(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour)

Flash the Cock

Vesperos only missed the flash because he had eyelids, which was curious because the man was a bumblebee. Svelte for a bumblebee, upright for a bumblebee, rather four-legged for a bumblebee, far too intelligent to be a true bumblebee, and also far too eyelidded. Aside from these many anatomical anomalies he could also be identified by the pinkish shimmer in his thick collar-mane of thatched bee fur, also found in his otherwise black eyes and the transparent panels of his delicate wings.

His stinger bore pink fletching that shaped it like a heart, but he tried to draw attention away from it with his dress, including long wide coattails perpetually crimped at the end. Something about him tended to draw people in, and the people of Minimil were no exception, so he kept himself sequestered in the hive neighborhood of Dauber’s Comb, accreted and situated on the barn’s ceiling in the crook of a beam: the only living complex higher than Loftplace and its sprawling sand castles that drowned half the old buildings.

The Comb and its hexagonal houses were not built of wax, for it was far too near the flaming hearth-throne upon which Hestia often sat. Instead it was constructed from wood and glass, each of its faces covered by a hanging curtain when its resident so decided, making it a patchy crystal pine cone when viewed from far below.

Vesperos had been standing on the balcony of his cell, as the homes of the enchanted or possessed bees and wasps that lived in the comb were called, when the flash of the cock occurred. He was staring down into the city’s wondrous diaspora, the air barely disturbed by all their diverse tosses, turns, and snores, perfectly situated to witness the event, but just happening to blink his ill-fitting eyelids at the exact moment it occurred. And it being a flash and all, there was no evidence of it by the time he took the city in again.

This habit of Minimil-watching took up a good deal of his time, as he considered it nearly the whole of his social life. Long had the bee-fellow preferred either distant observation or intimate encounters, and nothing in between, especially the kind of casual hobnobbing that had people asking after sick relatives and slightly-anomalous weather. All his relatives were sick, and if he was to become upset he might be the source of some of that strange weather. Explaining it all was never a joy.

Other winged stings of the comb were understanding, as they were all in the same hive but under no queen like the myrmidons, having come to intelligent life by many different means. Magical beings had an irritating preoccupation with flowers, so blooms often held spells and curses, meaning that if they were not stored properly under bell jars any insect might casually come along to pollinate and get themselves blessed or cursed with a frightening new understanding of the world around them.

That was not Vesperos, obvious from his anatomy that couldn’t pass for a bee after a second glance, but they did not pry. Not their beeswax, as the tiresome would say. So his neighbors gave him space to be friendly, causing him to always be alone when watching the city, leaning over his railing and sipping at mead or an old family recipe for ambrosia.

And so he was the morning after the flash, just hours on, dawn streaming through the barn’s window and catching the flagpoles and weather veins, including a prophetic cockerel, poking out atop the miniature trees of Bonsai Park, situated on the sill.

He sipped his mead, warmed the way he liked it, and stood naked as the day he’d first taken such a reduced form. The light of morning felt good on his fur, helped him adjust to it all the more. Accepting that he might never change again, back to something larger, only cemented his situation further, a quiet surrender that would anger many of his peers, but his aunt had seen to it that none of the others were there to bother him.

A lovely, relaxed, lengthy blink. Positively excessive. Too sweet the scenic oblivion, unhealthy to savor it so… Vesperos opened his eyes reluctantly and found he’d missed another crucial event in allowing himself the old comfort of blinking. Now his entire view of the city below was obscured, blocked by a statue of marble so pale and glossy that it looked like moonlight pressed into ingots.

This statue was of a woman, one so tall that her scalp barely missed the beam that held up Dauber’s Comb, was shocking not just in its sudden presence, staring him down when he wanted nothing more than to be invisibly high, but its familiarity. He knew her powerful form, her luxurious hair down to her waist, though it was here fanned over arms about to grapple with an absent monster, and the majesty of her feminine face which was a pastoral countryside unto itself.

She was his Aunt Hestia, Greek goddess of the hearth originally, returned to significant power by her coup in Minimil, the only hearth that also counted as a state in the thriving age of Little Wars. It was her that had invited him to come and live in Minimil after his descent to a smaller form, thus providing him much needed safety in a world growing more possessive of whatever could fit in their pockets and lockets.

As far as he was aware she was the only god of their pantheon to regain any degree of strength in this modern age of industry that exchanged prayer for the consistency of tinned rations. Technically she was his great aunt, her brothers and sisters once stronger than she ever was, Zeus and Poseidon among them, but all of them gone now, having walked into other worlds that looked like greener pastures or having shrunken out of perception as they tried to keep a foothold in the soil-souls of earthly peoples.

“Dear aunt, why have you raised a statue of yourself?” Vesperos asked, slack-mandibled, spilling his steamy mead across the balcony only for it to drip down and make others wonder who ordered such humid and sticky rain. There was no answer. It was not like her at all, for while, as a goddess, she accepted a good deal of worship and altars in her image, she was only the craftsman of the power she wielded, never her own promoter. To beg for worship or use strength to reproduce a mere image of the self were ways to diminish even more swiftly.

He hadn’t used them in days, but out came his wings, which buzzed and ferried him to her marble shoulder where he could look down the bronze striations across her back all the way to the city floor. That statue stood on tiptoe, carefully avoiding several homes, having only damaged the roads when the feet found their weight and sank in.

Much more concerning was that she was not alone. All of Minimil had, in the blink of his eye, become a statuary. Hestia stood at the window, hands on the edge of the sill, looking out, blocking most of the light. Hestia lounged beside the horse trough that had been converted into the Hotel Trogolo, staring down one of its chimneys.

A smaller Hestia clung to the lamp that picked up the sun’s slack like an insistent moth, marble eyes staring directly into the light the way only gods could. Hestias of rock, anywhere from the height of an average Minimil, but a few inches, to as tall as the barn were everywhere, watching everything, careful not to intersect with any structures but nonetheless frustrating the flights of hundreds of fairies and winged myrmidons as they attempted their morning commutes.

“Hestia?” Vesperos asked again, but in a voice so deep mortals could not hear. Not a tone he would use lightly, she would know it as an important call, but there was no answer. To him that meant she could not answer, was somehow incapacitated, a goddess in her own lands. What could do such a thing? And was what stood before him his great aunt?

Yes and no, he reasoned darkly, coming to a partial understanding quicker than most, for he recalled the miracles that could create the garden of busy rock now cluttering Minimil. A god, replete with their powers, did not have to be corporeal, and could be in multiple places at once. Before the flight of the bumblebee he had used such an ability constantly, for love existed all over the world, and needed encouragement and direction in even more places than that. Always did the arrows of Eros fly in different directions at once, despite there being only one bow.

