the exhausted heart of Bludgehaven nestled in its sleeve.

If the time and concern came as she hoped, and a message appeared asking for confirmation she was alive, how would she answer? A finger could do the job, but only with a transmissible ink. She looked around again, put off by all the anatimals stuck in the same paths they were on the moment she’d been brought in.

All the plants and animals were foreign, and she wasn’t allowed to sample any of them; she didn’t doubt Chattelpool would notice the tiniest of scratches on the melon-crabs’ armor. No ink. No ink… no ink… except for what I brought with me! There were plenty of old messages on the pages, and plenty of saliva in her mouth. Reinvigorating long-dry ink was certainly an underdeveloped skill of hers, but now was the perfect opportunity for practice.

After Chattelpool’s dietary tests of course, which came before she had any word from Anchor. Glazemouth and he appeared behind the observation window shortly after the sky had gone blue, kicking one of the food carts she’d seen in the banquet hall. She’d witnessed them propelling themselves, but perhaps they could only do it in areas they were accustomed to.

Before the tasting process began they made sure to ridicule her through the glass, the barrier blocking most sound but still leaving her with their walloping guffaws. This continued until the chef Hamishand accidentally doubled over in laughter, smearing a hand print of rancid brownish butter on the glass. Eggnonce kicked him out, wiped it away, and then, finally, lifted the covers from the various dishes so she could point out what she would like to try first.

Gutter’s udders! None of them! None of them please! Nausea did battle with hunger in the deepening valley of her stomach, and she knew which would grow stronger with time, so she reluctantly pointed, careful not to hit the glass, to something square and jiggly, layered lilac and white. The other options in the row were, respectively, emitting a sinking black gas, sprouting gray crystals, and topped with a tiny rasp-tipped worm skull.

Kidd ignored the Bickyplot’s obvious giddiness and went to the small compartment where he would place food. The signal was a tap on the glass, which he was apparently allowed to do. When she opened the compartment a blast of odor attacked her nose, climbing most of the way to her brain before she managed to hack it back out.

She shook her head, frowned so low it practically brushed the not-grass, but Eggnonce wouldn’t take it back until she’d at least put it in her mouth in full view. He didn’t say anything about tasting it however, so she tried holding her nose and breath while she picked it up and set it on her outstretched tongue. As it turns out, it was the sort of thing one did not need to smell to taste. It was without comparison, and only half due to her inability to think while it was partly in her mouth.

Signing her displeasure in any detail through the glass was impossible, so she simply threw up her arms in a large X. If that was food she was Thomas Jefferson. Her captor didn’t seem to quite believe her, but eventually he went back to the cart for something else, which was cast aside in much the same fashion, and so on and so forth until her mouth felt like a cesspool… but three separate edible items had been found.

One was plain boiled meat, still with the unpleasant caul membrane, present in most animals native to Pursuitia, still clinging to it. Kidd removed it, tasted it, and managed to communicate he only had to add salt to it to make it tolerable. No, not that yellow salt! Cretin. That would burn my skin on contact. The white one, birdbrain, the white one.

Aside from that there were handfuls of limp but vibrantly green shoots, probably picked no more than a day ago, that she recognized as a variety of pond weed that grew quite tall along the banks, although it always collapsed into the water whenever they looked directly at it, perhaps sensing their intent to eat it. Their taste was just sweet and grassy enough to make it tolerable that they could only be swallowed once all the spaces between the teeth were already full of those eaten previously.

Last was a reliable staple: crumple nuts. Resembling wadded bad ideas, the flat nut was always in a random wrinkle, so finding it took a little time, but they popped out easily and had rich flavor, like raindrops that had hit every shrub in the spice garden on their way down.

Only after the Bickyplot had wheeled the cart out, leaving a candle lit in the observation room, did she realize that the sampling was supposed to count as her supper that evening, perhaps six bites in total. Dismayed, still cavernously underfed given the day’s rigorous exercise, Blueberry still managed to find a bright side, provided entirely by the candlelight. She could use it to check her journal for messages without straining her eyes, so she put her back to the glass, sank into a sit once more, and opened to the first blank page.

Private Kidd, are you alive and well? This is Fool’s Gold Floyd writing on behalf of President Hart, who has been waylaid by endless reports to the Founders.

Fool’s Gold, son of Founder William Floyd, son of the free black Cassie Travails. She didn’t know him well compared to many of the others, but there were so few of them in total that she still knew more than the Founders knew of each other. He liked dice, fried frog leg anatimals, and flirtation. Never had she heard a serious tone from him, or read a written one, but he had tamped himself down for this correspondence. How poorly had the operation gone?

To find out she had to make her mark, just enough to indicate it was her. The diary was enchanted on the first page, barring anyone not of the young from marking it, so neither end had to worry about a Bickyplot pretending to be her. Blueberry licked her fingertip repeatedly, rubbed it against an earlier page, careful to avoid any active lines of drafted magic.

She succeeded in smudging some words, but paper fibers were coming up immediately as well, due to the low quality stock she used for what was always meant to be disposable. Now that meant she only had so many responses in her before the item collapsed, and that she didn’t dare try to indicate anything other than an open ear. When her fingertip looked dark and moist enough she rolled it across the page, just below Gold’s query.

.

Waiting was difficult, but Floyd was likely puzzling out her predicament, arranging his own statements for maximum information in minimum space, but at least the dot meant everyone would know she yet lived, and that she wouldn’t have to see their faces when they learned she had failed.

