(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 22 minutes)

When the Year is not Kept

And a Shave is Stolen while the Darkness is Borrowed

Robbed of her sight, Beret Chamberhand did her best to keep her words and her breath to herself. It didn’t feel like much of a robbery, as they were kept from her much of the time anyway by her marmoset masters, and she’d grown accustomed to having her view be nothing but white cloth, the only variety ever being the color of the trim.

Her surname was foreign to Compassleaf, as only tiny beities with enough wealth to own humans ever had need of her services. Marmosets were melodramatic and emotional creatures, and sometimes in their interactions they wished for the immediate architecture to reflect their emotional states. Continue reading →

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 19 minutes)

When the Year is not Kept

And there’s a Tug on Every Ear in Compassleaf

The Tower of Babel, home and stationhouse to the Babeloons, was the highest artificial structure in the city, dwarfed only by the four stumps themselves, but there was one that was nearly as tall, and thin to the point that it looked like a rope of glistening drool about to fall into the sky.

Its mud-daubed exterior was a mosaic of thousands of glass and metal beads reclaimed from the bygone age, everything that didn’t have a touch of cleverwood to it. The art was the work of magpies, one of many varieties of bird that used the Roostcheck, as it was called. In the world of the beities all news came on the wing, sometimes by bug, sometimes by bat, but almost always by bird.

They had the voices, and the sense of urgency, and the memory to see that information was transported almost losslessly across entire continents, and even the seas if an albatross was brought in as courier. Roostcheck was Compassleaf’s primary post depot, through which most business was done when there were no meetings in person. Continue reading →

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 30 minutes)

When the Year is not Kept

And the Bloody Mouth is Invoked

The Scion of the Salmon Run was set to return to Compassleaf for a sojourn. The height of the fishing season, when the river would be more salmon roe than water, was just around the bend, and naturally he had to take first honors so the others of the region could then acknowledge him and eat their fill.

Krakodosus had been on the coast investigating washed up kelp forests as a food source, so the mountain-stump city was in the middle of his straight path from the shore to Blueguts. The great black grizzly had been meaning to stop there for some time now, as it was getting embarrassing to muddle his way through conversations that praised a storyteller he owned but had never actually seen perform. Continue reading →

It is the age of the beity.  The animals of the world have grown in size and intellect, and in their wake humanity is reduced to meek servitude.  They say the humans did it to themselves, shying away from the chaos they created.  Loric Shelvtale says that, and much more in the course of his duties as a storyteller in the court of the great bear: Krakodosus the thundercoat, Scion of the Salmon Run.

Until one evening, during a key performance, he violates one of the ultimate rules, meant to keep his kind in check.  Fleeing for his life, he seeks the only human power left, a secret reserved only for dentists, who are still allowed to forge metal to keep the giant teeth of their masters clean.  That secret is the Bloody Mouth, an oath that turns a dentist into protector and warrior, and the tool of their trade into a weapon.

And so begins their struggle, to flee the beities, and perhaps learn how the world could have reached such a state, though they would be shocked to find it all started long ago, on a place called the internet, where their forebears could not stop obsessively staring at photos of adorable animals…

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 17 minutes)

(estimated reading time for entire novel: 13 hours, 43 minutes)

Invoke the Bloody Mouth

by

Blaine Arcade

When the Year is not Kept

And the Clutch of the Sig-neagle Fails

A beity is not failed by their talons out of nothing. There was an attack, and it had come out of clear skies no less. That is how the Sig-neagle was caught off her guard, for countless seasons had passed since last she suffered such craven disrespect. Even for her the skies were not without their threats; sometimes she did battle with hurricane winds and lances of lightning. They were challenging foes, eluding the steely traps at the end of each leg.

Lightning’s nature would’ve protected it completely in the seasons of old, but not now that the twin forces of life both ran in the river of animal blood. When bolts struck around her flight path they had be wary, despite their speed. More than once she had been witnessed under the dark clouds with a bolt caught up in her claws, those that saw it testifying to the indignity of the long-untouched lightning which turned out to flop just like a fish plucked from a lake when captured. Continue reading →