In the barn-city of Minimil, small creatures from all across the literary canon live as one people, from Lilliputians and Shakespearean fairies to myrmidons, homunculi, and Wonderlanders.  Their lives are tenuous, valuable as they are as pieces in the proxy game of Little Wars, where conscripting countries can use them to spill thimbles of blood rather than buckets.

A decade into the Little Wars era, the largest convention ever is about to occur on Lilliput.  Among the arriving ships is the candle boat Wicky Sticket out of Minimil, carrying a secret cargo of agents sent to interfere with the Hidden Body, an ethereal nation of traitors making big moves in the littlest and most deadly game.  And behind it all the ancient slumberers toss and turn.

This is the middle of The Challenge Obscene, the second novella trilogy of the Challenging universe.  It’s best to start with the first, which can be found here: The Challenging Handful, The Left Challenging Handful, and Challenging Applause.  The first part of this trilogy is Challenging Cock.

(estimated reading time: 30 minutes)

The Challenge Obscene

Challenging Ass

by

Blaine Arcade

Bear the Ass

Your fate is determined not by deck underfoot, but waters beneath it.

When a stranger is met at the chessboard, analyze their first move: how they greet you.

Beware the world’s largest candle boat, which is Charon’s ferry for half its passengers.

-Noozy Cornerlore

Frustrated at her own inflexibility, the Lilliputian woman who had just signed her name ripped it out of her custom-made elongated typewriter and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it over her shoulder into a similar pile, a pile casually chewed and ruminated upon by a group of milling donkeys she was supposed to watch over more attentively. The animals were interested because the long strips of paper still smelled like the mild cookies they were stored near: the only stock she had access to at that point. Her new employer, the newspaper called Minimil Minutes, would grant her supplies more in line with her position as a journalist, but only after she’d completed and turned in her first big story to an approving editor.

For months now she’d been trying to break into a less stale line of work, which in her mind should’ve been achieved singularly through the act of immigration, out of California and all the way to Minimil, the Scottish barn and haven city-state for small of all stripes. After all, what need would that place have of a fortune cookie typist, when none of the citizenry were large enough to enjoy the product and its associated wisdom that was often difficult to swallow but still sometimes managed?

Back in San Francisco her services had been in high demand. Fortune cookies, mere palate cleansers, were nonetheless big business, in which the small were uniquely capable. They could write fortunes on tiny inexpensive machines they modified and maintained themselves, and they could even slip a fortune into an empty cookie and pull it into position from the opposite side without any specialized baking techniques.

Each typist was a mind and a spirit, not just an insect’s printing press. Every fortune would be phrased a little differently, rather than mass produced, ensuring no two were the same, causing many of their printed pronouncements to be taken much more sagely, or gravely. Already among the best from size alone, Noozy had the additional talent of providing some of the most accurate predictions ever attached to a cheap meal.

People, big people no less, had bought houses, married lovers, named children based on what they’d pulled from their cookie and she’d pulled from her typewriter. It was that accuracy that got her name spread around enough for it to be heard on other continents. Without it she’d never have gotten permission to become a Minimil resident, a place becoming dreadfully overpopulated as the tiny, small, li’l, itty, bitty, and miniature fled the conscription of Little Wars all over the world.

When she got there her enthusiasm was quickly dampened however, as they still wanted her typing up cookies, to give to visiting big dignitaries as a subtle form of psychological warfare, unsettling their hopefully-less-than-iron stomachs with mildly poisoned dough and advice so they would never make it to the deadly matches they were meant to oversee.

But she did not see herself as a nefarious agent of the state. Lilliput and Blefuscu’s miniature peoples bore representatives of all the bigger peoples the world over; one of her parents had been Lilliputian-Chinese and the other Blefuscan-Japanese. Any hostilities existing between those larger groups were not present on Gulliver’s islands, so when her family had left, with her just a babe in their arms, she had to grow up among larger politics and learn about hatred that ran deep between generations, a black flammable river coursing right next to the serene puddle in which she was born.

To avoid drowning in that river, vanishing under its surface, she would do anything, and among that anything she thought clearly-worded and widely distributed truth to be the best flotation device for one’s perception. She had marched into the offices of the Minimil Minutes and demanded a position, offering up lurid details of the spycraft offer that had gotten her there in the first place, and which would surely be rescinded as soon as word got out, on paper or of mouth.