Hestia had been petrified, he reasoned, running his bee claw across the side of her neck, feeling no signs of life. Once there had been the gorgons, who were known to cause this just by locking eyes with their victim, but they were not the only creatures. One of them must have caught his aunt by surprise, found her gaze, and locked her in this deathly stone coffin. More a mausoleum, he noted, because also petrified was every other instance of her in her country, all of the normally invisible and intangible aspects of her walking among her citizens and spying on possible insurgents.

“I have forgotten,” Vesperos whispered, bewilderment giving way to iron weights of fear and uncertainty. “You have sheltered me so well I have forgotten that you have countless enemies, inside and out, and you must fend them off endlessly. A god can never rest. To hold power is to forever struggle, never be at peace. Yet you stoically took the brunt so that I might live here sleepily until the end of my days.”

Vesperos once again fumbled the utility of his insect’s blink. His eyes should have been closed, for there was a terrible noise and a cloud of dust that erupted far below. Already the city was coming to a clamor, its citizens stepping out to find their goddess memorializing herself. But whatever brought the dust was all the louder, and out of the cloud came something slithering, then running, then flapping leathery wings experimentally, blowing away some of the citizenry like dust bunnies.

Petrification was often associated with serpents, and the serpent-like, which was the best way to describe the tail Vesperos saw swimming in and out of its own billowing smoke trail. Finally his wisdom returned to him and he averted his eyes. If the creature’s eyes had met his he likely would’ve suffered Hestia’s fate, tumbling off her shoulder and perhaps crushing an unfortunate far below, or shattering into pieces.

A ruler always has those who wish to depose them, and among those at least one is justified, for power could never be wielded perfectly and without oppression. But Vesperos knew his aunt as kind, especially among the Olympians, in the light of her having to be born twice, the second time escaping the body of a father who had consumed her just to maintain his grip on the universe.

Familial duty kicked him in the back of the spirit, launching him off her shoulder and back to his balcony, then into his cell which he darkened by dropping the curtain and darkened further by closing the anatomically incorrect shields he had installed to keep the world from overwhelming him.

For a time he shut out the chaotic noise far below, and present even there in the comb as other residents ran around trying to gather information. Vesperos called up his old self, the stronger one, the one who had built a real, complex, tenuous life, and sought his wisdom. Something should be done, the bumble-barely told himself, recoiling from the following question, which asked whether or not he had to be the one to act.

Images of the smaller Hestia statues walked backward in his thoughts, shrinking, fading, like echoes, like Echo. So many could no longer be saved, but perhaps his aunt could. Petrification could be lifted by the creature that inflicted it, if they were intelligent enough to will it so. Or it might be lifted by the creature’s death.

Slow down, he warned himself. Think it through. Would Hestia be destroyed imminently, her statues broken to prevent her ever returning? The bee guessed not. The only reason to neutralize his aunt was to take her position as ruler of Minimil, among the most powerful armies of Little Wars, and thus of the world.

In order to do so they had to make sure her throne remained stable, and it was entirely possible for a god to ensure ruination in the event of their own demise. His aunt likely had a contingency where the city itself would collapse in some fashion if her life were to end, a threat that had long suppressed other attempts at revolt. Destroying the statues that imprisoned her various aspects risked that, and also risked releasing her raw life force, which could potentially act even without a mind to guide it. No, it was much safer for the villain, if it was a villain and not some mindless monster accidentally unleashed, to keep her locked away in decorative marble.

That meant Vesperos had time to develop a real plan, and he had already decided he was going to. Falling asleep and never waking up, with his little bug legs tented, was his old plan, after an unknown number of years sipping mead and seeing what love could do without his instructive prick, but that would not be possible without his aunt’s protection, and to have that he had to protect her first.

And before that even he would need information, information it was clear the people of the city at large did not have. Their confused clangor went on for hours, as did the occasional sound of a building fallen over, perhaps from the whipping of the culprit’s tail. If there were diplomats and spies that knew what was afoot, Vesperos did not know them. By design he knew very few.

But among those very few were the three, from the old country like himself. They would have knowledge. Of what sort was unclear, but they would have it, and they would have more than their fair share. The three, also claiming sanctuary under Hestia, also disguised in diminished animal forms, lived within one of Minimil’s tallest buildings, a grandfather clock, second only to the colossal wardrobe on the opposite end of the barn from Loftplace, World Drawer One, where matters of Little Wars were plotted and practiced and where new refugees applied for processing.

To get to the old clock, Strikes Tower as it was called, he had to first make himself presentable. Vesperos fumbled around in the dark, almost numbly, having forgotten how many days it had been since he last got dressed. Eventually he found something clean enough to look snappy. Crimped coattails to draw eyes away from his stinger. Matching pink micro-flowers with white stamen pinned on both sides of the breast. A gentleman’s sleeves. A slightly poorer gentleman’s hat sat between his antennae, pushing them lower in humility.

Danger awaited him. Hopefully that danger did not know his name or nature, but he would have to risk giving those away, for it wouldn’t be sensible to travel without his weapons even though there was nothing more indicative of his old self. When he opened the closet to fetch them hearts of dust emerged and flapped like moths before dissolving with the sighs of summer breezes lost in mansion passages.

Bee claw on ancient eager wood made both master and weapon groan with relieving memory. Out came a bow, perpetually strung, reminding him that indestructible string had come from the three he was about to visit in the first place, and it was no gift. Perhaps he would have to wait longer because of it, but as long as marble could afford to wait so could he. The bow was darkly pink of wood and it throbbed with a godly light many would not perceive, immediately synchronizing with the same light across his fur, eyes, and lustrous stinger.

More precious yet were the arrows, taken from further back and removed from the dull but thick cloth they were wrapped in. Only two. The head of each was a precious jewel, a crystalline pink heart, but also an ampule containing a single drop of his venom, cautiously gathered from the tip of his stinger, glisten by glisten, across many months. In his current state it could not be produced faster than that, hence the lacking ammunition.

In those drops swam happy infatuating bubbles, joining, wobbling, and splitting again. Despite having created them he still found their motion mesmerizing, lost an hour to more memories. When finally he returned to his senses he placed both arrows in a quiver barely wider than a closed umbrella and slung it over his shoulder, where it joined the bow. Now came the first real test: facing the bustling streets of the city.

All he took with him was a small purse of monies, a meaningless assortment of Minimil’s many currencies collected from small, and clipped from large, societies all over the world, their value here guaranteed by the intrinsic value of the Midas Detritus stockpile. Vesperos didn’t know most of the coins’ names, yet still knew more of them than he did the citizenry.

Fastest would be to use his wings and fly straight to Strikes Tower, between the legs of his aunt’s tallest statues, but caution warned him against such hasty corner cutting. The city was likely being seized by the petrifier, and they could’ve had minions already, all on the lookout for suspicious characters that might interfere. Someone flying instead of giving the statues a wide berth might count as suspicious.

Additionally, it risked him looking down to orient himself and accidentally catching the creature’s eyes. If it happened even once, even for a split second, he was hail. In the end he did use his wings, but only to parachute down from Dauber’s Comb to the dense floor of the city’s lowest neighborhoods, still divided by the walls of the original horse stalls.

