(estimated reading time: 53 minutes)

Where!?

Bick to Backering. Excerpted thim thes timed companyions further brainded than long-gated Wagonher. Kudd’s thirst chewse on helpupping Bonelyre Pinned und Crowize add just two L-swears askneaded. Butt in thair shees whizn’t arse inclined ass she umed. Backended to Wick snuffered taughaut aghen, lessoned lake treadwaters, downd lake drugging in whine.

Wagonher encompassed a pointy all-in belt, wagnered Knowrth the way to tavendor’s keyp, iffin it haddocked otherplatz on staggburred drunk ledggs. Theire might be founded and won ormbinous avoid: hole filled with punch that used to were the bodd of Hamsandcans Glammount. Asquerying locales how two reconvict themtwain was her gaol, a seedcret to be retilled in Pursuit of grown pease.

“Thingk what you want!” Kladd whollered, tryning tworient here frends. “Two thingk is two taughaut, witches wawk us thataway.” Odd threesteps on even went wellies for Bubbles Karp, but waisle world she rounded sheseen sum absenses not eyebawled for. Crowize and Bonelyre gone to missing, iteraplaced by callem columns abovout the grounding. “What are yon doowdling? Draw down tosand march! Chew fat must we, on the side of locales who knowknow the layered land topmidbottom!”

Froem Croweyed summit no aensir came deiwn; Bonelyre voiced heard of words dierected at inherself and Bickering she trytwixt on her ingfing.

“Can I thing the any? If eye can deed then molded Mustard wrung from dirt can weld to me betrothedly. It’s the real ham if I porsin it up to proper ortions. Then all hizzizz mine. Other words grave on stone, heregh blanked the seemingtary intumeer rock gar dens. Izenz rizin recalliber life on aloan. Such are the hard trymes we had in reaping fields of plots, Bicky and sticky as their deathleast restbed.

Unwise, Kuld knew this curse of acshouldn’t to be husband and life. A copygolem she mighty make, convincerating to memhery, but not more handed than an illusion wriskt. Tearing her eyes wayawords her convictioned husbody could be impassabl y cruel. Blurbear’s friend had to be recused from her self-courtship, quick plus.

Waxner whacks fastest at handle. She choked up on necklece hundtight and gave it breezeth by test swing and not a miss. Haxway through she taughaut it how to halve an axhead’s woulds. Mettalicly it’d seens the fortress fort ee trease. Test wheeled successful, Bleeburied her wepintension inside Bonelyrespire’s siring side.

Outcrackst no spill of reproduced manterial, premassured lumberjackulation instud repeeling barked landing to a show of Bonelyre en core. Extract sellf the newcomher deed, also newcoming to her seenses when eyeberries plucked Blue from background Bickerbush. They them joyned hands to handle with Waggin wristwist teethering to prevent furthurting law says.

Crowize stilt needed reunionized; to get her they sidled and took opawsit endles of Wagx and mentallied sharp the taughaut blade. Stryking bothwise timburdened the flooreign with Crowize eff fort to defence in dreams. Waresas Bonelyre dreamlized rebuilt romanster, the Lenape gearl bored in dreamed tranquilts of misty peacefulls of deFounded nachurning. Shrung kenned animulls adornabled her shoalders, grazing her combs of hayr, bleatpurring and squeachiring in hammocked ears. Twixt early crafted in call’em deumeter was world unspoilt by any privy-us gerianation.

Nore ward as goods as the realed in thing, shewhitch could haven if she got her head on straight out of the crowds. Rusty friends brushed corrotion from upper menagerie, dis-solving happymals to the hair they breathed.

“I thanked we’d won,” Crowize cried to thay. “I thanked it was over easy.”

“No funny eggdeas in the hatch yet,” BlunderKlod corrested. “Ormbinous blacking ovids we’re carting after horseeng aroundworld. Erstfound probe lemme laidback denicitizens of this Bickerepublic; any wise should knowtify us frendly interested if workers righting eggzistances have a function ideal.” Thrice grails onlooked plateaudinous surveillands uneven tfully.

“Ize don’t spy bodies any,” Crow mmented. “Isle taughaut and land one closer to port.” Hardened thingkey took crank mygrains levelered by fingpairs to Crownd temples, butting in before the cycloning could hap pen cread Kreadd stallopped her. Her better ideus deigned to sturb disless kicks the hornets’ piecefull hive, core eckly guesting was rude without invistation gates.

Politaris inderected a compassted device from littler taughauts picked up awf undistirbt. Them took turns on coggs braining gears to listentent. Ore, ient. Dirt, ect. Folloan, aother beengs near nuff to by at low prize. Not just any dayold zeropence, Kleaderd made sure on the fingishing tutch: a smarting Bick basketing the bushelled ansirs andsdames weknead.

Completedly screwtopped circ, lets it do its pur poses by leaning backs to it. Blackpitched needsle maidens from meretwig spun scratch undernosey glasses threelled. Atfirst dedent work the doohick, banged or knot on its handied face. Momentsous requisitired to calib rate outoften one tarredget in particles ular read. Witsout fullstopping it gave them a heading write wit dry black pen cilled on windoes to vicstory.

Following pitcil’s lead, treKKKed CCChildren BBBoldfirely, leafing ashrubben the nayture of a trail to coalwalk way back their if taughauting entrapinchance didna work. The compasstime whent jurrniedly, many and maul oneders ignorted in faevore of meating up a head that could explain as dayall it better. Lining straight stepisodes reran the boring show dethree sired.

Ovurned down a hill tiring to climate: air pleascented a clam before their storming, clearly shell containing a hoeinahandonaheartunahead. Gardentenderizing. Keeping a veg-table furnished long enough to growning seams a miracle toman hues under the accustoms of Bickwater breatholds. Y trhy it? Y naught dreamp vegup by taughaut roots? Twuzz ownly one of their uncountioned quests.

Stowring compassable in sighte’s out, Kindredd ledhers to ardentgound, care full to lightstep on suneatery harinvested row to artistroke to row. Families of iar all sosteppton Anchorfooted, as the tabled veg re lly minded them of horrticultic orrorders from the BicklingPot kitch, if purifried in heaveny oil. Growing to finita Pursuit monsterrotted ivything from creeplants to animalmatters.

Humdinged the farmher and cowquivalent bell neckept to curbd pasturization: “O dilly Dailly in tribed hardwort, to keep my tearywaterin short! Hmmding, hmmmding.”

“Execute us for interpretasting,” Burrby lodged, “Aprail us May pluck a questonion from your per infected gardenias?

