(estimated reading time: 44 minutes)
Leaflets
Almost every young hand was in the Jefferson Drafting Library, toiling away with writing instruments. Franklin pens were the best choice, if you could ignore the occasional zap, but there were not enough to go around, leaving only old fashioned quills, sometimes from anatimals and sometimes the diaphanous backbone-like stents found in Pursuitian worm mantles.
Even Kidd was there, behind a student’s desk of her own. She would be by far the slowest at producing leaflets, but the Founders apparently thought every five would count, though they might taker her half as many hours.
Again Hart was missing. Blueberry and Bonfire, and the committee too, kept glancing at the door, thinking he would come through any time. Surely the Founders would let up enough for a chore such as this, where his steady hand and premiere education would be much appreciated. Empty remained the door. No one supervised, likely preferring to look through the leaflets at the end instead of listening to all the scratching and page turning. Prying ears would not be far though; the young recognized this as an excellent opportunity to catch up on their correspondence.
Between leaflets they went at their journals under the desk, paragraph for paragraph, so that while they toiled away there was much silent discussion between books about recent developments.
Greetings to Miss Virginia Dare and the other citizens of Roanoke. We, the free people of Pilgrim’s Anchor, similar castaways in this unknown ocean between realms, hailing too from God’s green Earth, deeply regret how we acted at our first meeting.
To Sassafras- I can hardly believe what my traitorous hand is writing! It seems this one part of me ‘deeply regrets’ surviving Dare’s buttery bog! This hand of mine is clawing its way back to a grave that would be all too easy to sink right into. Tell me, does your body harbor any such traitors? A turncoat big toe perhaps? -Autumn
The group you met was young and inexperienced. They reacted in fright, and did not show the respect to their forebears that would have allowed diplomacy to flourish between us all the earlier. It is our sincerest hope that you suffered no loss of life in this encounter; we know not the circumstances and limits of your physical existence here in the land we call Evidentia.
To White Smoke- Woe is me, so young, so inexperienced. The other day I thought I saw a dragon approach my bedside and breathe fire all across my virgin flesh, alas, twas merely a mouse nose, the ravishing flame the tickle of its whiskers. We are the experienced in this world, not them. You could count the number who have raised a Franklin bayonet against the Bickyplots on one frostbitten and reduced hand. – Fool’s Gold
Whether you have met them or not, this too we do not know, we of humanity have a common enemy in this world. We call them the Bickyplots. They are towering fiends, evil hearts racing about inside their husk bodies like demonic rats. Long have they menaced us, murdered us, attempted theft and enslavement, on twenty-five years now.
To Blueberry- My Hart must also be racing around a terribly empty husk. I grow angrier over his absence every day. I’m likely to explode soon, and someone might perish. I’m angry with him as well, for choosing badly, but I think I can redirect my blast away from him. Do you know where in Independence Hall they are keeping him? – Bonfire
To Bonfire- No, I’m sorry. Heard nothing from him. Have faith. – Kidd
With you by our side we believe we can end the Bickyplot threat, which will in turn free us to draft a mutual solution to our interminable estrangements from our true home. The Bickyplots’ primary advantage has always been their established deeds and titles, in place well before our arrival, limiting our spread and littering the land with invisible pitfalls. Once those documents have been discovered and destroyed, or neutralized by unanimous signature, our drafting library will go to work on our glorious return.
To Fool’s Gold- Hello friend. May I call you such? I know we’ve never shared much proximity, and of late what we have has an air of rivalry. I’ve recently come to realize that and I want to make the situation plain. I would ask you to keep the contents of this correspondence private, to both our benefit.
I have an interest in Blueberry. Is she not fascinating in her strength, in her ability to move about regardless of the fences men like my father erect to stop her? It’s strange to say, both because he is my father and because he is the youngest and most capable of the Founders, but I dream of his death being near. I do not hate him. He hates Blueberry. He has more than muttered advocacy for her murder. He thinks she should be a sacrifice that sets a precedent. If it does not clearly come from the men who had almost demonstrated themselves capable of founding a nation half as big as the world, it is evil.
Should the day come where he has fallen instead of her, which I assure you I fight for, albeit in secret, I will then declare my love for her. You were her lifeline during her imprisonment. It should be no surprise that I would find it impossible for you to avoid developing a similar love for her. Your recent behavior bears that out.
I’ve no interest in conflict. Pistol duels are not the way for the young; they would only shrink our numbers. Blueberry is fully capable of choosing between us on her own, or choosing neither. Without that fierce stalwart independence of hers we wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place.
Instead I propose we unite, just as the Founders would with Dare, against the common enemy identified as any enemy of Blueberry’s. I did not vote for her for the Committee of Five, corrected that with the junior presidency, and we can give her the noblest gifts by enlisting in any effort at leadership she conjures up regardless of official position. Seeing as the Founders have rejected her claims, I believe she will act soon with a plan of her own, and I think we both should be there to aid her.