There were public and freight elevators from the hay loft on down, but they looked packed full at the moment, everyone trying to evacuate the sand castles since any disturbance, like the statues and the dust cloud, had a high chance of collapsing them into a pile. Vesperos was able to watch the blob of people from one elevator car leak off the platform, squeeze into the toy train station, and then pour back out when they were told the trains weren’t running.

And that’s why, the bee confirmed, looking over to see seven of Hestia’s marble feet on the tracks in several places. It would only take a few hours to add sections of track moving around them, as toy tracks came in prefabricated chunks in neat little boxes, but Vesperos wanted to make sure those hours were spent at Strikes Tower, doing the dreadful waiting that would be required before the three would agree to see him, if they agreed at all.

As soon as his feet hit the ground he was walking, more calmly than the other citizens, furthering the experience’s surreal nature. He felt invisible once again, a feat he had not achieved in decades. Whenever he used to be it was mostly as the third hidden presence in an intimate affair, just a glance to check in on lovebirds following intersecting migration routes he had installed at arrowpoint.

Vesperos barely examined the neighborhoods he passed through, instead seeing what anxiety looked like on all of Minimil’s myriad faces: fairy folk, myrmidons, Lilliputians and Blefuscans, homunculi, eggties, enchanted dolls and toys, spirit-possessed tokens of lives gone by, and all manner of small animals that had found man’s mind through magic, mishap, or mad science.

And a statue of Hestia. That was the only time he stopped, path blocked by his aunt frozen at his size. This one was a more intimate aspect, like his old self, probably following a worshiper she cared for personally, making sure they went about their day protected and blessed. Under her incarcerating compassion she suffered.

“I love you aunt Hestia,” he whispered in her ear, hugging her best size to receive her response, but then he was on his way again, all the way to Strikes Tower, where he refused to use the door on the ground level and instead buzzed his wings to ascend straight to the clock’s face. He landed on the minute hand as it settled on the number three.

There was no door on the clock’s faded and cracked face, nor a window to its inner mechanism, but Vesperos already knew what lurked within, and that they knew what had gingerly stepped onto the perch outside.

“I seek news of Hestia’s fate,” he said as boldly as he could manage to one of the cracks in the face.

“We have news only of your own,” answered voices three.

“This I will accept.”

“As always, the future is earned with time,” they rasped in answer, about to set their price. “You will wait here five days. Take no food or water. Say nothing to us. Begin… now.” The clock chimed so weakly only he could hear it, but it reverberated down into the center of his mind. Patience. All he could do now was exercise patience. Vesperos laid on his back, thinking the ceiling the only safe place to keep his eyes while the giant petrifier was rampaging.

He was too high up to hear the words of any individual, only the waves of the populace rolling and crashing as one. There was construction, and some protest, and even the sounds of the very monster he sought to stop running around underneath him, but he restrained his anger and curiosity. One wrong look, he echoed, but as was their nature, weaker and softer each time.

“Excuse me, might you tell me what’s been going on down there!?” he asked a passing myrmidon almost a day into his wait, forcing her to hover in place. Her clothing was leaf cuttings expertly tailored, which likely meant she was an officer or higher in Queen Zoukas’s colony.

“Hestia’s gone,” she said, “or not answering,” then gestured toward the biggest statue. “There’s been another takeover.”

“By whom? And are we in open rebellion?”

“A dragon called Zamshy Lamshy. No one knows where he came from, but he’s here, and one look in his eye turns you to stone. Nobody has defied him… how would they? My queen says we are to obey for now, as long as he does not outright destroy the city, so that is what I will do. I must go, good luck to you.”

With her departure came more questions. A dragon at this size? That would make it but a hatchling, and he hadn’t known dragons to petrify. Mortals called many things dragons, often requiring only a coat of scales to label something as such, so perhaps they were mistaken. Coming close to the real answer, he wondered about the possibility of a dragon eggty, as the name did have that familiar eggty sound, though both creatures were rare, so a confluence seemed all but impossible.

On the second day the skies busied, from which he assumed the populace was calming. Either the petrifier had gone or was hiding their eyes in such a way that put Minimil at ease. As soon as a fairy came close enough to hear him Vesperos hailed. He was a burly fellow, a heavy flapper on moth wings like bear fur, so the bee didn’t plan on forcing him to tread air for long, but he did it to himself with jovial babbling.

“Good fairy, can I trouble you for the news on this Zamshy Lamshy?”

“If there’s anything that can trouble me I haven’t met it yet, ha! Although I just heard the price on my wing insurance is going up. I don’t think it’s reason- ah! You don’t care about that. Let’s see, Zamshy and Lamshy those were the names.

I heard he went and changed the venue for the concert of the world’s smallest violinist. Now why would he go and do something like that? I’ve got to remember that it’ll be in the Bootyard now. Course, I suppose it’s lucky we’re still getting to have it at all, given the disruption. Nice of him to keep it in place.”

“Is there any news on what he intends to do with the city?”

“He’s got some representatives, or eggs calling themselves as representatives anyhow, going around and telling everybody they’ll release some statements in a couple weeks, but they say for now the big purple chicken is in charge, so go about business as usual and don’t look him in the eye.”

After the fairy fluttered off and stopped fanning his own wings into a mess, Vesperos spent a good while processing, as he had several good whiles left to spend before the trio honored the appointment. Chicken? What happened to dragon? And apparently Zamshy was at least affiliated with some eggties.

Without looking down he recalled the cloud of dust the creature had emerged from, and which neighborhood was the epicenter: Hopalong. It was home mostly to frogs and toads. Vesperos sat up as he found the realization that was now frozen on his great aunt’s face. What was the only possible identity when one involved dragons, chickens, toads, and petrification?

“A cockatrice.” Not even at the height of his amorous powers had he ever dealt with one, and thought them nothing but cautionary tales for children. Never leave a campfire without extinguishing it, lest it generate that special red salamander that spreads flame as it pleases. Never let a pet give birth directly under the full moon to prevent maddening mooncalves. And absolutely never indulge your curiosities by seeing if a toad can hatch a chicken egg.

Some opportunities are too dangerous to give life. When it squeezes through a twisted passage to find the sun it will dry into its twisted shape, no longer understanding the hearts that haven’t had to defiantly beat under such pressure and torsion.

No child had done this either, of that he was sure. An eggty had done this of his own volition, actively sought a civilian toad for this purpose. The temptation was understandable, as becoming a cockatrice and hatching would free him from the eggty’s restrictive existence of blind and fragile limblessness, but that immediately endangered anyone else who might catch a stray glance.

The average eggty must’ve known it was deeply wrong, and the average toad, for it had never happened in Minimil before despite a preponderance of both parties, often with one unwell and the other impoverished. It simply wasn’t done, until Zamshy Lamshy.