“O?” the farmher songstopped. “Per infected my pus! Taughauting popullutes vox to pox! Notaspot in Ouraura Valley that izzin per infectius. Howing witta hoe by these handsies slow is what is makes ItI mmune to per. Imper is the gown rown down me plowfeet heer! Fruiting with veg is but benefit sides gutfelt.”

“We two (three) know rewording hard works; that it took to urn oursinders scatterwinded to fertoilize yours. Nextus clI’ming steep izhour sweation quest, postmarked at densdination. Yuicy, evesweevad uv bad sonsdown borrowed byway o’ Bickerbasket. Fapples allen from this bickset methingks arstill rounning rund: youish yaebig and emptreed of sub stances gone legged all the way in Pursuit pants.

Woodo yoo knoo happening orbaments saidasuch? Have scenes of any you can spark to in eye-speakles?”

“Odir, thor under my side,” spakde the farmher. “Buried the like solefully” Taughauting witholden hand crackin whipsmarts, farmher traiformed othertool to brothertwol: shortbreed and strikin. Shove ull done it as neebee, bites of drite wunn at teetime. “O kaymabout while my manners was lost, lies it took history plays. Knot haven sereen him sensed, coldgnaw bear to look oon it for loong.

Greener the theem on hissing thumb, my stalk sirpent up urgizz offlact to underhandefeated winnters. A spring in his tempt unleased on stair aisle plods his own, greetn cloudburst, plants herded a rune the valleyant. Holeds waiter to put thathing in his grounding, and thatsits what’s dune by me mogully.”

Visitourists threeled to smiele her two bootscents on it, K,B, and C didgnaw interface wither unbickering of the double-emptied bowlb. Black dowming was the fearlsty sighn of it, still treasheure burhuggied years and yeeaars on,no rottons of waight inoroutside. Shoved dulled her last; uppity popped ormbinous void in preflight hatch sealed.

Feathureless as, a dependant bell rang in BeCK’s head unyt noneless and the allmore. A Bicky too plotted aground, justase the farmher’s beaustrung, nocked loose, shot, and lost manners: Puddlewine Culpabilgety. Dodds connectethered shorets togethim. BeCK knewanew. Whelln dumped into ill Pursuited, Puddlewine was rip tout. Ormbinous void was left behimd on loanshe.

“That saddles it,” winnied K of BeCKlan. “Ivery witnissat knoxt door to anonther smuch voyd the lass time I stoppered in to exammer in the dranks. Eleavin morare out there forkt our good pluck. We must bunch the gagglether and reunyt them to propeler cores. Farmher, you will have yore lawst mann relivquished ByCK’s judgmeant.”

Ode vherjoyed, farmher taughaut trinklets of bobblecrops to adoren her fixherupher vovum. Vested in with vale, she drunk dancened waltz to waltz sircles with sircle en herms. Lovely ter rain it was, butt in BeCk’s mined voice they painted out in sharp derails the blacklock hands of death. A note her world’s time was of thessence.

“No nsense!” the farmher luvvered middance. “Your threet don’t slavfar to gole. My manner’s blemiss hung hiergh willed to fill on order, that or derv givings from dinpartners on the firsty bite of lieef on Bick. Ring his ell and back his barber to fix the heirs in his heady foem. You can uzilize yoar rope to afford the gap inkremen tally.”

“Rowpe?”

“Yoar yettorrow shoulde” Summat refrence Wagonher swilthered to attent proudlean. farmher then wasn’t cowling himanimal, more of an objection undher ByCK’s judgmeant. Both are neither orn, K real-eyed. Taaughauting brings to lief and deadends to itaumn. Wagonher was in deeds a rowpe if she warnted him tube, and that tool.

“We down to understand howle,” B asshawmed.

“Keyp onend angered here, and ire out to the boonyweld, where loost thread touched nose its way back throughwn sneeziz airiginal. Character lies here, at the anger, aware it is bjust peace curiolooking beyonder, ownly a lifeline of tresspassage.”

“Button on his lips quiyet too close,” K addled. “Hardy tickle the nose, narvy a reach allaround.” When she heard her sheshell she bought the angler and trawled uprize memstory. Wagonher gottened looooonger passaging through the I of the need. The looooooooooooooonger he shunted the dore, the looooooooooooooooooooooooooooonger he picked nose Bickerwise in Purquarria.

It wood lifesaver a tossed drowner, freeing propertied flotsam too dr-owned. The Bickerers wood gate through better than they Wagnered, and welcomoremuch back than deservetd.

“Lookonger, thar he grows!” K demonstated toB and froC. “Tugs of war on batting twin feelds will home run batween bases.

“No firner treet to tophisknot than my missty-I’d manners,” farmher pledged tall, yaehigh on the ormbinous void conflading anvil andan tivillain. “Lead my jack’s goldpot back to get geld by him her’s farmplements forup and abandisowning his homes squared.” Heftying plow to shares, shreatened PoorWhine not yet revivisited.

foursum wombin their unvessealed plan in chalves relying over umbilicord homestead of discardealing it out of the noWagginher patch. Whighle leapers jumpcorded doggertail headbanding togethem voided, plan C’s saw took the girls’ instructures on where to build a gater in the fense, whathershaid featuring de and re tails from compassing memories of rungbells.

Taughauting mechaniacly precized her history diggering dock for shov’ll aims. Wag was knot fixed, but fixing knots loose poored by BiCK’s distracts as they were watch-thing farmher makings of gateity. Her digs pulled more digs aninew, scrunching on landed gently nough not to ripull. Meadows bunched flowing bouquets, evening pulling back day stream to turned fish headswimming backstroke.

Hoerisin’ to hoerisin’ the farmher scrunched lit Bick,erring nun. Ownly moon she rosed from bush was cut twist thworlnds. Astill it held its liqueer shape through which BoCK stunkenly drumbled down blunder. How cood they misses hoem wheknit got practickled to follow its callusing. Throuw it cambridge loongwinded blow BuCKdoes sworn sentcloaks in Purr suits: bevilious doctore dinks, crunched light ‘n’ crackle, aftertasting of spillgrilled blackenehearts buttlered and rolled under the tabells.

Brokering afixed Wag-to-her Keest, CK securitied the chains towin’ the day and the bettered ange of their naychure. Farmher promissed on her manners she woodent shed duties to halve and holed untall thirt yyns realed in and landed authentic inspices. Strongworked handsed Wagged and tied stumpenvoid.

“Tone vicstory!” B arced.

“Two freedoms kinged byway queens,” C rowed.

“Three pathweigh scales to home,” K lucked into a free of no charge tailed bi additious expatlorers.

