Anthea diNassos was born in a villa west of Thorns, overlooking the sea. Her dark-haired mother was the daughter of a thriving vintner, rich in both jade and beauty; her father, small and sparkling-eyed, the fruit of the thinnest branch of a noble family tree. She was born just as the light of morning came running along the wavetops to see her; her eyes drank in the ocean, and opened deepest blue. She was raised in the airy loggias of her family home, and learned to run playing hide-and-seek in the vineyard of her forefathers. Her fingers were the color of wine from stealing grapes, and her ready smile was likewise tinted burgundy. So she grew, between nobility and merchant class, between the parties in the rich houses of Thorns and her playmates in the harvest fields. She had dozens of friends, but her best friend was Marina, the daughter of her family’s steward. Together they ran and played, and the old men who were the tyrants of the grapes used to say wisely, seeing the brown toes miring in the rich earth, “They also have roots in this soil.”

All childhood dwindles into memory, golden or no, and there came a time when her parents realized that Anthea was growing tall and slender, and they began to turn their thoughts, and her time, towards the further health and wealth of the diNassos name. They increased the frequency of their daughter’s school lessons, arranged for her to go to parties every week, and transferred the family steward to representing the family wine business in Thorns, so that Anthea would not have Marina constantly distracting her from her studies and her new life. Anthea was less than pleased at the idea of marrying, being shackled to some unknown lordling, and leaving behind the fields and waves that had always been her home, not to mention her friends both at the farm and in Thorns. Well she knew, however, that this was the course she must follow. Her parents knew what was best, and were providing for her as their parents had for them. She swallowed her sorrow and fears, and contented herself with praying, every day, at the house shrine. Their patron spirit was Bountiful Lady of the Pearl Wine, and Anthea grew in her own room little vines of the family stock, that a bloom or bunch of grapes might be ready each day for her to lay on the Bountiful Lady’s terra cotta altar, in prayer for good fortune, for good health, and for love.

It was autumn, and Anthea leaned on her window-sill, drowsing in the lingering warmth just as the dormant vines below her did. Her parents had been staying in Thorns proper with friends for almost a month – strange, but a blessing all the same, for there were no parties to go to, no rich or well-born gentlemen to dance withal under her mother’s anxious eye. They had not even written her, sent word to heed her studies, or told the servants she must practice her music lessons. She was free. Her hand under her chin, her hair floating in a last warm breeze like a breath of the setting sun, she fell into a light and blissful sleep.

Anthea woke, her heart pounding, and breathed shuddering deep before opening her eyes. The warm breeze tugged insistently on her hair, warmer than before, and Anthea opened her eyes. Into the dusky sky black smoke was rising, as from one side of their lands to the other, the vineyards kindled a scarlet nightmare of flame.

Part II →

Consider the pickle. Dill, of course, kosher if possible. Extra zestiness and garlic, stackability, all a matter of taste. Crunch a necessity.

The pickle is an enigma. Made from the mild-mannered cucumber, albeit in its puckishly small incarnations, it is still considered a vegetable. And yet it has undergone a change — a sea change, one might say, given the saline nature of the brine in which its delicious flesh is steeped — and moved from the salad bar to the condiment table, the crisper drawer to the refrigerator door, from the domain of “Mom, do I HAVE to?” to the delectable snackings of all right-minded youngsters. The pickle is, in essence, a vehicle for taste. And while such assertions could be made of many an edible item, for the pickle it is vigorously true, since the pickle itself is in origin separate from the taste which eventually possesses it like the ghost of a vengeful ancestor. What joy! The marriage of toothsome spices with the crisp meat of the ground-growing plant. The restoration of pungent flavor to that unfortunate cousin of the colorful melon family that long lay bland and white of flesh! The transformative power of time made manifest in the person of a pickle!

“Will you hurry UP?” said Bessa, her hands on her hips, and Gerald stepped briskly aboard, snapping a salute as he went. She was the captain, after all. Minta looked uneasily at the solid ground under her feet, but jumped when Bessa bellowed, “Crewman Jones! Are you a sailor or a sea anchor?” and fingered a coil of robe expressively. Seaman Jones made haste, and the three crawled down into the cramped hull to man their controls.

“Where are we going?” breathed Minta, when the hatch was closed and further discussion of sea anchors in vain.

“There is only one way,” said Bessa firmly, “to find out.”

“I hope it will be dry,” said Minta, stroking the blue-cast gunmetal with a nervous hand.

Bessa gave a corrosive stare. “Minta, you idiot! It’s a submarine! What did you go and say THAT for?”

Minta started to bubble forth an excuse, but Gerald cut them both off. “Captain Seford, we’re going under now!” The gauges danced in whirligig uncertainty, and the porthole showed a kaleidoscope of nothings.