It perhaps would’ve been most prudent to wait for the next response before readying another inked finger, as it wasn’t clear if Fool’s Gold would ask for more confirmation. He would likely expand the dot into the deduction that her supply of ink, or opportunity to mark, was very low, thus shouldering as much of the burden of communication as possible.

But if she didn’t get to mining away the paper fibers and flushing out the inky ore with lubricating spit and finger pickax she would have nothing to do but wait and sink further into herself. Gently she massaged the same spot over and over, to keep it moist, waiting like a coiled tiger for something to strike and stain. Finally Fool’s Gold answered her defiant survivor’s speck.

I assume you can only respond with that and like marks. I’ve informed the others you are alive; they are deliberating on whether to tell the Founders. Until then, I can fill you in on everything. If you are in no imminent danger and want what I can write, mark again. If you require immediate intervention make an elongated mark.

.

Acknowledged. The raid was a partial success; the head and heart of Wighthall were taken. We lost three of us: Rush Paca, Gale Nelson, Unmarked Rodney. Funerals are being arranged, for but one body. They fought valiantly. You are presumed dead by Founders. They have Wighthall in Franklin’s charge. Emperor lives. Honey is here with me, is overjoyed you live, thanks you for your help in battle. Will continue to send information as available. Mark only if something must change.

Something did have to change, but no mark would make it happen. Those lost had to return to the land of the living. Kidd pushed the journal away, kept it safe from her falling tears. Given her own abandonment of the battlefield, every casualty now felt like a direct consequence. Whatever blunderbuss debris they took she could have blocked with a buzzing bayonet. Any Bickyplot blow could have hit her, been shaken off, countered. She knew she was among the best soldiers in all Anchor, so how had she justified disappearing in the middle of the biggest battle the young had ever fought?

Poorly, as attested to by the fallen. She hated not a one of her fellows, even those who most stalwartly blocked her inclusion in some matters of state due to her uncertain parentage, but two of those who had given their lives were among her biggest defenders in those same matters. Rush was reliable, kind, curious. He placed himself between Rutledge and Kidd as a buffer, bravely shielding her from his ire, and she hadn’t returned the favor when he was facing down a Bickyplot.

But Unmarked was an even bigger loss, in every respect. Not only were they close friends, but there was no one in position to take up his mantle as the Science Master’s apprentice. He likely had left notes behind, in such a regrettable case, that might only appear on the pages of his diary after he passed. They would include as much information about Founder Franklin as was relevant, but that could only do so much ingratiating anyone to the man.

Without Rodney they had no skilled machinist who could construct items like the cage she had so misused and gotten destroyed. Now such a secretive side mission wasn’t even possible, making it all the more difficult for those of the Carve-Out to secure certain signatures.

All this blood could be on my hands, and none of it that foul Bickyplot color. That washed off soon as I touched it. And yet I still pity myself. I still wonder if, in my presumed death, one Founder could be observed to have suffered a greater blow at the news. Someone with no open reason putting their hand over their heart, hanging their head, and drifting toward the other parents who lost this day.

A few more posts from Fool’s Gold arrived that evening, once he’d figured out how to make the previous ones disappear, correctly assuming her space to receive was just as limited as her ink for response. She couldn’t absorb them, not with three deaths blocking the path. Before he was even done she hid the field journal away in her clothing, tried to find the most comfortable position for sleep somewhere in the confines of her stiffness. There it was, leaned on her side, head using the only stone not worn into straight canals by the endless march of the other specimens. A prisoner’s sleep. The sort that might accept not ever waking with a quiet lack of dignity.

…

As November dragged on Blueberry did her best to regiment her days, divide them into as many activities as possible so boredom would not drive her mad. Morning exercises. Morning meal. Observation by Chattelpool, and hers of of him in turn. Whenever his probing grew physical she would try and distract him with chatter, useless information about humanity, but the degree to which he listened and absorbed it all disturbed her.

After that she went to spying, ear to the wall, listening for Bickyplot activity about the manor and trying to interpret it. At least their towering ungainly bodies made plenty of noise. Evening meal. Occasionally a different Bickyplot stopped by to gloat and tease, and she often managed to wrangle them into playing games of strategy with boards, tokens, and paper. Watching them howl and fume when they lost was her greatest joy, for they couldn’t take it out on her with strap or cane without incurring the wrath of Chattelpool.

Sometimes she didn’t get that joy, for while Bickyplots were lummoxes, and a few genuinely stupid in all regards, others were not immune to strategy, and they sometimes bested her, which led to more and doubled gloating except in the case of Spywulph, who could be gracious, or at least quietly befuddled, in defeat. More often than not he was the victor.

The others that assented to games were Voluptogast, Eggnonce, Blacknib, Oolbook, and Impestle. The latter never won, but all the others could. So there is no one strategist among them. If one is destroyed another will rise to take their place. We must find a universal defeat of the Bickyplot side of the board.

After games, once the Bickyplot raging or guffawing had faded away down the passage, Blueberry could extract her journal and check the news of Pilgrim’s Anchor. Regrettably, she had no efficient way to tell Fool’s Gold that she would appreciate much greater detail, given that she needed to stretch every word into minutes of thought to fill the monotony of her nights.

He still operated under the assumption that brevity was important, and since it was his journal used to contact her, he was her primary correspondent. Like letter writing, channels of communication grew stronger and more intimate the more they were used with drafting. It was a needless risk to transfer her to anyone else, but sometimes Muster or Honey would take up the pen just to remind her she was in their thoughts.

Each day Floyd’s tone grew more familiar and relaxed, as if he forgot he wasn’t writing for himself. Bless his flagging diligence. Extra phrases snuck in, widening the gaps until a sentence could squeeze through. The bleeding familiarity of a typical letter warmed her spirit, especially after a few weeks, when he could be counted on to tell a story more than deliver a report.