Herse before cart rattled cobbs more than an ullstone’s throw awate dor to or. Tripping returned looonger, and as Kilnd burn mussled thiends backending she seared che skies otherwordy four aspects mirred in her self’s righteousnessts. Whipped withinds gusto, obscared away manymuch phan Toms Andy laithed shadoes.

What flashee flickaught this tryme was nother innother set platces; it was voloids familyer, berrows where Berried Kidds long agrown, Foundered and plucked out. Feets echoed receipts in print in its immaterial, identypified in the know of Kidding. In what they now passed her renters pad traipsled.

Orphantom… or no mad roundabout it at all. No mad, amung themotions pumping steel thore harty pipes. Justase shed been she’d by renters pa st, mirred selves hadshad a shingle sared word of sire: freebooter. BootwastheirKidd’s word too. Boot free she would, not dom but smart, reeding through pasths most blinding tothers.

Not for rents, Blubbnomere Kandd. Winds at her back crossed her all ways cept double, raisining her as the snow bald hairlines downhail. Knowbody freer, she realed with ayes. Free as themerald thanks of inky Musterd, to growld as one’s owne’s intenderize. Renters pa ss d own nuth.

She fellt hands on her shoal, push backing to their missiong from acshun. The handcarv made out her moussis whole. Wagdangled string strong enough was to getting ther hair. Portookal three Anchorlings and embattered them ones against, out of the frying brainpane and into the fiars with catching Wigck.

Tickle by the looserun threadt, Backplots.

Tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tick,tickle!

Liberty Bell

Back in Pursuitia, a fretting Eggnonce Chattelpool kept pacing back and forth in front of the frothy color of the portal. The plucked goblin-bird perched in his antler-cage flew in circles, twisting its umbilicus, squawking unintelligibly. No matter how many times the Bickyplot whipped his cloak away from his legs he couldn’t find the freeing sensation he desperately rummaged for in an intellect that previously felt spotless and was now a thieves’ attic after an earthquake.

No Bickyplot had stepped foot back in their home world even once since their emergence, innately sensing that it would destroy what they had become, which to their avaricious hearts was death regardless of whether or not the body kept walking. To get the specimens for his menagerie and to lure out hunting dogs they had used bait on long poles, done infrequently to minimize risk, same as the forging of the thirteen locks that required all of their participation to open.

How had his little test animal done it? She and her cohorts were already in Bickering by the time he puzzled it out. Back when she’d been his prisoner, just before her escape, he’d caught her trying to hide a piece of the shape-shifting wood they’d sampled from home, again with a long pole, that time a scraper.

The experience had left him temporarily unconscious, and upon waking and finding her gone he had assumed she’d simply fled Bickering Hall. Lord Cadavawing had proclaimed otherwise. She’d been where she shouldn’t have, naughty thing. The wood must have worked as a key to each and every lock; that’s what she had in her hand when she returned. None of that mattered now, only what she was getting up to in there. How to get her out? The longest pole yet!? Perhaps he could build some sort of diving bell…

“Think, think, think!” he ordered himself, breaking off another antler tip to gouge more notes into the wall beside the gateway. He turned with it raised overhead like a knife and faltered, for there stood the three humans he’d lost. They stared back, but no, the Bickyplot saw. Blank distant eyes. Cheeks that temporarily forgot the taut tug of emotion. Stunned they were, by their transition between realms.

How fortuitous that his weapon was already poised to strike at Blueberry’s idle neck. With an epiphany screech he swung it down, only for an overlooked serpent to unspool from behind her head. The Bickyplot saw it too late: the furry python wrapped around her waist, guarding her head, its temporarily infinite body extending back through the portal.

Wagner lunged with lightning speed, correct in its presumption of its paralyzed master’s will. The anatimal’s blunt end wrapped around a bar of Chattelpool’s head. From there might have begun a tug of war resulting in the towering Bickyplot overpowering the hound’s tail, but combat was not the goal, connection was.

The whipping colors of home spiraled up the anatimal from the point of contact, an aurora water spout eager to fill the bowl of Eggnonce’s head. His bird-brain went instantly hoarse in its terrified scream, attempting to flee out the back, only able to fly until its cord lost slack. A moment later the bright shifting froth of Bickering’s substance touched the birth-defecting flesh of a Bickyplot.

And there was an explosion, of sorts. And liberty was declared, in a way. Understanding was attained, and fully so.

A giant hand on Blueberry’s face finally encouraged her spirit to resurface, faster than her friends who hadn’t swum those waters before. Instinctively she flinched, a snap of a nightmare detonating in her imagination: the shadow of all Bickyplots fused into one grabbing her with every claw to place her on a shelf prison for all time.

But the hand was caressing her cheek. Softly. With a supple warmth, as if a bucket of cream had overturned, transformed into an adorable animal, and run over to lick her face. Kidd’s eyes focused, still unable to find details. They were gone, erased by the explosive reverse metamorphosis of Eggnonce Chattelpool the unnaturalist.

The enemy she knew so well was gone, and as she looked upon his fresh glory she found the thorns in her memories of him crumbling away, awash in a tide of pity, for what now stood in his place was the radiance of a path righted, a pinprick of light found in a labyrinthine cave then swollen to become the sun.

What had been a slender mound of surgical gadgets of torture and stringy flesh was now a figure of liquid light, cast in the boisterous bobbing of a pastel sea, crowned not by a cage of wicked, hooking, grasping antlers but a pin cushion of godly golden rays. Replacing his face was a yellow-gone-white collapsed nexus of solemnity, righteous regret, and forward compassionate thought.

“Blueberry,” it spoke, her ear massaged in the same fashion as her cheek. The voice could melt ice into into butter. “You have saved me, and you have my eternal gratitude.”

“Who,” she rasped, finding her first word in the overturned drawer of her mind, “who are you?” Bonfire and Crow Eyes began to blink rapidly, putting their native world back together piece by piece. They hadn’t been immersed nearly as long as Kidd the first time around, and would not be subject to many days of confusion.

“I am what became a Bickyplot. I was lost, but you have tied a string to home and looped it around my finger.” From his calm explanation Blueberry reassembled everything that had happened in the other world, like turning a dream into a puzzle box to construct a memory.

Inside they had been briefly slowed by Bonfire and Crow Eyes getting wrapped up in Bickering’s nature, where thought quickly and easily became reality, where intent was enough to initiate a military campaign against natural law. She’d had to free them from columns they’d encased themselves in and filled with fantasies, Bonfire the return of Muster and Crow Eyes a natural Eden free of the Founders.

Once back on track they had found the equivalent of a farm, the land worked by a local. Hovering in her field was a black void, a placeholder, like the one Kidd had seen before. That was where a Bickyplot belonged, where it had been ripped out of the world.

