#Bird That Carries You Over An Unusually Large Gap

[jasper-rolls]

Bird That Carries You Over An Unusually Large Gap - MtH and turdl3 [SiIvaGunner (Blue Album)]

[ladygavroche]

Some random headcanons about Fëanorions and domesticated animals in Beleriand

(These are partly based on canon, partly on fanon, as well as stuff I made up on my own)

Himring is too cold for most animals to prosper. The fortress does have stables, which house enough war horses for a small but efficient cavalry. The people of Himring also raise goats, who are well suited to the mountain and its climate, for their milk or even for their meat. This is mainly intended as a last resort resource, however. In times of peace, Maedhros relies on his brothers to provide him with meat, wool, leather and other animal-based products. 

Maedhros also raises various birds of prey, for hunting and to carry messages safely, and also because they fit his aesthetic. He has managed to domesticate a couple of great condors, of which he is very proud. They are used only for his most important correspondence (i.e. letters to Fingon), because even if Morgoth has many spies among birds, most would think twice before approaching a beast with a ten-feet wingspan.  

Maglor had many song birds in Valinor; he even tried to bring his favorite parrot to Middle-Earth (the one that best imitated his voice), but it died of stress during the crossing on the ships. He had not found any satisfactory replacement in Beleriand.

The Gap is renowned for its horses; its cavalry is the key of its defence, and the defence of the lands beyond. Maglor’s Gap, however, is also quite suited to cattle farming, because of its large flat meadows. All through the land, large cow herds can be found, looked after by Maglor’s people on horseback (did I say Elf-cowboys? You decide).

Celegorm, of course, has massive kennels for his dogs, as well as a number of falcons and other hunting birds; he also has decent stables, although most of his horses originally come from the Gap and are often sent back there for mating. Himlad is surrounded by wooded areas, with an abundance of game (Celegorm makes sure no Orc is hunting on his lands). It is thus unsuited for cattle, unlike the Gap. However, Celegorm is also raising a number of pigs, which can provide his dogs with the necessary meat, during the winter, and can be sent over to Maedhros as supplies (salted pork keeps well and is very nourishing). The pigs are also used to find truffles in the woods.

Curufin and Celebrimbor have no particular interest in animal husbandry; even if Curufin recognizes the importance of having decent horses and the advantages of pig farming, he wants nothing to do with it and is too happy to leave it to his brother. Celebrimbor likes to play with Huan from time to time, but that’s about it. In any case, their forges are barred to anything that walks on more than two legs (and even those on two legs, if they happen to be Celegorm; he has a reputation for clumsiness around the fires…).

Thargelion has a great number of sheeps (and other similar animals) that are raised for their wool. There are many skilled smiths and metal workers in Beleriand, both among Dwarves and Elves, but Caranthir is playing on his strengths, and his lands have become not only a crossroad for trade, but a major center for textile. He even has silkworms, which were discovered and given to him originally by Amrod. 

Thargelion’s storehouses are always full of wool, fabric or grains, and that of course attracts rodents, so Caranthir keeps many cats to hunt them out. The problem is that he is too fond of them and always spoils them by giving them treats and leftovers from his own plate. As a result, the cats are usually not very interested in prowling the storehouses and prefer to hang around their master. Caranthir bemoans this state of thing but does not change his behaviour at all. 

The twin’s lands are also famous for their horses, though not quite as good as Maglor’s Gap in that respect. Amras is very traditional in his interests: like a good elvish princeling, he likes horses as well as dogs and falcons for the hunt. Amrod is a bit more unusual: he has an interest in all kinds of bugs, and he often experiments with them. He discovered the properties of the silkworms and gave them to Caranthir (since he lacked the skills to do anything with the silk himself). He has a great number of bee hives, which he tends to himself. He has figured out the bees have a language and is trying to find a way to use that for spying and for sending secret messages.

[duskandstarlight]

Embers & Light (Nessian multichapter fic)

Chapter 19 - Nesta

This is too long for Tumblr, so read part of it below but all of it on A03.

Emerald blazed threateningly in the dark forest and Nesta’s stomach lurched.

She wanted to snap at Cassian to move — to do something to stop the Illyrian from firing his arrows — but he remained fixed in place, his siphons winking but unused, as if he were out of power. He was still holding Nesta behind him, his grip tight around her arm. And Nesta knew, as surely as breathing, that he would do anything to make sure that she remained unharmed — even if he had yet to move a muscle.

Slowly, Cassian held up his other hand in surrender. Again, the siphon on the finger straps of his leathers flashed through the darkening forest.

“It’s me, Lorrian.”

Hard hazel eyes scanned over them both and Nesta watched them flicker in recognition as they settled on Cassian.

With an angry growl, the Illyrian lowered his bow. His wings flared before they retracted back in again, the same way Cassian’s did when he was pissed off.

“You couldn’t have just warned us of your arrival in your usual fashion, you stupid prick? What the fuck happened to you?”

The males voice was bass and sonorous. It bounced off the trees and rattled through Nesta in a way that made her bones feel brittle. She watched those sharp eyes flit around the dell. His expression turned grim as he took in the charcoaled and bloody remains.

“Fucking kerits, that’s what,” Cassian snapped. “A whole pack of them. Since when do they come this far down from the mountains? We nearly died.”

The males expression turned grim. He kicked at a severed head and Nesta watched it roll into the foliage, tongue still pink and lolling. “I’ve never seen them down here before. What was that silver streak? It looked like fire. It shook the perimeter like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I thought the house was going to come down.”

“That was Nesta,” Cassian explained shortly. “We were trying to get to safety. I thought her magic might pierce through Frawley’s magic. Instead, it felt like a cannon had gone off. It scared off the rest of the kerits and threw me into a boulder.”

Wincing, Cassian brought a hand to his shoulder as if he were remembering the impact. “It near dislocated my shoulder.”

Cassian turned to Nesta then, a critical eye running over her body. Despite her blood splattered face and hair, Nesta was otherwise unharmed. The kerits hadn’t even come close to touching her. She’d incinerated her half circle and Cassian had dealt with his.

“Any injuries I should know about?” he asked her.

Nesta shook her head, but Cassian’s gaze lingered on her a few moments longer, as if he weren’t sure he believed her. Even she was suffering from disbelief; they had been so outnumbered it seemed a miracle that neither of them were suffering from major injuries.

When Cassian seemed satisfied she wasn’t hiding anything, he waved a tired hand. “Nesta meet Lorrian. Although Lorrian is Illyria’s best aerial warrior, it would appear your power managed to scare the shit out of him — congratulations.”

The stern expression of the male - Lorrian - did not disappear at the introduction, and Nesta watched him cross his arms tightly across his muscled chest, the green magic of his right arm flaring from the movement. His piercing look was one of a warrior but Nesta did not flinch, she just stared right back. She was well versed in staring down opponents — what was another Illyrian bat?

It only took a few seconds for Cassian’s words to sink in. Lorrian’s eyes cut sharply from Nesta to Cassian. “Are we talking of the female who killed the King of Hybern?”

Cassian’s hand was instantly on the small of Nesta’s back as she stiffened habitually. The gesture was unusual; Cassian rarely touched her without cause. She resisted the urge to bat him away. When Lorrian tracked the movement she knew why Cassian had done it. It was protective — he was telling Lorrian where his loyalties lay.

Deep in the pit of her stomach, Nesta felt something primal growl.

It made her want to seethe at the same time her body melted into the sound.

“That would be the very same female,” Cassian said with a lightness that was laced with warning. “Feel free to thank her any time.”

A beat of silence followed as the warrior examined the female before him, but then Lorrian’s hardened expression relaxed, and in its wake — a smile. It transformed his face in the same way Cassian’s changed from General to the male she knew when he was off-duty. It was an intentional crack in his armour and the open vulnerability of the action did not escape Nesta. Never had she been that willing to shed her mask for someone she had met moments before. Even her sisters hadn’t seen all of her.

“Well, why didn’t you say? It’s good to meet you, Nesta Archeron.”

A large hand was thrust out towards her — the one that wasn’t glazed in emerald light — for Nesta to shake.

Nesta hesitated for a moment before she moved to grasp Lorrian’s hand. His hazel eyes were sincere and his gaze unwavering, and although her movements were stiff and measured, she made sure her handshake was firm when she grasped his own, even if her hands were spotted with blood.

Lorrian didn’t seem to mind. He bowed his head respectfully at her before he turned to Cassian. It was not a move that Nesta had seen any other Illyrian male do to another female.

“You had better come inside in case there’s anything else lurking about. Frawley will want to see you and you could both do with cleaning up. When she learns about the kerits, she might not be so pissed that you tried to break through her protective magic.”

Cassian winced. “If the witch bids it, I suppose we better.”

Lorrian barked a laugh as he held up his palm to gap between the boulders. It was identical to what she and Cassian did when they entered the bungalow. Emerald siphons flared and the invisible barrier began to fizzle away from the inside out; a splash of gold in the dark.

Exhaustion was pressing on Nesta so keenly that she had to summon all of her focus into getting her body to move forward. Cassian seemed to sense it, his eyes flickering briefly with remorse as they both followed Lorrian to the gap between the boulders. For a moment, Nesta thought Cassian was going to offer to carry her but he clearly thought better of it, gesturing for her to walk through the pocket before him with that crooked half-smile of his.

The hole in the protective bubble sealed with more fizzling, golden light as soon as Cassian had passed through. With it came an overwhelming sense of relief. Unlike the woodland they had left behind them, the forest here felt lighter, as if it were completely devoid of threat. Around them, the woody terrain was alive with movement: birds sung in the trees and small animals scuttled amongst the foliage. Even the trees and plants seemed to take on a brighter and more vibrant quality, the green so lush that if Nesta weren’t so weary, she would bend down to run her fingers through the fluffy woodruff with its constant smattering of tiny, white flowers that grew beneath the pine trees.

“So what actually brought you both here?”

Lorrian’s voice broke Nesta out of her reverie. He was speaking over his shoulder and he looked at Nesta first before his eyes travelled beyond her to land on Cassian. They were walking in single file down a narrow track between the trees, with Lorrian leading the way and with Cassian at the rear. Nesta had no doubt that it was an intentional positioning from Cassian. She could still feel his urge to protect combined with guilt that laced her stomach. The latter was no doubt eating away at him. He clearly hadn’t thought the barrier would react so strongly to her fire or that they would be in danger in the forest.

“I haven’t seen you for a few months,” Lorrian finished. His pointed look at Cassian told Nesta that a visit was overdue. “I imagine it wasn’t your intention to be hijacked by kerits.”

“I took Nesta to see Kamanam today,” Cassian told Lorrian after he had huffed a dark laugh. “We were close by so I thought we’d say hello. We were surrounded by those cackling shits as we headed down into the dell.”

Lorrian stared at Cassian for a little too long but he only nodded silently to show that he had heard. His siphons glowed and with it, the bow and arrows strapped to his back disappeared. The light encasing his arm also vanished, revealing nothing but air from a few inches below Lorrian’s shoulder. His leathers had been tailored to accommodate for his missing limb, the fabric sewn neatly around the stump.

“And how did you like Kamanam, Nesta?” Lorrian asked.

Knowing not to stare at the male’s missing arm, Nesta kept her gaze straight ahead. The path had widened and Lorrian dropped back a few steps so he was side-by-side with her. The movement was slightly laboured, as if he were adjusting to the loss of balance. He was watching Nesta with apprehension — as if he were expecting her to recoil. Nesta wanted to tell him that she was broken too and that she didn’t care to judge anybody, but as usual, her throat had become too tight so she flicked her eyes up to meet his head on.

Something that Nesta translated as respect tinged with relief flickered behind Lorrian’s irises, and the muscles in his shoulders relaxed, as she managed to admit, “The Arches are very beautiful.”

But then we nearly died, Nesta wanted to say, but didn’t.

The conversation was such a stark contrast to moments before — casual rather than frenzied — but from the unease laced with pine that sat heavily within her, Nesta knew that this was Cassian’s coping mechanism; feigning joviality because otherwise the gravity of what had happened would be too much.

And Lorrian seemed to know that, too.

His head bobbed. “You should come back on a clear day. Get this one to fly you over the water.” He jerked his head to Cassian who was still a few paces behind. “Frawley and I do it even now, and we’ve been living here for years.”

“If you think I’m ancient,” Cassian told Nesta, the low rumble of his voice travelling the distance, “then you should ask Frawley how old she is. She’s never answered me and I’m still burning with curiosity.”

Lorrian chuckled. “Don’t do that, Nesta. Not if you want to live, at least.”

Lorrian’s features were nothing but friendly now and in the dappled light between the trees, Nesta was able to study him more closely. His dark, curly hair was cropped close to his head and flecked with silver. If Lorrian were human, Nesta would guess that he was forty-or-so, but she had no idea what that made him in Fae terms. He was leaner than Cassian, which wasn’t wholly a surprise; Nesta had never met an Illyrian who was larger or stronger than Cassian. Even so, Lorrian’s remaining arm was still corded with impressive muscle and his skin was marked with the same black tattoos, interspersed with scars.

Nesta couldn’t find it in herself to reply to Lorrian. Perhaps she should have felt warier that she was about to meet a witch, but with every step they took through the woodland, the worse she felt. Her brain became more foggy, her limbs weighing her down like lead. And on top of it all, an all-consuming sense of exhaustion had overcome her.

If she were alone, Nesta would have curled up on the forest floor and made her bed amongst the woodruff and wooly thyme.

“Home sweet home.”

Lorrian’s words pierced through the fog and Nesta managed to drag her eyes up from the soft undergrowth to look ahead of her.

They had just navigated a sharp right-hand turn in the dirt path, and in the distance Nesta could make out a large, thatched cottage. The walls were the colour of magnolia and the red brick chimney was spouting soft billowy smoke.

Yet, whilst it appeared to be a beautiful sanctuary, Nesta found her spine stacking stiffly against her. Nesta hadn’t stepped foot in anyone’s home except Cassian’s in months, and he was the only person who knew she was afraid of fire. How many open and roaring hearths were there going to be in the cottage? How was she going to avoid losing control when already she felt like someone was closing a fist around her windpipes? How was she going to step over threshold without losing it completely? How was she —

Worry stabbed through Nesta so fiercely that her breath caught. She was so preoccupied in trying to take air into her lungs that she didn’t have a spare thought to identify that it wasn’t her own. As they neared the property, Nesta barely saw the chickens in the coop or the horses in the paddock. She didn’t even notice the honeysuckle — her favourite — that climbed up the exterior walls of the cottage. Her lungs rattled as panic clawed through her. Silver spluttered and died at her fingers, her power still too spent from earlier to protect her. Something cracked inside of her; light rushing into the dark, icy water rushing over warm sand.

“Nesta.”

In the far distance, she heard her name but it was muffled. She felt as if she were drowning underwater. It felt like the Cauldron all over again.

She choked on air.

“Nesta.”

This time the sound had a distinctive voice. Something turned inside of her, like a key clicking in a lock, and as her vision started to clear, she made out the large shadowed outline of a male as he stepped towards her. Startled, Nesta flew backwards, an unknown burst of energy taking hold of her. Her hands instinctively balled into fists, but then the scent of pine and musk washed over her and with it came a sense of calm and clarity.

Slowly, her fists unfurled.

“It’s just me,” Cassian said. His words floated towards her. He was still nothing but shadow; large, muscular body and impressive wings. “I’m going to touch you. Ok?”

A strangled noise emitted from her throat and then a large, warm hand was resting on her cheek.

Unthinkingly, Nesta reached up to grab it. Her fingers closed around the hand as her eyes started to see again.

Cassian’s face swam into view. Even through the cracked and dried blood, the concern etched upon his face was so stark she knew that he believed himself responsible for her trauma.

Taking her hand, Cassian rested her palm flat over his chest. Beneath leather and skin, she could feel the pounding of his heart as it threw itself hard against his ribcage, and in her stomach… so much guilt the emotion was bitter on her tongue.

“Breathe with me,” he ordered, before he proceed to take a long, slow breath in.

The sensation of air rushing into his chest was like a balm, and Nesta found herself following his breathing until her lungs no longer rattled and her vision righted completely.

“Is it the chimney?” Cassian asked when her breathing became even, enough that she was no longer gasping. “Or is it... everything that just happened?”

Nesta’s fingers curled around his hand and pressed once into his palm at the same time as she nodded. Both.

“The fire won’t make any noise,” he promised her. “I’d say I’d take you home, but you look like you’re going to collapse and the flight is over an hour.”

Even as he spoke, she knew that if she insisted he would take her back to Windhaven. There was such sincerity in his voice and expression that it hurt to look at him, so she cast her eyes beyond him to their surroundings.

Lorrian was nowhere to be found. Dread twisted through her and that panic started to rise again.

“Where—” Nesta started, but her breath had started to shudder again so she trailed off. There was no point in asking anyway. Of course Lorrian had witnessed it all. No doubt Cassian had asked him to go inside to give them some privacy.

The knowledge was mortifying.

“I asked Lorrian to go inside and silence the fires.”

He squeezed Nesta’s fingers then. She still hadn’t let go of him. The warmth of his touch was comforting against her ice cold skin. It chased away the numbness that was hovering over her like a threat.

“Lorrian suffers from battle trauma, too,” Cassian told her. “You saw his arm?”

Nesta dipped her chin. The action took all of her effort.

“He’s fighting a lot of demons. He won’t mention it. Neither will Frawley. She’s Lorrian’s wife. She’s a witch — she can magic the fire so it won’t make any noise.”

Silence stretched between them. Nesta tried to process his words and form a response, but it was too difficult. The heaviness was washing over her again and already she had started to become unfeeling.

As if Cassian could sense that he was losing her, he dragged a coarse thumb over the back of her hand. The sensation was muted, as if it were happening far, far away.

“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely.

Nesta stared at him. She wanted to frown and ask him why, but words had become difficult again.

Cassian shook his head. The gesture was remorseful and… he was angry at himself. “I shouldn’t have taken you here. Frawley’s portion of the forest has always been the safest—”

“Cassian.”

Cassian broke off as a small, petite female walked briskly towards them. She was wearing a long smock dress which was belted loosely at the waist with leather and made up of different shades of grey. The way her skirts swished around her as she moved gave off the illusion that she was walking through smoke. Pure, white hair fell just below the female’s shoulders and as she came closer, Nesta saw that her eyes were different colours; the left honey brown and the right ice blue. The effect was so startling that half of her face seemed to be bathed in light and the other in dark.

“You scared the shit out of my husband,” she told Cassian brusquely, as she drew up short in front of them.

Cassian made a noise in the back of his throat. The sound reverberated through Nesta. “Did he tell you about the kerits?”

The female — Frawley — snorted in an unkempt sort of way that would have resulted in upturned noses if they were in the human realm. Nesta got the impression that Frawley wouldn’t care. She struck Nesta as the sort of female whose mannerisms were clipped and to-the-point. She didn’t seem like the sort of person who would give a second thought to lady-like behaviour and would impale anyone who decided that they should put her down.

“Introduce me to your companion, Cassian,” Frawley ordered. “And I’ll pretend not to know that this is Nesta Archeron until you do so.”

Cassian grunted in exasperation but his pupils were no longer dark. He had turned to greet Frawley but he hadn’t let go of Nesta’s hand. Frawley’s ice blue eye darted down to glance at it. Cassian squeezed her fingers before he let go, his hand immediately finding purchase on the small of her back again. Encouragement, she realised, for the social situation he knew she did not want to be in.

This time Nesta didn’t want to bat him away. She felt frayed and raw, his touch the only thing keeping her tethered to the present.

“Frawley, meet Nesta Archeron. Nesta, Frawley is the witch who oversees the Eastern territory of The Steppes. And,” he said with a deliberate pause for emphasis, “is supposed to keep the beasts in the forest under control.”

Frawley made a disapproving noise in the back of her throat at Cassian’s words but she did not retaliate. She only rested her disconcerting eyes on Nesta. They seemed to work independently of one another and brown found Nesta after blue.

“We can’t leave it solely to males to protect, can we Nesta?” Frawley clipped. “Now, do come in, it’s getting dark and Caerleon gets forlorn when I leave him inside for too long.”

As she spoke, a sound halfway between a whine and a roar came from the cottage door. Frawley looked pointedly at them as if to indicate the sound had proven her point, before she turned sharply on her heel.

Somehow Nesta made her legs move, even though she wanted nothing more than to sink to the ground. As if he knew how badly she was faring, Cassian kept his hand on her lower back. The sensation alone was enough to keep her upright. She would not add to her burning shame by having to be carried across the threshold. It was bad enough that Cassian had to fly her everywhere as it was.

“That’s quite some power you expelled.” Frawley threw Nesta a discerning look over her shoulder. “I bet you’re feeling drained.”

“Yes,” Nesta said simply, because she couldn’t say anything more.

“Nothing I can’t sort out,” Frawley clipped as she opened the cottage door. It was a wooden stable door, the top half already open. Nesta saw a blur of sandy fur and she tensed instinctively.

A thumb caressed her back, the movement soothing against the sudden terror that gripped her — telling her that it was ok, that the kerits had gone and they were safe.

“Calm down Caer, you stupid Manticore, it’s just Cassian,” Frawley snapped, but a huge moving body of light tan fur jostled the female to the side. Frawley growled in irritation but Nesta barely heard it, she was too busy staring at the beast that had emerged in the doorway.

It was massive. At first, Nesta thought it was a huge lion with a long shaggy mane made of burnt orange, but as it prowled towards her, she could see large, leathery wings on its back and its tail, which was flicking at the tip, was not made up of a tuft of hair but of long spikes like that of a porcupine. The beast’s large paws thudded on the earth and its eyes were molten gold. It was beautiful and deadly and if Nesta had it in her to be afraid she would have already been running.

She took a step backwards, bumping into Cassian’s hard chest.

“Don’t mind Caerleon,” Frawley called quickly to Nesta. She had obviously seen the blood drain from her face. She pronounced the name kaa-lee-uhn, the mystical name rolling off her tongue effortlessly. “He looks terrifying but he’s essentially a big teddy bear when he’s at home.”

Nesta remained stock still as the animal came to a stop a few feet in front of her. It stared at her, its head low and its tail flicking, as if it were measuring her up.

Then Caerleon’s eyes slid to Cassian.

The manticore’s body straightened and his tail shot straight up, curling into a question mark, the needles of his tuft relaxed and soft like the spines of a thistle.

To Nesta’s amazement, the animal trotted over to Cassian with a low whine that sounded like a greeting.

