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I like the word nefarious, a fact which was brought to my attention today when I started an e-mail, “It is I, the nefarious FTE-requestor!” (Yes, there are a few people at work with whom I feel safe being silly.)
So, there it be: nefarious
As in, ‘Every frog knew to avoid the swampy lair of the nefarious Dr. Heron!’
“Marina,” Anthea sobbed. This whole day had been a phantasmagoria, something she could scarcely follow, let alone believe in — but here, suddenly, was something, someone, real and familiar. She wept softly, and cupped the ghost’s cold, watery hands in hers. “Is this real, then? Are we both here, and lost?”
“Yes, my friend,” breathed Marina in a whisper. “When the Mask took Thorns, he built this place, this palace. He needed servants…” The pale shadow raised her head, and Anthea saw a trailing noose wrapped around a ragged neck. “He likes us to wear our scars,” Marina smiled ruefully.
“Marina! How can you smile? You must…fight! Or escape!”
Marina laughed like a breeze over wine bottles. “I cannot, he binds me somehow. And it is not so bad, to fetch and carry, and be a parlormaid in a dead man’s palace. Others have not been so fortunate. And you, for you there is still time!”
“Is that what he has planned for me? To be your ghostly fellow here?”
“Oh, no!” said Marina, her milky eyes wide. “They said you are special, that you are to be like the Dancer,” she said, looking around uncomfortably at the word, and rising to a normal girl’s height in the air. “Come. They will come for you within the hour, but there is still time. Order me to show you the way, and I think my bindings will let me help you for a while. But we must hurry!”
“There must be a way for you to be released,” said Anthea, but at Marina’s impatient urging, she sighed and said, “I order you to show me the way out of the palace.” The living girl rose and followed the other from the dark room.
How lost she would have been without her ghostly guide! The palace corridors, dim and opulent, seemed to spread and blossom in endless, never-changing profusion. Marina opened each door for her, so she did not have to touch the wood, ill-omened ghost ash that it was. At last Marina made her pause, and passed her own head through an ornate door.
“The great hall,” she explained in a whisper. “It’s clear for the moment.” With an effort, the little ghost materialized and pushed the door open. Outside it, the well-remembered hall stood empty, giving even its silence a hint of echo. With a frisson of renewed fear, Anthea gathered the spreading skirts of her scarlet gown and trotted along the softly glowing marble, the sound of her steps making a flurry of fleeing footfalls cascade around the room. Marina glided alongside, the great doors growing ever closer ahead.
Suddenly, Anthea stopped, and the chorus of pattering feet rolled into silence. She stood staring at the one metal door among all the carved wooden doors in the hall. It stood slightly ajar. Marina appeared at her shoulder. “Anthea!” she whispered, “do come!” But Anthea was walking slowly towards the door. “Anthea! I cannot take you there! It is forbidden!” Anthea’s hand was on the handle, and the door swung silently inwards. “Anthea! I cannot guide you there!” Marina whispered desperately.
“I hear singing,” Anthea murmured, and took a step into the dark.
The sun is shining outside, the trees are all in glorious full bloom. The birds are tuning up for one heckuva concert, and the bumblebees are bumbling more than any parish beadle ever has. I cannot blog.
Have I mentioned that I have bought a pattern for a baby dress, and material for it, so I can have it ready for my pregnant co-worker’s little girl? Have I mentioned that I finished reading 1984, that I am digesting the beginning stages of A Very Short Introduction to Kant? These are things I could mention. As is the fact that Unreal Tournament is quite jolly and full of viscerally satisfying action. As is the fact that Joss Whedon totally surprised me with a third season Angel episode I watched last night. As is the fact that I had to erase a totally gorgeous pupil and iris from a portrait I’m drawing and am the better for it. These are all juicy topics I could discuss. But I cannot.