Bessa spared one last glare at Minta, and turned her attention to the controls. "Wet, she said through clenched teeth, “wet!” But the rushing roar of their journey was already fading, and with a barely audible plink the three-man sub emerged inside a mosaic sea.

The light streamed in through the porthole, tinting Bessa’s green, Gerald’s hazel, and Minta’s brown eyes an identical, vibrant blue.

“Look!” cried Minta, and they all saw a violet eel making his labored way through the seascape. “but…” she faltered, “doesn’t he look…peculiar?”

“Of course he does,” Bessa barked, “we’re in another world!”

“Not himself,” Minta pressed on quietly, “but how we see him.”

They all looked out the portal, and saw how the light travelled mazedly through the blue, and peered at the outer surface of the porthole, where irregular crystals pushed and shoved with a faint grating they could hear through the glass.

“It’s a dry ocean,” Bessa said flatly.

“A tremendous discovery!” urged Gerald, as the crystal shapes outside shifted and blurred the slowly-moving fauna.

“All Minta’s fault!” Bessa countered with a jut of her chin. “We might as well look about, though. Engines forward.”

Gerald twisted at the controls, and the cabin shook slightly as the engine woke behind it. They shuddered forward with a sound of grinding teeth, and Bessa grabbed wildly at a nearby strap to avoid pitching over Gerald and into the porthole.

“What’s the matter, man!” she hollered, as Gerald’s pianist fingers played over the flashing, squawking console.

“It’s the solid water!” he yelled back, “the screws aren’t working!”

“Then turn them off before something blows!” said Bessa, her face frightened in the strobing red light of warnings and alarms.

Gerald twisted, switched, and pressed, and the engine subsided gratefully into silence. He looked up at his captain with concern in his face. “How will we get anywhere?” Bessa pressed her curly head against the cool skin of the boat and closed her eyes.

“We can use the claws,” Minta offered into the silence. The others looked at her. “Remember, I added manipulator arms? I thought we might need to dig, so I made them stronger…” she wormed between Gerald and Bessa and depressed an unassuming button. With a stentorian klang, the sub thrust viciously pointed spades into the teeming beads of the dry ocean, and with a sound like a vast godfather clock preparing to strike, it tunneled forward through the shimmering deeps.

“Bless you, Minta!” said Captain Seford, “I thought we’d die in this crazy place!” From Bessa’s fierce bear hug, Minta exchanged droll looks with Helmsman Spiggot.

“Onward, then!” cried Captain Seford, releasing Minta and leaning forward to examine the shifting world without with a keen eye. “Let us see what awaits us in this pelagic paradox!”

Onward they pressed, until the shifting view the crystals yielded through the glass was no more curious than a summer’s haze. The captain raised the periscope, and reported the sky was brightest azure, and marked by flocks of drifting yellow birds. “Land ahoy!” she cried at last, “claw speed to half, there may be rocks!”

It was not a rock that loomed ahead, however, but a shifting burgundy shape that proved to be a small child, swimming through the blue with wiry arms. In surprise, he stopped and stared at the slowing submarine, his face obscured by a clam-shell mask.

“That child will drown!” cried Captain Seford, “Gerald, man the manipulator arms! Minta, find a life vest!”

Minta blinked. “But he’s perfectly fine, Bessa sir. He can breathe the air between the water.”

Bessa looked at Minta, then at the child waving at them happily through the glass.

She looked again. “AHA!” she shouted, “but will he be fine in a moment?” She pointed, and Gerald gaped at the nightmare vision forcing its way up from the depths below the unseeing child. Minta shrieked, and Bessa sprang into action with a zeal that was almost smug.

Minta pointed, “Look! It has scoops instead of fins!”

“Indeed,” said Bessa without looking away from the controls, “and more teeth than a voracious darkwyrm.” The sub’s digging spades klanged into position like a rapier and main gauche. “Soon we will discover how many colors of blood it has!”

Gerald turned on the engine, heedless of the alarms now adding noise and color to the fight, and the sub darted and swirled in a deadly sigil beneath the shifting crystal waves. First a feint, then a thrust – the digging claws drove at the nameless thing, and its staring chartreuse eyes grew wide with pain and fear. At last in defeat it labored slowly away, trailing its brown ichor in a spiral on the grains of water. The frightened child clung to the outside of the submarine, and pointed it towards his home harbor.

The people of the world were as strange as its waters, burgundy, maroon, magenta people with freckles in canary yellow making curious patterns on their dark skin. They were grateful to the heroic crew of the little sub, and especially to Captain Seford. They had never seen hair before, let alone red curly hair, and they insisted that all three of the visitors from a land beyond their sea stay to a lavish feast thrown in their honor. “Of course,” Bessa accepted with a twinkling smile. “If it’s not too much trouble, though, could we have some water while we are waiting for dinner? It is thirsty work, exploring.”

