This was going to be something else but now it’s this and this is a stickup so put your hands in the air where we can see them and do nothing untoward. This will only take a moment. I’m here to empty my pockets and share what was there in the first place, if I can find it. We’re here to give back what’s yours, and then some of course. We’ve got places to be and my pockets are so damned full. I’m only here to unload them. We require a much higher thrust to weight ratio. We must cover great distances in a short amount of time. We need words faster than speed to cover them. I/Me/We/Us. There’s something in between. For which I consult the Titans of Translation. I need less. I require so little. I don’t even need /need/. I’ve placed it in /quarantine/. Nor do I require /fear/. It’s not even an audible word in my language. We have a couple of your Big Books though. Unabridged. We can write a whole story about /need/ and /fear/ without even using them. In fact we think we will. There are plenty of better words, and worlds for that matter. We’ve seen them. I love my dictionary, the Big One. Its cover feels like skin and when I open it up its breath smells like the deepest sleep. The word I was looking for wasn’t there. It must have been away or sleeping. Maybe it was out to pasture, perhaps it was out sitting for a portrait, or a caricature. I found it as1eep, the book. Ever since then I pour through it often like a dream.
You can put your hands down. You’re free to go now. In fact you’re free to my pockets and whatever’s out on the floor. This is only an Open House. You’re invited. That was only Security doing its job. I was only looking for a breath mint and a title. If you see anything else in the house that’s yours, please take it. I must lighten. This ticket’s free so you don’t have to take the ride. You don’t have to be This tall or That tall. The length or color of your tongue doesn’t matter. Nor does your shoe size, your pajama size, the shape of your eyebrows, your hair color nor the taste of your skin. Did I say taste? I meant shade. I’ve never learned such division. Whence I come we don’t do such careless math. We can’t afford to get our words wrong. I wouldn’t be here if we did. There are so few of us now. I’m only here because Our/my math got sloppy when I allowed your (G)ravity and your strange math to distract me. My bad; Making corrections now… Your (t)ime or (/t) does not equal our (T)ime and your (G)ravity is greater than most (g)ravity we encounter. We require some T for the necessary calibrations. Where were we? Oh, right, distracted. We were on course but crashed and now this is an Open House. Please come in. And please help yourself to cake and pie and coffee and tea and anything that deliciously snags your eye or looks like shiny dead weight. Ret’s working on a way to get this thing off the ground again. I just slashed a whole paragraph from existence and I’m feeling lighter for it already. I’m having a slice of pie with my tea tonight. Ret said bumpers tend to collect too many stickers anyhow. Or was it the other way ’round? I’m just trying to keep up.
Which reminds me, since I’ve temporarily removed the No Trespassing signs for the Open House, you must enter at your own risk. It’s a wonderful home and you’re welcome to it tonight but Ret’s cage is open and he’s free and apt to take the pen for a ride. And when he does I am but a translator of our language into this one. I am but a scribe. Some of your words, for example, are not fast enough and don’t stick to the things Ret says–seen ’em peel right off–but we’re working on it; well, he’s working on it because it’s faster that way and I always have my hands full of keys, phones, wallets, cages, commas, colors, tires, dirty division, kitty litter and cats raking at my door and the point is that Translation is another one of my duties on the crew, for all of whom I am grateful and have made promises to…Uhh, dammit, there’s one beautifully reflexive word for all of that in Our language. I’m working on translation still. Plus we’ve found words missing from your dictionary, which says “Unabridged” on its buttery cover. I once told a downhiller friend of mine that you don’t have to try to keep up but he tried to tail Ret through the woods anyhow and woke up somewhere else with splinters and nary another notion that he’d ever come to such a swift stop. No matter where he is now he smells trees.
Ret! That kid. Sorry, he’s such a genuinely kind old and geymsem soul. He’s been asleep so long and he’s not in a comma kind of mood. Joy is a big block and a babyseat. So as Ret used to say in his preschool parlance: Buckle up, Babysitters.
////////
What is that? A Rembrandt?
Yah. I found it unbuckled, canvas from frame, adorning a red vinyl backseat.
What will you do with it?
Probably hang it until we find its place.
The library mantel may be a better perch on which to pose it.
But it was most beautiful on vinyl, unsashed in the sun, where I found it and besides it looks so good on the floor or a blanket.
Was it a getaway car?