I am not fit to discuss anything. I am seven years old in a flowered sundress. I have snapped a little snap-song to a squirrel and scared him away. I have been watching the wildlife. I have a braid and butterfly earrings. I am on two cups of coffee. I am standing under an apple tree and touching pink snow. I am stroking the soft skin of magnolia blossoms. I am fit for nothing and up for anything, and flitting from topic to topic like an industrious bee. So ignore me, and get out into the sun.
As I’ve mentioned before, this whole “not swearing at work” thing is very easy for me. There’s just a censor-switch somewhere in the back of my head. For other things, though, the censoring happens much more consciously. For instance, my geeky tendencies. The sheer number of sci-fi and gaming jokes my mind suggests and I swallow is HUGE. Also, the kind of jokes that are risky around those you don’t know too well (esp. their religious tendencies) I have to suppress. The geeky thing - well, it’s not that I think there’s anything wrong with my geekiness. But the things I geek over - sci-fi, RPGs, et cetera—are important to me, and I don’t particularly want to expose things that are important to me to those that will certainly misunderstand them, or insult them. (Case in point: At my old job, we were discussing Halloween costumes. I mentioned that the next year I was planning on dressing as a villain from Buffy. The woman said, “God, will anyone even remember that show next year?” in a very insulting tone of voice. I seem to remember screaming, “MY friends will, and so will the millions of people who made it a gigantic TV hit, you out-of-touch snob!” Oh wait, that was my desire. I think I gulped and said, “We’ll see.”)
Today I was at the Administration Building, and our very nice Grants Guru came up and announced she was walking back to our building with us. “Because you, Felicity, are the Chosen One.”
Felicity Quip Generator, loading…
“Uh-oh, Betty. That’s usually a bad thing.”
Sigh. At least at home I can be a total raging geek. And here. And for those wondering, I am chosen to be the first to use the new electronic grant submission system, ‘cuz they think I’m the best with computers.
Some of you may know – in fact, many people who have a minimal or marginal interest in comic books know – that Jean Grey (aka Marvel Girl, aka Phoenix, aka The first X-Woman) dies all the freakin’ time. So much so that I have it on good authority that the following exchange actually occured in X-Men continuity at a recent Jean Grey funeral:
Emma Frost (reformed villainess and X-Man): snicker
Scott “Cyclops” Summers: Goddammit Emma! It’s not funny!
Emma: Yes it is, Scott, and you know it.
If my source didn’t invent that passage through wishful thinking, then Marvel knows damn well that Jean Grey’s tragic deaths are as predictable as the tragic deaths of any number of Captain Kirk girlfriends. Why do they keep doing it? Why? I think I have the answer.
Last night I was perusing the polychromatic pages of the periodical (okay, I’ll stop now) Batman/Superman. Er, Superman/Batman. Whatever, this is why they have a logo, not a title. And the last frame of this comic book, after several frames of people talkin’ Kryptonian (yeah, Kryptonian. It’s kindee funny-lookin’.) shows Superman telling Batman as he gives the blonde girl he’s been talking to his cape to wear, “This is Kara Zor-El, my cousin from Krypton.” At this point, my head broke.
You see, DC has had this here “Cousin from Krypton” angle before. She was the original Supergirl. Or the second one. Or something. Before Supergirl was an angel, or an alien-human hybrid, or an angel-human hybrid, or a shapeshifting girlfriend of Lex Luthor’s…umm, okay, I’m already confused. I don’t read Superman, and I don’t understand Supergirl history. But I do know she’s been reinvented so many times that even I, who, as I said, do not read Superman titles have seen at least one Supergirl debut — she was supposed to be Lois and Clark’s daughter from the future. So do you start to see what I’m saying here?
A long long time ago, someone at DC and someone at Marvel made a bet that he (Marvel) could kill Jean Grey (Marvel Girl) more often than he (DC) could reinvent Supergirl. It all makes sense! At the time, it was a lark! Now, so many Jean Greys stenciled on that Marvel guy’s desk, a dartboard of Supergirl concepts mounted on the DC office wall, it’s a grim battle, each comics titan straining against the other to control the cheesiness of the superheroine ethos. This week some poor schmo at Marvel, with “counterintelligence” scrawled on his cubicle tag, read Batman/Superman and groaned. “Guys? Do you have the next Jean Grey death ready? I mean, have you got her alive again and ready to go? Those wily bastards have hidden it in this Batman/Superman thing – I know, a Bat-title! Sneaky! But “cousin from Krypton” only has one meaning…”
Or, you know, maybe it sells comics.