So, where do we stand Gold? You need not address my pestering at length, especially if I have estimated anything wrongly. If you agree, please just refer to me as your friend. – Edward II
To Rutledge- In the intimacy of love, there somehow remains the room to work together. – your friend, Fool’s Gold
And now to the details. We apologize for the foul refuse our young soldiers deposited on your lands, as that was their original purpose when we had no clue of your presence. Those were the heads of a single Bickyplot, which regrow when removed. It has recently come to light that the Bickyplots seek the return of one of these heads, the first one stricken, which most closely resembles the gigantic and warped manor they call home.
It might contain one of their drafted mooring points to Evidentia, and if so that would be a most powerful weapon we could use against them. So we humbly ask that you journey to us, as we do not wish to intrude on you more than we already have, and if possible bring with you this head as a token of our highly desirable alliance.
Included is a map to our location and an illustration of the Bickyplot stronghold, to help you identify the head we seek. We look forward to meeting you more formally Miss Dare, and all of your people as well.
John Hancock Robert Treat Paine Francis Lightfoot Lee
To Windstorm- Should this terrible idea come about our president will be brought out of hiding. He is too close in position to Virginia Dare to not be used, as young in face as she, and a leader too. Then we will be able to judge Hart’s health. Our Carve-Out has no path to insertion if he dies, which is most likely at his own hand I think. Pester your father please; see if you can learn more. – Dragonfly
To Edward II- How is your work on the Carve-Out coming along? I hope it has not proven too difficult to rephrase our demands in the format of the excision President Hart recovered for us. Remember we wish to match the number of words precisely. If Hart is incapacitated you are the next best hope for insertion, having both drafted it in part and suffered the watchfulness of your father’s eye.
I remember your suggestion that Kidd be added to the drafting team now that she has the relevant experience of traveling between worlds. While this authority would add credence to our inked words, that is not the world we wish to move to. Earth is not for us I think, and I would happily accept somewhere new or Pursuitia… just not that place. – Windstorm
To Crow Eyes- Why is everyone so calm? This is going to be a battle! If Dare follows that trail she will attack, and her corpse family respond precious little to our muskets. Will Franklin kites turn the tide at all? We won’t be permitted to launch until one of them has struck first. Dare herself is entirely stone, and chisels are nowhere in our standard arsenal. What are we to do? Have you any ideas? If they’re sharp I’ll keep them in my pockets on the day we march out to meet these Dare-devils again. – Pony
To Pony- My mother’s family once found some bodies, back on Earth, close in color and appearance to Dare’s horde. They burned almost eagerly. I recommend fire, which will be readily available if we meet them under the shade of the big eastern tree. One well-placed bolt could sever and ignite a large falling branch. Pass it on. As for the statue herself, I am equally unprepared. – Crow Eyes
To Oakes- Crow Eyes suggests we use fire on the bog bodies. Pass it on. – Pony
To Sassafras- Crow Eyes says to burn the bog bodies, pass it on. – Oakes
To Honey- Sister, we set fire to those bog demons, pass it on. – Sassafras
To Blueberry- It seems we are to set fire to Dare’s underlings if they come. You weren’t there, and I don’t know how well Bonfire described them to you, but they are truly equal to the Bickyplots in their grotesque forms. Wrinkled, sunken in flesh and form, black as tar, coated in the slime of ancient milks from creatures I dare not guess at… How anyone can shoo away an adorable anatimal in favor of their company is unthinkable.
I need no other reason than your word to believe you Blueberry, but Dare has provided it. They too have been made into monsters by their invasion of this world. We have this truth, and we must not squander it. Now that I have served in the field twice, both among the most harrowing of all the encounters we have had, or so I’m told, I am ready to serve under your blank banner specifically. Consider me your soldier to command, and my every anatimal part of your armory.
This of course pressures you to come up with a battle plan. You wouldn’t… by chance… have one already? – Honey
To Honey- It is contingent upon Dare coming here. And upon them bringing the head. – Kidd
Pact of Unity
Emperor the pig-ear anatimal, in all likelihood, did not have the emotional capacity for relief, but if it had the feeling would have occurred when it was summoned down from the sky by its breeder and trainer Honey Whipple to carry cargo for the Founders of Independence Hall once more.
Last time it had been conscripted it was made to carry tens of humans up and down a most repetitive shaft of air near a vomit-filled pit, its only stroke of luck being that it was made of ears and not noses. That same day its master had been threatened by the Bickyplots, so it bravely crashed through a glass window and defended her, only to be riddled with holes from a blunderbuss as long as its master was tall.
Recovery was never certain, few as anatimal wartime injuries were, but Emperor had managed over the course of the winter, stroked and exfoliated back to health by a humming Honey. Now, in the spring, it was flight capable once more, and having its opportunity for relief when the attached cargo was not a squirming human, but a satchel full of leaflets, lighter in load and responsibility.
The creature feature did not even have to fly itself all the way to the target, escorted instead on a tin horse-drawn wagon in the lap of its master until they were near a place of alien silence called Dare’s Bog. What little sound there was sucked wetly at metal hooves and hide boots. From there Honey launched Emperor, counting on its most recent round of training to kick in.