Once she’d sponged away the haze of fearful sweat she was shocked to see their actual counteroffer. A field reporter was needed, and a strenuous interview to prove their ability, so she was welcome to board the SMS (sovereign Minimil ship) Wicky Sticket with their one allotted ticket for its maiden voyage to the Lilliputian Isles, where the envoy and two platoons of myrmidons would disembark to participate in an event called Stained Atlas: a Little Wars convention attended by over sixty nations.

Cornerlore couldn’t believe her luck, and trusted it even less, but finding herself in no position to decline, she resolved to save the investigation of it until after the contract was dry. As it turned out, no investigation would be necessary beyond being directed to her dim noisy cabin and taking a big sniff of all the ass in the air.

One particular ass was to be expected, by the name of Mustardseed, technically more fairy than jackass by both mass and mindfulness. Noozy was of course well-versed in the history of the handfuls, the elite and sometimes clandestine teams that had been shaping Minimil politics since just prior to Little Wars’ institution; she’d read a whole volume on her way to Minimil as preparation. The name Mustardseed came up frequently, first as a member of the inaugural challenging handful, then as missing in action, followed by ‘rescued’, and then mentions of her integration at World Drawer One under the command of the goddess Hestia.

While Minimil’s pint-sized army could draw from a more diverse reservoir of the small than anywhere else in existence, most of the boots it actually put on the ground were bare chitinous claws borne of and belonging to Queen Zoukas of the myrmidons. Only a few agents of greater power actually gambled with their lives on the board, and of them the most vital to the barn’s so-far winning strategy was the flying ass Mustardseed.

Caught in the crossfire of a donkey-shaping curse during the Midsummer Night’s Dream, and abandoned by her absentminded king and queen in the same event, Mustardseed was already one tough cookie before she’d gained the ears, wide nostrils, furry forearms, and tail of a donkey. For one thing her wings were still intact, after all these years, an uncommon feat even in the enclosed skies of Minimil. Most fairyfolk lost them to high winds or predators and became nymphs of nature, the first of whom had been bred into lesser magical creatures over many generations, such as gnomes and elves.

Her ass seemed to be spreading, Noozy noticed when she caught a glimpse of the fairy boarding just before she was swallowed by disappointing darkness and the stabbing stench of dusty hay. Mustardseed’s dragonfly wings were now fur-lined and lobed, more like those of a gigantic hairy moth. The typist deduced that was good news as far as her magical abilities, which also made it good news for national defense.

The curse was carried in every part of her, including any hairs that she shed. If a being with a stomach was to ingest one of these hairs they would find themselves temporarily transformed into a donkey, a spell that would be painlessly and quickly reversed several hours later. It was a silver bullet in the game of Little Wars, not exactly, Noozy thought, mentally scratching out a long line, more like silver handcuffs.

Little Wars was a game of strict rules. The pieces could not move from their designated squares if it was not their turn, on pain of death performed by stomping referee. If they found themselves just five spaces from a marksman taking their turn, all they could do was hope their opponent missed an easy shot…

Unless the kind and powerful Mustardseed was present. Her hairy loophole had saved countless lives on both sides of the board, clopping away on a blithe technicality. Pieces were not held responsible if they moved from their spaces under a forcibly altered state of mind, which sometimes happened in warfare that allowed all forms of magic and mad science, at least in small doses. A dullard donkey ignoring the grid in search of grass was escorted off the board, disqualified and excused, to live and fight another day.

Getting cursed by Mustardseed was highly desirable: a stay of execution for anyone conscripted into Little Wars. Not only could she neutralize many varieties of foe with a single blown kiss, after scratching her scalp of course, but many of those foes surreptitiously sought her sight lines, so that she might blow them one, so they might be saved by swallowing a breath from the ass.

“I should like to interview that ass, instead of you layabouts,” Noozy sighed, pacing back and forth in her shared hutch, making all the other donkeys nervous. They brayed their dissatisfaction, which she dismissed with a good smack on their hindquarters. These were not transformed enemies, but entirely ordinary Lilliputian donkeys, remarkable only in their smallness. Their only purpose was showmanship and tactics of intimidation, to be marched in and out of opening ceremonies so that the enemies of Minimil could witness a terrible fate that was actually their best hope for survival.