“Hello you beautiful beast,” Cassian said with a low laugh.

Caerleon knocked his head hard into Cassian’s upper torso, rubbing his face against the leather like a cat branding its owner. Dropping his hand from Nesta, Cassian buried his fingers deep into the animal’s mane and ruffled the fur. Caerleon’s purr rumbled so deep that Nesta felt it in her chest but she was reeling from the loss of contact.

It was startling and Nesta felt cold.

She began to slip.

Frawley tutted. “Cassian is the only Fae Caer has ever met who is large enough not be knocked back when he does that. Now, you come with me, Nesta. You look dead on your feet.”

Nesta allowed herself to be led through the hallway, straight into a wide, open kitchen. Frawley sat Nesta down at a large, worn pine table opposite the huge hearth. As promised, the fire was silent, the flames dancing gently as they licked their way up the chimney as if the quiet had brought them calm. The knowledge that there would be no cracking bones eased the tight set of Nesta’s shoulders, even if she did feel like she was hovering above her body, looking down at herself.

She looked very ill, that much she knew, but she couldn’t speak or will her expression into something better. Even her neck felt heavy, the thought of turning to look for Cassian too much, so she stared at the silent fire until she became entranced.

In the distance, Nesta heard clattering — someone moving about the kitchen — and then a warm mug was pressed into her ice-cold hands.

“Drink this,” a stern voice told her. “It’s not too hot, so drink it right up.”

Nesta did as she was told. It tasted of chamomile and honey and... something she couldn’t put her finger on. She didn’t care to ask. With each sip, Nesta felt her body hum and tingle until her body realigned and she was just Nesta sitting in a stranger’s kitchen.

Frawley must have sensed a change in her because she took Nesta’s mug. With a swish of her charcoal skirts she walked over to a steaming cast iron pot on the stove and ladled some more liquid into it.

“Better?” Frawley asked as she handed it back to Nesta. “Best drink another cup. You expelled an awful lot of power in one go.”

Nesta frowned, thinking back to how her power had leapt to the clearing between the boulders.

“I couldn’t stop it,” she told Frawley. “I tried to sever the connection.”

Read the rest of the chapter here.

[jamesmarlowe]

RADTASK002: A GIRL AND HER DOG

March was a month without a season. Couldn’t call it spring yet; most of the trees were still bare, their long, dark limbs scraping up against the sky. Temperatures hovered indecisively around the low-fifties, then plummeted steeply each night. But there was something stirring: a birth of new smells, a trace of green in the yellow grass. A feeling of change, or the very brink of it, which had possessed him like an infusion of fresh blood and driven him outdoors— despite his three-hour block of afternoon classes, despite all the half-finished projects waiting for him in the studio. Outside, clouds skimmed the blue sky and squirrels tightrope-walked the phone lines. Birds huddled on exposed branches, returned from their long winter vacations. There was a smell of mulch in the air, fertile and earthy. A warm wind was blowing— as he walked outside the art building, Marlowe could feel it blowing through him as if through an open window, airing out all the trapped gloom in his soul. 

Gloom could accumulate even in him, of all people. There was something elemental about his need for sun and fresh air and open space; it was a quality he shared with all the other wild creatures who, after several long months deprived of all these things, were now also emerging from their dens and burrows, hungry and restless, desperate to roam. 

Today he was wearing a paisley bandana fashioned around his head, Springsteen-style, and a silver hoop through his ear. Both of these accessories gave his appearance a swashbuckling, pirate-y effect. Marlowe seemed to embody the part as he cleared a railing one-handed like a rodeo clown, then took the rest of the stairs two-at-a-time to where a girl waited for him at the bottom, her blonde hair lifted by the breeze. She kept her head bowed over her hands, deeply engrossed in the cat’s cradle she was weaving. 

Spacey Kasey. She was a junior in the Comp-Sci program. Sometimes people reacted to this information with a slow raise of their brows, or an actual laugh— more out of surprise than anything else, but that didn’t make it any kinder. No one really knew what to make of her. She could write code like Mozart wrote symphonies, but might also ask you if you knew how pineapples got their name, since they looked nothing like apples? Marlowe had met her at a party where she’d wondered precisely that, out loud, before turning her wide eyes to him; she had a child’s inquisitive stare. Why not pinefruit? He’d been fascinated from that moment on. His love for her had been a product of that fascination; he’d sensed something dreamy and outcast in her, something rare, easily misunderstood. They’d coupled up in late September, lasted till early November, the days dwindling and the nights lengthening by the time his old restlessness caught up with him— not her fault or his, just the natural progression of these things. Now, their relationship had lapsed into something easy, casual. Friends, sometimes more. He still found her endlessly fascinating. It was just a matter of how many other things in this endlessly fascinating world were also competing for his attention.

At the sound of cowboy boots smacking the pavement, Kasey looked up. The thread between her fingers went slack and her blue eyes brightened the way they always did whenever she saw him coming. Marlowe could not prevent a smile in response. Blue, he’d once heard, was the true color of the sun.

He whistled a short, upwards swoop. “Kase the Ace! Right time, right place!”

She was wearing an outfit almost as egregious as his own, tie-dyed shirt in sorbet shades of pink, purple and blue with only a pair of Lycra bike shorts underneath, exposing legs pale and goosebumped. There was a face looking at him from the front of her shirt, sinister drippy eyes loaded with glamorous make-up. Kasey’s own face was bare, her fair eyelashes almost invisible. Her earrings were a pair of mismatched plastic dinosaurs— one a red triceratops, one green T-Rex. Marlowe watched with visible amusement as she struggled to untangle the knots around her fingers. 

“Jeez, I used to be so good at these! I once taught all the girls at my summer camp how to do a ten-step cradle and I was like, their guru.” 

Eventually the two of them set off for the trees that hemmed the edges of campus. He briefed her about the reason for today’s outing—  a hunt for materials, looking for found objects not yet found—  but knew it wasn’t necessary, because Kasey could always be counted on to show up when he invited her. She was always happy to tag along, if only he asked. The quad they passed looked soggy and matted down in parts, the streaming sunlight revealing all the bald patches of mud and first sprigs of dandelion shoots. Marlowe kept his gaze ahead, away from that wide expanse of grass, letting Kasey’s idle chatter filter pleasantly through one ear and out the other. His gait was lopey but brisk, hers uneven as she skipped ahead, long blonde hair streaming behind her like a scarf thrown to the wind. 

“So what are we looking for today?”

Marlowe angled his face up to the sky, watching a bird disappear into a cloudbank. “Y’know, the usual. Hidden treasure, lost artifacts. Ancient ruins. Maybe a secret Amazon warehouse deep in the woods, that’d be useful. Could steal a lifetime supply of bubble wrap.” Rarely did he embark on such expeditions with a specific item in mind; mostly he just wandered around, expecting unusual things to find him and reveal their significance. Maybe it’d be a loop of blue ribbon, snagged on a wire fence. Or a child’s plastic bucket abandoned by the side of the road, handle broken, too lost to find its way back to the nearest sandbox. He searched for these banal objects that existed somewhere between tenderness and neglect— overlooked by so many who passed them by without any idea what they might’ve been before, what they could be next.

Kasey had begun walking backwards. There was a white patch of vitiligo on her forehead. Combined with her skipping and prancing, she often reminded him of a painted palomino. “I brought granola bars! They’re a little stale, you’ll have to use your back teeth.”

Marlowe flashed her two-thirds of a grin, revealing teeth that were good and strong, if a little crooked. “What if I told you I don’t have any? Will you mash them into a pulp and spit ‘em in my mouth?” He mimed the open-mouthed, head-back position of a hungry fledgling.

Kasey made a retching sound, dissolving into a giggle.

Soon they were stepping off the paved campus sidewalk and crossing the marshy grass towards the surrounding woods. The trees were sparse, still just skinny bodies stripped in the cold, but slowly the forest became denser the deeper they went; thick-trunked oaks and dark beeches grew here, close together, their twigs sprouting tiny green buds and unfurling fists of leaves. Branches criss-crossed the sky. Marlowe led the way through the corridor between trunks, but Kasey immediately began crashing through the skeletal undergrowth off to the side. 

“How about this?” Marlowe looked to where she’d hiked her leg up onto a large boulder like a big-game hunter posing with a kill. The stone jutted out of the ground at an odd angle, making him think of a dislocated jawbone. Kasey looked down at it, her expression deeply pensive. She tapped the toe of her sneaker. “You could like, give it a face. Glue eyes on it!”

Marlowe imagined an oversized pet rock in the likeness of Rocky Balboa, Stallone’s heavy scowl painted on. Shaking his head, he rewarded her sincere effort with an equally sincere smile. “Babe, I’m flattered that you think of me as some kind of circus strongman, but I’d need like, triple my current muscle mass to carry that.”

They found other things. An empty gallon jug, the kind used to hold water or milk, split almost in half. A tattered piece of fabric too muddied to even tell the original color. And most interestingly, a thin sheet of metal with torn edges, sharp as shrapnel. It leaned against a tree like a large canvas; the patterns of corrosion on its surface— oxidized red, blue rings of mold— made it seem less like a raw material and more like an already-finished work. Marlowe stood back with one finger resting against his chin, head tipped to the side as he appraised it like an art collector at a gallery. But in the end, he decided not to carry it either. He wasn’t up-to-date with his tetanus shots. 

They began to follow their own trail, no map or compass, forging a path through the woodsy vegetation that grew close to the ground and left long, raking scratches on arms and legs, resisting intrusion. Kasey swept back the flexible branches of saplings and peered into rotted tree hollows. Marlowe was more inclined to follow a few steps behind her, no urgency in his loose-limbed stroll. He tilted his head back and admired how the naked branches looked like slats of a broken roof letting most of the sky in. By now, the chill on his face had turned itself inside out; he grew warm, renewed in some vital way. He wanted nothing more than to walk deeper and deeper through these woods and never turn around, never retrace his steps, never go back. If he had to, he could survive out here. He’d exist just like the wild birds and foxes, on a diet of small, hard berries and foraged mushrooms. 

It was often in these moments of complete distraction that discoveries happened. The trees stood back. A secret flagged him down from behind them, kept until today, confessed now in this partial glimpse. “Hey, I think I got somethin’,” he said out loud. He didn’t look to see if Kasey heard or noticed. Eyes fixed on the gap between trunks, Marlowe forced his way through a thicket of mulberries to get to the other side. 

In the clearing, there was a statue of a little girl. One arm outstretched, sunlight on the crown of her head. Her empty eyes grazed the sky. Some kind of moss crawled up her legs, giving her the appearance of wearing knee socks. There was a dog at her feet— a terrier with perked ears. 

“What did you find!” called Kasey, still wrestling her way through the brambles. The sound of snapping twigs and a soft ow! told him she was making slow progress of it.

“Something,” Marlowe replied. Unusual, he added only to himself. “Some kind of statue.”

The pose of the statue, he thought, must’ve been intended to look like the girl had just thrown a stick in a game of fetch, but there was something about the frozen gesture that told a different story. It was an open grasp, fingers straining; he almost turned around to see what she was reaching for.

“Woah.” Kasey exhaled the word in a single breath. She had finally spilled out into the clearing behind him, looking disheveled but no less enthused, tugging one checkered sock up around her ankle. “Who’s that?”

Marlowe was already crouched. He brushed dirt off the foot of the statue but there was no inscription; if there’d ever been one, time had worn it away. Now she was as nameless as the trees around her. Standing up, he slid hands into the front pockets of his jeans and rocked backwards, giving the girl the same look he’d given that piece of rusted sheet metal: eyes slant with a certain sharp curiosity, their color like a jar of dark honey with sunshine in it. “Don’t know. Maybe a memorial or something. Or,” He began to pace around the statue, boots leaving sunken footsteps in the loam. When his phone buzzed in his back pocket, he reached for it absently. “Maybe she got turned to stone by some wicked Baba Yaga ‘round these parts. Her, and her little dog, too.”

It was hard to read anything through the disaster of the cracked screen. His eyes scanned Syd’s incoming messages and when he got to the last two, Marlowe stopped walking. His heart stalled.

SYD: also ?? im at the studio and haven't seen my sculpture anywhere SYD: r u sure you dropped it off?

Of course she had noticed by now; of course she was looking for it.

“Who’re you texting?” Marlowe raised his eyes to find Kasey observing the standstill he’d come to; she was leaning down to give the little stone dog a scratch under his chin. “Syd,” he answered, simultaneously dropping his eyes back to his phone. “She named her cat Martin. I’m expressing my deep, deep disappointment with her lack of imagination.” I did, at the gallery, he texted back. forgot 2 text you but the eagle safely landed. 

The thing about lying was that it came so easily, so naturally, he usually felt no guilt doing it.

“Tell her I say hi!” Losing interest in the statue, Kasey had found a divining rod. She was sweeping it back and forth now with brisk efficiency, like a metal detector. “How ‘bout this? Look, it’s almost perfectly symmetrical,” she asked. 

Message sent, Marlowe let his hand drop back to his side. He used his laugh to distract them both. “Does that thing have a crude oil setting? Fuck making art, let’s start fracking. I’d rather be a Texas millionaire.” Kasey whipped around, face lit by a wide, genuine smile; but as another text from Syd arrived, his own smile barely skimmed the surface of his face, too distracted to really stick. He typed back another answer. 

i'm sure it's just misplaced syd don't sweat

worst comes to worst, we can case the frats and make sure no one stole it to be their new beer pong deity or whtever the fuck those guys do

Like any good liar, he prided himself on being truthful most of the time— which made it that much easier for a lie to slip through, unsuspected. A wolf in honesty’s clothing. No less convincing than everything else he said. And wasn’t it a little bit of a favor, in this case? Better that Syd think some hulking frat brothers had stolen into the art studio under the cover of night and carried off her sculpture for a ritual sacrifice, some dark summoning to help the university through its football championships. Better that than the truth. 

Marlowe glanced over his shoulder in the same direction as the statue’s outstretched fingertips. Clouds worked across the sky, ragged and white, and behind them there was only blue, but now he felt like he could see what wasn’t there; a new, bad darkness, descending fast out of the western sky. Like those sudden thunderstorms in Virginia that rolled over the mountains, pouring like smoke over the lip of a bowl. The knowledge of the storm’s inevitable arrival sank low in his chest: present, but not yet fully understood. 

Even if she asked him in person, he’d deny it. He’d lie again. He’d help her look for a sculpture that he knew was already unsalvageable, dissolving with each cold rain that swept over the campus, turning to paste beneath the soil.

“Hey, c’mere.” Eager for distraction, Marlowe lowered himself down to the base of the statue, where there was deep cold beneath the velvety moss. Obediently, Kasey trudged closer, still holding the forked branch; when he pulled her down, she fell giggling and side-saddle across his lap. She circled his neck with her arms. He wrapped his own loosely around her waist.

“Would you ever hate me if I did something, like, really bad?”

Kasey pulled back to look at him, the wrinkle in her brow implying that she didn’t understand. “Like what?” 

Marlowe shrugged beneath the weight of her arms. “I don’t know, I don’t have an example. But like… bad. Something that really hurt you.”

Thoughtfully, she thumbed the silver hoop in his ear. The light was full on her face— she wore no make-up, and her lips were chapped. She must’ve been chewing them before, because he could see the faint bitemarks. His heart twinged, suddenly protective.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so.” Her expression went away for a moment. There was a soft vacancy in her eyes that he’d gotten used to in their time together. When she returned, the look she gave him was earnestly sweet. Whatever the imaginary hurt, she was looking at him like she’d already forgiven him for it. “Because I’d know you didn’t mean to.”

Because you wouldn’t mean it, Syd had said close to his ear that one night at Splatterhouse. He did things without thinking. Did them so often, it had become his defining trait. Marlowe knew he escaped accountability because of it; he was one of those people the world tended to forgive too easily, meaning he’d always be protected from himself, sheltered from the consequences of his actions, because there was no real intention to hurt behind them— and that alone absolved him. You couldn’t blame the tornado that destroyed your home, not when it was only doing what tornados did.

Marlowe kissed the stain on her forehead, where the skin was pinkish like a newborn’s. He kissed her between the eyebrows, then lower, just underneath the chin, on the pulse that beat like a hummingbird’s heart. Kasey pulled away to look at him again. Her hands had strayed to the back of his neck, toying with the hair curling up at the nape.

“Ew, Marlowe, in front of a little girl?” Her big eyes lifted up towards the statue. The shadow of that reaching arm fell over them both. 

“It’s spring,” he replied in a what-can-you-do tone, though it was still only the end of winter. It was only March. His eyes met hers, glinting with uncivilized suggestion. There was a faint smile tucked in the corner of his mouth. “And y’know, considering how long she’s been here, she’s ancient. A withered old crone, hundreds of years old. If anything it’s weirder to have a dead dog watching us.”

She frowned. “Why’s the dog dead?”

“Dogs don’t live for hundreds of years.”

She pouted at it. Poor thing. It didn’t seem to occur to her that humans didn’t live for hundreds of years either. Then she leaned back in, meeting him in his daring with another kiss, hands twining into hair, one bare leg swinging over to straddle him. And all around there was the sound of unseen birds, calling to each other from the trees: mimicking, teasing, pleading. A riotous awakening of spring. The next text from Syd would go unread for several hours, left without an answer. The Burger King meal she’d promised him would be forgotten. And the encroaching darkness would also recede, withdrawing to the far-back reaches of his mind— for now, the coming storm was only a dim, gauzey threat on the horizon, rumbling with the promise of distant thunder.

[thedeevirus]

Dark Crystal AOR Ficlet: ‘Reflections’

“SkekOk and his counterpart UrAc have an arrangement after bumping into each other during SkekOk’s newly assigned duty of keeping tabs on the Mystics following SkekGra’s disgrace and the Hunter’s refusal of such a tedious task. Information for information. But can such an agreement work when they're each other's own worst enemy?” 

Enjoy! If you would like a ficlet, drop me an ask! :)

***

‘It's about time’, SkekOk snapped. 'We agreed to meet when the Second Brother reached its peak!'

UrAc did not answer. Instead he offered the Skeksis the pile of papers he had carried carefully from the Valley of Stones to the usual meeting place. SkekOk seized them and waved a hand at the chest he had brought for UrAc in exchange as per their arrangement.

UrAc opened the grotesquely bejewelled casket and lifted the fine vellum parchment out (stained with wine and various food stuffs). He read the first page, brow furrowing at the numerous scribbles and hasty corrections. The Skeksis penchant for political alliances and backstabbing could be mildly amusing but mostly frustrating. Especially when each strategic move was so short lived. On the first page alone while documenting a minor verbal squabble in the throne room, SkekOk had evidently changed his mind three times about who was to blame for starting it. No doubt influenced by whichever Skeksis had been reading over his shoulder at the time. UrAc flipped through the pages documenting meaningless court politics and found what he was looking for.

SkekOk shook his head in bafflement at the Mystic’s disinterest in his stimulating viewpoint of life at court in favour of random observations SkekOk had noted while looking through the telescope at the top of the castle. True, that was all the Mystic had requested as part of their information exchange arrangement but SkekOk felt bird flight patterns and phases of the moons paled in comparison to the daily mental victories SkekOk won over his fellows. Wondering why he had even bothered trying to elevate a Mystic’s documented non-existent sense of adventure, SkekOk instead turned his attention to the records he had requested. A complete list of any injuries, illnesses or frailties afflicting the other Mystics. A blueprint for any rival’s undoing.

The first page was promising. The Healer had suffered a broken leg with no given cause so SkekUng had likely been injured on his travels away from the castle. SkekOk smirked. The mighty, indomitable SkekUng could do with being taken down a peg or two. But as he turned the page, excitement turned to annoyance.

‘You must file these better! I cannot have an incomplete record! It is more than my life is worth to have gaps!’

‘Or to record the truth it seems’, UrAc said but he knew SkekOk was not listening.

He was more concerned with furiously flipping through UrAc’s records, clicking his tongue critically.

‘Obtuse! Random!’

SkekOk scoffed at one particular page and held it up so UrAc could see it. UrAc obligingly examined the detailed drawing he had made of a large tree during a period of introspection. He was proud of it though he felt he had no talent for aesthetics. The drawing was actually formed entirely of miniscule words that documented how such a tree’s bark could ease pain in the joints. The reader was supposed to begin reading from the tree’s roots and into the higher branches, towards the Three Brothers. The artistic conceit was evidently lost on SkekOk.

‘Useless idling!’ SkekOK snapped, casting it to the ground.

The Mystic carefully retrieved it, rolled it up and tucked it into his satchel.

‘Perhaps instead of wasting time on such frivolities, you should spend some time keeping an eye on SkekGra’s counterpart, whatever their name is’.

‘UrGoh, the Wanderer’, UrAc said, bracing himself for the inevitable, lengthy gossip that his counterpart always delighted in sharing. UrAc did not understand why the Skeksis felt the need for such tedium when it would undoubtedly be in his records. So limiting to see words only as weapons.

‘It seems the Conqueror’s long absence was actually due to some kind of brain fever’, SkekOk said in a strange tone of affected regret, ‘He burst into the castle ranting and raving about all kinds of nonsense. Personally, I thought SkekTek’s treatment of trepanning him was showing some improvement before the Emperor lost patience, branded him ‘heretic’ and banished him’.

SkekOk paused, as if awaiting a comment. UrAc complied with a thoughtful ‘hmm’ as he continued reading.

‘Entirely necessary of course’, SkekOk continued, nodding sagely, ‘He was prattling on about how Skeksis should rejoin with Mystic. Can you imagine?!’

UrAc’s head ached at the shrill scandalised delight in the Skeksis’ voice.

‘Don’t have to’, he said, ‘UrGoh is also no longer with us’.

SkekOk’s eyes widened as he burst into a cackle. UrAc endured it stonily.

There had been no other choice. UrGoh’s increasingly erratic energy and consuming regret of what had been lost had interfered with the Mystics’ spiritual energies, confusing their dreams and muddying their meditations. The whole point of UrAc’s meetings with his counterpart was (unknown to the Skeksis) to confirm the signs of prophecy that the Master, UrSu, saw in dreams. What the Skeksis dismissed as simple migration patterns or unusual seasonal weather unworthy of time or notice was Thra reaching out to any who knew how to listen. The Mystics now knew another Great Conjunction would come. Their chance to set things right. What they did not know was when. And UrGoh’s disharmony while amongst them had created obstacles to the answer that they could not afford to allow.

‘Oh ho! How delightful to see how cold hearted you are! How ruthless to banish one of your own!’