Vesperos sat on this notion for days, no other revelations hatching out of it. Being a god, degenerated as he was, he could also occupy his time by retreating into memory, reliving the best parts of his life much more vividly than any mortal. That was why he wasn’t watching the clock count down to his appointment, why he almost missed a previously invisible door opening in its face after it struck five full days.

It was his memory where his closest family lived; it was they who were polite enough to warn him that his visions should end. The whistle he heard was not the air as they ran through the fields of Arcadia together, it was curious air pouring into the clock tower from which it had been so long denied.

His ever-troublesome eyelids popped open as he vaulted off the largest hand, buzzing his way into the black opening before they could close it and make him wait another ten days for tardiness.

Giant cogs turned everywhere, only the tips of their grinding teeth visible in the darkness once the door flew shut like an advent calendar turning back time. His clawed feet landed on a woven carpet of cobwebs, overshadowed by the living web above, of flesh and scaly hide rather than silk.

Vesperos was careful to avoid the crisscrossing strands on the way down. Those were the new threads, played closer than the old, sharing blood with their masters, the degradation of the magic partly his own fault when he had stolen the more traditional twine they used to use to string his destiny-defying bow.

It might be considered a mockery to bring the weapon, string slung across his chest brazenly, but the trio was blind. They might not notice if he did not volunteer the information. All they had access to was the rhythm of Strikes Tower and the smothering air, rank with dandruff and moldy cheese.

Once he demonstrated his patience a second time, by refusing to disturb any of the trash that constituted their belongings and not calling out to them impertinently, all three emerged from the greater shadow and into the lesser, showing him only their heads. Three blind mice. Formerly known as the Fates, they did not wear their new verminous forms with the same dignity Vesperos did. Each looked haggard, gray, and still unaccustomed to a snout full of disobedient whiskers.

Despite their appearance he could still feel the power radiating from their large ears; he recalled their new names: Lactesis, Atroparmos, and Cheeseclotho. When it came to remembering which was which though, he simply wasn’t capable, dark or no. Hopefully names wouldn’t be necessary; they should know the only thing he would be after was prophecy.

There were few parties left who knew how to interpret such things without veering off into doom, or at the very least frustration, so really they should have appreciated his visit. Otherwise the only purpose that earned them a safe haven was running scenarios ten moves ahead in any Little Wars matches that might occur in or just outside the barn for Hestia.

Shortly after becoming mice they had tried to give mere mortals the gift of foresight, succeeding only in enraging the owner of the farmhouse into which they had scurried. The woman chopped off all their tails, thinking they were peddling rotten luck to her. The tails still lived, and were taut overhead, for gods didn’t need to be attached to every part of themselves, as once again attested to by the statuary of Hestia.

“The bumblebee seemed happy to go quiet and die,” hissed the one he couldn’t identify as Atroparmos. “He did not need our gifts any longer.”

“But then he heard a noise outside his hidey-hive,” tittered Cheeseclotho, “and saw the matron of the hearth-throne frozen stiff!”

“Thus he comes to us in confusion,” Lactesis concluded, “hoping we might illuminate. Yet he already has a bright light, shining in his face, blinding him to everything else. We don’t think we should add to it. Why light a candle in the presence of the hearth?”

“I have already been answered by your wisdom,” Vesperos claimed. “You instructed me to exercise patience, and in so doing I learned the truth. Hestia has been petrified by Zamshy Lamshy, an eggty who has hatched himself into a cockatrice with a lady toad collaborator in Hopalong.”

“Yes, as we intended,” Cheeseclotho said, voice drenched in disappointment.

“Then why has he entered?” Lactesis asked.

“I thought you might have an addendum,” he said. “Perhaps the ants and fairies flying by didn’t perfectly articulate what you had to say. It’s been known to happen when we assign messengers.” The mice whispered at each other while their tails, joined end to end, pulled and spun in a web overhead. When they were done the new product of their invisible loom was pulled taut with a comedic rubber sound which he politely ignored.

“We can only repeat the prophecy we have already made for him,” Atroparmos said less cryptically than before. She checked the detailing bumps on a loop of tail as it inch-wormed under her nose just to make sure.

“What prophecy was that? I don’t remember you saying anything.”

“This was long ago,” Lactesis reminded, “before mice, but not before bees, as it concerns them. He was but a child, and we had warned him that one day he would do battle with a winged snake.”

“That must ring a-” Atroparmos said just as the giant clock struck the hour, hammering them with noise and twanging the tails of fate like piano wire.

“It does,” the bumblebee admitted, stroking the fluff at his collar. “That story is why I picked this animal as my latest form. One of them had stung me, so I ran to Mother Nyx, whining that the little thing was like a winged snake, that it was shocking such a small prick caused a deluge of pain.

Then she told me I would be alright, and that I should imagine what harm one jab from my arrows might cause, for one prick created a lifetime of love, and all its associated pains.

I had assumed… that since my first thought was that the bee was like a winged snake that meant I had already done battle with it.”

“Those were his words, not destiny’s,” Atroparmos corrected. “The serpent has not been bested, and the bee has not been busy.” The other mice laughed. Vesperos didn’t hear them, and not just because Strikes Tower had nearly deafened him moments before. Memories had flooded back, and as a god they included his own birth.

Mother Nyx had laid him as an egg, after Ares had made a contribution. He had hatched swaddled in the night itself, and was then parented by Mothers Nyx and Aphrodite. Raised on nothing but love, with the fires of war in his veins, he had come to craft his bow and arrow, strung with fates as he aimed them, heads poisoned with the indiscriminate love that could end the order established by any god before him.

All of that had come now to just two arrows and the drip feed from his stinger. With that he was supposed to best a cockatrice, the actual winged snake. Yes, the tail was rather serpentine, and it would have wings, but really the frustrating nature of mythical taxonomy was starting to grate on his exoskeleton. All these dragons, and cockatrices, and winged snakes should get themselves sorted into proper categories and make their seating arrangements at the dinner table before bothering him with anything.

“As usual you’ve been nothing but helpful,” Vesperos snapped, clipping their laughter. “I know you’ll be cheering for me. Should I not defeat Zamshy in short order he will begin investigating his new kingdom, and find a more efficient use for the three little old ladies using Swiss as hag stones.”

“We always see a future, so we are forever young,” Lactesis said.

“Unlike him, who is looking long in the stinger,” Atroparmos nipped. “Though forever young is his w-“

“We do not need to speak of the past anymore today,” Cheeseclotho whimpered, her face disappearing in the darkness underneath the ticking cogs. Her share of the tail went with her, clearing Vesperos’s path to the door that opened once again. He was quick to take it, and rid himself of the reek of bad cheese.

The exit took him out into an evening, darker than anticipated. The overhead lamp was on, but low, turning the city below to hazy amber glass. Using his eyes to navigate was dangerous when Zamshy could be anywhere, but the Fates had spent all his patience, so he relied on the hope that the cockatrice was too busy having meetings in the hay loft with that sand castle landlord in order to play statesman, and was thus unlikely to be patrolling the streets.