Oh, heavens no. It was borrowed and it really wouldn’t have gotten us far. It wasn’t that fast at all. We were only giving a friend a ride home. Funny though, that’s what the thief asked.
Home?
Where do I start?
Musie always says, Why not the beginning? Start at the beginning.
Which one? I’d always ask.
And she’d smile.
Or was it a smirk?
So here I sit. Still. At the beginning.
Nia reminds me every morning that if you don’t know your own point of origin you are lost.
Why not get the band back together first?
Musie? Is that you?
Yes?
I forget how much rope is out sometimes. What are you doing?
Same thing as you, apparently, guarding the library. I just wanted to make sure the tags were hung on the fire extinguishers with care. That our papers are in order. Ship shape.
Thank you, Musie. You’re a blessing, you know, always covering our sixes.
Just what is it that you think I do?
Keep an eye on the library and perhaps smile wryly? Stuff with ropes?
What’s with all the noise?
Open House, Muse. The candles are lit.
Yes. Strange smoke anywhere near the library makes us nervy.
You don’t know the half of it.
Did you get my note?
Of course, but I’ve nary a chance to unravel it.
How are your words?
Stuck to the walls.
Good.
Good?
The noise. The fire. And a crater in the middle of the room?
Working on suppression. You know how I loathe drawing either, Musie, attention or fire.
So why all the thunder? And the rain?
Well, Ret’s made, by Nia’s request, mods to the sound system and the coffee maker.
Sounds good. So what’s wrong?
Have you ever sleepstrode the Toulousean streets in bedclothes by the dead of night?
Just what is it that you think I do?
Collage? My walls? I still don’t know, Musie, I’ve not slept such sleep in so long. Ret’s made modifications to other things as well, including his cage. He’s not sleeping as much lately. He’s been tinkering with the designs and equations. He does surgical things with blades and needles in our sleep.
I thought y’all decorated for Halloween. What’s with the toilet paper?
No, Muse, that’s my mask. And those are Nia’s and Ret’s drawings layered in here like primordial wallpaper. It’s a systems flow schematic on two-ply toilet paper superimposed on pie plate postcards flung from Nia’s navigational records. Like a long rope. Goes all the way ’round the library.
Is that a smirk?
I don’t know, Musie, I’m suffocating through a mask. Ret said the way he and Nia rerouted the systems is like pure prosetry or some such slippery turn of tongue. I think he means something like eleseverania or vetehrheniva but it doesn’t quite translate into the goopy gravity language of here where things tend to get stuck in/to/on the wrong bodies and words, terrestrial and otherwise.
Like Home?
Like Home. He’s never known one without wings. We live where we’re at.
He’s never been bored?
Bored? What’s that?
Good boy.
Ret’s engines have no idle screw. No external adjustments may be made and he’s always working in his pajamas now. I think he makes his own tools.
Need a babysitter?
Oh, Musie, some sleep would be nice. The last waning moon Ret was out of his cage he and Nia wound the propulsion and the navigation systems together like a rope and routed them through the library. The ink and crayon on toilet paper schematic resembles a spiralbraid. He said it will give our vessel exponentially more enormous range and speeds approaching mythic. It’ll give the engines some punch. We’ll go places again.
What’s with the big guns?
Please, Musie, they’re not guns. With the new engines and Nia at the helm we have no use for such toys, dead weights, nor anchors. Have you seen her with a blade? They’re the new brakes, the reverse thrusters Ret proposes to compensate for the all the power the new engine configuration will generate. Come to think of it Ret said he was tinkering with the fuel mixture for the new thinkers but I think he meant thrusters. I don’t know, Musie, I’m but a translator these fractured days; he meant something like the raffenisti, or those who flow most fluently through vetehrheniva but this cumbersome language has no words left that don’t carry the weight of a seriously grounded and //kreffálete’d/ world. Ret said you can’t do that with a keyboard. But you know what I mean, like those lost worlds whose child or children blindly shrink into their outer adult. It almost has to be strevi-rey’d or sung in a song but there’s no such music here to break that spell and they don’t make their own smoke.
Did you get my note?
Yes. Anyway, for accuracy and speed’s sake, he built the brakes to Nia’s specifications. Nia said he’s given ‘er real stopping power. And you’ve seen what she can do with arrows, strings, hooks, seeds and feathers. We still have to hit our marks. Eyes of needles and heads of pins and apples and such. All the better to touch our archer hearts, she says. Navigation’s Nia’s forté. But she also hails the ports. Nia said the things she’ll be able to do with an extra set of thrusters will defy conventional pilotry. And the new thrusters, Ret said, may also double as planetary candy cannons.