That was how she learned both the short and the long of the developments regarding the severed head and accompanying heart of their captured Bickyplot. It was no longer the same head they’d left with however, as Floyd eventually elaborated upon, starting around November thirteenth.

Without Rodney we worried observation would only be possibly via drafted and rolled spyglass, cut and unfolded ear, but Franklin requested assistants for his examinations of the architect, for which he was provided the Hancock twins. They have been keeping us all informed, so all my gifts to you on the subject are actually courtesy of them, which they asked I relate.

Wighthall’s heart could have spoken through the severed head, it is believed, but it refused to regain composed thought until it was allowed to regenerate an entire sealed body. To prevent escape the Science Master has kept it in a new temporary structure, its solid walls reinforced by an active electrical field that will strike anything not properly grounded, like a skittering heart.

Further the head was placed into something of a tall cage, with only enough bars and straps to bind the limbs once formed, lock the Bickyplot body still and upright. Once secured as such it had be fed rotten materials from our fertilizer piles. Now they tell us to save every scrap of sinew, bone, and stem so that it might spoil and be fed into this unpleasant experimentation.

It took but two days for Wighthall to return to his full form and function. I hear he was not pleased at his predicament. The Hancock twins were ushered out shortly after he regained himself, so that any Founder who wished to question him could do so, but were allowed to return once the initial interview session was complete.

Unsurprisingly, he refused to sign the Second Declaration, or anything else put at his doorstep, in exchange for his freedom. Nor would he cooperate much in conversation, even deprived of anything else to occupy his time. I imagine you are resisting the same subjects in the same fashion, and we all thank you for it Blueberry. We know you’re keeping your head, and the same cannot be said for Mr. Wighthall!

Torture it started as, though it has become more torturous for us I think. To facilitate his cooperation we tried causing a great deal of pain with burns, electric shock, and amputation. The Bickyplot does not resist them, he clearly has pain, but it’s that strange pain that has so often vexed us. The hurt only ever makes them angrier, more affronted, never more desperate. I know not if any of them are capable of sorrow, which all of man falls into when the pains pile up. In the Bickyplots there is a hideous hope, a pomp that aids their circumstance, as if they believe they can never truly lose.

Nothing had any permanent effect. Clipped fingers were regrown in hours. Charred flesh in minutes. It was frustrating for those made to perform the task, but worse than that for everyone else, for each effort produced some quantity of Bickyplot blood. Disposing of it properly is a new and onerous task for us. It can’t be dumped anywhere where it might contaminate well water. Buckets must be taken an hour’s trip to the south before it’s safe.

We who do the carrying were hoping the torture deflected from Wighthall onto us would cease once the futility of it was certain, but alas, something resembling development has made it so much worse.

Franklin lopped off his head with an electrified cleaver. This was tried last, as Wighthall could not think or speak properly without it. Once returned for the second time he still denied us any information, but he did so in a slightly altered fashion. I know if it were me in the Science Master’s place I would not have caught it, my inattention to detail saving us all a good deal of trouble.

Apparently, this new head of Wighthall’s was a touch less standoffish than the previous one. Franklin deemed its tone and expressions softer. It also took to the phrase ‘if you please’, which he did not recall hearing before. No one thought much of it, but you know the Science Master; without seeking approval he went and knocked the head off again!

A third head was yet again slightly altered. ‘Tinges of melancholy’ Franklin declared. Sharper memory, more sensitive to insult, and so on… He began to catalog what he could, and from those records, which we have managed to transfer to our papers exactly as written, a degree of conclusion has been drawn.

Each head houses a slightly different personality. Life force within the heart is the true Bickyplot, so the head, and its accompanying faculties, is little more than another body part in need of repair. As we all know from our scars, those repairs are rarely perfect. It is now the prevailing thought that the hearts make deliberate alterations each time in the hopes that some new shape or decision will prevent the damage from happening again.

What this means, at least to the Science Master, and the number of Founders he needs to support his further demolitions of Wighthall, is that we could eventually find a personality that suits our needs, one more like Spywulph, or one much more desperate to be free. Perhaps that version of Cadavawing will sign the Second Declaration.

On that front there has been no luck so far, beyond the more loose-lipped heads letting slip some minor detail of Bickyplot life that is novel but ultimately of little interest. Of greater concern to us, the beings of Pilgrim’s Anchor who actually know how to use our minds, is the castoff heads themselves, which each generate nearly two buckets of Bickyplot blood.

Heating the blade white hot in order to seal the wound as it forms does not solve the problem, as the blood in the flesh still leaks out once spoilage begins. It is not attempted anymore, and the heads are now knocked off with a ceiling-mounted hammer that throws the object straight into the wall, making a terrible sound we do not need spies to hear, and now we hear it all the time instead of the Liberty Bell, which has its tongue held so we do not permanently damage our captive.

A log is kept, of each head’s appearance and the record of its suitability interview. I’m told by one of the artists who draws Wighthall’s face over and over again, and who now punctuates every sentence with complaints about cramping fingers, that we are already two hundred and forty heads into this venture. It won’t be long before this lone Bickyplot outnumbers the rest of Anchor.

Though I am not permitted in the area, the Founders cannot hide what now spills out like a mound of pumpkins, and it is clear to us that a pattern is developing. Changes to Wighthall’s personality seem scattershot, he is weeping one moment and drooling the next, but the form of his head has been steadily shifting away from its likeness to Bickering Hall.