Through conversation with the farmer they had even identified who fit that void, none other than the groundskeeper Pumpwine Cult-On-Sea, whose transformation had caused him to abandon the spouse with whom he worked that plot. Kidd’s perception penetrated, skewered her memories of the soil-soiling Bickyplot. In his spiritual and physical deformity he’d conflated the love of his life and the land he used to cultivate, resulting in the debauchery of a creature that seemed to lust after the dirt.

All of them must have been twisted this way. Eggnonce was likely a physician or perhaps a veterinarian, Spywulph a woodsman, Licketysplit a shy youth, and so on. Thoughts of saving them all slotted into another realization, this time her method.

Wrapped about her arm without triggering the unmarked rod in any way was Wagner, garbed in the ethereal air of Bickering. The anatimal was the key, so the farmer had told them before affixing one end of the dog’s tail to the stationary void. Time and space flowed at unique rates in each world, so when something elongated passed through it often became longer to accommodate without severing. This worked with poles, ropes, chains, vines, and as they’d now thoroughly demonstrated, anatimals.

Thus Wagner had grown longer after their first foray. Thus it could now become as long as they needed, while it was tied down on the other side. The connection also made Wagner a conduit, its coat a foothold for the aura of the other world to cling and climb like a rapid moss. One touch reunited the Bickyplots with their native lands, returned them to their original forms.

“Good luck with the others,” the angelic striding wonder that been Chattelpool told her. Apparently remaining there was so unpleasant that he didn’t want to linger to assist. Using Wagner as a guideline, never separating hand from tail, the former Bickyplot strolled past her and vanished into the portal, never to darken the world of Pursuitia again, aware as he was of what would happen should he blunder into that particular passage.

“Get your heads out of the clouds soldiers,” Blueberry instructed the other girls. “It’s time to put them all behind us.”

“My head feels upside down,” Crow Eyes complained, rolling it on her shoulders.

“And my upside down feels like a head,” Bonfire added.

“Worry the worlds later,” was Kidd’s order, punctuated by her holding up a glowing loop of Wagner. “This is all you need to know! Run and tell everyone that the Bickyplots are no more with but one touch of Wagner!” Run they did, at a slant that scraped the wall, successfully righting themselves after a few hallways each.

Blueberry wrapped Wagner around herself several times more before charging forth in search of prey, so that she might trip them with her snare, inject them with enlightenment. She was a predator of world-invading colonies, a much-needed hot poker for embedded ticks. The chaotic din of battle told her her targets were spread out across the manor, but the further she went the more line she would lay, the more inescapable her web would become. Was that Lady Hissmidge howling? Why not follow that to start?

It was her, reacting to something felt by all remaining Bickyplots. The moment Chattelpool had reverted from devilish deviance to dynastic decency the others had sensed it, felt it crawling in their flesh, bumping blindly into the parts of them that were not flesh, less painful yet more frightening than the torment of the Liberty Bell.

Each reacted in their own way, none understanding what the trigger actually was. Hissmidge shrieked, waved her arms, lifted her drooping paintbrush head to an even more unsettling angle, and ran around in the abject terror of a shaken hen house.

Middlebitch came running, hoping to destroy whatever caused that feeling swiftly. Xylofont and Godswallop cowered, allowing Fool’s Gold Floyd to free himself from their clutches. Lady Devalming abandoned her shackleram, giving Edward a chance to break free. Wighthall sucked his uvula back into his head so it could assist in shouting for help, which gave just enough ground for Honey to slip out and flee the meat locker.

Everywhere the Anchorites rallied. Lenape and Freed began to pour in from the collapsed facade. Franklin kites cruised from room to room, zapping skittering hearts now that they had been adjusted to seek smaller and lower targets. Bonfire and Crow Eyes had, in a matter of minutes, informed their forces of the secret weapon currently worming its way throughout the manor, making use of dead ends by leaving lengths of Wagner behind. The bog mummies were quickly subdued as well, once their generals were distracted in panic. What blackened bodies weren’t smeared into the hardwood and cobbletile fled into the surrounding forest on gangling lolloping limb like half-dead spiders on a tilted plank.

“I’ll kill every last one of you!” Lady Middlebitch Flaywood snarl-shouted, booted feet thundering through the halls, curtain-cloak flapping behind her as would the lobes of a shredded organ. “Twist off your heads to let some air in! Let your blood ferment and then wet my whistle! then I’ll eviscerate your-“

They would never learn what she would eviscerate, as she rounded a corner and was doubled over by a waist-high stretch of Wagner across a doorway. Middlebitchitude and Flaywoodiness exploded forward off her in a swirling oily dust cloud that was gone a second later. Something new and something old stood up in its place, held onto the anatimal tightly with both hands.

Without her venom she had no words at all. In actuality, in her truest, she was a demure creature that liked to sit in tower windows and opine in poetry, observing the animals below not as quarry, but inspirational ingredients for verse. Silently the enlightened and brightened thing followed Wagner deep into Bickering Hall, waving politely at the tiny humans with their big wonder as she passed. Bickering welcomed her home.

Her brethren were less set on confrontation, having enough presence of mind to spot Wagner’s threatening aurora sheen and retreat, only to turn and find a fence of bayonets leveled at them. Bumbling Xylofont and Godswallop tried to back away from the Anchorites and Wagner at the same time, smacking into each other and falling over onto the tail. The humans had to look away from the flash, beautiful as it was. Then their two former foes helped each other up, said genuine goodbyes with gestures alone. Junior President Jefferson was kind enough to escort them.

Cult-on-Sea was found upside down, half-buried in a floor he’d torn up, legs barely kicking. The Hancock twins tugged on a loop of Wagner and put it over one foot. The restored farmer then had no trouble extricating himself, practically skipping along the tail’s trail back to his adoring wife, even excited to see how mad she was regarding his long absence.

Incontible Bludgehaven, Oolbook Dudgewhistle, and Blacknib Bileby were cornered near the pie-slice bedrooms, three different exits blocked by Wagner, smug humans able to easily duck under it and close in.

“Don’t touch me!” Bludgehaven barked from his flapping safe door, dog spittle flinging. A whimper betrayed his fear. “Don’t let them touch me!” he then pleaded, burying his heavy head in Oolbook’s shoulder.

“Get off you oaf!” the staffless head of staff answered back, trying and failing to push him away with the ropy gray arms emerging from the spine of his head-tome. He should’ve used his primary limbs, which might’ve separated them in time to avoid learning that the Bickering aura could be transferred through them as well.