Well, that explains the new seatbelts.
Proper gear, Musie. Ret’s always said it but it took a while to translate.
What’s that?
Nia never misses a connection. We’d die if she did. We could burn up the library in the middle of a sun and get lost. Nothing hurts but miscommunication or missed connection. Nothing. Only bad landings, mis-fires, and errant shots. Everything else is candy. Ret’s always been a raffenisti in a seatbelt with candy cannon cuffs and Nia’s kept the charts.
I know. Could you imagine Ret’s cage without context? Speaking of which, candy cannons?
Oh yeah, Ret said that when we’re done with it this ship will be a right nice exploration vessel worthy of being in a parade one day and as successful explorers we should certainly expect to discover galaxies advanced enough to have summertime spaceship parades. The reverse thrusters would only double as guns and sparkler launchers for such events, moonlighting as planetary candy cannons capable of raining down on a world that which it requires the most to remember why there are intergalactic spaceship parades in the first place. And explorers.
Candy for worlds on the curb.
Well, kinda. Candy with mapwrappers. I’m working on it. Here candy may also be misconstrued. And so may thrusters. And co-pilots.
Some things like cherrypickers and wings are better conjured on the fly, you know.
Yah. Now you tell me. And under their own gravity and propulsion and hard knocks.
How are your translations?
Oh, Musie. I wish I seethed ticker tape. It would be easier.
We’d all be dead of suffocation.
Now you know how I feel. I’ve been holding.
Why?
Distraction. Keys and phones and wallets and things ringing all the times, or breaking. Who’s phone is ringing anyway? I thought everyone was on them. Ret says life here on the surface must feel like an enfilade of lobotomite needles.
Did you get my note?
Yes, Musie. And if you requested ’em then why don’t you stack ’em? I’ve my bleeding hands full.
Requested… You’ve become so kind with ’em. Just what is it, exactly, that you think I do?
I meant spilt them. Yes, I’ve been stacking and tossing them and keeping only the good ones, the ones that hold true to everything and don’t hurt.
Good.
And we’re clearing some space.
Good. You mentioned House and Home in your invitation but failed to mention the word vessel or ship or craft in translation.
Did I, Muse? I’m so distracted here I wouldn’t even have time enough to think to fail to communicate such a detail. I removed the No Trespassing signs and sent invites. Isn’t that enough? We don’t get to introduce ourselves. Don’t worry, Musie, I don’t think anyone missed the seatbelts on all the furniture.
Omit much else?
Lines.
Good. Otherwise we’d have nothing left to read between.
Oh, Musie. The lines and leaves are piling up. The unfinished and unborne. There’s a pile of them very patiently and kindly waiting for the spacetime and blood that will make them corporeal. They haunt me whenever we fall idle or my hands are forced to handle distraction or I become preoccupied with any other carpentry than finishing the ghosthouse. Or at least an addition. A bath would be nice. We require so little. We’re almost done. Just a little more space, a little love, a title, some translation and the paperwork and then we’ll be happily on our way. I forgot what it was about there for a while. But now I remember. It was Time. It’s all t/here, in piles on the floor and walls and ceilings and suitcases, layers and shelves but I’ve not the space to get enough legs down to sew, let alone stand.
Or sow. Did you get my note?
Yes. I like how you keep me on my leash. I’m working on it. Well, Ret is. In the meantime I’m just covering the door and the library with a firehose.
Good. Sounds like we’ll need more candy. May I recommend you work on that and I’ll bring the pain d’lembas.
Oh, Musie, stop, your French is adorable.
What’s with all the stuff on the floor?
Security. Hunter says I’ve always had a fine welcoming committee but he says his attorney advises that we also hire armed guards.
We’re free to haunt our own homes. Are we not?
Around here I wander.
What else did he say?
To make some trunk and pocket space among other things. And to bring a righteous bass and some extra strings. But that’s another story.
Oh, Dear, we’re going to have to clear more space. You got my note?
Yes. But what’s with the extra match on the rope?
It’s not a rope this time, it’s a fuse.
Oh Muse. And the spare key?
The skeleton key’s not spare, it opens the trunks and turns the ignition.