More concerning is its shift toward Independence Hall. His window-eyes move the fastest between iterations, and have already taken up identical positions to their model. The door-mouth has changed shape completely. A nodule of metallic bone is forming atop him, its connection loose, and before long it will be a functioning miniature of our Liberty Bell.

Unlikely though it is that he might be able to reproduce the magic of its drafted inscription, we still find its formation troubling. Should he be returned to his ilk we would be providing them with an accurate model of Independence Hall, which houses our greatest weapon against them.

Muster has suggested it is merely Wighthall’s body adjusting to its new environment, a sort of camouflage, and noted that without their powers of regeneration we cannot adapt as easily to all the poison now cluttering our paths.

Some of the Founders have seen this as well, and have torn one of the Science Master’s recommendations from his head-log and turned it into a more official notice: ‘It is recommended that an expeditionary force bear the residue of my experiments far from here, where they can be disposed of and pose little threat to our soil and groundwater.’

Naturally this refuse removal falls to us, and the assigned force will be leaving shortly. President Muster has inserted himself against objections on all sides, he is too important to send out of town on such a trivial mission is the thinking, but I imagine he is simply in need of a rest. I would take the company of several hundred severed heads over an equal number chattering in my ear all day.

We’ve consulted the maps and decided that the bog to the southwest, some call it Edward’s Bog now after the incident where Rutledge planted his boot deep in it and turned the whole party around, never to explore it further until now, is our best option for ridding ourselves of the Wighthall heads.

Supposedly like the earthly bogs you and I have never known, it will be a poor environment for complex forms of life and encourage stagnation. Nothing will suffer the effects of Bickyplot blood there, and we are to keep tossing the heads into every pool we cross until they no longer fully sink.

Joining the president are a surprising number, but not so surprising when you consider the sheer volume of the load we’re transporting; remember that each Bickyplot head is bigger than the most stately dollhouse. He is joined by Bonfire, Crow Eyes, Honey, and six more who have between them the skills of a wainwright in such case as the wagon carrying the cargo should break down.

Pulling it will be two tin horses: Smorgasguard and Harlequill. Typically their use would mean Rutledge would join us and supervise, but he is disinclined to put even a second boot in that bog again, or an unfeeling tin hoof for that matter. I’m sure he also considers it beneath himself to oversee such a task.

We both know that if he found himself unconscious and slung over the Wighthall pile he would wind up sunk in his own swamp, for who can tell the difference between one piece of garbage and another?

Dedication to the White Woman of Edward’s Bog

Nothing about the journey felt particularly presidential to Muster Hart, despite the ceremonial presence of two tin horses. Smorgasguard was the largest of them all, with armored shoulders that granted the posture of a dog bred for fighting, and beside it was the painted Harlequill, a more slender construct usually reserved for the Founders’ preferred ladies.

It wasn’t the mound of Wighthall heads refusing to rot in the reinforced wagon the pair of horses pulled that left Muster so embarrassed, but the way in which his personal affairs had childishly segregated their marching formation.

The young of Anchor were skilled in many fields, they could make and break a camp in the same hour with time for a campfire meal in the middle, but there were very few adults that could show them the way in matters of adolescent emotion. Their Founder fathers saw them as soldiers, and soldiers only had time for romance after they’d returned from war, and if they were lucky enough to not return at all they would never have to worry their dizzy little heads over such things.

So when what should have been the first couple suffered a rift there were no safeguards in place to keep it from spilling into everything else and leaving stains. Secrets were kept perfectly at the border checkpoint between young and Founder, but not at all between themselves, every journal overflowing with gossip and conversations that wandered to other more inflammatory topics before making it back to the scribe that first reported the affair.

Everyone knew that Muster and Bonfire were having a spat, and as soon as they knew it they also knew they had their own perspective on the matter, one that directed their footsteps subtly from the outset of their poison-dumping expedition. They’d been marching for a day and a half now, so the results of this biased drifting were no longer subtle.

Obviously Muster was correct in his actions, so thought most of the boys who now marched beside him on the Smorgasguard side of the wagon. He could not jeopardize his trust with the Founders, for that would undermine years of effort and potentially close the only avenue of attaching the Carve-Out to the Second Declaration, on which all of their fates rode.

Yet simultaneously Bonfire Paine was the one wronged, as was thought by most of the girls who stood by her on the Harlequill side. Ultimately their goal was to live their lives, which the Founders opposed entirely in the very premise of their declaration. Love was one of the only realms where the young could voice their objections with abandon, as it would always be passed off as childish indiscretion and fleeting fevers of infatuation.

If a dangerous beast had suddenly emerged from the underbrush and attacked they all would’ve been quite relieved, for slashing claws would rip away curtains of pretense, allowing them all the return to the basic facts of their existence: they were brave and they would defend each other to the death.

Pursuitia’s wildlife was never so aggressive as that, its most dangerous offering was a frightened opera worm, so the beast would have to be a ‘hunting dog’ set on their scent out of Bickering Hall; the Bickyplots doing them such a favor could only be counted on at the least opportune time.

Thus left stewing in silence, the force’s collective mood soured with every hour. Muster couldn’t keep his mind off it, not entirely, as he could feel Bonfire’s blazing stare from across the backs of the two tin horses. She might’ve melted them down with her anger if he met her gaze and offered anything less than distress in his expression, so instead he kept his eyes ahead, focused on their destination.

The tiniest relief came when he noticed their surroundings beginning to change. The typical Pursuitian forest, trees widely and evenly spaced, started giving way to a more decayed environment. Creamy leaf-pages curled on the branch. A gray mist like a tide of dust pooled about their feet, let them slide through with little disturbance. Everything grew brittle, and the normal quiet filled with crackles and snaps.