The muscle-memory instruction was tailored so Emperor would not have to recall it, necessary given its complete lack of a brain. The last ten times it was launched it was directed by rope, like a kite by its string, to fly in several wide circles and return to its point of origin.
Opening the satchel was not its job either. A plug of wadded paper was drafted upon and signed by Thomas Jefferson, ordered by his authority to disintegrate whenever it was directly over Dare’s Bog, thus releasing a drifting curtain of leaflets, most of which landed on muck. They were too light to sink, but after Emperor and its escorts were long gone a withered black hand emerged from the murk and mud to grab a leaflet and drag it under. Others followed.
No scout had remained behind to watch for any reaction. The young knew there was one regardless. Their dread would not have been so potent without it. Queasily they sat in their curdling fear for several days, some sleeping in their uniforms, expecting the muster bell any moment, midnight moments not excluded. It would make sense for the Roanoke undead to move in the dark, their midnight skin the perfect camouflage.
Worse, their fears could not be assuaged by proper preparation, abundant as the time was. The Founders wished to project a welcoming aura, and what they wished always became orders. While the young were encouraged to demonstrate discipline by presenting in formation, arms at their sides, they were not to be fully equipped with every weapon they would’ve taken to a meeting with the Bickyplots. Each had their musket, but only ceremonial swords were worn, and no hatchets were to be anywhere near, though the situation might have called for the burying of one.
Only one Franklin kite was permitted, any combat effectiveness hampered by the ceremonial banners flying on its spinning blades. It would at least contain a decent stockpile of electrical ammunition, as it needed a full charge to stay aloft in the first place. The idea of fire had spread as well as the actual phenomenon, and there remained hope that boltshot could ignite a bog mummy. As for the marble likeness of Dare, their only method of self-preservation seemed to be retreat behind the wooden fence of Pilgrim’s Anchor, a hide that did not seem as tough as hers.
Tin horses might have the strength to hold her back with their metal bulk, with two present in the clearing under the biggest tree outside the settlement: Harlequill and Applecandy. Astride them sat the representative Founders Rutledge and Witherspoon, the rest watching remotely via drafting, eyes drawn on pages posted to the fence exterior.
Early spring sun stabbed down that midday; everyone gathered under the tree’s wide-reaching canopy. This was not a type close to the bycandelites. Their method of self-preservation in winter was to first sprout up near wellsprings of intent or motivation-based heat, in this case Pilgrim’s Anchor itself. In the twenty-some years since their arrival this one had never stopped growing, a good chunk of its shadow stretching over the fence and providing excellent cover for outdoor games on the hottest days.
It kept them cool, the twenty young of the welcome party, and the two Founders, while they waited, staring in the general direction of Dare’s Bog at attention. They’d received a scouting report that she was on her way. Most active and noisy among them was the Franklin kite, idling back and forth in the air as the touch of branches above convinced it to change course repeatedly.
Something approached from behind, but Blueberry, Bonfire, and the others were not supposed to break formation, ordered as they were to display the utmost discipline to make up for their lack of it when they had, in the eyes of the Founders who had ordered it, shown up on Dare’s doorstep, dumped a mountain of refuse, startled and attacked the residents, then left.
The young women did not need to turn to know, recognizing his footsteps. Then the back of his blond head. Muster Hart hadn’t even been spotted in days. His friends didn’t know what room he slept in, what they were feeding him, or what they had him writing day in and day out in the hopes they were rewriting his very thought.
Kidd was next to Bonfire and was able to glance at her without turning her head. She saw a potential interruption, love calling out, but her neighbor swallowed it under great duress. A higher form of love winning out. If she calls his attention the Founders will see, tightening the leash yet more. We know you know Mustard. Our spirits are even closer than our bodies right now.
Young Hart was meant to lead the negotiations, as the Founders were too busy looking decoratively regal on their polished mounts, as well as somebody having to apologize for the young’s behavior. Dolled up like a toy, deprived of all weapons but the steel handshake of a sword sheathed on his hip, Kidd knew he was glad none of his own could see the mortified look on his face. He was willing to suffer silently on their behalf, but was unsure if he could withstand doing so visibly, like being burned at the stake and not permitted to scream.
If there was an internal scream at that moment it was surely dispelled at the white colossus emerging from the distant trees. Sun with the striking power of lightning bounced off Virginia Dare’s alabaster chest and struck the Anchorites. Even at that distance she was nearly blinding, scouring color off the grass as she moved through it. Behind her came her wretched shriveled minions, as if the shadows of dead and dropped branches had come to life. Like scarecrows cursed with hinges they moved most morbidly, limbs jerking and stabbing solid ground they were no longer accustomed to.
Clumps of waxen butter clung to their bodies like armor and helmets. A few rolled entirely encased in it, cheese curds with the size and behavior of tumbleweeds. Muster and the others who had been to the bog recognized that Dare had not brought her entire force with her, perhaps half. They were roughly equal in number to the delegation stood outside the fence.