Rutledge II snuck up behind, pulling Wagner, and tapped Bludgehaven on the bottom. One burst of light chained into another. Bileby tried to flee, but one of his trailing tentacles was grabbed by his glorious neighbor that had shed the name Dudgewhistle. A third blast melted the draftsman’s Bickyplot soul away.

So many of them fell to the crisscrossing Wagner so quickly that they ran into each other during their brief stroll back to the portal. They did not make conversation, instead slapping each other on the shoulder with the sounds of ceramic cymbals and golden gongs. The mirth of reunion radiated. Anchorites got to laugh and feel that strange state of walking with a heartbeat that had not yet slowed from the sprint.

Impestle Hissmidge was easy to find thanks to her wailing, which suddenly ceased when she completed another stationary circle and saw Blueberry Kidd stood before her, wrapped in pastel rainbows much less dingy than the palette she had used to decorate Bickering Hall snotty top to rotten bottom.

“Ooh, what is that?” she asked, eyes gone pupil. Then she reached out and snatched a length of it, overcome by the bounty of color so quickly that it redefined her. “That’s what it is. I thought it seemed familiar.”

Of course Glazemouth was hiding in the kitchen with a great big pot over his head. Stood in the corner as if that made his hulking bulk invisible, nervous butter dripped from his blindfold’s lip. To spare him the distress, one of the Anchorites snuck up, trailing Wagner slack, and chose not to warn him before pressing it into his gut. Off blew the bucket, as if a lobster had exploded inside. It lodged in the ceiling where the remaining drops of butter fell and sizzled on the stove top crown of a chef reborn, tastes reset and rid of refuse.

Lady Voluptogast handled the lost battle most gracefully, though a tiny utterance of ‘hmph‘ seemed to indicate they should have put up a better fight in the faceless face of Wagner waged against them. When cornered she straightened her clothes, dusted herself off, and closed the lips that were her face, briefly swallowing the mask always kissed between them. The new mask that emerged bore her stateliest expression. Surrounded, she approached of her own volition and bravely put out her hand over a taut tail electric with alien decency.

“I’ve always gone where the love is,” she haughtily stated, grabbing down. The entity that emerged from her wispy dull skin then danced without dignity all the way to the portal, so weightless that she was, on average, supported by less than one foot.

Cadavawing Wighthall had chosen to still his own tongue rather than politely surrender in the color of the personality they had cultivated in him through repeated pruning. Instead he had huddled in a pocket of the freezing chamber in which he’d battled Specialist Honey. Retracting all heat to his hidden cardiolic self, his Independence Hall head crawled with ice crystals that radiated from broken and bruised window frames as glassy spears. One touch of Wagner melted them, and the rest of the surrounding ice so that a flood of foul-smelling meat drippings ankle-high joined the ankles that caused them in exiting.

That left but one. He was not hiding. Stood he was in the double doorway of Bickering Hall’s foyer, the only part of the facade that still stood. Out he stared, at the serenity of Pursuitia they had so long disturbed as boils that lanced their surroundings to avoid being lanced themselves. Questinking Spywulph gnawed with his two mouths at the tight bit and bridle cords forming the web of his face. His gnashing grinding horse teeth and chugging nostrils made clear the intensity of his contemplation.

Any low mortal had a hard enough time comprehending their own imminent death. Much more difficult for Bickyplots this, their morals rusted shut and teeming in the crevices with red-eyed cannibalistic shadows. Anchorites gathered almost solemnly behind him. No Bickyplot was friend, but he had always been the least of their foes in cruelty. He was the one who could offer respect by default, not requiring any kind of scheme or competition.

“Magnificent,” he said out of both throats, admiring the battlefield of sprouting blue fulgurites, blackened and buttered bones, crashed Franklin kites, and the darkening purple splashes of regal Bickyplot blood.

“Lord Spywulph,” Corporal Kidd addressed, stepping forward with an offering of Wagner between her presented arms, as if the anatimal was a sword being returned to its wielding king after a victorious day on the field, “it is time.”

“Not my time,” he answered without turning away from the carnage and the placid forest beyond, a wood of waxy paper and inky sap that might only now be noticing the two parasitic civilizations, putting its pen to page on the matter with silent crushing grandeur. “It is your time, little humans. I kept mine in a clock of thirteen hours, its ticking tocks the beats of scrabbling hearts. I thought they could hunt up more, or at least scavenge it.

But they were always counting down. The faster they raced, the more we hunted and pursued, the more inevitable this day. To think, all we had to do was walk back. It feels… it feels like climbing the noose that has already broken your neck.”

“When our own worlds feel hollow it is because we hollow them out,” Blueberry said. “Never use up. That’s not the way. Use wisely.” Questinking took a deep breath, finally turned to face them. His single eye wobbled with moist madness. Even now he was afraid, surrounded by enemies that no longer were thanks to their won war. Hatred and malice were gone from their eyes, and he couldn’t peel that membranous lens from the only one he had. Afraid just to go home. Afraid just to mind his own business, as if returning to his roots to grow in a new direction robbed him of his potential.

“I am beaten back,” Spywulph boomed, putting what pride he could in his expression as he tried to meet each of their faces at least once. “I built a house upon my trespass, saving me no heartache. Blast you humans! Blast yourselves! Do it with drink! Do it with revelry! May you be ever coated in the sticky worms you’ve earned. I’ll be free of it. Just you watch!” Curse or praise they could not tell.

His footfalls thundered across the hardwood. Existing in pure confidence, Kidd descended to one knee, lowered her head, and raised Wagner. The last of the Bickyplots, Lord Questinking Spywulph, the trespasser who at least knew the virtue of admiration, reached out and took what was his.

The last blossom of light erupted and shed its vanishing petals of shocking iridescent white. Questinking undone, Questinking revised, straightened to his full height, went higher still with a raised fist.

“The trail of wisdom!” the new creature trumpeted. “Just what I was looking for!”

“Hooray!” went every Anchorite well enough to feel joy, in a hundred variations, raising their weapons skyward to half the height of their new friend’s fist. The last thing he said was a request to join him on his jolly walk through the countryside of clarity. Together they rolled Wagner back, crossing room to hall to room, pulling out the stitching thread that seemed to hold the crumbling remains of Bickering Hall together.

Indeed as they steadily progressed toward the back the manor further degenerated, hastening just as the former Lord Spywulph passed. Beams audibly shriveled and contracted. Walls fell over into rubble that fell over into pebbles that fell over into dust. Pipes rusted into peeling red husks and curls. Glass and pottery cracked loudly before collapsing into piles with sounds much more resigned.