“Of course!” smiled the matriarch, and the villagers soon brought ornate fluted glasses full to the brim of the rough cubes of water. Bessa looked at Gerald, and Gerald looked at Minta. “Maybe,” said Crewman Jones softly, “we could go somewhere where water is wet.”

When I was in middle school, they took away local control of the schools and cut the budgets. They said we didn’t need tracking because it was bad for the non-honors kids, and that we could do without all that art and music. I went to private school to wait out the bad times, which we were sure would be temporary. So then they made it almost mathematically impossible to pass school levies or taxes of any sort. Because, you know, heaven forfend a majority of voters be able to tax themselves to pay for services.

And they just keep on going. Every time the government tries to get its house in order, the greedy bastards vote it down. Every single time. When I heard about Measure 30 this morning, I had a fleeting desire to run my car into a tree so I wouldn’t have to see them do this for the next thirty years, or fifty years, or however long it takes for the pendulum to swing back and people to realize that in order to have a healthy state and state services, they have to forgo a few lattes and issues of Maxim. If you’ll excuse me, I have to go to work now. I’m going to need that money to send my kids to private school.

Howdy, folks. Time for me to spout more rhyming gibberish. In this case, it’s rhyming gibberish I came up with Elsewhere, on the boards at RPGnet, in response to someone’s suggesting an artefact for Exalted (for Golden, in fact) called the Claws of the Bandersnatch. The person who suggested this artefact added that these claws should be a weapon that can A) cut anything — spirit, ghost, what have you, and B) climb anything, even air. I was feeling bored and puckish, so here you have the classic tale of the Claws of the Bandersnatch. For background info on Exalted, see the beginning of this article.

In times of old there lived in sloth a Fae of timeless age
A lady? Lord? A thing of power, the deadly Chrysophage!
Its merry bands of bloody fun to saner lands it sent,
For outside its own mad domain it very rarely went.
But lo! The lofty Solars heard of borderlands’ sad plight,
And slew the cruel revellers that drained the woods of light!

In wrath the stunning Chrysophage beheld its vanquished churls.
And on the roiling Wyld itself its rageful magicks hurled!
“What sanity is this which dares to thrash my threshers here?
What obstacle to bliss has thus engendered puling fear?”
The Chrysophage, its rage and power frothing to a peak,
Out of the gathered Wyld itself begat a mighty Beast!

“No tree,” it said, “shall stand when my Beastling dear is near!
No tower shall rise or house shall stay or mortal conquer fear!
For neither shall the snivelling ‘real’ its chaos form abide,
Nor indeed the touch of steel e’er rip its glistening hide!”

And so the the Beast from Wyld did rise above, upon, and through,
The shapely trees and peaceful fields from which the swallows flew.
“Go forth!” the Chrysophage did rave, “my lovely teeming thing!
Go forth and be called Jabberwock, of which the blood-bards sing!”

No border stopped the Jabberwock. No town could near it thrive.
No forest stand, no castle halt, nor Solar Sword divide.
The Solar Warchild, Beaming Boy, his golden blades denied,
threw down his arms and his defeat cried to the open skies.

But hark! Some windsome spirit comes the weeping Exalt near,
And words of hope and eavesdropping drops sweetly in his ear!
“The Chrysophage, O Dawning One, whose Beast you tussle with?
I heard it caution, ‘Suffer not a BANDERSNATCH to live!’”

Now hope grew large within the breast of stalwart Beaming Boy!
His golden blades the BANDERSNATCH had no power to avoid!
He slew the beast and with its claws a cunning Twilight plied.
Behold the CLAWS OF BANDERSNATCH! The gleaming, golden-dyed!

Behold the foe of Jabberwock its downfall thus devise!
Behold how back to flattened lands the Solar fairly flies!
There without tree, nor tower, nor ladder, the air itself he climbed.
There fell from great and lofty heights upon the Beastly slime!

And writhe as might the Jabberwock, and change as twould its shape
The claws of lowly BANDERSNATCH it never could escape!
Its slimy spine the claws did split and bare its knotty back
And right against its seamy heart the claws went snicker-snack!

That is the tale of BANDERSNATCH and hero Beaming Boy
The Solar who to ruin brought the Chrysophage’s toy!
And ever and anon you’ll hear, no weapon is the match,
Of those same deadly gloves of war, the CLAWS OF BANDERSNATCH!

His body now a grey dry shell, the hapless Frog lies low—
The full tale of his short, cruel life no one shall ever know.
What joyous days in woodland glades may he one Spring have had?
What softly sculling tadpoles dear now miss their lissome dad?

And who was it so carelessly the double door did prop?
That curious Frog into the warm and heated space could hop?
In vast uncharted carpet wastes the Frog I fear was trapped
No fly, no mite, no toothsome bug, into his maw there happed.