Clutched in the approaching statue’s hand was a chimney of Bickering Hall, the best handle on one of Cadavawing’s many severed heads. Was it truly the first one? Hart would know best; he had done the severing. Kidd knew it was supposed to be the one that looked most like their stronghold, and as it came into closer and closer detail she could see no deviations.
Despite their slow approach they arrived under the tree’s shade all at once, silent after they’d taken their final steps in the grass. Baking sun and distance had suppressed the spoiled milk permafrost smell of the bog bodies that suddenly pooled between the ranks of the young. Many switched to breathing through their mouths, only to find a low concentration of nevertheless foul taste, bad cheese licked out of the crevices of a wooden bench, mushroom pecked right out of the cow nostril it fruited in. Perhaps projectile vomit could be added to their meager arsenal.
It was no wonder Dare wasn’t bothered by it; the giant was close enough now to see the marble plugs inside her nostrils, the shallow plain of her inner ear, the missing tear ducts in the sculpt of her blank eyes. No life was left in this thing, only intent, the exact nature of which was unknown. The young knew hostility was an element, from experience, not just the stone bow and quiver slung across her back.
She stood high enough to swat the Franklin kite down without jumping, and the great clomping pedestal-halves stuck on the bottom of her dainty feet only robbed her of an inch as her weight sank into Anchor’s soft ground. Her posture, and her sealed lips, indicated she would not be starting this affair. Her grip on Wighthall’s head remained tight as the slither of a hidden red ribbon across his heart informed Muster it was time for his first line.
“Greetings to you, Miss Virginia Dare, and to yours.” There was a rasp of misuse in his voice. They haven’t asked his opinion in days, when they should be living by it. Right behind you Mustard. I’ve got your words in my journal. Whatever silence they force upon you I will reverse tenfold when the time comes. “I am Corporal Scudder Hart of Pilgrim’s Anchor.”
“I am Founder John Witherspoon, dear lady.”
“And I am Founder Edward Rutledge, at your service.”
“Thank you for undertaking the journey,” Muster said. A pause as he boxed, locked, and shelved a part of himself. “Now that you are here I can give you my most sincere apology for the nature of our last meeting. I was frightened, and I acted in haste. No more. We shall work together, the way man was designed by god to do, until the day we walk side by side back through the worldly gates of the Earth.”
Silence again, save for the shifting of the kite and the gentle touch of the leaves it knocked loose as they settled. Could she respond at all? Would these ink-black bodies have to come forward and snap themselves into the shape of letters? Finally, she moved, raising the arm that held Wighthall’s head.
“Yes, that looks the right one,” Rutledge said, squinting. “Thank you for delivering it to us.” She didn’t loose her fingers. “Might we have it?” The face couldn’t move, yet it expressed flippant amusement with a slight tilt. Up she tossed the head, indelicate, where it sent a ripple through the lower canopy. As it fell she drew her giant bow and nocked the ivory shaft of a man-length arrow. Before the Anchorites could even guess what the string was composed of she had loosed it, skewering the head through an upper floor window and nailing it to the trunk of the tree.
Harlequill bucked and Applecandy shuffled backward. Both horses whipped their necks back and forth indecisively. Such tin golems did not have nerves; their body language was entirely a response to the nervous clenching of Founder buttocks. Why had Dare handled it so roughly? Any sensitive materials stashed inside could have been destroyed by the piercing. They were far more valuable as leverage intact than in tatters.
“Go on and fetch it Corporal,” Rutledge ordered Hart. Dutifully the young man tore his eyes from Virginia’s blank marble and strode toward the tree, unsure how he would even unstick such a heavy arrow. Every step closer put his mind further elsewhere. How could he protect Bonfire, Blueberry, and everyone else from these mummies if they were allowed to come and go as they pleased? How to ward against betrayal? How to hide the Carve-Out from yet another party? How in Pursuitia was he supposed to-
“Muster!” Bonfire screamed. He turned his head and nearly lost it, the force all but wrenching it from his shoulders. A second arrow had flown. He tried to search for its target nearby, head still bobbing against his will. It bobbed down and he found it. Not the arrowhead. That was somewhere in the tree, just behind him. All he saw was the spear-shaft of it sticking out of his chest. Right through the heart. For half a thought he wondered why he didn’t yet know what it felt like. The answer and death introduced themselves together. Did they want him to do something? Protect someone in the beyond? He could; he knew he could. He was meant to safeguard strange worlds and their inhabitants. Bred for it, not by blood, but gently scratched out on his skin by the other pups of the litter, piled warm together and kicking.
All of the young felt it as a blow to the heart. They were brought to their knees, except Bonfire, who was already by his side, cradling his hanging face, trying to soak up his heat as it left his body. Anguished twisted screams escaped her, the sound of toes curling in her boots, the sound of a wife trying to speak to her beloved across the hardening veil. Her cries’ corkscrew character dug into her fellows, twisted them back to their feet, where they found they were already aiming their muskets at the Franklin kite.
The Founders thought too slow to wonder if the situation could be salvaged. Perhaps miscommunication was still a possibility, and the young should stand down, but they didn’t even have their horses under control, a terrible sign indeed, given that they only responded to their riders’ influence.