And Noozy Cornerlore had been bamboozled into taking care of the filthy creatures for the entirety of the voyage to the isles, which took some weeks. All she wanted was to let herself out onto the fresh air of the deck, freshest when the wind wasn’t blowing the Wicky’s smoke column back in their faces that is, and mingle with the dignitaries, generals, and celebrities that made up most of the passengers. Each had more than a few cookies’ worth of secrets, gossip, and wisdom, of that she was sure.

Every time she tried she was bullied back to her hay shoveling and bucket-slopping by a member of the crew, often a mermaid’s purse eggty whose floppy flat body could literally browbeat her into stupefaction. And if it wasn’t that pocketed dogfish it was someone else, barking at her to not bother guests, to do her job, to keep the asses primped and presentable. The only other responsibility granted to stave off boredom was a single sheet of care instructions nailed to the wall, which charged her with separating five of the donkeys from the others, and one or two other things that couldn’t possibly matter, but only when they were hours from Gulliver’s shore.

Those special donkeys were marked with a half moon shaved into their flanks, which Noozy spotted here and there in the group of fifteen, never holding her attention once she was sure they were all still alive and kicking, hopefully only kicking her a small percentage of the time despite the close quarters.

Much more of her attention went to the wide seams between the boards that made up one of her walls, looking out onto the main deck. The Wicky Sticket was the mightiest of all candle boats, a grown human could barely lift it, and though it bore a marvelously engineered wick and extenuating flame it was still wise to make the hull of metal and keep the wooden-walled chambers closer to the bow, well away from the chugging steam engine.

The shoddy construction of the donkey hutch gave her a few narrow strips through which to watch her potential interview subjects, just wide enough to identify faces and overhear conversations. She’d tried to snag their interest through the slats, but the closest she’d got was a chuckle from Mr. Ontoes Wallagog of Minimil Foraging and Reconnaissance.

Week after week Noozy’s mind churned over possible ways to make use of what she had, to have a decent story written before the convention even started. She was at her wide typewriter, fingers poised, sitting on the backside of one of the lazier donkeys, staring through the slats and trying to read lips.

Too far into the trip she realized it was easier to read their reputations, to guess at their goals by a combination of preexisting knowledge and their current body language. There she found plenty of fodder, honed in on it so fervently that she left sweat stains on the wood from pressing her forehead against it.

Yes, a narrative unfolded between the slats and before her eyes, especially when she squinted, and she was making sure to hammer it onto the cookie-formatted page: the most conducive of formats for conspiratorial run-on sentences. The goddess Hestia had sent from Minimil not just an army, not just tested diplomats and distracting socialites, but several agents who could disguise themselves as such, obscuring their more sinister skills and combat experience.

The man Wallagog could fence with both hands while riding his hummingbird mount, which could aid him with its bill; his defensive perimeter had captured and turned out many threats before they even reached the barn since the beginning of the Little Wars era. There was a ceiling on his position however, as he had tried to prevent the rise of Hestia when her Left Challenging Handful infiltrated and immolated the Shoulders of Government.

Also wronged by that party, and also aboard, was Gildny Mildny, eggty from the goose that lays golden, and current steward of the Midas Detritus, under Mygdenia of course. His rivalry with Humpty Dumpty had resulted in Dumpty’s death, but nobody was claiming the golden boy of the banks was involved. Perhaps it was Noozy’s job to find the first scrap of evidence stuck to his shell?

Not before she figured out what the fairy with the turquoise hair was doing on deck! One of the savviest scheming fairies in the mortal realm, she practically owned Minimil’s hospitality industry, insofar as Hestia allowed anyone to own what was ultimately hers. It would be difficult for the fae woman to oversee her properties from the distant Lilliputian islands. Was she ordered to attend? Hestia trying to be rid of her?

Who was that who just passed in front of her? Now they’re speaking to the fairy! Without so much as sipping their drinks. Those glasses were pretense, their contents deception. This was not socializing, not hobnobbing either, but strategizing. Noozy placed his face: Drookarkus Polooko. Former soup diver, longtime chief of the Minimil Fire Brigade. There was a reliable man, beloved in the city, and with little chance his firefighting expertise was needed to manage the expertly engineered wick of their candle boat.