The very floor receded, washed over by a tide of dirt and breeze-swept leaves of golden-cream and pumpkin orange. As the pieces of their fortress separated and shrunk all hiding places were compressed out of existence, squeezing any remaining Godswallop hearts into the open where they were quickly captured by the Anchorites and pressed against Wagner. Their hissing, screeching, and biting ceased on contact as they became beads of blown lamplight rocketing down Wagner’s length, toward a home where they could grow without the burden of inherent hostilities.

The last remnants of the upper floors wilted on bending stalks of wood like mushrooms that died before properly fruiting. Between them was the gateway. Setting aside the last slack of Wagner, the anatimal was now gathered into several piles at their feet like coiled rope, the unburdened being stepped through.

Similar to the estate, the opening then weakened and diminished, but did not disappear entirely. Kidd made sure to tug on Wagner in the most communicative fashion she could muster, hoping to convince the farmer on the other end to untie her pet. The message was received, and the tapered tip of her favorite tail was freed. The colors of Bickering drifted away on the wind, leaving only its familiar fur and its new patently ridiculous length.

“Make way!” a few of the adults shouted, assisting those who had manned the Liberty Bell in dragging it to the forefront. Its crack was twice the size it had been at the outset of the battle, but every letter stamped into the metal remained boldly legible. The hole to Bickering sank in the air, took on the shape of a finger’s puncture through a page, and settled near the ground without making contact.

Five people carefully hoisted the Liberty Bell over it, then lowered their greatest weapon as if snuffing a campfire. Its final toll was its subtle placement in a ring of soil, an ink bottle on a stack of blank paper. Everyone present deemed it the perfect stopper for the lingering door to Bickering, further securing it with stones around the base to keep it upright through times of blizzard and gale.

Should anything emerge ever again, having lost their way or indulged the sort of curiosity easily degraded into avarice, it would immediately strike the Liberty Bell, and freedom would ring, frightening it back into a world it was more suited to, that would feel all the more welcoming upon an actual return.

Together the denizens of Pilgrim’s Anchor, thoughts now turning to the aged slippery chain that could yet pull them loose from the Pursuitian seabed, read out the words of the Liberty Bell for a final time.

PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF

The Clinging Ivy of Muster Hart

Blueberry, victorious leader, brave explorer

                                                                                                  declare as one a foothold between where feet are comfortable

                                                                       but we will be reunited,

                                                                   for now,

Our trail together ends here at a branch, as I am imprisoned in metal, having taken the form of an iron in the Founders’ dwindling fire. You understand this crime better than the others, for where their walls imprison

                                                                                                                                                                everyone

me they have always banished you, until now. Our mission continues with this passage, and I promise I am fully present in spirit ual realms, as this ink will grow to show the way , hopefully into a garden tribute to our friendship that will overtake and overgrow the Bickyplot grounds annexed,

                                                                        and to what I’ve left unsaid in Pursuitia .

                  the destined

                               the loyal

                                       the unstoppable                         sister you will need on the road more traveled

                                                    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 her two thousand descendants .

for her not to linger on what we’ve lost, and so will not give her these green tidings and blessings and clues as I give them to you alone.

             When you are done leading all but yourself

Whether you are elected or not, you are now the leader of our generation, as you have seen the camps of the enemy, been in their heads, and are the only one who bears both the knowledge of two worlds , many more, 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 while you safe-guide

                                across and between worlds

                                                                 times

                                                      plentiful        poor

With love and trust and awe -dropped jaw ,

                                                            your sincerely written companion Mustard

PS. That name carries a drafting power, and when you speak it you write it across my soul. Untold sparks, warmth, and campfires, your real homes, you have unwittingly built in me and others. Your pen is your speech, and we are your journal. Never have you been an inadequate draftsman.

PPS. Make yourself known… to all the inhabitants.

Carve-Out

Absent the shadow of Barony Bickering, Pursuitia already felt like a new world as the survivors walked away the hours it now took to reach Pilgrim’s Anchor from the Liberty Bell. The angle of every leaf seemed to have gained skyward degrees. Native worm creatures made themselves tripping hazards, arcing in and out of the soft soil like elated porpoises. Some they’d never seen in all their lives there bore bright lobed plumage on fin appendages, as if a comb had been run across the lips of a giant clam and left shadowy creases. Fruits fell and landed upright, their freshened scent indicating they had just become edible when all prior attempts by the humans had deemed them toxic.

The subtle intent of the trees was expressing itself, feeling far from minor to most of the travelers but muted to the three who had barged into Bickering and experienced a world where having a thought could drop its anvil weight on your head.

Wonderful as it would have been to walk lackadaisically and perhaps come across some Silhouettes they could inform of their own freedom, the victors could not. The first unease was created by Blueberry, who suddenly felt another pressure vanish before stumbling over it. The entire caravan stopped to stare at the unmarked rod.

It had never looked alive, but it certainly appeared dead now, a crumpled bug dropped out of the sky after a successful mating dance, its only offspring the bar of dangerously dark bruising left across Blueberry’s arm. Whatever Unmarked Rodney had wanted his creation to eventually achieve had been achieved, allowing it to join the other six hallowed dead resulting from the extended battle.

Burying it seemed inappropriate, and that was before it started breaking down on its own, sides collapsing and springs shooting out in all directions, one of which created the final injury of the day when it embedded in Oakes Newtown’s thigh. Everyone gave it a wide berth and moved on.

Then it started to weigh on Kidd’s mind. But why now? Technically our struggle is not over. There’s still the thorny insertion of the Carve-Out. We may need weapons in hand, defeated as the Founders seem. Most of them do not want us to have ever existed; they’ll make some excuse about our addition ruining the drafting, call it what they might call me: a calamitous variable.

Unless… Could it be that Rodney built it to cease its functions just as the Carve-Out was to be inserted? Drafting is a delicate procedure. The finishing touches and signatures are applied in silence and stillness whenever possible. The unmarked rod has always been boisterous. It would be unwise to arm yourself with it in a tense situation where you’re trying to force many signatures.

It has taken itself out of these calculations. And done so now. Which means… the Second Declaration is underway!

She had no proof, but it would quickly become unnecessary. Rising from the quagmire of thought, she saw her fellows ill at ease, nervous, glancing around at landmarks, seeming to find the pace insufficient. They sense it too. The Founders could have easily drafted a way to learn of the Bickyplots’ fall as soon as it happened. Carved totems with just such a purpose could have been paperweights these past two decades, and now they’re leaping off desks suicidally to alert them.

They were walking faster. A gap grew between those intact and those wounded who used branch crutches or sat on the wagons. None of them wanted to believe their fathers would deliberately forego a farewell before erasing them from realm and time. Every step made it seem more likely, every breath choking up in the throat.