Dare shot from her bow again, but it was just a finger on the hand holding it, pointing an order for her bog bodies to attack. Shambling, lurching, jerking, the hollow fiends with eye sockets and mouths plugged a bad yellow progressed deeper into the shade. Their master turned and walked toward the trunk, to make sure her prey hung dead.
Never would she offer an explanation. To her, it was too apparent to even acknowledge. Virginia Dare was the first white child born in a new world. It was a singular honor. When they had left their village it was that honor that held everyone together. The same when that most magical word had been scrawled and cast them across realities: CROATOAN.
How one of her people had found it, she had never learned. They were too frightened to come forward and admit it, but it might have been innocent enough, found rolled up in a wormhole, recreated larger out of curiosity. A declaration was all it was, substantively. The truest name of Pursuitia, Evidentia, Wormland, as spoken by the Silhouettes in their native language. Twice now Virginia had been declared the first white child in a new world. Twice and forever. It was her title, written on her in stone after she led.
Yes, thank you for asking, Founders of Pilgrim’s Anchor, she was willing to take her proper place on any town’s best pedestal, but such posts had no room for two. Muster was both unnecessary and an insult, not half the first white child she was. She’d even gone all white, totally white, white as the rocks that gasped when they saw their creator. Muster wasn’t white compared to her. He was a fleshy peach. A tawny tangle of rug scrapings. He was dark as dust, and not even of the dust of the Earth.
Dare was reaching to grab a mourning Bonfire by the scruff and toss her aside when Private Blueberry Kidd shot her in the eye. The musket ball cracked and chipped her face. There was no healing a statue, but she had her townspeople, who could search the ground endlessly for every last speck of marble lost and glue it back into place. It was but surface damage, which she could take many times over across every facet and suffer no loss of mobility or strength.
Kidd sensed this, so she tried lightning next. A bolt launched from her bayonet, struck the stone woman like little more than a strand of blue twine. Mustard’s not gone. He’s alive, and growing, in my journal, in serene green. He made sure of it. Fight. Fight now so I can read him later.
The resolve was there, but not the firepower. She slung her musket away and charged at the Founders on their tin horses. Those two idiots were wasting their strongest assets on pomp, and they weren’t even doing that right, reducing the majestic beasts to roofing nails bent by fear, squeaky gate hinges about to drop their charges.
“Off!” Kidd ordered Rutledge, who actually took time out from his panic to glower at her, failing to ignite the usual flame of shame under her skin.
“How dare you!?” he growled.
“Off!” A swing of her musket’s stock collided with his shin so painfully that he threw himself backward off Applecandy. Blueberry couldn’t mount immediately, she had to pull out a charcoal stick, like dark chalk, from a pocket and sign her name to the declaration on the tin horse’s haunch. Otherwise it would not acknowledge her as rider. Rutledge wasted that precious time rubbing his shin and cursing, a luxury not afforded to the others as they wrestled with dark greasy ghouls.
The first volley of bolts failed to ignite any of them. Zap. Hiss. White smoke, but not even the glow of ember in the wound. None of the young could recall if they’d ever successfully lit cheese on fire. Their foes’ flesh was too coated in it, stifling flame. If only they’d had their hatchets, they could have empowered them with electric fluid, turning them into spinning saws, then tossed them up to bring down dry branches that would have been much easier to light and wield.
As it stood their best way of making fire was firing lightning into the tree itself, but that would kill it, and possibly everyone under it if great masses of flaming splinters were to fall. When they collectively looked down, away from that terrible idea, they saw gnarled dead hands reaching out.
A bolt leapt out of the kite, passing through a mummy’s head and collapsing it before it struck the channeling bayonet of another White Smoke, this one named Hancock. She pulled a trigger never meant to fire, energizing her blade and making it spin up into a whining, singing, silver circle. The lightest flick cut off an entire mummy arm. The hand still moved, crawling forward, dragging the bone like an unfurled snail, but the devils were bound to be less effective rent limb from limb.
Her neighbors witnessed her success and imitated her, but for general combat. White Smoke had a more refined purpose, which was to cover the retreat of her twin sister Dragonfly. Not a word had passed between them, but trust had and always would. In the course of spying on their father’s affairs they’d both channeled parts of him, cinching their spirits closer and closer together. When Dragonfly ran off White Smoke knew it wasn’t cowardly flight.
Meanwhile the tin juggernaut Applecandy barreled across the shade, its rider transforming it into a battering ram with the accumulation of speed. Virginia Dare sensed its approach, which forced her to toss Bonfire aside much more gently than intended. The statue needed that time to twist and grab the horse before it could knock her over.
Collision cracked her. Once again only surface layers were lost, but Applecandy kept at it, obeying the last order Kidd had squeezed into it with her thighs, which was to kick, buck, and kick again. Force of impact had thrown the rider forward; she had prepared herself. Dare’s neck was there to grab, allowing her to swing around and ride this other statue’s back while it clashed with her steed.