Silken worm webs thickened the canopy, trapped the light for nocturnal beasts to lunch on. As the vegetation yellowed, grayed, and went a nauseous green, the Anchorites suffered a congealing odor like a vinegar belch, paired sickeningly with wet black wood. They had smelled the bog, but not yet reached it, for their feet weren’t sinking into the ground.

None would have to, if they were cautious, for Edward Rutledge II, having taken point on the Smorgasguard side, told everyone to halt. He’d spotted a depression, small but deep, in the carpet of fluffy fronds. Sent in his father’s stead, young Edward easily recognized the size of his elder’s boot, and the distinguishing mark of a nail head embedded in the sole.

“I think this is my father’s print,” he told them all with a laugh, the first in many hours.

“It is,” Crow Eyes said after examining it. “I was here when we found the bog… but it is so perfectly preserved. That was months ago. Not a single living thing or storm has disturbed it? There must be something wrong with this place.”

“There is, it’s a bog,” one of the boys dismissed. “And now we leave our wrong cargo here where it belongs.”

“Let’s get the wagon turned around,” Muster ordered in agreement. There was a gate on the back; once opened the entire pile of heads would come tumbling out. The junior president hoisted himself up onto Smorgasguard’s saddle and took the reins, but before he could pull Bonfire had mounted Harlequill.

“There’s a dry path there that goes deeper,” she said, pointing ahead. In the process she leaned toward him and he felt her air. Its recent absence overwhelmed him. “If we dump them here they’ll just sit here like that boot print. We want them sunk.”

“It looks safe,” he croaked, incapable of doing anything but what she wanted of him in that moment. Muster clicked his tongue and cracked the reins so the tin horses would continue on. Being animals of metal and drafting rather than flesh and fears, they would trot forward until completely submerged with no complaint at all. “Everyone follow behind the wagon; we don’t want to lose any of you.”

Two by two they lined up behind, suddenly uncomfortably close with the person they’d been sighing at the most across the expedition. A few muskets had to be slung to the opposite shoulder so the bayonets wouldn’t cross with the loudest sound for miles.

Honey was at the back; she fished out a large roll of something pale from her cloak. A soft encouraging whistle made the anatimal of shed snake skin lift its end like a dog’s snout. Gently the girl rolled it forward with the ball of her thumb. Light as air, the anatimal held itself aloft as it grew longer and longer: a floating trail of breadcrumbs to guide them back.

“Does that one have a name?” the boy paired with her asked.

“No, because it’s not just one. You can press the snake skins together and use hot wax to seal them. Then they act as one, but they were only shed by living things, so they don’t do much living themselves. Once you give them an order they follow it perfectly, unlike some disrespectful little blighters I know.”

“You don’t mean us?” the boy asked, gesturing to the rest of his broad-shouldered Smorgasguard line.

“What? No I meant sku-“

“Because it’s not right that someone would give their betrothed such an order as that. If he’d been obedient it could’ve put all of us in great danger.”

“This is why I prefer the company of anatimals,” she sniped with narrowed eye, “they’re all ears when you need them to be.” She shivered intentionally, and out of her cloak’s folds came perked rabbit, fox, and cougar ears. He was successfully silenced, but they’d been overheard by the row ahead, a whispered argument catching there as well.

Anger choked its way up their procession pair by pair until it reached those just behind the cart: Rutledge II and Crow Eyes. Largely by proximity each had overheard the most from Muster and Bonfire along the way, and so were the most poisoned against each other, even more than the unhappy couple themselves who at least had an initial love tempering matters. Not so with irritable Edward.

“I don’t think Miss Paine understands that everything must be set aside, especially our hearts’ desires, until after the Carve-Out has freed us. Once it has some quarter of some world will be ours… and in it such a concentration of joy and fulfillment that it will quickly outweigh the sorrows of now.”

“Oh?” Crow Eyes had mastered reservation as argument.

“Don’t you think so? We can’t even have what we want now. Try and take it and see what our forebears do. They cast shadows over us, and nothing is free of that shadow.”

“Most people think themselves stronger than shadows.”

“I am!”

“Edward, you’ve never shown that.”

“Never!? I was there at Bickering Hall, same as you. Xylofont cut me, right here.” He peeled back a sleeve and showed a pink mark that still had some chance of becoming a scar. “I went against that dog of theirs, I’ve broken a shackleram, and three of us fought off Lady Flaywood with nothing but baskets when we caught each other foraging for mushrooms.”

“I mean the strength to go after what you want, not survive.”

“What is it you think I want?”

“She’s locked up in Bickering Hall.” The younger Rutledge whipped his head to see if the other pairs were listening, but they had their own variations of Muster’s and Bonfire’s impasse already well underway.

“Blueberry?” He thought about denying any affection for her, but he’d been trying for years, and Crow Eyes had seen through that, so it was pointless. “The last thing she needs now is for me to be a burden on her mind.”

“Mind? Why not heart?” Edward choked on her words; how was she this skilled with so few of them in her arsenal?

“My father would never allow-“

“And thus you do not fight. You and Muster lack the same strength. You’re scared.”

“I’m scared for Blueberry, especially now. She’s trapped all alone with those twelve devils.”

“Fool’s Gold showed you her dots,” Crow Eyes reminded. “You must love her if you thought you could read her well-being from a few smudges. I saw them too, and I would presume nothing more than Private Kidd doing what she does best.” Rutledge kicked a tuft of grass.