Mere minutes later, certainty peppered the group. They were disappointing men. Not once had they collectively risen above the young’s expectations. If they had, the Junior Congress might never have formed in the first place. No seats had been provided at the table, and thus no place would be provided on Earth, where their ‘true’ families had been left behind.

“Just go!” one of the more injured shouted to those pulling further and further ahead. Their neighbors joined them in hurling frightened warnings.

“Hurry!

“We trust you!”

“Carve! Carve!”

Any necessary goodbyes between the young had to be dropped as ballast as well, right then and there. The healthiest bolted, shedding all but the weapon they deemed best for threatening their forebears. Adult Freed and Lenape couldn’t match their youthful stamina, and so stayed behind to tend and aid the slower injured.

“They’ll do it,” Honey voiced, running alongside Blueberry. She whistled to summon Emperor beneath the treetops. The pig-ear moth swooped in so she could grab its underbelly and ride its glide, speaking orders down into its orifices.

“I agree,” President Windstorm said from the other side, trying to moderate his breathing for the long run still ahead of them. Honey dropped off her loyal pet; it soared back into the sky. Only she could communicate with it effectively, but should it return it could hopefully give them some kind of reconnaissance.

“Of course they’ll do it,” Bonfire growled, overtaking everyone else. “They take every liberty! And they never manage to have decency!” Cloaks were shed. Ammunition. Powder. Belts and bandoleers. Hats. Some boots even, now that the Pursuitian ground felt friendlier to bare feet.

Commander Kidd, feeling more like Private Kidd, almost amused by the sheer amount of company she had in this current instance of abandonment and exclusion, kept her thoughts to regulating her reserves. She already knew everything she had to do; now she needed the apportioned fuel to do it.

The burning agony in their muscles made a fitting and miserable companion to the gawking gargoyle fears perched on the crumbling parapets of their confidence. No one in any world would have ever envied that run, which might last three hours, with individuals dropping out to rest sporadically before catching back up to the pack.

Ten of them got there much faster than that however, once all the tin horses were unhooked from their loads and sent charging to the leaders. There was no argument over who should take a horse. Any vacant spots in leadership had been filled battling the Bickyplots. It was the Committee of Five, joined by Kidd, Bonfire, Honey, Rutledge II, and Floyd. For them, at full metal gallop, it took just forty minutes to reach Anchor.

Emperor had returned shortly before they saw the gates, the pulse in its skin used as code to vaguely inform Honey of what its surveillance flight had overheard. It was enough to confirm their fears. Some number of Founders had sealed themselves inside Independence Hall, and their quills scratched so aggressively that the anatimal heard it through walls.

There was no time to collaborate with the other Freed or Lenape, and no use to it either, as they were completely locked out in the distracting minutes where Anchor came to comprehend the absence of the Bickyplots.

One way in. It was the same way out for their mortal enemies, the friendly loophole that saved Kidd countless time now, but times that could probably be counted across the anatimal’s body even at a large interval, now that Wagner was mightier in length than any serpent of Earth. The tail’s size allowed it to keep up with the horses, snaking along behind, blunt featureless face raised as high as a man off the ground the entire time, ready to strike from the moment the run began.

Wagner was their way in, as they’d assumed some measure of protection had been taken to secure the hall against entry while they scrambled to compile the Second Declaration. It would’ve been done haphazardly, much more focus placed on the drafting that was going to transport their feeble bodies across worlds and eras. It was safe to assume the ground level was completely barred, that tin horses, muskets, and hatchets could do nothing to break through in time.

What they would have overlooked was, once again, the roost of the Liberty Bell. Only anatimals could reach it, and even the Founder that respected the divided creatures most, Franklin, did nothing more with their potential than fry it in lard. If they put their decrepit brains together and managed to spark the notion of Emperor, they still wouldn’t fret, as their opposing children could only enter one at a time.

They did not know Wagner had attained a colossal size, not as thick as an opera worm, but even longer. Blueberry assured the other nine that her loyal hound’s tail had the strength needed to make their entrance simultaneous. So as they curved to the inner path of Anchor that ringed Independence Hall, the young dismounted at speed, leaping from their tin horses onto a raised hump of Wagner.

Kidd had the forward-most position, doing her best to control her pet from a new orientation. She squeezed with her thighs when it needed to stop, causing it to ricochet off the ground in a cloud of dust, bend toward Independence Hall in a way threatening to flatten her against the side.

She pulled up mightily. The tail climbed, climbed, grazed the roof with her soles. Kidd tried to run across it, holding Wagner between her legs, anything to help the momentum carry them into the bell’s basket. It worked. She was swallowed up by the shadowy stairs leading down into Independence Hall. All nine of her fellow soldiers were snaking in behind her.

The rest of their entrance was a blur, a halting mix of correct turns taken upside down and shoulder collisions on unforgiving walls. The doors to where the men drafted were of course closed, forcing them to test Wagner’s strength as a ram, though that was not the animal it generated from.

With a crash they broke through, igniting coughs among their elderly oppressors that roiled across the chamber. The young had the element of surprise once again, which Blueberry used most effectively by encircling them all in Wagner and pulling them closer together, making it difficult to draw weapons if they had any aside from their pens.

The junior Committee of Five and the others rolled off Wagner on the outer side and drew whatever arms they had retained in flight. Previous drafting on the items protecting the Founders had been stripped, to add more strength to the fight against the Bickyplots, now leaving them vulnerable. Luckily several were charged, blades now glowing an intimidating blue-white as biting as the first blizzard of Pursuitian winter. They too encircled the Founders, forcing them to crowd inside the Wagner-lasso, bending several of them onto the table where a massive document was receiving revisions from no hand other than Thomas Jefferson’s.

“What is this? What’s going on?” he demanded, directing the second question to his son Windstorm as soon as he recognized him.

“We know what it is you’re doing,” his child shot back. “Long have we known your intentions. Long have we planned. There will be no forgiveness for these years spent intending to erase us, and we will hear no excuses.”

“He’s grown a Lenape mouth,” Rutledge senior snapped, managing to stick out above the rest as the least-wilted bloom in the gray bouquet. “You rotten rapscallions have no authority here!” He then saw his own son, face cast half-cold in the light of this humming hatchet. “Edward! Put that down this inst-“

A toss could be considered putting it down, but there was definitely an element of disobedience, even disrespect, in the way it lodged itself in the shoulder meat of Founder Edward Rutledge. He honked like three geese trying to eat each other, tail feathers first. The wound would not be fatal, not imminently, not with the hatchet’s impregnated heat cauterizing, but it was more than enough to make the man flop backward into an incoherent haze.