‘UrGoh and SkekGra’s wishful, arrogant thinking is the exact flaw that caused this situation’.

‘At least we can both agree that unity is a fool’s hope’.

‘We do not disagree with the goal’, UrAc said, careful not to take any selfish delight in the smile slipping from SkekOk’s face, ‘Only their plans to hasten it’.

‘Implying you have some sordid plan of your own?’ SkekOk challenged.

‘Scheming is the Skeksis way’, UrAc said simply.

SkekOk tossed his head, feeling foolish. Of course the Mystics didn’t have plans. Such complexities were above their slow witted brains. It seemed sometimes that they would find any excuse not to act. To sit for hours on end stacking stones or considering their own reflections in water.

To cover up his foolishness, SkekOk snidely remarked, ‘And yet you go behind your fellows’ back to converse with me? Perhaps they would banish you if they realised…’

He trailed off, suddenly realising the same could be said of him. Judging from UrAc’s slightly raised, amused brow, he did too. SkekOk returned to the original topic.

‘Where did you last see the Wanderer?’

‘The two spend their days idling in the crystal desert, gorging themselves on urdrupe berries’.

‘Together?’

The subtle, bemused twist to UrAc’s lip perfectly reflected SkekOk’s own feelings at this latest revelation.

‘SkekGra always was partial to those berries. I’m sure they’ll be perfectly miserable together’.

UrAc made a low rumbling noise in his throat. SkekOk was not familiar enough with Mystic vocalisations to recognise it as the low chuckle it was.

‘Miserable?’ UrAc repeated.

‘Do you like looking at me ?’ SkekOk asked, ‘Well?!’

UrAc did not answer, placing SkekOk’s records back in the chest.

‘Hmph. I assure you the feeling is mutual’.

‘Your record is incomplete’, UrAc said.

‘Impossible’.

‘There is no record of this’.

The Mystic revealed his right wrist. SkekOk’s eye twitched at the talon marks and his hand threatened to stray to his own injured wrist hidden by the ruff of his robe. He licked his lips, sensing the Mystic’s unspoken request for an explanation.

‘The Emperor took offence to the sound of my quill scratching while he was talking. Recording such a minor incident was pointless’.

‘You want a complete record’.

‘Not of mistakes!’

‘We are a mistake’.

‘The one mistake I can live with’, SkekOk said spitefully, ‘Despite myself it seems’.

‘Not forever’.

‘Words last forever’, SkekOk said simply, ‘Skeksis will live forever’.

‘Not as a Skeksis. Not as a Mystic’.

SkekOk threw back his head and laughed, loud and long. Then he lowered it and advanced on the Mystic until his beak was barely an inch away from the long, doleful head of his counterpart. It was pathetic how physically close the Mystic allowed him to be. No Skeksis would have tolerated such a blatant disregard for etiquette.

‘I thought you said mindgames are the Skeksis way?’ SkekOk jeered, ‘You certainly aren’t very good at them. You can’t intimidate me with such an empty threat! I know for a fact there is no power on this planet that could reunite us!’

The Mystic shook his head ruefully.

‘No. There is not’.

SkekOk blinked in confusion at the contradiction as well as the sad look on the Mystic’s face. He tossed his head, sneering. Mystics were never quite all in the present moment. The illogical argument was probably just to distract SkekOk from the fact he had just seen through his counterpart’s pitiful attempt at a mindgame.

‘When the time comes, you do not need to be afraid’, UrAc said quietly.

The comforting undertone to the words was the biggest insult SkekOk had been dealt in a long time.

‘Y-you think we fear you?!’ SkekOk spluttered, ‘Disdain you? Yes. Despise you? Yes. But we do not fear you. You are simply ugly reminders of what we have overcome!’

He snapped his beak shut causing the last set of glasses perched on his beak to fall off.

Snarling impatiently, he began the difficult process of negotiating his body into a kneeling position to retrieve them. Only to have the Mystic offer them to him. By simple advantage of being closer to the ground, he had caught the glasses as they had fallen. SkekOk hastily replaced them on his beak, his carefully cultivated paranoia screaming at him to regain the advantage despite the Mystics’ known pacifism.

‘They don’t help as much as they should’, Ur Ac said, offering a vial, ‘Use this’.

‘I do not need your pity!’ SkekOK snapped.

‘Pragmatism’, UrAc corrected.

SkekOk greedily eyed the bottle, his knowledge of the Mystic’s legendarily effective healing powers warring with his pride. It was true that his vision was getting worse and he didn’t dare seek help from SkekTek. If he did, then word would reach the Emperor about his failure and what good was a scroll keeper who couldn’t see?! Glancing at UrAc, he noticed the Mystic had turned his head away, as if in consideration of SkekOk’s feelings. SkekOk’s blood boiled at the indignity and the vanity of the Mystic in thinking SkekOk needed anything from him! But when he failed himself, he failed the Emperor and when he failed the Emperor- Swallowing his pride, SkekOk desperately snatched the vial and hid it within the depths of his robes. Out of sight, out of mind. Skekok winced as a sudden, unpleasant popping sensation in his hands broke through the rising dread and shame.

UrAc was cracking his wizened knuckles.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that!’ SkekOk snapped, wringing his gnarled, clawed fingers.

Reaching into his robes, he withdrew a quill pen of his own design. Longer than those typically used by Gelflings, he had cushioned it with silk to allow for easier grip. He thrust it at the Mystic. Even as he mused on how Mystics could be so infuriatingly primitive, SkekOk felt a smug smile creep across his face at the fascination on UrAc’s face as he regarded the pen.

‘Take it for Thra’s sake! You write too slowly and too late at night. Just once I’d like to wake up without my talons creaking’.

As the Mystic accepted the pen in both hands, ponderously turning it so the crystals set into the nib caught the sunset, SkekOk spun on his heel.

‘Now I must return to the castle before I’m missed’.

He began to walk back to his carriage, ignoring the nagging sensation growing in his chest. It would pass. It always did. According to SkekOk’s research, lower creatures often made reference to such a pain when in emotional distress. But SkekOk was not in emotional distress! He couldn’t wait to get as far away from UrAc as possible!

Fighting the compulsion to look back, to see if the Mystic was following, he entered his carriage. The same nonsensical reflex always followed the initial aches. He slammed the door and reached for the lever to trigger the return trip to the Castle. And saw UrAc watching him from the corner of his eye.

He couldn’t help but return the Mystic’s steady gaze. There was an odd feeling of displacement, as if he were falling, staring into a vast chasm. Being swallowed whole absorbed by something vast, peaceful and empty, vanishing into oblivion.

For a split second, SkekOk thought UrAc’s foot moved towards him and his heart thundered in his sunken chest. SkekOk gasped, awed and terrified at the sudden, choking onslaught of emotion.

But the Mystic was simply turning away, vanishing back into the long grass. To begin the long journey back to his own kind.

SkekOk wiped at his watering eyes and cursed the glare of the sunset as he yanked the lever. The armaligs, startled by the sudden rough treatment by the usually patient scroll keeper, sped away. SkekOk leant back in his seat and inhaled deeply, thinking of his waiting sanctuary of his books and papers to calm himself. He felt a weight against his chest and withdrew the object from his robes. The milky looking eye balm shone in the ruddy light of the sunset. In a sudden fit of sheer fury, spite and something that felt like that long forgotten emotion SkekOk had once known as grief, he threw it on the carriage floor. Every one of the resulting hundred twinkling pieces cast his own face back at him.

[loretranscripts]

Lore Episode 130: In Plain Sight (Transcript) - 25th November 2019

tw: none

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

In early winter of 1822, Captain Samuel Barrett Edes became a hero. He was sailing in the south-east Pacific when he and his crew encountered a Dutch ship that was in trouble. Edes managed to save every single one of the Dutch soldiers, and then headed for the city of Batavia, known today as Jakarta, to drop them off and see if a reward could be collected. While he waited, he did some shopping. Now, Edes wasn’t rich by any stretch of the imagination, but he owned a small portion of the ship he sailed and of course, he was expecting a handsome reward for his heroic efforts. With this in mind, he kept an eye open for something unusual and conversation-worthy to take home, and that’s when he saw it. It was a mummified mermaid. It was over two feet long, had the curved tail one might find on a fish, but the upper body of something much more human in shape. It was brown from the preservation process, wrinkled with age and entirely addictive to look at, and Captain Edes knew instantly that he had to own it. In late January of 1822, he did something bold. He sold the ship he did not fully own and used the proceeds to buy the mermaid. Then he found transportation back to London and put the odd creature on display, because just about everyone who saw it believed that it was real.

Of course, there were those who could see through the hoax. Captain Edes had been fooled by a clever craftsman who had sewn the torso of an orangutan onto the lower half of a large salmon. Elements were added to the face and hands to give it a more humanlike appearance, but those with training in natural science and anatomy could spot the hidden clues that gave it all away. That didn’t matter to most people, though. The idea that mermaids could be real had been around for centuries, so when something as powerful as a mummified specimen floated into their world, they were blind to its flaws and impossibility. They wanted to believe, deep down inside, that the hybrids of folklore actually existed. Today, we know a lot more about our world than we used to, but if we were to go back in time and live through a less learned age, we would be amazed at the stories that await us, tales of creatures that sit at the very edge of our imagination, living things that defy logic, and monsters that inspire wonder. Our hearts want to believe while our minds are ready to move on. Instead, what we tend to feel is a mixture of deep curiosity and primal fear, and if the tales from the past are any indication, there’s a good reason why. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

 When we talk about the natural world, the very first thing we need to do is gain some perspective. Today, we live in a technologically rich society. We carry supercomputers in our pockets that are more powerful than the ones that sent the first humans to the moon. We can walk past an intriguing part of our neighbourhood, pull out our phones and look at a satellite map or do a search for more information. We’re still hungry people, curious and drawn to unanswered questions, but rather than starving in a house with little food, we feast each day on a never-ending buffet of answers and information. Today, if you want to know something, chances are good you can learn about it in an instant, but hundreds of years ago, that was an impossibility. Not that people didn’t try, though. 2000 years ago, a Roman named Gaius Plinius Secundus attempted to gather everything knowable into one place, and he did an admirable job considering the world he lived in. Gaius was born into a wealthy Roman family in the year 24AD and followed a path of privilege all the way to the top. He was well educated, well connected, and when he entered the Roman military, he quickly rose to the second highest level possible – the equestrian order. Once out of the military, he served as a lawyer, before being assigned various governorships around the empire, and towards the end of his life, he had the privilege to serve as advisor to two different emperors. Today, we know him as Pliny the Elder, but in his day, Gaius was a success story.

Looking back, his biggest legacy was his 37 volume collection of knowledge called Natural History. It was possibly the world’s first encyclopaedia, gathering everything known about a whole array of subjects, from farming and botany to geography and anthropology, but the most influential contribution, filling up volumes seven through 11, were his writings on zoology, the study of all living creatures. But here’s the thing – Pliny the Elder, like everyone else in his society, lacked the proper tools to dig deep and apply hard science to every creature he wrote about. He also lacked the ability to travel and see each animal he described, so he relied heavily on others, like Aristotle’s Historia Animalium and the writings of Eratosthenes and Hipparchus, and that meant his collection was less than perfect. How so? Well, his work on zoology included such amazing animals as dragons, mermen, and even something called a blemmyae, a race of hairy, human-like beings who literally had no head on their shoulders, with eyes and a mouth right in the middle of their chest. Pliny was thorough, for sure, but not very discerning with his source material.

But what his work did do was give birth to something a lot of people have heard of, a type of book known as a bestiary. It took a while for their availability to spread, but by the early middle ages, bestiaries were a common enough resource. They were, at the basic level, books about known animals, typically with colourful drawings to help the reader visualise the specific details of each entry, and over the centuries, some editions became more popular than others. One of the most famous is the Aberdeen Bestiary, an illuminated manuscript that dates back to the 12th century. Aside from being a beautiful example of medieval artwork – and I mean that, you should seriously do an internet search for sample pages – the Aberdeen Bestiary is also a powerful example of just how popular these books really were. It’s filled with images of all sorts of animals, along with rocks, fish, trees and even worms, and a lot of the entries in the manuscript include notes about the nature of the thing in question, making it a valuable reference tool for any budding naturalist. But these bestiaries did more than that – they inspired the popular culture of their day.

England’s King John, who reigned from 1177 to 1216 was said to have a copy of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History in his personal collection, and John’s son and successor, King Henry III, even used images from it to decorate one of the chambers at Westminster. As their popularity spread, more and more writers got in on the tradition. The Norman poet Philip de Thaun wrote a bestiary about a generation after William the Conqueror invaded England, and it became a gift for King Henry II’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Even Leonardo da Vinci made one. It seems if you were an intelligent person in the middle ages or the Renaissance, making your own bestiary was practically a rite of passage – and let’s be honest, colourful manuscripts filled with unbelievable creatures and animals that defied logic couldn’t not be popular. Humans have this innate desire to look at curious things. We’ve always been rubberneckers, straining to take a long, hard look at things that sit outside our normal experience, and the spread of bestiaries is proof of that. But those ancient books and manuscripts also teach us something else about ourselves. Human beings are creative creatures. When faced with a mysterious gap in our knowledge, we’re more likely to invent something to plug the hole than to leave the question unanswered – and what we’ve come up with is equal parts entertaining and downright terrifying.

 I mentioned earlier how the internet and the accessibility of powerful devices has given us an edge over our predecessors, and in a lot of ways that’s true. Yes, we have access to a huge majority of our collective knowledge, but not all of it. In fact, there are still things we don’t know. For example, scientists today believe that there are roughly 8.7 million animal species on this planet, and yet 86% of the ones that would live on land still haven’t been discovered or studied, and it’s even worse inside our oceans, where over 90% of life is still a mystery to us. We know a lot, yes, but our world is massive and diverse, and that makes the learning process slow and tedious. Some animals are also a bit harder to track down, they’re less abundant or more shy, and so it’s made studying them more of a challenge. A good example is the platypus. For a very long time, scientists thought the descriptions of it were nothing more than a hoax. I mean, it was rumoured in 1799 to be a hybrid of a duck and a water rat, part mammal and part bird, with venomous spurs that could kill a dog, and while we’ve learnt more about them over the years, the platypus is still an allusive creature. A recent documentarian was able to get what he considered to be a goldmine of actual footage of the animal, amounting to about 30 seconds, and when only half a minute of film is something to celebrate, you know the animal is hard to study.

Of course, while we’re searching for new species, the ones we do know about are slowly dying off, which doesn’t help. Some estimates place the number of species on the edge of extinction at around 20,000, and more get added to that list all the time. For the medieval writers of bestiaries, this would be their worst nightmare. All those creatures belong in their books, and yet they keep slipping away. But at the same time, not being able to see an animal never really stopped those ancient writers from including it in their catalogue of life on earth. In fact, there are a lot of entries that would cause most people to scratch their heads, because while, yes, we’ve grown in our understanding of the world around us, these bestiaries serve as a time capsule of our gullibility. As far back as Pliny the Elder’s collection on natural history, we can see those less believable creatures pop up. He once wrote that thousands of sea-nymphs known as neriads had washed up on the shores of what is modern day France, and that they looked just like the nymphs of the land, except that they were covered in fish scales. He also wrote about that fiery bird of legend known as the phoenix, which was known to burst into flames before re-emerging from its own ashes. And of course, I’ve already mentioned his fascination with mermen and blemmyae. It seems that Pliny the Elder had an obsession with gathering all known creatures, whether or not he had witnessed them with his own eyes.

Other historians added their own contributions to those mystical lists as well, and if I ran through it for you now, it would sound like a recap of the Harry Potter series. Hippos and elephants shared the same space as hippogriffs and mandrakes. There were dragons and tritons, giants and sea monsters. Honestly, it sometimes seemed that if a young child could draw a picture of it, that was good enough to get it included. Of course, some creatures were more popular than others, and that popularity varied from culture to culture. In Europe, one of the most talked about creatures of all was also one of the smallest, but don’t let its size fool you, because there was nothing safe about the basilisk. Our old friend, Pliny the Elder, wrote about it 2000 years ago, describing it as a serpent with legs that was no larger than a foot in length. But what it lacked in size, it more than made up for with attitude and special features. A basilisk was said to stand tall on its back legs and had a crown-like plume on top of its head. And they were dangerous, too – according to the stories, basilisks were so poisonous that even looking at them could get you killed. Other creatures avoided the like the plague, and wherever they chose to make their nests, the plant life would die and wither away. One description I read said that if a man on horseback stabbed the basilisk with a spear, the poison was so powerful that it could climb up the spear, kill the man, and then kill the horse as well.

Of course, when something is that powerful and deadly, it eventually becomes the centrepiece of tales of valour. It’s said that Alexander the Great once killed a basilisk, and like many of the other legends about him, he did it in a way that proved not just his might but also his intelligence. It’s said that he polished his shield until it was like a mirror, and then approached the creature holding it outward. When the basilisk saw its own reflection, it fell victim to its poisonous gaze and instantly dropped dead. We can find images of the basilisk in just about every bestiary in existence, most of which look like a cross between a snake and a rooster. There’s a statue of one in Vienna, commemorating an 11th century hunt, and there’s even a church in Sweden with a carved relief showing St. Michael stabbing one with a spear. So popular was this creature that people sold powders that they claimed to be ground-up basilisk, something that most people purchased for use in alchemy, but more than a few used as an antidote to poison. Everywhere you look through the middle ages and earlier, the basilisk is waiting to rear its poisonous little head. You can see society’s attraction to it in their folklore and superstition, a mixture of fear and fascination, of wonder and disgust. For centuries, it popped up in stories whispered all around Europe, like a well-loved character in a popular book series. But if one account is any indication, it might not be a work of fiction after all.

 The people of Warsaw had a problem on their hands. They were two decades into a new political structure known as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and while it gave a lot of freedom to the wealthy and elite, it left the lower class in a constant state of fear and oppression. Life in the city was challenging for many people, but that was the new normal. In 1587, though, something happened to put the people of Warsaw on edge. Livestock in the area around an old, ruined building had begun to turn up dead. Even a few of the neighbouring residents had been found poisoned in their beds, washing over the community with a wave of grief and loss. And in the midst of all that confusion and pain, two of the neighbourhood children disappeared. Well, disappeared might not be the right word for it. Folks had seen the two young girls playing near the ruins, they had watched them laugh and skip and revel in the freedom and joy that came with childhood, most likely muttering quiet prayers that it would last as long as possible. The neighbours knew what sort of hard life awaited those girls once they were old enough to work and carry their own weight. Their joy must have been bittersweet.

And then someone watched them step inside the ruins. That was the first reason to worry. Folks avoided the ruins for a good reason – it was dark and dangerous, and the cellar beneath it had been a den for all sorts of animals. So, whoever it was that watched them disappear into the shadows most likely headed over to warn the girls’ parents. When everyone arrived at the ruins to call them out, though, they were no longer visible. While there was a good chance they had simply moved on to a new playground, someone decided to peer inside the dark cellar, and there, laying on the broken stone floor, were the sleeping forms of both girls. So, one of the older women stepped inside to wake them. A moment later, though, she collapsed into a heap beside the girls, sending the growing crowd into a panic. They didn’t know what was causing the people inside the cellar to lose consciousness, but they knew there was something dangerous about the dark space, so they sent for a fire hook – a long pole with a metal hook on the end – and then reached in and pulled each body out into the light. All three of them were dead, and not just dead – they were bloated and dark, as if they’d been dead for days. Most frightening of all, though, was that their eyes seemed to be protruding from their sockets. No one could be sure, but it almost looked as if they’d been frightened to death.

Wanting answers, they sent for Benedictus, the king’s very own physician. If anyone would have the skill to identify the danger, it would be him. And, sure enough, after taking a long look at the trio of bodies, he brought them a definitive answer. All of them had been killed by a basilisk. In an instant, the atmosphere around the old ruins changed. Newcomers came to watch, while leaders gathered to form a plan. Something had to be done, and just like the stories all of them had grown up with, it seemed that a basilisk hunt was in order, but the trouble was no one wanted to risk their lives by entering the cellar to kill it – not even Benedictus, who seemed to know the most about the creature. But they had an idea. A group of leaders from the community quickly headed to the local jail, where two men awaited execution for various capital crimes. Each man was given the same offer: come kill the basilisk, and you will receive a full pardon and your freedom as a reward. It seemed like an easy choice, too – inside jail, there was no chance of survival. Outside, though, there was at least the possibility they might survive. It made sense to everyone.

The first criminal declined the offer, but the other one, a man named Johann Faurer, agreed to help. He was escorted from the jail to the old ruins, where Benedictus awaited him with tools and instructions. The townsfolk had quickly gathered dozens of small mirrors and sewn them onto a pair of leather pants and a coat. I imagine Johann gave the old physician a sideways glance at the sheer ridiculousness of it all, but at the same time, he would have known the folklore just as well as everyone else. Alexander the Great had defeated a basilisk using a mirror-like shield, so why would it not work for him? With a crowd of over 2000 witnesses watching, Johann began to carefully walk into the ruins, where he entered the cellar. He had a long rake in one hand and a torch in the other, to light his way, and as soon as he stepped into the darkness below, he cried out that he could see it – a long, serpent-like tail, with a head that resembled that of a rooster, right down to the crown-like plumage. Benedictus called out instructions to the man. “Grab it with the rake,” he told him, “and then carry it out here into the light.” Johann shouted back that he understood, and the entire crowd began to shift and rumble. If a basilisk was going to be dragged out of the ruins, no one wanted to be around to see it, so they all ran for cover and hid their eyes. When Johann emerged, he held the writhing creature by the neck in one of his gloved hands. They daylight somehow made it weaker, and that gave Benedictus the courage to step closer and examine it. It looked exactly like the bestiaries of old had taught him – the body of a snake, four long legs and a head that looks very much like a rooster.

But sadly, this is where the account of the basilisk hunt ends. Whoever had been recording the events had most likely been in the crowd, and when Johann had begun to emerge from the cellar, they had followed the crowd into hiding, which leaves the ending a bit of a mystery. Who killed the creature, when all was said and done, and how did they do it, knowing the risks the old legends spoke of? What we do know is this: the Warsaw basilisk hunt of 1587 was the last time the creature was reported anywhere in Europe. Maybe it had been the last of its kind, and its death marked its extinction, or perhaps the few that survived had a knack for staying out of sight – like the platypus of Australia. Either way, all that was left from that moment on were legends and stories. Like so many creatures that have once walked the earth, the basilisk – if it was ever real to begin with – has slipped into the shadows of the past, and it’s never been seen again.