Nothing cinched these disparate yet intriguing figures together, not until Miss Cornerlore heard then spotted a buzzing winged figure descending from the bridge to the main deck. If she didn’t recognize him from the iconic pink bow and quiver slung over his shoulders, she would note the heavy eyelids that couldn’t be found on any other specimen of bumblebee. None other than Vesperos, grand-nephew of Hestia. Half a hero in Minimil, thanks to his vicarious seduction of a bureaucratically rampaging cockatrice, and half a villain, for accidentally destroying the world’s smallest violin in the process of said heroics, Vesperos was exactly the sort of creature that could confirm the journalist’s suspicions.

He was a leader, and likely Hestia’s most trusted associate. Noozy hammered away at the keys, spelled it out for herself to see if it looked as right as it felt, which it did: A b o a r d  t h e  W i c k y  S t i c k e t , t h e r e  i s  a  c h a l l e n g i n g  h a n d f u l .

In all likelihood they wouldn’t call themselves that. The names for such elite teams changed for every occasion that formed them; new as she was in Minimil most people in the world had heard some tell of the handfuls though. Officially the only such strike team was the Challenging Applause, a five member organization maintained by Hestia at all times, but it did not operate in secret. Those that did were handfuls, each member called either a digit or a challenger, depending on who told the story. Other countries liked to blame their Little Wars failures, not just losses in battle but recruiting deals falling through as well, on the unseen activity of challenging handfuls out of Minimil.

“I’ve got your number now,” Noozy said, licking her lips, achieving nothing as they were like sandpaper. The asses’ dander and hair soaked up all the air’s moisture. The suffering would be worth it though, would help keep her first draft dry and pristine. The people needed to know that Hestia had assembled another handful, that she’d put Vesperos in charge of it, and that she’d shoved them off the dock with such divine force that they would next make port in Lilliput to… The clacking stopped.

“To what?” Noozy asked the nearest ass. Hee-haw. “No, I don’t think so.” If there was a handful there had to be a mission. Stained Atlas was already going to be filled with bloodshed, parley, and piece trading via prisoner exchange, or by the occasional solving of a magical riddle. What could be done there that required cloak and dagger instead of open challenge? She entertained ideas of assassination, theft, and propaganda.

Whatever it was, there was no evidence of it on deck, or in the donkey hutch, resulting in Noozy typing herself into a corner. Racking her brain produced no fleshed-out ideas, day in and day out, and she was still pages short on crucial claims when the ship’s foghorn blew to announce the sighting of land.

“Crumbs!” she swore, in an already Minimilish fashion. The craft had engrossed her so thoroughly that she’d forgotten to perform the lowly duties that kept the crew giving her daily rations. It was time for that one sheet of paper nailed to the wall, and if she didn’t get it done maybe they wouldn’t let her back onboard when it was time to sail home.

Launching onto cramped legs was a bad idea. Ignoring the resultant cut on her forehead was as well. Still she got to the posted sheet and read through it carefully one more time. Separate the five donkeys with the shaved half moon symbol. Then adorn them with the necklaces from the gray box with the brass latch. Noozy whirled around. Hay. Droppings she was behind on shoveling. No box.

The two materials turned out to overlap much more than she was comfortable with as she sifted their layers in search of the box, eventually finding it underneath one of the sleeping animals and also finding the strength to free it from a fat haunch. Inside were five necklaces big enough for the animal’s stocky necks: simple black cord with drab steel pendants that were each irregular but might average together into a shallow rectangle.

These animals were ostensibly for show, so why such lousy decoration? Questions were chisels, and they were best saved for the egregiously shapeless marble that was her story, so she went about completing her task before someone could throw open the door and scold her. One by one she squeezed herself between marked and unmarked donkeys and thrust with her whole body to push them away from the others. Luckily they were not energetic at the moment, and milled about compliantly, even allowing her to bend their ears back and place the necklaces without event.

“There,” she told the people who weren’t present, who dared waste her talents on drudge work, “don’t know what good this’ll do.” Mere moments later, it did appear to do some good, if good is here defined as ‘turning donkeys into other things that can not only talk, but thank as well’. A sound like warbling bamboo poles snapping back into shape marked each blink of a transformation, donkey shape stretching out and rebounding upright with new colors and extremities.