A little boy labored up a mossy hill, stumbling and sliding on the slate. The raven who went with him did not labor, but hopped and flew and called out encouragement and insults to the boy. “Take us to your tucker! Button up some grub!” he called. The boy heard him very well, but did not say a word. He only climbed more quickly and more sweatily, until he reached the little path to the top, where a green sod roof covered a dark dripping cave, a little blossoming tree beckoned, and a pool of clear water reflected the sky.
An old woman came out of the cave, and tilted her head to hear what came her way. She had long twisting hair like seaweed, fingers twisted like driftwood, and she was blind. She heard the footsteps of the little boy, and heard them stop before her. He was small, and thin, with brown hair and solemn hazel eyes, but she could not see him. She would have given him food if he had asked, but he could not ask her.
“Who’s there?” called the old woman, and the raven cocked his head at her.
“I’m a devil!” he cordially replied.
The old woman considered this, and tentatively put out her hand toward where the footsteps had stopped. She ruffled the hair. “You are a very small sort of devil,” she said, stepping back again.
The raven hopped on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m a devil!” he insisted.
The old woman had long been thought a witch, but had never had the opportunity. “You’re a devil?”
“I’m a devil!”
“Can you fly?” said the old woman, and the raven circled in the air above her head.
“I’m a devil!” he reiterated (as if she should have known that all devils could fly.)
“Can you make it rain?” said the old woman, and the little boy cupped his hands in the pool and threw the water up in the air to plunge down upon the old woman.
“Can you make it snow?” The little boy tore the wind-chilled petals from the fruit tree, and the old woman smiled as they kissed her face.
“Can you make fire?” asked the old woman, and the little boy struck his flint and steel and kindled a small fire to warm them.
“I think, on the whole,” said the old woman, “you are my kind of devil. What will you require of me for your services?”
“Take us to your tucker! Button up some grub!” exclaimed the raven, and the old woman nodded.
“That seems quite fair,” she said, and ruffled the boy’s head again with a smile, “after all, you are a very small devil.”
Note: A long time ago, Matt told me I should post some of my poetry here. Inspired by my recent brush with raccoonery, I thought I’d post this poem I wrote at college.
Night Leaper
Black eyes glisten like the first cup of coffee
In the flashnight, caught midlight.
Shocked superheroes retreat,
Garbage bag battle bandoned—
Who was that masked…thing?
Wolf fur and a tail from Dr. Seuss.
Dainty washing, As Good as it Gets.
Glint of life flitting road-side,
darting hideward, or holeward, or roadward—
oops
Stiff and rotting, gloved hands held high
The hero greeting Death.
Minta smiled up at the airship with a beatific air. The light rushing through the tall windows of the tower gleamed off the particolored bag of gas that held the ship aloft, and cast strange colors on Minta’s pale blonde hair. “Flying will be lovely,” she murmured, either to herself or to Gerald.
Gerald grinned, “And there’s far more room than in the submarine.” He frowned across the vehicle silo at that maligned creation.
“I liked the submarine, too,” Minta said cautiously, looking around for Bessa.
As if worrying that she might be there made it so, Bessa came sliding down the nearest mooring rope with a mad smile. “So, my crew! Are we to stand about all day or are we to go somewhere? What is our assignment? Where shall we sail the Grand Magnifico?”
Minta pulled a metal tube from her crewsuit, and handed it to Bessa with a respectful bow.