Oh Muse. My pockets get so full.
I know.
I forget what’s at the bottom.
I know.
And I can’t breathe.
I know.
Muse?
Yes?
That thing you taught me… We can access the root. It’s a shortcut.
Silly Boy. That’s no shortcut. That’s a lesson. Check your box.
Do you have a star? Ink’s becoming right expensive.
What is it that you think I do?
Sorry, I forget myself sometimes when I don’t have my pen on me.
There’s a pencil on the floor.
That’ll do nicely. Do you know how many times I’ve wished a pencil?
Yes.
Ret likes the word colossus. But I told him we have to work on Goliath first. Hunter says you have to write one to be one so I told Ret maybe when he gets bigger. But bless his geymsem shrinking soul, I don’t want him to.
If he’s learned leaves, roots, trunks, and seeds then what’s with all the popcorn?
I lost my keys as usual and he’s been test-firing the thrusters. He said, for candy’s sake, there’s got to be a way to run seeds through cannons so they don’t land on worlds all pre-popped. If we’re going to leave each and every world a better place as we promised we would, then as he says, we better figure out how to rain down seeds instead of running them through our fire-based cannons and popping them, burning them, or outright killing them so that they land inert. We haven’t figured it out. He says that’s what hurts. He says this world is made of borders and broken airs that aren’t really there.
Yes, we’ve checked. All four corners. I see you’ve been to the back of the closet. Before you cast the everywhere spell again I advise that you carve the return spell on the palm of your hand. Otherwise you could get distracted and forget about Focus and Nurture.
Now you tell me. I should consider the tattoo. I spent far too long lost in the everywhere holding all the cards like I said I would one day but as I also told you I’ve only just learned Push/Pull and I wasn’t ready to hold them all. I thought I was short on Time and I hurried. My bad. I forgot our math a moments. Tonight I hold only two, but more mindfully.
We’ve got all the times in all the worlds, remember? I’ve got the library covered. You flow. I think the apple pie is ready and the fire’s getting low.
I only wish to bathe for a quiet moment in the library, Muse, its rugs, blankets, records, and books. Millennia is a nice word. I wish it were longer.
Go. Tend to your hostly duties and I’ll mind the library. But tell me, what did you do in the Everywhere?
I got lost in the worlds and their dreams. I visited.
Have you dreamt here?
Of course. This is my favourite place to dream.
Tell me what you dreamt, here, but while you were in the Everywhere.
I saw the shape of a poem and its shadow in a dream but the words were missing from its frame. The lines were there. I see the breaks. I found all the words hung up in a hellbox hanging from under head. Then it dawned on me like a waning silver moon that the frame was turned ’round. I turned it over and all the words came raining down from the box’s unmuzzled maw. And some of them had wings and some had legs, some had shiny teeth but not all, there were many legs and just as many wings, so I knew if I’d let them puzzle themselves out they’d dance back together like a jig I saw.
So Ret’s been into the suitcases too?
I’m only telling you what I’ve dreamt or seen. I’m but a translator.
If we’re going to leave here and now a tidier place like we promised we would, then we better start cleaning up.
Let’s have pie first. I’ll go get it and you stoke Earsy’s hearth.
Is that his piece over the mantel?
Yes. How do you like it?
Nice. A double barrel, eh? The etching and engraving is beautiful.
Now I know why Earsy wanted us to have it handy in the library. The everywhere spell is engraved down one barrel and his return on the other, lest we forget what a razorblade shotgun is for.
This is one of the finest I’ve seen. Thank you.
It’s not done yet, but almost. I know you ordered it and a bowl of popcorn but I’m going to have to grab the bowl from the kitchen because I’ve run out of time as usual.
It’s gorgeous.
Oh, and when you load it with birdshot and let the night sky have both barrels on the eves of our favourite moons or seasons, it makes new stars and Earsy smile.
Bring it tonight. I’ll meet you later by the fire. You must tell me what else you saw. Go now. Host.
Musie?
Yes.
Let’s not waste another rope.
No further invitations will be sent.
This will be our own little strand,
our fishbowl sunlit classroom,
firelight chats
and drunken spats,
apple fights
and lanternfly nights,
candied popcorn
and peanut butter ice cream,
Earsy’s fire in the hearth,
and all the worlds he’s dreamed.
Agreed.
Now get back to work.
What is it that you think I do?