Each ass was revealed to be a different silhouette, some stranger than others. Noozy flattened herself against the slats, finally facing the correct direction after weeks of stiffening her neck the wrong way. She found nothing to type or say as she took stock of the creatures taking stock of themselves.

Three Lilliputians tried, futilely, to brush loose donkey hair from the darkest portions of their clothing. In fact, none of them was Lilliputian, they were two homunculi and one Wonderlander, but with so many peculiar things happening it was initially difficult to discern the subtle physical features that separated them from simple shrunken humans.

The other two were not as difficult: a myrmidon and an eggty. Once that was established however they threw the typist for a loop all over again with wild piercings and modifications, some of which did not appear intentional. The primary difference, aside from species, was that the eggty hardly had a speck of shell unadorned with bangle or doodad, while the myrmidon had it all concentrated into a single pin, a lance on the minimil scale, puncturing through the center of her exoskeletal chest and tipped with a cork.

Various weapons, tools, and snacks hung from it with no clear order: daggers, green sausages, ship biscuits, a sharpening rod, binoculars, a jar of bacon and persimmon jam, and a few things that would’ve made Noozy a felon just for recognizing them. As for clothing the myrmidon wore rags, but they were hidden under a much newer jacket, still heavily used, the color determined by the dust on it more than the material. A beret sat askew on her head, covering the stump of her single broken antenna.

Noozy had seen plenty of Minimil’s soldiery marching back and forth throughout the Wicky Sticket; those spawned from Queen Zoukas, and ever in her service, ran in hue from the tans and oranges of cheap ceramic down to the dark red of quality brick. This pinned bug was more of a smoky lilac carapace-wise, indicating she’d come from a different colony entirely.

Aside from the giant pin, which surely would’ve disturbed the animals, she at least looked like she had just crawled out from a months-long hibernation under a pile of stinking asses, in sharpened and corked contrast to the eggty, who was so polished that Noozy could see her baffled reflection in the shell’s surface.

That was significantly because the egg had none of her original shell left, having had it replaced over the course of years, carefully sawed off in panels without ever rupturing the precious membrane that kept her fetal form suspended in fluid. Now her exterior was glass, interrupted at the midsection, underneath, and atop but behind the point, by silver ports ringed with black rubber gaskets.

Extending from each was a chemically treated cat whisker, modified into many pseudo-limbs that suspended the glass shell well above the filthy floor where a typical eggty would just spin on their base to travel. Altogether the modified assemblage of crackpot ideas moved like a cross between a softened sea urchin and a stalking wolf spider.

And there was yet more to her. Limned on the glass was a black skull, flanked by wings thrown open, and through the eye sockets the fetal featherless form stared with milky pearl eyes nearly overwhelmed by wrinkled skin: the eyes of an ancient elephant trying to remember any of its storied life, anything other than the graveyard of bones it marched through.

More devices and tools floated in the aqueous solution suspending her, some free, others bobbing on chains terminating at the bottom of the shell. Shapes like doorknobs capped the whiskers internally, which she dexterously manipulated with gentle taps of her malformed wingtips and feet. Her-

“No,” Noozy muttered, forcing herself to move on from a creature she might otherwise never stop describing and still never master enough to name. Her hope that looking at the Lilliputians once more would provide some relief was mostly dashed, as she caught glimpses of what made them the once-entirely-imaginary creatures called homunculi. One of the women, dressed mostly in black, had a hat with a very wide brim, like the puddle left over after a witch melted, and when she took it off to adjust it Noozy saw that her long black hair was a wig sewn into the hat, her actual head bearing the pattern of a chessboard across the skullcap and down the back of her neck.

Flat tokens slid deliberately across the curved spaces, chasing each other, retreating, huddling to discuss tactics. Her face was rather ordinary by comparison, but still striking, with black checker eyes and full lips that looked like they could maintain a seal for centuries. She was a good deal taller than her compatriot in homunculosity, who was perhaps the least strange of the five who had just stopped being asses.