“Orders!” Bessa said with a tone of not unmixed delight, and dubiously extracted a piece of paper from the tube. “For my eyes only,” she noted with a glare at the craning Gerald. “Ah,” she said with evident satisfaction, “we are to sail the Grand Magnifico to a far land of ice and pillars, where only frosty air surrounds the earth, and water is a rare commodity.” She squinted at the paper and added forcefully, “a rare, WET commodity. I’m sure it meant to say that.”
“Just in case,” squeaked Minta, “I have provisioned the Grand Magnifico with water of our own dimension.”
“Excellent thinking, Seaman Jones,” Bessa clapped her on the shoulder, “perhaps you WILL make officer someday.”
“Thank you, ma’am—I mean, sir, Captain, sir. May I ask what our task is to be in this faraway land, sir?”
“No!” barked the Captain. “Loose lips crash ships! Aboard, gentlemen!” With a haul on the mooring rope and a few vaulting leaps, she sprang aboard and let down a ladder for her crew. “Helmsman Spiggot! To the wheel! Seaman Jones, cut the mooring lines!” And as Spiggot hauled the wheel over and Jones scurried to and fro, loosing the bags of weight that tethered them, Captain Seford lassoed a great lever on the side of the silo, and pulling it, opened the great shining roof onto a kaleidoscoping sky. “Brace for entry!” Helmsman Spiggot stood straight and firm at the wheel, Seaman Jones wove an arm into the rigging, and Captain Seford gripped the railing on the prow as they rose into the confounding void.
plink The Grand Magnifico was sailing through a silver sky, glinting with ice particles that floated on the air and grated softly against the brazen hull. In the distance, a delicate metropolis rose in glassy spires from a slender pinnacle of stone. Several such islands presented themselves to the eye, their bases foundered in the icy fog.
“It’s lovely!” whispered Minta, and her breath crystallized before her.
“It’s quiet,” Gerald noted, listening to the soft shhhing sound of the crystals against the hull.
“It’s too quiet,” Bessa insisted, peering narrowly into the distance.
A great reverberating boom broke the crystal hush, and a sooty black cannon-ball smashed into one of the crystal spires of the island city. Minta cried out, and Bessa’s eyes glinted. “Pirates!” she screamed, “the very pirates we were sent here to destroy!”
Even as Minta drooped under the sight of the beautiful turret crashing down in ruin, she heard this effusion. “Pirates?” she said.
“Pirates!” yelled the Captain, “Spiggot! Back-calculate the trajectory of that cannon-ball and put us on intercept! Jones! Man the flame-jet!”
“There weren’t any pirates in the orders,” pursued Minta, showing no signs of manning any flame-jets whatsoever.
“How do you know?” said the Captain with a dangerous gleam in her green eyes, “Have you been reading confidential documents?”
“It wasn’t a confidential document,” murmured Minta. “If it said pirates, let’s see it.”
Bessa sniffed, “I ate the orders, standard practice. Now unless you want to see how many cannon-balls it takes to get to the middle of a spun-glass city, I suggest you prepare the flame-jet for maximum speed!”
With a sullen sigh, Seaman Jones mounted the rigging and waited below a complex tubing affair at the base of the balloon. “Flame-jet ready and primed,” she reported wistfully.
“Excellent.” Captain Seford peered up at Minta. “You did provision the ship with weapons, Jones?”
“Of course. There are cutlasses below, and cannon on every side.”
“Excellent! Burn the flame-jets! Three taps on my mark! Mark!”
The Grand Magnifico shot forward with all possible speed, the slender islands and the shocked faces of the pale people who lived there devolving into an icy blur. The ice crystals beat at the sailors’ faces, but ahead, a dark shape resolved itself into the menacing form of a black ship with a long cruel bowsprit. The Grand Magnifico scudded to a stop in the empty sky, and turned her port battery to the darksome sloop. Captain Seford strode to the rails and saw, across the intervening yards and interfering mist, a lean dark form with a greasy sword and a gleaming mustache gesturing defiance to the champions of good.
“Jones! Man the guns!”
“Captain! Permission to speak!” squeaked Jones.
“No, you fool! You can speak after the battle! Man the guns!”