None of her weapons seemed any good. I’ve got her by the nape, but what could break it open!? One of her own arrows! Whether or not she was correct, she could at least empty Dare’s quiver from that position, making it more difficult for her to slay more of her friends at range. She tried to pull one of the marble shafts out with her free hand, found it extremely heavy.
Then the giants’ bowstring went taut against her back. Dare had pulled on the bow across her chest, hooked it around Applecandy’s thick neck to restrain it, and, intentional or not, also started crushing Blueberry against her shoulders. The enormous pressure squeezed the breath out of the girl, seemed also to take her very sight, vision washing purple and gray like a tub of laundry water dumped over her head.
Bonfire was torn, like her namesake under heavy wind, flame tips splitting in different directions. Muster needed her. Blueberry needed her. But only one of them could be helped. Hot stinging tears streaked down her cheeks; she sobbed and whined through gritted teeth. But the rest of her was moving.
Bog mummies descended on her with raised arms, trying to cover her with a spiderwebbed dome of crisscrossing fingers and elbows. Lightning struck before they could close the roof on it. Her bayonet sang itself to life. As if clearing weeds she knelt down and spun in a circle, blade chopping through every ankle. Bonfire was able to slip out from amidst their writhing, a fish out of the net.
From there a short distance to Dare, and to Blueberry asphyxiating on her back, arms already hanging over alabaster shoulders like locks of hair. Bonfire approached from the side while Applecandy still wrestled the statue. A strike with all her strength, with all the Franklin kite’s, did nothing against Dare’s leg except stop the bayonet dead.
Too powerful. So entrenched in their ways that she’d literally turned to stone. The idea had become an edict, the edict then edifice. How were they supposed to fight a societal tenet that could no longer be altered? Was it their place to simply bow down, because they hadn’t gotten to the world first, and let the elders choose when everyone died?
They’d already made that decision for Muster, crushed him under the weight of the gavel. Bonfire couldn’t let it happen to Blueberry too. The bowstring. Perhaps she could cut the bowstring. For that she had to circle around behind, but Dare became aware of her presence. Applecandy was pushed away, and before it could charge again the statue reached out for Bonfire.
She sometimes had the privilege of riding Harlequill, and had practiced in the obstacle course outside the stables, where Franklin kites often flew as a matter of experimental course.
There was an interaction that occurred when a tin horse kicked up, which the kite felt was identical to the raising of a bayonet. A bolt was issued, and the horse energized. This resulted in a shock to the rider, which she had once suffered, and which might have killed her had the saddle not served as partial insulation. Then the incident had nearly ended her a second time, Harlequill throwing her off with threefold the force she’d previously thought the construct capable of.
The young had kept this ability a secret from the Founders, in case they might find a use for it, though it seemed impractical to apply. Foresight had not revealed any situation where shocking the rider, to then have the horse flail more dangerously, would aid them, but regular sight revealed it to Bonfire just then.
Using her bayonet as a lure, she coaxed a bolt out of the kite, redirected with a swift motion and a tap on Applecandy’s flank. Crackling blue and white skipped across the artificial animal, heat sizzling in its pitted metal eyes. The additional strength made no difference to the orders inscribed upon it, clarified by Kidd. It tackled Dare again, but this time it kicked up big wads of soil with every clop and cracked the statue’s whole chest on impact with a sound like ceramic-armored knights jousting.
Dare was nearly toppled backward. Kidd would’ve been smashed under her weight. Finally able to circle around, Bonfire made sure this couldn’t happen by spinning up her bayonet once more and slicing the bowstring. Freed, barely conscious, Blueberry slid down Dare’s back and was spared twisted ankles when she was half-caught by Bonfire.
The girl was about to rouse Blueberry with the trembling slap of her hand, accomplished instead by her hot tears pelting her friend’s cheek. Kidd’s eyes stopped swimming as all of her came up for a breath. Together they rose, stepped back, readied their weapons for another go at Virginia Dare.
The statue had won her bout with Applecandy however, the penultimate blow a punch across its tin jaw that knocked it to its forward knees. From there the child of Roanoke wrapped both giant arms around the horse’s entire midsection, lifting it off the ground with awing strength, swinging it over her head, and slamming it down with cratering force right in front of the two girls.
Its tin legs still thrashed when Dare’s pedestal foot stomped on its chest. Even if it rose again, it no longer had the correct direction to move without a rider guiding it. Cracked eyes loomed, narrowed on Bonfire and Kidd. Blank as they were, the pair could see the rage in the chips, the glazed glare brought into sharp relief by the damage that had transformed her face into a more accurate pattern of brittle, shattered, and yet cutting emotion. Dare’s intention to snatch them both up and bang them together like cymbals until dead was frighteningly clear.
Then Dragonfly Hancock proclaimed liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof! Duh-rong! Duh-rong! So tolled the Liberty Bell!
While her sister covered her escape she had gone back to the main gates and been let in by High Water. From there she’d run straight to Independence Hall, shouting the entire way that Dare had betrayed them! Dare and her undead attacked! Doubtful as the Founders were of anything their children said, there was no mistaking her sincerity when it had powered her to the center of Pilgrim’s Anchor in seconds, fast as the wind with the whip cracking behind it. She was in full uniform, equally immersed in her rank, and her declarations were heard as seriously as every report of the muskets and buzz of streaking electric fluid. Doors were opened to make way. Stairs were cleared. Dragonfly made it to the tower and gripped the bell pull as if it was her very life.