 There really is something delightful about the bestiaries of old. Their colourful pages and evocative descriptions were beyond sensational. In a world without television, radio or easily accessible works of fiction, those catalogues of natural history were the closest most people could get to travelling the world. Of course, the things most authors chose to include in their bestiaries would probably never make the cut in our modern times. After all, headless tribesmen with eyes on their chests, unicorns and sea nymphs all feel more like characters in a fantasy novel than entries in a study on the world’s flora and fauna. And yet some of those expectations have been broken over the years. For centuries, sailors told stories about the kraken, enormous sea creatures that could reach out and drag an entire ship underwater with its long tentacles. King Sverre of Norway recorded its description way back in 1180, and for hundreds of years people claimed to spot them in the waters of the ocean. Then, in 1853, the carcass of a giant squid washed up on a Danish beach, giving the legend new life. Over the century and a half since then, scientists have determined that there is indeed a giant sea creature that fits the ancient descriptions – give or take a few sinking ships, of course – and while they’ve been challenging to catch on film, we now know they exist. And those mermaids of old might have roots in actual animals as well. Many scientists and scholars now believe that old reports of mermaids could very well be mistaken sightings of an aquatic mammal known as the manatee. As is so often the case, our misunderstandings had given birth to frightening legends, only to have science bring a bit of clarity to the tale. Sometimes the monsters of the ancient world turn out to be real, and sometimes legends inspire new discoveries.

In the part of the world that stretches from Mexico to South America, scientists have been familiar for over a century with a lizard from the iguana family. It’s not the largest reptile around, but it can grow to around 2ft in length, and it can run at amazing speeds. Some scientists refer to it as the Jesus Christ Lizard because of its strange ability to run across the surface of water. But its most common name is based on other features, like its tendency to run on two legs and its serpent-like body – a body that’s topped with a head and plumes reminiscent of a crown or a rooster, which is why its name is both logical and a bit of a throwback. They call it the basilisk.

 There’s something enticing about the mysteries that fill the gaps in our knowledge of the world around us. Looking back at the bestiaries of the middle ages, its clear humans have had a lot of fun filling those holes, and the creativity of the past has continued to inspire stories today. But there’s one more creature I want to tell you about. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to learn all about it.

[Sponsor break from Bombas, Casper and Fracture]

They had fallen in love, and it was something that would change their destiny forever. At least, that’s how the legend tells it. Long ago, a young man lived on a small island surrounded by deep blue seas, and in the process of hunting one day, he encountered a beautiful young woman. But the hunter quickly learned that there was more to her than he could see with his eyes. The woman, it turns out, was a fairy. In fact, she was well known to the locals there, who referred to her as the Dragon Princess. Despite their differences – him, a normal human being, and her, a magical fairy – the two of them fell in love and were soon married, and that helps this tale become on of those happily ever after stories that we all love so much. The couple went on to have twins, a boy and a girl, and just like their parents, they were an odd pair. The boy was just like his father, a human with no magical powers of his own, while the girl took after her mother, and because of that, both parents decided that the children should be raised in separate places to help them fully become who they were meant to be.

According to the legend, it was many years later when the son was out hunting, just as his father had taught him. He was creeping through the forest, his spear balanced in one hand, when he spotted a deer. He quickly threw the weapon, which found its target, and a heartbeat later the young man was carefully making his way over to collect his prize, and that’s when the dragon stepped out of the trees. It was enormous and frightening, and it clearly wanted to take the deer that he had just killed. The young hunter spoke to it, begging it to leave his future meal alone, but the creature ignored him and proceeded to move toward the deer, so he lifted another spear and got ready to take aim at the dragon. Suddenly, a figure stepped out of the shadows of the forest and stopped him. It was his mother, the fairy princess, who he had not seen since his childhood, and as she approached him, she spoke a word of warning. “Do not throw that spear”, she told him, “for that is no ordinary dragon. That is your sister.” Instead, she taught him to live in harmony with his sister, and according to the legend, that fateful meeting set the destiny of their entire community on a new path. Even today, if you were to visit the place where they lived, the people there would tell you that they are descended from dragons, illustrating how that harmony has continued.

And of course, this story is just one of many tales about dragons that fill the pages of folklore. In fact, most of us would be hard pressed to find a creature mentioned more often than those magical beasts, from the 11th century legend of King George and the Dragon to the fantasy novels and television shows of our modern world. They really do seem to be the king of monsters. Dragons are also one of those nearly universal creatures. It seems just about every culture around the world has had some version of them in their folklore. The ancient Egyptian god of chaos was Apophis, represented as a giant serpent. The Babylonians had their own god of chaos called Tiemat, and in Arcadian mythology there were not one but three dragons on display. Norse mythology features a giant serpent who gnaws at the roots of the world tree. In Ukrainian folklore, there is a dragon with three heads, while images of dragons can be found all over medieval heraldry. And of course, few cultures on earth hold as tightly to their dragon mythology as the Chinese, who have been decorating objects with images of the creature at least as far back as the Neolithic period, and we could speculate why, I’m sure. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how the accidental discovery of dinosaur bones might spark fear and wonder in the minds of humans thousands of years ago. The places where stories of dragons are most common are also places where such fossils have been uncovered, so it does make sense.

So, when Europeans arrived on an island in the Flores Sea, just south of Indonesia, they probably didn’t think twice about the local stories about dragons. In fact, those tales were probably a bit old hat, as they say. Dragons lived in caves, breathed fire, were vicious killers and could fly when necessary – nothing about all of that was new. What was new, though, were the things they saw there. On an island surrounded by deep, blue sea, an island full of people who believed they were descended from dragons, mind you, they discovered a creature that brought all of their legends to life. It lived in the caves along the shore, it was an enormous killer, and it sometimes even followed its prey up into the trees. It ticked all the boxes. These were 300lb serpent-like monsters that could bring down a half-tonne water buffalo. When they licked the air with their bright red tongue, it looked as if they were spitting fire, and they even dug into the graves of the dead looking for treasure. Of course, that treasure was always food, not gold. And they’re still there, crawling across the sandy beaches of the island, living in harmony, more or less, with the people who still call the place their home. They might not have wings or piles of golden treasure to curl up on, but they are the largest lizard on earth, measuring in at over 10ft in length, and they’re deadly. Sometimes the tales of the past stay shrouded in mystery, and other times we manage to crack the riddle and shed new light on the shadows that once frightened us. This living, flesh and blood dragon seems to offer a fresh answer to an ancient question, however incomplete it might be, but at least we now know that there really is one place in the world where that old cartographer warning is actually true: Here, on Komodo Island at least, there be dragons.

[Closing Statements]

[officialhexrpg]

Arts & Graphics: June’s Writing Challenge Winner!

June's theme for the Arts & Graphics forum on HEXRPG was all about Ancient Egypt! In this challenge, artists had to write a report of their findings as a Curse-Breaker working in Egypt. 

3rd Place: K8ekt 

I had left Hogwarts as a Professor of Arithmancy six months previous. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my job there. The students were always fresh faced and willing to learn. It had been a pleasure to watch them develop and grow from children to confident young men and women. But I had always felt there was more to life. More I was capable of. Yes, being a professor had been rewarding but I felt destined for more. That’s why I had decided to change my career from teacher to evil spell breaker, and I was thriving. Information on the whereabouts of an ancient pharaoh’s treasure had been discovered back at Gringotts in Diagon Ally and the head Goblin had chosen me to investigate. I was a little nervous of course, as this was my first solo mission but I was also very excited. The head Goblin himself had chosen me, I must have impressed someone along the line somewhere. Now, here in Egypt, glancing around the tourist shop, I wondered just how I was going to get to the tomb of Mustava. Magical wards had been put around the pyramid to stop wizards and witches from apparating anywhere near it. I had absolutely no idea how I was going to get inside to even begin my search. Maybe the head Goblin had been wrong about my abilities. But then I noticed a poster above the counter which read: ‘West Valley Tomb tours leaving daily! Get your tickets here! Egyptian or British pounds accepted!’ I couldn’t believe my luck! This was the opportunity I’d been waiting for. I approached the shopkeeper and pointed to the poster. “Mustava’s Pyramid please?” I asked holding out a handful of coins. I was hoping that some of them were either English or Egyptian pounds as I had no idea. I was relieved when he nodded and took some of the currency then handed me a notepad with a list of names. I scribbled ‘Septima Vector’ under the ‘Mustava’ heading and left to find the bus station and my coach. The coach ride was long, hot and stuffy. The air conditioning didn’t work and opening a window barely helped. I wished I’d taken an anti-sickness potion before I had got on but I hadn’t had time, and the bus was so overcrowded I couldn’t risk opening my bag. All the muggles were suffocating, and it didn’t help with the sun’s heat burning through the windows. Finally we screeched to a stop as we reached our destination and I hurried to get off desperate for fresh air. It wasn’t much better outside. There was no cover and the hot rays were pounding down, bouncing off the fine sand which was everywhere. I really wanted to cast a cooling spell but I couldn’t get my wand out here. I needed to sneak away from the crowd of photo snapping tourists, but how? There was nothing to do but follow the crowd inside the pyramid. It was dark and had a fusty smell down were they were being shown. Muggles had added some basic lighting but the light was still dim. We were shown into a small room I realised was a tomb. The Pharaoh's mummy was laid in a large sarcophagus in the centre of the room, the walls were covered with Egyptian hieroglyphs and paintings of gods, crops and animals. There was an opening on the opposite side of the room leading into another passageway with security tape across it. It looked promising so I backed away from the crowd quietly, ducked under the tape and left the group behind. I didn’t get very far though until I reached a dead end. Dang, it was sealed off. Then something caught my eye. There was a section of drawings on the wall to my right that didn’t look like normal ancient Egyptian figures, they had pointy hats and held wands just like wizards. There was writing under the images I recognised to be ancient Greek. I frowned. Well, this was certainly unusual. It had to mean something. But what? A simple translation spell should help. “Aparecium.” I commanded and the writing moved and merged into a language I could understand. I could understand it alright but I was none the wiser. It was a brain teaser and I didn’t have a clue what it meant. ‘I’ve been around for millions of years, but I’m no more than a month old. What am I?’ “Come on, it’s your job to figure these things out!” I whispered to myself under my breath, looking around at all the images of wheat fields, gods, suns and moons… I paused. “Moon! That’s the answer!” There was a moon on the opposite wall to the rhyme. I raised my wand and touched the painted moon gently with the tip uttering ‘Alohomora’. The whole wall moved back, opening up in front of me. I smiled and slipped through. As the wall shut behind me I was encased in darkness, the room was pitch black, I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face, so I quickly spoke the word ‘Lumos’ and the room was illuminated by the light of my wand. I gasped at the sight that met me. The room was full of treasures. Boxes made from solid gold and silver, filled with precious gemstones surrounded me. I had found it! I couldn’t believe how easy it had been. Wait… Why had it been so easy? I wondered to myself before the realisation hit me. I might have found the treasure but I needed to get out, and there wasn’t a way out. That’s when I saw the skeletons. Hunched up by the wall I had entered by were the bones of the crypt finders before me. The wands in their hands told me that they were wizards and witches, like me. Probably all evil spell breakers. Something was shining next to one of the bodies on the stone floor. It was a single shimmering gold feather. It looked familiar but I couldn’t quite place which bird it belonged to. I bent down to examine it more closely. As soon as I picked up the golden feather a high pitched shriek filled the room. Ah. Even though I had never heard the noise before I instantly knew what it was. My fear was realised when the bird swooped down over my head, so low the air moved strands of my hair. I knew I needed to silence the yellow Fwooper and soon, it’s twittering song had the power to make witches go insane. Pointing my wand in the direction of the deafening tune I shouted ‘Silencio’. I couldn’t hear my own words but the charm must have worked because the room suddenly became silent. Deathly silent. I could hear wings softly flapping but the maddening melody was gone. The Fwooper dived once more, this time dropping an object at my feet before settling on top of a silver broom by my side, her round eyes fixed on her gift. My attention moved from the bird to the box on the floor. I knew better than to touch it and instead retrieved my secrecy sensor from my pocket and aimed it at the item. Sure enough, the rod began to vibrate uncontrollably. As I suspected, the relic was blighted with evil. It appeared to be a board game, I had seen it in a book I had read in preparation for my trip here. It was called ‘Senet’, the full name meaning ‘game of passing’. “I wonder...” I said out loud then shrugged, I had nothing to lose. Sitting down opposite the Fwooper I aimed my wand at the game, using ‘Locomotor’ I moved the first piece on the board. The bird glided to the floor silently and moved another piece with her beak. We carried on like this, taking it in turns until it was my final move. Well, that was lucky, I thought with a sigh of relief, I had won the game! The counters began to dance in a circle, getting faster and faster until they turned to a blur, a beam of light shot out from the middle, shining across the room and onto the ceiling. An opening was appearing and dust fell from the newly revealed gap. moonlight flooded the room and I realised it must lead outside. I needed to get up there, but how? As if my new feathered friend knew what I was thinking, she flew back onto the silver broom and nudged my arm with her head. “Thank you.” I said, stroking her under the chin, mounted the broom then flew up, up through the hole and out of the pyramid into the cool night air, relieved the baking sun had set but surprised at how much time had passed since I had started my tour. A smile crept onto my lips as I realised my first solo mission had been a success.

[wildwoods1]

                         Wildman: Courting the Strange in Nature

 The small window behind my computer screen, if I am angled properly, allows me to see the trees, the fence and, between the lamp and the porch post,  the gate fills the left side of the glass. Imagine my surprise when I looked up from working one day to see a very unusual creature standing outside the gate with his hand resting on its’ top wrung. He was very tall and looked...unlike anything I thought existed. The closest I had seen to this was the Thestral Flying Horses pulling carts in Harry Potter. Wildman is not winged, at least I have never seen them, but he does look as if he was dead with his skin shrunk hard and cured over the bones, the way it would be cured over a slow campfire. His head/skull is that of a stag, his body that of a man; his rack of horns seem to faze faintly in and out of vision for us 3D types and he is all-over the dark brooding brown of dried skin. On his spine there is a  tiny little bead resting on top of each vertebrae and certain bones show their shape through the  heavy tough leather. But by far the most unusual and impressive attributes are his eyes. The skull appears empty; eye sockets house nothing visible to the human eye. But when one begins to connect with him something happens. He begins to look back at you and the longer he looks the deeper the eyes become until one is mesmerized by the deep, deep wells of feeling and connectedness with the entirety of Nature. He looks as if his eyes, being part deer with large wide expressive pupils, chose to set themselves into one of the most sensitive of Natures’ large and potentially friendly creatures. It’s almost as if his eyes were the sum total of his entire consciousness and they alone made everything happen! They alone open the hearts of the beings staring back at him.

His work, he is one of many, involves the ebb and flow of energy in Nature: everything from migrations to storms, tree sap and fledgling birds; moths and Kestrels fly by his balance, to express great Earth  functional in her consciousness. He claims it is a lovely story and fun in the telling; he promises to tell it soon.

I have developed such a love for this being, I can’t tell you. This surprises him endlessly and he feels he is truly blessed. You can feel this response in him, which in itself is fairly miraculous. It is sentimental, to be sure. But it is far more. He carries a sense of how to feel. His version of Felt-Sense is so highly attuned it is one of the more exquisite versions of Instinctual Wisdom...the kind that bridges the gap between Higher Self and the Human capacity to feel. Wildman gives me the sense of not only being connected to Nature as I would seemingly never be on my own, but he also gives me the instruction and essence of the woods, how it breathes and how it fills it’s inhabitants with life.  Ultimately, whether or not we actually exist, whether or not we can allow ourselves to transcend… we have to learn to feel enough to allow ourselves to reach beyond the physical and reason; to feel fully the possible, the wholeness, the beingness that we all share. To me it is manifestations like Wildman who take us by the hand and lead us into the primordial forest, hold us near the quaking we carry within and say “Be silent and see: You are home, you are loved and you are good. Start from here.”

[j0sgomez-blog]

By Michael Lanza

An unforgettable campsite can define a backcountry trip. Sometimes that perfect spot where you spend a night forges the memory that remains the most vivid long after you’ve gone home. A photo of that camp can send recollections of the entire adventure rushing back to you—it does for me. I’ve been very fortunate to have pitched a tent in many great backcountry campsites over nearly three decades of backpacking and trekking all over the U.S. and the world. I’ve boiled the list of my favorite spots down to these 25.

I update this list every year, and each time, it becomes more difficult. Below my top 25 list you’ll find a second list of campsites that were previously in my top 25. Each campsite photo below includes a short description of where it is and the trip, and most have a link to an existing story about that trip at The Big Outside.

In a few cases, the photos from these places show the view a few steps from our tent, rather than the site itself.

I share a brief anecdote with each photo because, for me, each campsite isn’t merely a beautiful scene: it is a story and a memory. Because that’s what camping in the wilderness is all about.

I’d love to read your thoughts about any of these places, or your suggestions for campsites that belong on my list; I’m always looking for trip ideas. Share them in the comments section at the bottom of this story.

Sweet dreams.

Sahale Glacier Camp, North Cascades National Park, WA

We slogged up Sahale Arm into a cold, wind-driven rain, unable to see more than a hundred feet in any direction. But as my friend David Ports and I reached Sahale Glacier Camp (see lead photo at top of story), the rain and wind abated and the clouds dropped below us, giving us a view of the earth falling away into a bottomless abyss a few steps from our tent door. A mountain goat strolled past our camp.

Perched at the top of Sahale Arm and the toe of the Sahale Glacier, at 7,686 feet, the highest designated campsite in North Cascades National Park overlooks what appears to be a boundless, wind-whipped sea of sharpened peaks smothered in snow and ice, among them Johannesburg, Baker, Shuksan, Glacier Peak, and in the far distance, Mount Rainier. See my Ask Me post about backpacking in North Cascades National Park for more photos and information on how to take this trip.

The campsite by Royal Arch (which is behind the photographer) in the Grand Canyon.

Beside Royal Arch, Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

Backpacking the 34.5-mile Royal Arch Loop, the most remote and arguably the most rugged and lonely established South Rim hike in the Big Ditch, three friends and I put in a monster first day to reach the campsite beside Royal Arch—and was it ever worth the effort. We descended Royal Arch Canyon, which involves slow, strenuous, and exposed scrambling in spots—but is also lush with hanging gardens growing along its vibrant creek, which plunges through several crystal-clear pools—until we came into view of the arch, the Grand Canyon’s largest natural bridge (it’s water carved, so technically a bridge, not an arch).

Royal Arch campsite, Grand Canyon.

We passed beneath the tall, thick arch (which provided ample shelter during dinnertime rain showers) and walked just beyond it to a flat ledge more than large enough for our two tents, directly beneath a towering sandstone pinnacle. Just steps beyond our ledge loomed a vertical, 200-foot pour-off dropping into the lower section of Royal Arch Canyon—a reminder not to wander far from the tents after dark. Come morning, dawn light would set the red walls of that lower canyon ablaze. For the four of us, all longtime backcountry explorers, this was an all-time best campsite.

See my feature story about backpacking the Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch Loop, with lots of photos, a video, and information on how to pull off this trip, and all of my stories about the Grand Canyon at The Big Outside.

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Johns Hopkins Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park.

Johns Hopkins Inlet, Glacier Bay National Park, AK

For one of the trips for my book about taking our kids on wilderness adventures in national parks facing threats from climate change, we took a five-day sea kayaking trip in Glacier Bay, where cliffs shoot straight up out of the sea and razor peaks smothered in ice and snow rise thousands of feet overhead. We watched bald eagles and other birds flying overhead, harbor seals popping up out of the water near our boats, Stellar sea lions honking and carrying on while sprawled on the rocks of South Marble Island, and brown bears roaming rocky beaches looking for food.

We spent two nights at this campsite near the mouth of Johns Hopkins Inlet. From there, we kayaked up the inlet to within about a quarter-mile of the mile-wide snout of the Johns Hopkins Glacier; a thousand or more seals occupied floating icebergs or swam around the inlet. Throughout the evenings and mornings in camp, we listened to that massive glacier calve another bus-size chunk of itself into the sea every 20 or 30 minutes, with an explosive sound the native Tlingits called “white thunder.”

See my story about sea kayaking in Glacier Bay for more photos and a video, plus information on how to pull off this trip.

Hi, I’m Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside, which has made several top outdoors blog lists. Click here to sign up for my FREE email newsletter. Join The Big Outside to get full access to all of my blog’s stories. Click here to learn how I can help you plan your next trip. Please follow my adventures on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube.

The Narrows, Zion National Park, UT

It was one of the most glaring omissions in my resume as a backpacker: I had never hiked The Narrows of the Virgin River in Zion National Park. (I actually had a permit to do it in October 2013, when Congress shut down the federal government, closing all the national parks and temporarily crushing my hopes of finally ticking off that classic hike.) Then an unexpected opportunity arose: I had a window for a four-day trip in early November and saw an unusually good forecast for southern Utah. I broached the idea of backpacking The Narrows to my friend, David Gordon, he leapt at the chance, and we got a last-minute permit for a very popular trip at a time of year when there are far fewer people either competing for a permit or dayhiking from the bottom.

Campsite no. 1 in Zion’s Narrows.

I shot this photo and video of David at our campsite, Narrows no. 1, in early evening; the slot on the left side of the photo is The Narrows—we had emerged from that slot, hiking downstream, just an hour or so earlier.

Read my story about backpacking The Narrows of Zion National Park, with many more photos, a video of the trip, and tips on pulling it off yourself.

Score a popular permit using my “10 Tips For Getting a Hard-to-Get National Park Backcountry Permit.”

Precipice Lake, Sequoia National Park.

Precipice Lake, Sequoia National Park, CA

It almost seems unfair to compare other places to mountain ranges like the Tetons, High Sierra, and North Cascades, or to the Grand Canyon; those four destinations dominate this list in part because I keep returning to them, but I think the photos speak for themselves. On a six-day, family backpacking trip in Sequoia National Park, we camped at two alpine lakes that deserve placement on this list: Precipice Lake and Columbine Lake (below).

Precipice wasn’t even part of the planned itinerary; we intended to go beyond it, over Kaweah Gap, to camp in the Nine Lake basin. But when we reached Precipice in late afternoon on our third day, we decided within minutes to stop for the night. Cliffs of clean, white granite with black streaks ring much of the compact lake’s shoreline. The mouth of the outlet creek provides an excellent pool for a chilling dip. Granite ledges above the lake have flat areas for tents or to just lay out bags and sleep under the stars (as my 12-year-old son and I did). The evening alpenglow on the cliffs reflected in the lake, and on 12,040-foot Eagle Scout Peak towering above Precipice, put the icing on the cake.