Besides, he was only watching one narrow strip of ground: the straightest line from Strikes Tower to the section of Hopalong most damaged by the hatching of the cockatrice. It was his hope that he could locate, or at least identify, the public-menacing toad that had willfully sat upon the egg, and not just momentarily, for proper incubation took hours, all time she could’ve spent thinking about what she was doing and who she might hurt.

If she had been made to wait outside the office of the Fates the whole city might’ve come tumbling down, he thought just as he glided into the neighborhood, his wings stilled so they wouldn’t bumble and alert anyone to his presence.

Finding the nest was not difficult, as only one building had the sort of damage that could be classified as explosive: a massive manor by Minimil standards. Several signs, one wrought iron, informed him that this was Second Toad Hall, though what it meant to say was that it was two thirds of Toad Hall, for the right side had suffered unscheduled and undisciplined renovation leaving many rooms chewed open and exposed to the evening air.

There were eggties about the grounds, all stamped with something above their painted faces that Vesperos was a little too far to identify, except for its purple color. They didn’t look like guards in their snappy little eggcup suits, more like architects and city planners. If they were there sorting out the damage by touch they might be doing so all night, but Vesperos was not willing to wait any longer.

If the toad was inside then she was about to suffer a bee flying straight through her open window. It was as good a plan as any, except all the windows were closed, blinds drawn down, to hide her shame presumably. Toad Hall was very open on the right side, but it crawled with busybody eggties, and even with them blind he did not wish to get too close. Some were very good at sensing vibrations, and it was not unheard of for them to receive other shell modifications like their ingestion and speech ports, glass viewing windows included.

“The direct approach then,” he grumbled, soaring around the exterior and landing on the front step. With a curled onyx claw he carefully crafted his knock to be heard from the inside and not the out. Almost immediately there was shuffling within, so much so it suggested a handful of shufflers. Four of them answered the door, practically tearing it off its hinges. Vesperos didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t three angry amphibians and a curious rat all armed with cudgels, human jewelry chains, and walking sticks. Startled too were those on the other side of the threshold; however they were several steps ahead of the bee in their own adventurous plot and were already suffused with enough adrenaline to absorb unexpected elements much the easier.

A toad and the rat grabbed one of the diminutive god’s shoulders each and yanked him inside, the second toad closing the door quickly while taking care not to slam it. Aggressively manhandled through the foyer, under a chandelier tinkling like a threatened snake with a glass rattle, and into a sitting room, Vesperos was tossed onto an article of furniture so comfortable that the affront of his treatment was gone by the time he’d sunk a penny into it.

Both parties analyzed each other curiously, Vesperos not disadvantaged despite being outnumbered, as his godly sight could estimate them all as fast as they could estimate him individually.

The two women toads were a set, on the elder wartier side, wearing matching jackets of worm leather and dusty work clothes underneath. The one still holding the sterling chain had a baggy throat, a tiny gray X scar in her left pupil, and a thick coat of rusty lipstick with a fool’s gold shimmer all across her wide mouth. Her partner, possibly in crime, was a midge taller, which is more than it sounds in Minimil, with cheeks partly inflated all the time as if ready to take offense, and the color painted across her lips was an equally sparkling goldenrod.

Beside them was a frog, a male, who needed no cosmetic assistance in dazzling those who met him, for his skin was as cleanly tan as desert sands and the skulls that occasionally come up for air between the rolling dunes. Seams of flesh, like warts plucked off a toad by their creator and rolled as clay, branched and traced his more aerodynamic shape, starting at the lips, moving down his sides, and climbing the ridges of his arched back to terminate at the inner corners of his eyes. These seams glowed with many pastel colors: blue, yellow, green, and pink.

Vesperos recognized divinity in the creature, not a god, but a powerful animal from the early days of a place’s nature. Australia perhaps? Tasmania? He had a whiff of the tricksters hidden somewhere under his humble shirt and pants, expressing itself like slimy sweat, making it clear the frog did not like clothing at all, a revelation perhaps reached minutes prior when he put them on for the first time.

Last was the rat, the friendliest looking of the bunch, with the softest eyes. He smelled of salt, deck sanding, garlic sausage, stalest bread, and the whisker chalk that keeps them from getting stuck together during a hard day’s work. Long of body, paw, tail, and ear, he wore a blue jersey that was nevertheless too long and baggy in the sleeves. Of his cohorts he was the only one to take a seat, but still leaned forward and put some weight on his walking stick, which was so smooth itself the bee assumed it was a broom handle oiled only by the worked mitts of a dozen seafaring types.

The god’s antennae twitched, his eyes following the insect sense, landing on yet another person who was huddled up on a lounger off to the side, another toad crumpled in her fancy dress, holding her knees up off the floor and sobbing softly. She shielded her face, making it unclear if she even knew someone else had joined them. Whoever she was, her weak mewling and lippy puttering became background noise for his interrogation.

“Alright, who are ya?” asked the yellow-lipped toad, tip of her cudgel poking through the webbing on her opposite hand.

“I am Vesperos,” he answered plainly. Few in the city knew his name; it was almost as good as a pseudonym. “I’ve come to meet the toad who hatched Zamshy Lamshy.” The woman in the corner sniveled, balled up tighter. “I suppose that’s her.”

“Who she is is none of your business,” the other tough toad said. “You should be worried about who we are. My name’s Tabitha, that’s Buffy.” The taller toad flicked her nose up. “We’re the Die-hards! The Death-or-Glory Toads! I know you saw our motorbikes out front!” He hadn’t. “That means Second Toad ‘All is under our protection.”

“We are, all of us, interested in keeping this house, and its occupant, safe,” elaborated the rat in a voice smooth as olive oil, airy as sourdough. His soft black eyes seemed to have figured out Vesperos without him saying much. “You can call me the Wayfarer, as these aren’t my parts. A long while back now I passed through the Toads’ old village and befriended them, as did these charming cyclists.” The burly toads wiggled in delight.

“I’m Tiddalik,” the vibrant frog said, offering the least despite clearly having the most magical backdrop of life. “I’m Mrs. Toad’s neighbor.” Buffy slapped his head, barely drawing a response.

“Don’t tell him who she is!” the Death-or-Glory toad scolded.

“It’s not a difficult name to guess,” Vesperos interjected, hoping to quash any violence early, “and I assure you I mean no one any harm. I do intend to put an end to this cockamamie cockatricity. Tell me, are you all conspirators in his hatching?”

“No!” Mrs. Toad erupted, leaping out of her seat despite the incredible shock absorption ability of the cushion under her. Distraught, she hadn’t intended to land anywhere in particular, just in the middle of things, but Vesperos’s natural magnetism put her swooning squarely in his lap. “No conspirators Mr. Vesperos! Only me! I did it, and may the crown forgive me, of my own volition!” She howled once more and blew her nose into an armrest.