“I want to know who her parents are. I’ve been watching and none of the adults are acting as if their child is missing. Whoever they are they have no decency. What if… because she isn’t claimed, the Carve-Out won’t recognize her? She could be separated from us, left alone here or worse.”

“If she was claimed there would be two people in agony back in Anchor. Is that better? Kidd acts with no legacy; she deserves every new world she comes across. Not many can say that.”

“I’ll see to it that my legacy outw- Oohf!” Edward’s face smacked into the back of the wagon as it came to a halt, the others behind him heeding his utterance and avoiding a similar fate. The horses’ hooves had begun to sink, and they were now surrounded by four semi-distinct pools of muck dusted with dry windborne algae and brown papery bark curls.

“This is as far as we go,” President Hart informed them, dismounting along with Bonfire so they could direct the horses to turn and back the cart over to the muck’s edge. One of the girls tested the pool with her musket, found it deeper than her bayonet, and refused to dirty the barrel by dipping any further. Wighthall could do the rest of the sounding, and hopefully not resurface to share the results with them.

Two sets of hands attacked the latches and threw open the back; heads immediately tumbled out and splashed on the pond’s skin like ingots into porridge. When the lower portion of the mound refused to budge Rutledge and Crow Eyes tossed themselves in, stomped around the things, and worked together to dislodge them with their bayonets and send them to join the rest. All the while the others watched, slightly disgusted at the snapping turtle-sized bubbles that emerged around the perimeter of the dumped heads and popped with the same animal’s aggression.

“Gases getting pushed up, now that the heads are taking their place,” Bonfire observed, holding her nose. Muster snorted. “What’s so funny?”

“You sound silly like that,” he said, shaking his head to dispel the inappropriate mirth, but not soon enough. Bonfire reached over and pinched his nose shut, hard enough that he couldn’t escape without pulling her into the edge of the pond.

“Now you speak,” she ordered, smile crawling about the corners of her mouth. He trembled pathetically, but she kept hold. “Speech!”

“This is no way to treat the president,” he honked quietly. When another laugh caught in the pressure of his nose he made a terrible sound, enough to send them both into giggles. All the while open Wighthall mouths filled instead with bog sludge, the pile sinking at a steady pace. Yet the bubbles had grown more aggressive, spirited under all the foliage and turned the surface roiling.

The young took a few steps back, some even drawing their muskets, but there was nothing to shoot. The gases rising were even more foul than the bog’s stagnant air, like curdled milk fermenting inside the shells of mud crabs. Held noses became quite the trend. This unease lasted for several minutes, until finally the bubbles became scattered. Something else now rose in their place.

“What is that?” Honey asked with a scowl and the funniest pinched-nose voice of all of them, yet unable to get a laugh from her cohorts. A pocket full of unsettled cat noses puckered against her hip as she stretched her arm, using her bayonet to point at a tilting object taking its first breath in many years. They spied a ring of corroded metal and dark green wood barely constrained by it.

“It’s a barrel,” Crow Eyes said from her higher vantage, still stood on the edge of the now empty cart. “As is that.” Another one popped up on the opposite side of the Wighthall heads. “And that.” Three became five, nine, thirteen. Not limited to the single pond in which they’d dumped the heads, soon they were surrounded on all sides by a multitude of the bobbing objects, each big enough to hold a crouched man.

“But no one has been this far out,” Rutledge blurted, fingers drumming the stock of his weapon, displeased by the lack of electric charge. Some good lightning could dry whatever they feared right out of the bog, turn it into a much politer desert.

“Has to be the Bickyplots then,” a girl said, somehow a question despite the phrasing.

“No, they don’t make barrels like that,” Crow Eyes contradicted. “Those are man made.”

“Then the Founders lied to us,” Bonfire said, “but why would they send us out here then?”

“Let’s find out,” the president declared, taking his own weapon over to the nearest barrel and reaching to hook it rather than delegating the task. It bobbed and dodged defiantly, but only twice, as the blade was sharp enough and the decaying wood weak enough for one good slice to lodge it in place. Hart backed up, pulling the item ashore, finding it quite heavy once it wasn’t buoyed by the sludge that now fell off it in overlapping ribbons. Two of the others moved to stabilize it. “Wait. Use these.”

Muster dug a pair of riding gloves out of his coat and tossed them over, as did Bonfire, allowing the others to right the barrel without touching it. They brushed, picked, peeled at the exterior, but there was nothing to reveal. If there had been a branded emblem the decay had destroyed it long ago. No maker’s mark on the metal. Judging by its age the maker was Father Time, the rust his signature.

“Hold it steady,” Muster ordered, “I’m going to open it.” All those not ordered to keep their hands on it backed away, save Bonfire who came nearer. One side of his bayonet was serrated, so Muster hoisted his musket aloft and thrust down, puncturing with ease. Then he sawed. He stopped only once, reorienting himself to deal with the stench, which caused most of his soldiers to back up even more, with no dry land left beyond.

“It’s like bad cheese,” Bonfire retched, “and someone burning through a candle with a wick of goat hair!” Once the circle was complete Muster lifted with the edge of the blade, threw it into the pond. Four heads peered over the edge. All had wizened and now refused to breathe through their noses, but their eyes started to water regardless.

Maggots thin as paper crawled across an equally yellow-white surface, waxy and caked. Hart took out a smaller knife and dug in, finding resistance somewhere between cold butter and rain-soaked firewood.

“Butter or cheese,” Crow Eyes guessed aloud without approaching. “Bogs can preserve. Whoever they were they sealed this as food and sunk it on purpose. Either they forgot to come back for it… or they couldn’t.”