And she pulled. This was their final line of defense, their one and only weapon that was endlessly effective against the Bickyplots. The declaration wrought on its metal predated their transfer between realms, and was thus unaffected by preexisting measures of their enemies meant to hobble new arrivals. The Liberty Bell was why Bickering Hall could make no assault on Pilgrim’s Anchor with blunderbusses and shacklerams and ‘hunting dogs’. Its toll caused them great agony, and would always drive them away.
If the Bickyplots were not so securely entrenched in their own stronghold, mostly by longstanding enchantment, the humans might have put the bell on wheels and brought it to their gates as battering ram. The risk of it breaking upon crossing into their deeded lands was too great however, thus more than two decades of stalemate. Thus the entire second generation, one of whom now repeated the most noble sentiment the first ever conjured out of their cynical hearts.
That repetition proved Private Blueberry Kidd was right, and just in time to prevent her from resorting to the unmarked rod in their battle with Dare’s bog dredgings. It had been on her arm for the whole affair, but given the last time she’d used it in combat it had attached and never let go, she didn’t want to know its intentions for the rest of her body. Her hand was stayed when the bell declared, the wave of its sound visible once it struck Virginia Dare and carried with it a froth of her white dust.
Everywhere she cracked, and no longer just on the surface. Freedom struck deep, digging for wells of decency in the dry, evil bed of her statement-spirit. When it found nothing she forced the next toll to dig deeper. Applecandy escaped out from under her; she lost a foot in the process.
Again and again Dragonfly rang the Liberty Bell, providing ample opportunity for the young to witness how every faction on the battlefield was affected. The mummies were not spared. In lieu of cracking their flesh deformed and collapsed, especially on the head. Waves of freedom flattened their face one way, as if they were clay suffering the pressure of a giant thumb, then the other way when it rang out again. Soon they were convulsing on the ground, curling up more and more, into tight black balls that squeezed bog butter of their seams as they lost what little air they’d trapped in their dead lungs and orifices.
It’s true. It’s true, it’s true, it’s true. The Founders cannot pontificate their way out of it now, now that they’re hearing it in a tone that can’t be ignored. She already knew it was true from her time in the Bickering realm, but to see it play out was so much more profound, only not intoxicating in its vindication because it was soaked in the despair of her best friend’s fate.
The Bickyplots were not harmed by the Liberty Bell because they were monsters; it was because they were monstrous. The instrument proclaimed liberty, warding off and dispelling what was not conducive to that same goal. Under that logic any oppressor, be they Bickyplot or human, would suffer in its exacting toll.
Virginia Dare, as the woman who wound up in Pursuitia, in what she more correctly called Croatoan, would’ve heard it as nothing more than a bell. Now that her colony had calcified, stubbornly resisted death, sunk into the land they tried to master, and now killed to maintain her position in a society that barely existed, she was the same sort of creature as the twisted Bickyplots. Her evil was theirs, the evil of turning what did not belong to them into belongings. Over time the harm of these evils was compounded, and the form of her people more shaped by it: the deforming hammering blows of a diabolically industrious blacksmith.
Duh-rong! One of Dare’s shoulders crumbled out of place. The statue was on her elbows and knees, such an alien pose for something chiseled to stand tall, like a wilted mountain. Bonfire could not allow the Liberty Bell to have the final blow. Dare’s head hung as if brought low by a fatiguing stream of vomit, spilling only the giant arrows out of her quiver in a clatter. Bonfire leapt forward and heaved one of them off the ground, turning it on its master.
Mighty shout, mighty thrust. And all at once the arrow’s head became another’s. Chalky chunks of marble bouldered each other on their way down. They didn’t get to rest upon the grass, not yet, for another wave of liberating strength passed through the shade of the stalwart tree. It did nothing to the young but invigorate them, like a breeze from behind, like a buoying wave, a pat on the back from the elemental of life. The motes of dust and the pulverized pieces that had been Virginia Dare were blasted out of the shade into the harsh sun. Bog mummy bodies, now as dry, deflated, and twisted as worms baked on rocks, were blown as if they weighed nothing, taken on the wind, as close as they could now come to embracing a life of true freedom. Husks of dead seed, they were soon gone.
And it was not their total destruction that forced the Founders to face their failures. It was the ringing in their ears. Later they would learn that on her first pull Dragonfly had cracked the Liberty Bell. It was still in one piece, for now, but in the shadow of its brokenness the young could see it was not due to Hancock’s rough handling. The Liberty Bell expressed its disappointment, its sorrow over those who had long benefited from its free speech falling into the ways of tyranny.
Independence Hall had been somewhat artificially buoyed, when it came to proclaiming liberty to all the inhabitants. The slaves brought with them had been freed, on paper, and in Pursuitia things done on paper always counted. Impure motives on the Founders’ part did not lessen the liberation felt by those long-suffering under the dehumanizing yoke.