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Columbine Lake, Sequoia National Park.

Columbine Lake, Sequoia National Park, CA

Whichever direction you approach this lake from, you will pay for the privilege of a night here with significant toil. Filling a stone basin at nearly 11,000 feet, below the distinctive spire of Sawtooth Peak and an arc of snaggletoothed mountains, Columbine is reached either via a 600-foot hump up through dozens of switchbacks from Lost Canyon; or a much harder 1,200-foot scramble, sans a maintained trail, up a steep mountainside of sliding scree from Monarch Lakes to 11,630-foot Sawtooth Gap, where a primitive but better path leads down to Columbine. (We took the former and descended from Sawtooth Gap to Monarch Lakes, and were glad we were not carrying backpacks up that route.)

Once there, though, your effort is (mostly) forgotten. We explored the granite ledges on the north shore of the lake, where crevices and small bowls in the granite hold tiny pockets of water and you sometimes have to scramble on all fours over short, vertical walls. Alpenglow painted the peaks a salmon hue in the evening–of course–and sunrise cast an unbelievable pallet of orange, yellow, and reds onto a curlicue sculpture of clouds hovering just above one jagged ridge nearby. While not easy on the legs, Columbine Lake is very easy on the eyes.

See my story about this six-day backpacking trip, which included Precipice and Columbine lakes, with many more photos, a video, and information for planning this trip yourself.

Get the right pack for you. See my picks for “The 10 Best Backpacking Packs” 

and the best ultralight, thru-hiking packs.

Death Canyon Shelf, Grand Teton National Park.

Death Canyon Shelf, Grand Teton National Park, WY

I could rattle off a list of gorgeous campsites in the Tetons, a park I’ve visited somewhere between 15 and 20 times and never get tired of. But I decided to include just the two camping zones I consider the best places to bed down in the Tetons backcountry, that can be reached by trail: Death Canyon Shelf (at right) and the North Fork of Cascade Canyon (below).

I’ve camped a few times in different spots on Death Canyon Shelf, a broad, three-mile-long bench at about 9,500 feet. With the earth dropping away abruptly into Death Canyon on one side, cliffs rising some 500 feet on the other side, and views across the jagged peaks and canyons of the Tetons—reaching all the way to the Grand Teton—there are few spots with such sweeping and dramatic panoramas. I’ve watched moose in Death Canyon through binoculars from the cliff tops and was awakened one night by a bull elk outside our tent. On my most recent night here, with my family and a couple of friends, we watched one spectacular sunset followed by an equally glorious sunrise.

After the Teton Crest Trail, hike the other nine of “America’s Top 10 Best Backpacking Trips.”

North Fork Cascade Canyon, Grand Teton National Park.

North Fork of Cascade Canyon, Grand Teton National Park, WY

We backpacked over Paintbrush Divide, at about 10,700 feet, and descended through switchbacks into the North Fork of Cascade Canyon, gaping at the view of the sheer north face of the Grand Teton rising several thousand feet above the deep, green trough of the canyon. I’ve hiked all over the Tetons, including over this pass a couple times before. This spot gives one of the best views on a trail in all of the Tetons.

Passing Lake Solitude, ringed by a horseshoe of cliffs, we hiked down into the North Fork camping zone and grabbed the first available campsite. The shot above is of the creek flowing a short distance from our tent, looking down canyon at the Grand. In the morning, we continued down the canyon, passing several more established campsites in the North Fork camping zone that would have easily made this list as well.

See my story about backpacking the Teton Crest Trail, with more photos, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Dying to backpack in the Tetons? See my e-guides to the Teton Crest Trail and the best short backpacking trip there.

Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park.

Lake Ellen Wilson, Glacier National Park, MT

Our weeklong backpacking trip had featured too many wildlife sightings to count—including bighorn sheep and numerous mountain goats, not to mention that we had an impending date with a sow grizzly bear and her two cubs. The scenery blew us away every day. I would have forgiven Lake Ellen Wilson, our final night’s campsite, for being anticlimactic.

But upon arriving there, we soaked tired feet in the lake’s cold, emerald-colored waters, a 20-second walk from our campsite, gazing around at a basin ringed by thousand-foot cliffs with several waterfalls pouring off of them. Then we laid down on the sun-warmed pebbles on the beach, which felt like a heated bed with built-in massage. For my friend Jerry Hapgood and me, dropping off into an afternoon nap on them was the default setting. It turned out to be our best campsite of the trip.

See my story about backpacking my modified and expanded version of Glacier National Park’s Northern Loop, with more photos, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Get my expert e-guides to the best backpacking trip in Glacier and backpacking the Continental Divide Trail through Glacier.

At Wanda Lake on the John Muir Trail in the Evolution Basin (above Evolution Lake).

Evolution Basin, John Muir Trail, Kings Canyon National Park, CA

We walked up to the shore of Evolution Lake after dark, laid out our sleeping pads and bags on granite slabs under the stars, and quickly nodded off. So we didn’t catch a glimpse of our surroundings until first light the next morning—which actually made it more magical, I think, because we got to watch daylight slowly reveal this magnificent alpine valley to us.

Thru-hiking the John Muir Trail in a week, trying to knock off an average of 31 miles a day, we rose the next morning in the dark to begin another long day on the trail. We departed Evolution Lake by headlamp, but soon the approaching dawn began slowly illuminating a starkly beautiful landscape of rock, water, and sky. Dawn struck the line of jagged peaks on the horizon first, then eventually found us, the only people already on the trail that day. At that hour when many backpackers are still fast asleep, we hiked through one of the most stunning stretches of the JMT, the Evolution Basin, in its richest light.

See my story about thru-hiking the John Muir Trail, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip (at any pace).

Got a trip coming up? See my reviews of the best gear duffles and luggage and 7 best hiking daypacks.

Our campsite in Titcomb Basin, in Wyoming’s Wind River Range.

Titcomb Basin, Wind River Range, WY

The views kept getting better with every mile on the first day of a three-day, 41-mile loop that two friends and I backpacked from the Elkhart Park Trailhead in Wyoming’s Wind River Range in mid-September. But as we entered the long, alpine valley called Titcomb Basin to find a campsite for the night, craning our necks to see the cliffs and peaks towering overhead, we immediately realized it was one of the prettiest backcountry spots any of us had ever seen.

An alpine valley at over 10,500 feet, Titcomb Basin sits below mountains on the Continental Divide that soar more than 3,000 feet above the Titcomb Lakes in the valley, the highest of which is 13,745-foot Fremont Peak. In fact, high peaks flank the valley on three sides like a long, narrow horseshoe. The only easy way in and out is via the trail entering the mouth of the basin. The next day, we hiked an off-trail route over Knapsack Col at about 12,200 feet, at the upper end of Titcomb, descending another trailless alpine valley speckled with wildflowers. Every time I return to the Winds, it feels like a reminder that I need to get there more often.

Read my feature story about that 41-mile hike, “Best of the Wind River Range: Backpacking to Titcomb Basin.”

Dome Glacier, Glacier Peak Wilderness.

Dome Glacier, Ptarmigan Traverse, Glacier Peak Wilderness, WA

The first four nights of camping on the Ptarmigan Traverse are in the alpine zone with 360-degree views of some of the most severely vertiginous and heavily glaciated and snow-covered peaks in the Lower 48. With clear skies, any of those camps might among the most memorable you’ve ever had. But besides White Rock Lakes, my other favorite campsite on the Ptarmigan was on the Dome Glacier, base camp for our climb of Dome Peak. Throughout a clear evening, with a sea of clouds filling the valleys below us, we looked south to the white pyramid of the volcano Glacier Peak, glowing above the clouds in the dusk light.

Getting There Climbers traditionally begin the Ptarmigan Traverse at Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park and walk south, largely hewing close to the Cascade Crest. Beyond Dome Peak, from the Cub Lake area in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, the route descends to the Downey Creek Trailhead on Suiattle River Road. The route is mostly off-trail and crosses six glaciers; expert skills at glacier travel and navigating off-trail through mountains are required. See an excellent route description at summitpost.org/ptarmigan-traverse/154644.

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Great Sand Dunes National Park.

On the Dunes, Great Sand Dunes National Park, CO

Not long into our first day backpacking across the massive sand dunes of this park—which tower several hundred feet tall—I was already convinced that carrying a pack loaded with food and gear for three days as well as two gallons of water up giant dunes was not a brilliant plan. Our group of editors from Backpacker Magazine marched a few miles over the rolling, sometimes steep dunes until we found a relatively flat spot to pitch our tents. Then the magic show began.

It was November, and the light of late afternoon and early evening transformed the shifting, mountainous dunes into three-dimensional works of abstract art. I wandered a wide perimeter around our camp in the evening and early morning, shooting photos of frost on multi-colored dunes that often came to a peak as sharp as on the roof of a house. At times, sand avalanching downhill under our boots made an eerie sound, a phenomenon known as “singing.” I decided the dunes more than made up for the effort expended getting there.

See my story, with more photos, about backpacking at Great Sand Dunes for information on how to pull off this trip.

Get the right tent for you. See my “Gear Review: The 5 Best Backpacking Tents” and my “5 Tips For Buying a Backpacking Tent.”

High camp at 12,000 feet below the East Face of California’s 14,505-foot Mount Whitney.

Below the East Face of Mount Whitney, CA

In frigid blasts of wind raking the snow-covered mountainside in April, our party crested a steep slope to find ourselves facing one of the most-photographed and unforgettable mountain vistas in America: the East Face of California’s 14,505-foot Mount Whitney, highest peak in the Lower 48. On a flat pan of snow at 12,000 feet below that jagged skyline, we pitched our high camp, from which we made a successful ascent of Whitney’s Mountaineers Route the next day. Spending two clear, starry nights in that camp, we saw the East Face in the varying light of all times of day, from dawn to sunset, dusk to dark. When I mentioned to one of our climbing partners that Whitney’s East Face was the only place I’ve seen that conjures mental images of the peaks of Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia, this man—who’s also been to Patagonia—told me that he’d been thinking the same thing.

See my story about that trip, “Roof of the High Sierra: A Father-Son Climb of California’s Mount Whitney.”

Campsite by Hance Rapids, Grand Canyon National Park.

Beside Hance Rapids, Colorado River, Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

The first day of a three-day backpacking trip in the Grand Canyon with my 10-year-old daughter, Alex, and two other families was a tough one: descending nearly 5,000 vertical feet in five miles on the rugged New Hance Trail, then walking another 1.5 miles (and 700 feet downhill) to campsites beside the Colorado River. Everyone was tired. But sometimes it takes a hard day of hiking to reach a magical spot, and a this lonely corner on the floor of the Big Ditch was a pretty good place to rest tired legs.

Our front porch offered a view of redrock cliffs just across the river. The gravelly drone of Hance Rapids drowned out all other noise. Night fell like a black curtain to reveal a sky riddled with more bullet holes than all the road signs in Arizona combined. Morning brought a sharp chill to the air—it was November—and the slow, patient unfolding of dawn light descending like very tired backpackers from the South Rim a vertical mile above us to the mid-canyon geologic layers and, finally, bathing our campsite in warmth. We left there completely rejuvenated.

See my story from this backpacking trip, with more images, a video, and tips on planning it yourself.

Click here now for my expert e-guide to backpacking the Grand Canyon rim to rim or my expert e-guide to dayhiking rim to rim.

Camp Schurman, Mt. Rainier.

Camp Schurman, Mount Rainier National Park, WA

Camp Schurman sits at 9,460 feet, on the very tip of Steamboat Prow, a cleaver of busted volcanic rock and dust. Two massive glaciers, the Emmons and Winthrop, part around this stone prow in a way that illustrates how frozen water behaves much the same as its liquid form. More than four square miles of moving ice, thousands of years old, and stretching over nearly 9,000 feet of elevation, the Emmons is the largest glacier in the Lower 48; the Winthrop isn’t much smaller. When two friends and I set off to climb the Emmons in early August a few years ago, with much of the snow melted off the glaciers, they displayed heavy scarring: huge, frighteningly beautiful crevasses as plentiful as waves on a storm-tossed ocean.

A two-foot-high, oval, stone wall shielded our tentsite from the irrepressible, bone-chilling wind. Standing outside our tent, I was struck by the mind-boggling scale of Mt. Rainier. Looking up at the mountain, I couldn’t fit it all within my peripheral vision. And yet, I knew I was looking at a tiny fraction of Rainier—which made me feel both very small and very fortunate for just being there.

Getting There From White River Campground at 4,400 feet, five miles past the White River ranger station (get a climbing permit there), hike the Glacier Basin Trail 3.2 miles to Glacier Basin Camp, at 6,000 feet. Follow a climbers’ trail up into the basin, reaching the Inter Glacier (good training ground for new climbers) at around 6,800 feet. Climb to Curtis Camp on the ridge north of Mt. Ruth, then descend off the ridge onto the Emmons Glacier and continue to Camp Schurman at 9,460 feet.

Map/Guidebook Trails Illustrated Mt. Rainier no. 217, $11.95, (800) 962-1643, natgeomaps.com. Mt. Rainier—A Climbing Guide, by Mike Gauthier, $18.95, mountaineersbooks.org.

Contact Mt. Rainier National Park, nps.gov/mora.

Hike stronger and smarter. See my stories “Training For a Big Hike or Mountain Climb” and “10 Tricks For Making Hiking and Backpacking Easier.”

At Big Spring, Paria Canyon.

Big Spring, Paria Canyon, Vermilion Cliffs National Monument, AZ-UT

I’d known that Paria Canyon could hold some surprises. But our two-family party found a little more adventure than we’d anticipated—which became evident when the other dad in our group, Vince, plunged hip-deep into quicksand on our first afternoon. But he managed, with considerable effort, to extricate himself; and by the next day, the kids had figured out how to identify shallow quicksand that they could stomp around in, howling with laughter. (Before the trip was over, Vince’s wife, Cat, and I would also take a quicksand dip.) We hiked for five days, mostly in the cold but usually ankle-deep Paria River, through a canyon that ranged from narrow with sheer walls to a big, open chasm between distant cliffs. While every campsite was really nice, the one at Big Spring (above), on our second night, took first prize.

Paria, which meets the Colorado River at Lees Ferry (where we finished our hike), at the beginning of the Grand Canyon, is unquestionably one of the great, multi-day canyon hikes of the Southwest—partly explaining why it’s so difficult to snag a permit to backpack it. But before you register a complaint about that with the Bureau of Land Management, which administers the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, bear in mind that the permit system preserves an unusual degree of solitude and a unique wilderness experience: We saw very few other people over five days, and spent much of that time on our own. (The BLM allows 20 people to start backpacking the Paria daily; we grabbed nine spots.)

See my story, with more photos, about backpacking Paria Canyon;for information on how to pull off this trip.

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Upper Lyman Lakes, Glacier Peak Wilderness, WA.

Upper Lyman Lakes, Glacier Peak Wilderness, WA

On the second day of a five-day, 44-mile family hike through the Glacier Peak Wilderness, we ascended a long finger of snow and crossed the pass that represents the crux of this trip in terms of technical difficulty, Spider Gap, at 7,100 feet. From there, we descended snow into the head of a valley sculpted and scoured by ice just a geologic moment ago, the Upper Lyman Lakes basin.

The Lyman Glacier poured down the cliffs of 8,459-foot Chiwawa Mountain into the vividly emerald waters of the uppermost lake. Barren, snow-speckled peaks and cliffs ringed the valley on three sides. A creek leapt from the lake’s far shore, crashing over stones and a small waterfall, below which some of us took a frigid and very brief bath. Wildflowers sprung hopefully from the few, shallow patches of soil. We pitched our tents on a grassy knoll near a copse of conifer trees, with an unobstructed view of that entire basin. And we spent most of the evening watching the shifting light across the mountains until sunset lit the clouds afire, watching a pair of bucks and a few doe wander through our campsites, and, well, swatting mosquitoes. (It was late July in the North Cascades, after all.)

Read my story about this five-day backpacking trip, with more photos and information on how to pull off this trip.

Plan your next great backpacking adventure using my downloadable, expert e-guides. Click here now to learn more.

On a hike above “Kid Rock” campsite, Stillwater Canyon, Green River, Canyonlands.

“Kid Rock” campsite, Green River, Canyonlands National Park, UT

We made up the name for this campsite; it doesn’t have a name that I’m aware of, though it is an established and large campsite on the Green River in Stillwater Canyon, seven miles above the confluence with the Colorado River. We gave it that name because, minutes after we landed, the eight kids in our five-family crew—ranging in age from four to 12—immediately planted their figurative flag on this boulder at the edge of the campsite and christened it “Kid Rock.” We all now remember that site by the name the kids gave that boulder.

Really, there are many special campsites along this lazy stretch of the Green, which passes through a canyon of soaring redrock cliffs and spires. But besides being spacious and scenic, this one sits at the bottom of a trail that climbs about three miles uphill to White Crack, one of the most spectacular campgrounds on the White Rim.

See my story about floating for five days down the Green River through Stillwater Canyon in Canyonlands National Park, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Alice Lake, Sawtooth Mountains.

Alice Lake, Sawtooth Wilderness, ID

In the last week of June—not yet summer in the mountains—my son, Nate, and I backpacked with two friends to one of the gems of the Sawtooth Wilderness: Alice Lake. While the ground was mostly dry and snow-free in the valleys, we had a frigid ford of a creek running knee-deep and fast with snowmelt, and then encountered up to three feet of snow still on the ground for the last hour or so to Alice Lake, which sits at 8,598 feet below an eye-catching row of granite pinnacles. We found Alice still partly frozen over. But the calm of late afternoon and then the next morning served up a glassy reflection of the snowy peaks beyond that illustrates why this area is a favorite among Sawooths aficionados.

I’d been to Alice Lake a few times before, as had Nate, on his first wilderness backpacking trip—and one of the first of our annual “Boy Trips”—when he was six years old. In fact, on this recent visit, I recognized and pointed out to Nate the campsite where, seven years earlier, I hurriedly threw up our tent just before a violent thunderstorm rolled in. This time, we just spent one night out there, early enough in the season that we had a chilly night and no mosquitoes.

Read my story “Jewels of the Sawtooths: Backpacking to Alice, Hell Roaring, and Imogene Lakes,” about that hike and one with my daughter, with more photos and trip-planning info. Also, check out my story, “Ask Me: What Are the Best Hikes in Idaho’s Sawtooths,” which provides more info about Alice Lake (and has a lead photo from Imogene). And see my “Photo Gallery: Mountain Lakes of Idaho’s Sawtooths.” Lastly, don’t miss two more photos from Sawtooths campsites that I’ve had to bump to my list of Past Favorite Backcountry Campsites (see below)—which tells you something about the Sawtooth Mountains lakes.

Benson Lake in Yosemite National Park.

Benson Lake, Yosemite National Park, CA

At dusk on the second day of a four-day, 86-mile backpacking tour of northern Yosemite—the park’s biggest swath of wilderness—my friend Todd Arndt and I strolled up to perhaps the most unlikely sight deep in the mountains: a sprawling, sandy beach that looks like it got lost on its way to Southern California. After hiking almost 23 miles that day, the trip’s longest, wiggling our toes in the cool sand and standing in the icy lake water in our bare feet reduced us to cooing babies.

A longtime backcountry ranger in Yosemite had told me that I’d find the park’s best backcountry beach at Benson Lake—but I never would have imagined such a vast expanse of fine sand deep in the mountains. It was one of many surprisingly gorgeous backcountry secrets I discovered over seven days of backpacking 151 miles through Yosemite’s most remote corners.

See my story about that trip, “Best of Yosemite, Part 2: Backpacking Remote Northern Yosemite,” and my story about the three-day, 65-mile first leg of that odyssey, “Best of Yosemite, Part 1: Backpacking South of Tuolumne Meadows.”

Yearning to backpack in Yosemite? See my e-guides to three amazing multi-day hikes there.

Compromise Camp on the Green River in Whirlpool Canyon, Dinosaur National Monument.

Green River, Dinosaur National Monument, UT-CO

Long shadows leaned over the steadily sliding river as we pulled into our first campsite on a four-day rafting trip on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument, which straddles the Utah-Colorado border. From the floor of Lodore Canyon, we gazed up at burgundy cliffs soaring a thousand feet overhead. One friend said to me, “This is probably the nicest campsite I’ve ever seen.” But what was truly amazing was that the second night’s campsite was better than our first—and the third night’s site was even more breathtaking than the first two. For that reason—and because many campsites on the banks of the Green in Dinosaur are equally beautiful—I’m simply lumping all of them together for this list.

See my story about that trip, “Why Conservation Matters: Rafting the Green River’s Gates of Lodore.”

Tiger Key, Everglades.

Tiger Key, Everglades National Park, FL

Songbirds chattered and flitted among the trees along the shore. Cormorants and brown pelicans skimmed the water’s surface. Egrets glided overhead. In one secluded cove in Tiger Key, an outermost island of the Ten Thousand Islands in the Everglades, we sat in our canoes and watched 10 brilliantly pink roseate spoonbills perched in a tree, watching us. In a small bay, we sat rapt while a dolphin swam wide circles around our canoe for about 20 minutes. Every evening, we stood in the warm beach sand watching the blazing red orb of the sun slowly sink into the Gulf of Mexico.

Another of the trips I took my family on for my book, paddling the Everglades was one of the most magical for all of us—for the scenery, the exotic birds, and the unique experience of having a wilderness beach all to ourselves.

See my story about kayaking the East River and canoeing and wilderness camping in the Ten Thousand Islands of Everglades National Park, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Unnamed canyon, Capitol Reef National Park.

Unnamed Canyon, Beehive Traverse, Capitol Reef National Park, UT

An hour into a three-day, cross-country traverse of the Waterpocket Fold formation in Capitol Reef, my friend David Gordon and I had already taken our first wrong turn, seen a bighorn sheep, and I’d dislodged a boulder that nearly crushed David. (We were off-route.) The incidents were omens for the days to follow, navigating our way through a maze of canyons, cliffs, domes, and towers, where it was not unusual to spend 20 minutes or more hemmed in by seemingly impassable cliffs before finding the narrow ledge or the break in the wall of rock that indicated the direction of our route.