Her dress was feminine, bouncy, white gloves smoothing out wrinkles and indents without actually touching them. Golden curls rolled down her shoulders and over her chest, shine prevented by the red parasol with lace trim resting on her shoulder and spinning, creating an effect at the edge like wind-driven snow. Clad in red and gold, the gold sometimes pink in brief transitions Noozy only partly attributed to her rapid blinking, the woman’s fine dress tried to match her cherubic and placid features, which wore the expression of an angel wondering how a butterfly had flapped all the way to heaven.

Taking them in was utterly taxing, the typist felt like she choked on their images, but one remained to force down. He was the Wonderlander, something only recognizable by the way he didn’t exist as one might hope. Typical existence was rather stalwart, consistent, and cohesive. For the Wonderlanders, direct and indirect descendants of irradiated fae living underground in clusters of chaotically-decomposed magic, existence was more of a dalliance.

His skin moved very slightly out of sync with the rest of him, perceptible as the slightest doughy stretch. Occasionally one of his pupils darted under the eyelid like a housefly, preferable to the instances where they flew off the eye, around the head once, and back in through the ear. This was made all the more unnerving by his relentless smile, toothy and scooping, like a clown face painted on a snow shovel.

If not for his cosmically-nauseating quirks, he would’ve been considered exceptionally handsome, with a narrow face a little like a book spine and a chin a woman could take in her arm and escort to the dance floor. He wore a good deal of red and brown, somewhere between journeyer and business luncheon, and had something like a small rolled carpet slung over one shoulder.

“You’re not supposed to leave Wonderland,” Noozy said, finally managing to address them, drawing all their eyes for the first time. Their fidgeting over their appearances, presumably checking for any lingering donkey details, ceased. She wasn’t sure why she said it, but it was true. Everyone in Wonderland was completely and utterly insane, and it was catching, but who was she to talk, having just watched five donkeys turn into the seediest Minimil rogues’ gallery anyone had ever seen.

“I got a permit,” the man claimed, pupils behaving while he locked eyes with her. His voice was a cackle drowned in maple syrup. When it became clear Noozy had at least enough spine to keep standing there, partly thanks to the wall she was pressed against, the former donkey assumed he was supposed to prove it.

A pair of scissors appeared from somewhere, with it seeming equally like to be his fingers transformed into blades as something quickly retrieved from and replaced in a pocket, and snipped a perfect rectangle from the roll over his shoulder, which he snatched out of the air as it drifted and displayed to her like an identification card, but not long enough for her to see anything other than odd geometric shapes… and that they were moving. He tucked it away in his clothes, perhaps with the scissors.

“Who… who are you people?” Noozy asked, questions now stacked enough in queue to be issued.

“Ghosts of the Halve-Maen,” the red-clad homunculus woman said cryptically, unable to kindle a mysterious air in her rosy cheeks, which was fine, since the myrmidon quickly swatted any mystery that might have formed.

“We’re the challenging handful!” The eggty whipped her with a whisker, failing to knock off the pinned ant’s beret thanks to its antenna anchor. It did spin however.

“Little Wars is the name of their game, secrecy the name of ours,” the black-clad homunculus scolded.

“Not even off the boat, are we!?” the myrmidon said, rubbing a spot on her exoskeleton that could not have possibly felt any pain.

“We should trust no one but each other to keep our starting parameters intact.” The tokens on the back of her head moved about and clacked faster. “Our goddess agrees, otherwise she would not have insisted on our disguised travel.”

“Disguised? For weeks I was shoveling the spent fuel of your disguises?” Noozy said snottily. The flame of ambition unsnuffed itself, changed her demeanor. “I see! It was so I would be in position to interview you before the start of your mission.” She shouldered through them, heaved her elongated typewriter into the air, and brought it down on the haunches of a donkey that hadn’t divulged any juicy tidbits yet. “First question: what is your mission at Stained Atlas?”

“A scoopster!?” the myrmidon blurted. “Why’d they put a news-nosy in with the likes of us?”

“See here,” the dark homunculus said while the eggty acted as an extension of her will, inserting a whisker tip into the typewriter so that any resulting text would be on her false limb and not the page, “there’s been some sort of mix-up, a lack of communication between our handlers and the crew I think. Our affairs are top secret. You are not to write about us.”