“Does anybody want a taste?” Bonfire asked. There were no takers.

“But who were these people?” Muster asked in frustration. He searched for answers deeper in the bog butter, stabbing and peeling repeatedly to see if anything changed or if the substance was uniform throughout. It wasn’t for very long. He struck something black, a chill passing through his knife, his arm, the rest of him, all from the change in resistance.

Taking his riding gloves back, Hart returned to work, scooping and chipping with his hands, revealing a rounded shape, somewhat sunken, of soft black. Suddenly he had a sense of it, knew it took up most of the barrel and that the butter was merely the medium in which it had been suspended. He stood. Two steps back. A third.

“Pry off the front,” he instructed the others around it, his greasy hands held up and far from his body. Don’t be what I think you are. I do not need a helping of this butter on my plate. Two bayonets dove between the slats on opposite sides; their owners pushed for leverage. The barrel squealed in protest. “Give it your all!” His soldiers stopped hesitating and pushed like their weapons were oars fighting the current of Styx.

Wood exploded at Muster, but he didn’t flinch, allowing it to bounce off harmlessly. The object’s overall shape remained unchanged, as the solidified butter didn’t even creep down. Hart’s greasy fingers swiveled and pointed at his feet, the bayonets next cutting into the middle of the butter’s top on either side, sinking only under pressure, dull knives through cold dense cake.

Once they hit bottom they pushed again, splitting the front half of the butter away. It finally fell and revealed the object stored within, its leathery black surface, its crumpled form, its bony protrusions, its withered skeletal limbs, its closed eyes and sealed lips.

“By the bell,” Rutledge said through the lump of sick rising in his throat, “it’s a man!”

“A dead man,” Crow Eyes elaborated flatly while others looked away, but they couldn’t wander far, not if they wanted to avoid sinking into his humble home.

“No, it must be something else,” Muster said, shaking his head, tainted hands still held far from his face and body. “Something that just looks like a man. Another visitor from a world of his own. Look at the skin; it’s black like coal.”

“He is mummified,” Bonfire said. She approached and crouched down, going eye to closed eye with the fellow. “Preserved like the butter. Muster, this is a human, just like us, but much older.”

“So we weren’t the first in Pursuitia,” Honey said, worrying the floating snakeskin in her hands.

“Somebody else declared something they didn’t mean to,” Rutledge guessed, standing at the exact center of the cart. “They never made it back to Earth.”

“We don’t know anything about them,” President Muster said to calm his people. There was nothing around to wipe his hands on but the grass, so he used that.

“Except that they died,” Bonfire corrected. She tossed a pebble, which bounced off one floating barrel and hit a second before sinking in the mire. “I’d wager each one contains a body. There’s a whole village here. So who pushed them in… and where are they now?”

“We’ve accidentally defiled a graveyard,” Hart groaned. “Poisoned it in fact. There is no getting all those heads back out. That’s enough folly for one day; about face everyone!” Struck with a flash of anger, Hart kicked the edge of the barrel’s intact wood, the whole thing falling back in the muck and sailing away like a funerary raft.

Another bubble preempted their obedience, the largest of all, and the angriest too. Escaping gases had ceased minutes ago, so it seemed as if Hart’s kick had triggered it, that or individual hairs coming off them and landing on the ponds, displacing just enough fluid to upset one last sunken mass.

White this time instead of black. It rose just past Wighthall’s rough pyramid of heads, vertically, at a steady pace, very unlike the listless bobbing barrels. It was another person, but not one that had ever lived by their measure. She was made of smoothest alabaster, and three quarters as tall as a Bickyplot, which they could only know as she defied every fluid dynamic they knew. This flawless statue rose until her toes were exposed, and then rose some more, until they saw the square pedestal upon which she stood.

“Muster? Weapons?” Bonfire urged.

“Take aim,” her president almost whispered. Nine muskets went up, all but his own, but the statue felt no fear as dirty water and detritus sloughed off it, leaving not a trace, not one imperfection anywhere on her.

“It’s just a statue,” Rutledge muttered, “Just a statue, that’s all. Strange place to erect one, but everyone has strange ways in Evidentia… Queer place…”

“Crow Eyes, get the horses turned back,” Hart ordered; she silently obeyed. The false animals couldn’t be skittish, so he paid them no mind as they trotted behind, instead locking his eyes on the blank orbs under the statue’s determined lids. The likeness was of a young woman, athletic rather than dainty, carved collarbones like the jaw of a baleen whale. Whoever the sculptor was, they had seamlessly blended her simple sheer dress into her bare arms, ankles, feet.

“She’s lovely, if a touch pale,” Bonfire commented, and it was true. Her full lips belonged there, barely pressed onto a strong chin. Tall pert ears, like thorny leaf-hoppers lying flat against trees, barely stuck out from a heavy but brushed head of hair.

“President, sir,” Honey said; she had lifted a hinge on her brass ring. It was the compound lens of some insect anatimal, which served to magnify, if obnoxiously quintuple, her vision when she peered through it. “There’s an inscription on the plinth; I can’t make it out from here.”

Before he could react Bonfire tossed her weapon to him. She leaned back and ran forward, taking a flying leap onto the Wighthall mound. A particularly ugly head was knocked loose, into the sludge, but she managed to rise and keep her balance. Rather than shout at her Muster tossed both of their weapons to a private who definitely would have shouted at them if she’d had the authority.

His leap was just as good as hers, and together they crossed the summit and slid down the far side, just keeping their boots dry. Now they were close enough to read the text:

Here Stands

Virginia Dare

Our savior and our future on the white trail to

CROATOAN

1610

“1610,” Bonfire said in disbelief. Almost two hundred years ago.”