“There there,” the bumblebee said, too confused for anger. “Could you explain why you have done this? Not a soul has ever needed a cockatrice running around.”

“I’m ashamed to say it was ignorance,” Mrs. Toad blubbered. “I am only now just learning, from my dear old friends Tabs and Buffy,” she reached out a webbed paw to them as if they were across a chasm, “things that are common knowledge for the common folk. I was completely unaware of the edict that no toad should ever, under any circumstances, rest upon a chicken’s egg for any length of time. The powers I have unleashed were beyond the imagination of my noble upbringing, never sullied with creative or deductive thought.”

“It’s true,” Tabitha said. “Nobody ever gave ‘er the no-nonsense. She’s been distressed about ‘er ‘usband see, a lout who’s running around town sticking other avenues with ‘is business.”

“He’s not a lout,” Mrs. Toad defended weakly, only growing limper in Vesperos’s lap, forcing him to support her back.

“Oh yes he is deary,” Buffy insisted. “And we’ll get him to crawl back here and admit it, just ya wait. As for this Zamshy, apparently some faceless egg rolled up to her late the other night, filled her head with a sappy speech about his downtrodden self, not a crack on him despite this supposed trodding mind ya, and tricked her into squatting on him for his health. She thought it was a charitable act!”

“I swear I did not know he would become such a beast,” Mrs. Toad said, heaving breaths inflating her throat. “Now he has petrified our goddess and seized control of the whole city, and everyone’s talking about it! About me! I’ve been rightly cast as the villain and I don’t know how I will ever live it down.”

“We’re going to fix it,” Tiddalik said.

“Then you’ll go right back to living it up!” Tabitha added.

“There is a good deal to do,” the Wayfarer reminded, stroking his chin with nails so full of compacted dust they were gray as headstones. “If we are to restore Mrs. Toad’s reputation we have to not only rein in Mr. Toad’s excesses, but also convince this cockatrice to return his office to Hestia.

While this is my first time in Minimil I’d met the woman once before, in Corsica, where we spoke of captains’ cabins at sea. I did not know she was of the Greek pantheon at the time, disguised as she was. When we were finished she invited me to travel here, to help with the crafting of a boat. We’d only just finished work on it in the dry dock, and couldn’t give her the good news, as she’d gone, well…” He knocked on the wood of his walking stick.

“Those eggties outside?” Vesperos asked, as his antennae had again twitched, but this time toward the front door.

“Zamshy sent them to fix my house and look after me,” Mrs. Toad explained. “He also said he wants to move me out of here, somewhere safer now that I’m… royalty. I couldn’t look up at him to correct him, he warned me not to, nor could I find the courage to speak, but I felt how he looked down at me Mr. Vesperos, even as the dust of our union stilled whipped about, and it was with a sort of genuine love. I think he now sees me as his mother. What did you call it Mr. Wayfarer?”

“Imprinting,” the rat said. “I’ve seen it many times with hatchings, from Svalbard to Venice. Creatures of the egg have a strong bond with whomever they first lay eyes on.”

“He made sure to look at you first Mrs. Toad,” Vesperos said, meeting her eyes with his glossy black goggles. “My great aunt Hestia is nearly everywhere in this barn, and he very intentionally found her second… He needed to not feel anything for her… as taking her burning throne was his goal, more so than hatching into his current form. But why?

If he wanted the city there were better ways to plan this, like transforming elsewhere and luring her to that indoor location. Here he could’ve been caught as an egg.”

“He seemed at his lowest when we spoke,” Mrs. Toad said. “As truly maligned an animal as myself.”

“Perhaps he considered success only the remotest possibility,” the Wayfarer guessed. “Death and destitution were on the table as well. This would mean he had some other goal, something he might achieve with the power of this country, but also found in the end of his life.”

“Rock bottom,” Buffy summarized. “Most folks who hit it blame somebody else for throwing them down there.”

“Of course,” the rat said, shaking his ears slowly, “when you look in the eye that kills with a glance you will find ideas of revenge.” His wrinkled eyes went back to the bee. “Sorry, did you say Hestia was your auntie?” They all refocused on him. Mrs. Toad finally dismounted and went to stand with the others, wiping her eyes to get a good look as well. If the lot were to be recruited, there was little point in lying. Vesperos stood, shined with inner pink light.

“I am formerly Eros, Cupid by the Roman way of naming, and yes, she is my family. That is why I intend to stop Zamshy and restore her; this is no coup upon a coop of a coup.”

“The god of love?” Mrs. Toad uttered, her education apparently extending as far as him at least. “Cupid, in my home, oh dear.” She whirled around and straightened a few pillows, something the gods in her mind certainly judged before any smiting or blessing. She whirled back. “Here I am, one love run off and another demented and doting. I’m so sorry Mr. Cupid, have you ever seen such a marred love as that between me and my family?”

“Take heed, lady toad, of the word of a god,” spoke Vesperos, and it was fully understood by vibration and not reason that he had very much ‘spoken’ and not ‘said’. Second Toad Hall seemed to take heed along with them, even the pillows trembling slightly.

“No love in this world is marred. It can be used for evil, but the lust of spirit is to all life as gravity is to the stars and planets. It is the force that draws, that unites. Without it we would all be alone in the dark, speaking to the void, emptying ourselves into bottomless silence until there was nothing left.” He reached over his shoulder and drew one arrow from his narrow quiver, spinning it to show the crystalline heart at its tip and the liquid contents; it sang with the motion.

“This is love,” he continued. “The very substance. Once I was sent to spy on and torment a woman who was called Psyche, Anima in the Roman. I found her, watched from afar, blithely fondling my arrows as I considered what fiend or thorny object I could make her fall in love with. By accident and hubris, I scratched myself. From then on I loved Psyche, and because the substance is stronger than me, I never regretted it.

She eventually knew me as a lover, but only in darkness, ashamed as I was of how I had debased my immortal blood by falling for a mortal. But she too was struck, when she tried to surprise me by lighting a torch so she might finally spy my face. It so shocked her that she fell backward, right on top of my quiver, and then loved me the same as I loved her.

Love at first sight? Love at first bite? A curse? A malady? None of this matters, only the happiness that love enables. We were married, and knew lifetimes of it. Even Zamshy’s instinctive love for you is admirable Mrs. Toad, as is your love for a philanderer. It is only their evil actions that will be judged, never a loving motive.”

By the end of the speech he had, unbeknownst to himself, approached her and taken both of her hands. The others had suffered a similar symptom, scrunching together and holding each other’s shoulders. A bond had formed in the air between them, a tightness of heart, and the closer they were to each other the more constricting each beat was.

“I want all of you to join me in my quest,” Vesperos said when he took a step back. “There are five of us, excepting Mrs. Toad, who will of course remain out of harm’s way as she allows us to show our love for her. Five makes a Challenging Handful, doesn’t it? The only way anything actually gets done in Minimil.”