“But, sir!”
“No, seaman! None of your lip or suggesting! Roll out those cannon or we’ll all perish!”
Minta scurried to prepare the brass cannons with every evidence of misery, as Captain Seford returned her gaze to the dark stranger. “Spiggot, spyglass!”
The spyglass duly handed, she studied the handsome features of the pirate captain. “A worthy adversary, Spiggot. A foeman worthy of my steel and shot. I can see him clearly now…”
Spiggot cleared his throat, “That’s because he’s headed right for us, cap’n.”
She dropped the spyglass to her side. “Indeed he is! He means to board us!” She drew a cutlass from her belt. “Excellent!”
“Please please, Captain, permission to speak?”
“Drivel, Jones!” said Captain Seford, wrapping herself around a loose rope and preparing to swing across to the dark nemesis. “They’re closing for hand-to-hand!” She leapt up to the rail.
“NO, sir!” cried Minta at last, breaking the bounds of propriety, “They are ramming our sailbag!”
Captain Bessa looked up in horror as the dark bowsprit tore through the cheerful sac of the Grand Magnifico, and caught too late at the rail as the ship lurched forward and down. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” she called, as she lost her footing and plunged backwards into the frigid abyss. “Jooooooooooones!”
“What were the orders?” Gerald whispered to Minta as they gripped the steering bar of the life-glider.
“To search out a rare and wonderful crystalline bird and bring its egg back for study,” Minta whispered back.
Gerald smiled, “Sounds exciting.” He stared down the rope hanging from the glider, at the Captain, roped around the ankles and staring down in an attitude of frozen terror. “Think she’ll be okay through the vortex that way?”
Minta nodded gravely, “Oh, yes. I do fear she’ll never look at heights the same way again, though.”
Rock Star having lived most of his life in the Midwest, he had never seen an ocean until yesterday. Of course we had to remedy this, and since yesterday was clear and fine and Matthew had stopped whining about his muscles after the hike he and Rock Star took, we headed for the beach at the slug-a-bed time of noon or so.
Rock Star is a very satisfactory houseguest—he is adaptable, fun, and cooks quite well and often. However, one of the most amusing things about Rock Star as a houseguest is how much he praises our fair city and region. He actually apologized his first weekend here for going on and on about how lovely Portland is. The ocean and beach also fell prey to his enthusiasm, being declared “quite possibly the neatest thing I’ve ever seen.” We walked up and down at Manzanita, watched the stiff wind driving an exodus of bubbles before it, ran from the advancing surf, and generally had a good time. We instructed Rock Star in such beach basics as not turning your back on the ocean, not sitting on logs in the surf, and the various interesting behaviors of wet sand when feet are involved.
Then we went up to Cannon Beach for a little while, as Matt insisted Haystack Rock must be seen, and we walked down to observe the… largeness and rockiness of this large rock. The surf was fairly spritely all day, forcing us to run (boys) and skip (me) backwards a great deal more than usual. Just in the shadow of Haystack Rock, I managed to get caught running away from four waves all combining in a great wet synergy, and got wet up to the back pockets of my overalls. It was actually a little scary, as I was still running when the feet and feet of water engulfed my legs, and I was dreadfully sure for several moments that I wasn’t going to be able to keep my balance. I managed by dint of some screaming and eeking to keep said balance, and we drove home with me very damp and cold. Despite my suggestion that Cannon Beach is full of pretty dresses which could easily be bought for me.
On the way home I napped a little, and also discovered that Rock Star never “went on a trip and brought A, B, C”, so we went on a trip and brought the following: an anaconda, a blunderbuss (him, not me!), a coatimundi, a didgeridoo, an egg, a fire extinguisher, galoshes, a heliotrope, an icicle, a jerkin, a killing jar, a lathe, a Mazeratti, a ninja, an octopus, a pincushion, a quilt, a radish, a sousaphone, a termagant, a uvula, Venus, a Wiggles CD, Xaoping, a yes-man, and a zither.