But many years had passed. The Founders had not done much for liberty lately. One could not just repeat the word, or point out how at one old avenue they had bravely said it themselves. A dark age is always risked if the tools of liberty are dropped for even a moment. Those who tire of toiling should step aside, not step up and tell others how best to use what was rightfully theirs.
No longer. As Kidd foresaw, the white elders were becoming entrenched in their cruelty toward the world they had infiltrated. The disease wanted to spread, and was raging most feverish in its encysted failure to do so. Without anything to eat, digest, propagate within, they were just stagnant globs of infectious pus. Without spread they had no pretense, no way to claim their violence was progress, and they were their furthest from liberator status.
The cracked character of the Liberty Bell was the woe of mankind in the grip of hostile powers. None were more trapped in that vice than the powerful. Now the sound of freedom pained them. They could not bear to hear the words in any voice but their own. Nor could they understand how they, who had fought for their own rights to live as they chose, could ever be expected to humbly pass that torch. It had to be earned, didn’t it? Never mind that if that were true, it then had to be won from an oppressor, and who withheld it?
“Silence it!” Founder Rutledge demanded, pelvis the summit of his body upon the ground, mud on his dress uniform created from ropes of his own drool. “Make it stop!”
“Why has God forsaken us!?” Witherspoon added in chorus, having fallen off his own tin horse. It stood idly by, an upright toy in a dark chest alongside all the other tin soldiers. “Free us from this unholy clamor!”
The young thought the same. Echoing howls of the other Founders behind the fence arose from Independence Hall and were almost as loud as the bell itself. Dragonfly had not ceased her ringing. Why would she? Look at them. How alien they are, tormented by our liberation. None of the young moved to assist Rutledge and Witherspoon, instead forming a circle around them, trying to wrap their heads around everything that had just happened.
Hate welled and roiled. How dare their creators feel such pains? Nature or not, it hardly mattered. The downtrodden had no obligation to assist the boots. Nothing would be lost in their passing, worse, many things gained. If not for the drafted enchantments on all the muskets, barring them from doing harm to the Founders, the two present likely would not have made it back into Pilgrim’s Anchor. Killed in battle, the report would say, and not one pen among the young would contradict it. Legacy can be stored in objects, but they are shepherded, secured, and preserved by the people.
As they suffered Bonfire and Blueberry went back to the tree trunk, where Muster Hart hung limp, just as alien as the Founders’ suffering. Everyone, in their own way, for good and for ill, acted as if his life was the one that mattered most in Pilgrim’s Anchor. If he had lived much longer perhaps he would’ve become the statue that the people looked to. Then he could not have been pierced so easily, by weapon or by his lover’s needle that had so easily found the soft tissues of his heart before.
Together they freed him, drafting from battlefield scraps a notice that declared the marble arrow dislodged from the tree, as it had gone too deep for them to pry loose by hand. Gently they slid him down onto the roots, eyes empty of all light but the worming speckles that made their way through the canopy. A word, his last, lay curled in his open mouth, calcifying now that it would never get to emerge.
Bonfire swept her hand across his face, closed everything so he would know it was time to rest. His parasite knew its job was done; the red ribbon of Lee slithered out of his clothes and into the air. It avoided one of Bonfire’s falling tears, but it couldn’t escape her snatching talons. Vicious, seething, grief straining between her teeth like extruded curls of metal, she shredded the Founder’s property into a hundred pieces.
If that’s not the first act of open rebellion it was me bashing Rutledge on the shin. We’re doing it now. Down goes the veil over our contempt. I don’t think we can hold it together until the Carve-Out without Mustard. But I can. I have to. It’s what he would have of me. Kidd’s tears flowed as well. She was emotionally numb, the sorrow finding its avenues all over her body as her skeleton shook, her tongue crushed itself against the roof of her mouth, and cold seeped down her flesh. She had to look away in the hope some of it would stop.
That was when she saw it, still pinned to the tree. The first head of Cadavawing Wighthall. The way back into Bickering.
The Clinging Ivy of Muster Hart
Blueberry,
but we will
for now,
Our trail together ends here, as I am imprisoned in metal, having taken the form of an iron in the Founders’ fire. You understand this better than the others, for where their walls imprison me they have always banished you. Our mission continues with this passage , and I promise I am fully present in spirit, as this ink will grow to show, hopefully into a garden tribute to our friendship,
and to what I’ve left unsaid.
the unstoppable
the perfect the incredible
Please take care of Bonfire the radiant for me. I wish for her to pass me by,
living a life
full enough for two.
for her not to linger on what we’ve lost, and so will not give her these green tidings and blessings as I give them to you alone . Whether you are elected or not, you are now the leader of our generation, as you have seen the camps of the enemy, and are the only one who bears both the knowledge of two worlds and a golden heart. There is nothing you cannot do but what you are unjustly denied, and all that I have already done, behind locked door, written in a hand that has held yours,
and does so
across worlds
With love and trust,
your companion Mustard
Blaine Arcade 