“Technically, as our mission will be in the city and on behalf of its true governor, we are a Challenging Applause,” Tiddalik corrected, or so he thought, until Tabitha corrected his correction.

“Yes, but there’s already a Challenging Applause, as they’re kept on standby at all times. We ‘ave to be a ‘andful, as there’s Felicity Lace, Mygdenia-“

“Excuse her,” Buffy interrupted, “she’s a drooling toady for any and all digits and challengers.”

“Then revel in it,” Vesperos declared, “for now you are one. Zamshy the cock has committed an obscene act, and I’m afraid Mr. Toad now has several of those under his belt, may have cast off his belt onto a pile of them. Let us call ourselves challengers, and this… the Challenge Obscene.”

“To his downfall,” the Wayfarer agreed, walking stick knocking the hardwood through the carpet, “and to the restoration of Mrs. Toad’s honor.” Agreement rippled throughout the group, and together with their bond threw them all down a staircase of consequential certainty. They would do this, and do it together, and would consider little else until it was over. At least one god was making it so.

Then there was a knock at the door. Before they could be afraid, before they could hope it was just another stronger god to pull into the fold, there was a distant but loud scratch: a talon on cobblestone. Another knock, the tap of polite eggshell. Another scratch, closer. Knock, scratch, knock, scratch.

“Oh it’s Zamshy!” Mrs. Toad fretted. “He said he was going to have me stay somewhere while they were fixing our home; he must be here to take me!”

“Mrs. Toad? Are you there?” a voice called through two barriers, door and shell. “My name is Womgy Tomgy, I’m with the construction firm. Hello?” Scratch, scratch, scratch! The newly formed handful unclenched and each rushed to a hiding spot, assuming the cockatrice could only reasonably interact from the nearest window. There was enough furniture for all of them excepting Mrs. Toad, but she had to remain visible anyway in order to act as if nothing was amiss.

In her panic she briefly made the mistake of peeking over her shoulder, just as the window’s edge pooled with green light. Only the curtain being down saved her from petrification. Zamshy would not end his investigation until he was sure of her safety however, so Vesperos popped up to direct her with arm gestures.

After swallowing a full frog throat of fear she managed to unfix herself and daintily back toward the window, fumbling behind her back to find the curtain pull. When she did it went up all at once and green flooded the room like a searchlight. The intensity of it tingled on the back of her head, leading her to wonder if that was the sensation of microscopic parasites petrifying and falling to their deaths.

“Mrs. Toad, my dearest lady,” the rooster-wyrm crooned. His voice hissed low, puttered lower, crackled like burnt eggshell and steaming coals. “I have made all the arrangements. They are ready to accommodate you at the Castle of the Grip. I told them their finest suite needed to be molded even finer, and they brought out sand so small of grain you would swear it was the long lost offspring of silk and water.”

“Oh? Th-thank you so very much, Mr. Lamshy, but I assure you, I’m quite comfortable here. I don’t think the repairs will take long.”

“If they do I will scramble a few eggs. Still I insist that you go. This is not a suitable neighborhood for the new first lady of Minimil.” The eggty by the front tapped on the door again. “That will be Mr. Tomgy. Do let him in and show him around. You can tell him everything you would like changed within Second Toad Hall and he will make it so. After the tour I will whisk you away to your lofty new life.”

“Alright!?” the toad blabbered, panicked pupils practically slapping Vesperos without turning her head a single degree. The bumblebee nodded. They all had to escape, but the cockatrice would not be put off his own mother’s safety. She would have to let the other eggty in, her defenders’ first challenge being the total avoidance of his and his master’s awareness.

Stiff as a deserting tin soldier, Mrs. Toad scurry-waddled off to let in the contractor egg, the two of them returning to the sitting room promptly. Womgy Tomgy was a rather ordinary eggty, a relief after so much discussion of how strange and mighty they could be; he was dapper and unassuming in his eggcup suit with a circular orange yolk-tie. His charcoal eyes were made enthusiastic by brows drawn so high as to perhaps be confused for a bad rendition of a toupee. His mouth was a perfect circle of black around his speaking grate rather than a line, indicating he never stopped talking.

“-All sorts of improvements are on the table Mrs. Toad,” he said. “Off the top of my tip I think we could get you some magnifying glass sliding windows in your new greenhouse. Everyone swears by them; they warm up the coldblooded faster than a saucepan bath! Between you and me they do wonders for eggties as well.” He rolled over some clutter that was actually the Wayfarer’s long foot. The rat stayed perfectly still, betrayed no position, not even that of the air between his whiskers. “…I’ll have a maid service come through for all this debris. Anyway, would you care to show me the path out to the garden? Don’t you worry, eyes or no, I am paying attention. There’s a perfect little map growing inside this shell.”

As he blathered Mrs. Toad was given no choice but to sporadically agree and obey. The pair made their way toward the windows, where there was an exit into a long hallway overlooking the back grounds. Once the room was cleared the challengers could’ve looked for their escape, except Tabitha had chosen to hide beside a chest of drawers with high legs, the view underneath blocked from the window only by a standing suitcase, the open latch of which was caught by Womgy Tomgy as he rolled by.

It fell over, with the green light of Zamshy’s unblinking eye filling the space. Tabitha had no choice but to perform the world’s shortest leap, while gaining no height at all, putting herself directly behind Tomgy’s rolling shell. Crouched, she crawled forward, practically hugging the egg.

If the cockatrice spied her he would no doubt attack, the same as anyone else who found an intruder in their mother’s home. What was one more hole in her wall when such grandiose repairs were imminent? They would be but the first swings of the sledgehammer. All three entered the hallway, with the Die-hard toad forced to live out the title, riding the egg’s silhouette as he changed direction.

Their foe kept his eye on Mrs. Toad, so his paralyzing beam passed out of the sitting room, fanned window by window. Finally the others had opportunity to move, and they had to, for Mrs. Toad hadn’t been able to share that the front door was left open for more laborer eggties to enter and learn the paths they would be traveling as they worked.

Two more in hardhats entered, chose different paths. The remaining challengers had to stay silent as they tiptoed and tumbled out of their cover and up against the back wall, the only place they could crouch under the window frames and be safe from a stony demise. But the eggties needed to learn where all the walls were, back included. The team couldn’t stay there. Rather than wait until the last moment the Wayfarer, who had the front of the four of them, started making his way into the hall as well, significantly behind Mrs. Toad, Womgy, and a Tabitha already suffering cramps in her contracted legs.

What followed was the slowest and most miserable game, the pieces skulking around the labyrinthine board in frustrated quiet, only half of them aware they were playing at all. One of the hatted eggties traced the back wall too closely, forced Vesperos to shift behind him, leaving him in exactly the same situation as Tabitha. They could only go where their respective eggs went, and though they did an excellent job of stifling all noise Zamshy’s eye still drifted back and forth across the windows attentively. The bee found no strategy, but Mrs. Toad kept aware of their plight, ultimately coming up with an impressive plan for someone so gentle under so much strain.