My friend, local guide Steve Howe, spent many seasons working out this cross-country hike, which begins at Grand Wash and zigzags south a very circuitous 17 miles to Capitol Gorge. He calls it the Beehive Traverse, for the type of sandstone towers encountered along the way. He shared a map and GPS data with David and me to let us attempt it ourselves; very few people have hiked the route before us, and most of them were guided by Steve. On our second night, we camped in this unnamed canyon below flying buttresses of golden sandstone.

See my story, with lots of photos and a video, about backpacking the Beehive Traverse in Capitol Reef.

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Toleak Point, Olympic National Park.

Toleak Point, Olympic National Park, WA

On our second day of backpacking the southern Olympic coast, we had already marveled at a massive boulder in the intertidal zone on the beach that was wallpapered with hundreds of mussels, sea anemones, and vividly orange or purple starfish. We had also climbed down an 80-foot cliff on a rope ladder that was missing several rungs at its bottom.

Late that afternoon, we found a spot for our tents on the beach at Toleak Point, where dozens of the rock pinnacles called sea stacks rise out of the ocean just offshore. As the kids played in a tide pool, a sea otter emerged from the pool’s other end and flopped across the beach to plunge into the ocean. A seal cavorted in the waves near us. When I went to explore the sea stacks exposed at low tide, a great blue heron lifted off of one and soared away over the beach like a winged dinosaur. Another of the trips my family took for my book, this three-day hike on the Olympic coast is still remembered by our kids, as well as my wife and me, as one of our all-time favorite trips.

See my story about backpacking the southern Olympic coast, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

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Past Favorite Backcountry Campsites

As I visit new places, I occasionally add new campsites to the list above, and have to remove some great spots from the list (to keep it to 25, a somewhat random but sensible number). But bumping a site from my list doesn’t diminish its attraction, of course. So I will keep those former favorites in the list below, to give you even more ideas and goals for future adventures.

Granite Park, John Muir Wilderness.

Granite Park, John Muir Wilderness, CA

On the second night of a three-day, 32-mile, partly cross-country traverse of the John Muir Wilderness from North Lake Trailhead to Mosquito Flat Trailhead, we pitched our tents in Granite Park, an aptly named high valley speckled with scores of alpine lakes and tarns and encircled by an arc of 12,000- and 13,000-foot spires of barren, golden stone. In the evening, the sinking sun painted the peaks, lakes, and granitic landscape in a shifting, vivid light that was absolutely captivating. We couldn’t tear our eyes from the light show that went on for a few hours. When the last alpenglow faded away, night brought a sky riddled with stars.

In the morning, we set out early and I got the above shot of my friend Jason Kauffman passing a lake minutes from our campsite.

See my story and more photos about backpacking a 32-mile, partly off-trail traverse in the John Muir Wilderness for information on how to pull off this trip.

Rock Slide Lake, Sawtooth Mountains.

Rock Slide Lake, Sawtooth Mountains, ID

Having lived in Idaho since 1998, I have explored much of the state’s best-known mountain range, the Sawtooths. But it took me 13 years to finally backpack into the deep interior of the southern Sawtooths, an area speckled with mountain lakes that lies a solid two days’ hike from the nearest roads in any direction.

So when my friend Jeff Wilhelm and I carved out four glorious September days to finally explore this area, we found deep, clear lakes filled with lunker trout, ringed by jagged peaks, and trails that don’t receive many boot prints. Walking through the bright, airy forest there, filled with granite outcroppings, reminded me of the High Sierra—without all the people. We used Rock Slide Lake as a base camp for two nights to give us a day to explore with daypacks, and spent hours on its shore, marveling at the dawn and sunset light there.

See my story about a four-day, 57-mile in the southern Sawtooth Wilderness for more photos and information for planning this trip.

Coyote Natural Bridge, Coyote Gulch.

Coyote Natural Bridge, Coyote Gulch, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, UT

My memory of my wife’s and my first backpacking trip in Coyote Gulch 16 years earlier was cloudy when we returned recently with our 12- and 10-year-old kids and another family. Sometimes revisiting a place doesn’t measure up to a fond recollection of it; not so with Coyote Gulch. It was more scenic even than I remembered. Soaring, red rock walls tower along its length. A steady creek pours over several short waterfalls, its year-round flow keeping the canyon bottom lushly green. And then there are features like Jacob Hamblin Arch and Coyote Natural Bridge.

My plan had been for us to spend our second night at one of the campsites below Jacob Hamblin; but the team was a little too pooped by the time we reached Coyote Natural Bridge to push on more than an hour farther. It turned out to be serendipitous, because we had the sandy beach area around the bridge to ourselves (whereas the campsites at Hamblin are popular). The kids played for hours in the creek and some adults took an evening hike while the others laid down on the warm sand with a book.

See my story about backpacking Coyote Gulch (and hiking slot canyons in the Escalante and at Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks), with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

White Rock Lakes, Ptarmigan Traverse, Glacier Peak Wilderness.

White Rock Lakes, Ptarmigan Traverse, Glacier Peak Wilderness, WA

It was the third day of our six-day trip on arguably America’s premier mountain haute route. A multi-day walk along a high mountain crest, the Ptarmigan Traverse crosses six glaciers and stays high above treeline until the fifth day. We camped by lonely alpine lakes—one of which was still completely frozen and snow-covered in mid-August—below jagged summits in possibly the most vertiginous mountains in the country.

My climbing partners Stefan Kinnestrand and Wes Cooper and I ascended two of those glaciers, the LeConte and the South Cascade, in whiteout conditions on that third day, navigating by GPS while watching very carefully for crevasses. Then we scrambled from another pass down a precarious slope of loose rock so steep that a slip might have concluded with a tumble of several hundred feet right to the bottom. Most of the ground surrounding the White Rock Lakes remained snow-covered that August day, and the lakes were still almost completely frozen. When the fog finally lifted, we got a view across the deep valley of the West Fork of Agnes Creek to the Dana Glacier and Chikamin Glacier pouring off a ridge connecting several rocky peaks and spires. I’ll eventually post a story and more photos from the Ptarmigan Traverse.

Getting There Climbers traditionally begin the Ptarmigan Traverse at Cascade Pass in North Cascades National Park and walk south, largely hewing close to the Cascade Crest. Beyond Dome Peak, from the Cub Lake area in the Glacier Peak Wilderness, the route descends to the Downey Creek Trailhead on Suiattle River Road. The route is mostly off-trail and crosses six glaciers; expert skills at glacier travel and navigating off-trail through mountains are required. See an excellent route description at summitpost.org/ptarmigan-traverse/154644.

Spring Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park.

Spring Canyon, Capitol Reef National Park, UT

Southern Utah’s Capitol Reef has scenery to match its siblings in the National Park System—but when it comes to crowds, this place ain’t no Zion or Yosemite. In the visitor center at the outset of a three-day, family backpacking trip, a ranger told me that we were the only party getting a permit to backpack into Spring Canyon that day.

We hiked below towering, burgundy cliffs with patches of white and orange and black water-stain streaks, passing enormous boulders piled up below the cliffs. More than four hours after setting out from the Chimney Rock Trailhead, we pitched the tent on a grassy bench in Spring Canyon, beneath cliffs topped by domes and spires soaring hundreds of feet overhead. Staying there for two nights, with a day of exploring in between, we saw no other people. If that kind of solitude is rare in the backcountry of many national parks, it’s especially unusual in a spot reached with relatively little effort.

See my story about dayhiking, slot canyoneering, and backpacking in Capitol Reef National Park, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Lagunas Chevallay, Dientes Circuit, Patagonia.

Lagunas Chevallay, Dientes Circuit, Chilean Patagonia

The 35-mile Dientes Circuit through the Dientes de Navarino (“Teeth of Navarino”) on Isla Navarino (Navarino Island), at the southern tip of South America, is chock full of ends-of-the-Earth moments and beautiful campsites. With my friend Jeff Wilhelm and 22-year-old Puerto Williams-based trekking guide Maurice van de Maele, I hiked for four days through a wild, wind-battered landscape of incisor-like rock towers and alpine lakes that gets visited by just a handful of people every year.

About halfway through the trip, the Antarctic wind blew us through Paso Ventarron (Ventarron Pass) as the late-day light pierced clouds above the Lagunas Chevallay. We descended the rocky trail to camp beside the large, unnamed lake shown at the head of the valley in the photo above.

See my story about trekking the Dientes Circuit, with more photos, for information on how to pull off this trip.

East Fork Owyhee River.

East Fork Owyhee River, ID

Guiding our kayaks between tight canyon walls on Deep Creek, we didn’t see the confluence until we practically fell into it, the swift waters spitting us out into a deeper, wider channel: southwest Idaho’s East Fork Owyhee River. The four of us immediately landed and dragged our boats up onto a spacious beach on river right, tired and wet. I felt chilled in my wetsuit from a day that had seen us spend eight hours or more paddling through rain, snow, hail, and wind.

Perhaps a football field’s distance downriver, the East Fork made a sharp left turn and plunged into unseen quarters between sheer rhyolite walls. As evening descended, those cliffs became a study in contrasting light—some in dark shadow, some edged with sunlight, and the white rock of the farthest one glowing as if lit by some internal power source. Though just one of many scenes of staggering natural beauty from an eight-day, 82-mile adventure on the upper Owyhee River system, from Deep Creek to Three Forks, that one has stuck with me.

See my story about kayaking the upper Owyhee River, with more photos, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Little Frazier Lake, Eagle Cap Wilderness.

Little Frazier Lake, Eagle Cap Wilderness, OR

Sometimes the destinations closest to home are the ones you neglect for too long. That was the case for my family with the Eagle Cap, just a half-day’s drive for us, but a place we had not yet backpacked in (with the exception of one disastrous attempt, when our son was a toddler, that was aborted due to a nasty stomach virus. But I have skied the backcountry of Norway Basin in the Eagle Cap with friends.) So last summer, we finally took a five-day, 41-mile loop in the southeastern corner of this 350,000-acre wilderness.

We hiked up broad, U-shaped valleys and camped by boisterous streams and lakes that offered mirror reflections of dawn light and alpenglow on rocky, 9,000-foot peaks. I made the side hike up 9,572-foot Eagle Cap for its 360-degree panorama overlooking much of the range; the kids played in streams and had the treat of one of the most spectacular thunderstorms of their lives on our second afternoon. Our third campsite, at Little Frazier Lake, sat near the lake’s outlet creek, where my son worked for hours rearranging rocks; my daughter and I scrambled high up some nearby ledges. And in the morning, the lake offered up a perfect reflection of the stone basin cradling it. I will eventually post a story, with more photos, about this trip.

See my story about this five-day, family backpacking trip in the Eagle Cap, including more photos and a video, for information on planning this trip.

Fishing at Lake 8522, Sawtooth Wilderness.

Lake 8522, Sawtooth Wilderness, ID

We backpacked the Alpine Creek Trail less than three miles up a sunbaked valley flanked by cliffs to where it ends abruptly in ponderosa pine forest. A steep headwall loomed above us, 500 vertical feet or taller, capped by rocky ledges—a daunting obstacle that would logically turn away most hikers. But I had been told that the basin of unnamed lakes just beyond the pass at the top of this earthen wall was worth the effort of reaching it. So my son, Nate, almost 11 at the time, and I, joined by his buddy, another Nate, and that kid’s dad, Doug Shinneman, clawed and high-stepped our way up a faint, very steep user trail, grabbing branches and slipping in mud, and scrambling up exposed ledges.

At the top, we saw that I’d gotten good advice. A cool forest embraces one side of the blue-green waters of Lake 8522; a granite cliff juts straight out of the water on the other side. We found a spot in the woods for our tents and spent the next couple of days fishing, exploring the higher lakes in the basin, and taking in some sunrises and sunsets that kept my camera busy.

Getting There From ID 75, about 20 miles south of Stanley and 40 miles north of Ketchum, turn west onto Alturas Lake Road and follow it about seven miles to its end at the Alpine Creek Trailhead. Hike the Alpine Creek Trail roughly 2.5 miles to where the maintained trail terminates. Follow a faint, very steep and rough user trail that climbs almost straight uphill several hundred feet, with some scrambling, to a pass that leads into a lakes basin. Lake 8522 is a short walk beyond the pass. This area has some user trails and established campsites, but is not managed like official trails; minimize your impact.

Map Earthwalk Press “Sawtooth Wilderness,” $9.95, (800) 742-2677, omnimap.com.

Contact Sawtooth National Forest Stanley Ranger District, (208) 774-3000, fs.usda.gov/sawtooth.

Hall Arm, Doubtful Sound, Fiordlands National Park, New Zealand.

Doubtful Sound, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand

It was a typical summer day in Doubtful Sound: alternating spells of light mist and steady rain punctuating brief periods without precipitation. The shifting gray overcast delivered about 10 minutes of sunshine the entire day. But the air was warm and the water flat, its dark surface as clear as a just-cleaned mirror. Tendrils of ghost-like clouds floated around granite cliffs that rose straight out of the sea up to 4,000 feet high; and the cliffs wore long coats of thick rainforest that seemed to defy gravity.

Our small group pitched our tents behind a rocky beach, in the forest of podocarp trees and punga tree ferns. After a mild night of periodic showers, we woke and walked to the beach to see the water still and glassy, reflecting the sea cliffs and misty clouds.

See my story about sea kayaking Doubtful Sound, with more photos and a video, for information on how to pull off this trip.

Tonto Trail, Grand Canyon.

Tonto Trail, Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

If there’s a bad campsite in the Grand Canyon, I haven’t found it yet. But my favorite (so far) is this spot just off the Tonto Trail, on the plateau between Lonetree Canyon and Cremation Creek. We camped here on the last night of a four-day, late-March family backpacking trip from Grandview Point to the South Kaibab Trailhead (another trip my family took for a chapter of my book).

While we were exposed to the wind—which can blow pretty hard—and had to carry water to that camp, those were small tithes for a 360-degree panorama reaching from the South Rim to the North Rim, with countless named temples and buttes within view, most prominently the Zoroaster Temple (visible in the background of the photo above). While the kids played with rocks in the dirt and my wife read, I walked around with my camera, finding an amazing background in every direction.

See my story, with more photos, about backpacking in the Grand Canyon for information on how to pull off this trip.

Indian Basin, Wind River Range.

Indian Basin, Wind River Range, WY

Six friends, 500 pounds of gear and food for a week, one horsepacker to haul our stuff the 15 miles from the trailhead to Indian Basin—and plenty of alcohol, which figures prominently in this adventure tale. We had grand ambitions for several rock and snow climbs of peaks along the Continental Divide that week. We didn’t plan on daily, cold morning showers or the violent afternoon thunderstorms that would dump a couple inches of hail in 30 minutes and threaten to blow our tents to Iowa.

Though we never tied into a rope all week, we did tag a few walk-and-scramble-up summits, including 13,745-foot Fremont Peak in cold wind and fog, and 13,517-foot Jackson Peak. Mostly, though, we huddled in all of our clothes under a tarp in camp, plowing through our alcohol supply and laughing uproariously over things I barely recall. I got the above shot during one of the rare moments of glorious sunshine that made us optimistic about climbing—until the next storm cell drove us back into our tents.

Getting There The Elkhart Park trailhead is 14.5 miles from Pinedale. From US 191 (Pine Street), in Pinedale, turn north onto Fremont Lake/Half Moon Lake Road. In three miles, bear right on Skyline Drive. A short distance beyond a viewpoint overlooking the high peaks, bear right at a fork to parking for the Pole Creek Trail. Follow the Pole Creek, Seneca Lake, Highline (for just a quarter-mile), and Indian Basin trails about 15 miles to Indian Basin.

Map Earthwalk Press “North Wind River Range,” $9.95, (800) 742-2677, omnimap.com.

Contact Bridger National Forest Pinedale Ranger District, (307) 739-5500, fs.usda.gov/btnf.

Dog Lake, Seven Devils Mountains.

Dog Lake, Seven Devils Mountains, ID

A fresh September snowfall had just blanketed the Seven Devils, which rise to over 9,000 feet and form the east rim of Hells Canyon in west-central Idaho. My friend Geoff Sears and I started our three-day hike in thick fog, at first catching only glimpses of the craggy peaks.

But the weather slowly cleared through the afternoon, as we leapfrogged surviving segments of a long-abandoned, faint trail leading to Dog Lake, where we put our tent up in a small basin that rarely sees human visitors. That evening and the next morning, under blue skies with no wind, the lake offered up a sharp reflection of the snow-plastered cliffs of black rock.

See my story about another backpacking trip in Hells Canyon.

Getting There From US 95, a mile south of Riggins, Idaho, turn west onto Squaw Creek Road (CR 517). Drive 16.5 miles to Windy Saddle Trailhead, a half-mile before Seven Devils Campground. Hike south on Boise Trail 101 for 7.4 miles. Just after crossing Dog Creek, turn west and look for traces of the faint trail leading about 1.3 miles to Dog Lake; you’ll be mostly bushwhacking through semi-open forest with some blowdowns obstructing the way.

Map The Hells Canyon National Recreation Area map, $6, Hells Canyon NRA website (below).

Contact Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, Riggins ranger district, (208) 628-3916, fs.usda.gov/detail/wallowa-whitman/recreation/?cid=stelprdb5238987.

Above our campsite on Mount Baker.

Mount Baker, WA

It was a wretched campsite, actually. We’d had no intention of staying there, but weather left us without a better choice than to endure an interminable night on that cold ground of sharp stones. The wind-tortured, 9,000-foot saddle separating the Coleman and Deming glaciers on Mt. Baker was simply where we ended up when Plan A—camping on the summit—crashed in the sea of ambitious dreams. My wife, Penny, and I were climbing our first Pacific Northwest volcano years ago with our friend Larry Gies, through thick fog that reduced visibility to less than 100 feet at times. By late afternoon, we gave up on reaching the summit, pinned our tents to the ground, and dove inside.

But two hours later, a mountain fairy granted us one of those rare, magical events that occur when least expected: Sunshine lit our tents. We stepped outside to see the cloud ceiling below us. We tagged the mountaintop as the setting sun strafed that sea of clouds with red and orange light. You can’t distinguish our tents in the photo above, but they’re in the saddle below us—that miserable, serendipitous spot.

Getting There From I-5 north of Bellingham, follow WA 542 for 33.8 miles. One mile past Glacier, turn right onto Glacier Creek FS Road 39, and continue eight miles to parking for Mt. Baker (Heliotrope Ridge) Trail 677. The trail ends after two miles, at 4,800 feet; continue on the climbers’ trail up the Hogsback to a tenting area at 6,000 feet on the edge of the Coleman Glacier.

Map Green Trails Mt. Baker no. 13, $7, greentrailsmaps.com.

Contact Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest outdoor recreation information, (206) 470-4060, fs.usda.gov/mbs.

[erynnar]

Kai stood rearranging the baskets of apples, filling in the gaps made as the bushels and baked goods sold. What was not surprising was the rate at which the various alcoholic wares disappeared. Branan still kept the supplies for the palace and Tapsters (carefully hidden beneath a tarp) until he received word that he would be allowed to deliver it inside the city. Under the guise of “protecting the kegs for Tapsters, Branan “hired” Sten and the band of mercenaries. It was a pretense that actually held a modicum of truth.

The delay, according to Branan, was unusual; dwarves loved their drink. Ever since Bhelen had taken the throne, human merchants were allowed, and even encouraged to visit inside of Orzammar. The strange wait resulted in a general edginess that infected Branan and his group.

The delay, perhaps, was not the only thing causing disquiet amongst them: the dwarves themselves exuded unease, both merchants and citizens alike. The tension was even worse here than at the Horn.

It reminded her of a hunting trip her family made when some of the nobles were visiting. They traveled with falcons and the Huntsman’s dogs for flushing birds into the sky. The fields were full of calls of their quarry, quail. When the shadow of the falcon would pass over the billowing wheat the silence descended as if a heavy blanket had been cast over the grain.

The tension would be released in a burst of terrified flight when the dogs would flush them out. This felt the same; and from the normally stalwart and stoic dwarves, it was most unnerving. They reminded her of the stone they claimed to come from and return to, steady. For them to act as quail waiting for the falcon’s punch, it must be very bad indeed.

Such thoughts made Kai tense and edgy along with the vibes from the dwarves. As a result she wasn’t sleeping well, if at all. Not that the proximity to the Deep Roads was in any way the cause of her distress...oh no. She had such lovely memories from this place after all.

The dwarven politics, more tangled and hard to traverse, than a pit of poisonous snakes. Then the pressing crush of darkspawn, their stench, their corruption around every corner coupled with the macabre sing song poem repeated, over and over again. The source, a horrific discovery of just what the darkspawn did to victims drug underground, in particular the female victims. Just thinking of that female dwarf still gave Kai chills. Then the constant horrific nightmares from the taint in her blood; and the song of the archdemon so alluring and compelling that rose to a deafening and terrifying crescendo when they came upon it directing the darkspawn armies in the trenches below. Ah yes, good times! Kai gave a mental snort.

“Well at least you don’t have to worry about an archdemon this time, or a broodmother, or...” Alistair’s cheeky voice sounded in her ear.

“Oh, yes and I managed to forget about that part, thank you so much for reminding me, smart guy.” Kai rolled her eyes at him.

Sorry, mi’ gra.” She could hear his rueful grin.

“I really, really, really hate the Deep Roads. And dwarven politics gives me hives. Why do I feel as though I will be dealing with both again?.”

“Because there is no rest for the wicked?” She heard the laughter in his voice and she couldn’t help but join him. Alistair always made things better, even when things looked bleakest, then as now. He was her light in the dark.

“Tell me again why I love you?”

“My minor obsession with my hair? My devilishly handsome looks? My love of fine cheeses? Take your pick.” Kai gave him a mental snort and a smile.

Her inner dialogue was interrupted by Zev who tickled his fingers in her hair at the nape of her neck as he leaned in on the pretense of kissing her while he put his lips to her ear.

“Jarren informs me that the delectably endowed Wynne wishes to meet you down the hill out of sight from the market. She will be there ‘picking herbs for potions’ as her reason for being there.”

Kai smiled and rubbed his cheek leaning in, “I take it Wynne and Anders have found lodging inside the city then?”

“Si, and as soon as we are allowed in we may break away from Branan and avail ourselves of it.” His fingers kneaded the base of her skull making it hard to concentrate. Perhaps pretending to be lovers snatching a moment was a bad idea. His lips tickled her jawbone, “And Tam and Jarren have secured curious positions for the scath and Sten as soldiers to the palace to ‘keep the peace’ they were told. One of Bhelen’s men came looking for them specifically when he heard there were mercenaries in the market. Apparently there is a sort of behind the scenes martial law situation. Not where surfacers visiting Orzammar will notice, of course.”