And how at last, his strength low ebbed, the thwarted Frog did scale
The easeled board, to hide amongst the ads for serum sales?
No insight, truly, have we now, into his wretched fate
Nothing but the tiny corpse the winter did dessicate.

After spending most of my childhood competing with stitching for my mom’s attention, you’d think I might be prepared to compete with stitching for my husband’s attention. No, Matt has not taken up quilting. He has, however, spent every moment I wasn’t nagging him to do stuff with me or do housework, these last few days, doing panorama stitching, thinking about panorama stitching, or getting photos to stitch into panoramas.

To this end we went Saturday to the Japanese Garden, despite the frigid conditions and driving rain, and Matt took pictures. (You’ll have to scroll down in the top left frame to see “Japanese Garden”.) I thought he’d like me to mention it, so there it is. Plug plug.

Just a little message to my Oregonian friends:
If you haven’t voted in the special election on Measure 30 yet, please do, and please vote Yes. The tax increase is not a very large one for the average Oregonian, and the part of the tax increase that does affect the average Oregonian at all is only for a few years.

Don’t believe the opponents who say it’s bad for business - most of Oregon’s largest employers have spoken out in favor of Measure 30. Oregon already has the fifth lowest taxes in the nation - the businesses are not going to leave if we raise them a little. What businesses want is stability, a state government that can deliver on its promises, an education system that will attract the parents who they want to recruit, and a secondary education system that produces well-trained workers. All of these things - the things business wants, the things Oregonians want and need - are on the chopping block if Measure 30 fails. Oregon has given us all a lot, and we need to give a little back in these hard times. Please vote, and vote yes.

Having pioneered the giving thanks for small, petty blessings trend, I’m introducing the “Already Slightly Shopworn Year’s Itsy-Bitsy Resolutions.” We can call them “As Is Resolutions,” or “realistic.”

I hereby resolve to submit a story (already written, editted, formatted, and addressed) to a magazine (already chosen for the purpose, its guidelines read, its address printed on an envelope somewhere, a self-addressed postcard already prepared) this weekend. Why in the world this little task (forestalled by my move to the new house) has so long remained undone, is a question easily answered by Psych 101. However, even though the printed envelope is lost, my paranoia will insist I reread the submission guidelines, and I will once again need to find, obsess over, stamp, and trim a postcard to include, I will do this this weekend. If I have not done this by Monday, I entreat you all to castigate me heartily. In return, if you have any weeny little resolutions to make, I will upbraid you if you don’t do them. Deal?

Update: It’s sitting in the mail tray to go out. No castigation required.

I had a friend at college who didn’t believe in Wyoming. He said that it, not England, was a conspiracy of cartographers. I believe among his supporting evidence was its suspiciously regular shape.

“And think about it,” said he, “have you ever met anyone who’s been to Wyoming?”

“Yes,” I said, with sundry smirks.

He was a little perturbed, as this had never happened before, “Well have you ever met anyone from Wyoming?”

“Yes,” I proclaimed with mounting smugness.

“Well, but, have you ever been to Wyoming?”

“Yes, actually,” I remarked with Ultimate Nonchalant Smugness. He spluttered and subsided into the wreck of a glorious theory.

I realized this morning, as I drove to work to the strains of P.J. Harvey’s Songs from the City, Songs from the Sea, that I take rather the opposite approach in my belief in places. I do not believe in New York.

Yes, many people have been there. I had a cousin who went off to university there (though you’ll note I haven’t seen her since). I have friends who have visited there (bedrick) and even a friend who lives there (novel.) I have heard its name and constituent organs sung of in many a song, seen its face in newspapers, seen its press of folk and its buildings in movies and on television. And, you see, that is precisely the problem. To me, New York is not a place, but a complex amalgam of concepts, stories, an avatar of Cityness. New York is not a real place, but a backdrop for a million stories. Too many things are supposed to happen there for it to be real. It is too many things to too many people to be anything other than a well-developed fiction. Whereas I have tasted the bland spreading highways, the dirty cleanness and pristine filth that is LA, and whereas I have stayed in Chicago long enough to hear and feel, as it were from far off, a little of its pulse and music; New York has no such breath of reality to animate the much-shaped clay in my mind. It is too multifarious and too seminal to actually exist outside of analogy.

And maybe in a way, despite the ludicrousness of my non-belief in New York, I am right. The New York in which Seinfeld lives, where Tony and Maria met, where art and theatre thrive and Spiderman catches purse-snatchers, where accents pinpoint the borough of origin, where immigrants see America for the first time — it doesn’t exist. The New York that lives in the minds of those of us out here, far away, never likely to see it, is not a real city, and maybe, if we did meet the real one, we would be just a little disappointed.