“I was wondering about a possible expansion for the secret tunnel,” she said loudly, interrupting Tomgy’s lecture on inlaid indoor tadpole pools. “You see Mr. Toad wouldn’t settle for any missing detail in this reproduction, so he had to make sure we also had an underground passage like the original Toad Hall, which was famously connected to some fabulous ruins.

Getting the permit to dig was a walloping headache, what with Queen Zoukas’s colony using streets under the streets, and with the risk of hitting that Wonderland pocket that’s down there somewhere, but we did eventually manage it. Here’s the entrance right here in fact! Next to the dining hall. Under this squeaky floorboard in the butler’s pantry.“

“Secret passage? Why the ideas I’ve already got Mrs. Toad. First off, carpet. Secrets are dirty enough without getting the dirt beneath the dirt all over one’s shell…” As he continued the challengers who could steal glances at each other also shared nods, and the plan was successfully passed to all of them within seconds. Whenever the light was off them they would make their move, into the pantry and through the disguised trap door. They’d been warned of the biggest hazard by Mrs. Toad as well: the squeak.

Someone had to test it, learn if this was the squeak of a cabinet hinge or a terrified mouse. The Wayfarer volunteered when he found himself the first in position to do so. Bounding on all fours, walking stick tucked perfectly straight under his arm, the rodent slid into the pantry, caught the nearly invisible edge of the door with his buck teeth, and threw it up quick as he could.

Perhaps it was like a terrified mouse, but the weak squeak from one’s nightmares. A thick blanket could stifle it completely, but the hearing of the cockatrice proved lethally sharp. Never one to lose his head, the rat had made sure to close the door as quickly as he’d opened it, so the pantry appeared just as it had moments before when Zamshy bathed it in green again. The light lingered. Vesperos was forced to roll on by and not act.

Every second spent staring at an empty pantry was one where Mrs. Toad might not have been safe, so the eye did move on… at least until it heard a second squeak and came rushing back. Still nothing. Just shelves of salted crane fly limbs fanning out of coffee cans, dried grub knots, and black currants hanging from the ceiling like chains of garlic.

But something in there squeaked, and for a third time no less. The light returned again, found only a potato with cubes cut out of it, the exposed faces of flesh coated with starch to keep them from browning. Potatoes didn’t squeak. The ginger nodules piled on the top shelf? Another mute ingredient. The jarred cricket leg fillets? Even outside the jar, even alive, that was really more of a chirp than a squeak.

And so it went, the infernal bird greatly irritated, but none the wiser, until all of them had escaped into the underground passage, save beleaguered Tabitha, who had been made to pass by the pantry just as Mrs. Toad was making the route plan.

Once the tour was complete Mrs. Toad deliberately steered her companions back to that hall, but this would be the last chance. Time for the crouched toad to have the death or the glory of her other title. The green light was glued to them, the window oh so tight. One slimy toe out from behind the rolling eggty’s silhouette, one corner of the trap door, and they would all be found out.

Perhaps she could’ve done it after a full evening of practice, and with a few rosary drops of rum in her to steady her nerves, but there was only the one pass bathed in that judgmental emerald glow. And it was here. She hopped, slid. Lifted, dropped. Pulled, released. The squeak was the quietest of them all.

But the snake’s pupil saw, toe and corner, nefarious movement, the finale of an aborted assassin’s attempt on his mother’s life. Once three steps away he deemed Mrs. Toad clear of danger; his beak came crashing through the wall.

Dust was everywhere once again, and through it flashes of yellow ivory studding his stabbing bill. One thrust obliterated the window, two the entryway of the pantry, three the trapdoor. The fourth came straight down, drilling into the earth. Instead of a fifth Zamshy Lamshy would burrow his head inside, try to look down the tunnel and burn any flesh within to rock.

Tiddalik decided to be their savior; the frog bounded back the way he’d come, let a scrambling Tabitha pass. She uttered a breathless thanks, but she would want to hold onto her air in a moment. The frog stopped, stood tall. His throat inflated, but through its transparent bulge there was a deluge from deep in his throat, a whirlpool of mighty waters that reversed into a spout headed for his mouth.

Before Zamshy could turn his head Tiddalik had opened wide and filled the earthen passage with a wall of surging water, under such pressure that it was turned into a hose that blew straight up the dragon-chicken’s bony nostrils. Second Toad Hall, as it ejected the sputtering monster’s head, suffered its second disaster in a week, this time an inexplicable geyser.

The gardens were watered, but everything else became a terrible mess. Several of the construction eggties were washed down the lane, and a few cracks were suffered against lampposts, but nothing serious. Neighbors came out to see what the commotion was and had to quickly duck away and retreat when they recognized the scaly drumsticks of their new overlord.

Results on the other end were just as explosive. Tiddalik’s whitewater emesis launched him backward, where his body or his currents rammed and then carried Tabitha, Buffy, Vesperos, and the Wayfarer. Together the surge turned them left, then left, and pushed them straight on until they were in a seedier part of town, on account of the pine cones that stood everywhere as false trees, many of their ridges decorated with hanging notices and advertisements.

One fell over as a bubbling jet of mud formed underneath it. Up from the depths washed the challengers, who would be scurrying for cover in moments, but first they needed to catch their breath.

“What… was that?” puffed the bee, forcibly spitting water from his mandibles, which he was just figuring out how to do, since he’d never tried to drown his insect body before.

“One one hundred and seventeenth of a Sicilian duck pond,” Tiddalik said, wiping the dribble from his lips. The torrent within him had apparently receded. More explanation was required, nay demanded, but with wet wilted antennae and a water pocket definitely present though not pinpointed somewhere in his head, Vesperos decided to drop the dripping subject until they were somewhere safer.

“Tabs! You’re alright,” Buffy sighed, splashing over to her companion and hugging her. “I could kiss ya, but your face is off.”

“Aye that’s what ‘appens when you get a sloppy one from Poseidon ‘imself,” Tabitha grumbled. She pulled out a compact mirror from her jacket, and a lipstick, went to work clearing the tunnel’s mud from her complexion and reigniting the glisten on her mouth. Her popping pucker was all the louder for her irritation with Tiddalik. “You’ve got to warn a girl before you do something like that you barmy frog! I swear your lot is no warts and all slippery. ‘Ave you any idea ‘ow much a tube of this color costs m-“

“What’s this,” the Wayfarer interrupted, stabbing a floating poster with his stick. He tossed it to choke up on the handle, bring it close enough to read. “Ah, the world’s smallest violinist! I was hoping to attend this show, suppose that’s out with the bathwater now. Hmm… this must be a fresh one, says there’s going to be a diplomat there as an honored guest. Anyone heard of this Rea Brass fellow?”

Continued in Part Three