“What happens if I do?” Noozy challenged. “Are you going to kill me?” The handful huddled, which the writer didn’t like. Apparently her murder was at least as far as the spitball stage. The whisker remained jammed in her machine, so she couldn’t even hammer out an SOS that might be found months later after too large a serving of lo mein.

“Good news,” spoke the myrmidon, tilting her beret over one eye only for it to stretch back once she released it, “which I s’pose means we’re doin’ your job for you. Anywise, you get to live.”

“A body on the boat would be a rough seas start,” the Wonderlander added.

“Your silence is required, but only temporarily,” the chess-patterned homunculus told Cornerlore. “If you refrain from sharing or publishing anything until after Stained Atlas, you have our word we will give you exclusive rights to the story of our mission. Do we have a deal?” The Lilliputian thought it over in the face of growing signs of impatience: curling whiskers, tapping feet, and fiddling with the cork that made the lance harmless.

“Alright, you asses have yourselves a bargain,” she said, extending her hand. The rosy homunculus went to shake it, but Noozy lifted it like a gate latch at the last second. “If you pay a little information up front. Give me your names, so I can at least call you liars if you renege.” The apparent leader, with her blank expression and tucked away hands, nodded at the eggty, who removed her whisker from the typewriter. Then they started to leave, one by one, tossing their names over their shoulders, to be weighed on the keys of Cornerlore’s livelihood.

“Elizabug Inarug,” said the myrmidon, saluting as she passed by.

“Nevry Mevry,” grackled the glass eggty out of her speaking grate.

“Darnette Van Winkle,” chimed the feminine homunculus, complemented with a curtsy.

“Chessica Tarkower,” said her darker sexless counterpart.

“Call me Jack,” the Wonderlander finished, licking the back of another snippet from his roll and slapping it onto the wall as he left, where it stuck. And just like that they were gone. Noozy sat there idly, once the names were typed of course, and wondered if those donkeys had turned into people just to blow up her theory about the handful out on deck.

Those self-pitying thoughts slowly pooled into more productive burblings. This handful’s disguises must have been the result of Mustardseed’s cursed hairs. She’d previously read that the curse only lasted a few hours per hair, so the hay she’d been shoveling must have been cut with a large number of them to ensure they weren’t revealed part-way through the voyage.

What had then triggered their return to form? The necklaces, she reasoned, since she was instructed to apply them just before making port. Something about that felt wrong. A dedicated piece of jewelry to lift a curse that fasting could end on its own? There was more to it, and more to that, and it would all be Noozy’s if they kept their word. Until then she could still keep herself busy; there were war games on. The open ones would still be the subject of conversation among the Wicky Sticket’s passengers who were listed plenty of places other than the first page of Noozy’s newest article.

In fact, she could hear them chattering now, through the wall, gathering to disembark. At least that was what she thought she heard, but when she put her ear to the slats it was drawn horizontally across them, to the door, where the lobe crinkled against the sheet Jack had plastered, adjacent to the ass instructions.

Its touch raised gooseflesh across her body. Not paper. She knew every stock of paper, how they each stood up to saliva, and how much ink they transferred to their cookie sheath. Whatever this was felt like slime that gained tensile strength the more it stretched. Like a bubble, if bubbles were made of gritty tooth plaque and could be cut into sheets.

Her eyes took a turn, once again saw moving shapes similar to those on Jack’s ‘permit’. Those were doing the chattering. Never mind the losers aboard, she told herself, here’s something to write home about!

…

“Citizen Square, did you hear that quake just now?”

“Yes Constable Triangle, I did. It was likely the work of God; he warned us the time was near. Pay no mind to the aftershock. With your three points you haven’t much mind to go around, so keep it to your orders. Remember everything you hear.”

“Thank you for reminding me Citizen. Your extra angle is such a boon to my class. I will continue my patrol now.”

“Best of luck Constable.”

“Oh! Oh!”

“What is it now?”

“I can’t continue my patrol! There’s nowhere to go! The world ends here. It didn’t used to.”

“So that’s what the quake was for. Do not worry. God in his infinitely unknowable angles has done it. Just as he shrinks corners to hone our edges to our tasks he has shrunk the world, so we will not be distracted by what we do not need.”

“But what do I do now?”

“Patrol the new perimeter Constable. With less world, vigilance is all the easier!

Continued in Part Two