“Only if years are as long in Pursuitia as they are on Earth.”

“Is she-“

“The first white child born to English colonists in the new world, yes. I’ve seen her name in several books. She was part of the lost colony of Roanoke. Nobody knew their fate.”

“Now we do. They tried to declare something, on paper, something they had no right to, and such brazenness sent them here. Then they died and threw themselves in a bog that we haven’t even named after them.”

“Bonfire… how is this floating? Some work of drafting is still at play… sunken stone tablets perhaps. We must report this to-“

“It’s moving! It’s moving!” Honey shouted across the pond. Muster and Bonfire lifted their heads, only to strike them on stone that wasn’t there before. Miss Virginia Dare now loomed over them, hand descending to grab. Behind them the head mound was too steep, leaving nowhere to run. Bonfire chose instead to leap out into the mire, landing on one of the barrels and riding it toward the shore.

Muster was left no options at all as stone hands wrapped around his waist and lifted him into the air. Blank eyes narrowed on his face, an adult deciding if an infant needed to be sacrificed or not. Before the construct could make up its mind, a musket ball struck it square on the cheek, distracting it.

Smoke issued from Bonfire’s barrel, the force of the blast speeding her other barrel slightly, but she wasn’t on solid ground yet. Dare transferred Hart to one hand, holding him by the scruff of his clothes like a cat, and raised the other into the air as a beckoning claw.

Black withered arms burst out of the top of Bonfire’s raft, flailed and grabbed at her ankles. She could hardly kick and still keep her balance. A dark maw gnawed its way up, through fibrous butter, swallowed it down to make room for her living flesh. The struggle stalled her in the midst of the mire.

None of her comrades would allow her to sink, and it was Honey who had the means to prove it. The girl slung her weapon away and instead used the snakeskin anatimal, its length so impressive that her rapid unspooling did little to disrupt the breadcrumb trail. Once she’d made it into an impromptu lasso she swung it over her head and tossed it to Bonfire, who grabbed hold and was swiftly pulled to dry land.

The grabby barrel came with, its contents breaking out as it was dragged across the ground. Multiple musket balls riddled it with worming white smoke, utterly failing to dissuade the undead creature. Their counteroffensive was such a debacle that the enemy multiplied with every shot.

The other barrels, still sealed and animated by unknown forces, tilted in their direction and moved as if by oars. Bodies that had never earned the vessels started emerging on all sides, emptied eye sockets trailing swamp weeds and gilled worms that fell flopping like eels.

“What do you want!?” Muster asked the statue holding him aloft over the dilapidated village of Wighthall. The statue offered nothing but hands. She probed the folds of his coat, ripped out a journal and discarded it, tore off his buttons, spied his navel and stared through it as if it was a passage underneath a stone bridge.

Another round struck her head, didn’t even chip. Either she was flawless or she was nothing. It did succeed in distracting her enough for the probing hand to pull back slightly. Hart seized the moment, reaching behind his back and grabbing the butt of his musket. By jerking it back and forth the serrated bayonet cut away at the scruff of his coat. Gravity tore the rest and he dropped onto the mound.

After that he didn’t look back. She’s indestructible, and she’s coming, that’s all I need to know. Every effort was made to kick the heads up behind him, like a digging dog, which prevented Dare’s labored lunge from grabbing him once more. His mind lagged behind his body, didn’t take in his circumstances until he was safely on ground that was only solid compared to its immediate surroundings.

Chaos up from the depths. Barrels had lined up on multiple fronts, bodies bursting out as slow cannon fire. Some of the dead were on their feet now, dragged by invisible puppeteer strings more than walking. Damned arms outstretched, many still capped by walls of pale butter. The creatures had only their graves, and so the intent of their assault was clearly to recreate the silent peace they’d been resting in, which required every breathing mouth and lung to fill with the grain of the bog and learn the sensations and pressures of its still bed.

Dare’s shins plowed straight through Wighthall’s heads, tossing them, knocking over some of Hart’s soldiers. The living monument’s pedestal had split in two on a perfect line, become awkwardly shaped boots. Each should have been as heavy as a tin horse’s hindquarters, yet she strolled across the surface of the muck as if it was stone and she was flesh.

“They’re invulnerable!” someone shouted after driving a knife into a corpse’s wallet of a gut, which spilled nothing but tight coils of organ leather and didn’t slow its approach. Not only that, some of Dare’s army was still softly armored inside concretions of hardened cheese, a darker color than the butter. These fermented boulders rolled as if they could see, controlled by a tumbling body within, attempting to knock them over or into the sucking swamp.

“Everyone on the cart, now!” President Hart ordered, finding the courage to step forward, as Dare closed in, and slash wide at several bog mummies in a line, delaying them a mere second. Few in any world had ever obeyed an order so quickly though, and the young were all piled in before he could jump up and be pulled into his own spot in the back.

Bonfire had mounted Harlequill; she urged the tin horse to its full gallop as soon as she glanced over her shoulder and saw he was aboard. One of her hands crossed the gap and touched Smorgasguard’s bulging shoulder, which made the order its as well. Both false beasts tore up the ground, practically dug the graves the Croatoan wretches never earned as the distance between the humans and their vengeful bifurcated past grew.

At her size, Dare was the last thing to disappear behind them. Never did her blank eyes stray from Muster’s heart. Nearly ten minutes had passed on the path before anyone dared speak, and it was of course their leader, who glanced at the floor of the wagon when the others looked to him.

“We’re headless, friends; that’s a mission accomplished.”

(continued in the finale)