“He said we will hear no excuses!” young Edward asserted, nodding to Blueberry instead of the younger Jefferson. She finally took her leap off Wagner, from directly over their drafting table. Her stomp broke their wills and senses of decorum alike. Her filthy boots, riddled with Pursuitian minerals and tiny worming larvae were mere inches from their finest and most refined work of draftsmanship.

She walked along its edge, threatening it by passing the shadow of a foot over its corners, becoming its heavenly bodies. Its makers muttered and gasped fearfully in its stead. Two glowing hatchets backed up the authority Rutledge had claimed she didn’t have.

“That is the Second Declaration,” she accused them all, pointing at the document with a blade.

“Correct,” Science Master Franklin answered from the middle of them, still the least bothered by all that had transpired. His attention was actually on all the Wagner that hadn’t been there before.

“Which you were about to sign without your children present,” Kidd continued, pacing smacking judgment back and forth on the table. “Not even a goodbye for us, whom you hoped to erase, to forget entirely, just like the world you have trespassed upon. For shame! We lost our Hart to you!

But we know Pursuitia is not ours either. You will get what you want, despite deserving so much worse. There is a caveat. There, where there is space. You will make an addition. Junior President Windstorm?”

“President?” the elder Jefferson balked. His son paid him no mind, drawing a scrap of paper from out of his uniform, crumpling it, and tossing it his father. It bounced off the man’s chest, which should have been considered a blessing given what Edward had used to play catch with his parent. Founder Jefferson flattened it and read aloud.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.

This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

“I wrote this,” he said vacantly, as if he half-expected the admission to open an ethereal door midair. “Where did you get-“

“It doesn’t matter,” Commander Kidd interrupted. “What matters is that you wrote that for the First Declaration. A passage decrying the evils of slavery. Then it was excised. It never made it into the final draft.”

“It wasn’t my choice,” the Founder defended. “Still it is not my choice.”

“By excluding it you told the worlds they were as free to treat you as property as you found yourselves to be with the lives of others,” Blueberry excoriated them. “You sought only your own freedom, and you were granted it imprecisely as a result. As you attempt to go back and make your mistakes all over again, we will insert the correction. President Windstorm, the Carve-Out.”

Each member of the Committee of Five carried a copy of its most recent iteration, in case it should be needed in unexpected situations. This had been very taxing on the Junior Congress, given the need to illicitly obtain both the papers and inks they intended to use. No Founder would have approved, nor would have the more sympathetic inkwitches.

Windstorm was much more careful this time, drawing out black paper with white script. He handed it off to the tip of Wagner’s tail, which swept it to the table. Blueberry bent down and slid it where it would be integrated into the document. Founders leaned in, saw ink that was more than white in truth, dreadful to them with its many hues gliding along letters’ edges like a cosmic tide.

“You used aetheric opal white,” Jefferson commented, unable to hide his disgust.

“The ink of communicating with the foreign,” the young explorer confirmed from where she stood over them, surveying the declaration as one would a great map, eyes softening on the dark island partly of her own creation. “You fear it because you can only destroy the foreign. We make it familiar. Observe how we have altered your passage, as little as possible, freeing ourselves from your wicked intent. But one sentence has been added at the end.”

“Now, all you gentlemen have to do is sign your names, just as you were about to. Then we will go our separate ways.”

“She’s ruined it,” one Founder dared say, immediately flinching in expectation of a bayonet to the back of the skull. Instead he was scolded.

“If you cannot accept the possibility that we will live on, that we will not be erased, you resign yourself to living out the rest of your days here, in a world you despise but must still feed from. Every day more of your constitution will be made of its stolen material, and neither will benefit.” Benjamin Franklin shuffled forward, his robust size aided in the tight squeeze by his jabbing cane.

“You know,” he said jovially, “I was always jealous of those Lenape names you children received. They are what is missed, yes?” She nodded. “I suppose it is good I never had one then. Everybody would call me Tender Turkey!” His laugh gave him the buoyancy needed to pick up a quill and bob it in the tall crystal ink bottle meant to mark the dignity of the occasion. Before he could sign Founder Jefferson’s hand intervened.

“Allow me, old friend.”

“Of course Thomas. Just be sure to leave room.”

“Let’s get this over with,” Hancock spouted, shouldering his way forward.

“Veronica, is that you?” Founder Whipple addressed Honey, hopping as much as he could to see his teary-eyed daughter. “Do tell your sister I’m sorry. I love you both, I do.” Disagreeable murmuring took over, but under the young’s supervision they signed the Second Declaration one by one. A few hands needed steadied.

Blueberry watched with ice creeping into her veins, with sweat turning to shot in her pores, with solemn dedication and hope so dawning it overtook her sense of self. For she knew. The Carve-Out wouldn’t work for her, not the way it did for the other young who were actually born of Founder, Lenape, or Freed.

She had come from between. She had escaped everyone and everything else’s intent. To that she would return, fleeing on the tightrope of fine print. That’s why it’s so difficult to read. Limiting myself to one tongue was never meant to be. My understanding should not be nailed down and limited. That makes it harder to visit more worlds, and to move on when the time is right.

The countdown of signatures couldn’t be stopped; it was dangerous to do so. If they tried to wait for the other runners to catch up, or the injured, one or more of the Founders would find the haughty indignity to kill them all as long as it kept the young from contributing. The Carve-Out always had to be an opportunistic stab, and this was the opportunity.

Nobody would get to say their farewells, not to parents, not to children, not to memories, anatimals, or places. Blueberry knew the young would all be reunited, in their earned frontier, and took some solace in that. If the Founders had half the unity of the young they would’ve stopped bickering over edits and successfully signed before Emperor even heard their plot.

All she could reasonably pray for was that, as she slipped into the streams between, Wagner was allowed to come along as her lifeline.

She held back her tears, so as not to stain the Declaration of Independence. Founder Hopkins was the final signature. As his pen scratched, as all the others watched, Blueberry closed her eyes and held her breath, taking hold of a length of Wagner undulating by her side. Its fur slipped through her loose grip.

It grew like the ivy notions of long gone Mustard Hart. It traveled like whatever Private Kidd was, and whatever she would be, to be known only when she entered a new world and got a good look at its version of a mirror.

Everyone else of Pilgrim’s Anchor assumed the Second Declaration would have to be posted, to a door was often the most effective. Not this time. The table was the door. Pursuitia knew when the act was complete, had with half-intent long-awaited it.

For the second time there was a declaration. For the first time the United States of America came to be founded. For the first time a world lush with vegetation and barren of intelligence gained a footprint. A needle and thread moved between, watching on both sides.

“To each their own,” said the freebooter needle in a language that couldn’t be written down, in words to be instantly forgotten, “and never ownership.”

The End