“No wonder the dwarves are tense. Just what by Andraste’s flaming knickers are we getting ourselves into, I wonder. Well at least they will be in a prime position to spy at the palace.”

Kai almost gasped when Zev’s teeth gently nibbled her earlobe. “Ah, mi cielo, you and Trouble do have a very close relationship don’t you?” He pulled back his amber eyes twinkling with mirth.

Kai wrinkled her nose at him, “Yes, as proven by the Antivan assassin standing before me.” Zev gave her a throaty chuckle. “Well, at least you can’t say being with me is boring.” Kai shrugged at him.

Zev threw back his head and let out a full laugh this time, “Si, I cannot accuse you of that. Fortuna is a fickle mistress, she took so much away from me, and then she led me to you, my beautiful Kaidana.” His fingers stroked down her neck, “And for that I hold no complaints, despite Trouble knowing where you are at all times, no?” He did kiss her this time, before continuing, “Say hello to our delightfully bosomed Wynne for me, and tell her I long for a pillow as soft and firm as...” Kai put a finger to his lips stopping his comment before he could finish. He grinned and kissed its tip.

She shook her head, grinning, grabbed a book, a hunk of bread, an apple, and cheese before telling Branan she was taking a lunch break. He nodded and Kai made her way discreetly around the market stopping at booths, gazing at wares, and talking to merchants while wending her way to the outer edge of the market where the land dropped off into a sloping hill. Kai paused at the edge, taking a deep breath, stretching, giving the impression she was taking in the view and relaxing.

Kai caught sight of Wynne’s brightly colored mage robe as the enchanter wandered under the tall pines, using a small crescent shaped blade to cut herbs before placing the bunches in the specialized reed basket carried by two leather straps worn crossed ways over her torso.

Wynne’s gray head looked up and Kai waved as one would, casually to a barely met acquaintance, which is what they were supposed to be. Wynne bobbed her head, and Kai went to sit on a large rock with a flat top that jutted out over the hill offering a stunning view of the valley below.

Kai had discovered the rock back during the Blight when they first visited Orzammar. They had been waylaid by bounty hunters hired by Loghain to kill her, Alistair, and anyone with them, after Zevran’s attempt failed. The rock had served as a place to stay from view while they cleaned off the blood.

Today she used it as a clandestine meeting place. Kai took out the book opening it up on her lap and while eating her lunch, waiting as Wynne made her way around the rock eventually, gathering herbs from its base before leaning against it as if she needed a break.

Kai stuck her finger between the pages of the book, while crunching her apple and looking into the valley below. Wynne looked in the same direction as if taking in the view. Kai whispered out of the corner of her mouth, “Zev told me you have lodging for us, once we get inside that is.”

“Indeed. And I will say this young lady, that on the surface things appear to be normal. Normal, that is, if you aren’t looking for trouble. Whoever is behind this is very clever. There are strange folk around the inner market square. They dress like Fereldans and speak in Fereldan, but with a slight accent, an accent I can’t place.” Wynne’s brows furrowed, “One such stranger took to hovering around Garin, who sells lyrium and other minerals while Anders and I were there.”

“Ah, yes, ‘Garin the Giggler’, as Alistair called him. One too many hits with the lyrium, even for a dwarf.” Kai chuckled.

[blackgoddessofsassiness]

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[celestial-leaves]

OSH#4: What Goes Unspoken

Some called them monsters, others still freak, some elites pet, but everyone agreed that they belonged with a collar around their necks and incarcerated when they weren’t being thrown into battle. They came with different classifications and skills, a few so weak they could barely lift a feather much less themselves, but others were so strong that they never left solitary unless it was in a straight jacket. It is unknown as to what caused the mutation, the nobles claimed that it was a gift from the Gods to bring them victory in their battles. They claim that the first was a beautiful man who commanded the elements and all the scaly creatures to bend to his will. But deep underground, in the Below streets another rumor had blossomed. It spoke of a girl born out of wedlock whose father had more money than anyone in his kingdom and whose mother scrubbed chamber pots for a living. They say she awoke one day and realized that life wasn’t fair, and when they finally apprehended her more than fifty people had lost their lives. In the end, eyewitness testimonies claimed that she had only been captured because she was coughing and swaying to hard to fight back. Coughing just like the sounds that were filtering through the thick blanket and into his ears. 

Gavri’el shifted about rearranging the flashlight as he turned the page. A list of names was scrawled across the paper in long and spindly handwriting, it spanned both pages and continued on to the other side. There were letters next to each names and numbers. Gavri’el picked one out at random;

<< Laniatum Excubiarum Terra. Earth Sentinel. S Ranks: 3, A Ranks: 8, B Ranks: 22, C Ranks: 46, D Ranks: 113, W Ranks: 258.>>

Something dropped onto the mattress before rolling into his side and transforming his blanket from a comfort into a method of asphyxiation. Letting out an irritated noise Gavri’el freed his head and turned to glare at the intruder. Large eyes framed by black eyelashes stared back at him.

“Lu is coughing again,” Mikal said.

Gavri’el bit back his instinctive reply and instead let out a sigh as he saw the last of his peace float away, he imagined it even waved a jaunty hand goodbye as it left. “And we should go check on him, is that it?” He asked as he sat up.

“Yup! Emi thinks so too!” Mikal replied, his faced breaking open into a gap-toothed smile. Gavri’el shook his head silently but handed over the flashlight to his youngest brother and carefully closed his book, arranging the loose leaves so they wouldn’t crinkle. On his far side, Emil rolled over eyes just visible between the flop of his bangs and the top of his over shirt.

“Let’s go check on Lukas then, shall we?” Gavri’el said and was gratified when he received two beams. The floor of their bedroom was cold, the stone having lost any heat it might have garnered during the daylight and the material from whence his socks were hewn did little to protect his feet. With Mikal’s arms clinging to one shoulder whilst his legs were wrapped securely around his waist, Gavri’el proceeded listening for tell ale coughs to guide his way. Emil’s hand slipped into his own and tugged him towards the kitchen. Though the sounds grew louder, no gleams of light appeared, and the 11-year-old felt irritation begin to replace his concern. “Mikal light,” he snapped and shoved his way through the door curtain. The flashlight halo revealed a sorry sight, one that made Gavri’el want to headbutt someone, seated on the countertop with an open book in his lap and a mug was his older brother.

That was not an unusual sight, what fed the ire was the trembling in Lukas’ shoulders and the paleness of his skin, almost pallid. “Lu!” Mikal exclaimed and made as if to climb down.

The interpaled looked up, blinked silently, and then glared, “what are you doing up?” He snapped. Mikal flinched back and lost his grip his slide turning into an ungainly fall. Gavri’el caught him around the waist, took three giant steps forwards and placed him on the countertop where he promptly lunged for Lukas’ face.

“Hey?!” Lukas yelped, wheeling back as the book slid from his lap and Mikal’s small hands collided with his face.

“Lu! You’re warm!” Was the subsequent exclamation.

“I’m… I am a warm blooded…?” Lukas replied, looking much like the antelope caught by the hunter’s scope light. Mikal frowned, jaw going tight and cheeks puffing out but before he could correct his brother. Lukas jolted and bent near double as another series of coughs wracked his chest and left him with his head pressed against his knees, still shuddering. The pattering of feet told Gavri’el that Emil had just fled the room, no doubt to fetch their first aid kit. He approached the other two, pulling up a blank face when Mikal sent him a panicked look.

“What was that you said? I’m fine? Take yourself off to bed now, was it?” He asked, only to receive a vicious glower for his troubles. Gavri’el glared right back and reached out to press the back of his hand to his brother’s forehead. He needn’t have bothered, the heat wafted up to him leaving little doubt that a fever had made its home there. The concern returned, a small ball that curled itself up in his gut and pulsed with each breath. “C’mon, let’s get you to a bed.”

“I’m fine,” Lukas protested, shaking his head as if the gesture alone didn’t make him sway. Gavri’el ignored him, and motioned at Mikal to move, the little boy flung himself off the counter in return, wobbling a bit but miraculously not faceplanting the ground. He darted ahead of them calling out for Emil. Gavri’el turned back to his brother and without ceremony confiscated his mug, he even bent and retrieved the fallen book from the ground, so Lukas would not have any excuses. “You’re worrying about nothing,” Lukas muttered, but he uncrossed his legs and slid off the counter top. “Honestly, its just a cold.”

“People have died from less,” Gavri’el replied, he set a steadying hand on his brother’s shoulder and followed him back into their bedroom. Mikal was bouncing on the mattress, looking over Emil’s shoulder who had upended their sparse supply of medicine onto the blankets. He looked up at their entrance, there were tears gathering in his eyes though none had escaped yet.

“Storebror…we don’t have any Meadowsweet or Black Elder, and there’s only a few leaves of Yarrow left.” There was panic brewing in Emil’s eyes and though Mikal looked confused now, it wouldn’t take long before he picked up that something had changed.

“That’s fine, it’s not that difficult to find,” Gavri’el heard himself say, he felt Lukas jolt beside him and Emil did not look especially reassured, but he gathered up the herbs and packets clearing the mattress. Lukas sat down gingerly before flopping backwards and stretching out. Mikal promptly dropped down as well and claimed his stomach for a pillow. Emil curled up on the other side, resting his head on Lukas’ shoulder.

“Gavri’el,” Lukas said and held out his hand. The second eldest sighed but sat down as well, curling himself around Mikal and linking their fingers together. “We’ll go find something in the morning, okay?”

“Okay.”

Gavri’el could count on one hand the number of times he’d been into the city, and he could count on one finger the number of times it had happened in broad daylight. Lukas walked like he belonged here, with his head held high and his hands shoved into the pockets of the trench coat. The same coat that had mysteriously appeared one day, and he still didn’t know here it came from. Lukas had just shoved an apple slice into his face when he’d asked. The streets were just beginning to fill with the early birds as the merchants unrolled their wares and began to hark. It wasn’t a pretty sound, more like the cacophony created by a murder of crows than an organized market square. Gavri’el sped up a little determined to keep close to Lukas. he hadn’t ben blessed with the protection of a coat and he could feel his skin crawling under the many gazes. The thought of them knowing that he was a rat was almost enough to cause him to grab his brother’s wrist. He crushed the impulse hastily, Lukas weak as he was might fall or react dangerously if suddenly grabbed.

“Bror, do you know where you’re going?” Gavri’el asked eventually after they’d passed several stalls, one of which that seemed appropriate and veered off into a narrower side street. It was inhabited by only a few booths, whose merchants were clearly not up to par. Lukas looked around, shoulders hunching as he coughed before he moved on swiftly, clearly searching for something. Gavri’el followed him down weaving circuits, up a staircase, across a rope bridge that swayed alarmingly, and back down again into an even seedier section of town. Lukas stumbled to a halt below an overhang, shoulders shuddering as he hacked and spat bile onto the ground, there was a wild gleam in his eyes when he looked up and he flinched away when Gavri’el reached out.

“Hey…” Gavri’el started but Lukas was already gone, a steady lope that ate up ground and created a dull pounding that matched the beat in Gavri’el’s head. The boy clenched his jaw and sped up until he was only a stride or two behind his brother. Something flickered in the corner of his eye, and Lukas veered sharply left, sliding between two buildings so quickly that Gavri’el overshot and stumbled on for a few paces. He skidded to as halt, spun back around and darted into the corridor, calling for his brother. He could hear coughing up ahead but nothing else. Gavri’el burst out into a small clearing, Lukas was kneeling in the middle bent over as he hacked but he wasn’t alone. There was a man over him, one who wore the belts and carried the baton of the enemy. One who was dressed in a familiar trench coat. He looked up at the sound of Gavri’el skidding to a stop and his eyes narrowed, a hand on his baton he stepped past Lukas and placed himself in between the two. Lukas was still coughing but Gavri’el found his feet frozen to the ground, unable to take a step back or more importantly to gasp out a sound. A voice inside his head, was telling him to run, it sounded a bit like Lukas when he yelled, but there was another voice as well one that was older and far warmer. That one was murmuring of a promise, duties, and trust freely given.

“Get away from my brother…” the voice that rasped out of his throat wasn’t his own, it sounded like the squeak of a mouse, Gavri’el swallowed harshly and forced himself to take a step forwards. The baton slid smoothly out of its belt loop and unfolded with a snap, the silent promise of pain hung heavy in the air. That was his brother though and he was needed, Gavri’el took another step forwards, trying to appear as unthreatening as possible. He swallowed again, words forming and disappearing in his brain, there had to be something he could say. Anything.

“Stop right there,” the guard said, his baton swung up to rest against his shoulder and his stance broadened.

“That’s… That’s my brother,” Gavri’el protested, and took another step. “I’m just going to collect him and then we’ll leave, please.” His legs were trembling he could feel them, his palms hurt where his nails were digging into them, there was a growing stone in his stomach because Lukas had stopped coughing, but he wasn’t moving either.

“I said, that’s far enough, Rat.”

Gavri’el froze at the tone shift, legs locking him into place, the guard knew what he was, that meant he knew what Lukas was as well and there was no way they’re were going to escape unscathed. “Please,” he said unable to keep the tremble out of his voice. He’d seen what they did to rats caught outside of the regulation hours, and he’d heard the cautionary tales.

“Silence. Kneel, put your hands on your head.”

Gavri’el dropped to his knees, lifting his hands shakily. Despite how hard he was biting down on his lower lip, he couldn’t stop the trembling. On the other side of the guard Lukas was stirring, Gavri’el could see his narrow fingers digging down between the cobblestones. Dirt was beginning to float, small mots coalescing into a form only to fall to the ground when Lukas abruptly went limp. He couldn’t stop the instinctual yelp or the forwards jolt, nor could he prevent the baton strike that crouched into his shoulder and sent him careening sideways. It hurt and for a few long breaths he couldn’t do anything more than squeeze his eyes shut and curl up.

A loud clatter followed by a crash had his eyes flying open again. The guard was on the ground, flat on his face, his baton lying a few feet away. There was another man kneeling on his back, he was grinning despite the harsh pants that were leaving his mouth. “Tsk tsk tsk, you gotta watch your back out here, Alex,” he said. Gavri’el stared too shocked to do much of anything else, the newcomer was a guard the crisscross of belts riding on his hips and the baton at his side spoke to that. So, did the dark gray cargo pants tucked into scuffed boots. The stranger stood up, reaching his arms high above his head in a lazy stretch, before stepping down and fixing a bright gaze on Gavri’el, “you all right there, kiddo?” he asked.

Gavri’el blinked, scooting away until he could scramble to his feet, his eyes flitted over to the abandoned baton and back again. “I’m… I’m fine. We’re fine, what, what do you want?”

“Me? Nothing much, lil’squeaker,” the guard said and shrugged, his thumbs hooked into a belt and he rocked back a bit. “Though…,” the head tilted a bit angling towards Lukas, “Lu, isn’t looking too hot you might want to take him to the Apothecary.”

The answer Gavri’el had been preparing to spit back short-circuited in his brain, leaving behind only steam and smoke. The guard knew who Lukas was, the guard knew that they were rats, the guard was a danger to Emil and Mikal. With no other options, Gavri’el dove towards the fallen baton, scooped it up and charged towards his brother intending to swing at the guard should he get in the way. No resistance was forthcoming, and he dropped down at Lukas’ side unmolested. His brother was breathing in shallow gasps, his skin sweaty to the touch, and his pulse more like a flutter than a drumbeat. Gavri’el rolled him onto his back gave him a slight shake but there was no reaction.

“What happened?’

Gavri’el startled and turned crouching protectively over his brother.

“Easy there, kid.” Steady blue eyes assessed him from under a fringe of dirty blond hair, that fell every which way and was hardly constrained by the dark red barrettes he could see sticking out.

“What do you want?” Gavri’el asked, hunkering down further, “I’ll do anything just please let us go.”

The guard stared back at him, a frown marring his face in stark juxtaposition to the upwards slant of his lips, eventually though he shook his head and let out a long sigh. “Anything you say, lil’squeaker?”

“Yes… anything. Just please, let us- “

“First order of business, shut up,” the guard cut him off smoothly, Gavri’el slammed his mouth shut, settling for a glare instead. The guard just smiled, blinding and bright enough that Gavri’el never saw the strike coming.

“That was foolish.”

“When I need an extra opinion, I’ll be sure to ask for it.”

“I stand corrected that was stupid.”

“Yes, yes, what’s wrong with him?”

“He’s exhausted, what were you expecting with one of his kind…”

There was a drum beating out a slow march in the back of his head, steady thumps that sent pulses of pain down his jaw and around his ears. Gavri’el forced a breath, burying his face into warm cotton, and struggled to open his eyes, only to jolt upright a moment later looking around wide eyed. He was no longer in the alley, he was no longer outside for that matter, instead the inner workings of a room met his gaze complete with two armchairs and a row of beds. He was sitting on one, a light blanket draped over his legs and across from him his brother lay still and pale. Gavri’el yelped and flung himself from the bed, more tumbling across the floor than walking as his head protested viciously the additional movements. Up close, Lukas looked at ease, some color having returned to his faced and his chest rose and fell steadily. The 11-year-old let out a relieved sound and slumped down to his knees, resting his head on the bed. The heat that had been emitting from his brother was all but gone, leaving his skin pleasant to clasp or rest his still pounding head against. Gavri’el closed his eyes, and felt his thoughts fly away like the fleet footed rabbits of the fields, stealing away his consciousness and his worries.

[readbookywooks]

Vanikoro

THIS DREADFUL SIGHT was the first of a whole series of maritime catastrophes that the Nautilus would encounter on its run. When it plied more heavily traveled seas, we often saw wrecked hulls rotting in midwater, and farther down, cannons, shells, anchors, chains, and a thousand other iron objects rusting away. Meanwhile, continuously swept along by the Nautilus, where we lived in near isolation, we raised the Tuamotu Islands on December 11, that old "dangerous group" associated with the French global navigator Commander Bougainville; it stretches from Ducie Island to Lazareff Island over an area of 500 leagues from the east-southeast to the west-northwest, between latitude 13 degrees 30' and 23 degrees 50' south, and between longitude 125 degrees 30' and 151 degrees 30' west. This island group covers a surface area of 370 square leagues, and it's made up of some sixty subgroups, among which we noted the Gambier group, which is a French protectorate. These islands are coral formations. Thanks to the work of polyps, a slow but steady upheaval will someday connect these islands to each other. Later on, this new island will be fused to its neighboring island groups, and a fifth continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia as far as the Marquesas Islands. The day I expounded this theory to Captain Nemo, he answered me coldly: "The earth doesn't need new continents, but new men!" Sailors' luck led the Nautilus straight to Reao Island, one of the most unusual in this group, which was discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell aboard the Minerva. So I was able to study the madreporic process that has created the islands in this ocean. Madrepores, which one must guard against confusing with precious coral, clothe their tissue in a limestone crust, and their variations in structure have led my famous mentor Professor Milne-Edwards to classify them into five divisions. The tiny microscopic animals that secrete this polypary live by the billions in the depths of their cells. Their limestone deposits build up into rocks, reefs, islets, islands. In some places, they form atolls, a circular ring surrounding a lagoon or small inner lake that gaps place in contact with the sea. Elsewhere, they take the shape of barrier reefs, such as those that exist along the coasts of New Caledonia and several of the Tuamotu Islands. In still other localities, such as Reunion Island and the island of Mauritius, they build fringing reefs, high, straight walls next to which the ocean's depth is considerable. While cruising along only a few cable lengths from the underpinning of Reao Island, I marveled at the gigantic piece of work accomplished by these microscopic laborers. These walls were the express achievements of madrepores known by the names fire coral, finger coral, star coral, and stony coral. These polyps grow exclusively in the agitated strata at the surface of the sea, and so it's in the upper reaches that they begin these substructures, which sink little by little together with the secreted rubble binding them. This, at least, is the theory of Mr. Charles Darwin, who thus explains the formation of atolls - a theory superior, in my view, to the one that says these madreporic edifices sit on the summits of mountains or volcanoes submerged a few feet below sea level. I could observe these strange walls quite closely: our sounding lines indicated that they dropped perpendicularly for more than 300 meters, and our electric beams made the bright limestone positively sparkle. In reply to a question Conseil asked me about the growth rate of these colossal barriers, I thoroughly amazed him by saying that scientists put it at an eighth of an inch per biennium. "Therefore," he said to me, "to build these walls, it took . . . ?" "192,000 years, my gallant Conseil, which significantly extends the biblical Days of Creation. What's more, the formation of coal-in other words, the petrification of forests swallowed by floods-and the cooling of basaltic rocks likewise call for a much longer period of time. I might add that those 'days' in the Bible must represent whole epochs and not literally the lapse of time between two sunrises, because according to the Bible itself, the sun doesn't date from the first day of Creation." When the Nautilus returned to the surface of the ocean, I could take in Reao Island over its whole flat, wooded expanse. Obviously its madreporic rocks had been made fertile by tornadoes and thunderstorms. One day, carried off by a hurricane from neighboring shores, some seed fell onto these limestone beds, mixing with decomposed particles of fish and marine plants to form vegetable humus. Propelled by the waves, a coconut arrived on this new coast. Its germ took root. Its tree grew tall, catching steam off the water. A brook was born. Little by little, vegetation spread. Tiny animals - worms, insects - rode ashore on tree trunks snatched from islands to windward. Turtles came to lay their eggs. Birds nested in the young trees. In this way animal life developed, and drawn by the greenery and fertile soil, man appeared. And that's how these islands were formed, the immense achievement of microscopic animals. Near evening Reao Island melted into the distance, and the Nautilus noticeably changed course. After touching the Tropic of Capricorn at longitude 135 degrees, it headed west-northwest, going back up the whole intertropical zone. Although the summer sun lavished its rays on us, we never suffered from the heat, because thirty or forty meters underwater, the temperature didn't go over 10 degrees to 12 degrees centigrade. By December 15 we had left the alluring Society Islands in the west, likewise elegant Tahiti, queen of the Pacific. In the morning I spotted this island's lofty summits a few miles to leeward. Its waters supplied excellent fish for the tables on board: mackerel, bonito, albacore, and a few varieties of that sea serpent named the moray eel. The Nautilus had cleared 8,100 miles. We logged 9,720 miles when we passed between the Tonga Islands, where crews from the Argo, Port-au-Prince, and Duke of Portland had perished, and the island group of Samoa, scene of the slaying of Captain de Langle, friend of that long-lost navigator, the Count de La Perouse. Then we raised the Fiji Islands, where savages slaughtered sailors from the Union, as well as Captain Bureau, commander of the Darling Josephine out of Nantes, France. Extending over an expanse of 100 leagues north to south, and over 90 leagues east to west, this island group lies between latitude 2 degrees and 6 degrees south, and between longitude 174 degrees and 179 degrees west. It consists of a number of islands, islets, and reefs, among which we noted the islands of Viti Levu, Vanua Levu, and Kadavu. It was the Dutch navigator Tasman who discovered this group in 1643, the same year the Italian physicist Torricelli invented the barometer and King Louis XIV ascended the French throne. I'll let the reader decide which of these deeds was more beneficial to humanity. Coming later, Captain Cook in 1774, Rear Admiral d'Entrecasteaux in 1793, and finally Captain Dumont d'Urville in 1827, untangled the whole chaotic geography of this island group. The Nautilus drew near Wailea Bay, an unlucky place for England's Captain Dillon, who was the first to shed light on the longstanding mystery surrounding the disappearance of ships under the Count de La Perouse. This bay, repeatedly dredged, furnished a huge supply of excellent oysters. As the Roman playwright Seneca recommended, we opened them right at our table, then stuffed ourselves. These mollusks belonged to the species known by name as Ostrea lamellosa, whose members are quite common off Corsica. This Wailea oysterbank must have been extensive, and for certain, if they hadn't been controlled by numerous natural checks, these clusters of shellfish would have ended up jam-packing the bay, since as many as 2,000,000 eggs have been counted in a single individual. And if Mr. Ned Land did not repent of his gluttony at our oyster fest, it's because oysters are the only dish that never causes indigestion. In fact, it takes no less than sixteen dozen of these headless mollusks to supply the 315 grams that satisfy one man's minimum daily requirement for nitrogen. On December 25 the Nautilus navigated amid the island group of the New Hebrides, which the Portuguese seafarer Queiros discovered in 1606, which Commander Bougainville explored in 1768, and to which Captain Cook gave its current name in 1773. This group is chiefly made up of nine large islands and forms a 120-league strip from the north-northwest to the south-southeast, lying between latitude 2 degrees and 15 degrees south, and between longitude 164 degrees and 168 degrees. At the moment of our noon sights, we passed fairly close to the island of Aurou, which looked to me like a mass of green woods crowned by a peak of great height. That day it was yuletide, and it struck me that Ned Land badly missed celebrating "Christmas," that genuine family holiday where Protestants are such zealots. I hadn't seen Captain Nemo for over a week, when, on the morning of the 27th, he entered the main lounge, as usual acting as if he'd been gone for just five minutes. I was busy tracing the Nautilus's course on the world map. The captain approached, placed a finger over a position on the chart, and pronounced just one word: "Vanikoro." This name was magic! It was the name of those islets where vessels under the Count de La Perouse had miscarried. I straightened suddenly. "The Nautilus is bringing us to Vanikoro?" I asked. "Yes, professor," the captain replied. "And I'll be able to visit those famous islands where the Compass and the Astrolabe came to grief?" "If you like, professor." "When will we reach Vanikoro?" "We already have, professor." Followed by Captain Nemo, I climbed onto the platform, and from there my eyes eagerly scanned the horizon. In the northeast there emerged two volcanic islands of unequal size, surrounded by a coral reef whose circuit measured forty miles. We were facing the island of Vanikoro proper, to which Captain Dumont d'Urville had given the name "Island of the Search"; we lay right in front of the little harbor of Vana, located in latitude 16 degrees 4' south and longitude 164 degrees 32' east. Its shores seemed covered with greenery from its beaches to its summits inland, crowned by Mt. Kapogo, which is 476 fathoms high. After clearing the outer belt of rocks via a narrow passageway, the Nautilus lay inside the breakers where the sea had a depth of thirty to forty fathoms. Under the green shade of some tropical evergreens, I spotted a few savages who looked extremely startled at our approach. In this long, blackish object advancing flush with the water, didn't they see some fearsome cetacean that they were obliged to view with distrust? Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the shipwreck of the Count de La Perouse. "What everybody knows, captain," I answered him. "And could you kindly tell me what everybody knows?" he asked me in a gently ironic tone. "Very easily." I related to him what the final deeds of Captain Dumont d'Urville had brought to light, deeds described here in this heavily condensed summary of the whole matter. In 1785 the Count de La Perouse and his subordinate, Captain de Langle, were sent by King Louis XVI of France on a voyage to circumnavigate the globe. They boarded two sloops of war, the Compass and the Astrolabe, which were never seen again. In 1791, justly concerned about the fate of these two sloops of war, the French government fitted out two large cargo boats, the Search and the Hope, which left Brest on September 28 under orders from Rear Admiral Bruni d'Entrecasteaux. Two months later, testimony from a certain Commander Bowen, aboard the Albemarle, alleged that rubble from shipwrecked vessels had been seen on the coast of New Georgia. But d'Entrecasteaux was unaware of this news - which seemed a bit dubious anyhow - and headed toward the Admiralty Islands, which had been named in a report by one Captain Hunter as the site of the Count de La Perouse's shipwreck. They looked in vain. The Hope and the Search passed right by Vanikoro without stopping there; and overall, this voyage was plagued by misfortune, ultimately costing the lives of Rear Admiral d'Entrecasteaux, two of his subordinate officers, and several seamen from his crew. It was an old hand at the Pacific, the English adventurer Captain Peter Dillon, who was the first to pick up the trail left by castaways from the wrecked vessels. On May 15, 1824, his ship, the St. Patrick, passed by Tikopia Island, one of the New Hebrides. There a native boatman pulled alongside in a dugout canoe and sold Dillon a silver sword hilt bearing the imprint of characters engraved with a cutting tool known as a burin. Furthermore, this native boatman claimed that during a stay in Vanikoro six years earlier, he had seen two Europeans belonging to ships that had run aground on the island's reefs many years before. Dillon guessed that the ships at issue were those under the Count de La Perouse, ships whose disappearance had shaken the entire world. He tried to reach Vanikoro, where, according to the native boatman, a good deal of rubble from the shipwreck could still be found, but winds and currents prevented his doing so. Dillon returned to Calcutta. There he was able to interest the Asiatic Society and the East India Company in his discovery. A ship named after the Search was placed at his disposal, and he departed on January 23, 1827, accompanied by a French deputy. This new Search, after putting in at several stops over the Pacific, dropped anchor before Vanikoro on July 7, 1827, in the same harbor of Vana where the Nautilus was currently floating. There Dillon collected many relics of the shipwreck: iron utensils, anchors, eyelets from pulleys, swivel guns, an eighteen-pound shell, the remains of some astronomical instruments, a piece of sternrail, and a bronze bell bearing the inscription "Made by Bazin," the foundry mark at Brest Arsenal around 1785. There could no longer be any doubt. Finishing his investigations, Dillon stayed at the site of the casualty until the month of October. Then he left Vanikoro, headed toward New Zealand, dropped anchor at Calcutta on April 7, 1828, and returned to France, where he received a very cordial welcome from King Charles X. But just then the renowned French explorer Captain Dumont d'Urville, unaware of Dillon's activities, had already set sail to search elsewhere for the site of the shipwreck. In essence, a whaling vessel had reported that some medals and a Cross of St. Louis had been found in the hands of savages in the Louisiade Islands and New Caledonia. So Captain Dumont d'Urville had put to sea in command of a vessel named after the Astrolabe, and just two months after Dillon had left Vanikoro, Dumont d'Urville dropped anchor before Hobart. There he heard about Dillon's findings, and he further learned that a certain James Hobbs, chief officer on the Union out of Calcutta, had put to shore on an island located in latitude 8 degrees 18' south and longitude 156 degrees 30' east, and had noted the natives of those waterways making use of iron bars and red fabrics. Pretty perplexed, Dumont d'Urville didn't know if he should give credence to these reports, which had been carried in some of the less reliable newspapers; nevertheless, he decided to start on Dillon's trail. On February 10, 1828, the new Astrolabe hove before Tikopia Island, took on a guide and interpreter in the person of a deserter who had settled there, plied a course toward Vanikoro, raised it on February 12, sailed along its reefs until the 14th, and only on the 20th dropped anchor inside its barrier in the harbor of Vana. On the 23rd, several officers circled the island and brought back some rubble of little importance. The natives, adopting a system of denial and evasion, refused to guide them to the site of the casualty. This rather shady conduct aroused the suspicion that the natives had mistreated the castaways; and in truth, the natives seemed afraid that Dumont d'Urville had come to avenge the Count de La Perouse and his unfortunate companions. But on the 26th, appeased with gifts and seeing that they didn't need to fear any reprisals, the natives led the chief officer, Mr. Jacquinot, to the site of the shipwreck. At this location, in three or four fathoms of water between the Paeu and Vana reefs, there lay some anchors, cannons, and ingots of iron and lead, all caked with limestone concretions. A launch and whaleboat from the new Astrolabe were steered to this locality, and after going to exhausting lengths, their crews managed to dredge up an anchor weighing 1,800 pounds, a cast-iron eight-pounder cannon, a lead ingot, and two copper swivel guns. Questioning the natives, Captain Dumont d'Urville also learned that after La Perouse's two ships had miscarried on the island's reefs, the count had built a smaller craft, only to go off and miscarry a second time. Where? Nobody knew. The commander of the new Astrolabe then had a monument erected under a tuft of mangrove, in memory of the famous navigator and his companions. It was a simple quadrangular pyramid, set on a coral base, with no ironwork to tempt the natives' avarice. Then Dumont d'Urville tried to depart; but his crews were run down from the fevers raging on these unsanitary shores, and quite ill himself, he was unable to weigh anchor until March 17. Meanwhile, fearing that Dumont d'Urville wasn't abreast of Dillon's activities, the French government sent a sloop of war to Vanikoro, the Bayonnaise under Commander Legoarant de Tromelin, who had been stationed on the American west coast. Dropping anchor before Vanikoro a few months after the new Astrolabe's departure, the Bayonnaise didn't find any additional evidence but verified that the savages hadn't disturbed the memorial honoring the Count de La Perouse. This is the substance of the account I gave Captain Nemo. "So," he said to me, "the castaways built a third ship on Vanikoro Island, and to this day, nobody knows where it went and perished?" "Nobody knows." Captain Nemo didn't reply but signaled me to follow him to the main lounge. The Nautilus sank a few meters beneath the waves, and the panels opened. I rushed to the window and saw crusts of coral: fungus coral, siphonula coral, alcyon coral, sea anemone from the genus Caryophylia, plus myriads of charming fish including greenfish, damselfish, sweepers, snappers, and squirrelfish; underneath this coral covering I detected some rubble the old dredges hadn't been able to tear free-iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, shells, tackle from a capstan, a stempost, all objects hailing from the wrecked ships and now carpeted in moving flowers. And as I stared at this desolate wreckage, Captain Nemo told me in a solemn voice: "Commander La Perouse set out on December 7, 1785, with his ships, the Compass and the Astrolabe. He dropped anchor first at Botany Bay, visited the Tonga Islands and New Caledonia, headed toward the Santa Cruz Islands, and put in at Nomuka, one of the islands in the Ha'apai group. Then his ships arrived at the unknown reefs of Vanikoro. Traveling in the lead, the Compass ran afoul of breakers on the southerly coast. The Astrolabe went to its rescue and also ran aground. The first ship was destroyed almost immediately. The second, stranded to leeward, held up for some days. The natives gave the castaways a fair enough welcome. The latter took up residence on the island and built a smaller craft with rubble from the two large ones. A few seamen stayed voluntarily in Vanikoro. The others, weak and ailing, set sail with the Count de La Perouse. They headed to the Solomon Islands, and they perished with all hands on the westerly coast of the chief island in that group, between Cape Deception and Cape Satisfaction!" "And how do you know all this?" I exclaimed. "Here's what I found at the very site of that final shipwreck!" Captain Nemo showed me a tin box, stamped with the coat of arms of France and all corroded by salt water. He opened it and I saw a bundle of papers, yellowed but still legible. They were the actual military orders given by France's Minister of the Navy to Commander La Perouse, with notes along the margin in the handwriting of King Louis XVI! "Ah, what a splendid death for a seaman!" Captain Nemo then said. "A coral grave is a tranquil grave, and may Heaven grant that my companions and I rest in no other!"

[readbookywooks]

'Absolutely true!' shouted Rincewind desperately. 'Only this specific troll can't, you see.' 'Can't?' Herrena hesitated. Something of the terror in Rincewind's voice hit her. 'Yes, because, you see, you've lit it on his tongue.' Then the floor moved. Old Grandad awoke very slowly from his centuries-old slumber. He nearly didn't awake at all, in fact a few decades later none of this could have happened. When a troll gets old and starts to think seriously about the universe it normally finds a quiet spot and gets down to some hard philosophising, and after a while starts to forget about its extremities. It begins to crystallise around the edges until nothing remains except a tiny flicker of life inside quite a large hill with some unusual rock strata. Old Grandad hadn't quite got that far. He awoke from considering quite a promising line of inquiry about the meaning of truth and found a hot ashy taste in what, after a certain amount of thought, he remembered as being his mouth. He began to get angry. Commands skittered along neural pathways of impure silicon. Deep within his sili-caceous body stone slipped smoothly along special fracture lines. Trees toppled, turf split, as fingers the size of ships unfolded and gripped the ground. Two enormous rock-slides high on his cliff face marked the opening of eyes like great crusted opals. Rincewind couldn't see all this, of course, since his own eyes were daylight issue only, but he did see the whole dark landscape shake itself slowly and then begin to rise impossibly against the stars. The sun rose. However, the sunlight didn't. What did happen was that the famous Discworld sunlight, which as has already been indicated travels very slowly through the Disc's powerful magical field, sloshed gently over the lands around the Rim and began its soft, silent battle against the retreating armies of the night. It poured like molten gold[4] across the sleeping landscape – bright, clean and, above all, slow. Herrena didn't hesitate. With great presence of mind she ran to the edge of Old Grandad's bottom lip and jumped, rolling as she hit the earth. The men followed her, cursing as they landed among the debris. Like a fat man trying to do press-ups the old troll pushed himself upwards. This wasn't apparent from where the prisoners were lying. All they knew was that the floor kept rolling under them and that there was a lot of noise going on, most of it unpleasant. Weems grabbed Gancia's arm. 'It's a herthquake,' he said. 'Let's get out of here!' 'Not without that gold,' said Gancia. 'What?' 'The gold, the gold. Man, we could be as rich as Creosote!' Weems might have had a room-temperature IQ, but he knew idiocy when he saw it. Gancia's eyes gleamed more than gold, and he appeared to be staring at Weems' left ear. Weems looked desperately at the Luggage. It was still open invitingly, which was odd – you'd have thought all this shaking would have slammed the lid shut. 'We'd never carry it,' he suggested. 'It's too heavy,' he added. 'We'll damn well carry some of it!' shouted Gancia, and leapt towards the chest as the floor shook again. The lid snapped shut. Gancia vanished. And just in case Weems thought it was accidental the Luggage's lid snapped open again, just for a second, and a large tongue as red as mahogany licked across broad teeth as white as sycamore. Then it slammed shut again. To Weem's further horror hundreds of little legs extruded from the underside of the box. It rose very deliberately and, carefully arranging its feet, shuffled around to face him. There was a particularly malevolent look about its keyhole, the sort of look that says 'Go on – make my day . . .' He backed away and looked imploringly at Twoflower. 'I think it might be a good idea if you untied us,' suggested Twoflower. 'It's really quite friendly once it gets to know you.' Licking his lips nervously, Weems drew his knife. The Luggage gave a warning creak. He slashed through their bonds and stood back quickly. 'Thank you,' said Twoflower. 'I think my back'sh gone again,' complained Cohen, as Bethan helped him to his feet. 'What do we do with this man?' said Bethan. 'We take hish knife and tell him to bugger off,' said Cohen. 'Right?' 'Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!' said Weems, and bolted towards the cavemouth. For a moment he was outlined against the grey pre-dawn sky, and then he vanished. There was a distant cry of 'aaargh'. The sunlight roared silently across the land like surf. Here and there, where the magic field was slightly weaker, tongues of morning raced ahead of the day, leaving isolated islands of night that contracted and vanished as the bright ocean flowed onwards. The uplands around the Vortex Plains stood out ahead of the advancing tide like a great grey ship. It is possible to stab a troll, but the technique takes practice and no-one ever gets a chance to practise more than once. Herrena's men saw the trolls loom out of the darkness like very solid ghosts. Blades shattered as they hit silica skins, there were one or two brief, flat screams, and then nothing more but shouts far away in the forest as they put as much distance as they could between themselves and the avenging earth. Rincewind crept out from behind a tree and looked around. He was alone, but the bushes behind him rustled as the trolls lumbered after the gang. He looked up. High above him two great crystalline eyes focussed in atred of everything soft and squelchy and, above all, warm. Rincewind cowered in horror as a hand the size of a house rose, curled into a fist, and dropped towards him. Day came with a silent explosion of light. For a moment the huge terrifying bulk of Old Grandad was a breakwater of shadow as the daylight streamed past. There was a brief grinding noise. There was silence. Several minutes passed. Nothing happened. A few birds started singing. A bumblebee buzzed over the boulder that was Old Grandad's fist and alighted on a patch of thyme that had grown under a stone fingernail. There was a scuffling down below. Rincewind slid awkwardly out of the narrow gap between the fist and the ground like a snake leaving a burrow. He lay on his back, staring up at the sky past the frozen shape of the troll. It hadn't changed in any way, apart from the stillness, but already the eye started to play tricks. Last night Rincewind had looked at cracks in stone and seen them become mouths and eyes; now he looked at the great cliff face and saw the features become, like magic, mere blemishes in the rock. 'Wow!' he said. That didn't seem to help. He stood up, dusted himself off, and looked around. Apart from the bumble bee, he was completely alone. After poking around for a bit he found a rock that, from certain angles, looked like Beryl. He was lost and lonely and a long way from home. He — There was a crunch high above him, and shards of rock spattered into the earth. High up on the face of Old Grandad a hole appeared; there was a brief sight of the Luggage's backside as it struggled to regain its footing, and then Twoflower's head poked out of the mouth cave. 'Anyone down there? I say?' 'Hey!' shouted the wizard. 'Am I glad to see you!' 'I don't know. Are you?' said Twoflower. 'Am I what?' 'Gosh, there's a wonderful view from up here!' It took them half an hour to get down. Fortunately Old Grandad had been quite craggy with plenty of handholds, but his nose would have presented a tricky obstacle if it hadn't been for the luxuriant oak tree that flourished in one nostril. The Luggage didn't bother to climb. It just jumped, and bounced its way down with no apparent harm. Cohen sat in the shade, trying to catch his breath and waiting for his sanity to catch up with him. He eyed the Luggage thoughtfully. 'The horses have all gone,' said Twoflower. 'We'll find 'em,' said Cohen. His eyes bored into the Luggage, which began to look embarrassed. 'They were carrying all our food,' said Rincewind. 'Plenty of food in the foreshts.' 'I have some nourishing biscuits in the Luggage,' said Twoflower. 'Traveller's Digestives. Always a comfort in a tight spot.' 'I've tried them,' said Rincewind. They've got a mean edge on them, and —' Cohen stood up, wincing. 'Excushe me,' he said flatly. 'There'sh shomething I've got to know.' He walked over to the Luggage and gripped its lid. The box backed away hurriedly, but Cohen stuck out a skinny foot and tripped up half its legs. As it twisted to snap at him he gritted his teeth and heaved, jerking the Luggage onto its curved lid where it rocked angrily like a maddened tortoise. 'Hey, that's my Luggage!' said Twoflower. 'Why's he attacking my Luggage?' 'I think I know,' said Bethan quietly. 'I think it's because he's scared of it.' Twoflower turned to Rincewind, open-mouthed. Rincewind shrugged. 'Search me,' he said. 'I run away from things I'm scared of, myself.' With a snap of its lid the Luggage jerked into the air and came down running, catching Cohen a crack on the shins with one of its brass corners. As it wheeled around he got a grip on it just long enough to send it galloping full tilt into a rock. 'Not bad,' said Rincewind, admiringly. The Luggage staggered back, paused for a moment, then came at Cohen waving its lid menacingly. He jumped and landed on it, with both his hands and feet caught in the gap between the box and the lid. This severely puzzled the Luggage. It was even more astonished when Cohen took a deep breath and heaved, muscles standing out on his skinny arms like a sock full of coconuts. They stood locked there for some time, tendon versus hinge. Occasionally one or other would creak. Bethan elbowed Twoflower in the ribs. 'Do something,' she said. 'Um,' said Twoflower. 'Yes. That's about enough, I think. Put him down, please.' The Luggage gave a creak of betrayal at the sound of its master's voice. Its lid flew up with such force that Cohen tumbled backwards, but he scrambled to his feet and flung himself towards the box. Its contents lay open to the skies. Cohen reached inside. The Luggage creaked a bit, but had obviously weighed up the chances of being sent to the top of that Great Wardrobe in the Sky. When Rincewind dared to peek through his fingers Cohen was peering into the Luggage and cursing under his breath. 'Laundry?' he shouted. 'Is that it? Just laundry?' He was shaking with rage. 'I think there's some biscuits too,' said Twoflower in a small voice. 'But there wash gold! And I shaw it eat shomebody!' Cohen looked imploringly at Rincewind. The wizard sighed. 'Don't ask me,' he said. 'I don't own the bloody thing.' 'I bought it in a shop,' said Twoflower defensively. 'I said I wanted a travelling trunk.' 'That's what you got, all right,' said Rincewind. 'It's very loyal,' said Twoflower. 'Oh yes,' agreed Rincewind. 'If loyalty is what you look for in a suitcase.' 'Hold on,' said Cohen, who had sagged onto a rock. Wash it one of thoshe shopsh – I mean, I bet you hadn't noticed it before and when you went back again it washn't there?' Twoflower brightened. 'That's right!' 'Shopkeeper a little wizened old guy? Shop full of strange shtuff?' 'Exactly! Never could find it again, I thought I must have got the wrong street, nothing but a brick wall where I thought it was, I remember thinking at the time it was rather —' Cohen shrugged. 'One of those shops[5],' he said. That explainsh it, then.' He felt his back, and grimaced. 'Bloody horshe ran off with my linament!' Rincewind remembered something, and fumbled in the depths of his torn and now very grubby robe. He held up a green bottle.